Conditions at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are far worse than its operator or the government has admitted, according to freelance journalist Tomohiko Suzuki, who spent more than a month working undercover at the power station. A book by Tomohiko Suzuki detailing many of his experiences at the plant and connections between yakuza crime syndicates and the nuclear industry, titled "Yakuza to genpatsu" (the yakuza and nuclear power), was published by Bungei Shunju on Dec. 15.
Some 1,400 people have filed a joint lawsuit against three companies that manufactured the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, saying they should be financially liable for damage caused by its 2011 meltdowns.
The plant's operator recently admitted for the first time that radioactive water was still going into the sea. On Tuesday [23 July], Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said steam was seen around the fifth floor of the building housing Reactor No 3 shortly after 09:00 local time The sight of steam rising is worrying because it means somewhere inside the reactor building water is boiling, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo. The badly damaged reactors are supposed to be in what is called "cold shutdown"; the temperature of the cooling water inside the reactor should be well below boiling point. It is another sign that Tepco still does not fully know what is going on inside the damaged reactors, our correspondent adds. Steam was last seen rising from a reactor building at the plant on 18 July
BBC 8 Nov 2013: Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from inside Reactor Building 4 at Fukushima..... It comes down to what is, in the next few weeks, going to start happening inside one building at the destroyed nuclear plant. ... So what can I report? Mainly that I feel somewhat reassured by what I have seen. The preparations for the fuel removal appear meticulous.
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC News 1 October 2013 1. Firstly, Fukushima was not an unavoidable natural disaster. - there was no plan for how to deal with such a large and complex disaster. ( "a one-in-1,000-year probability") - the nuclear power industry "captured" the bureaucracy that was supposed to regulate it - the whole town was far too trusting 2. Cleaning up a nuclear disaster is extremely difficult. - just how complex only becomes apparent when you see how it is done - large areas (e.g. forests) may have to be declared out of bounds for decades (cannot be cleaned) - the waste (and this article does not even mention the leaks)
Press Release 11.03.2012: "...the Fukushima catastrophe was more serious in terms of its releases of these two nuclides than Chernobyl. This is not surprising since there were three reactors breached at Fukushima to one at Chernobyl of equivalent capacity, said Busby. Total Fukushima releases exceeded 2 x 1019 Bq (20EBq) and were overall more than twice the releases from Chernobyl. The high population density of the area contaminated makes this a more serious issue for health than the Chernobyl releases. These findings support the early assessment made by Prof Busby in March and later in August 2011 and the many statements he made to the BBC, ITV, and Russia Today and show that those many pro nuclear experts who talked down the seriousness of the catastrophe were wrong."
Chris Busby: "...the late Professor John Gofman, a senior figure in the US Atomic Energy Commission until he saw what was happening and resigned, famously said: "the nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity." This war has now entered an endgame which will decide the survival of the human race. Not from sudden nuclear war. But from the on-going and incremental nuclear war which began with the releases to the biosphere in the 60s of all the atmospheric test fallout, and which has continued inexorably since then through Windscale, Kyshtym, 3-Mile Island, Chernobyl, Hanford, Sellafield, La Hague, Iraq and now Fukushima, accompanied by parallel increases in cancer rates and fertility loss to the human race.
Vulnerabilities found by the commission and identified in the draft report include a situation at four reactors in Finland and Sweden, where if the cooling systems failed or all electric power was lost, the operators would have less than an hour to restore safety functions before catastrophic damage took place. The draft report says that 10 reactors in countries including Spain, France and the Czech Republic lack adequate equipment to detect earthquakes. Mark Breddy, a spokesman for Greenpeace European Unit, the environmental advocacy organization, said: “Cozy relationships between nuclear operators, regulators and politicians were pivotal to aggravating the Fukushima disaster. The situation isn’t much better in Europe.” Given those relationships, he said, he questioned whether the European Commission’s stress tests were as thorough and as impartial as they should have been.
Beginning on Monday December 30, 2013, the Internet has been flooded with conjecture claiming that Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 is ready to explode. Fairewinds Energy Education has been inundated with questions about the very visible steam emanating from Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3. Our research, and discussions with other scientists, confirms that what we are seeing is a phenomenon that has been occurring at the Daiichi site since the March 2011 accident.
Tšernobylin ja Fukushiman onnettomuuksien seurauksena luontoon levisi laajoille alueille radioaktiivista ainesta. Radioaktiivinen laskeuma aiheuttaa suhteellisen alhaisen, mutta pahimmillaan useita vuosisatoja kestävän altistuksen ionisoivalle säteilylle. Tapio Mappesin tutkimusprojektin tarkoitus on selvittää kuinka alhainen ionisoiva säteily vaikuttaa alueen eläimiin, niiden kantoihin, lisääntymiseen, kuolleisuuteen ja fysiologiaan. Tutkimus on vielä alussa, mutta tuloksia joihinkin kysymyksiin on jo saatu.
RT.com 4.1.14: "As TEPCO began preparations for the cleaning of the drainage system with tons of leaked radioactive water at the Fukushima power plant,a former employee reveals the reason for so many leaks was cost cutting measures such as using duct tape,Asahi reported."