Even as the struggle to gain the upper hand at Fukushima Daiichi remained touch-and-go, the broader ramifications of the accident were becoming apparent to officials in Tokyo, to local communities, and to the Japanese public at large. In response, the government created the Nuclear Sufferers Life Support Team, with a daunting mandate. It included not only securing housing for the evacuees, who eventually would number nearly 160,000, but also organizing decontamination efforts, supplying evacuation centers, securing medical services and supplies, conducting environmental monitoring, and providing information. This, of course, came on top of efforts to help victims of the nonnuclear disaster—the earthquake and tsunami—that had battered the northeastern region.
For many Japanese, the accident became personal with the discovery on March 19 of radioactive iodine-131 in raw milk from Fukushima Prefecture and on spinach harvested in Ibaraki Prefecture, southwest of the nuclear plant. The spinach also contained trace amounts of cesium-137. The farms where the contamination was discovered were as far as ninety miles from the reactors: distance no longer guaranteed safety. Fears that the nation’s food supply and its agricultural regions might be threatened added a new dimension to the accident and raised the stakes for the public and the government.
Although the levels of contamination exceeded safety limits, government officials hesitated to impose a ban. They instead sought to offer reassurance and suggest voluntary measures. Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, asserted at a press conference that someone who ate the spinach for one year would be exposed to the same amount of radiation as from a CAT scan—a comparison perhaps lost on the nonexpert.
Rather than issue an outright ban on milk sales, the Fukushima prefectural government requested that farmers halt shipments from dairy farms within eighteen miles of the reactors. The Ibaraki government similarly asked its farmers to halt spinach shipments. However, it soon became apparent that the central government had to act more assertively. On March 21, it finally banned shipments of milk from Fukushima and vegetables from Fukushima, Ibaraki, and two neighboring prefectures where these foods had been found to contain radioactive iodine and cesium above government limits.
“The levels are not high enough to have an effect on humans, so we ask that people remain calm,” Edano told reporters.
Edano’s announcement, meant to reassure, had just the opposite effect for numerous Japanese, who had been told to “stay calm” over and over since the crisis began. This latest development distilled the Fukushima Daiichi accident to a crucial question for many: will our food harm us? And that led to an even larger question: is our government capable of protecting us?
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“Feed and bleed” is nuclear shorthand for a process in which makeup water is added to a reactor vessel when the closed-loop cooling system is malfunctioning. The makeup water absorbs heat given off by the nuclear fuel and is allowed to boil away, or “bleed,” into the containment. Feed and bleed can also be used to cool spent fuel pools: in that case, the steam created would be released into the reactor building.
For days, the damaged reactors and spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi had been kept on life support by a massive “feed and bleed” operation. If the reactor cores and spent fuel pools were all intact, the level of radioactivity in the coolant bleeding off would have been relatively low. But instead this water was highly radioactive—a clue that it was coming into contact with fuel that had sustained serious damage.
On March 24, three contractors laying cable in the basement of the Unit 3 turbine building received doses of between seventeen and eighteen rems (170 to 180 millisieverts) while standing in water. There had been water in the turbine building basements since the tsunami, but no one expected it to be radioactive. Now it appeared that heavily contaminated water was coming in from somewhere. High levels of iodine-131 suggested the source was the reactor core. This was very unwelcome news; it meant that the Unit 3 containment had a breach.
Two of the men who came into contact with the contaminated water suffered radiation burns of their feet and were hospitalized. The government had already upped the allowable dose rate for emergency workers from ten to twenty-five rems a year out of concern that the entire workforce would quickly exceed the permitted dose. Now the question became: would it have to be increased again to maintain an adequate emergency workforce?
The situation would soon worsen. On March 28, TEPCO discovered that an underground trench near Unit 2 had filled with radioactive water carrying a surface dose rate of one hundred rems (one thousand millisieverts) per hour, a level that could be lethal after several hours’ exposure. Radioactive water had been detected near the discharge canal a week earlier, but the water in the trench had far higher radioactivity levels and therefore posed a larger threat. (The rate actually may have been higher; one hundred rems per hour was the upper limit of the measuring equipment.) If the depth of the water increased by another three-plus feet (one meter), it would spill out of the trench and possibly flow into the ocean. Japanese authorities theorized that the water had come into contact with melted fuel inside Unit 2, escaped through a breach in the containment, and then made its way to the trench near the turbine buildings. Contaminated water was also found in trenches outside both Units 1 and 3, and on April 2 in a pit near the Unit 2 seawater pump, which was subsequently found to be leaking into the sea.
The fact that contaminated water was getting into places it shouldn’t have been able to reach should have been no surprise given the stresses that the reactors’ joints, seals, and pipes had undergone during the earthquake and tsunami as well as the later explosions—stresses exacerbated by repeated dousing with many tons of water. Until electricity was restored and cooling pumps made operable, however, the wholesale flooding of the reactor vessels and spent fuel pools had to continue. The fact that tons of highly radioactive water were being generated and were finding their way into the marine environment was an unavoidable consequence. Indeed, at this point, water was the only cure.
TEPCO was trying to capture the tainted water, but storage space was growing short. No one had ever contemplated dealing with this much water. TEPCO scrambled to find places to store and eventually treat the excess water even as workers continued to add more.
The growing volume of radioactive water would pose a Herculean challenge. The plant site would eventually become crowded with large gray storage tanks where trees once stood. Dealing with contaminated water on the plant grounds, as well as controlling groundwater flowing beneath the site toward the Pacific Ocean, would only grow more problematic as time went on.
Also pressing were the challenges of removing or reducing radiation scattered for miles across farmland and forests, in residential neighborhoods and schoolyards. The magnitude and inherent difficulty of that cleanup task were only now becoming apparent. The fallout from Fukushima—literally and figuratively—affected large regions. The evacuation zones now became decontamination zones, with varying levels of radiation, some minor, some unquestionably hazardous, dispersed randomly. “Hot spots” occasionally popped up in unexpected places. Even if it was removed from the ground, contamination could remain in trees and on hillsides to be carried eventually by rain showers or breezes to new locations. And radioactivity drawn in by the roots of trees and shrubs could be released to the atmosphere later during forest fires.
After days of failed attempts to stanch the leak in the Unit 2 pit—using sawdust, garbage bags filled with shredded newspaper, and polymer—the flow finally was halted on April 6 using a liquid-glass coagulating material. TEPCO reported that more than 137,000 gallons (520 cubic meters) of water had been discharged, carrying off iodine-131, cesium-134, and cesium-137. The leak convinced TEPCO that it had to alter its policy forbidding any discharge of contaminated wastewater. The highly contaminated water in the trenches and turbine buildings had to be drained, but there just was not enough room in the tanks on site to store it. The utility realized it would have to begin waste triage, disch
arging water with low levels of contamination to make space for more hazardous water. But, TEPCO noted, any discharge would require “an adequate explanation to convince the general public” it was necessary.
The release of 11,500 tons of water was announced by the utility and the government in media briefings on April 4. But Japanese authorities neglected to notify foreign governments, including neighboring China and South Korea, until two minutes after the discharge began, an oversight regarded by those governments as a diplomatic gaffe. (Among others concerned about the release was the U.S. Navy, whose vessels were deployed off the coast to help in disaster relief. Navy officials worried that the radiation might contaminate ocean water treated for shipboard use.)
April 6, 2011, was the opening of the school year in Japan, a day marked by formal ceremonies. In Fukushima Prefecture, the toll of the disaster was obvious; many school facilities awaited repairs, and playgrounds were filled with rubble and piles of contaminated dirt covered with sheeting. The number of incoming students had dwindled in many areas, although in some instances the children of evacuees living in temporary shelters were hastily folded into the class rosters. Familiar faces of teachers or administrators were missing, victims of the earthquake and tsunami or absent because they had lost their homes and been forced to relocate.
Local officials and faculty worked hard to encourage a sense of normalcy. Families wore their best clothing; banners and flowers filled the auditoriums; educators greeted students. Yet the ongoing disaster was not far from everyone’s minds; normalcy was a long way off.
On April 10, one day shy of the first-month anniversary of the disaster, the Japanese government recommended the evacuation of certain areas twelve to eighteen miles (twenty to thirty kilometers) from the plant where the expected first-year dose rates would be greater than two rems (twenty millisieverts); twelve days later, it formally expanded the mandatory evacuation zone to include some areas even farther away, such as Iitate. The government could no longer ignore monitoring data revealing the presence of pockets of high radiation, especially to the northwest of Fukushima Daiichi. (Since March 15, people living in this zone had been advised to stay inside their homes with doors and windows sealed. Food supplies were often scarce—delivery trucks were reluctant to enter the area—and living conditions bleak.) The dose threshold for evacuation was chosen by Japanese authorities as the lower limit of a range set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, which recommends that during emergencies, public exposure to radiation should be restricted within a band of two to ten rem per year.
The latest advisory signaled to many that the previous evacuation warnings had not gone far enough. That triggered another exodus of residents and generated even more doubt about the reliability of information being provided and the competence of government officials. The same day, about two thousand antinuclear protesters took to the streets in Tokyo, marching to TEPCO headquarters and then to the headquarters of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which regulates nuclear power. (Within a few months, Friday night protests outside the prime minister’s office became a regular event, sometimes attracting tens of thousands of people.) A common complaint among the early marchers: they were not getting the full story about the accident from authorities.
On the opening day of the school year on April 6, 2011, a first-grader puts on her hat during an elementary school enrollment ceremony in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. Despite the ongoing nuclear crisis, parents and school officials worked to create a sense of normalcy for children. AP
Public anger in Fukushima surged on April 19 when the government authorized schools in Fukushima Prefecture to reopen provided that students attending them would not receive annual radiation doses of more than two rem. The authorities must have thought they were on solid ground with the new dose limit. After all, the government had already decided it was safe for everyone, including children, to live in areas with radiation doses of up to two rem per year. But the announcement led to puzzlement and outrage.
The government argued that students would not actually be exposed to the maximum possible radiation levels because most of their time would be spent not in the schoolyards but inside the school buildings, where they would be shielded from radiation. Not only did the public reject that explanation, but larger questions arose. If there were schoolyards in the prefecture that were so heavily contaminated they might exceed the two rem per year standard, why weren’t the surrounding areas evacuated?
Another issue was why the government would allow children to bear the same radiation dose as adults. In doing so, the authorities were ignoring that children are particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of radiation. The implications, once they sank in, set off a tempest of national protest.
A damning response came from Toshiso Kosako, a respected researcher who was serving as special advisor on radiation safety to the cabinet. On April 29, Kosako tearfully resigned at a news conference and delivered an angry statement criticizing the government for its “whack-a-mole” attitude in setting radiation safety standards. “I cannot possibly accept such a [dose] level to be applied to babies, infants and primary school students, not only from my scholarly viewpoint but also from my humanistic beliefs,” Kosako wrote.
In late May, the government announced it would revert to the usual standard of one hundred millirems (one millisievert) per year. And Tokyo promised to help pay for removal of contaminated topsoil from school grounds.
In many communities, residents eager to move on with life had already launched cleanup campaigns of their own, not willing to wait for the government. Scraping away just three inches of soil could reduce radiation levels by as much as 90 percent, so volunteers dressed in hazmat suits and paper face masks used earthmoving equipment and hand shovels to strip contamination from playgrounds and other public places. They handed over to their communities thousands of pounds of radioactive dirt, covered with plastic sheeting or stuffed into garbage bags.
Clearly, water was not the only by-product of the accident that would pose disposal problems. By one official estimate, as much as 695 square miles (1,800 square kilometers) in Fukushima Prefecture—more than double the area of New York City—was contaminated with enough radiation to yield an exposure level of five hundred millirems (five millisieverts) or more per year. And the people living on or near the contaminated soil were determined that it had to be removed. They wanted to get on with their lives. As to where it would ultimately go, that was yet to be decided.
On April 17, 2011, TEPCO announced a recovery plan that it called a “roadmap towards restoration.” “By bringing the reactors and spent fuel pools to a stable cooling condition and mitigating the release of radioactive materials, we will make every effort to enable evacuees to return to their homes and for all citizens to be able to secure a sound life,” the utility promised.
The roadmap set ambitious targets. The first, to be achieved within three months, was to reduce on-site radiation doses. The second, to be accomplished three to six months after the first target was met, involved bringing the release of radiation “under control” and “significantly” lowering it. Immediate actions were divided into three areas: cooling, mitigation, and monitoring and decontamination. The ultimate goal: cold shutdown, meaning that the temperature inside the reactors would be maintained below the boiling point, reducing the threat of pressure buildup and steam releases and providing a safety margin against future equipment problems.
Getting the reactors to a more stable state was an urgent goal. Fukushima Daiichi was still only one mechanical failure or natural catastrophe away from a second crisis. The jury-rigged feed-and-bleed cooling systems were far from robust, and safety margins were razor thin.
The recovery document served a dual purpose: it provided a technical blueprint and it conveyed to the nation that TEPCO finally had a game plan—and a timetable. Perhaps now the end was in sight.
From the perspective of the NRC’s Chuck Casto, the symbolism o
f the plan was as important as its engineering details. “If you’re in a shelter somewhere, you want to see a timeline,” he said. “And from a technical point of view, it funneled everybody; [it said] this is our path. It served so many purposes to get that roadmap.”
TEPCO sought the NRC’s input on the recovery plan as it was being drafted, Casto said: “They listened to us on it, [we] provided advice.” In his mind, the unveiling of the recovery plan was a watershed moment ranking right behind the meeting with the midlevel government and utility managers on March 21. Now, it seemed, things were moving ahead.
The timetable called for the installation of closed-loop cooling systems similar to those existing in the reactors before the accident. (TEPCO initially hoped to repair the original systems, but finally acknowledged they had suffered too much damage.) However, closed-loop systems would not eliminate the need to effectively and rapidly treat the contaminated water accumulating at the plant.
TEPCO hired Kurion, a tiny California company that employs a technology similar to the one used to treat wastewater from the Three Mile Island accident. The process uses zeolites, microporous adsorbent minerals, to bind and filter the cesium-137 in the water. TEPCO also engaged the French conglomerate Areva to develop a second phase of the treatment process, in which the residue from the Kurion system would be mixed with reagents, polymers, and sand to create a radioactive sludge-like mixture. (Some experts questioned whether the utility was merely trading one waste problem for another: large quantities of radioactive water for large quantities of radioactive glop.) Both the Kurion and Areva systems were operating by mid-June. A third system, developed by Toshiba and named SARRY, was put into operation in mid-August. The radioactive concentrates produced by these processes were stored on-site in growing rows of containers.
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