"State crime" in Fukushima : "The only solution is to run"

[Sa_Race]

On 23 June 2013, for the second year of the first "citizen radioactivity mesuring station" in Fukushima, the Citizen Radioactivity Measuring Station (CRMS) network held a meeting with scientists and inhabitants, to which we attended.

Professor Hiroaki Koide, a physicist, specialist at the Reactor Research Institute of Kyoto University, has delivered a lecture and we thank him for accepting, on the basis of the oral presentation and from additional documents, that we publish and distribute the content.

Cécile Asanuma-Brice and Thierry Ribault

The intervention of Professor Hiroaki Koide

"The building No. 4, partially destroyed, houses a spent fuel pool containing radioactive elements in large quantities, and is now in unstable equilibrium [...]. In there lie 1,331 radioactive fuel rods equivalent to 14,000 times the amount of cesium-137 included in the Hiroshima bomb [...].
It won't be until the crane -whose construction will start in the upcoming days- is ready, that we'll be able to start removing the rods : they'll submerge a lead container in the pool, and one by one, pick the 10 to 11 bars the 100 tons enclosure is able to accomodate. Then it will be closed, moved out, and they'll start over again. If one of the 1331 bars ever falls, contamination will prevent from approaching the pool for several months. For the single reactor No. 4, this work will require, I think, more than ten years."


"Many workers are irradiated"

"In buildings 1, 2 and 3, where the radioactivity is so high that we can't approach, it's unclear when it will be possible to extirpate the spent fuel from the pools. The cores have melted and collapsed. Distraught, our only solution, for the moment, is to spray water all over to keep cooling them. However, for the sole reactor No. 1, water level don't rise above 40 cm, because there's a huge hole through where water leaks more and more, overflowing now the turbine hall. There's attempts to recover the water, to extract cesium and sprinkle it back again. But leaks run from side to side, and as the water is full of radioactive elements, radioactivity is climbing when it's expected to "go down" [...].

Even today, many workers are irradiated in order to carry out the containment work. The 100 tons of ceramic uranium which were in the heart have liquefied the concrete base located below. It dissolves at about 1500 degrees, and the melted core has continued to sink and created a hole.

However, according to the leaders of Tepco, the corium certainly is getting forward into the one meter thick concrete base, but its progression so far doesn't exceed 70 cm, leaving a margin of 30 cm. When I heard that explanation, I asked them if, say, they went there to check. Since we can't even insert a single radioactivity sensor, one cannot assert such thing. It is unverifiable."


"We will build a concrete sarcophagus"

"According to the plan provided by TEPCO, the corium should have the form of a round rice cake. In reality, it's impossible to know in what condition it is. I'm pretty sure however that it crossed the concrete and continues to dig underneath. Tepco leaders say they would like to know for certain... and that is why they are developing robotics related technologies. They hope to extract the core in thirty years. Personnaly, I think, they will never be able to, and that we'll build a concrete sarcophagus, as it was done in Chernobyl. But in Chernobyl, 27 years later, this huge concrete cover is decrepit and they must build over a new one.

This is the only solution, in Fukushima as well, but we won't be able to do it in a thirty years time. I will no longer be here. Almost all of you who are in this room, you will not be there. Young people may be able to see the sarcophagus, but when it will be necessary to build a second one, none of them will still be alive. This is the time scale we face [...]. Like Chernobyl, we'll need to provide large areas where contaminated wastes used to build the sarcophagu swill be accumulated, territories then forbidden for a one hundred or two hundred years, even more."


"300 or 400 times the Hiroshima bomb"

"The amount of cesium-137 released in Fukushima is about 168 times what was released in the explosion of the Hiroshima bomb : these are the figures of the Japanese government, but they are underestimated, and the reason is related to the issue of liability. While TEPCO is responsible for the accident, none other than the government has asked Tepco to pursue in the nuclear field, arguing that it was "safe".

The government has a heavy responsibility, and the term "responsibility" is an understatement as it has committed, actually, a real state crime. Is it normal that in such a case, it's the criminal who provide figures, and therefore the evidence of his crime? It should, as a matter of fact, multiply these numbers by two or three, and understand that the amount of cesium released during the explosions at Fukushima is equivalent to 300 or 400 times the Hiroshima bomb. That's without accounting for what has been discharged in the ocean, and as of today, large amounts are released in the sea without anyone being able to foresee the end of this disaster. [...]"


"The only solution is to run"

"At the nuclear testing center of the Kyoto university, where I work, when we handle radioactive materials, we are forced to do it only inside what we call "controlled access zones"[...] . If, as a result of experiences, my level of contamination exceeds the limit of 40 000 becquerels/m2, I'm considered as as radioactive waste, the door will not open, and I have to be "thrown"[...].

According to the map provided by the state, in the city of Fukushima, radioactivity exceeds 60,000 becquerels/m2. But the government says that people can live there ! It's not one of my laboratory experiments, it's not only my hands and my clothes which are contaminated, but the building we are now in. The road, the railway station, the station square, groves, mountains, everything is contaminated [...]. We're all here, quietly gathered in this conference room in Fukushima, talking as if nothing ever happened, even though in this city of 300,000 people everything is irradiated [...]. The place where we are now should be classified as a "controlled access zone" and be evacuated [...]. The only solution is to flee [...]. One shouldn't allow others to live in a "controlled access zone", especially not children. [...]

Individual responsibility weighs in the decision of each one. I'm here on my own and so are you. But not children. It's not that I would only protect the children. It's because if I do not protect them, I'd never forgive myself. To each of you to decide accordingly."



Source : http://www.rue89.com/2013/07/03/crime-d ... ite-243864
CRMS : http://www.crms-jpn.org/
Hiroaki Koide blog : http://hiroakikoide.wordpress.com/

Spoken japanese translated and published in oral french style, translated in english with google translator, altered and adapted to ok-ish (I hope) english by me, myself and I.