Fukushima, after eight years: Of the 19 to 25 million tons of contaminated topsoil bagged up across the country, the government has suggested incinerating 11 million tons..
Tag: Incineration
Okuma-Futaba Incineration & Storage Facility
Official storage of contaminated soil begins in Fukushima
Contaminated soil produced during cleanup in communities affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster is carried on belt-conveyers covered with plastic sheets at an interim storage site in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, on Oct. 28.
OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture–Hailed by the government as a major step to rebuilding, radioactive soil from the cleanup of municipalities impacted by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster began arriving at an interim storage site here on Oct. 28.
However, officials and residents with the towns of Okuma and Futaba fear the repository may end up being permanent as finding a final resting place outside Fukushima Prefecture is expected to be extremely difficult.
Still, local governments welcomed the start since rebuilding has been hampered by the countless number of bags containing polluted soil that have been kept in backyards.
“We are hoping to remove as many bags of contaminated soil as possible from people’s living spaces,” said Tadahiko Ito, vice environment minister who inspected the site on Oct. 28.
All the soil there is supposed to be taken out of the prefecture by March 2045 for final disposal under the law.
The repository began operating at the site, where soil from low-level pollution will be kept after being brought in via a belt-conveyor system. Bulldozers will afterward flatten the surface.
After a certain amount of soil is brought in, the ground will be covered with uncontaminated soil. The site can hold about 50,000 cubic meters of soil, according to the Environment Ministry, which oversees the project.
The ministry began building the interim storage facility about a year ago. As of the end of September, contracts had been signed for about 40 percent of the 1,600 hectares of land needed for storage in Okuma and Futaba, which co-host the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
A total of seven facilities will be built to keep polluted soil.
The ministry also plans to complete two facilities to store more radioactive waste in fiscal 2019.
Overall construction costs are estimated at 1.1 trillion yen ($9.67 billion) for all the interim storage facilities.
They can store up to 22 million cubic meters of soil and other waste.
According to the ministry, about 15.2 million cubic meters of contaminated soil from decontamination work are piled up or buried at about 150,000 location in Fukushima Prefecture, including plots near houses and schoolyards.
The ministry envisages moving 12.5 million cubic meters of the total to the interim sites by the end of March 2021.
Sprawling radioactive waste storage facility opens for business in Fukushima
A new facility in the town of Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, starts storing radioactive waste generated by the 2011 nuclear crisis on Saturday.
The government’s new radioactive waste storage facility in Fukushima Prefecture kicked into full gear on Saturday after completing a roughly four-month trial run.
While the facility near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex is designed to store soil and other tainted waste collected during decontamination work for up to 30 years, it remains only half complete six years after the triple core meltdown struck in March 2011.
An estimated 22 million cu. meters of contaminated waste exists in Fukushima, but the facility does not yet have enough capacity to store it all, and residents fear it will sit there permanently in the absence of a final disposal site.
The government has been able to buy only 40 percent of the land so far but eventually plans to secure 1,600 hectares for the facility, which is expected to generate ¥1.6 trillion ($14.1 billion) in construction and related costs.
The storage facility is urgently needed to consolidate the 13 million cu. meters of radioactive waste scattered around the prefecture. The prolonged disposal work, among other concerns, is said to be keeping residents away from their hometowns even when the evacuation orders are lifted.
Also on Saturday, the government began full operation of a facility where waste intended for incineration, such as trees and plants, is separated from the rest.
Contaminated soil is sorted into different categories depending on cesium level before storage.
Work to store tainted soil at Fukushima facility begins
Tainted soil is brought into an interim storage facility for radioactive waste in Fukushima Prefecture on Saturday.
FUKUSHIMA (Jiji Press) — The Environment Ministry started Saturday bringing tainted soil to one of its interim storage facilities for radioactive waste in Fukushima Prefecture.
Soil generated from work to decontaminate areas hit by fallout from the March 2011 triple meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc.’s disaster-damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has temporarily been piled up in about 1,100 places within the prefecture.
Shifting the soil and other radioactive waste to the storage facilities, to be finally built on a 1,600-hectare site straddling the towns of Okuma and Futaba, is expected to make it smoother to reconstruct areas devastated by the nuclear accident as well as the massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered the accident.
On Sunday, 36 cubic meters of contaminated soil arrived at the facility from a temporary storage in Okuma.
“I hope all tainted soil and other waste will be removed from living spheres in the prefecture as soon as possible,” State Environment Minister Tadahiko Ito told reporters after watching the work.
But over 60 percent of the overall construction site remained to be acquired as of the end of September, and facilities to burn plant waste and store ashes with high cesium levels have yet to be built.
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How long shall we accept Japan to pollute our skies with incineration of radioactive materials?
About the Incineration of Fukushima Decontaminated Soil and Debris
Incineration, Processing and Interim Storage at Okuma-Futaba Facility
As you may see the Mainichi’s article below does mention the incineration which will take place at this facility. The Asahi ‘s article below on the other hand completely omits to talk about the incineration, lying by omission.
The radioactive debris will be first incinerated to reduce their volume to 1/50 of their initial volume, then processed and stored there. The amount of contaminated soil and other waste reaching up to 22 million cubic meters (metric tons).
However it is important to point out that whatever the type of screening filters used during the incineration they will not retain all the radioactive nanoparticles, that some radioactive nanoparticles will still be released into the air during that incineration.
Thus “storage facility” is a misnomer, as it is actually a processing facility before to be a storage facility.
An intermediate storage facility under construction in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, in February, with the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in the background
Interim storage site for Fukushima contaminated soil to begin full operations
An interim storage site in Fukushima Prefecture for soil and waste generated when areas affected by the Fukushima nuclear crisis were decontaminated will be put into full-scale operation on Oct. 28, Environment Minister Masaharu Nakagawa said.
Contaminated soil temporarily placed on the premises of the facility, which straddles the prefectural towns of Okuma and Futaba, will be brought into an underground storage site on the property.
The storage site will be the first one in the country to be put into full-scale operation to store contaminated soil and other waste.
“There are numerous challenges that must be overcome, but the start of operations at the facility is an important step toward the final disposal of contaminated soil,” Nakagawa told a news conference on Oct. 24.
The Environment Ministry is constructing the interim storage site on an approximately 16-square-kilometer area around the disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. Operations at a section of the facility located in Okuma will begin on Oct. 28. After contaminated soil is measured for radiation, the soil will be stored separately at the facility depending on levels of radiation.
Waterproof work has been performed at the site to prevent stored soil from contaminating ground water.
At the site, a plant to incinerate weeds, trees and other flammable materials removed from contaminated soil and a facility to manage incinerated ash containing high levels of radioactive cesium will also be built.
The ministry estimates that the amount of soil and other waste removed from decontaminated sites in the prefecture could reach up to some 22 million cubic meters. Decontamination work is still going on in some areas affected by the nuclear disaster, which broke out in March 2011 following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Most of the soil removed from decontaminated areas was put into bags and temporarily stored at various locations in Fukushima Prefecture. Some of the bags have been brought onto the premises for the interim storage site since March 2015.
The central government intends to build a final disposal site outside the prefecture to complete the disposal of contaminated soil by 2045. However, the government has not worked out a specific plan on the final disposal site, such as its location and the timing of its construction.
Fukushima debris heading to intermediate storage facility
The Environment Ministry on Oct. 28 will start bringing radiation-contaminated soil to an intermediate storage site in Fukushima Prefecture, despite having acquired less than half of the land needed for the overall project.
The ministry’s announcement on Oct. 24 marks a long-delayed step toward clearing temporary sites that were set up around the prefecture to store countless bags of radioactive debris gathered after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011.
The entire intermediate storage project will cover a 16-square-kilometer area spanning the towns of Futaba and Okuma around the nuclear plant. It is designed to hold up to 22 million cubic meters of contaminated debris for a maximum period of 30 years.
However, the ministry is still negotiating with landowners on buying parcels of land within the area. As of the end of September, the ministry had reached acquisition agreements for only about 40 percent of the land for the project.
The soil storage facility that will open on Oct. 28 is located on the Okuma side. It has a capacity of about 50,000 cubic meters.
Bags of contaminated soil stored in Okuma will be transferred to the facility, where the debris will be separated based on radiation dosages.
A similar storage facility is being constructed on the Futaba side.
The ministry initially planned to start full-scale operations of the entire storage facility in January 2015. However, it took longer than expected to gain a consensus from local residents and acquire land at the proposed site.
In March 2015, a portion of the contaminated soil was brought to the Okuma facility for temporary storage.
About the Incineration of Fukushima Decontaminated Soil and Debris
From 2011 to 2014, decontaminated soil and debris were incinerated all over Japan. Informations about the quantity incinerated nationwide during those years in various locations are hard to get. As of today incineration is still ongoing in Eastern Japan, but we do no know if it is still ongoing or not in other parts of Japan as somehow nothing is being published about it.
Incineration is never a solution for radiation contaminated waste, it reduces the volume of the contaminated waste but at the same time redistributes its contained radionuclides into the nearby environment, thus endangering the health of the people living there.
However, this article from September 2014 gives a list of the incineratition locations and of the disposal companies involved, among those Japan Environmental Safety Corporation (JESCO) was the most prominent, as JESCO was the company already handling most of the PCB waste disposal.
JESCO Hokkaido Office (Muroran City) ＪＥＳＣＯ北海道事業所（室蘭市）
Ecosystem Akita (Odate city) エコシステム秋田（大館市）
Kureha environment (Iwaki City, Fukushima prefecture) クレハ環境（福島県いわき市）
Tokyo Seaside Recycle Power (Koto Ward) 東京臨海リサイクルパワー（江東区）
JESCO Tokyo Office (Koto Ward) ＪＥＳＣＯ東京事業所（江東区）
Toyama Environment Improvement (Toyama City) 富山環境整備（富山市）
JESCO Toyota Plant (Toyota City, Aichi) JＥＳＣＯ豊田事業所（愛知県豊田市）
JESCO Osaka Plant (Osaka City) ＪＥＳＣＯ大阪事業所（大阪市）
KEIO GEORE (Amagasaki City, Hyogo) 関電ジオレ（兵庫県尼崎市）
Kobe Environment Creation (Kobe City) 神戸環境クリエート（神戸市）
Ecosystem Sanyo (Misaki Town, Okayama Prefecture) エコシステム山陽（岡山県美咲町）
Sanko (Sakaiminato City, Tottori Prefecture) 三光（鳥取県境港市）
Fuji Clean (Ayagawa Town, Aya Gun, Kagawa Prefecture) 富士クリーン（香川県綾歌群綾川町）
Ehime Prefecture Waste Treatment Center Toyo Works (Niihama City) 愛媛県廃棄物処理センター東予事業所（新居浜市）
Lightwork refining tobata manufacturing plant (Kitakyushu city, Fukuoka prefecture) 光和精鉱戸畑製造所（福岡県北九州市）
JESCO Kitakyushu Office$ ＪＥＳＣＯ北九州事業所
German firm aims to compactly convert radioactive Fukushima wood into power
Whatever they say, incineration is never a solution as it just redistributes radionuclides into the environment
Black plastic bags containing radioactive soil, leaves and debris from decontamination operations are dumped at a seaside spot devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, in February 2015
Japan is turning to a small German company to generate power from timber irradiated by the 2011 Fukushima No. 1 nuclear meltdowns.
Closely held Entrade Energiesysteme AG will sell electricity from 400 of its container-size biomass-to-power machines set up in Fukushima Prefecture, said Julien Uhlig, the Duesseldorf-based company’s chief executive officer. The devices will generate 20 megawatts of power by next year and function like a “biological battery” that kicks in when the sun descends on the region’s solar panels, he said.
Selling green power with Entrade’s mobile units could support Japanese attempts to repopulate a region that’s struggled to restore a degree of normalcy after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami killed 18,000 people while also triggering the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns that displaced 160,000 others. The prefecture aims to generaJapan is turning to a small German company to generate power from timber irradiated by the 2011 Fukushima No. 1 nuclear meltdowns.
Closely held Entrade Energiesysteme AG will sell electricity from 400 of its container-size biomass-tote 100 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2040.
Entrade’s so-called E4 plants, four of which fit inside a 40-foot (12-meter) container, can reduce the mass of lightly radioactive wood waste by 99.5 percent, according to Uhlig. Shrinking the volume of waste could help Japanese authorities who need to reduce the volume of contaminated materials. Workers around Fukushima have been cleaning by scraping up soil, moss and leaves from contaminated surfaces and sealing them in containers.
“Burning won’t destroy radiation but we can shrink detritus to ash and create a lot of clean power at the same time,” said Uhlig, a former German government employee, in a phone call from Tokyo on Oct. 21. “There’s a lot of excitement about this project but I also detected a high degree of reluctance in Fukushima to talk about radiation.”
The decommissioning of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s stricken plant is set to take as long as four decades and the government estimates environmental cleanup costs may balloon to ¥3.3 trillion through March 2018.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in March that Japan cannot forgo nuclear power. His government wants about a fifth of Japan’s power generated by nuclear by 2030, compared with almost 30 percent before three of the six reactors melted down at the aged Fukushima No. 1 plant.
Currently, just two of the nation’s 42 operable commercial reactors are running, which has translated into higher costs for imported fossil fuels as well as more greenhouse gas emissions.
Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection declined comment on the process of burning radioactive waste in Fukushima.
Entrade’s biomass units will be located about 50 km (31 miles) from the Tepco reactors, said Uhlig.
Entrade’s biomass plants, which rely partly on technology developed by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, are “compactors” of lightly irradiated waste, said Uhlig. The “all in the box” technology is attractive to environmentally conscious clients who have a steady stream of bio waste but don’t want to invest in a plant, he said.
Uhlig’s company is cooperating with London’s Gatwick Airport to turn food waste from airlines into power. Royal Bank of Scotland financed another project supplying power from 200 units to an industrial estate near Liverpool, in northwest England.
Entrade has experimented with 130 types of biofuel since beginning operation in 2009. The company claims its plants convert biomass to power with 85 percent efficiency.
“It’s a bit like mixing muesli, taking what’s available from clients or the locality and blending it,” said Uhlig.
Entrade is moving its headquarters to Los Angeles to generate investment capital and help meet demand in the U.S. and Caribbean, he said. The company has 250 units in California and can hardly keep up with demand, Uhlig said.
German Owned Biomass Plants Burning Radioactive Wood For Electricity in Fukushima
Japan to burn irradiated wood to create electricity, releasing gases to the environment AGAIN! Safe disposal?
“Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection declined to comment on the process of burning radioactive waste in Fukushima. Entrade’s biomass units will be located about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Tepco reactors, said Uhlig.”
A lone tree inside exclusion zone, close to the devastated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant in February 2016.
Radioactive Fukushima Wood Becomes Power in German Machine
- Entrade contracts 20 megawatts of power sales to Fukushima
- Lighty radiated wood turned to power in 400 biomass plants
Japan is turning to a small German company to generate power from timber irradiated by the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear meltdowns.
Closely held Entrade Energiesysteme AG will sell electricity from 400 of its container-sized biomass-to-power machines set up in Fukushima Prefecture, said the Dusseldorf-based company’s Chief Executive Officer Julien Uhlig. The devices will generate 20 megawatts of power by next year and function like a “biological battery” that kicks in when the sun descends on the the region’s solar panels, he said.
Selling green power with Entrade’s mobile units could support Japanese attempts to repopulate a region that’s struggled to restore normality after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami killed 18,000 people while also triggering the Fukushima nuclear meltdown that dislocated 160,000 others. The prefecture aims to generate 100 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2040.
Entrade’s so-called E4 plants, four of which fit inside a 40-foot (12-meter) container, can reduce the mass of lightly irradiated wood waste by 99.5 percent, according to Uhlig. Shrinking the volume of waste could help Japanese authorities who need to reduce the volume of contaminated materials. Workers around Fukushima have been cleaning by scraping up soil, moss and leaves from contaminated surfaces and sealing them in containers.
“Burning won’t destroy radiation but we can shrink detritus to ash and create a lot of clean power at the same time,” said Uhlig, a former German government employee, in a phone call from Tokyo on Oct. 21. “There’s a lot of excitement about this project but I also detected a high degree of reluctance in Fukushima to talk about radiation.”
Ballooning Costs
The decommissioning of Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc.’s stricken plant is set to take as long as four decades and the government estimates environmental clean-up costs may balloon to $3.3 trillion yen ($31.5 billion) through March 2018.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in March that Japan cannot forgo nuclear power. His government wants about a fifth of Japan’s power generated by nuclear by 2030, compared with almost 30 percent before three reactors melted down at the Fukushima plant.
Currently, just two of the nation’s 42 operable nuclear reactors are running, which has translated into higher costs for imported fossil fuels as well as more greenhouse gas emissions.
Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection declined to comment on the process of burning radioactive waste in Fukushima. Entrade’s biomass units will be located about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Tepco reactors, said Uhlig.
Like Muesli
Entrade’s biomass plants, which rely partly on technology developed by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, are “compactors” of lightly irradiated waste, said Uhlig. The “all in the box” technology is attractive to environmentally-conscious clients who have a steady stream of bio waste but don’t want to invest in a plant, he said.
Uhlig’s company is cooperating with London’s Gatwick Airport to turn food waste from airlines into power. Royal Bank of Scotland financed another project supplying power from 200 units to an industrial estate near Liverpool, U.K.
Entrade has experimented with 130 types of biofuel since beginning operation in 2009. The company claims its plants convert biomass to power with 85 percent efficiency.
“It’s a bit like mixing muesli, taking what’s available from clients or the locality and blending it,” said Uhlig.
Entrade is moving its headquarters to Los Angeles to generate investment capital and help meet demand in the U.S. and Caribbean, he said. The company has 250 units in California and can hardly keep up with demand, Uhlig said.
Miyagi Prefecture to Request Municipalities to Dispose by Incineration the 8,000 Becquerels Below Contaminated Waste
The radioactive waste generated by the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident will be disposed in accordance to the contaminated waste standard disposal methods of the country. All to be incinerated in the Miyagi Prefecture existing waste treatment facilities.
A prefecture in northeastern Japan plans to start burning low-level radioactive waste materials from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.
Miyagi prefectural officials say they will ask municipalities to burn pasture grass and other waste with levels of radioactivity lower than the government-set level of 8,000 becquerels per kilogram.
They plan to use incinerators across the prefecture on a test basis starting from January. They say such waste will be mixed with regular garbage in order to keep radioactivity levels low.
The officials plan to collect and analyze data on radioactivity levels of ash for 6 months. They say a full incineration operation will follow, once safety is confirmed.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20161024_01/
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20161024/k10010741491000.html
