Fukushima set to become nuclear waste graveyard

Japan’s atomic energy specialists are discussing a plan to make the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant a storage site for radioactive waste from the crippled station run by Tokyo Electric Power Co.

The Atomic Energy Society of Japan is studying the proposal, which would cost tens of billions of dollars, Muneo Morokuzu, a professor of energy and environmental public policy at the University of Tokyo, said in an interview yesterday. The society makes policy recommendations to the government.

“We are involved in intense talks on the cleanup of the Daiichi plant and construction of nuclear waste storage facilities at the site is one option,” said Morokuzu.

Radiation leaks from the three reactor meltdowns at Fukushima rank the accident on the same scale as the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The 20-kilometre exclusion zone around Fukushima has forced the evacuation of 50,000 households, extermination of livestock and disposal of crops, drawing comparisons with the Ukraine plant.

Areas up to 30 kilometres from Chernobyl remain “a dead zone,” Mykola Kulinich, Ukraine’s ambassador to Japan, said in Tokyo on April 26, the 25th anniversary of the disaster.

Waste Proposal
Tokyo Electric shares have plunged 85 per cent since the day before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima plant. The stock today rose 2.2 per cent to 322 yen in Tokyo.

Local authorities in Fukushima, 220 kilometres (137 miles) north of Tokyo, aren’t aware of a proposal to make the Daiichi station a nuclear waste storage site, said Hisashi Katayose, an official at the prefectural government’s disaster task force. He declined to comment.

Building storage for radioactive waste at Fukushima could take at least 10 years, said Morokuzu, one of 50 people on a cleanup panel that includes observers from Tokyo Electric and the Trade Ministry. Tokyo Electric would need five years to complete decontamination of the reactors, which includes removal of hydrogen to prevent explosions, he said.

Japan’s three storage facilities for highly radioactive waste are at Rokkasho, at the northern tip of the country’s largest island of Honshu, and a nearby site at Sekinehama. The third site is at Tokaimura in Ibaraki prefecture, near Tokyo.

Intermediary Use
As the sites are for intermediary use, the nation is still searching for a deep underground storage site for the waste, according to the World Nuclear Association. The selection is due to be completed by 2025 and become operational from 2035, the London-based association says.

About 90 per cent of the world’s 270,000 tons in used nuclear fuel is stored at reactor sites, mostly in ponds of seven metres deep, such as those exposed at the Fukushima site when hydrogen explosions blew the roofs off reactor buildings.

“Intensive discussion is needed before reaching any conclusion on what to do with the Fukushima site,” said Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University in western Japan. “This is one that the government should take responsibility for and make the final decision.”

In the past two weeks, the utility known as Tepco has said fuel rods in reactors 1, 2 and 3 had almost complete meltdowns. That matches US assessments in the early days of the crisis that indicated damage to the station was more severe than Tepco officials suggested.

“Most of the fuel rods melted and damage to the cores is most severe in the Number 1 reactor, followed by the Number 3 and then Number 2,” spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said in Tokyo May 24.

The utility on April 17 set out a so-called road map to end the crisis in six to nine months. Tepco said it expects to achieve a sustained drop in radiation levels at the plant within three months, followed by a cold shutdown, where core reactor temperatures fall below 100 degrees Celsius.