Seventeen have passed safety checks and only 10 have resumed operation.Īccording the paper laying out the new policy, nuclear power serves "an important role as a carbon-free baseload energy source in achieving supply stability and carbon neutrality" and pledged to "sustain use of nuclear power into the future." Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he planned to get the Cabinet to approve the policy and submit necessary bills to Parliament.Īs part of the new policy, the Economy and Industry Ministry has drafted a plan to allow extensions every 10 years for reactors after 30 years of operation while also permitting utilities to subtract offline periods in calculating reactors' operational life. Utility companies have applied for restarts at 27 reactors in the past decade. Still, restart approvals for idled nuclear reactors have come slowly since the Fukushima disaster, which led to stricter safety standards. Also, we need to push the development of advanced analytical techniques so that these particulates can be quickly identified and characterized.Energy Nuclear power is gaining support after years of decline. Tokyo CNN The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday acquitted three former Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) executives, finding them not guilty of manslaughter over the 2011 triple reactor. The most direct result would be to design monitoring systems so that we have a good record of released particulates. What, if any, policy recommendations would you suggest based on your findings? This collaboration is an entirely natural outgrowth of previous collaborations. We have always collaborated on topics that involve radioactive materials and the use of electron microscopy. The lead researcher for the group, Professor Satoshi Utusunomiya, was once a member of my research group when I was at the University of Michigan. I have had long standing collaborations with Japanese scientists for decades. How did you come to work with your collaborators in Japan? The government sought to play down fears of a meltdown at the Fukushima 1 plant. This advanced technique is required because the particles are so small - nanometers in size. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident was initiated by the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. This is a special contribution because it uses very advanced electron microscopy techniques that allow for imaging of individual atoms or clusters of atoms. This is an important discovery because this provides us with samples of the fuel and melted core. In this paper, we describe the first identification of fragments of the melted core that were entrapped by the Cs-particles and transported away from the reactor site, some 4 kilometers. The highly radioactive Cs-rich particles formed in the reactor by condensation from a silica-rich vapor, formed from the melting of core and concrete structures. Recently, in a previous paper we have described a new type of particulate that is Cs-rich (some Cs isotopes are highly radioactive). In order to understand the health risk, it is very important to understand the form and chemistry of these particulates. What did you find?ĭuring the core melt-down events at Fukushima Daiichi, radioactivity was released as fine particulates that traveled in the air, sometime for distances of tens of kilometers, and settled onto the surrounding countryside. We’ve heard lots about possible health effects from contaminated water after the Fukushima disaster, but less about particulates in the air. This research paper reflects my interest in answering these questions. I am particularly interested to understand why the accident occurred and what the long-term impact will be on the environment. I now teach a freshman seminar on this event. The Fukishima Daiichi event surprised me. On a visit in February to the site of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown in Japan. Why did you decide to study the Fukushima disaster? Hilly is the founder of the Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal. In the discussion that follows, Ewing explains the team’s findings and why they are important for health and environmental safety. On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant experienced a triple meltdown resulting from a tsunami, constituting the worst nuclear power plant. Ewing, Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), as a member of a team of Japanese researchers, today published a report on the details of what exactly - at the particle level - was released into the air after the disaster. The Fukushima disaster has been called the most significant nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. In March 2011, a post-earthquake tsunami triggered nuclear meltdowns, hydrogen-air explosions and the release of radioactive materials from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
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