Japan Admits 3 Nuclear Meltdowns, More Radiation 
Leaked into Sea; U.S. Nuclear Waste Poses Deadly Risks
Amy Goodman/Juan Gonzalez
Democracy Now
June 10, 2011
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/10/as_japan_nuclear_crisis_worsens_citizen

Almost three months after the earthquake and tsunami
that triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan, new
radiation "hot spots" may require the evacuation of more
areas further from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power facility. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety
Agency recently admitted for the first time that full
nuclear meltdowns occurred at three of the plant's
reactors, and more than doubled its estimate for the
amount of radiation that leaked from the plant in the
first week of the disaster in March. "What they failed
to mention is that they discharged an equally large
amount into the ocean," says our guest Robert Alvarez,
former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of
Energy. "As [the radiation] goes up the food chain, it
accumulates. By the time it reaches people who consume
this food, the levels are higher than they originally
were when they entered the environment." Alvarez also
discusses his new report on the vulnerabilities and
hazards of stored spent fuel at U.S. reactors in the
United States. Then we go to Tokyo to speak with Aileen
Mioko Smith, executive director of the group Green
Action. She says citizens leading their own monitoring
efforts are calling for additional evacuations,
especially for young children and pregnant women.
[includes rush transcript] 

Guests: Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser to
the U.S. Secretary of Energy and now a senior scholar at
the Institute for Policy Studies. His new report is
called "Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the US: Reducing the
Deadly Risks of Storage." 

Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the group
Green Action.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Almost three months after the earthquake
and tsunami that triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan,
government officials say they may evacuate more towns
affected by radiation. New monitoring data shows "hot
spots" of elevated contamination farther away from the
stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The new hot spots were announced after authorities
conceded on Monday the crisis at the stricken nuclear
power facility was far more severe than they had
previously admitted. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial
Safety Agency more than doubled its estimate for the
amount of radiation that leaked from the plant in the
first week of the disaster in March. The agency has also
admitted for the first time that full nuclear meltdowns
occurred at three of the plant's reactors.

A recent law school graduate, Takanori Eto, is the first
to file a lawsuit against the Japanese government over
its handling of the crisis.

    TAKANORI ETO: [translated] There are dangers
    inherent in the government's nuclear policy. From
    the very beginning, there were also mistakes made.
    We also found out that, even after the accident, the
    Japanese government was unable to properly protect
    its people. So I decided, rather than remain silent,
    I needed to bring to light these lapses in judgment
    in a lawsuit.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Takanori Eto, the first person to
sue the Japanese government over its handling of the
nuclear disaster.

The New York Times reports harsh economic conditions are
driving laborers to Fukushima for work at the plant
despite the dangers. Earlier this week, a robot sent
into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility
detected the highest levels of radiation since the onset
of the crisis. A nuclear review by the U.S. power
industry, convened this week, is weighing safety
upgrades at domestic plants in the wake of Japan's
reactor crisis.

To discuss the state of nuclear power plants in Japan
and the United States, we're joined in Washington, D.C.,
by Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser to the
U.S. Secretary of Energy, now a senior scholar at the
Institute for Policy Studies. We're also joined in Tokyo
by Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the group
Green Action.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Bob Alvarez, start
off by talking about what we know at this point and the
fact that just this week we're hearing there were three
nuclear meltdowns. What does this mean?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Well, I think it means that the accident
was much more prompt and severe, and its radiological
consequences are going to be-unfold in a more serious
way. As you mentioned earlier, the contamination of land
nearby, or not so nearby, is proving to be quite
extensive. The reports that I've seen suggest that land
contamination, in terms of areas that are technically
uninhabitable because of cesium-137 contamination, is
roughly 600 square kilometers, or about 17 times the
size of Manhattan Island.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Aileen Mioko Smith, the reaction of
the public to this increased contamination much further
on than the exclusion zone, although it's in hot spots-
what has been the reaction to the government's failure
to make this clear early on?

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Well, there's incredible concern,
especially among parents in Fukushima prefecture. But
now spreading is concern among parents in Tokyo, which
is quite a far way from Fukushima. Mainly, what's been
happening is that citizens have been monitoring. And
after they find high levels, they demand that the local
authorities and the government look at those
contaminated areas, and then the government looks, and
it is contaminated. So it's very much citizen-oriented.
There are people going in all the time. There are
radiation monitors all over. Parents are measuring.
Mothers are measuring. University professors on weekends
are measuring.

AMY GOODMAN: And a new study is being done by the
prefecture, Aileen?

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Yes, we're very concerned that a
health study is starting at the end of this month. This
is concerning the effects of the Fukushima residents, on
the prefectural citizens. It's headed by a Dr. Shunichi
Yamashita, who's at the Atomic Bomb Research Institute.
He's the radiological health safety risk management
adviser for the prefecture. He's widely shown on
national TV. He speaks widely in the prefecture, always
saying there's absolutely no concern with the levels of
radiation in Fukushima. He says that mothers, even
mothers exposed to 100 millisieverts, pregnant mothers,
will not have any effect, health effect. Remember the
number 100. Compared to that, the Soviet Union required
a mandatory evacuation during Chernobyl at five
millisieverts. This doctor is quoted as saying, "The
effects of radiation do not come to people that are
happy and laughing. They come to people that are weak-
spirited, that brood and fret." This is a direct quote.
And he's heading the study. And so, the citizens in
Fukushima are very concerned.

AMY GOODMAN: Bob Alvarez, you've come out with a new
report. What are your main findings?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Well, my report dealt with the
vulnerabilities and hazards of stored spent fuel at U.S.
reactors in the United States. The United States shares
similar designs, reactor designs, as the Japanese
reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi station. And if you
watched the accident unfold at the Daiichi station, the
explosions basically showed you that the spent fuel
pools were exposed to the open sky. We, in the United
States, are currently storing on the order of three to
four, five times more radioactivity in our pools than in
Japan, and that the amount of radioactivity that we are
storing in unsafe, vulnerable pools constitutes the
largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.

In 2008, my colleagues and I issued a report, an in-
depth study, following the 9/11 attacks. We became very
concerned about the vulnerability of these pools after
those attacks, and we pointed out that if somebody or
something were to cause the water to drain, it would
lead to a catastrophic radiological fire that could
render an area uninhabitable far greater than that
created by Chernobyl. Chernobyl created an area that's
currently uninhabitable that's approximately the size of
half of the state of New Jersey.

The fact of the matter is, is that we don't have a final
resting place for these wastes. We've been trying to
find a disposal site for these wastes for the last 55
years. And the reality is that these wastes are going to
continue to accumulate at U.S. sites, and the reactor
operators are going to continue to squeeze spent fuel
into pools that have nowhere near the level of
protection of reactors. I mean, these pools are
contained in structures that you would find at car
dealerships or big box stores. And, for example, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not require the pools
to have backup diesel generators if they lose offsite
power. It's very important to keep the pools cool, and
they do pose some very, very serious risks. They are, in
my opinion, the most serious vulnerability of nuclear
power that we have in the United States.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But what are the alternatives, given the
fact, obviously, that the United States government, like
several other governments around the world, are
determined to continue to expand the use of nuclear
power? What are the alternatives for storing the spent
fuel?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Well, I think that there are different-
there's a big difference between plans and reality. I
think that the expansion of nuclear power in this
country, if it occurs at all, is going to be rather
modest and minor. We have to be concerned about the 104
reactors that are operating and the generation of that
material, and that we should be doing what Germany did
25 years ago, which is to thin out the pools, use them
for the original purpose they were intended, which is to
allow the spent fuel to cool off for several years, and
then to place the spent fuel into dry, hardened storage
modules. And this significantly reduces the hazards of
these spent fuel pools.

AMY GOODMAN: You say that what is recommended for
expansion in the United States is relatively minor, Bob
Alvarez, but I think many were shocked that President
Obama has been pushing for something that presidents
haven't pushed for for decades. I mean, the last nuclear
power plant in this country built, what, some 30, 40
years ago. I mean, Juan, you've written about President
Obama, before he was president, getting a good deal of
support from the nuclear industry, and he never said he
wasn't going to push for this, but they've been rather
quiet about it right now, since the catastrophe in
Japan.

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Well, I think a lot of this is
rhetorical. I think that-I look at it as the equivalent
of throwing nuclear candy at political supporters, or
even political enemies who you're trying to win over.
The fact of the matter is, is that nuclear power is not
going to have a chance in this country, at all, unless
it has unfettered access to the United States Treasury.
This is not going to happen. The House, for example,
recently enacted the appropriations legislation for
fiscal year 2012 and totally spurned Obama's request to
expand loan guarantee authority. In other words, the
U.S. government would guarantee the loans, but the loans
themselves would come out of the U.S. Treasury. I don't
think that the Congress right now has the stomach to
open up the Treasury for reactors that are going to cost
on the order of $10 billion apiece.

You also have to keep in mind that while he has been
vocally supportive of nuclear power and has done things
like try to seek expanded loan guarantee authority, he's
also pulled the rug out from under the nuclear industry
by canceling the Yucca Mountain disposal site. And so, I
think that we have to sort out, as we do with a lot of
things the President does, the difference between what
he says and what happens.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Aileen Mioko Smith, I'd like to get back
to the disaster in Japan for a moment. Greenpeace has
been reporting that the contamination levels-dangerous
contamination levels in the ocean go out as-they found
it as far as 50 miles out from the shore. What has been
happening with the fishing industry in Japan and the
reaction to the possible contamination of huge swaths of
the ocean off the coast?

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Yes, the ocean contamination is very
serious. There are estimates that it's 10 times the
release that was-that compared to Chernobyl into the
Baltic Sea. So it's very serious. And the National
Fisheries Association came out very early on after the
accident demanding the closure of all nuclear power
plants in Japan. This is an incredible statement,
because the industry has never been concerned about
nuclear power before. Just right now, TEPCO is-the
amount of contaminated water on site is building and
building, and there's intention to dump more. And the
industry is opposing it right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Bob Alvarez, can you talk about this
contamination of the oceans?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Yes. As you know, the Japanese
government, in its report to the IAEA, said it had
underestimated the amount of radioactivity released to
the atmosphere during the first week and that it amounts
to roughly 40 million curies of radioactivity. What they
failed to mention is that they discharged an equally
large amount into the ocean, about 20 million curies,
and that the-what they're counting here is the
radioactive iodine and radioactive cesium.

Radioactive cesium is of most concern because it has a
half-life of 30 years, it gives off potentially
dangerous external penetrating radiation, and it is
absorbed into the food chain and other biota as if it
were potassium. So as it goes up the food chain, it
accumulates, and by the time it reaches people who
consume this food, the levels are higher than they
originally were when they entered the environment. There
is a stretch of ocean floor offshore from the reactor
site that's about 300 kilometers wide-I don't recall,
several kilometers-300 kilometers long, rather, and
several kilometers wide of cesium-137. That's a very,
very serious concern because of the fact that this is
really a fundamental element of the aquatic food chain
for the food supply for the country of Japan.

AMY GOODMAN: Aileen Mioko Smith, can you talk about the
changing of what is considered acceptable radiation
limits at the schools?

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Yes. There's been a big fight. The
Fukushima residents, the parents, came down in busloads
to Tokyo on March-excuse me, May 23rd and met with the
Ministry of Education. The whole building was encircled
by people, completely encircled, and these negotiations
went on inside the building. It was very intense. And
the parents made the ministry say that they would aim
for returning to back down to the one millisievert
standard as much as possible, compared to the twentyfold
increase that they were allowing in Fukushima prefecture
for the children. These levels that they have been
allowing, it's officially still in place. They're huge
levels. Twenty millisieverts is much higher than what
triggers a radiation-controlled area inside nuclear
power plants. For example, in Japan, workers have been
recognized for compensation, getting leukemia or
whatever, as low as five, a little bit over five
millisieverts. And this standard for children is
fourfold that annually. Anyway, we demanded that it be
brought down as close to one. They agreed. And then it
turns out that what they're saying is, just during the
time they're a school, they can reach that maximum one.
So, of course, you know, a child's life is at school,
going to and from school, etc., so the government is
still allowing very high levels for children.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Bob Alvarez, I'd like to ask you about
this problem that the public confronts of governments
misrepresenting, or sometimes actually lying, to the
public in terms-when these major disasters occur. I
mean, going back, from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl,
most recently the BP spill in the Gulf, or the collapse
of the Twin Towers and the health effects for the
public, and now here we have in Japan-the tendency of
government always to withhold information that they
immediately have from the public. Doesn't this
eventually lead to just general mistrust of people to
what the government is saying in these disasters?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Oh, yes, of course. I think the nuclear
industries, particularly in the United States and
elsewhere, Russia, Japan, have a very long history of
withholding information and misleading the public about
the hazards of their activities. And in this country, it
went on for many years, and during the open-air bomb
testing program, for example. The nuclear industry
enjoys this rather unique status because of its origins
in the nuclear weapons program and that it's a system
that has been fostered under conditions of secrecy,
isolation and privilege, and they do not consider it in
their interest to be candid with the public. I used to
work in the Energy Department for six years and was a
former, I guess you would say, nuclear insider. And the
mindset that I encountered there was that they-the
people who were reluctant to reveal candid information
about the nature of the hazards from these activities-
was that we can't scare people, scaring people is worse
than telling them the truth. And I think that that's a
fundamental-a fundamentally wrongheaded assumption.

AMY GOODMAN: Bob Alvarez, how do you respond to the U.S.
nuclear industry saying it doesn't expect any health
problems among Japanese people as a result of the
nuclear accident?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: I just think that's arm waving. It's
public relations arm waving, because we won't know what
the full truth will be for decades to come. We do know
that based on past accidents, such as Chernobyl, such as
the experience we've had with our nuclear workers in
this country over the last 50 years, is that there is
bound to be a significant increase in the risk of
cancer, and most likely other diseases.

AMY GOODMAN: And you say Japan is equal to or worse than
Chernobyl, the Fukushima Daiichi plant?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: That's correct, because if-the Soviet
Union and Russia basically have claimed that about 50
million curies of radioactivity were released to the
environment-this is roughly comparable to what the
Japanese government has currently admitted-and that this
site continues to release significant amount of
radiation in the atmosphere, nowhere near as large as it
did during the first week or two, but it's still quite
significant.

The other issue here is the workers on the site. I was
astounded to learn that some 5,000 workers have positive
evidence of internal exposure to radioactive materials.
This is a huge number of people to be exposed over such
a short period of time. In the U.S. nuclear weapons
program, which operated at a sort of a brisk pace for
nearly 50 years, this is roughly comparable to what all
workers at nuclear weapons sites during that period were
recorded to have received from internal exposures. I
think that the impact on the workforce, the emergency
responders, is going-is something we need to watch very
closely, because that's going to give us some important
clues of what we might expect in terms of the health
consequences to the public.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And yet, Aileen Mioko Smith, some of the
reports that we've had here, the news reports, say that
there's no trouble recruiting people to go and work on
the cleanup because of, obviously, the high pay that
they're offering and also the economic dislocation that
occurred as a result of the tsunami and of the nuclear
accident itself.

AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Yes, that's correct. And we're very
concerned for the health of the workers. And as Bob
Alvarez pointed out, now the knowledge that so many
workers have received internal exposure, this is also a
concern for the public, and citizens are very concerned
about that. The Japanese government refuses to recognize
any potential internal exposure of the residents of
Fukushima. We've been addressing this about the
children. Citizens have demanded whole body counts-a few
have actually been able to get them-at the Atomic Bomb
Research Institute, and are refused the results. They're
just told, "No problem." They don't-aren't given the
data. And they're demanding that the data be released.
So that is a great concern.

And the other thing I want to point out is this is still
an ongoing accident. That issue about the spent fuel
pool that Bob Alvarez addressed on the U.S., at
Fukushima, as you know, Unit 4 is there with that
exposed spent fuel pool. We're concerned about possible
aftershocks. There are people that are still living 12
miles outside of the radius of the plant. They're only
hot spots that have been evacuated outside of that
larger area of 20, 30 kilometers. And that's why we're
demanding evacuation, and the demand has now become very
clear, and we're pushing for that to happen, especially
for pregnant women and young children.

AMY GOODMAN: Bob Alvarez, nuclear power globally-the
U.S. says it's moving forward. But Germany, Angela
Merkel has been forced to turn back on that, and they
say they're not going to move forward with nuclear power
plants. Same with Switzerland. Saudi Arabia says they're
going to build 30 new nuclear power plants?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Well, as I said, plans and statements
and announcements oftentime are different from what
actually happens. The fact of the matter in the United
States is that we no longer have any companies or
capabilities or infrastructure to build nuclear
reactors. We have to depend on nations such as Japan and
France to do that. Japan is the-right now the only
producer of forgings for reactor vessels. Nuclear
engineers in this country are almost like Confederate
war veterans; there are very few actual U.S. citizens
who go to college to become nuclear engineers, because
it's considered a dead-end occupation. So, we don't
really have the infrastructure. The skilled knowledge
base that we need to have any significant expansion of
nuclear power is not there.

And I think that the Fukushima accident has really had a
major body blow to the world nuclear industry. You have
to understand that Japan, with its 54 reactors,
represents the third-largest number of reactors of a
country in the world. They're number three. And for
Japan now to announce that it's going to shut down its
reactors by next spring, albeit perhaps for temporary
reasons, is a major signal to other countries who either
have a large reactor fleet or those who are
contemplating building more.

I think Saudi Arabia's desire to have 30 reactors is
something that's not necessarily going to be easily
achievable, because of the fact that the United States
serves essentially as a gatekeeper for any such deal of
that nature. I think that Saudi Arabia is looking to
establish a nuclear infrastructure in order to allow it
to have the capability down the road to have nuclear
weapons. Building 30 reactors in Saudi Arabia, in a
country which really doesn't have much water to speak
of-and reactors are extremely water-intensive-doesn't
make a lot of sense. And then if you look at the price
tag for building these reactors in a place like Saudi
Arabia, you're looking at an expenditure of somewhere
between three to five trillion dollars to do this. So I
think some of this-some of these announcements and plans
are just what they are, announcements and plans.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, on Vermont, because it could
become the first legislature in the country to shut down
a nuclear power plant, the Vermont Yankee plant, but
Entergy, the owner, is fighting hard, trying to sue them
to stop them from doing this. The comparison of Vermont
Yankee to the Fukushima plant?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Well, the Vermont Yankee plant is a
General Electric boiling water Mark 1 reactor, which is
the exact same design as those at the Fukushima Daiichi
site. It has more radioactivity in its spent fuel than
all of the spent fuel rods at the four troubled
reactors, wrecked reactors, at Fukushima. It's 42 years
old. And this is a reactor which-I think whose time has
come to close. It should not be looked upon as just an
ATM machine for a multi-tiered holding company that
makes sure that it can make as much money as possible.
You know, this reactor was purchased for pennies on the
dollar. And companies like Entergy, who operate in these
deregulated environments, are loath to do things that
would require significant safety upgrades. For example,
if the state required them to build cooling towers and
comply with the Clean Air Act and to really build new
modern ones, I think the capital expenses alone would
drive Entergy to shut down that reactor. So, I think
that the battle lines are drawn there, and I think that
we're going to see an increasing battle between states
who appear to be on a collision course with the federal
government over the future of nuclear power.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much for being
with us, Robert Alvarez-

ROBERT ALVAREZ: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN:-former senior policy adviser to U.S.
Secretary of Energy, now a senior scholar at the
Institute for Policy Studies. His new report is called
"Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the US: Reducing the Deadly
Risks of Storage." We'll link to that at
democracynow.org. And Aileen Mioko Smith, thank you so
much for being with us again, this time from Tokyo. She
is executive director of the group Green Action.

___________________________________________

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