JAISAL NOOR: Welcome to The Real News Network.
I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.
In Japan, the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
reactors are continuing to emit record levels
of dangerous radiation.
Now the Japanese government has stepped in
and pledged nearly $500 million to help stop
the leaks.
Now joining us to stop this discuss this ongoing
environmental crisis is Arjun Makhijani.
He's an engineer who specializes in nuclear
fusion and the president of the Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research.
He's authored numerous reports in books on
energy and environmental-related issues.
Thank you so much for joining us.
ARJUN MAKHIJANI: Sure.
You're welcome.
NOOR: So can you give us your reaction to
these latest developments in Japan over this
growing crisis, this continuing leaks of record
levels of radiation?
MAKHIJANI: Well, this is a crisis that has
been evolving for more than two years now,
and the latest revelations are just one more
thing, but one more very serious thing.
What has been happening is the fuel in the
reactors melted and melted right through the
reactors in three reactors.
And that fuel still has to be cooled, even
though it's molten.
And so they have to add cooling water.
But now the buildings are damaged and the
groundwater is coming up and contacting the
molten fuel in the buildings or in the basements
of the buildings.
And they're collecting this groundwater and
storing it in hastily build tanks.
There are 1,000 of them, and some of them
have begun to leak.
And the radioactive water in these tanks is
very, very radioactive.
So near one of the tanks, the radioactivity
is so high that you could get a lethal dose
of radiation in a few hours.
In other places it's much less, but it still--you
could get an annual dose as a worker in 10,
12, 15, 20 minutes.
So the working conditions on the site are
very difficult.
The site is contaminated.
And 300 tons (that's about 80,000 gallons)
a day of contaminated water are going from
the site and pouring into the ocean underground.
NOOR: And so this has been happening for more
than two years now.
Now the government has a new plan to build
what's been described by some as an unprecedented
ice wall to help contain this leak.
What are your thoughts about whether this
can effectively contain this?
MAKHIJANI: Well, I think it can at best be
a palliative.
Ice walls are not a new thing.
They are known.
But they're usually a temporary construction
expedient.
This would not be a temporary construction
expedient, because they're planning to remediate
this site over a period of decades, not years.
Moreover, the size of this project is huge,
unprecedented.
To build it on a highly radioactively contaminated
site would be very difficult, 'cause they
have to dig up a lot of dirt, and that dirt
is contaminated.
Now you're putting--like there are coils in
your freezer, you're putting coils like that
in the soil to freeze the soil.
If there is an earthquake, of course those
coils could break, and then you have an ice
wall that is no longer an ice wall.
The ice will melt, and you have contaminated
water that had been holding up, building up
over a long period of time, and that would
pour into the ocean.
So I don't know that this thing--this is definitely
not going to solve the problem.
It's going to be difficult to build it.
It will take time.
And in the meantime, this contaminated water
is simply building up, and they're going on
building new tanks, even though they have
more than 1,000 tanks already.
NOOR: And so there are some reports that by
2014 or maybe sooner this radiation will be
hitting the United States and other parts
of the world.
Talk about the growing international concern
about this crisis.
MAKHIJANI: Well, the initial release of radioactivity
from Fukushima was very large.
There was a release to the air because of
the meltdowns and the explosions, hydrogen
explosions.
And then there were also releases to the ocean.
There was fallout from the atmosphere into
the ocean of quite a large amount of radioactivity.
The French Radioprotection Institute called
it the largest incident of radioactive pollution
of the oceans in history.
So of course the fish in the ocean are contaminated,
and the ocean currents do disperse the radioactivity.
It takes about three years, I think, for contaminated
water discharged near Fukushima to reach the
west coast of the United States.
Of course, the fish migrate a lot faster than
that.
NOOR: Is this a source of concern, growing
concern in the U.S.?
And can you also talk about the international
response?
What lessons have been taken from this disaster?
And how do you evaluate whether countries
and corporations have done enough to really
address the seriousness of this problem?
MAKHIJANI: Yeah.
Well, there are not alarming levels of radiation
in the United States.
I mean, the main problem is in Japan.
But people are very concerned, and I think
rightly so.
And what I have said is the Food and Drug
Administration should be regularly monitoring
the seafood and publishing the results very
publicly and doing a thorough job of it, and
the Environmental Protection Agency should
be monitoring the seawater and rainwater and
so on--rainwater now not so important, but
certainly sea water monitoring is important.
And they should make these results public.
As for the second part of your question, different
countries have drawn different results.
So Germany already had decided after Chernobyl,
the disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986,
to phase out nuclear power because they could
not contemplate what would happen if they
had a similar accident in Germany.
After Fukushima, they decided to accelerate
their nuclear phaseout.
So they're going to shut down all their nuclear
reactors by 2022, and essentially charting
a path to a nearly completely renewable energy
sector in Germany, or at least electricity
sector.
The French rely 75 percent on nuclear energy.
They did some serious assessments also, and
they realize that if they have an accident,
anything like Fukushima, it would be very,
very difficult for France or a large part
of France to recover from that--hundreds of
billions of dollars of damage, besides, of
course, the question of how you reoccupy contaminated
areas.
In the United States, it hasn't seemed to
have much impact.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did a report
and an assessment, and they are requiring
reactor operators to make some changes to
improve safety and emergency management, but
overall they have gone on licensing reactors
after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
Recently they have stopped licensing, but
not because of Fukushima.
It's because the courts have said, you don't
know what to do with the nuclear waste, and
you've got to figure that out first.
So, until then, they have stopped licensing
decisions.
In other countries, in China they made a pause
and went on.
In India, I don't think they made even a pause.
In Japan, of course, essentially all the nuclear
reactors are set.
The public has largely gone against nuclear
energy, but not yet the politicians, or the
politicians in power, anyway.
NOOR: Thank you so much for joining us.
We'll keep following this story.
MAKHIJANI: Thank you very much.
I'd be happy to come back.
NOOR: And thank you for joining us on The
Real News Network.
