Fukushima Daiichi: the situation (one year) after (ASN and IRSN)

[moinsdewatt]

Fukushima: 20 tonnes of equipment extracted from the reactor pool

Monday August 3, 2015 franceinfo.fr

More than four years after the disaster, after months of preparation, the operator Tepco managed to extract from the pool of reactor 3 equipment that was originally used to move the fuel.

The removal of this equipment will first allow it to be placed in a safe place. But it will also facilitate the cleaning, thanks to machines, of the surface above the swimming pool of this reactor where radioactive detritus has accumulated. This particularly delicate operation due to the radioactivity required the use of a 600 ton remote-controlled crane.

The explosions that followed the tsunami of March 11, 2011 devastated the entire building of unit number 3, the fuel from the reactor core melted, which brought the ambient radioactivity around this reactor to a deadly level. . The extraction carried out this Sunday is only one stage of preparations for the dismantling of the plant which will take at least 40 years.


The extraction of this equipment was carried out with a 600-ton crane © MAXPPP

http://www.franceinfo.fr/actu/monde/art ... eur-712413

[moinsdewatt]

Fukushima: a first commune completely evacuated again habitable

Le Monde.fr with AFP | 05.09.2015/XNUMX/XNUMX

The Japanese commune of Naraha, in the Fukushima region, officially became habitable again at midnight on Saturday September 5, a first for a town completely evacuated after the nuclear accident of March 11, 2011.

A ceremony marking this rebirth of the city was held in the morning in a park, after a candlelight vigil the day before.

Former residents (2 households, 694 people) have so far had the right to return to prepare for return, but not to fully resettle. According to Japanese media, only slightly more than 7% have registered to return. .

The authorities estimate that the level of exposure to radioactivity in Naraha, a town located some 20 km from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi power station, has returned to a threshold below XNUMX millisieverts per year. In theory, this level allows residents, according to the Japanese government and international organizations, to relive it almost normally, even if the decontamination is neither complete nor perfect.

Fears are not lifted

Opinions differ, however, and environmental organizations protest against these conclusions. "The level of contamination is very variable in this locality and according to the houses, which is likely to create tensions between people," Jan Vande Putte, of Greenpeace, recently told Agence France Presse (AFP).
Part of the infrastructure has been restored, including a railway line, a bank branch has reopened, as well as a convenience store and a restaurant. But for some residents, such as Satoru Yamauchi, who ran a “soba” noodle restaurant before the accident, this is notoriously insufficient and the fears (particularly with regard to water) are not lifted.

"We cannot of course say that security has been fully restored and it is clear that there are still a mountain of problems to overcome," agreed Naraha Mayor Yukiei Matsumoto, in a message to the public this summer after the announcement of the decision to lift the ban on living in the area. But he also stressed that "refugee life involves many worries and a great deal of stress which have repercussions on the health of a growing number of people".

http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2 ... _3244.html

[Christophe]

New concerns: http://fukushima-diary.com/2015/09/grou ... a-week/#fr

The radioactivity in Cs 134/137 of the groundwater of reactor 2 increases by almost 260% in just one week

[moinsdewatt]

PICTURES. Fukushima, the place where time stands still



A row of cars stopped for years, overgrown with weeds ... This is not an image from the Walking Dead series, but a photo taken in September 2015 by the Polish photographer Arkadiusz Podniesinski in the area exclusion of Fukushima, four years after the nuclear accident which caused the evacuation of 160.000 people. Here are the images of his report.

Posted on 09-10-2015 the Obs




A motorcycle overgrown with vegetation.



The shelves are always full. "My intention was to show the state of the exclusion zone today. These ghost towns are terrifying and bear witness to the tragedy that has struck hundreds of thousands of people," comments the photographer



As far as the eye can see, a contaminated waste storage site.

other photos : http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/galeries ... rrete.html

[1360]

A photo of anticipation of the Volkswagen site?

More seriously, it's scary ...

And the pro-nuclear who tell us that it is only among others (true, for the moment) and that it is not so serious because the following generations will have the solution ....

Sad.

[Flytox]

An exemplary organization for the treatment of waste, we see immediately that we know how to learn from the past .... the waste is put online within reach of the next tsunami, just to have to start all over again. There are kicks in the ass that are lost It is at least a TEPCOnnard solution ....

[moinsdewatt]

The ice wall under construction could begin testing at the end of the year.

Tepco Expects to Begin Freezing Fukushima Ice Wall by Year End

Stephen Stapczynski October 10, 2015

Tokyo Electric Power Co. expects to begin freezing a soil barrier by the end of the year to stop a torrent of water entering the wrecked Fukushima nuclear facility, moving a step closer to fulfilling a promise the Japanese government made to the international community more than two years ago.

“In the last half-year we have made significant progress in water treatment,” Akira Ono, chief of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, said Friday during a tour of the facility north of Tokyo. The frozen wall, along with other measures, “should be able to resolve the contaminated water issues before the Olympic games.”
..................

The purpose of the ice wall - a barrier of soil 30 meters (98 feet) deep and 1,500 meters long which is frozen to -30 Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit) - is to prevent groundwater from flooding reactor basements and becoming contaminated
....................
The proposed ice wall has never been done on such a scale, and there could be operational issues due to the complicated nature of the project, according to Lake Barrett, former head of the US Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Nuclear Waste Management.
“Some of these areas may have different freezing and sealing capabilities,” he said by e-mail.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... y-year-end

[moinsdewatt]

News from the ice wall.

The tubes 30 m deep over a length of 780 m long are installed.



3 min video here:
https://www.rt.com/news/323500-fukushim ... l-leaning/

[moinsdewatt]

News from Fukushima:

5 years later, TF1 at the heart of the Fukushima power station

TF1 REPORT. 5 years after the nuclear disaster, one of the worst in the modern era, it is the first time that a European television team has been able to penetrate the irradiated area of ​​the Japanese power station at Fukushima. To contain the radiation, a huge sarcophagus is being built around reactor 3. According to the authorities, it will take 30 years to complete the decontamination operations,

3m17 of report.
http://lci.tf1.fr/jt-20h/videos/2016/5- ... 14783.html

DOCUMENT. Five years after Fukushima, residents return to irradiated cities

13 Feb 2016

For five years, residents of Naraha, a town 20 kilometers from Fukushima, received emergency housing. Recently, the government has decreed that the area has become habitable again. All around the houses, the grass was cut but the decontamination did not go any further. Of the 8.000 inhabitants before the disaster, only 10% of the population returned to Naraha.
Video Source:

2mn40 of report
http://lci.tf1.fr/jt-we/videos/2016/doc ... 15722.html

[moinsdewatt]

Almost 5 years later:

Fukushima: Tepco in the sights of justice

By Arnaud Vaulerin, correspondent in Japan - February 26, 2016

Three former Japanese power company executives to be charged on Monday for failing to take appropriate action in March 2011.

Five years after the Fukushima nuclear accident, Tepco should be caught by Japanese justice. Three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the Fukushima Daichi power plant, could be charged on Monday for professional negligence which resulted in death and injury in March 2011. To date, no one has been criminally recognized responsible for the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in April 1986. This information comes at a delicate time for the electric company. On Wednesday, she had to apologize for minimizing the severity of the reactor core condition that had melted.

The indictment formed by a group of citizens will be filed in the Tokyo District Court by lawyers sitting as prosecutors. It targets Tsunehisa Katsumata, 75, former president of Tepco, and his two former vice-presidents, Sakae Muto, 65, and Ichiro Takekuro, 69. The trio led Tepco when the Fukushima Daichi site was struck by the magnitude 9 earthquake and the tsunami wave which caused a general electrical failure causing the hearts of reactors 1, 2 and 3 to melt and serial explosions .
............................

http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2016/0 ... ce_1436001