An earthquake triggered a Tsunami that rocked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s Tohoku coast in March 2011, causing the near destruction of three nuclear power plants. It’s been four years since the Fukushima disaster, and experts have yet to pinpoint the location of the melted fuel from the reactors.

Before officials can tackle the challenge of removing the melted fuel, they first have to find out where the nuclear waste is located. The radiation levels at the wreckage are too high for people to investigate. In an effort to find the missing waste, engineers have developed remote control robots to withstand the radiation levels.

Even remote control robots are insufficient to probe the crippled reactors. A robot probe quit working in three hours after it was sent into Fukushima’s No. 1 plant to collect radiation levels. The mission was intended to last ten hours. The probe was designed to withstand high radiation levels. No one knows exactly why the robot stopped working.

The conditions of each reactor vary. Researchers are designing different types of robots to deal with different conditions. For example, the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID) and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd. are developing a submersible robot to probe the depths of the No. 1 reactor, which has been engulfed by contaminated water.

Tokyo continues to be promoted for 2020 Olympics regardless of sea life contamination

Fukushima is a debacle of massive proportions. Nevertheless, Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Shinzo continues to promote Tokyo as the site for the 2020 summer Olympics. Many have expressed concern about Fukushima, which has contaminated not just the air but the water as well.

In an effort to expose these lies, the journalist Hirose Takashi wrote a letter to young athletes that expressed in simple prose just how bad Fukushima is. As Takashi notes, the nuclear reactor core melted to ground level. The melted fuel is like an acid that burns through and eats everything in its path. It seeps into the ground, turning cool water deep beneath the Earth into the toxic depths of Hell. The groundwater then circulates back into the sea, where it contaminates fish and other sea life. Now, a major source of seafood has become polluted.

Water has been poured into the reactors in an effort to the cool the melted fuel. No one knows how much the melted fuel has cooled. What is known is that the water used to cool the melted fuel is contaminated.

Now, officials face the challenge of storing the water on-site and finding a place for the radioactive waste once it’s recovered. Hopefully, the concept behind nuclear winter theory known as synergism doesn’t apply to Fukushima, which states that when two bad things happen, a third (and unpredictable) bad thing happens that is greater than the sum of the previous events.

Citizens exposed to dangerous levels of radiation

This isn’t the first time the Japanese government has deceived its people about the severity of Fukushima. In April 2014, the government hid a study for six months that estimated radiation levels surrounding the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The survey investigated private residences, schools, farmland and other living spaces. Radiation doses exceeded the long-term goal of 1 millisievert per year at 24 of 43 sites. These findings were released just two weeks after the government lifted evacuation order No. 1 last April. Many residents are now concerned that they may have been exposed to toxic levels of radiation.

There is currently no road map for how to store the nuclear waste emitting from the plant. The government and TEPCO have a deadline to compile a plan by March 2018. Finding a place to store nuclear waste without posing health concerns to the public is very difficult. People are growing dubious of claims that the plant can be cleaned up in 30 to 40 years. This doesn’t include the hundreds of millions of dollars already spent on cleaning the site and thousands of deaths from the plant’s destruction.

Sources include:

http://the-japan-news.com

https://translate.google.com

http://www.scmp.com

http://ajw.asahi.com

http://www.theguardian.com

http://www.news.com.au