Japan declares 'nuclear emergency' after quake - PART 2

Whether Tepco fails or not, it’s taxpayers’ tab

. “Tepco is a private company, earning profits and listing its stock on the market,” said Masatoshi Akimoto, a Lower House LDP member. A rookie politician first elected in December, he heads a small study group with colleagues on the nation’s energy policy.

“A normal private company would shoulder its management risks and would be accountable for its actions,” Akimoto said. “How is it possible that a company that caused a nuclear accident can avoid bankruptcy, and its shareholders and creditor banks aren’t held liable?”

Akimoto acknowledged that his views are well outside the LDP mainstream. Still, he argued that the bankruptcy filing is the only way Tepco can be held accountable for its failure to bolster the plant’s disaster defenses, when the risks the facility faced were no mysteries.

If Tepco goes under, he said, shareholders and creditors will also pay for the risks in investing in a nuclear plant operator. Their shares would plummet and they would be forced to lose much of their outstanding loans to Tepco. Management would be sacked and the utility’s remaining assets would be sold off — saving “trillions of yen” for taxpayers, Akimoto figured.

The reality, however, is that the government is trying to prevent Tepco’s failure at all costs, by introducing new accounting rules that smack of “window-dressing,” fumed Kenichi Oshima, a professor of environmental economics at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.

Japan Times Source, good Article, read the whole

it's all good news at fukushima

money money money...

edition.cnn.com...

poor men...

and these are the workers that will remove the fuel rod's, next November..

not good not good

reply to post by voyger2


Yes, for sure "not good". Especially when you consider that the fuel removal task would be a major challenge for the original plant operators. You can only imagine what could go wrong when untrained "day laborers" are trying to dismantle a fuel pool that is in very bad shape and where one slip could trigger a disaster of biblical proportions.

reply to post by happykat39


But it is not the Nuclear Gypsies (Temp-Staff) who dismantle the Fuel Pool
of Nr. 4. but "real Tepco Employees and Nuclear Engineers"!

NATIONAL Fukushima 2020: Will Japan be able to keep the nuclear situation under control?

Thirty seconds into what may ultimately be regarded as one of the defining speeches of his career, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe slowly raised his hands chest high, then spread them out sideways in a gesture of confidence.

“Let me assure you,” he said, addressing members of the International Olympic Committee on Sept. 7. “The situation is under control.”

The prime minister was attempting to convince his audience in Buenos Aires that the multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, initiated by tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, should not be a cause of concern for Tokyo hosting the Summer Olympic Games in 2020.

The nuclear accident, he said, “has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.”

However, cleaning up the crippled nuclear power plant certainly won’t be plain sailing, with decommissioning plans believed to include the removal of spent nuclear fuel rods from a cooling pool littered with debris, the creation of a permafrost wall around the four damaged reactors in order to prevent the spread of radioactive isotopes and the discovery of the precise location of the melted nuclear fuel in the highly toxic containment vessels.

“On a scale of zero to 10, I’d say the decommissioning process has advanced by about 0.1 (since the nuclear accident),” said Michio Ishikawa, president of the Association for Nuclear Decommissioning Study.

Great Article

Read it

Interesting graphics in here in the beginning shows how rainwater at the site flows over and around all the tank structures, down the hill towards the plants, into and around the buildings themselves, then thru and out pipes under the control buildings to the sea. Every time it rains. And its raining.

Another typhoon due the 25th(?)

enenews.com...

Neutrons Created in Particle Accelerators....

Japan pursuing new nuclear disposal technology

The Japanese government plans to develop new technology that would cut the environmental impact of highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

The waste is believed to have an impact on the environment that lasts tens of thousands of years. The government's current plan involves burying it deep underground. But officials have yet to choose a site due to safety concerns.

The science ministry convened a panel of experts on Wednesday. Ministry officials told the panel that they will start to develop a technology that would reduce the amount of time the waste is considered harmful to hundreds of years. The experts agreed to the plan.

The plan involves extracting long-lasting radioactive substances from spent nuclear fuel. Officials say that by using neutrons created in particle accelerators, the substances can be changed into shorter-lasting materials.

They say that if the plan succeeds, it would also cut the disposal space needed for the waste to about a hundredth of current estimates.

However, there are many problems that must be overcome, including how to secure safety. Observers say it will take decades before the plan can be put into action.

Some experts said that Japan should ask other countries to help with the project. Others said the government should exercise caution in deciding whether to put the technology into use.

Hiroyuki Oigawa of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency says that, if Japan obtains international support, the plan could be put into practical use in about 20 to 30 years.
Oct. 23, 2013 - Updated 08:07 UTC

Wonder how cost effective this is and how in the heck it will work????

www3.nhk.or.jp...

- Purple Chive

So, we have been worried about whether or not Japan will even still exist as an occupied country, well it seems that the young generation isn't even interested in having kids, or relationships at all.

www.foxnews.com...

So, it might not matter.

reply to post by Purplechive


Hi Purple Chive.

The plan involves extracting long-lasting radioactive substances from spent nuclear fuel. Officials say that by using neutrons created in particle accelerators, the substances can be changed into shorter-lasting materials.

Yah, one little bit at a time. The power requirements for a particle accelerator aside, what to do with the "less dangerous", dangerous waste is still up in the air. 30 meters up in the air in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima.

The other notion of "extracting" the most dangerous waste from the spent fuel rods is a whole other process. Its called bomb making.

That part of the nuclear fuel cycle is even more waste generating than the initial mining and refining of ore to make fuel rods in the first place. It involves corrosive acids to reduce the metal to oxides, plating tanks for reclamation of the chosen elements and refining by smelting of the chosen nasty (like plutonium for bomb "pits"). All the waste from that is highly radioactive and also needs to be "secured" somewhere for eons. Since that process is designed to make money from selling the materials to the military the cost is justified.

How will we convince the nuclear industry to pay for all that when the finished "product" will be waste?

Thats part of the problem with the waste (spent fuel) up until now. All the spent fuel rods are still in the reactors, right? Even now? One assumes they thought of some idea all these years what to do with it.

No? Because there is no profit from that part of the operation. Everything leading up to producing electricity they pay for. As soon as the fuel is "spent" its a liability. In more than one horrendous way. Look at how the world is watching fuel pool #4 . What might happen there is potentially so dangerous...

Any fuzzy ideas how to reduce the radioactive waste to harmless jelly is disinformation designed to distract us from the reality. The only thing that diminishes radioactivity is decay over time, period.

BobAthome
reply to post by Alekto

 

"so tell me,, what would the heat of the CORES be"

seeing i asked first it would be,, impolite of me too, insist on an answer ,seeing it is your Country, ,Tokyo, and all.
so the relation is,, image,,, from a pure image, an angle ,fragile, delicate, egg,,should be handled with extreme care, or oppps,, sick,, tummy,,remember, powerplant has sick tummy,,?,,if u do remember,,those Tepco approved, images,, well,, i hope u can get the rest.

You have issues.

Hey fuel rod fans...

simple enough?

The change that TEPCO will be placing transport casks into the reactor well to load fuel into them is a concerning development. Transport casks weight as much as 50,000 pounds. Reactor vessels were not designed to hold up this much weight on top of the reactor internal systems.

Especially earthquake rattled, Tsunami battered, explosion shattered ones.

reply to post by intrptr


The Transport Cask do not rest on the Building Nr.4
but on the new Building surrounding Nr.4!

Even when Building Nr.4 is/ was intact the Transport Cask
never ever rested on the "Reactor Vessel" itself!

Edit: Misunderstanding!

Check their Source and you get the needed Info,
i don't understand how they write something
that stupid:
www.world-nuclear-news.org...

i guess its a Western Thought Process.

yes sadly i do have issues, with the level of, incompitence from a society, that grew from ,the horrors of a nuclear sin,,too see the day when a Japanese from, such a past,,would say that i had issues,, with a nuclear incident,, which i my humble opinion, was
a: pushed upon the Japanese People by there Govt. bought for by G.E.
And paid for by the "Nuclear dis-arniment Treaty" where do u think the MOX came from????,, disarmed Russian missles,, shipped by Britian,, through Ports in France,,too good old Fukusha MOX #3. But hey who knew it was gonna be hit by the most devestating quake in Japans History,,really it should have went BIG boomb,,,when the Hydrogen explosion hit,,,,so ya were on borrowed time,,, lest use it wisely,, not greedily,,


before the SUPER TYPHOON hits.reply to post by Alekto

Human0815
reply to post by intrptr

 

The Transport Cask do not rest on the Building Nr.4
but on the new Building surrounding Nr.4!

Even when Building Nr.4 is/ was intact the Transport Cask
never ever rested on the "Reactor Vessel" itself!

Edit: Misunderstanding!

Check their Source and you get the needed Info,
i don't understand how they write something
that stupid:
www.world-nuclear-news.org...

The source says "In" the reactor well.

Transport containers will be placed in the empty and undamaged reactor vessel and the fuel will be transferred to them underwater using the fuel handling machine. The used fuel will eventually be placed in the site's shared used fuel pool, which was undamaged by the natural disasters two years ago.

Unless you got a different link...

Makes sense they would temporarily store them in the well, it didn't melt down after the earthquake so it would be the strongest vessel on the site. Unless theres a strong enough aftershock during the process.

Doesn't sound dangerous at all. Crane swinging a 25 ton storage cask around filled with still too hot spent fuel rods...

Transport containers will be placed in the empty and undamaged reactor vessel and the fuel will be transferred to them underwater using the fuel handling machine.

I am not quite sure how they will take the fuel rods out of the #4 SFP and transfer them to the transport containers UNDERWATER ? If they come out of the water, as I understand it from previous posts, the fuel rods heat up and, if they are out of the water too long, they catch fire.

So, I guess what they are saying is that the transport containers have water in them and so they pop the fuel rods out of the #4 SPF and quickly place them in the container which they will use to transfer the rods to the common spent fuel pool which they say was undamaged (although has a huge number of other fuel rods in it already, if I remember correctly)

Is there any clarification on this please?
on edit: Yes there is - from this article here.

Since I am reviewing my pensions and insurances, this popped into my head.

Trying to be realistic here, what will be the effect of any nuclear fuel rod accident which occurs over the next few weeks?

Scenario 1.
A fuel rod dropped/breaks off and drops back into the pool.

Scenario 2.
A fuel rod dropped/breaks off and drops to the ground missing both pool and container.

Scenario 3.
A fuel rod dropped/breaks off and drops into the transport container.

Scenario 4.
Some other I have not thought of.

Financial effect - all economies are connected. Countries, pensions & insurance funds have investments in companies in Japan and many industries use products and services originating in Japan. When the Yen goes down, the financial markets will suffer a decline too. This makes all our investments take a knock. Banks have thier money tied up in all corners of the world.

How likely is it that a significant effect will be felt on the worlds economies?

Environmental effect - similar to what has already happened with the cores but additive/cumulative perhaps?

WOW
cant believe how big my original thread got to and this one looks to be going the same way.
just popped in to say "excellent work!! " to everybody that has posted on this still ongoing disaster.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK GUYS AND GALS ;-)

....winter is coming....freezing again....pipes break....and the tanks can't even hold up when it's warm.

Dang...wish I wasn't so pessimistic. I use to try and have "Happy Thoughts" a long time ago that Fuku would improve. That sure as hell is gone.

And yeah Intpr....neutrons from a particle accelerator....BEAM ME UP SCOTTY!!

Typhoons...Ice...snow...great conditions to start the delicate process of removing HOT spent nuclear fuel.

Oh well --- have a great day everyone!!

Anyone know where AC has gone??

- Purple Chive

qmantoo
Since I am reviewing my pensions and insurances, this popped into my head.

Trying to be realistic here, what will be the effect of any nuclear fuel rod accident which occurs over the next few weeks?

Scenario 1.
A fuel rod dropped/breaks off and drops back into the pool.

Scenario 2.
A fuel rod dropped/breaks off and drops to the ground missing both pool and container.

Scenario 3.
A fuel rod dropped/breaks off and drops into the transport container.

Scenario 4.
Some other I have not thought of.

Financial effect - all economies are connected. Countries, pensions & insurance funds have investments in companies in Japan and many industries use products and services originating in Japan. When the Yen goes down, the financial markets will suffer a decline too. This makes all our investments take a knock. Banks have thier money tied up in all corners of the world.

How likely is it that a significant effect will be felt on the worlds economies?

Environmental effect - similar to what has already happened with the cores but additive/cumulative perhaps?

Let me take a stab here.

In the event the rods end up on the ground, they can bull doze over them like they did all of the fragments from the original explosions.

Just sayin'.

Tetsuya Hayashi went to Fukushima to take a job at ground zero of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. He lasted less than two weeks.

Hayashi, 41, says he was recruited for a job monitoring the radiation exposure of workers leaving the plant in the summer of 2012. Instead, when he turned up for work, he was handed off through a web of contractors and assigned, to his surprise, to one of Fukushima's hottest radiation zones.

He was told he would have to wear an oxygen tank and a double-layer protective suit. Even then, his handlers told him, the radiation would be so high it could burn through his annual exposure limit in just under an hour.

"I felt cheated and entrapped," Hayashi said. "I had not agreed to any of this."

When Hayashi took his grievances to a firm on the next rung up the ladder of Fukushima contractors, he says he was fired. He filed a complaint but has not received any response from labor regulators for more than a year. All the eight companies involved, including embattled plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co, declined to comment or could not be reached for comment on his case.

Out of work, Hayashi found a second job at Fukushima, this time building a concrete base for tanks to hold spent fuel rods. His new employer skimmed almost a third of his wages - about $1,500 a month - and paid him the rest in cash in brown paper envelopes, he says. Reuters reviewed documents related to Hayashi's complaint, including pay envelopes and bank statements.

Hayashi's hard times are not unusual in the estimated $150-billion effort to dismantle the Fukushima reactors and clean up the neighboring areas, a Reuters examination found.

In reviewing Fukushima working conditions, Reuters interviewed more than 80 workers, employers and officials involved in the unprecedented nuclear clean-up. A common complaint: the project's dependence on a sprawling and little scrutinized network of subcontractors - many of them inexperienced with nuclear work and some of them, police say, have ties to organized crime.

Tepco sits atop a pyramid of subcontractors that can run to seven or more layers and includes construction giants such as Kajima Corp and Obayashi Corp in the first tier. The embattled utility remains in charge of the work to dismantle the damaged Fukushima reactors, a government-subsidized job expected to take 30 years or more.

Outside the plant, Japan's "Big Four" construction companies - Kajima, Obayashi, Shimizu Corp and Taisei Corp - oversee hundreds of small firms working on government-funded contracts to remove radioactive dirt and debris from nearby villages and farms so evacuees can return home.

Tokyo Electric, widely known as Tepco, says it has been unable to monitor subcontractors fully but has taken steps to limit worker abuses and curb the involvement of organized crime.

Special Report