2016-03-17 Koide Hiroaki: an insider's exposé of the Fukushima nuclear disaster
Koide Hiroaki has spent his entire career as a nuclear engineer, and has become a central figure in Japan's movement for the abolition of nuclear power plants.
'Koide: Well ... the danger corresponds to the amount of exposure-you probably know this - so for a country that has declared its intention to maintain the 1mSv/yr standard to then turn around and ask people to endure twenty times that level, there is no scientific basis for that declaration. That's a social decision.
But if you want to inquire as to why, as I've mentioned to you, some 2.4 petaBecquerels of radioactive material have fallen on Japan, that material has been dispersed, contaminating Tohoku, Kanto, and western Japan. So in addition to the law setting the legal limit for exposure at 1mSv/yr, there is another law that states that absolutely nothing may be removed from a radioactive management area in which the levels exceed 40,000 Becquerels per square meter.
So the question becomes how many places or how much area has been contaminated beyond 40,000 Bq/m2? And according to the investigations, that answer is 140,000 km2. The entirety of Fukushima prefecture has been contaminated to where all of it must be declared a radioactivity management area.
Indeed, while centred on Fukushima, parts of Chiba and Tokyo have also been contaminated. The number of people living in what must be called a radiation-controlled area is in the millions, and could exceed ten million'.
'Koide: Yes. For humans going there means instant death, so the only way at all is to use robots. But robots are extremely vulnerable to radiation. Consider, robots receive their instructions through series of 1s and 0s, so should the radiation switch a 0 to a 1 you'd end up with completely different instructions.
Essentially robots are useless. Even if you are able to send them in they can never return. Because this has been the case up to now, the only way left in the end might be to use robots that try to avoid exposure or that are built as much as possible to withstand exposure, but that is no simple thing.
So it means until we figure out what to do it would still take many years. Once you understand this fact you can start thinking about what can be done. And at the very least the 'road map' devised by the government and TEPCO is the most absolutely optimistic road map that there could be.
They are convinced that the melted core fell through the bottom of the pressure vessel and now lie at the bottom of the containment vessel-basically piling up like nuggets of the melted core. There's no way this would be the case. (Laughs)'.
'In my view, Fukushima should be declared uninhabitable and the government and TEPCO should bear a legal responsibility for the people displaced and dispossessed by the nuclear disaster. That's what I think, but if that were to be done, it would likely bankrupt the country. I think that even though it could bankrupt Japan, the government should have carried out the evacuation to set an example of what the government is supposed to do.
But obviously those in and around the LDP certainly didn't agree. They've decided to sacrifice people and get by taking on as little burden as possible. So they've made the social decision to force people to endure their exposure. In my view, this is a serious crime committed by Japan's ruling elite.
I would like people to know just how many thousands of people live in this abnormal situation where even nuclear scientists like me are not allowed to enter, not to mention, drink the water. It is strange that this issue has been left out of all debate over the effects of the radioactive exposure.
We must be aware that contemporary Japan continues to operate outside the law in abandoning these people to their fate by saying it's an extraordinary situation. Under such circumstances, I think, there are a multitude of symptoms of illnesses in contaminated areas. But if we're talking about any given symptom, it's hard to say since we just don't have any good epidemiological studies, or even any good data. But there will surely be symptoms, namely cancer and leukaemia'.
Original article: 2016-03-17 Koide Hiroaki: an insider's exposé of the Fukushima nuclear disaster
I found that it read very well. He clearly knows the nuclear engineering and is aware of the health effects of radioactivity and the need for epidemiological studies.
Koide Hiroaki has spent his entire career as a nuclear engineer, and has become a central figure in Japan's movement for the abolition of nuclear power plants.
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