Tag Archives: Nuclear Disaster

Three decades after nuclear disaster, Chernobyl goes solar

Visitors walk past solar panels at a solar power plant built on the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, Ukraine October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

By Pavel Polityuk

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukraine unveiled a solar plant in Chernobyl on Friday, just across from where a power station, now encased in a giant sarcophagus, caused the world’s worst nuclear disaster three decades ago.

A new Safe Confinement arch covering the damaged fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is seen near a newly built solar power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine October 5, 2018. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

A new Safe Confinement arch covering the damaged fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is seen near a newly built solar power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine October 5, 2018. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

Built in a contaminated area, which remains largely uninhabitable and where visitors are accompanied by guides carrying radiation meters, 3,800 panels produce energy to power 2,000 apartments.

In April 1986, a botched test at reactor number 4 at the Soviet plant sent clouds of nuclear material billowing across Europe and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate.

Thirty-one plant workers and firemen died in the immediate aftermath of the accident, mostly from acute radiation sickness.

Thousands more later succumbed to radiation-related illnesses such as cancer, although the total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.

“It’s not just another solar power plant,” Evhen Variagin, the chief executive of Solar Chernobyl LLC, told reporters. “It’s really hard to underestimate the symbolism of this particular project.”

The one-megawatt solar plant is a joint project by Ukrainian company Rodina and Germany’s Enerparc AG, costing around 1 million euros ($1.2 million) and benefiting from feed-in tariffs that guarantee a certain price for power.

An employee walks past solar panels at a solar power plant built on the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, Ukraine October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

An employee walks past solar panels at a solar power plant built on the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, Ukraine October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

It is the first time the site has produced power since 2000, when the nuclear plant was finally shut down. Valery Seyda, head of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, said it had looked like the site would never produce energy again.

“But now we are seeing a new sprout, still small, weak, producing power on this site and this is very joyful,” he said.

Two years ago, a giant arch weighing 36,000 tonnes was pulled over the nuclear power station to create a casement to block radiation and allow the remains of the reactor to be dismantled safely.

It comes at a time of sharply increasing investment in renewables in Ukraine. Between January and September, more than 500 MW of renewable power capacity was added in the country, more than twice as much as in 2017, the government says.

Yulia Kovaliv, who heads the Office of the National Investment Council of Ukraine, said investors want to reap the benefits from a generous subsidy scheme before parliament is due to vote on scrapping it in July next year.

“Investors expect that in the renewable energy sector facilities launched before 2019 will operate on the current (beneficial) system of green tariffs,” she told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Odessa in September.

“And that is why investors want to buy ready-to-build projects in order to complete construction before that time.”

(Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets in Odessa; writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Dale Hudson)

‘Hearts are in pieces’ five years after tsunami hits Japan

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (Reuters) – Japan on Friday mourned the thousands who lost their lives in a massive earthquake and tsunami five years ago that turned towns to matchwood and triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

The nine-magnitude quake struck offshore on a chilly Friday, sparking huge black waves along a vast swathe of coastline and killing nearly 20,000 people.

The tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, where meltdowns in three reactors spewed radiation over a wide area of the countryside, contaminating water, food and air.

Naoto Kan, the prime minister at the time, has said he feared he would have to evacuate the Japanese capital Tokyo and that Japan’s very existence could have been in peril.

More than 160,000 people were evacuated from nearby towns and some 10 percent still live in temporary housing across Fukushima prefecture. Most have settled outside their hometowns and have begun new lives.

Some areas remain no-go zones due to high radiation. Demonstrators in front of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) bore signs saying, “Give me back my hometown!”

At cemeteries along the devastated coastline, in front of buildings hollowed out by the wave, and on beaches, families gathered to offer flowers and incense, bowing their heads and wiping away tears.

Flags at central government buildings were at half-mast, some draped in black.

In coastal Rikuzentakata, which was flattened by a wave as much as 56 feet high and lost seven percent of its population along with its entire downtown, pain remains strong.

“The reality is that we still feel the scars here, and there are still many struggling to restart their lives,” said 65-year-old Yashichi Yanashita, a retired city hall official. The four-story city hall was inundated by the wave.

A MOMENT OF SILENCE

At 2:46 p.m., the moment the quake hit, bells rang out in downtown Tokyo and people around the nation bowed their heads in a moment of silence. All the trains on Tokyo’s vast underground paused for a minute.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Emperor Akihito bowed in front of a stage laden with white and yellow flowers in a Tokyo ceremony attended by 1,200 people, including survivors from the stricken area.

“Father, that day, I called your mobile phone so many times, but you didn’t answer … ” said Masakiyo Kimura, who lost his parents to the wave in the city of Onagawa.

“Our house was completely torn from its foundation. Nothing remained except for the pair of matching teacups father and mother used, lying on top of each other.”

Billions of dollars in government spending have helped stricken communities rise from the ruins, including elevating the earth to protect them from future waves and cleaning radiation-contaminated land, but much remains to be done for thousands still languishing in barracks-like temporary housing.

“I get the feeling that the number of people who don’t know what to do, who aren’t even trying, is increasing,” said Kazuo Sato, a former fisherman from Rikuzentakata. “Their hearts are in pieces.”

RECONSTRUCTION CONTINUES

Government spending on reconstruction is set to dip from the start of the new fiscal year in April. But Abe pledged continued support.

“Many people are still leading uncomfortable lives in the affected areas. There are many who cannot return to their beloved homes because of the accident at the nuclear power plant,” he said at the ceremony.

“We commit ourselves to … providing care for their minds and bodies, forming new local communities and supporting industrial development of the affected areas.”

Full recovery will take still longer.

“Infrastructure is recovering, hearts are not. I thought time would take care of things,” said Eiki Kumagai, a Rikuzentakata volunteer fireman who lost 51 colleagues, many killed as they guided others to safety.

“I keep seeing the faces of those who died… There’s so much regret, I can’t express it.”

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, Editing by Linda Sieg, Nick Macfie and)

Fukushima’s ground zero: No place for man or robot

(Reuters) – The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima’s nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean “ice wall” around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t know how to dispose of highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks around the site.

Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-metre high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods.

Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed.

“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant,” Naohiro Masuda, Tepco’s head of decommissioning said in an interview. “The biggest obstacle is the radiation.”

The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.

But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda said.

Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.“It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.

IRRADIATED WATER

Tepco, which was fiercely criticized for its handling of the disaster, says conditions at the Fukushima power station, site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in Ukraine 30 years ago, have improved dramatically. Radiation levels in many places at the site are now as low as those in Tokyo.

More than 8,000 workers are at the plant at any one time, according to officials on a recent tour. Traffic is constant as they spread across the site, removing debris, building storage tanks, laying piping and preparing to dismantle parts of the plant.

Much of the work involves pumping a steady torrent of water into the wrecked and highly radiated reactors to cool them down. Afterward, the radiated water is then pumped out of the plant and stored in tanks that are proliferating around the site.

What to do with the nearly million tonnes of radioactive water is one of the biggest challenges, said Akira Ono, the site manager. Ono said he is “deeply worried” the storage tanks will leak radioactive water in the sea – as they have done several times before – prompting strong criticism for the government.

The utility has so far failed to get the backing of local fishermen to release water it has treated into the ocean.

Ono estimates that Tepco has completed around 10 percent of the work to clear the site up – the decommissioning process could take 30 to 40 years. But until the company locates the fuel, it won’t be able to assess progress and final costs, experts say.

The much touted use of X-ray like muon rays has yielded little information about the location of the melted fuel and the last robot inserted into one of the reactors sent only grainy images before breaking down.

ICE WALL

Tepco is building the world’s biggest ice wall to keep  groundwater from flowing into the basements of the damaged reactors and getting contaminated.

First suggested in 2013 and strongly backed by the government, the wall was completed in February, after months of delays and questions surrounding its effectiveness. Later this year, Tepco plans to pump water into the wall – which looks a bit like the piping behind a refrigerator – to start the freezing process.

Stopping the ground water intrusion into the plant is critical, said Arnie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer.

“The reactors continue to bleed radiation into the ground water and thence into the Pacific Ocean,” Gunderson said. “When Tepco finally stops the groundwater, that will be the end of the beginning.”

While he would not rule out the possibility that small amounts of radiation are reaching the ocean, Masuda, the head of decommissioning, said the leaks have ended after the company built a wall along the shoreline near the reactors whose depth goes to below the seabed.

“I am not about to say that it is absolutely zero, but because of this wall the amount of release has dramatically dropped,” he said.

(Story corrects spelling of names in fifth paragraph to …Naohiro… not Naohero, in twelfth paragraph to Akira… not Akiro, in fourth-last paragraph to Arnie… not Artie, adds dropped word in first paragraph.)

(Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick and Minami Funakoshi Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Fukushima Nuclear Accident A “Warning To The World”

The head of the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant is warning that the 2011 meltdown should be a warning to the world to prepare for the worst.

Naomi Hirose, president of Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the triple meltdown following the earthquake and tsunami should be taken into account when countries build new nuclear power facilities.

“Try to examine all the possibilities, no matter how small they are, and don’t think any single counter-measure is foolproof,” Hirose told London’s Guardian newspaper. “Think about all different kinds of small counter-measures, not just one big solution. There’s not one single answer.”

The interview came as the British government just signed a deal with EDF Energy to build a new generation of nuclear reactors in the country.