Fukushima: A terrifying glimpse into a disaster
We were gifted a random Wednesday off by Temple, and because of this, a few spring activity trips were planned for that day. And what more relaxing and fun way to spend a day off than trucking 3.5 hours away on a bus to see the disaster zone of the 2011 earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown in Fukushima?
While it may not have been a particularly 'fun' trip, I did find my time in Fukushima to be very educational and enlightening.
I should start out by saying that the tours of the nuclear meltdown zone are given by none other than the company TEPCO, the owners of the nuclear power plant that melted down. The tours are meant to serve as a massive PR campaign, as (somewhat rightfully), the people of the area and generally around the world are very angry at TEPCO for the meltdown. While, yes, no one could have planned for an earthquake and tsunami to occur in a matter of an hour, there were several oversights done by TEPCO that resulted in the subsequent meltdown. The most obvious being this: The backup generators that were set to run in case of a power outage were placed just 80 meters from the ocean. Not only that but these generators were not protected by anything waterproof! This feels like a major oversight for a country that has historically been hit pretty hard by earthquakes and tsunamis.
Because of the Earthquake, the power sources for the 4 central units of the nuclear power station were lost. Luckily, that's what the backup generators were there for. However, not long after, the tsunami also knocked out the backup generators, and power was lost to Units 1, 2, and 3. Unit 4 also lost power but continued to have water pumped through, but this would soon be lost as well. The loss of the constant flow of water quickly proved detrimental. Despite efforts by local firemen, the core reactors began to melt down as heat increased exponentially from the nuclear reactions. This intense heat created steam, filling the air with hydrogen, and causing the eventual explosions that destroyed the plant. This is a simplification of the events that occurred, I highly recommend reading up on it on a better more knowledgeable platform than me.
What I mainly want to speak about is the experience of my tour through the TEPCO Dai-Ichii Nuclear Power Station.
We took a charter bus full of eager students to get to Fukushima. We were led by two professors with a long history of studying the nuclear disaster (one from a political point of view and one from a more scientific point of view.) As we approached the plant, signs along the highway began to pop up that read out the radiation level in mSv. The towns we passed through became more, and more, and more empty. It was pretty eery when we finally arrived at the TEPCO decommissioning archive center. This building was in a town of nearly 20,000 before the disaster. Now? Just 800.
Before going to the plant, we first walked around the Decommissioning Archive. It was here, in detail, that TEPCO explained their actions and ongoing plans for helping remove radiation and clean up after the meltdown. There are 4 phases to their plan of decommissioning:
0. Achievement of cold shutdown state. This will result in a significant impression of emissions. This was achieved in December of 2011.
Phase 1: Begin the removal of fuel debris. This was successfully completed in Unit 4 in 2013. Unit 3 has also successfully had all fuel removed. Units 1 and 2 still have fuel inside, and they are currently working to have significant rubble removal, including the installation of fuel removal equipment to eventually remove the fuel and store / transport it.
Phase 2: This is where the removal of fuel debris is set to begin. This is the current phase of the decommissioning being faced by TEPCO. Unit 1 still can not be touched by even robots due to the massive heat release from the fuel meltdown, but units 2 and 3 have begun to show progress with robots being able to touch and maneuver the fuel debris. Still, they expect that this process will not really be able to begin for another 10 years
Phase 3: Period to end of decommissioning. This includes treatment, disposal, and dismantling. This likely won't occur for another 30 to 40 years.
The main thing we learned from our time in the decommissioning center is this: Fixing this mess will take a very, very, very long time.
TEPCO can and is doing everything it can to keep the reactors cold. This involves pumping a TON of salt water through the reactors day in and day out. Because of this, the plant has accumulated hundreds if not thousands of massive water tanks filled with contaminated water. TEPCO has installed ALPS, an Advanced Liquid Processing System, to deal with this growing huge amount of irradiated water. Through ALPS, several of the radionuclides present in the water are removed, except for Tritium. Because of Tritium, even the treated water must still be safely stored away. There is no accessible and available technology for removing Tritium from the contaminated water.
With thousands of tons of water being pumped through the reactor cores every day, TEPCO now had another issue; Where the hell were they going to store all this contaminated water? They are running out of space on the plant's grounds for the water tanks to hold the contaminated water, and the areas around the plant have no intention of taking on any of the water on their land. They had lost enough to the meltdown as is, and now they are being asked to give more space for irradiated water? No way. So, a difficult and admittedly horrible decision was reached by TEPCO and the Japanese government:
They are going to release the ALPS-treated water, starting in the Spring of 2023, into the ocean. Sounds great, right? They are only releasing the water 1 meter from the land as well! Their argument is that, if mixed with enough clean seawater, there is no way to detect the Tritium still present in the water and there should be no issue with releasing it back into the ocean. Take that as you will.
Now, at last, let's get to go to the plant.
Naturally, we were not allowed to bring our phones with us to the plant. Whether this was for security, or genuinely for the safety of our devices against the radiation, I could not tell you. The Dai-Ichii power plant was about a 20-minute bus ride from the decommissioning center, and we were taken there on special buses equipped with technology that read out the radiation levels present within the bus at any given moment. Once at the plant, we went through some pretty hardcore security, including a metal detector and a large sense of sorts that read our day passes once they were confirmed by our IDs. Once cleared to enter, we were given gloves and a vest with 4 pockets; two on the chest and two on the abdomen. We were then given Dosimeters, which would play out loud an alarm if the level of radiation we were being exposed to get too high. We were told to expect them to go off, but that by the end we won't have received more than 0.2 mSv of radiation, which is about equivalent to dental X-Rays. For the women in the group, we had to wear our dosimeters on our abdomen, while men wore them over their chests. Well, in their eyes, women had to protect their ovaries and men had to protect their hearts. I held my tongue but oh boy did this piss me off.
Now we boarded back on the bus to begin our tour. We were taken on a road around the plant, passing by major attractions before actually stepping out anywhere. We saw the many massive water tanks, the ALPS building, as well as remnants from the massive concrete pumps used to get water into the reactors soon after the meltdown occurred. As we drove around, it was noted by all of us that there was not a spot of open land. For protection of the land, and for avoiding the massive accumulation of contaminated groundwater, the land around the plant had been completely paved over so no water could seep underground. To prevent even more ground water, a massive ice wall was installed in the ground around the plant to prevent any water from enetering from the sides, not just from the top. Further still, apparenly this area used to be lined with hundreds of Cherry Blossom trees to brighten up the plant. These were, of course, all gone. Now standing in their place were tall, imposing water tanks full of dangerously contaminated irradiated water.
The main attraction was, of course, the observation deck where visitors could view Units 1 through 4 at an almost alarmingly close distance. Unit 4 was nearly completely reconstructed, and Unit 3 was not far behind. Unit 2 still had quite a bit of work to go, but Unit 1...Unit 1 was the showstopper. This building was exactly as it was the day of the meltdown because simply there is nothing anyone or anything can do about it currently, it is too hot and radioactive. It was mind-boggling to stand just 50 or so meters away from Unit 1, where robots meltdown if they get too close. From behind the Units, we could see the sea wall that is currently being constructed to prevent a tsunami from wrecking the area once again. The original tsunami measured at 15 meters, so naturally, this sea wall was not 15 meters. The radiation meter by the observation deck was reading out at a whopping 75 mSv, which was an insane amount to just casually be hanging out in. We stood here for as long as our Dosimeters would permit, but after not too long, our dosimeters began to scream at us to Get The Heck out of there. We complied, but the scene of the 4 destroyed units will not leave my mind anytime soon. One of the buildings close to the units had all of its windows blown inside, and you could see inside that the explosions had really done a number on what must have originally been an office building of sorts. Seeing these relicts of the past so insanely destroyed, it sticks with you.
We boarded back onto the bus will a new sense of the severity surrounding us, and finished our tour. We stopped by Units 5 and 6, which were unaffected by the earthquake and tsunami but, of course, are now shut down. Passed the untouched units, we could see out into the ocean, where marked by 4 unimpressive brown poles, the area of the water dump is set to take place within the next few months. It made all of us uncomfortable how we all felt we could easily swim out and back from that point if we so desired, and this was there they were going to be releasing Tritium contaminated water.
Speaking of, once the tour was complete, we were brought into the main visitor building and allowed to handle a bottle of the ALPS treated water. It looked no different than a normal bottle of water, other than the fact that the lid was wrapped up in a ton of tape to prevent any sort of leakage or spilling. It felt a little odd to be holding it, but since we have every intention to release it into the ocean, it felt wrong to not hold it at least once.
After just a short hour, the tour of the plant was over. We were scanned thoroughly again, to make sure no radiation contamination remained on our bodies and clothes. We also had to step on a sticky mat, which removed any debris from the bottom of our shoes. Our Dosimeter levels were read out to us (0.2, as promised), and we were sent back to the decommissioning center. It was not said out loud, but anyone could tell that this tour had deeply unsettled us, leaving us with a new sense of the calamity that had occurred.
While it was pretty obvious throughout the tour that TEPCO was trying their best to clean up their public image, I still felt the whole tour was extremely informative and properly distressing. If given the chance, I think anyone would do well with experiencing this tour. If nothing else, than to put into perspective just how insanely powerful nuclear energy is, and how terribly things can go wrong in the blink of an eye.
