Fukushima: The Curse of Groundwater

Bids for octopus!

The local fishing industry was dealt a devastating blow by the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

Over the ensuing 11 years, it has managed a steady recovery.

Testing to monitor the safety of each species of fish and shellfish has continued, and now most species have been cleared for shipping.

We're about halfway to where
we were before the quake.

It really feels like we're making
great strides back to normal.

However, the fishermen remain concerned about the future.

The power plant is a problem.

They've decided to
discharge water into the sea.

Water from the decommissioning of the Fukushima reactors includes tritium and other substances.

It has accumulated over these 11 years, until 1.3 million tons of water fill 1000 tanks.

Within the next two years, we plan to begin discharging
water into the sea.

In April 2021, the government announced it was not possible to continue accumulating treated water at the plant and that it would be discharged into the sea.

The government promised to assure the safety of the discharged water by diluting concentrations of tritium and other radioactive substances to levels well below regulatory standards.

However, distrust continues to be deep seated among those in the local fishing industry.

Takano Takeshi is a fisherman from the port of Ukedo in Fukushima Prefecture.

Government and power company officials promised they would not dispose of treated water without the understanding of those involved.

We expressed our concerns, but I can't say that they ever really listened to us.

Frankly, they've given us no reason to trust them.

What are the reasons that this problem has remained unresolved for such a long time?

We obtained several hundred documents that the government and power company produced concerning these issues.

These documents reveal that, soon after the nuclear accident, plans were developed to build a groundwater barrier intended to prevent the buildup of contaminated water.

They also reveal how closed-door deliberations led to the abandonment of these plans.

Company management and the government clashed on this issue.

It's fair to say there was a battle over it.

I'm disappointed in the people not taking our advice.

I'm also disappointed in myself that I couldn't get them to agree with us.

No one has accepted responsibility.

No one.

We'll examine how the plan to build a water barrier dissolved into thin air during the first three months after the nuclear accident.

The Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is located in the town of Okuma in Fukushima Prefecture.

Shozugawa Katsumi of the University of Tokyo has been surveying contamination around the damaged reactors for eight years.

He has been particularly concerned about the presence of groundwater.

There are tanks just above here.

Since before the nuclear accident, this area was known for the abundant flow of groundwater.

In surveys to date, trace amounts of radioactive substances have been continuously detected in water samples from three locations outside the southern border to the plant.

The concentration is about 20 becquerels per kilogram, so that's within the legal limit.

But it's clearly higher than natural levels, so we can say the source is the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

We hypothesize that the groundwater is a complex mixture of water from multiple veins.

Because of this complexity, we need more rigorous sampling around the plant, to determine the current condition of the groundwater with greater precision.

The heavy flow of groundwater in the area around the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has presented a major hurdle to the dismantling of the damaged reactors.

At the power plant, the nuclear fuel that melted during the accident is continuously cooled with water.

Water that has been in contact with the nuclear fuel is contaminated with large amounts of radioactive substances.

This contaminated water is strongly influenced by the flow of groundwater.

Breaches in the reactor walls allow groundwater to flow in, which increases the amount of contaminated water.

Over the past 11 years, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has used sea-side barriers to contain this water, as well as bypass and subdrain systems to pump out the groundwater.

The most important countermeasure is a frozen-soil wall to curb the inflow of groundwater that was largely completed in 2017.

As a result, the amount of contaminated water generated has been reduced from an average of 540 tons to 150 tons daily.

The contaminated water that is produced is filtered to remove most of the radioactive material, and then stored in tanks as treated water.

However, until the flow of groundwater is stopped entirely, the amount of treated water will continue to increase.

One Japanese specialist was among the first to warn of the dangers of groundwater in Fukushima.

Good morning.
Nice to see you.

Eguchi Takumi lives in Tokyo.

He is an engineer who has been involved in underground construction in various parts of the world for more than 50 years.

Immediately after the accident in Fukushima, he was repeatedly asked for advice by government leaders and TEPCO officials.

They were all aware that I had been an advisor after the Chornobyl accident.

Having been involved with underground construction projects in the former Soviet Union, Eguchi was asked by the government for advice after the Chornobyl accident.

Officials who knew of this involvement sought his advice as the Fukushima accident turned increasingly grave.

Eguchi was first called in by government officials five days after the tsunami.

I got a call from a vice-minister at the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure, asking me to come in as soon as possible.

They wanted to bring the accident under control quickly, and asked for my advice.

Eguchi's first response was to stress the importance of the groundwater.

With the Chornobyl accident, that was the most serious problem.

The groundwater.

If contaminated water spread to the river, it would be carried quickly to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

That would be catastrophic.

More people lived close to Fukushima Dai-ichi than Chornobyl, and the sea was close.

Just about 200 meters away.

So it would be a major problem if contamination spread into the sea.

So my main concern was the need to shut out the flow of groundwater.

Eguchi argued that the base of the power plant should be hardened with cement to stop the flow of groundwater.

However, the response of the government officials was unenthusiastic.

They didn't say, "That probably can't be done," but no one said, "That's a good idea," either.

There was no response.

One week after Eguchi offered his advice, the problem of contaminated water came to the fore.

Medical team reporting. A subcontractor
came back the crisis center, after touching a puddle of water.

The water radiation level was
400 millisieverts per hour.

I have the sense that this will
pose a big problem.

A worker involved in the reactor recovery effort had been accidentally exposed.

He had come into contact with contaminated water in the basement of a reactor building.

Until this accident happened, the problem of contaminated water had hardly been discussed at all between government and TEPCO officials.

Those officials had set up a joint headquarters to manage the response to the nuclear accident.

Coordinating these efforts was Hosono Gōshi.

We were not expecting to hear that people were exposed to radiation from the water.

I remember being very surprised.

At that time, the hydrogen explosions had created a crisis, and the priority was to cool the nuclear fuel.

The only option was to use water.

You're cooling radioactive substances with water, so it would seem obvious.

But at the time, we were occupied with a greater concern.

Kaieda Banri was then minister of economy, with jurisdiction over electric power companies, including TEPCO.

Here's another serious problem, I thought.

We had been concerned about preventing leakage.

But this development showed how the water we were pumping in was spreading over a considerable area.

We knew we had to pay attention to this.

Two days after the accidental exposure, a meeting took place behind closed doors in Tokyo.

The venue was a TEPCO-affiliated office.

Eguchi and other private sector experts on groundwater were assembled.

At that meeting, TEPCO revealed something, something important they had never mentioned up until that point.

That 1,000 tons of water flows through there daily.

Groundwater.

At the plant?

From the time of construction.

TEPCO explained that it had struggled with groundwater from the beginning of construction of the Dai-ichi power plant.

The power plant was built by carving out the hillside of a plateau facing the ocean.

The sandy soil, highly permeable to groundwater, stretched from the carved-out hillside to the area of the power plant's buildings.

It's sandy, so water just courses through.

This is trouble, I thought.

I was shocked, to be frank.

You have to wonder why they would build a nuclear power plant in a place like that.

I've said all along that
the water is our biggest problem.

A week has passed and
we've made no real progress.

We've reached our limit.

We've got to do something.

Just standing by feels like
we're simply waiting to die.

TEPCO quickly developed a plan to transfer the contaminated water.

To prevent leakage, the highly contaminated water in the buildings would be pumped out and transferred to another building.

However, that building already contained less contaminated water that had collected due to the tsunami flooding.

TEPCO requested that the government permit the discharge of this less contaminated water into the sea.

I think it was March 31, we heard from TEPCO that they planned to discharge water into the sea the following day.

To the government, intentionally discharging water was different from water that leaked due to the accident.

For the government to give the go-ahead to release this water was a higher order of responsibility.

Because we had a process of deliberation, we couldn't approve this quickly, so I told them, "No way."

However, the day after the discharge was delayed...

Attention, please.
This is the Dai-ichi plant.

We have an urgent matter
to report.

We've confirmed the worst case,
that highly radioactive water, over 1000 mSv/h,
is flowing into the sea.

This was the first confirmation that highly contaminated water was flowing from the buildings into the sea.

It was leaking from a facility in Unit 2 that was called "the pit."

I've never forgotten that image.

It's etched in my mind.

I realized that if we just stood by and rejected TEPCO's plan, there'd be no resolution and the problem would get worse.

We asked our experts and they reasoned that it was best to accept the discharge of the less contaminated water, and to replace it with the highly contaminated water.

Preparations to do so began right away.

At 7:00 PM on April 4, the discharge of the low-level contaminated water into the sea began.

Government and TEPCO officials explained that it was an unavoidable emergency measure.

It was hard to give an adequate explanation that resolved people's concerns.

Those of us who were managing the crisis on the ground didn't have the time, or the physical or spiritual margin to do so.

It really felt at the time, something like, "Won't you stop tormenting us?"

You could almost hear people scream.

But we had to come to terms with the situation.

In my position as the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, it was my responsibility to make that judgment.

One Japanese official was assigned a central role in developing countermeasures for the deepening groundwater crisis.

Mabuchi Sumio was a special advisor to Prime Minister Kan.

He led a joint government and TEPCO team charged with mid- to long-term planning.

In early April, the team began considering groundwater countermeasures.

From an early stage, they considered a plan to build an underground barrier that TEPCO refers to as an "impermeable wall" to prevent the inflow of groundwater into the reactors.

At the site of the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, they had carved out the hillside, removed the soil, and erected buildings.

Anyone with a background in engineering, like I had, would assume there was a large flow of groundwater into and out of the site.

If there are radioactive materials there, of course the water would wash through and be contaminated.

But just as the central government began serious consideration of countermeasures...

Sand lance from offshore Iwaki were found with 570 becquerel/kg,
exceeding the legal limit.

This announcement shocked the local fishing industry and caused great uncertainty.

– Isn’t that Ukedo?
– It is Ukedo.

The fishing port closest to the Dai-ichi power plant is Ukedo, in the town of Namie.

It was hit directly by the tsunami, and 154 local residents lost their lives.

In addition, as the nuclear accident intensified, it was declared an evacuation zone, while entry to the area was strictly controlled after the accident.

Around this time, the Ukedo-based fisherman Takano Takeshi had begun living as an evacuee in Akita Prefecture, more than 200 kilometers away.

He says that government and TEPCO officials did not provide convincing explanations of the spreading contamination of the sea.

We had no knowledge of what the radioactive substances were.

We only knew that more and more were flowing into the sea.

We wondered if we'd ever be able to fish again.

American officials soon became alarmed about the conditions in Fukushima.

The US dispatched a large contingent of nuclear specialists to Japan to assist in the effort to contain the accident.

Steven Reynolds served as the vice-chief of the team sent by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Americans quickly suspected that groundwater was contributing to the problem of contaminated water.

This is a summary by the Japanese side of discussions with the American experts.

It notes their concern over the increasing flow of groundwater into the nuclear reactors.

The underground water...

We were always concerned about that.

Once you get the water cooled and you start cooling the reactor, your next concern is, well, where is all the water coming from and where is it going?

Radioactive waste had contaminated groundwater at a nuclear facility in the state of Washington, and the Americans argued that coping with the groundwater should be a priority.

There were some lessons we were
able to gain from Hanford.

It was... they store a lot of nuclear weapons’ waste.

And back in the 50’s and 60’s they buried the waste in 55-gallon steel drums and buried them in the ground.

And over time, the steel drums would corrode and leak.

So, they would leak out and contaminate the groundwater.

And the groundwater... it doesn’t stay still, groundwater.

It moves somewhere.

You want to minimize the groundwater being contaminated because it moves.

In Fukushima, it moves to the ocean.

In Hanford, it would move to the river.

But either way you end up contaminating your water supply and you don't want that to happen.

Around this time, special advisor Mabuchi had directed TEPCO to survey the soil and the flow of groundwater around the plant.

Seeing the results of the survey convinced him of the need for a groundwater barrier.

The survey showed that the flow of water from the hillside converged near the reactor buildings, and it would reach the sea in a minimum of about six months.

We'd have to move quickly.

The survey showed, clearly, that the flow of groundwater concentrated the water right under the four reactor buildings.

Seeing this confirmed the accuracy of our assumptions.

If explosions damaged those buildings, then of course the groundwater would flow through and carry contamination into the sea.

It had to be stopped.

On May 4, TEPCO President Shimizu Masataka and other executives visited evacuees from the town of Namie to deliver an apology.

We would like to apologize
from the depths of our hearts.

We are truly sorry.

You promised that an accident
could never happen.

You lied to us.

We want to know when
we can return, or if we can't.

We can't give up.

After evacuating to northern Japan from the port of Ukedo, the fisherman Takano Takeshi was unable to make plans for his future.

I had lived with the sea since I was a boy, so having that life completely overturned like that kind of sent me into a panic.

I was born and raised there, put down roots and had a life.

To have those roots pulled from the ground drained me of all my motivation.

One month had passed since serious consideration of the groundwater barrier began.

However, the decision to carry out a plan was still pending.

Special advisor Mabuchi arranged to meet with Economy Minister Kaieda, who had jurisdiction over TEPCO.

He requested the company be directed to quickly implement measures to contain the groundwater.

Their response had stalled.

It had already been a month without movement.

Contamination would reach the seawall in six months, so there was little time.

They had to get started.

TEPCO said, first of all, they hadn't yet settled on the engineering method for blocking the groundwater.

This was new territory for all of us, so I understood that they were facing a difficult problem.

But that being said, efforts had to be made.

Otherwise more and more contaminated water would just accumulate.

Around this time, TEPCO's first step to address the contaminated water was to introduce a water purification apparatus.

The tainted water would be purified and recirculated as cooling water.

Exterior-sourced water would not be required, thus reducing the amount of contaminated water.

However, the flow of groundwater would not be stopped.

What was the plan to deal with the increasing amount of contaminated water?

A former TEPCO executive agreed to talk about internal deliberations, on the condition that his identity would be withheld.

There was general agreement that highly contaminated water would not be released into the environment.

Meanwhile, we thought we should be permitted to discharge less contaminated water into the sea if it was diluted to concentrations below the legal limit.

In fact, by world standards, low-level contaminated water was regularly discharged, so we assumed it would be possible.

Nei Hisanori was then a top official in the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which oversaw the nuclear energy industry.

He engaged in deliberations with TEPCO about the groundwater barrier.

No one anticipated an accident like this.

We had discussions with TEPCO about how difficult it was to decide on the best approach.

Nei says the safety agency approved TEPCO's approach.

If the purification apparatus functioned, water diluted to legal levels could then be discharged into the sea.

If it was within legal limits, discharging water into the sea was considered a matter of course from an early stage.

As regulators, all we could say was, "Keep the water below those levels, monitor it."

That's all.

Beyond that, at the time of the discharge, it would of course be the job of the operator to coordinate with those involved.

We concluded it was not our role to prescribe that process.

For their part, the American team did not think the introduction of the purification system alone would solve the problem.

The NRC wondered how effective
the water purification system would be.

How well will it filter out the water?

But then you have more and more... up to 400 tons of water a day.

You gotta pump constantly, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, forever.

And how robust is that system?

Will it work?

What happens if it breaks?

What happens if it leaks?

Our thought was to prevent water from becoming contaminated.

To do that, you put a wall on the hill side and you put extraction wells on either side of the wall to pump the water away.

So, you have this groundwater that's not yet contaminated from becoming contaminated.

The NRC was saying the same thing.

The inflow had to be stopped.

The hill side had to be addressed.

We could foresee what would happen, at that stage.

We warned that contaminated water would continue to accumulate, if it wasn't stopped.

However, another hurdle faced the implementation of that plan.

The consolidated loss
was about $15 billion.

That's the biggest loss on record.

TEPCO's business environment had taken a severe hit after the nuclear accident.

Now it faced the heavy burden of recovery, detailed in this roadmap that was released in mid-May.

Top executives at TEPCO displayed a reluctance to commit to building the impermeable wall as part of the plan.

On top of the engineering problem, the survival of the company was at stake.

Making a commitment, at this stage, to building the groundwater barrier meant- they were estimating it would cost something on the order of a billion dollars.

Where was a billion dollars going to come from?

They were saying a plan like that would bring the company extremely close to bankruptcy.

So their bottom line was...

don't make us do that.

Once it was determined what construction costs TEPCO would have to bear, those costs would be treated as a liability, for accounting purposes.

If liabilities ballooned in this fashion, they could overwhelm assets, making TEPCO effectively insolvent and driving the company into bankruptcy.

At the same time, the government hoped to avoid a TEPCO bankruptcy, because it didn't have the technical knowhow or the personnel to decommission the plant.

There was a strong sentiment within our party to dissolve TEPCO and have the government take over the recovery effort.

Among other parties too.

There was public support for this too.

It was seen as a way of punishing TEPCO, which is understandable.

But those doing the decommissioning would still be the same people who were familiar with the plant.

But how to manage the cost?

The only thing that was agreed upon was that the operators who caused the accident would bear the cost.

If, at that stage, the government had borne the cost, the barrier might well have been built.

But with TEPCO paying, they had to make their decisions after considering the costs and benefits.

As long as the flow of groundwater could be reduced by using other methods, like pumping it out through subdrain wells, the barrier wall was treated as something that was desirable but not essential.

Special advisor Mabuchi, who was charged with the contaminated water problem, was not made aware in detail of the TEPCO management's concerns.

All along, I had misgivings about how the management was dragging their heels.

There are only two reasons for top management to hesitate in making decisions.

One is fear of losing executive authority.

The other is fear of damaging business stability, that cash expenditures will increase.

Those are the two reasons.

TEPCO was planning to continue operating as a business.

Given that, it was the financial side.

That's what they were concerned about.

But to me, it was unacceptable for them to say they did not have the money to act.

Mabuchi asked government bureaucrats to examine the question of whether the central government could bear the costs.

But they responded that they could find no logic that supported the government providing funding.

Normally, if a private business causes an accident and then says, "We don't have the money to deal with this, please pay for it," you'd say, "Get outta here."

It's the operator's responsibility.

That was the only conclusion they could reach.

Beyond that, it's political... a subject for political negotiation.

However, the political situation took an unexpected turn.

Opposition parties called for a vote of no-confidence in the Kan Naoto cabinet, in protest over its response to the accident and other issues, and the Diet was thrown into chaos.

Prime Minister Kan announced his intention to resign, but not until later in the year.

After we have achieved
a certain level of resolution, it will be my intention

to ask the younger generation
to take on the responsibility.

The political environment turned quite fluid.

This made the implementation of the groundwater barrier plan all the more difficult.

People ran for cover, things emptied out and movement froze.

This meant he was now a lame duck.

All of the stakeholders involved, from TEPCO to METI and the Finance Ministry, everyone pulled back.

Of course, no one is going to take directions from someone who plans to resign.

As the administration lost its cohesive force, Mabuchi and his team tried to accelerate the groundwater barrier scheme.

They set a deadline, pressing TEPCO to firm up a plan and announce it publicly.

One week after delivering these instructions, Special Advisor Mabuchi made a visit to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

In preparation for announcing the plan to the media, the basic scheme for the groundwater barrier had taken shape.

It would be placed around the perimeter of the reactor units 1 through 4.

A wall built of concrete and clay would be constructed to a depth of 30 meters to block the flow of groundwater.

The one final task that remained was to survey the site and to confirm the locations for building the barrier.

Mabuchi and others drove in a van around the buildings to confirm the construction site.

We couldn't let things drag out.

We had to take the first step.

It was important to have them launch the project.

We decided on the boundaries, here and there and there.

It was definitely feasible.

I concluded that we could get heavy equipment in there.

We can start construction right away.

We're going to do it.

Then, the day before the plan was scheduled to be announced to the media...

Do you remember seeing this?

Yes.

I remember this.

This was in the final stage, with the announcement scheduled for the next day.

These opinions emerged during a meeting to finalize plans for the announcement.

Among the documents we obtained was this memo summarizing talks between TEPCO executives and ministry officials.

Top management is gradually beginning to turn its attention to mid-term and long-term matters.

If a public announcement is made, the underground wall could spur a major discussion of mid- to long-term cost recognition and accounting issues,

and management has suddenly been seized by uncertainty.

There are political risks to providing government funds to TEPCO.

It is necessary to proceed with caution.

This was the first time Mabuchi had heard the true feelings of the TEPCO management team so explicitly.

It was just as I had imagined.

I had supposed they would have second thoughts, when they faced the heavy financial burden, and those very thoughts had now appeared on paper.

There was also a TEPCO memo that proposed that the media announcement avoid an explicit commitment to implement the barrier construction plan.

When Mabuchi heard this news, he immediately met with Kaieda Banri, the minister who had jurisdiction over TEPCO.

I rushed over to Minister Kaieda's office.

I said, this is big trouble.

If we let this opportunity pass...

everything will come to a halt.

However, Minister Kaieda worried...

that there could be market chaos.

He thought we had to avoid moves that might cause upheaval in the market.

Including a crash in stock prices.

Do you remember being asked
to cancel the media announcement?

No, I don't.

That TEPCO would be driven to the brink of bankruptcy, or more explicitly...

That the company will fail.

I clearly remember hearing that.

When I asked the minister to make them commit to proceed without delay, he said he would.

He said he would, but it just wouldn't be announced.

We asked TEPCO to comment on the developments around the media announcement.

This was their response.

If this was announced as planned, there was danger of a misunderstanding, that this was a liability that required recognition and the implication that this would result in insolvency.

So company management met with the government to request that the announcement suggest that "the feasibility of carrying out the plan was being studied."

As a result, the announcement was deferred.

We hope you will understand that we were not in a position to decide on actions at our own discretion, since everything was discussed with the joint headquarters.

Well, we...lost.

Of course, that was frustrating.

But more than frustration, I feel apologetic.

Frankly.

Mostly I feel sorry that I didn't have the strength to see it through.

Soon after these events unfolded, Mabuchi resigned from his position as special advisor.

Four months later, the plan to build the impermeable wall on all four sides of the reactor buildings was shelved.

A barrier using the frozen-soil method to block the flow of groundwater was largely completed, with partial government funding, in 2017, six years after the nuclear accident.

With the NRC philosophy or mission statement of "protecting public health and safety," we know that time is of the essence.

You know, the sooner you work on an issue, to solve an issue, you know, the better off it is.

In Japan, the mindset or the "safety myth" was that an accident can't happen.

That's why they didn't believe in severe accidents.

They didn't plan for it.

An accident couldn’t happen.

The plants were so safe, an accident will not happen.

People often say that, under critical conditions like this, it is important...

for everyone to work together, with a united sense of purpose.

With the nuclear accident, in the various efforts to bring the accident under control, I think we found that...that wasn't necessarily always the case.

In the end, operators really should be concerned not only about their own company, they should think about the country as a whole.

That's important.

I have no intention of making the excuse that "We did what we could, too bad."

I share the blame.

Myself included, those in charge of the government bear responsibility.

We are responsible for how things turned out.

Without deep introspection, we have no right to comment further.

We are responsible.