November 1, 2014

NRA rebuts claim that Fukushima cleanup affected faraway rice paddies

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201411010037

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Japan's nuclear watchdog disputed the farm ministry's assertion that radioactive substances churned up by debris removal work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant contaminated distant rice paddies last year.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority announced at a commissioners' meeting Oct. 31 its estimate that 110 billion becquerels of radioactive materials spread as a result of cleanup at the No. 3 reactor building on Aug. 19, 2013.

This figure is lower than the 130 billion to 260 billion becquerels estimated by the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., in August.

Radiation readings rose significantly during debris removal that day, with radioactive substances found to have contaminated plant workers about 500 meters from the reactor building.

However, NRA Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa emphasized, "The affected area of the fallout was within the nuclear plant compound."

"While it is difficult to simulate the spread of radioactive substances (outside the plant), it is unlikely that the debris cleanup caused the contamination (of the rice paddies)," Fuketa said.

The nuclear facility was ravaged by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami, triggering a triple meltdown.

The NRA arrived at the figure of 110 billion becquerels by analyzing radiation levels recorded at monitoring posts north-northwest of the plant on the day in question.

Radioactive fallout on this scale constitutes a Level 0 incident on the International Atomic Energy Agency's International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.

Earlier, the farm ministry pointed to the possibility that radiation from the plant had spread to rice paddies in Minami-Soma more than 20 kilometers away, and called on TEPCO to take preventive measures in its debris removal work.

During the NRA meeting, some experts noted that despite the NRA's estimate, it is unlikely that factors other than debris cleanup at the plant could have caused such high levels of radioactive fallout at the rice farms.

“From a broader perspective, the Fukushima No. 1 plant is responsible for the contamination," one participant said.

October 31, 2014

NRA: Fukushima debris didn't taint rice paddies

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html

Oct. 31, 2014 - Updated 11:27 UTC+1

A member of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority says it's highly unlikely that radioactive particles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant contaminated rice fields some 20 kilometers away.

Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa spoke at the authority's meeting on Friday. Radioactive substances were found in the paddies after workers removed debris from the plant's Number 3 reactor building in August last year.

The authority said the removal work released dust particles with 110 billion becquerels of radiation.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the particles had relatively large diameters of several micrometers.

Fuketa indicated that given the level of radiation, the particles had an environmental impact only in the plant compound. He suggested that the contamination may have come from river and ground water.

The authority is considering whether to make projections on how far radioactive particles will spread during debris removal and how they will affect rice fields.

October 28, 2014

TEPCO guidelines say evacuees entering college not eligible for compensation

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20141028p2a00m0na017000c.html

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has set in-house standards for compensation that require evacuees who have moved out of evacuation zones to attend university or college to repay some of the compensation they have already received, the Mainichi Shimbun has learned.

A TEPCO document obtained by the Mainichi Shimbun says that if a tenant agreement between an evacuee and a landlord had been signed before the outbreak of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, it is considered that the decision to move was made before the disaster, and that their evacuation was over after they moved into the new place. TEPCO is believed to use the guidelines when interviewing evacuees about requests for compensation.

According to the Fukushima Prefectural Board of Education and other concerned parties, however, there are no universities or two-year colleges in areas that have been designated as evacuation zones, where residents are entitled to 100,000 yen in compensation monthly for their mental distress. It means that under the TEPCO standard, all evacuees who moved out of evacuation zones to enter university or college, regardless of the location of the institutions, will be subject to TEPCO's demand for repayment.

While TEPCO has not disclosed how many people are subject to such a rule, the prefectural education board said there were some 1,000 students in off-limits zones who graduated from high school in the spring of 2011.

A 21-year-old woman from a difficult-to-return zone, who is being urged to return some 9 million yen to TEPCO, was accepted into a three-year nursing college in the Kanto region in December 2010. She signed a rental contract for an apartment near the school in January 2011 and moved there in the beginning of April. In June this year, TEPCO requested the woman's family to send a copy of the rental contract to TEPCO's head office in Tokyo, and sent back a note in September with the amount of repayment the woman needs to pay, claiming that she ended her evacuation when she moved into the apartment.

A representative of TEPCO's head office for Fukushima restoration told the Mainichi Shimbun, "We make decisions on compensation after checking individual circumstances," but added that the company cannot release payment guidelines.

Attorney Naoto Sasayama, who takes part in nuclear disaster compensation claims, said, "As disaster compensation is funded by the government, operation transparency and fair payment guidelines are indispensable. If TEPCO demands evacuees repay some of the compensation, the company needs to disclose the payment standards."

October 28, 2014(Mainichi Japan)

October 27, 2014

Chiba governor asks Taiwan to lift import ban

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html

Oct. 27, 2014 - Updated 10:17 UTC+1

A governor from eastern Japan has called on Taiwan to lift its ban on imports of food and agricultural products from his prefecture. The ban was imposed in the aftermath of the March 2011 nuclear disaster.

Chiba Governor Kensaku Morita made the request to the head of Taiwan's liaison commission with Japan, Lee Chia-chin, in Taipei on Monday.

Fukushima and Chiba are among the 5 prefectures with food and agricultural products facing a blanket ban in Taiwan.

Morita told Lee that products from Chiba are being screened for radioactive materials before shipment in line with state government standards.

He requested that Taiwanese inspectors be dispatched to Chiba to see their inspection process.

Lee responded by saying he will pass on the request to relevant government offices. He said the government will immediately lift the ban should authorities give their consent.

He also said the issue will be taken up during a trade meeting between Japan and Taiwan, slated for November.

He added that a dispatch of Taiwanese inspectors will be the most convincing step to take.

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October 23, 2014

Woman urged to repay nuke disaster compensation after she enters college outside Fukushima

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20141023p2a00m0na013000c.html

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has demanded that a 21-year-old woman repay roughly 9 million yen of the 16 million yen in compensation she received over the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which left her family home in an off-limits zone, it has been learned.

TEPCO is demanding the woman return the amount she received after she entered a college outside Fukushima Prefecture and changed her residential address. The woman has resisted the demand.

"I have no prospects of being able to return home, and my psychological pain continues," she said.

TEPCO has not released concrete guidelines for compensation. It is feared that the finances of other nuclear evacuees could be thrown into disarray if TEPCO were to suddenly demand that they repay large amounts of compensation they have already received.

Under interim guidelines from the Dispute Reconciliation Committee for Nuclear Damage Compensation, a body operating under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, people who are forced to evacuate from their homes for long periods are eligible for compensation for mental suffering. TEPCO makes decisions on compensation based on the requests it receives.

The case of the 21-year-old woman marks the first time that TEPCO has demanded repayment of compensation from someone other than its own employees. Roughly 80,000 people are eligible for compensation for mental suffering, and it is possible the company's move could affect other evacuees who change their addresses when entering academic institutions, getting married or job transfers. The company is therefore likely to face calls to clarify its guidelines for compensation.

The family of the 21-year-old woman, who agreed to speak to the Mainichi Shimbun, said that in December 2010, when she was a third-year student at a high school in the Futaba district of Fukushima Prefecture, she was accepted into a three-year nursing college in the Kanto region. After the outbreak of the nuclear disaster in March 2011, her family evacuated from one place to another within the prefecture. In early April that year, she started living by herself in an apartment near the college. She graduated this spring and started working at a hospital in the Kanto region.

When her family visited a TEPCO counter to discuss compensation in June this year, they explained how she had entered the college. Then in early September, a bill from TEPCO arrived. It stated that the amount she had received differed from what she was supposed to have been paid. TEPCO said that she had decided to enter the college before the nuclear accident, and that her period of evacuation ended when she changed her address to attend college.

Specifically, TEPCO demanded that the woman repay the 7.3 million yen she had received for mental suffering (covering six years and one month worth of payments at 100,000 yen per month), in addition to 480,000 yen in compensation for her evacuation from the no-go zone, and about 1.28 million yen in compensation for household effects.

The woman had sought compensation from TEPCO for household effects because she had purchased new items, not having taken anything from her home after the outbreak of the nuclear disaster. However, TEPCO asked her to repay the amount on the grounds that she had purchased the items in line with her entry into college.

The woman's family remains unhappy with TEPCO's demand.

"People from the zones where return has been deemed difficult are unable to return to their homes for a long time. She did enter college, she hasn't become financially independent, and her life as an evacuee hasn't finished. TEPCO hasn't publicly released its payment guidelines, and we can't agree with its decision," a family member said.

A representative of TEPCO's head office for Fukushima restoration told the Mainichi Shimbun, "We can't comment on individual cases, but decisions are not made on academic advancement alone. We will continue with compensation in the future while checking individual circumstances."

According to the Fukushima Prefecture Board of Education, roughly 1,000 high school students from evacuation zones graduated in the spring of 2011, as the woman did. If it turns out they decided to change their address to areas outside evacuation zones before the outbreak of the nuclear disaster, then they could face demands from the company to return their payments.

The education ministry's office on measures for compensation for nuclear damage takes the view that in general terms, if a person can't return home, then their period of evacuation does not end simply because of academic advancement. However, the nuclear damage response office within the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, has seen this as a borderline situation in determining whether or not compensation should be paid.

Earlier, when several TEPCO employees changed their address to locations outside the zones that were off-limits, the company judged that their period of evacuation had ended, and demanded that they repay compensation for mental anguish. The bill that one employee faced was in the range of millions of yen.

There have been other cases in which TEPCO has cut off compensation payments. When a woman in her 30s married a man outside the evacuation zone in October 2011, TEPCO judged that the woman's livelihood had been established, and cut off her payments for mental suffering. The woman argued that her mental suffering had not ended, and filed for mediation through the central government's Nuclear Damage Compensation Dispute Resolution Center. The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy informed TEPCO that it was not right to cut off compensation using marriage as a reason, and payments subsequently resumed.

October 23, 2014(Mainichi Japan)

October 21, 2014

Nautical charts to be revised to reflect unprecedented changes caused by tsunami

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/recovery/AJ201410210001

By YURI IMAMURA/ Staff Writer

ONAGAWA, Miyagi Prefecture--About an hour into a Japan Coast Guard hydrographic survey mission, a crew member on lookout abruptly shouted for the dinghy to stop.

The starboard was about to touch a 200-meter-long rope floating about 1 meter beneath the sea surface near Onagawa Port, Miyagi Prefecture.

The rope was being used for an underwater operation to tie a work vessel to a buoy. The previous day, the crew discovered about 10 caissons, the gigantic concrete boxes that constitute the foundations of a breakwater, in the area.

The boxes, measuring 20 meters per side and each weighing several thousand tons, were dumped there by the tsunami three and a half years ago.

“Even those hefty caissons were swept up by the tsunami,” said Tsuyoshi Takaesu, the chief hydrographic surveyor of the main Tenyo survey vessel. “You will never know what you will encounter.”

The Japan Coast Guard continues to survey waters off the tsunami-affected Tohoku coast to revise nautical charts that take into account disaster-related rubble on the seabed, drifting objects and changing water depths that could pose a threat to safe navigation.

The mission primarily covers 24 ports and surrounding waters along the Pacific coast extending from Aomori Prefecture to Ibaraki Prefecture and is scheduled to be completed by the end of fiscal 2015.

The 2011 disaster caused changes to the seafloor on an unprecedented scale, Coast Guard officials said. And the mission so far has been full of surprises and potential dangers.

“A big mess would follow if (the rope) were to be caught in the dinghy’s propeller,” Takaesu said in a strained voice about the rope.

The dinghy’s crew approached carefully and used a pole to get the rope out of the way.

The compact dinghy, which is only 2 meters wide and 10 meters long, was deployed from the 430-ton Tenyo survey vessel on Sept. 17 to survey the shallow interior of the port.

The Tenyo, with a crew of 23 and Koichi Nishimura as captain, was surveying all parts of the harbor off the town of Onagawa for the first time in 32 years.

Takaesu, 50, has served in the post since immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered the tsunami on March 11, 2011.

The tsunami changed water depths significantly in nautical charts in at least one location for every harbor, according to officials of the Second Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, which oversees the coasts of the six Tohoku prefectures.

Nautical charts show water depths, coastal topography, locations of shoals and lighthouses, ocean flows and tide currents to ensure safe navigation of seafaring vessels and port use.

The new nautical charts will be used to set limits on the size of vessels and their cargo to ensure that seabed objects will not hit the ship bottoms.

Takaesu recalled the time he was in Kamaishi Port in Iwate Prefecture in May, when he came across a spot with a depth of only 1 to 2 meters, despite surrounding depths of 36 meters. When he hastily brought out measurement equipment, he saw something in the water that looked like Tokyo Tower.

“What’s this?” he thought, and returned to the same spot. He realized the object was a mess of entangled fishing nets.

“It gave me a shudder to realize that an object like that was still moving along,” Takaesu said. “Rebuilding efforts have proceeded visibly on land, but they probably still have a long way to go in the ocean.”

The dinghy can accommodate 10, but only five or six usually go on board because of the small interior.

A monitoring chamber in the center of the dinghy contains four computer monitors. A multi-beam sonar on the bottom measures the seafloor topography and produces graphical output.

The constant movement of the dinghy can induce sea sickness.

“I have yet to get accustomed,” said Kenta Kobayashi, a 21-year-old rookie who was assigned to do hydrographic surveys in spring.

The dinghy shuttled back and forth at a speed of 8-9 kph within a radius of about 100 meters near a tsunami breakwater under construction 1 km off Onagawa Port. It shifted its trajectory slightly to one side each time, just as you do when you wipe a floor with a cloth.

“We are passing by the caissons,” Kobayashi said as the dinghy entered the waters where the objects had been spotted the previous day. When the depths became shallower, the computer screens shifted from deep blue to orange.

Koji Saito, a 25-year-old assistant hydrographic surveyor, said he was working for the Second Regional Coast Guard Headquarters in Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture, when the quake and tsunami struck. He said he found a swept-up passenger car in Hachinohe Port, Aomori Prefecture.

“Whenever I am on a survey mission, I can’t help but look for a car that may contain missing people,” Saito said.

Tsunami breakwaters were destroyed in the ports of Ofunato and Kamaishi in Iwate Prefecture, where water depths lost a maximum of 10 meters. But in a July 2011 survey, the water was 15 meters deeper than indicated in the nautical chart at one location in Hachinohe Port, Aomori Prefecture. It is believed that the tsunami induced a big eddy that scooped out part of the seafloor.

Coast Guard officials said local governments that administer ports are in charge of surveying any small changes, such as those resulting from wharf construction. The Coast Guard uses those survey results to modify its nautical charts.

But the 2011 disaster created so many changes that the Coast Guard took the unusual step of conducting comprehensive surveys and republishing nautical charts for all 24 ports affected.

It takes workers two to eight weeks to survey a single harbor. They work in three shifts around the clock. Data analysis requires an additional six months to one year.

“There is a pressing need for port maintenance to help rebuilding efforts,” said Hirokazu Mori, the 47-year-old chief of the hydrographic surveys division in the Second Regional Coast Guard Headquarters. “We hope to produce highly reliable nautical charts.”

Japan’s first nautical chart was created in 1872 by the navy and covered Kamaishi Port. Vessels of a certain dimension are legally obligated to equip themselves with nautical charts on a permanent basis.