Nancy Foust comments

Of course there are alternatives. Those alternatives cost money and might be inconvenient for the myth the government is peddling, that the disaster is over and not a major problem.

The treated water contains tritium and some other radioactive isotopes but it far less problematic then when it was full of other substances. It could be stored in tanks until the tritium decays off. The other isotopes could be managed by further filtration that deals with those specific isotopes. Something like a continuous loop filtration system could be used on these tanks to deal with that remaining contamination.

There would be a need for more tanks to hold this water. The government has already purchased land for soil storage outside the plant grounds. They could do the same for this type of tank.

There are existing technologies that can remove tritium. The complaints about those is cost and that they would be hard to "scale up". These technologies are already in place at some nuclear plants to filter water in their systems. There would be a need for multiple of these systems but the byproduct of this is hydrogen. Hydrogen can be collected and sold as a usable fuel product.

It is their job to deny any radiation link to the growing number of illnesses. Some of the newer thyroid cancer findings were discovered in people who previously had a clean screening. How they continue to make these excuses with a straight face is beyond me.

No worries. When the GOP and Trump are done Americans won't be able to afford new cars.

Of course they are saying it is totally fine. That is business PR. Deny any problems until the problems explode in your face, then call it a feature. The evidence the press has dredged up, like there is nobody meeting with the Pentagon or Sec. of State office a week after the election. It is a dumpster fire and doesn't look like it will improve over the next 4 years. Making a neo nazi your chief strategist is not going down well either.

Set up data to achieve a desired result, lather, rinse, repeat. About as "accurate" as the UNSCEAR studies.

I am in the US. What I have seen in the last year that "might" have had some connection to the program: Hatsune Miku was on David Letterman one night, I saw that on random chance by leaving the TV on. Hulu has certain anime that appears on US streaming the same week it releases in Japan. I found that on random accident looking for something else. Babymetal played a few dates in NYC and LA. I only knew who they were due to word of mouth on Facebook. The concert dates were posted by the same person.

After seeing JAEA's "angry wife" mess in 2012, the govt. may want to hire some artists and marketing agencies to run these programs for them.

The article isn't clear about what actually was found. There is no fuel at all in the reactor vessel. No solid or melted fuel. So they ASSUME there is probably fuel in the containment vessel floor. But this is also at this point just speculation. They are going to start looking there next. There is considerable evidence that at least some of the melted fuel ended up in the torus tube and torus room. The torus room is the basement area that has pipe interfaces and other openings into other buildings and the ground. It is not part of the containment systems of the building.

Saying all the fuel is melted is a gross understatement of what was actually found.

If you look at all the reactor research and corium (melted fuel) research, what has happened is almost textbook. The fuel all melted due to lack of cooling, left the reactor vessel and likely all or part left the containment structure.

They will be doing the muon scan at unit 2 next. It could be in worse shape that unit 1.

The Fukushima disaster will eventually bankrupt Japan. No sane person would restart a nuclear plant under the natural hazard conditions in Japan.

It depends on how they do this. JAEA has done a bunch of destructive testing at their research reactor using a process similar to the one described in some of the news reports. If they are just doing a similar experiment using the equipment they have used in the past it is actually rather low risk. The ones they have done before takes a small 110mm model single fuel rod in a container and gives it a huge pulse of radiation that spikes the temperature. They have done this before. JAEA seems to have done a poor job explaining what they are doing to the press. If they actually have something totally different in mind they need to clearly describe what they are doing. The info given to the press sounds really disturbing the way it was worded.

Barrett is yet another opportunistic "consultant" hired by TEPCO who is cheerleading the past and current reckless behavior that has earned TEPCO an international hated reputation. Barrett has no solutions or ideas and just pushes that same BS that the public must "accept" their fate so TEPCO can keep on being an international menace and not bother investors with any pesky losses. So far Barrett's solutions are to get some welded tanks and dump everything in the sea. Ultimately taxpayers in Japan are paying for this guy's "expertise". This guy is not some high ranking technical expert, he's a consultant that has been feeding off the US dept of energy consultant trough. Now he is doing the same in Japan. Put him in the same category as the utterly useless Barbara "Mrs. Burns" Judge who did the same thing. Showed up and went to work trying to BS people rather than actually providing solutions. Disband TEPCO, let the banks take their lumps for investing in them. Turn the disaster site over to the NRA and keep all the reactors turned off. Time for Japan's govt. to grow up and start acting like adults.

So who buys all this real estate? The government in order to put on the games? If the government is buying it then it is the taxpayers who are actually buying it. So the real estate gamblers want the taxpayers to buy their properties during a down market. How nice.

This is just a TEPCO PR stunt. They hired Judge last year along with some other western nuke industry people to rehab TEPCO's image.. She is there to BS people, not change anything. She also has zero experience in nuclear engineering or anything really related to nuclear safety. She had a brief stint on one of the UK nuclear agency committees. Her appointment was heavily criticized because she had no experience at all to be on that board.

Previous comments about Judge and her earlier hire by TEPCO was that they thought she could convince women that TEPCO was now OK. That too is an old nuclear industry PR tactic. To try to use women to convince the demographic almost always against nuclear power, women. The US and UK do this heavily in their marketing and PR.

A more accurate statement (or question) would be at what point does iodine 131 exposure (and other similar isotopes) begin to cause cancers? Do they really know for sure? The 1990's research on Chernobyl really didn't know even some basic answers and I doubt they got all the answers out of Chernobyl in the last 10 or so years. Throwing a gallon of water at someone gets them wet. Throwing 10 gallons of water at them gets them wet also but at some point between 1 and 10 you may not really be more "wet". The excessive exposures at Chernobyl at some point may have been over and above what is needed to create thyroid damage. So taking the huge exposures at Chernobyl and trying to go backwards to Fukushima's exposure doses that are in many cases not accurately recorded may not be an accurate measurement.

Can they make Sprint's coverage in the US Midwest not suck? If they can do that and charge somewhere less than the highway robbery Verizon is charging they could potentially make a decent go in the US.

Just because something has a fancy title and make lots of proclamations doesn't mean it is a) accurate or b) worth the paper printed on. UNSCEAR is part of the over all IAEA mess and has a long track record of downplaying nuclear problems.

What you want to ask is what data was used and does it realistically reflect the reality. How did they then use that data to make assumptions.

If the data itself was fairly useless or known to be inaccurate that ruins the whole thing. Using iodine scans done weeks after the disaster as someone's total iodine exposure is bogus. Iodine 131 has a 16 day half life. People who were tested were tested far too late. Unless you adjust and attempt to back track to what their exposure at the time was, using that late in the game reading is misleading.

One I saw mentioned in another article about this report cited workers would not see health impacts from their THYROID exposure to i-131 SOON. Never mind most of the workers didn't get the bulk of their exposures by inhaling iodine 131. Even thyroid exposure has some latency so they focus on one thing that turns out the way they want it and ignore the real problem like the number of workers with well over 100 mSv exposures from their work. Saying they will all have no problems at all would be foolish, inaccurate and that is why UNSCEAR avoids saying anything about it and focuses on something that was mostly irrelevant.

This is all a PR game for the nuke industry who wants everyone to forget what happened. They have a rug to sweep this all under and you pesky people are getting in the way of their nuke Renaissance

Do these politicians have any idea how all of this reflects on Japan elsewhere? Hashimoto's week long misogynistic tirades & denying war crimes? Abe outright advocating taking away individual rights considered normal in most of the world. Undo-ing the constitution looks more like chomping at the bit to go to war than trying to modernize the WWII laws. I thought his desire to restart reactors was bad. WTF....

Dropping the bomb was about dick waving at the USSR, not about ending the war with Japan. This needs to be seen for what it really was. Even back in the 1980's they were still using the "to end the war" excuse in history class. The US tried very hard to prevent images of what was done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki from making it into the media. People SHOULD be appalled.

Greg Mitchell has a great series on the issue of dropping the bombs and the play by play of events that prove this wasn't about ending the war. Why the airshow thought this was ok in the first place is stupid on their part.

"Reliable experts have said that there is no radiation problem that the level of radiation present is less that what is normally found in most parts of the USA."

Maybe the parts of the USA at the Hanford nuclear site or the Nevada test site? No, the levels in the evac zone are far higher than places in the US. Your "experts" are not reliable...

A couple of things that matter greatly not mentioned enough in the media. TEPCO and GoJ lied to the US about radiation levels. The US wasn't actively monitoring things until around the 16th. Then the govt agencies went into panic mode. There is proof of this in the NRC FOIA documents.

After the 16th when the Reagan realized levels were way higher than TEPCO or GoJ was telling US officials the US had DOE monitoring on the ground and took more action. I fully expect to eventually see action against the US military for what went on. There was clearly not enough precaution taken on the ship and none of the enlisted got iodine.

It isn't just the air doses. Some had more concentrated exposures due to handling filters, contaminated gear etc. If you can find the actual video of the press conference it makes all of this make more sense.

I would not put much stock in the WHO being impartial or honest either. They are beholden to the IAEA by UN mandate. So the guys who promote nuclear power on an international level have the ability to edit what WHO says and does.

I actually read the report. They didn't include readings from inside the 20km zone. They eliminated them from the calculations. This is directly out of the report on exposures used to create the cancer prediction models: "Doses within a 20-km radius around Fukushima Daiichi NPP were not assessed in the WHO preliminary dose estimation and therefore this geographical area is not included in this HRA. "

The WHO exposure doses are totally generic. They used environmental readings and general food testing data from the government to create these generic exposures. The WHO work does not reflect what happened to real people.

So one person might get a slight over estimation, then the one who actually did end up exposed gets an unrealistically low estimation. the fact that the 20km zone is removed from all of this makes it worthless.

US grocery prices have gone up to about double what they were around 2006. We also have more and more problems with contaminated foods (e coli, lysteria, salmonella) and the general quality of many products has gone down to increase profits. About 70% or more of the food in the typical grocery store is produced by a handful of big agriculture/food conglomerates that own most of the major food brands. Be careful what you ask for. That corporate food supply will only be cheap until they are entrenched and then it will become expensive again.

Basroil wrote this: "2) They only included nodules over 5mm in the initial report back in 2001, all others were disregarded. The Fukushima data shows just 0.5% of cases with nodules over 5mm, not the ridiculous 30% everyone complains about. That's a whole 60x smaller result."

You fail at reading both the actual testing results and every media outlet that has reported on it. The thyroid nodule rates are up into the 40% range.. unless you area accusing all of the newspapers in Japan to be spreading rumors...

It has only been two years. Cancers have a varied latency period. There are a number of locals that were exposed that have cited various medical problems they cite as being from radiation exposure. There is no formal study underway to document or verify these. That doesn't mean they are not happening. The health survey has botched a number of the methodologies used in the estimates for exposure. So now various experts have complained that the health survey declaration of "no harm" may be wildly inaccurate. Meanwhile the GoJ and WHO have declared the entire thing a non issue. The reality is the only official surveys are an unreliable mess and it is pretty sure based on what various experts have put forth as actual evidence that exposures differ from the govt. numbers. Exposures seem to vary widely in who got how much of what based on many factors. Of course the powers that be want to make all of this a non-issue so they can restart reactors and get back to business as usual. Leading up to the 2nd anniversary this has kicked into high gear with various shills in the US and Japan suddenly declaring everything is peachy.

5 people were also shot at gun shows in the US today. These people don't represent the wider array of views on the issue that constitutes the majority of people in the US. Reporting like this just encourages the view outside the US that the entire place is full of dumb rednecks.

Ah the new push to end "harmful rumor". Expect more of these types of news stories blaming the whole thing on those pesky consumers and their "fears".

The government failed and has done nothing to regain public trust when it comes to food. The only thing that will regain consumer trust is a detailed system that can not be gamed to prove the food you hold in your hands isn't contaminated.

BTW the US govt. isn't any better on this issue. The intervention limit is 1200 bq/kg. The FDA pulled some pre-disaster products off store shelves in the US, tested it and declared there to be no problem. Their follow up testing involved foods highly unlikely to be contaminated and they refused to document the location in Japan the item came from. Sure something from Okinawa isn't going to show contaminated and it is "Japan" so they call it good.

Rokkasho is likely over an active fault. Nothing like a plutonium extraction facility going all "Daiichi". This obviously impacts Japan. The rest of the world is not amused with the massive pollution in the Pacific or the fallout that wafted over the US and Canada from Fukushima. The US govt has its heads up their backsides about as bad as the LDP do. Both are tone deaf unless you happen to have a billion dollar company and buckets of cash.

It will be interesting to see what stunts the LDP tries over the next year to dismantle the progress made. I hope when Abe visits those living in temporary housing there are some independent media documenting it. I can't even imagine being in that situation other than I doubt I could be civil to the guy wanting to restart reactors after what happened.

The US is not some monolithic culture and a small subculture of gun obsessed rednecks do not represent the entire country. Most people are just sick of the constant public massacres. Even people I know that are pretty big gun enthusiasts admit we need some better regulation. Even the NRA has admitted there will probably be more regulation.

The gun obsession in the last decade along with all the trumped up rumors that "Obama is going to take all the guns" was fomented by the NRA. The bulk of the NRA's funding does not come from individuals. It comes from gun manufacturers. The NRA turns around and gives political groups like ALEC huge amounts of money and sit on their board that writes gun law proposals their affiliated politicians then try to pass in different states. This is how we ended up with crazy law like "stand your ground" and others that loosened gun ownership and lowered the bar for things like conceal-carry in public. So much of the current gun obsessed culture has been directly funded by the gun companies. People run out and buy more guns after rumors they will all be seized come out and the ability to use them in public is less restricted. Right now any moron can carry a gun in public, they don't have to prove they have any clue about safety or proper use.

The issues in the US also involve the lack of access to mental health care. All heath care has been held hostage by private industry who are making huge profits while fewer and fewer people can access or afford needed health care. When this happens with people with serious mental illness we end up with people shooting up schools and movie theaters. I think there will be change. People in general are fed up and more are starting to realize the involvement of the gun industry in the public discourse and how they have manipulated the public conversation for far too long.

There are thousands of abandoned pets in the evacuation zone in Fukushima. The groups feeding and trying to rescue those animals could really use that 6,000 yen.

Our dog loves whipped cream, a spoonful is one thing, part of a cake, he would be doing the technicolor yawn all over the floor.

There is plenty of this in the US. Corporations treat employees like disposable cups. There is no job security in many places. Longer hours, heavier workloads all with the threat that you could be booted out the door at any moment. This has become the norm for office, retail and manufacturing.

Even those who do find full time permanent work the pay vs. cost of living has been rapidly getting out of balance over the last 10 years. There are plenty of young people who can't afford to have kids between daycare and related costs vs. one person's paycheck. There really isn't any social support system in the US anymore even though politicians like to make it sound like the US is full of moochers.

I know many in the US being mandated by their employers to work 50-80 hours a week for salary (no overtime) meaning your per hour pay is very low. Japan has their own version of this mess but it stems from making capitalism more socially important than everything else.