福島核電廠差錯留下大問號----中壢英文補習班－金學堂英語的部落格

Errors at the Fukushima
Nuclear Plant Leave Big Doubts

【By MARTIN FACKLER／陳世欽譯】

NARAHA, Japan — In this farming town in the evacuation
zone surrounding the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, workers in
surgical masks and rubber gloves are scraping off radioactive topsoil in a
desperate attempt to fulfill the government’s vow to allow most of Japan’s 83,000 evacuees to return. Yet, every
time it rains, more radioactive contamination cascades down the hillsides .

Thousands of
workers and a small fleet of cranes are preparing for one of the latest efforts
to avoid a deepening environmental disaster : removing spent fuel rods from the
damaged Number 4 reactor building and storing them in a safer place.

The government
said September 3 that it would spend $500 million on new steps to stabilize the
plant, including an even bigger project: the construction of a frozen wall to
block a flood of groundwater into the buildings. The government is taking
control of the cleanup from the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power
Company.

The triple
meltdown at Fukushima in 2011 is considered the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
The new efforts were developed in response to accidents, miscalculations and
delays that have plagued the cleanup effort, leading to the release of enormous
quantities of contaminated water.

Analysts are
beginning to question whether the government and the plant’s operator, known as Tepco, have the
expertise to manage such a complex crisis. They say Tepco has resorted to
quick, ineffective fixes.

“Japan is clearly living in denial,” said Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a medical doctor
who led an investigation last year into the causes of the accident. “Water keeps building up inside the plant,
and debris keeps piling up outside of it. ”

Problems seemed to
take a turn for the worse in July with the discovery of leaks of contaminated
water into the Pacific Ocean. Tepco said in August that 270 metric tons of
water laced with radioactive strontium, a particle that can be absorbed into
bones, had drained from a faulty tank into the sea.

Contaminated
water, used to cool fuel in the plant’s three damaged reactors to prevent them
from overheating, will continue to be produced in huge quantities until the
flow of groundwater into the buildings can be stopped . Setbacks in the
enormous effort to clean up the countryside are also undermining confidence in
the government and eroding faith in nuclear power.

The cleanup
efforts to date, critics said, were ill-conceived projects begun as a knee-jerk
reaction by the government’s powerful central ministries to deflect public
criticism and to protect the clubby nuclear power industry from oversight by
outsiders.

The biggest public
criticism has involved the government’s decision to leave the cleanup in the
hands of Tepco. The recent leaking tank was one of hundreds that have been
hastily built to hold the 390,000 metric tons of contaminated water at the
plant, and the amount of that water increases at a rate of 360 metric tons per
day.

Critics say Japan
may be able to come up with better plans if it opens the process to outsiders.

The trade ministry
will now take charge of the plant’s cleanup. This will include the plan to
stop the influx of groundwater into the reactor buildings by sealing them off
behind a subterranean wall of ground frozen by liquid coolant.

Some critics have
dismissed the “ice wall” as a costly technology that would be vulnerable at the blackout-prone
plant because it relies on electricity the way a freezer does.

Nuclear experts
also questioned the government’s longerterm plan to extract the fuel cores from the
reactors, which would eliminate the major source of contamination. Some doubted
whether it was even technically feasible to extricate the fuel because of the
extent of the damage during the explosions and meltdowns.

Scientists have
played down the threat from contaminated water, saying the new leaks are
producing small increases in radioactivity in the Fukushima harbor that remain
far lower than immediately after the March 2011 crisis.

“This continued leakage is not the scale of what we had originally,” said Ken O. Buesseler of the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Perhaps the
principal threat of the radioactive water is to the Japanese government.
Harutoshi Funabashi of Hosei University said, “Admitting that no one can live near the
plant for a generation would open the way for all sorts of probing questions
and doubts. ”

中譯

在日本福島第一核電廠附近撤離區內福島縣雙葉郡以務農為主的楢葉町，戴著外科手術口罩與橡膠手套的工作人員不斷扒除地面的表土，力圖實現日本政府的承諾，讓8.3萬名被迫撤離的民眾大多數能重返家園。然而只要一下雨，就有更多輻射汙染物沿著山坡流下。

數千工人與幾部吊車準備再次努力，以防範一場不斷惡化的環境災難：移除受損四號核機組建築物內的廢燃料棒，存放到較安全的地方。

日本政府三日表示，將以五億美元穩定福島核電廠，其中包括一項更大的計畫：建造一道凍土牆以阻止地下水大量流入建築物內。日本政府已自經營該電廠的東京電力公司手中拿下清理作業的主導權。

福島核電廠2011年的反應爐核心三重熔毀事件，公認是車諾比核子災變1986年發生後舉世最嚴重的核災。連串意外、誤判與延誤曾經嚴重影響善後清理，並使大量受汙染的水流出，以致日本政府不得不採取多項新措施。

分析家已經開始懷疑日本政府與東電是否具備處理如此複雜危機的專業能力。他們說，東電採取的是快速卻無效的補救措施。

去年接受委託主導調查災變原因的醫師黑川清說：「日本顯然不能面對真相。水仍然不斷在核電廠內累積，殘礫則不斷在核電廠外堆積。」

有關方面七月發現，受到汙染的水已經流入太平洋；問題似乎變得更嚴重。東電上個月表示，約270公噸受到輻射性金屬元素鍶汙染的水已自一座有罅裂的槽流入大海。鍶會滲入骨頭。

受到汙染的水用於冷卻核電廠的三座受損機組以免過熱。它會繼續大量產生，直到地下水不再流入建築物為止。規模龐大的鄉村地區清理工作受挫，已經動搖日本民眾對政府與核電的信心。

批評者表示，日本政府自始規畫的善後清理作業不夠周延，而且未經思考，主要是為了轉移輿論的批評矛頭，同時保護具有排他性的日本核電產業，使其免於受到外界監督。

最主要的批評針對日本政府將清理作業交由東電執行的決策。最近發生外洩現象的貯存槽，是東電緊急建造，用於貯存39萬公噸電廠汙染水的數百座貯存槽之一，而這些受到汙染的水平均每天增加360公噸。

批評者說，如果善後作業完全透明化，日本或許可以規畫出更周全的具體計畫。