BBC: Fukushima Built On Aquifer Could Topple

[Generic Other]

400 Tons Highly Radioactive Water Pouring into Ocean Daily. Official warns Fukushima reactor buildings could "topple" Tepco's work to change flow of groundwater can form pools below surface that soften the earth. Tepco prepares this week to start work on a new set of measures that would ring off and cap the area where the most highly contaminated water has been found, some experts and regulators are saying that the battle to completely contain radioactivity to the site of one of the world's worst nuclear accidents may be a losing one. It's preparing to extend the underground hardened-earth barrier in a ring around the most heavily contaminated section of coastline, in hopes of heading groundwater off before it can flood in. Tepco is also proposing to cap that ringed section with gravel and asphalt, so nothing gets out. The operator is hoping to get an initial ring of hardened ground done by October. But there's a risk to changing the flow of groundwater in the ways that Tepco is considering, said Tatsuya Shinkawa, nuclear accident response director of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, at a news conference last month. The water could pool dangerously underground, softening the earth and potentially toppling the reactor buildings.

http://www.netc.com/
http://enenews.com/wsj-official-warns...
http://enenews.com/nytimes-400-tons-o...

[Downwinder]

1. Like capping a volcano.

[KauaiK]

2. This demands an international response & help

Japan should accept the international help that was offered to mitigate this horrendous disaster because it affects us ALL.

[Moostache]

3. Yeah, right after the GOP gets done starving children and killing off women and minorities...they're

a little busy at the moment ya know!

There's no hope of stopping this or even mitigating it at this point. Once the contamination was allowed an escape route into the sea, it became inevitable that the worst case scenarios were only a matter or when not if...

TEPCO, Japan, China, the US, Russia and the EU combined are powerless to stop this monster. There's no coverage because there's no stopping it and no happy ending to close the 15-second blurb with.... This is how the oceans die - al of them since there is no border or barrier to stop the freely flowing radiation from contaminating every ocean and every sea; all this while the soil wastes, the temperatures alternate records and the ice melts to nothing and humanity exits stage left...destroyed as all empires are - by hubris and greed.

We built planet killers on fault lines and without adequate foresight.
We burned poison and released it freely into the air and water.
We destroyed forests and ecosystems arbitrarily and with only money and power as guides.

What could possibly have gone wrong? How could anyone have guessed?
If you're under 40, buckle up of the worst of what will ever be...if you're over 40 like me, all we can do is say we're sorry that we didn't have more of an impact when it could have mattered...

[bvar22]

4. Relax. "They're just venting a little steam."

"I know Science,
and there is NOTHING to worry about."

.....You ignorant, Henny-Penny, Luddites!!!!

[Generic Other]

9. Better an "ignorant, Henny-Penny, Luddite" than a glowing TEPCO worker

although sadly we'll all go together when we go...

[bvar22]

21. That is what I can't understand.

A Gated Community,
or a giant bank account in the Caymans,
is going to be absolutely WORTHLESS and IMPOTENT
as a hedge against Environmental Degradation.

The children of the RICH will DIE alongside the children of the Poor.

[progree]

5. Thanks for the nice text summary. I urge everyone to also watch the 2 minute video

as it emphasizes how the barrier that has been built so far is causing a lot of the ground water, which normally flows to sea, to instead just rise and rise towards the surface and will "soon" reach the surface (and then will simply flow over the ground into the sea). And towards the end the pictures of all of the water storage tanks (more than 1000) that continue to be built and fill up .. as 400 tons of ground water flow into the site each DAY.

The film ends with "Fukushima's water crisis has only just begun"

[Mort Rainey]

6. K&R

Startling

[JohnyCanuck]

7. A Fukushima fisherman’s tale: Radioactive water from the Daiichi plant is flowing into the ocean...

at a rate of 300 tons a day

Old habits die hard among fishermen. Yoshio Ichida still rises for work every day at 3am and checks the engine of his five-ton boat. Then, as the sun rises over the Pacific and the trawler bobs gently in Soma wharf, he switches off the engine and gazes out at a sea too poisoned to fish.

Just 27 miles up the coast from this small harbour town, radioactivity from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant leaks into the ocean, and into the sardines, mackerel and squid that three generations of Mr Ichida’s family once caught.

Engineers are fighting what appears to be a losing battle to stop the leaks from worsening.

Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) warned this week that the build-up of contaminated groundwater at the plant is on the verge of tipping out of control and that its operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), “lacked a sense of crisis” about the looming damage to the Pacific.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/a-fukushima-fishermans-tale-radioactive-water-from-the-daiichi-plant-is-flowing-into-the-ocean-at-a-rate-of-300-tons-a-day-8750780.html

[Generic Other]

10. Everything so many have been worried would happen

appears to be happening. It feels very ominous.

[Dustlawyer]

11. It's their BP, only worse! Sadly, it looks like we will take a 2nd huge blow from the sea due to

greedy, ill prepared, understaffed corporations. Guys, I think it's past time to change how we do things around here!

[pam4water]

8. I know things were bad. Did not know they were that bad. There really should

be more people working on stopping the leaks.

[AtheistCrusader]

12. Um, build the impermeable barrier on the uphill side?

Last edited Thu Aug 8, 2013, 02:08 AM - Edit history (2)

Water doesn't get in, it doesn't get contaminated. No rising water table in the plant itself.

Sincerely hope someone considered that option....

Edit: Another option, freeze the ground.
This is the Libby Dam. That hillside on the right? The US Army Corps of Engineers pumps coolant into pipes sunk in that hill to keep it frozen. To keep it from moving.


Freeze the ground around the site, make an impermeable barrier right up to and directly around the foundations of the buildings in trouble. Freezing it will lift the buildings, that's unavoidable, but it would otherwise stop groundwater erosion of the soil under the buildings.


To fix an audacious problem, you need an audacious solution.

[pam4water]

13. If it's an aquifer you need to dig down to get it. The water could be seepaging straight through

the ground in to the aquifer. And not be accessible above ground. And it can months to move through the channels in the aquifer. They might have need to start working on damming up the flow months ago

[AtheistCrusader]

15. IIRC they started on the sea-side barrier months ago.

Possible they have other plans in the works too, but yeah, it looks like they went with the 'capture' plan rather than a 'prevent' plan, which is kinda ass-backwards, as capturing it requires unlimited storage/cleanup.

I suspect they will start filtering and releasing the stored water at some point, but one particular isotope is currently problematic for that.

[kristopher]

16. I don't think they appreciated the volume

the breach is allowing groundwater into the reactor building. They knew they had more water to pump out than they were putting in, but that gives them no way to judge the flow-through volume or the path the contaminated water is following. IIRC they don't have it mapped in detail.

They've considered freezing the ground, it was discussed about 2 months ago. They seem to have dropped the idea, at least for now; probably because of the unknowns involved.

[AtheistCrusader]

17. It would lift the buildings. Definitely risky.

I didn't know that option was considered.

Is there a public source of other contingencies they've considered or started work on?

[kristopher]

18. Not that I know of.

I regularly read all the English language Japanese papers and I rely on this (right-leaning) japanese blogger for information gleaned from Japanese language sources http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/.

I couldn't give you a specific cite for what I wrote, but I do recommend http://ajw.asahi.com/category/0311disaster/fukushima/?page=1 as the best single repository of coverage.

[kristopher]

25. from today's NYTimes

...It was also not clear how intensively the government would actually get involved in the cleanup, or whether it would allow Tepco to remain in charge. Mr. Abe did not give specifics beyond directing his ministers to help resolve the water problem, which he said was causing public anxiety. On Wednesday, local news reports quoted unidentified officials in METI as saying that Tokyo would likely help pay for a $400 million wall of ice that is being planned to surround the damaged reactor buildings.

Some top officials hinted that Wednesday’s move amounted to little more than an effort to provide public money to assist Tepco. Others suggested that the government might seek to take the lead in at least certain aspects of the cleanup, like the technologically challenging ice wall.

“There is no precedent in the world to create a water-shielding wall with frozen soil on such a large scale,” said the government’s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

Indeed, the proposed ice wall is seen here as a symbol of both the daunting technological challenges posed by the cleanup, and the need — critics say desperation — for creative solutions as the plant, which already stores enough contaminated water to fill 160 Olympic-size swimming pools, is faced with having to store hundreds of more tons every day.

The plan calls for freezing the soil around the reactor buildings to keep out groundwater before it can become contaminated. The wall would run nearly a mile in length and reach almost 100 feet into the ground. Officials said no wall of ice on such a scale has ever been attempted before, and was thus beyond the capacities of Tepco alone to pull off...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/world/asia/fukushima-nuclear-plant-radiation-leaks.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

[AtheistCrusader]

27. *whistles softly*

That is a big-assed ice barrier.

Bigger than the footprint of the buildings in question.

That's a gnarly idea. And a top-priority energy consumer too, something's gotta power all the compressors for the refrigeration. It would probably be given top billing over even hospitals.

[Generic Other]

23. And it is people like you with some technical skill who should have been asked to help

from the start. I had no idea such a thing was even possible.

[AtheistCrusader]

24. I believe Kristopher when he says they considered it.

I'm sure they did. There's only a limited number of ways to attack this problem. My comment on building the barrier on the other side, is predicated only on the super-simplistic statement by the media there that the aquifer flows from the uphill side to the sea, when the reality is probably more complex than that.



Frankly, I'm disappointed by the lack of progress on emptying Reactor 4's fuel pool thus far. I expected them to be further along.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

14. it has been this bad and worse since a month after it happened.

[Generic Other]

22. People on DU told us to eat bananas and quit worrying

That was a long time ago. With dozens of threads on the should/or should we not have bombed Hiroshima topic as a distraction, this emergency seemed to just fall off DUs radar. And I think you are right. It hasn't gotten worse. It has always been worse. Worse than they are telling us.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

28. you're a wise one...itis worse....

Even moving to the southern hemesphere doesn't matter anymore. Our food chain is poisoned now and forever.

1970's we knew this would happen some day...NO NUKES!

[blackspade]

19. This is horrific

The international community needs to step in and help clean this up either monetarily or materially.
TEPCO is obviously too incompetent for the task.
There is to much at risk to let this sit, unmitigated, any longer.

[WillyT]

20. K & R !!!

[Larkspur]

26. This Fukushima nuclear disaster is Japan's real life "Godzilla"

I grew up watching those B rated films. The metaphor that monster represented was the side affects of nuclear power. Of course, when I was a kid they were mainly referring to atomic bombs, but nuclear power is nuclear power: deadly and difficult to contain.