Fukushima Contaminated Water at West Coastlines of the Americas

Summary: Fukushima contaminated water arrives at U.S. west coastlines in 2015, more than four years after 2011's meltdown leakage into the west Pacific Ocean.

NOAA's Fukushima Daiichi release model: NOAA HYSPLIT, Public Domain, via NOAA Science on a Sphere®

Fukushima Daiichi (Fukushima Number One) Nuclear Power Plant reactors are still pouring out contaminated (radiated) water into the Pacific Ocean at a rate of 300+/- tons daily more than four years after 14-meter (45.93-feet) tsunami heights flooded 12 of 13 backup diesel generators and obliterated backup power lines to off-site generators.

The troubles began before the magnitude 9.0, six-minute Great East Japan earthquake of March 11, 2011, at 14:46 locally (05:56 Coordinated Universal Time) and the tsunami of less than one hour later.

A study published Sept. 21, 2015, by Costas Synolakis and Utku Kânoğlu of the University of Southern California’s Tsunami Research Group in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society cites design flaws as compromising building and site security and equipment functions.

The layout of the archipelago’s second-oldest nuclear power plant disregards its dangerous location on Honshu, Japan’s main island.

The 3.5-square-kilometer (864-acre, 37,846.23-square-foot) site within the Futaba District towns of Futaba and Ōkuma encompasses coastal land on the Pacific Ring of Fire threatened by earthquakes, tsunami and volcanoes. Fukushima Daiichi finds itself on the northeast side of Honshu overlooking the subduction zone where the Pacific tectonic plate runs under the Okhotsk tectonic plate.

The Pacific Plate goes roughly under Japan at the rate of 9.144 centimeters (3.6 inches) per year. It has 1,000-year-old standstills over rough spots.

Two shock waves impacted Honshu when westward subduction resumed, with the first wave an earthquake and the second wave a tsunami.

Electricity joined water in emergency preparedness against the nuclear meltdowns caused by overheated nuclear fuel elements exceeding melting points and resulting in damaged cores March 28, 1979, at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, and April 26, 1986, at Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Standard operating procedural progressions from backup diesel generators to off-site generators, on-site battery packs and portable generators kept electricity continuously powered during emergencies to prevent overheating and to protect reactor cores. Success looked to hyperboloid (inward-curved), 182.88-meter-tall (600-feet-tall) cooling towers to pump water to and from condensers in the floors under steam turbines.

All of Japan’s nuclear power plants, from the first plant begun March 1, 1961, at Tōkai onward, instead make use of coastal water.

All nuclear power reactors in Japan need to build tsunami walls, reduce horizontal earth movement and secure access to coastal waters through beach pump stands connecting concrete inflow and outflow pipes, with screened covers to exclude maritime debris and sea life, to in-floor condensers.

Fukushima Daiichi offered a 5.69-foot (18.7-foot) seawall, despite historic occurrences of much higher tsunami waves; foundations built on solid bedrock to withstand horizontal earth movements of 0.447 g, with 1 g equivalent to 32 feet per second, despite realized suspected possibilities of 0.561 g during the Great East Japan earthquake; and generators stationed in basements and on low-lying ground no higher than 13 meters (42.65 feet) above sea level.

Reminiscences of workers and simulations by investigators provide reconstructions to explain Fukushima Daiichi’s six boiling water reactor units enduring yet another earthquake along with 24 BWR and 24 pressurized water reactor (PWR) units at tremor-prone Japan’s 16 other nuclear power plant sites.

Many question eyewitness accounts and simulated results that attempt to reconcile interrupted electrical power and water circulation at Fukushima Daiichi’s first three of six units and first four spent fuel pools with non-problematic cooling and electricity immediately to the south at Japan Atomic Power Company’s (JAPC) Tōkai Daini (Tokai Number Two) and Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daini (Fukushima Number Two) and immediately to the north at Tohoku Electric Power Company’s (EPC) Onagawa plant.

The radiated after-effects of explosions at Unit 4 and of meltdowns at Units 1 to 3 resist scientific scrutiny far less than Fukushima contaminated water and power blackouts confronting Daiichi’s 6,413 workers attempting to control flooding, extend pack power with batteries from their own cars, monitor on/off valves and read gauges not calibrated for extreme pressures and temperatures.

A study published in 2014 by The Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident stated: “The radioactive emissions [of micron-sized iodine and cesium particles] contaminated soil, seawater, and various natural resources, as well as food, drinking water, and other consumables -- and necessitated environmental restoration and proper treatment of waste products before citizens could return to their homes.”

Radiated water took the lead with descriptions of leakages from Unit 2 during TEPCO’s televised press conference of Feb. 25, 2015, and of daily 300+/- ton radioactive groundwater releases in an interview published by Mitsuhei Murata, former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland and professor emeritus at Tokaigakuen University, in the magazine Gekkan Nippon’s (Monthly Japan) September 2015 issue.

Contaminated water leaked from Fukushima Daiichi and released through groundwater and rainfall runoff into the Pacific Ocean since 2011 urge scientists to follow the water to the western coastlines of the Americas since Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution finds detectable levels of Fukushima-sourced cesium-134 and cesium-137 along Alaskan, Californian, Oregon and Washington coasts, with more massive radiation plume drifting expected for 2016.

Thousands of paper cranes line walls inside TEPCO's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: TEPCO @TEPCO_English via Twitter Nov. 10, 2015

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

NOAA's Fukushima Daiichi release model: NOAA HYSPLIT, Public Domain, via NOAA Science on a Sphere® @ http://sos.noaa.gov/Datasets/dataset.php?id=332#

Thousands of paper cranes line walls inside TEPCO's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: TEPCO @TEPCO_English via Twitter Nov. 9, 2015, @ https://twitter.com/TEPCO_English/status/663904624219287553

For further information:

ENENews. 2 November 2015. "Fukushima nuclear waste now being found off all U.S. states on West Coast - Detected near shorelines of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska this summer - Highest radiation just miles from San Francisco (MAP)." Energy News.
Available @ http://enenews.com/fukushima-nuclear-waste-being-found-all-states-west-coast-detected-shorelines-california-oregon-washington-alaska-summer-highest-radiation-levels-miles-san-francisco-map

The Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident. 2014. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Disaster: Investigating the Myth and Reality. Oxon, England; and New York, New York: Routledge.

Synolakis, Costas, and Utku Kânoğlu. 21 September 2015. "The Fukushima accident was preventable." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 373: 20140379. DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2014.037
Available @ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2053/20140379

TEPCO @TEPCO_English. 9 November 2015. "[A #SNAPSHOT] Wishes placed on Strings of a thousand #Origami paper #cranes for recovery of #Fukushima." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/TEPCO_English/status/663904624219287553

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 30 March 2015. "Fukushima and Our Radioactive Ocean." YouTube.
Available @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5eXrtp_6RM