JAISAL NOOR: Welcome to The Real News Network.
I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.
In Japan, the operator of the crippled Fukushima
Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant acknowledged that
highly radioactive rainwater runoff has contaminated
the surrounding areas.
Now joining us to discuss this is Arjun Makhijani,
who is a nuclear engineer with 37 years of
experience in energy and nuclear issues.
He's the president of the Institute for Energy
and Environmental Research.
Thank you so much for joining us.
ARJUN MAKHIJANI: You're welcome.
NOOR: So can we get your reaction to this
latest troubling news from the operator of
the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant,
saying that this highly radioactive rainwater,
which they weren't able to clean up and pump,
has again contaminated the surrounding areas?
MAKHIJANI: Yes.
So Fukushima has had a problem of contaminated
water since the time of the accident in 2011,
and not only the water that's needed to cool
the molten fuel in the reactors, but also
all of the rainwater and storm water and so
on that has been getting into the reactors
and contacting the fuel and so on.
They've got about 1,000 tanks with contaminated
water on site.
Some of these tanks are leaking.
And, of course, the site is contaminated from
fallout and leaking water and so on.
The latest problem that you're asking me about
arose when there was a typhoon last week,
which is a very, very severe storm and dumped
an enormous amount of rain.
And what that has done is in the areas that
are highly contaminated with leaking water
that was contained by berms and barriers,
that containment basically got overtopped,
and now we have quite contaminated water that's
flowing onto other parts of the site and into
the ocean, contaminated water that's flowing
into the ocean every day apart from these
severe weather events.
So this adds to the contamination.
NOOR: Has this raised further questions about
the management of the cleanup and the way
that TEPCO was approaching it?
MAKHIJANI: Well, I think the management of
contaminated water has been deficient from
the beginning.
For some of us it was apparent back then,
in 2011, that it was not such a good idea
to accumulate millions of gallons of contaminated
water on-site.
I had suggested back then that they should
buy a supertanker and put the water in the
supertanker and have it sent elsewhere for
filtration rather than storing so much contaminated
water on-site, risking leaks and worker radiation,
because all of this makes it very difficult
for workers to work.
It's not just a question of abstract, you
know, there's some soil that's contaminated.
Workers actually have a lot of work to do
there.
They're building buildings to replace the
damaged structures from the explosions.
They have to put up new cranes.
They have to put up equipment to be able to
extract the fuel, used fuel that's in the
spent fuel pools.
So there are thousands of people working on
the site, and when you have events like this
it makes it very difficult to manage the accident,
much more difficult than if you did not have
the problem with contaminated water.
NOOR: On the topic of working conditions at
the facility, CNN recently spoke to a worker
who claims that conditions there are very
unsafe for those that are working there.
What's your response?
MAKHIJANI: As I understand, you know, there
are thousands of subcontractors.
There are not as many employees of the company
itself.
As the workers get worn out, tired, reach
the maximum limits of radiation, they have
to be replaced by other workers who are not
as experienced and not as trained.
Morale is a problem.
I understand drinking is also a problem, depression,
and so on.
And you can understand.
When an accident is that severe and conditions
are so problematic, and on top of it the accident
has been mismanaged, the situation of workers
is going to be very difficult.
Many of these workers have also lost their
homes to the accident, you know, because they
are from around the area, many of them, and
they can't go back to their houses, so they
are in temporary housing and so on.
So conditions for workers are extremely difficult,
and many of them don't appear to be even very
well paid, as they should be for the kind
of work they're doing.
NOOR: And finally, there's a typhoon that
may make landfall this this week in Japan.
Does this raise further concerns?
And what does the future look like for the
cleanup of this massive radioactive site?
MAKHIJANI: Well, one just hopes that the structures
will hold up, because the structures that
have been built to protect the reactor and
the spent fuel, especially with reactor number
four, are very critical to prevent the accident
from becoming much worse.
So there is a current severe problem, of course,
with all the contaminated water and leaks
and so on, but there's much more radioactivity
inside the reactors in the spent fuel pools,
and so what happens with all these storms,
severe storms, typhoons and so on, is that--typhoon
is the same thing, essentially, as a hurricane--is
that there is a risk that there will be much,
much more severe spread of contamination.
Thankfully, that does not seem to have happened
so far.
But the longer it goes on, of course, the
greater the risk.
NOOR: Thank you so much for joining us.
MAKHIJANI: Thank you very much for asking.
NOOR: Thank you for joining us on The Real
News Network.
