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Nuclear error
Japan should bring in international help to study and mitigate the Fukushima crisis.
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The radioactive water leaking from the site of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan is a stern reminder that we have not seen the end of the world’s largest nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine in 1986. After an earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima plant in March 2011, it became clear that efforts to decontaminate the area would be long-lasting, technically challenging and vastly expensive. Now it turns out that the task has been too big for the owner of the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The Japanese government on 3 September announced a plan to take over the clean-up, but its intervention is overdue.
In the two and a half years since the accident, TEPCO has repeatedly failed to acknowledge the nature and seriousness of problems with safeguarding nuclear fuels in the three destroyed reactors at Fukushima. Each day, some 400,000 litres of water are being funnelled into the reactor cores to prevent the rods from overheating. Only in recent months has TEPCO admitted that some contaminated water is leaking into the reactor basement and, through cracks in the concrete, into the groundwater and the adjacent sea. Few independent measurements of radiation exposure are available, and it is worryingly unclear how these leaks might affect human health, the environment and food safety. But the problems do not stop there. There are now almost 1,000 storage tanks holding the used cooling water, which, despite treatment at a purification system, contains tritium and other harmful radionuclides. The leaks make clear that this system is a laxly guarded time bomb.
It is no secret that pipes and storage tanks sealed with rubber seams have a habit of leaking. TEPCO’s reliance on routine patrols to detect any leaks has been careless, if not irresponsible. That the company, in response to the latest incidents, intends to refit the tanks with sensors and extra safety controls just underlines the makeshift way in which the storage facilities were set up in the first place. Meanwhile, the fate of the constantly amassing polluted water is undecided. Proposals earlier this year to dump it into the sea understandably met with fierce opposition from local fisheries.
“An international alliance on research and clean-up would help to restore shattered public trust.”
Given the government’s past actions and information policies, one might doubt whether it would be any more competent than TEPCO at managing the situation and communicating it to the public. Over the weekend, it turned out that radiation doses near the leaking tanks are 18 times larger than first reported: leakage that started as a mere ‘anomaly’ has turned into a genuine crisis. Japan should start consulting international experts for help. The United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom — to name but a few — all have know-how in nuclear engineering, clean-up and radiation health that would serve Japan well. An international alliance on research and clean-up would help to restore shattered public trust in the usefulness and effectiveness of monitoring and crisis-mitigation.
The most important impacts of the leaks will be those on the sea off Fukushima and the larger Pacific Ocean, which must be closely monitored. After assessments by US and Japanese scientists in 2011 and 2012, two major questions remain unanswered. How much radioactivity is still entering the sea? And, given the high levels of radioactivity that have been measured in some species long after the accident, when will fish and seafood from the region be safe to consume? The leaks make it more urgent to find answers to these questions.
To make reliable assessments of any environmental effects, scientists need to be able to collect data on contamination of marine food webs with all long-lived radionuclides, and particularly with caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239. They also need to know the sources of contamination, and to study the transport of radionuclides in groundwater, sediments and ocean currents. Current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his government have promised to boost science; they should encourage and support researchers from around the world in collecting and sharing information. Chernobyl was a missed opportunity for post-accident research — in that sense at least, Fukushima could do much better.
- Journal name:
- Nature
- Volume:
- 501,
- Pages:
- 5–6
- Date published:
- ()
- DOI:
- doi:10.1038/501005b
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でじたるコミック • - Now,the site contamination is critical than the ocean pollution. If packing of the tank became the deterioration, long PVC hoses filled in the site also may become degradation everywhere. TEPCO not spend money for not profitable , has correspond the level 7 accident with PVC hoses . If leakage from the hose discovered, the Fukushima site will be very high radiation . By any chance, Fukushima site becomes a non-admission, it is only a matter of time that the spent nuclear fuel accumulated in the Fukushima site will destroy the world.
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nao takaho • - In fact, some doctors have reported that exposure effects have come in Tokyo. Shigeru Mita M.D. have said that the number of white blood cells, especially of neutrophil, is significantly decreasing in blood of children in Tokyo. He examined blood test of 1500 children around Tokyo, and found that average of neutrophil number has decreased to 2500 cells/μl (normally 5000~3000). In this year, Hand-foot-and-mouth disease and rubella outbreak occurred in Tokyo. Japanese Government does not execute blood test not only in Tokyo but also in Fukushima.
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Geoff Russell • - Please contrast the New Scientist article ... http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929322.600-should-fukushimas-radioactive-water-be-dumped-at-sea.html#.UilhQL8W2Kk with the amateurish fear mongering of this Nature editorial. Note the editorial uses a trick more normally seen in the Murdoch press, implying that something "18 times larger ... " must be a "crisis" while giving zero context about whether this is dangerous or not, and if dangerous, quantifying the impact. See the New Scientist article for a professional way to discuss such complex matters.
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Mark Duffett • - "Few independent measurements of radiation exposure are available, and it is worryingly unclear how these leaks might affect human health, the environment and food safety" Spin dialled up to 11. Another, at least as valid way of putting it would be 'there is no evidence that these leaks will affect human health, the environment and food safety'. Nature would do well to take a critical look at the science behind limits set on 'when fish and seafood from the region is safe to consume'. There is nothing in the current developments to alter Geoff Brumfiel's assessment last year: the risk from radioactivity is relatively low. On the other hand, the science is quite clear that fear of radiation in these situations has health effects orders of magnitude greater than those of the radiation itself. Editorials of this sort of tone in Nature are not helping, to say the least.
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Geoff Russell • - Compare the language in this editorial with that of the article in the same issue on ocean trawling. In the editorial the word "crisis" is used 4 times, but doesn't appear in the trawling article. Would anybody offer a comparison of the mass devastation and suffering caused by ocean trawling compared with that of the Fukushima water leaks? As far as reported in Nature and elsewhere, there has been no devastation and no suffering associated with the latter. Nor is there likely to be. Will vast areas of the ocean be denuded as regularly happens with trawling? Nothing like this has been suggested from anybody. How will sea life suffer as a result of Fukushima? I'd be betting that if the sea life around Fukushima could cheer, they'd be doing it at the top of their "lungs". The decline in human exploitation will be the best news for the area for hundreds of years. Ditto the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Now, a question. When will Nature do an editorial on the other sea-wall engineering failures in Japan? The ones which resulted in thousands of human deaths and real suffering. It seems that engineering incompetence is getting off rather lightly compared to TEPCOs bumbling which has been a target everywhere.