Latest news with #nuclearaccident
NHK
3 days ago
- Politics
- NHK
Low-level radioactive soil in Fukushima arrives at PM's office grounds for reuse
The first batch of soil removed for decontamination after the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has arrived at the grounds of the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo for the first reuse in the country. Bags of soil were unloaded from a 10-ton truck onto the front yard of the office on Saturday morning. The soil had been stored at an intermediate storage facility in Fukushima Prefecture. By law, soil removed during decontamination work in Fukushima Prefecture shall be disposed outside the prefecture by 2045 after an interim storage. The government plans to use low-level radioactive soil for public works and other projects to reduce the volume for final disposal as much as possible. This is the first case of reuse in the nation except of the use in a demonstrative project in Fukushima Prefecture. Two cubic meters of soil will be buried at the depth of 60 centimeters in the front yard. It will be overlaid by a layer of regular soil that is at least 20 centimeters thick. The work is to take two days through Sunday. As of March this year, 14-million cubic meters of soil was stored at the interim storage facility. The government standard for reuse sets a limit of 8,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram of soil. The limit was set so that additional radiation doses to workers and residents near the soil will not exceed 1 millisievert per year, the international standard for the allowable dose to the public. The radioactive cesium concentration in the soil being buried is 6,400 becquerels per kilogram, within the government's reuse standard. The Environment Ministry will measure radioactive levels around the yard once a week or so and publish them on its official website. Ministry officials say they hope the first case of reuse will help enhance public acceptance of the removed soil.
NHK
07-07-2025
- Politics
- NHK
NGOs warn Zaporizhzhia plant at high risk of nuclear accident
Ukrainian non-governmental organizations warn that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine is at an elevated risk of a nuclear accident. Officials from two Ukrainian NGOs described the current situation at the Russian-occupied plant during a news conference in Tokyo on Monday. The groups examine Russian war crimes based on satellite imagery and interviews with relevant persons. Their news conference came after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that all external power lines supplying electricity to the plant were down for several hours on Friday. The NGOs said they are investigating what caused the outage. The groups, however, said they are aware that the outage coincided with air raid alarms in the region. The organizations warned that the Zaporizhzhia plant is at a heightened risk of an accident. They said that its personnel have been tortured and that Russian troops have militarized the plant, placing their weapons in and around the compound. The NGOs said they have identified seven locations in the vicinity of the plant where nuclear engineers and civilians were tortured by Russian forces. They said some of them were tortured by electric shock. An NGO official said Russia's military infringes on human rights and is threatening nuclear safety. The official stressed the need for the entire international community to consider how to response to war crimes committed by Russia's military, as well as to address a possible nuclear accident.
Russia Today
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Russia abandons nuclear deal with new NATO member
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has ordered that an information sharing agreement with Sweden on nuclear accidents and nuclear installations be abandoned, after Stockholm joined NATO last year. The relevant document was signed by Mishustin on June 24 and published on the state portal for legal information on Friday. The deal, signed by the USSR and Sweden in 1988, taking force of April that year, stemmed from the 1986 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, in which the agency's members agreed to notify each other of any nuclear accidents on their territory that could affect other countries. Scientists at the Swedish nuclear power station at Forsmark were among the first in the west to detect increasing radiation levels on April 28th 1986, two days after the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. Sweden joined NATO in March 2024, abandoning its long-standing policy of neutrality. Stockholm has provided almost $10 billion in military and other assistance to Kiev since February 2022, while also announcing a major rearmament program at home. Russia constitutionally remains a successor state of the Soviet Union, having exclusively incurred the bloc's debt upon its dissolution, and Moscow recognises international treaties signed by the USSR. Russian ambassador to Stockholm Sergey Belyaev told RIA-Novosti in May that Stockholm's stance 'indicates that Sweden has completely lost its status of a neutral country and is turning into a springboard for the implementation of NATO's militaristic ambitions.'
NHK
06-06-2025
- Business
- NHK
Japan's high court overturns earlier ruling in Fukushima Daiichi damages suit
The Tokyo High Court has overturned a lower court ruling and has dismissed a claim by plaintiffs for former Tokyo Electric Power Company executives to pay damages to the utility over the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The ruling handed down on Friday does not hold the defendants liable. TEPCO shareholders had filed the lawsuit against five people who were in top managerial posts at the company at the time of the accident that followed a powerful quake and tsunami in March 2011. The plaintiffs said the accident occurred because of poor safety measures at the plant. They demanded that the defendants pay damages to TEPCO worth over 23 trillion yen, or about 160 billion dollars, to cover the costs the company incurred in compensating local residents who had to evacuate, decommissioning the plant and conducting decontamination efforts. Earlier in 2022, the Tokyo District Court ordered four of the defendants to pay the utility a total of 13.3 trillion yen, or about 92 billion dollars, in compensation. The amount of damages is believed to be the highest ever ordered by a court in Japan. Both the plaintiffs and the defendants appealed the ruling. At issue was a long-term assessment of possible seismic activities issued by a government panel in 2002. The lower court ruling said the assessment was found scientifically reliable. The presiding judge said the assessment made it obligatory for the company's managers to take measures against tsunami. The Tokyo High Court Presiding Judge Kino Toshikazu said on Friday that while the nuclear plant operator should have respected the assessment, it cannot necessarily be judged that the operator had been legally liable to take anti-tsunami measures.
Gizmodo
28-05-2025
- Health
- Gizmodo
Japan Puts Fukushima Soil in Prime Minister's Flower Beds to Show It's Safe
In March 2011, an earthquake triggered a massive tsunami along Japan's coast. The surging waters caused the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to lose power. As a result, the cooling systems of three reactors failed, and their cores experienced a partial meltdown, releasing radiation into the environment in the second worst nuclear accident in history. While the earthquake and tsunami claimed over 18,000 lives, the nuclear accident itself didn't cause any direct radiation deaths. However, 14 years later, Japan is still dealing with its consequences—including over 494 million cubic feet (14 million cubic meters) of slightly radioactive soil, equivalent to 11 Tokyo Domes. To demonstrate that the soil is now safe enough to repurpose, Japan announced on Tuesday plans to use some in the flower beds at the Prime Minister's office, as reported by Japan Today. The soil has been sitting at an interim storage facility near the Fukushima Daiichi complex since its removal during decontamination work, and the Japanese government is legally obliged to deal with the soil before 2045. The plan comes in the wake of public opposition to using the soil in Tokyo's public parks, pushing the government to abandon the plan. The Environment Ministry maintains that some of the soil is now safe enough to repurpose. Since the public is clearly not convinced, however, the government plans to demonstrate this firsthand by using the soil in flower beds as well as for other purposes near government offices, according to Japan Today. 'The government will take the lead in setting an example, and we will do so at the prime minister's office,' chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a meeting, as reported by the Guardian. Back in 2024, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) approved Japan's plan to recycle about 75% of the slightly radioactive soil—'if demonstrated safe'—in infrastructure including railways, waste treatment sites, roads, seawalls, coastal protection, agricultural land, and land reclamation. During the soil task force meeting, the Environment Ministry said that the radioactive soil would be used in foundations and covered in a thick layer of regular topsoil, according to the AP. 'The IAEA is confident that as the Ministry of the Environment (MOEJ) continues to explore solutions in line with our recommendations, its evolving strategy for recycling and final disposal of removed soil and waste will remain consistent with IAEA Safety Standards,' agency director General Rafael Mariano Grossi stated in an IAEA press release. Japan is also dealing with hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated water, which operators used in 2011 to flood the nuclear reactors to mitigate the meltdown. In 2023, the IAEA approved Japan's plan to release treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, which the country began doing shortly after despite strong opposition from neighboring countries. In a similar demo to the forthcoming one, Japanese ministers ate fish from Fukushima to demonstrate that the discharge was not contaminating seafood. Evidently, many people need tangible proof that the government truly has their health and safety in mind. It remains to be seen whether this future demonstration will be enough to convince them.
