Ground Zero: Japan Speaking Tour Series No. 2
/ Grayson Webb
In our second installation of the Japan Speaking Tour Series, Fairewinds Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen visits Fukushima Prefecture (Japan state) and shares his sobering observations with the Fairewinds Crew. Currently in Japan presenting to groups and organizations throughout the country, Arnie visited the modern ghost towns, abandoned houses, and far stretching roads lined with plastic bags of radioactive garbage that have replaced the once bustling neighborhoods and cities of Fukushima. Formerly home to thousands, the massive release of radiation due to the meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi has forced residents to evacuate and destroyed their beautiful homeland. Join the Fairewinds Crew and ask yourself this: With 99 operating atomic power reactors generating electricity in the U.S., what’s so different about your home, your town, your state that what happened to Fukushima couldn’t happen to you and your family?
Transcript
English
MG: Hi, you’re listening to the Fairewinds Energy Education podcast hosted by the Fairewinds crew. I’m Maggie Gundersen, President of Fairewinds. And welcome to our show. Today we will hear from Chief Engineer, Arnie Gundersen, who is currently in Japan. He’s presenting to groups and organizations throughout the country. Arnie’s first stop on this trip was Fukushima Prefecture, formerly the home to thousands who have been forced to evacuate due to heavy radiation released by the atomic meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi. Beautiful abandoned homes, empty ghost towns, 30 million bags of radioactive garbage weighing 30 million tons line the roads and fill formerly abundant rice fields. Wherever you go, there are constant reminders that everything is radioactive. This is the new Fukushima Prefecture.
AG: So today is my first day here in Fukushima, and we started – got off the bullet train in Fukushima City and drove out to some of the towns that surround our plant. And I’ll tell you, the devastation is just awful. You go by beautiful homes, and they’re abandoned. There’s snow on the mountains and the driveways aren’t plowed and the places are beginning to get run down. And in their front yard, you’ll see dozens of bags and each bag weighs a ton – filled with dirt. There’s 30 million bags weighing 30 million tons, of radioactive dirt and radioactive tree leaves and everything.
MG: Is that all over the country or is that just in Fukushima Prefecture or Fukushima City?
AG: Oh, it’s all over Fukushima Prefecture. That’s the only area we saw today. But it’s everywhere. I was just driving down the street and in somebody’s front yard, they had a pile of 20 of these giant plastic bags full of radioactive material. And then, of course, all the rice paddies are loaded with plastic bags full of radioactive material. So they’re not going to be growing rice there for a long time. Then we found a parking lot at a supermarket that had a large radioactive source right in the middle of the parking lot that people were walking over and driving over. It was loaded with a black radioactive dust. So just wherever you go. It’s everywhere. And every house we saw was abandoned. Then you get into a small town that is open during the day for the construction people. And then they close down when the construction people leave –
MG: What do you, mean for the construction people? People cleaning it?
AG: Yes. Nuclear here in Fukushima Prefecture is creating thousands of jobs because there’s all these people cleaning up the radioactivity, both in the farmers’ fields as well as at the power plant. We didn’t get to the power plant yet. But wherever you go, there’s constant reminders that everything is radioactive. Big orange signs on the side of the road saying this area is not under construction, but this area is being decontaminated and this isn’t complete yet. And we go to areas that were complete and they’re as radioactive as all heck. So as soon as they clean it, it rains and it becomes contaminated again.
MG: (3:52) Why is that? Why does the rain bring it in again? Is that – let me ask you two ways: Is that washing down from the mountains or the hillsides? Or is that washing from the site? Or is it radioactivity still exuding from the site that’s being re-deposited through radioactive plumes?
AG: Well, they’re only cleaning 20 feet on every side of the road. So all the dust and debris that’s up in the forests is being blown by the wind or washed by the rain right into people’s front yards again. So wherever we look – one of the samples that one of my fellow scientists collected showed plutonium and significant amounts of plutonium. It was in a square meter. So that’s 3 feet by 3 feet. He was getting 19 disintegrations per second of plutonium. And that stuff hangs around for a quarter of a million years. So it’s –
MG: Can I interrupt you a minute, Arnie? That plutonium was part of the core that came out, then, in the explosion? Correct?
AG: Yeah, the only source it could ever have come from was inside that nuclear reactor.
MG: And the plutonium is being re-deposited at locations that were unanticipated. Correct?
AG: Yeah. It’s everywhere. My Geiger counter just counts a click for radiation decay and it doesn’t tell me what the isotope is, but it is everywhere, and we’re very careful. We’re wearing gloves all the time, respirators all the time.
MG: Are people living in Fukushima City?
AG: Fukushima City is relatively clean. It’s 40 miles away from the site. So when we got there, my background radiation was 40 counts per minute. But I got up into the hills and sort of near the power plant; I was still 7 or 8 miles away. And I was reading over 10 times that on the car window, as we were driving along, it was clicking along at 400 counts per minute. I’m with three carloads of scientists and as we left Fukushima City, their radiation detectors were reading about 40 counts per minute. And then as we got into the hills between Fukushima City and the power plant, the radiation detectors went up to 400 – ten times what it was in the city. And there’s heavy snow everywhere. There’s at least a foot of snow in the mountains. So that’s acting as shielding and preventing these numbers from even being higher. We went out to an incinerator. It’s under construction. And they plan to burn ten tons a day of material. Well, there’s 30 million tons of material up here. So that means they’ll have it all done in 3 million days. That’s a long, long, long, long time. A thousand years.
MG: (7:08) A thousand years?
AG: Yeah. This incinerator is not working yet but their through-put is estimated to be ten tons a day. The scientist I was with went to the side of the road and scraped a sample – a small, small sample of radiation from the side of the road, from the dirty snow on the side of the road – was reading 400 counts per minute. So wherever the ground is exposed, there’s high levels of radiation in the mountains around here. It runs right into the Pacific Ocean. When this snow melts, it’s not going to be collected. It’s all going to run right off and into the Pacific Ocean.
MG: You talked about the plutonium. Where was that found? Was that in place near where people are living or out in a woods? You said something about in a parking lot. Is that a supermarket where people shop?
AG: The plutonium was found in a farmer’s field about 10 miles from the power plant. But it was found because that’s where they looked. If it’s in that farmer’s field, it’s everywhere. So wherever there’s radiation, Cesium, there’s going to be plutonium. And that’s truly frightening.
MG: That’s what you and Dr. Kaltofen have spoken about since the very beginning. Am I correct?
AG: Yeah. It’s pretty clear that a significant amount of plutonium is scattered throughout the hillsides. And Cesium’s got a 30-year half life so in 300 years, it’s gone, but plutonium’s got a 25,000 year half life, so it’s a quarter of a million years before it’s gone. Some of the Cesium levels are so high – we had a Cesium level – scientists told me they had a Cesium level that was 25 million Becquerel per kilogram. Big number. So that means in 300 years, it’s one thousandth of that. Well, 25 million – that is still 25,000 counts per minute per pound – 2 pounds of material. So these are big numbers.
MG: Could you elaborate for our listeners a little more? I know we have a lot of new members and followers of Fairewinds. So I would like them to understand what you mean when you talk about half lives.
AG: If you had 100 molecules of something – let’s say Cesium 137 – in 30 years – it has a 30-year half life – so half of it would be gone. So you’d be down to 50 particles. And in another 30 years, half of that 50 would be gone, so you’d be down to 25. So in 60 years, the 100 would have gone to 25. Then that 25 will be cut in half to 12 and ½ and then the 12-1/2 will be cut to 6-1/4. So every 30 years, what’s left gets cut in half.
MG: Does that mean it’s not going to impact people any more; that the dosage is lower? Can you explain that a little more?
AG: Well, what it means is that it doesn’t go away until scientists say 10 half lives. So you’re still exposed to Cesium here in the hills around Fukushima for 300 years.
MG: That would be Cesium and Strontium and plutonium – all those radioactive isotopes are there.
AG: Yeah. It’s easier to detect Cesium and plutonium than it is to detect strontium because the decay particles from strontium are really hard to detect. But yeah, all of those particles are up there in the hills and there’s no way that any number of human beings could go up into an entire mountainside. Some of these mountains are 8,000 feet high. So to go up into them and clean a mountain range is just beyond the capability of human beings. So what happens is, every time it snows or every time it rains, it washes down into these villages and it washes down into the Pacific.
MG: And we’re not even talking about the bio-accumulation, what’s moved down in the soil and what the trees and plants are sucking up from the soil and re-depositing.
AG: In these hills around Fukushima, there’s monkeys. We saw one today, as a matter of fact, running across the road. And one of the scientists watched the monkey poop and then collected the poop. And the monkey poop had 50,000 Becquerel per kilogram of cesium in her. So these animals that are living up there in the forest are becoming more and more and more highly radioactive.
MG: And they’re transferring that wherever they go.
AG: Yes. The impression I get is the futility of the cleanup. These areas that scientists sampled today were supposedly clean, and they’re highly radioactive again. And the deep sadness of seeing these beautiful family homes just abandoned and likely to remain abandoned for a lifetime. The futility and the sadness I think are the two things that weigh on me the most, as I go to bed tonight.
MG: I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. I have one more question before we close. You were talking about the incinerator and all the waste that they’re going to be burning there. When that’s constructed and finally built, will it be contained? I mean incinerating, burning it up, where is all that radioactive air going? Can it be captured?
AG: Yeah, the Japanese are marketing this incineration design throughout Asia, telling countries that they should build one, too, so that when they have a nuclear disaster, they’ll have an incinerator readily available to burn all the cesium.
MG: I remember many years ago you said that if there was a catastrophe, a meltdown, a major radiological release from a nuclear power plant, because it’s an atomic reactor, that it would be much more devastating than an atomic bomb. Do you still feel that way?
AG: (13:30) Oh, yeah. The amount of nuclear waste that one year – a nuclear power plant runs for one year and creates as much nuclear waste as 500 bombs. So for – we’ve got 400 reactors running every year that have been running for 40 years. So we’re creating an enormous amount more waste than an atomic bomb ever would.
MG: Thank you, Arnie. Thank you for talking with us today and sharing your insights. And I know we’ll have another chance while you’re on this trip.
I’d like to thank all our listeners for listening to this podcast today and tell you we will be back on in several days to give you the latest update from Arnie in Japan. What is the human cost in Japan to the people that have bee forced to evacuate or are still living amidst this huge deposit of radioactivity? And as Arnie pointed out, it’s a vicious cycle. The radioactivity is cleaned up but it’s still in the mountains; it’s still in the snow; it’s still in the rain. And it washes down and over on the land that’s already been cleaned. What will be done with the tons and tons – millions of tons of debris? Stay with us the rest of this tour in Japan to hear more of what’s happening over there. We will keep you informed.
