via Japan Times / November 5, 2013 / With Tepco due to begin removing more than 1,300 spent-fuel rod assemblies and nearly 200 fresh ones from the reactor 4 pool at the Fukushima No. 1 plant this month, global pressure is mounting to allow an international task force to monitor and assist the highly hazardous operation.
A former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland, anti-nuclear groups in Japan and abroad, nuclear engineers, doctors and radiologists are warning of the dangers of the operation Tokyo Electric Power Co. plans to carry out and are calling for pressure on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration to be more globally transparent.
“It is urgently needed to set up an international task force to assist Japan by deploying all possible means to reduce the risks of the imminent first unloading of spent fuel from unit 4,” ex-Ambassador to Switzerland Mitsuhei Murata said in a recent letter to U.S. President Barack Obama.
Journalist and activist Harvey Wasserman, writing for Global Research, an independent research and media organization based in Montreal, claims Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to extract the fuel on its own.
The extraction “may be humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban missile crisis. We are petitioning the United Nations and Obama to mobilize the global scientific community to take charge of the nuclear power plant and the job of moving these fuel roads to safety,” he wrote in September.
Separately, 17 internationally prominent physicians, nuclear engineers and scientists, radiation experts, and policymakers have written to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, asking that he appoint experts independent of both Tepco and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has a mandate to both monitor and promote nuclear energy, to formulate a viable disaster-mitigation plan.
The operation to remove the fuel rods is also heightening fears in the U.S. over food safety, especially on the West Coast. More than 12,000 people have signed an online petition on Change.org to 10 senators, calling on them to conduct an investigation into possible environmental damage to the U.S. Pacific coast.
“This would include a detailed inspection of the (Fukushima No. 1) facility by a team of experts who are independent of the nuclear industry, as well as ongoing monitoring of West Coast and Hawaii water, air and food for radiation,” the petition reads.
At a meeting of largely pro-nuclear Japanese and international scientific experts in Kyoto last month, Abe said the government is open to receiving the most advanced knowledge from abroad to contain the Fukushima woes.
He also told the International Olympic Committee in September that Japan needs international assistance. But in neither case did he specify what kind of advice from abroad he would welcome.
Source: Japan Times
Picture: Bloomberg
November 6, 2013 at 11:40 pm ·
Complete and utter nonsense, a scare whipped up out of pure fantasy. This is an operation that carries zero off-site risk. As the preceding article demonstrates, the debris has been cleared and the fuel rods inspected already, with good visibility of the fuel assemblies. The rods have vastly reduced heat production in their 3 years of storage. They will not catch fire, touching rods together does not have magically dangerous effects, etc.
Take the word of a couple of anti-nukes, if you like:
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2013/fukushima_fuel_pool_4
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Thomas Cochran, the Washington-based Natural Resource Defense Council’s nuclear program senior scientist told Bellona in a telephone interview that he considered the dangers to be vastly overplayed and, “That Tokyo would have to be evacuated is complete nonsense.”
“There are lots of worries at Fukushima,” he added. “(The fuel pool) is not one of the pressing ones.”
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert with the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists, told Bellona by email that a chain reaction in the fuel pool was not a risk he considered significant.
“The biggest risk with Unit 4 pool unloading is that a spent fuel cask might drop and damage the pool, causing a leak that could expose some fuel and cause overheating,” he said.
Cochran agreed, telling Bellona that a dropped fuel assembly was unlikely to cause wide spread contamination.
But Cochran was skeptical that a dropped assembly would even break.
“The vast majority of fission materials are encased in ceramic material – if a fuel assembly casing broke, you would be dealing with noble gasses as well as a small amount of radioactive ones, but I don’t think that would cause any sign of off site exposure,” he said.
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November 9, 2013 at 10:50 am ·
If there is a major earthquake, reactor 4 could be a major disaster for japan, west coast and hawaii.
Google David Suzuki to learn more. Japan needs to allow international experts to direct the operation, this unloading of fuel rods is uncharted territory for engineers at the plant. i hope there is no major earthquake, but david suzuki says there is a 95% chance of a 7 or larger within the three years it is projected to get those rods out of there safely, so that is not very positive news. Already the radiation has caused a lot of problems for hawaii japan and west coast. anyone who says this is ok and not a disaster is a fool, and is dead wrong. lets hope there is no major earthquake in the area while they are moving those rods.