

Power plant executives to face Fukushima charges for first time - janisS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/31/power-plant-executives-to-face-fukushima-charges-for-first-time/

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ohitsdom
Wow, the concept of citizens' panels sounds awesome. I wish we had something
similar in the US. It's the perfect solution for dealing with police
shootings, where prosecutors are reluctant to indict an officer (since they
need to work closely with police in their everyday work).

~~~
baseballmerpeak
A pre-trial in the court of public opinion? I thought that is the purpose of
grand juries. After all, a grand jury would _indict a ham sandwich_. (Though
not all pork, evidently)

On one hand, it's a massive waste of judicial bandwidth. On the other, it's an
effective check on the coziness between AGs, DAs, and law enforcement
organizations.

~~~
dragonwriter
The difference seems to be that a US grand jury can indict on a prosecutors
motion (and even, IIRC, in certain cases independently), but no one is
obligated to prosecute based on an indictment once it is issued (obviously,
one sought by a prosecutor will probably usually be followed up on by that
prosecutor.)

But, from the description in the article, when a citizens' panel finds that
charges should be issued after a prosecutor has decided not to prosecute, the
case is reopened by prosecutors. Assuming this isn't just a reconsideration
where the prosecutor can again decide not to actually prosecute the charges,
this is a fairly substantial difference.

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baseballmerpeak
NOVA's documentary on Fukushima [1] is a very informative watch and shows the
immense challenges faced by TEPCO.

I don't think they will be convicted.

[1] - [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/nuclear-
disaster.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/nuclear-disaster.html)

~~~
stcredzero
The blame should not be with the operators, but with decision makers who
signed off on a fatally flawed plant design. Really, you'd think it was common
sense: if you absolutely need these generators in case of a disaster, like a
flood, don't put the generators and their gear/infrastructure at a lower flood
level! Much the same mistake was repeated many times in Houston, and came to
light after Hurricane Ike.

Other things that came to light that were shown in the video:

Completely passive backup cooling systems that were dependent on actively-
actuated valves for proper functioning. (Should have defaulted open in case of
a power failure.)

Dependence on sensors that would fail without power.

Dependence on sensors that would provide dangerously misleading readings in
precisely the most dangerous situation. (Water already boiled away)

I think it's a good video to watch if you are doing operations of any kind
that requires worst-case thinking and planning.

~~~
ChuckMcM
In hindsight it is obvious, but at the time of construction, you would have to
justify spending money to protect against _both_ a 9.0 earthquake (pretty
rare) _and_ a tsunami larger than one ever recorded _at the same time_. Which
can only happen if you have the 9.0 quake right off your coastline.

At the time the plants were built, there was no geologist on the planet that
believed Japan could even _have_ a 9.0 quake, or a 30 meter tsunami (which you
needed the quake for anyway). Thus, at the time, the plant was over designed
for all possible scenarios.

~~~
gizmo686
This is why defense in depth is important. Even without anticipating a 9.0
earthquake, they could have anticipated that their floodwalls would fail for
an unspecified reason, and desighned the plant to be resiliant to flooding in
the event of flood wall failure.

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marze
The people who lived near the plants lost everything, perhaps 80000 of them.
I'm not sure what became of them, but I'm pretty sure no one came up and said,
here is a check for the fair market value of your property. It was more like,
you can live in this cardboard cubical in this community center now. I'm sure
they've moved on by now.

I'm sort of surprised they weren't treated better. All of the nuclear reactors
in Japan are shut down now, and the financial interests would like to see them
turned on. But how do you expect public support with 80000 refugees from the
meltdowns that are grumpy about it?

~~~
WalterBright
Global warming will cause far worse problems than Fukushima did.

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kazinator
Can someone kindly explain how the photo of Norio Kimura and its caption
relates to the article?

~~~
yellowapple
I was wondering the same thing. It feels like the article is implicitly
blaming the Fukushima meltdown for the tsunami somehow.

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shernan111
About time.

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mrschwabe
The article indicates that Fukushima was the "world’s worst nuclear disaster
since Chernobyl in 1986" but let's not beat around the bush, by now many of us
have come to the conclusion that this is the worst nuclear disaster ever as
the distrubing ecosystem collapse [1] currently underway in the Pacific Ocean
would seem to confirm.

When Chernobyl had its meltdown, they weren't pumping up to 400 tons of
radioactive waste into an ocean every single day [2].

Either way, am surprised but delighted to see the Washington Post bring the
issue to the forefront today.

[1] [http://enenews.com/govt-official-chilling-report-pacific-
oce...](http://enenews.com/govt-official-chilling-report-pacific-ocean-
silence-seas-very-very)

[2] [http://tass.ru/en/world/759657](http://tass.ru/en/world/759657)

~~~
tptacek
There are 187000000000000 _million_ gallons of water in the Pacific Ocean,
meaning that "radioactive waste" is 2.1 x 10^-10% of the body of water itself.

The waste we're talking about is HTO --- tritiated water --- which is a low-
energy beta emitter that has intrinsically low bioavailability, because it is
literally just water and is eliminated quickly.

Before developing an opinion about how terrifying this radiation leak is, a
good number to have handy --- exercise for the reader --- is over the 12 year
half life of tritium, assuming 400 gallons pumped into the ocean every day,
for 4384 days, what percentage of the background radiation of the Pacific
ocean are we talking about elevating it to?

Another number, which will not make you feel better about the world, is what
elevation to background radiation is produced by the coal plants it would take
to offset all the power produced by nukes.

Finally: if you believe that HTO leaks from TEPCO are, or are going to be,
responsible for mass die-offs of marine life, you're going to have to account
for the fact that we basically carpet-bombed the oceans with HTO during the
insane nuclear weapons testing of the 1960s; nothing TEPCO is doing will come
close.

~~~
mrschwabe
In an attempt to grasp how toxic the water is, wouldn't it be more effective
to measure levels of cesium 137 instead of overall background radiation? I
don't care what background radiation the entire Pacific has, I care if the
sushi I'm eating has ionized, cancer-causing particles in it.

 _" Michio Aoyama’s initial findings were more startling than most. As a
senior scientist at the Japanese government’s Meteorological Research
Institute, he said levels of radioactive cesium 137 in the surface water of
the Pacific Ocean could be 10,000 times as high as contamination after
Chernobyl..."_

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/concerns-
over-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/concerns-over-
measurement-of-fukushima-fallout.html)

~~~
tptacek
Your analysis might confuse two different phenomena.

When you mention TEPCO pouring "400 million gallons" into the Pacific, what
you're talking about is them dumping contaminated cooling water from tanks
into the ocean. The scale of that dumping is caused by (a) the ongoing need to
pump water into the compromised reactor to cool it and (b) the large amounts
of water they've already stored. However: that water is also filtered, to
remove the (actually dangerous) Sr-90. What's being dumped into the ocean is
HTO, not Sr-90 or Cs-137.

On the other hand, the meltdown at Fukushima contaminated the entire area with
Cs-137, most of which is in the soil, sediment, and sand. The Cs-137
contamination is much worse than the HTO contamination. However, it is also
not ongoing; in fact, increase in cesium detected around the plant has fallen
dramatically in the last two years.

~~~
mrschwabe
Fair enough - though I'm not sure if I will just take your word for it that
the potential for new releases of new cesium 137 is not an ongoing threat from
Fukushima Daiichi. The only way we can know for sure I suppose, is through the
efforts of independent researchers brave enough to get close to the facility.

In the spirit of HN, it would be neat to see an open technology solution for
the purposes of monitoring. Ie:

    
    
      if(waterSample.cesium137 > 0.001) return ALARM(waterSample)

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gh02t
> it would be neat to see an open technology solution for the purposes of
> monitoring

It's trivial to do so. Decay of Cs-137 releases a 662 keV gamma ray that is
easily measured and the count rate is proportional to the source activity (or
ultimately the total amount of Cs-137 present). You can calibrate an
inexpensive NaI detector such that it will tell you how much Cs-137 is in a
given volume of water. If you place it next to a pipe that has a constant flow
rate, you can infer the average amount of Cs-137 in the liquid flowing through
the pipe. It's something that you can build in an afternoon if you know what
you're doing and have the equipment.

This is pretty much how they monitor liquids for contamination in a real
plant, except they use more detailed spectral measurements to monitor multiple
isotopes. If you ever have the rare opportunity to go into a reactor control
room, there will be a display somewhere that reads out this exact measurement.

~~~
mrschwabe
Good info!

If the technology is cheap, as you point out, then the next logical step might
be a collaborative project to get a network of inexpensive, miniature, buoyant
craft's out to sea - for the purpose of actively measuring levels of cesium
137; sharing these results for everyone to see, to graph, and to check on at
any given time of the day.

One-time results from a fish is useful data but to have a whole swarm of
devices actively monitoring levels in various locations would be ideal.

Thinking ahead, the next hurdle could be the logistics of internet connection
- maybe they could connect to each other in a mesh-network that daizy-chains
back to an internet connection closer to shore. Oh, and power (solar panel
maybe?). Navigation. Yeah - some challenges for sure, but it all seems within
reason.

~~~
slapshot
Somebody did this. Before the experiment, they expected a background level of
Cesium 137 of between 1 and 2 bq/M^3 (caused by 1950s nuclear testing, which
released a ton of it). They found actual levels between 1 and 2 bq/M^3 across
the Pacific with some small variation above and below:
[http://ourradioactiveocean.org/results.html](http://ourradioactiveocean.org/results.html)

Think about it this way. Worst-case estimates are that 2-4 kilos of Cesium 137
were released. If it all ends up in the ocean, the total Pacific Ocean weighs
on the order of 638,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilos. The total new Cesium 137
is: 0.000000000000000000627% of the ocean. At a 30 year half-life, that's one
decay event per 70 liters per hour.

~~~
mrschwabe
Thanks for the headsup - but there's nothing wrong with some competition and
not to mention getting more coverage; for example it doesn't look like they
have any data near the coast of Fukushima preficture which is the most
important spot. Also the monitoring does not appear in realtime and if we are
getting nitpicky there are certainly a few UX issues with how the data is
presented.

On a related note, I'm sure Ken Buesseler is a good guy and his site is nice
and I have nothing bad to say about him; I don't know him - but you can find
comments about him from people who claim he's a "nuclear shill" and so
regardless as a matter of principal it would be prudent to get more
independent researchers involved in gathering data.

~~~
gh02t
> but you can find comments about him from people who claim he's a "nuclear
> shill" and so regardless as a matter of principle it would be prudent to get
> more independent researchers involved in gathering data.

You can also find a large number of people on the Internet who claim Obama is
a lizard alien ([http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/polling-theory-
embarrassment-453096](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/polling-theory-
embarrassment-453096)). This comparison is hyperbole, I know, but his data and
methodologies are peer-reviewed and support his claims. He's far from the only
person studying the issue, it's a hot topic (pun intended)
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=fukushima+radiati...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=fukushima+radiation+levels&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C34&as_sdtp=)
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