Tepco Failed to Disclose Scale of Fukushima Radiation Leaks, Academics Say

Stuart Biggs and Yuriy Humber, New York Times, May 27, 2011 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-27/tepco-faces-massive-problem-containing-radioactive-water-at-fukushima.html 

As a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency visits Tokyo Electric

Power Co.'s crippled nuclear plant today, academics warn the company has

failed to disclose the scale of radiation leaks and faces a "massive

problem" with contaminated water. 

The utility known as Tepco has been pumping cooling water into the three

reactors that melted down after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. By 

May 18, almost 100,000 tons of radioactive water had leaked into basements 

and other areas of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. The volume of radiated 

water may double by the end of December and will cost 42 billion yen ($518

million) to decontaminate, according to Tepco's estimates. 

"Contaminated water is increasing and this is a massive problem," Tetsuo

Iguchi, a specialist in isotope analysis and radiation detection at Nagoya

University, said by phone. "They need to find a place to store the

contaminated water and they need to guarantee it won't go into the soil." 

The 18-member IAEA team, led by the U.K.'s head nuclear safety inspector,

Mike Weightman, is visiting the Fukushima reactors to investigate the

accident and the response. Tepco and Japan's nuclear regulators haven't

updated the total radiation leakage from the plant since April 12. 

Tepco has been withholding data on radiation from Dai-Ichi, Goshi Hosono, 

an adviser to Japan's prime minister, said at a press briefing today. Hosono

said he ordered the utility to check for any data it hasn't disclosed and

release the material as soon as possible. 

'Public Distrust' 

"This kind of repetition will invite public distrust," Chief Cabinet Secretary 

Yukio Edano told reporters today when asked whether the perception

that the government has withheld data since the accident is eroding public

trust. "This is a grave situation for the entire nuclear energy administration 

as much as the accident itself is." 

Japan's nuclear safety agency estimated in April the radiation released 

fromDai-Ichi to be around 10 percent of that from the accident at 

Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986, while a Tepco official said 

at the time the amount may eventually exceed it. 

"Tepco knows more than they've said about the amount of radiation 

leaking from the plant," Jan van de Putte, a specialist in radiation safety 

trained at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, said 

yesterday in Tokyo. "What we need is a full disclosure, a full inventory of 

radiation released including the exact isotopes." 

Leakage 

Radiation leakage from Fukushima was raised at a hearing of the U.S. 

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week. U.S. 

regulations may need to be changed after the Fukushima meltdown, 

William Ostendorff, a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission said. 

The Japanese utility is trying to put the reactors into a cold shutdown,

where core temperatures fall below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees

Fahrenheit), within six to nine months. Ostendorff rated the chance of 

Tepco achieving that goal at six or seven out of 10. 

Tepco took more than two months to confirm the meltdowns in three 

reactors and [only] this week reported the breaches in the containment 

chambers. The delay in releasing information has led to criticism of 

Prime Minister Naoto Kan for not doing more to ensure Tepco is 

keeping the public informed. 

'Fundamentally Incorrect' 

"What I told the public was fundamentally incorrect," Kan said in 

parliament on May 20, referring to assessments from the government 

and Tokyo that reactors were stable and the situation was contained 

not long after March 11. "The government failed to respond to Tepco's 

mistaken assumptions and I am deeply sorry." 

Public disagreements emerged this week between Tepco and the 

government over whether orders were given to halt seawater injection 

into reactors to cool them the day after the tsunami. 

Tepco is considering whether to discipline the manager of the 

Fukushima plant, Masao Yoshida, after he ignored an order to stop 

pumping seawater, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the 

company, said yesterday. 

He was commenting after Kyodo News cited Tepco Vice-President 

Sakae Muto saying Yoshida will be removed for disobeying the order. 

Hosono said Yoshida is needed at the plant to contain the crisis. 

Blackout 

The earthquake and tsunami knocked out power in the Fukushima plant,

depriving reactor cooling systems of electricity. Fuel rods overheated,

causing fires, explosions and radiation leaks in the worst nuclear accident

since Chernobyl. 

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on April 12 raised the 

severity rating of the Fukushima accident to 7, the highest on the global 

scale and the same as Chernobyl. The partial reactor meltdown at Three 

Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 is rated 5. 

The government needs to investigate the total amount of radiation leaked

from the plant to ascertain damage to the ocean from contaminated water,

said van de Putte, also a nuclear specialist at environmental group

Greenpeace International. 

The group found seaweed and fish contaminated to more than 50 times 

the 2,000 becquerel per kilogram legal limit for radioactive iodine-131 off 

the coast of Fukushima during a survey between May 3 and 9. 

Mol, [the] Belgium-based Nuclear Research Centre, and 

Hérouville-Saint-Clair, [the] France-based Association pour le Contrôle 

de la Radioactivité dans l'Ouest, confirmed they conducted analyses of 

the samples supplied by Greenpeace. 

Radiation Readings 

Ascertaining the cumulative volume of radiation emitted by the plant is

possible, van de Putte said. 

"Perhaps the government will speak about this matter after the detailed

accident analysis," the University of Nagoya's Iguchi said. "It's possible

to calculate this with the time-series plant data recorded in the control

room. The most important thing we need to know is the amount of fuel 

left in the reactor core." 

Tepco is planning to treat the contaminated water at Dai-Ichi with a unit

supplied by Areva SA (CEI) from mid-June. The decontamination 

equipment can process 1,200 tons of water a day, Tepco said. 

The company had little choice in pouring water on the reactors because 

the risk of contamination was outweighed by the [much greater] risk of 

leaving fuel rods exposed, Peter Burns, a nuclear physicist with 40 years 

of radiation safety experience, said in an interview. 

Burns, the former representative for Australia on the United Nations'

scientific committee on atomic radiation, added pumping in the water 

"was a desperate measure for desperate times."