Contaminated water that will reportedly be released into the sea from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant contains a radioactive substance that has the potential to damage human DNA, a Greenpeace investigation has said. The environmental group claims the 1.23m tonnes of water stored in more than 1,000 tanks at the plant contains “dangerous” levels of the radioactive isotope carbon-14, in addition to quantities of tritium that have already been widely reported. The publication of the report Stemming the Tide 2020: The reality of the Fukushima radioactive water crisis comes days after Japanese media reported that the government was close to giving its approval to release the water into the Pacific ocean, despite objections from local fishermen who say the move will destroy their livelihoods. While most attention has been focused on tritium – which cannot be removed by the on-site filtration system used by the plant’s operator Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] – Greenpeace Japan and Greenpeace East Asia said that radioactive carbon contained in the stored water would also be discharged. Carbon-14 has a half life of 5,370 years and becomes “incorporated into all living matter”, the report said. “It concentrates in fish at a level thousands of times higher than tritium. Carbon-14 is especially important as a major contributor to collective human radiation dose and has the potential to damage human DNA.” Greenpeace said it had confirmed with Tepco that the system was not designed to remove carbon-14. “Nearly 10 years after the start of the disaster, Tepco and the Japanese government are still covering up the scale of the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi,” said Shaun Burnie, author of the report and senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace Germany. “They have deliberately held back for years detailed information on the radioactive material in the contaminated water. They have failed to explain to the citizens of Fukushima, wider Japan and to neighbouring countries such as South Korea and China that the contaminated water to be dumped into the Pacific ocean contains dangerous levels of carbon-14.

Guardian 23rd Oct 2020 read more »

The Chernobyl Shelter Fund (CSF) has officially been completed after receiving non-objection for closure by the assembly of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The London-headquartered bank set up the CSF in 1997 to assist Ukraine in making the site of the temporary shelter over Chernobyl’s destroyed reactor 4 stable and environmentally safe. The New Safe Confinement (NSC) also aims to create the conditions for the eventual dismantling and decommissioning of the contaminated structure.

World Nuclear News 22nd Oct 2020 read more »

Unit 5 at the Fuqing nuclear power plant in China’s Fujian province attained a sustained chain reaction for the first time yesterday, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has announced. The unit – the first of two demonstration Hualong One reactors at the site – is scheduled to begin commercial operation by the end of this year, with unit 6 following by the end of next year. Unit 5 will be the world’s first Hualong One reactor to be commissioned.

World Nuclear News 22nd Oct 2020 read more »

In Donald Trump’s world – laid bare during Thursday night’s final presidential debate with his Democratic rival Joe Biden in Nashville – fossil fuels are “very clean”, the US has the best air and water despite his administration’s extensive regulatory rollbacks, and the country can fix climate change by planting trees. But according to the harsh realities being laid out by climate scientists, Trump’s world does not exist. Humanity has just eight years to figure out how to get climate change under control before the future starts to look drastically worse – multiple-degree temperature increases, global sea-level rise, and increasingly disastrous wildfires, hurricanes, floods and droughts. Doing so will mean that unless there is a technological miracle, humans will at some point have to stop burning oil, gas and coal.

Guardian 23rd Oct 2020 read more »

It has been around 20 years since a lengthy discussion on climate change featured in a presidential debate during which time a monumental shift has happened in how America views the crisis. Two-thirds of Americans think that the US government should do more on climate change and moderator Kristen Welker asked both Donald Trump and Joe Biden how they would step up on the issue during the final presidential debate on Thursday, with millions of Americans already taking to the polls ahead of election day on 3 November. Calling it an “existential crisis”, Mr Biden sounded the alarm for the world to address global warming, as Mr Trump took credit for pulling the US out of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, the international agreement aimed at doing precisely that. Mr Trump said his focus was saving American jobs, while taking credit for some of the “cleanest air and water the nation has seen in generations” — partly down to regulations passed in the Obama era.

Independent 23rd Oct 2020 read more »

President Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax”, said he planned for a “trillion trees” before touting America’s “clean air”, “clean water” and lower carbon emissions (all of which are, at best, misleading, as The Independent has reported). The president then pivoted to an attack on clean energy, taking particular issue with windmills. “He thinks wind causes cancer. Windmills,” Mr Biden noted. “I know more about wind than you do,” Mr Trump replied, before going on to say windmills are extremely expensive, “kill all the birds” and “the fumes coming up, if you’re a believer in carbon emission … for these massive windmills is more than anything we’re talking about with natural gas which is very clean”.

Independent 23rd Oct 2020 read more »

Japan’s government said Wednesday it will pursue its nuclear fuel recycling program that would involve extracting plutonium from spent fuel, despite international concerns about the country’s already huge plutonium stockpile and lack of prospects for effectively consuming it as nuclear fuel. Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, at a meeting with the governor of Aomori prefecture, home to Japan’s pending nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, reaffirmed that new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s government will pursue the country’s nuclear energy policy.

Asahi Shimbun 22nd Oct 2020 read more »

The Miyagi Prefectural Assembly has adopted a petition seeking the restart of the No. 2 reactor at Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s Onagawa nuclear plant in the prefecture. The petition was approved by a majority vote at a plenary meeting of the assembly on Thursday.

Japan Times 23rd Oct 2020 read more »

The Miyagi Prefectural Assembly has approved reactivation of the No. 2 unit of the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant in the northeastern Japan Prefecture of Miyagi, and Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai is set to make a final decision on the restart as early as next month after hearing the opinions of the heads of local bodies involved.

The Mainichi 23rd Oct 2020 read more »