Cc Version;fukushima Three Years On; a Synopsis of Events from 311 - Pt5 of 6

People in northeastern Japan have spent nearly two years getting over what they lost and getting back on their feet Next Monday marks the second anniversary of the earthquake tsunami and nuclear accident The disaster killed nearly 16,000 people About 2,700 others are still listed as missing People across the northeast are moving forward on a path to recovery They have worked to rebuild their homes communities and their lives We look at how far they've come and the challenges that still lie ahead The biggest one is the damaged nuclear plant at Fukushima Areas shown in red are still off limits About 160,000 people from Fukushima are still unable to go home The earthquake and tsunami triggered a total blackout at Fukushima Daiichi Tepco workers were unable to keep the fuel inside the reactors cool Meltdowns happened inside three of the facilities six reactors The temperature of the fuel continued to rise Hydrogen built up and sparked explosions The blast damaged reactor buildings and released massive amounts of radiation into the environment Two years on Tepco says the situation is stable They say water circulation systems are keeping the nuclear fuel cool They say the plant is no longer releasing significant amounts of radioactive materials Crews will one day dismantle and decommission the 4 crippled reactors Japanese leaders announced the operation could take up to 40 years But Tepco engineers admit they have no firm timeline and no firm plan for moving the molten fuel NHK spoke with the utility's top official in charge of nuclear power The engineer has been with Tepco for almost 30 years He was in charge of safety at Fukushima before the accident Now he supervises the decommissioning process What do you think is the most difficult part of the decommissioning process Two difficult challenges One is how to understand inside the reactor pressure vessel and the primary containment vessel and to remove molten fuel and debris from units 1 through 3 The other challenge is how to cope with waste how to treat it and how to safely store it for a long time Tepco engineers are still trying to understand the situation inside the reactors They are using fiber-optic scopes and closed circuit cameras to gather image of the damage They are also using computer simulations to determine the condition of the molten fuel The high levels of radiation are slowing things down Workers can only go into reactor buildings for 5 to 10 minutes at a time We haven't understood well how those molten fuels are distributed and located We need to sample the debris We need to understand the mechanical and chemical characteristics of the debris Otherwise we can not develop the necessary tool to retrieve the debris I hope we can understand something about it in a couple of years It takes a long time and it's difficult to achieve it Can we really say that the decommissioning process will end within 40 years It's difficult to talk about such a far future Just for the removal of the debris takes 10 years or more The half live of the cesium is 30 years so we need to wait for the radiation to reduce There are different ways to decommission a nuclear plant but they all involve risks Given the state of Fukushima Daiichi the team needs to take into account the unprecedented challenges when they choose options Tepco will have to discuss it with stakeholders and explain the risks of the options before they decide what course of action to take We need to improve our capability of the risk communication in the future That's also a challenge Regarding most of the decommissioning we need to share that information Another major issue is the toxic waste on site at Fukushima Daiichi Every day 400 tons of ground water seeps into the highly radioactive units Engineers pump it from buildings and into special tanks They are in a constant race to build enough storage capacity to prevent leaks into the environment It's really impossible to continuously accumulate that water in the tanks We need to think about the possibility of discharging it or the other alternative ways like evaporation Tepco engineers are planning to introduce a new device They say it can remove all radioactive isotopes from the water Tepco says they need to talk to local residents in order to decide how to resolve this problem Looking ahead the engineers have started to update the decommissioning roadmap The government pledged the entire process would take 40 years Right now there's no concrete plan in place to fit that timeline This week marks the anniversary of atomic catastrophes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan Today Japanese attention turns to other nuclear concerns Tensions are rising over the radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the country's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant Which was devastated by the earthquakes and tsunami in March 2011 Joining me to discuss the radioactive leak is Paul Gunter from Beyondnuclear.org Can you tell us how long the contamination has been leaking into the water Very likely since the explosions and meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi in March 2011 What sort of radiation is leaking into the Pacific What we see now is movement of radioactive hydrogen tritium which is a mobile radioactive isotope but clearly radioactive cesium 134 and 137 and stontium 90 We're seeing a full range of radioactive contaminants which indicate the damaged cores of these reactors the meltdowns themselves Are now contributing to the contamination of the Pacific Ocean and groundwater that's moving at a rate of 300 to 400 metric tons per day But these numbers are only approximations and will vary but a lot of radioactivity is moving through groundwater into the ocean Why is the plant continuing to leak if they have taken steps to decontaminate some of this leakage Tepco put up a temporary wall between the reactor wreckage and the ocean but it acted like nothing more than a dam so the water is building up behind the dam Now it has breached the dam and it's spilling over and the radioactive contamination is moving into the Pacific Right now the Japanese government is in chaos The revelation of the contamination is coming more than two years after the accident occurred It indicates that it's completely out of control and the command control in Japan is in chaos right now The big question is why aren't they calling international aid to address the radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean Why do you suspect they aren't calling international aid The problem is there's no transparency and the government and the industry as documented by the Japanese diet their congress is that there's been a collusion What we're seeing is a veil being drawn over the accident to promote an agenda to continue the restart of the reactors in Japan and to contain the bad news rather than the radiation The radiation is much worse than just the news itself What can be done beyond these dams in terms of containing the leakage In order to contain the leaks we have to isolate the radioactive waste Indications are now that the reactor structures themselves have been breached It's very likely that some of the radioactive material from the melted cores have moved into the earth It's beyond containment right now and that's the tragedy that we see unfolding as Fukushima's radioactive water crisis is only beginning How far has the radiation spread and how fast is it going while it spreads Some of the radioactive isotopes are more mobile than others Radioactive tritium hydrogen moves anywhere water goes because it is radioactive hydrogen and makes up a component of water The spread of the contamination is only going to be as effectively monitored as the technology is out there We don't know the full extent of the contamination as it moves through groundwater and the atmosphere and into ocean currents We're in a very grave situation as the Japanese government has declared a new radiation emergency coming out of a worsening situation at Fukushima What does this mean for the people of Japan and around the world The concern now is that the people of Japan want more transparency about what the government is and isn't doing about this uncontrolled radioactive catastrophe The meetings between government and industry are going on behind closed doors The people of Japan want more transparency to get a better understanding of just how out of control the situation is Government figures show that as of last month more than 300,000 people were still living in temporary housing, with relatives or in other impermanent situations We're all from Iitate You're all from Iitate? Yes, we're members of the Chernobyl club Iitate has the highest radiation Yes the highest We first visited district number 6 in November 2011 We can't go home with all that radioactivity Our mayor says it will take 2 years but I think he's mistaking it for 20 We may have to hold our funerals here Lots of us are worried about that Most of us are over 70 This place is dead It's like being in jail but we don't have guards to make us exercise It's like we did something wrong and got locked up Authorites plan to build more than 23,000 public housing units for those who can't rebuild their homes But as of last month workers had only completed 84.