AG: Hi, I’m Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds Energy Education, and I wanted to share today a little bit about my personal journey through the world of nuclear power. Forty-two years ago I got my bachelors degree in nuclear engineering. First in my class from Rensselaer. Forty-one years ago I got my masters degree in nuclear engineering, and I also had a reactor operator’s license. And I really believed at the time I was doing that that nuclear power could save the world. I worked my way through engineering and management, got a safety patent, became a senior vice president, and then I became a nuclear whistleblower. During that time, Three Mile Island blew up, and Chernobyl blew up, and I still believed the technology was safe, and I blamed the nuclear reactor operators in both cases. Well, when I became a nuclear whistleblower, I believed that the nuclear regulatory would come riding over the horizon and rescue me, but instead they started shooting at me too. And I realized that regulation of nuclear power was inadequate in the United States. But I think in my heart of hearts I still believed that nuclear would be safe.

Well, for the next part of my journey I worked for many NGOs, non-governmental organizations, writing reports on nuclear. But in my heart of hearts, I still believed that if we all tried hard enough we could make nuclear power safe. Then came Fukushima Daiichi, and all of the safety systems that engineers had relied upon didn’t work. The cooling pumps on the ocean failed. The diesel generators failed. The offsite power failed. The nuclear reactor failed. The containment blew up. All of the barriers to keep the radiation from the public had totally failed. And I think that was the final piece of my journey. I realize now that nuclear can have forty great years and one bad day, and that’s really what I’ve dedicated my life to, to make sure that that one bad day doesn’t happen in your backyard. Now, Fairewinds Energy Education has been doing these videos now for more than two years, and I think we’ve become respected around the world for the technical quality of our analysis. We don’t just throw up a news story, we analyze what’s really happening and give you the facts of the situation, facts that you’re not getting from other people.

Well, July begins our fundraiser month, and we’ve had a staff here at Fairewinds who would love to work with Maggie and I in the future to continue that standard of excellence for really good video, and I hope that you can do a couple of things to help us out. First, pass the word about the site. You can twitter us, you can facebook us, there’s many ways to share this analysis with the world. You probably noticed that on the site we are having a French translation now and a German translation, and of course last year we had a Japanese, so we have a site that’s accessible in four languages so the world can hear that that one bad day doesn’t have to happen in anybody’s backyard. What I’m asking also though is for funds. We can’t do this for free. Maggie and I work for free on these videos, but we do have a production staff, and there are some costs that have to be covered. I’ve appreciated your donations in the past, and we’re asking for them again. Thank you very much for listening to these videos, and I hope you enjoy the next one with me and Akio Matsumura. Thanks for watching Fairewinds.

AM: Well, Arnie thank you very much for inviting me to such a wonderful place. This is my first time visiting Vermont, and also I’d like to thank you and Maggie to making a great contribution to increase public awareness of risk about Fukushima. Many readers of my blog appreciate what you have done.

AG: Well, thank you Akio. Coming from you that means a lot to me, and I know it means a lot to Maggie too. We try our best, and I’m glad that the world wants to hear it.

AM: Well, I have received many questions from my readers to ask if TEPCO has the capacity to handle this magnitude of disaster or not. I do not know. But, I also have some inside story in Japan, that TEPCO executives also believe that TEPCO alone cannot handle this magnitude of disaster. So I wrote a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urging him to establish an independent international assessment team composed of nuclear scientists, geologists, engineering structure because we are laymen confused by so many scientists saying all the different stories. And I mentioned to former Prime Minister Hatoyama, I only believe in what Arnie says, what Helen Caldicott says. So Arnie, what do you think of this first question – my suggestion is to establish internationally independent assessment team to look at totality of picture of the problem we face now after Fukushima.

AG: I think it’s a great idea. I think we definitely need an international team of really independent experts to go in and outline a logical plan to minimize the exposure to the Japanese people moving forward. The IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency – claims to be that independent agency because it’s an arm of the UN. But if you look at the Charter, Article number 2 of their charter is to promote nuclear power. Now to my way of thinking, that means you’re not independent. The team of individuals has to be respected by the people of Japan who are going to have to (1) live with the radiation and (2) have to clean up after this. And so to rely on a group who’s trying to promote nuclear power seems to me to be counterproductive. So an international team of experts going in and laying out a plan going forward, to be implemented by somebody other than Tokyo Electric I think is critical. The other piece of that is if that plan is put in place and a large engineering firm is put in to replace Tokyo Electric, the independent team should remain as an overseer of the large international engineering organization. Because the trust of the people in Japan can’t be on a company that also builds nuclear power plants. It would have to be on that independent expert team. That independent expert team could also put pressure on the Nation of Japan’s government to spend the money that’s needed to solve this problem. I think what we have right now is that the Japanese government isn’t willing to give Tokyo Electric any more money, and Tokyo Electric then is trying to decontaminate the site on a budget that’s not big enough. So if that international team could put pressure on the contractor to do the job right and also represent to people of Japan the true cost of the cleanup, I think that would solve the two biggest problems facing the Daiichi site.

AG: In the first part of this video we really tried to propose an alternative to the situation that’s actually happening in Japan today. You know, if you read the papers or the different blogs that are out there, you can always find another problem at Fukushima Daiichi – rats eating the wires, radiation leaking into the ocean. And what Fairewinds has been trying to do for two years now is to say that there are alternatives; there are alternatives to fixing up the Fukushima Daiichi site and there are alternatives to nuclear power in the future. So the second half of this video talks about the problems on the site and the potential ramifications for the world moving forward. Please help us with a donation or translation expertise or twittering this to other people so that the message gets out there. Fairewinds needs your help so we can make sure that that one bad day isn’t in your back yard.

AM: Well, thank you, Arnie. I mentioned to political leaders – I went to Japan twice last year and said this is a national crisis. And the national crisis cannot depend on technical or private sectors. This is really serious crisis catastrophe, not only for Japan, but the rest of the world. So that’s number one. Now since the accident, you also are warning of danger of reactor number 4 which we understand is a huge contaminated water spent fuel in a pool. Now you also recently raised the issue, concern about reactor number 3. Would you kindly explain to me what is your new concern of reactor number 3 compared to reactor number 4?

AG: The condition of the site right now is precarious. As long as there’s no earthquake, it’ll be okay. But that’s a big if where you’re sort of counting on an earthquake not occurring in a country that’s prone to earthquakes. And by an earthquake, I’m talking about a Richter 7 at or near the site. Now there’s three problems with the site right now. The first is the enormous amount of water that’s stored on the site in hundreds of tanks. Tokyo Electric isn’t letting us know exactly what the radioactive material is in those sites but there’s so much radiation in those tanks, we do know that the exposure to people who are outside of the plant boundary is very, very high. That tells us – there’s this phenomenon called Bremsstrahlung and the decay of radioactive material in those tanks is releasing x-rays in very high quantities off site. That means that those tanks are extraordinarily radioactive and if there is an earthquake, none of them are seismically qualified. So we could easily have a situation where 700 tanks spring leaks, it runs across the surface of the site and into the Pacific Ocean. That’s more contamination in those tanks than has already been released into the Pacific Ocean. So number one is an earthquake destroying the tanks and causing them to leak. Number two is the concern I’ve had for years, which is the structural condition of unit 4. Unit 4’s fuel pool has the most fuel and the hottest fuel. It was recently changed out. So a loss of cooling in the unit 4 fuel pool can still lead to a fuel pool fire and contamination of vast amounts of the country. The chance of a fuel pool fire diminishes with time because the fuel becomes cooler. It’s not there yet but it is approaching the point where if the pool were to lose water, it’s likely that the fuel would not catch on fire. That assumes the fuel stays intact. If the earthquake is significant enough to distort the fuel and cause it to collapse, all bets are off and you can still get heating to the point of creating a fire if the fuel were to break and not be cooled. But the third thing, Akio, is what you referred to as the unit 3 problem. Unit 3 has less fuel in it than unit 4. That’s good. The bad news, though, is that unit 3 is much more severely damaged than unit 4. So if unit 4 could ride out a Richter 7 earthquake, it’s likely unit 3 will not. So the risk of a structural failure in unit 3 is higher, although there’s somewhat less nuclear fuel in the fuel pool, it still presents in my mind now rapidly becoming the single biggest risk on the site is a structural failure of the unit 3 building because of all the damage from the massive detonation shockwave that hit the building. The magnitude of this problem is huge. It’s as if we – the Japanese should be fighting this as if it were a war. And you don’t fight a war on a budget. And I think that’s what’s happening in Fukushima. Tokyo Electric has minimal funds and they’re doing the best they can with minimal funds. And the Japanese government, it’s easier for them to blame the problems on Tokyo Electric rather than face the fact that at the root of this problem is that there’s not enough money being spent. So if you’re going to solve the biggest industrial accident in history, you’re going to need the funds required to do that. And I don’t think either party – Tokyo Electric or the Japanese government – want the Japanese people to understand just how deeply in debt the Fukushima Daiichi disaster has put them. I think it’s about a half a trillion to three quarters of a trillion dollars in debt to clean up the site and to clean up the prefecture.

AM: What would be really the best way to solve this environmental and health issue that’s happening now at Fukushima?

AG: To my way of thinking, there’s two problems at the root of the Fukushima issue. The first is the ground water is continuing to leak into these reactors. Now you have to remember, after the earthquake, the entire Pacific side of Japan dropped by three feet. Japan sunk down three feet. Well, if you’re a building and your structure suddenly drops three feet, that causes the floor to crack. And more importantly now, it puts more water pressure on the bottom of the building. So water is flowing into these reactors at Fukushima Daiichi in large quantities – 400 tons a day. Now if the buildings were clean and had no radiation, that wouldn’t be a problem. Let them flood. They’re not going to run anyway. But the problem is that the containment has holes in it. The containment has penetrations that - where wires came in and out and where pipes came in and out. And the insulation on those penetrations was never designed for high radiation, high temperature, and no one ever thought that it would be exposed to salt water. Well, all three of those things happened at Daiichi and the penetrations have now all failed. So the radioactivity that was supposed to be contained in the nuclear reactor is now leaking through those penetrations to where the water is leaking into the other buildings. The net effect is we’ve got pieces of nuclear fuel, small powdery nuclear fuel mixing in on the floors of these buildings that are now getting large quantities of radioactive water. So you have two choices: you can either stop the water from going in; or you can stop the radiation from going out. Both are difficult. I proposed building a trench around the Fukushima site and filling it with something called Zeolite. Zeolite is a volcanic material. It’s really good at absorbing radiation. Another Japanese scientist, Dr. Koichi Nakamura has suggested building wells outside of that trench to drop the water table. So if you can drop the water table and just pump that water into the ocean, because it will be clean, the Zeolite trench will prevent the radiation from getting to those wells, that would reduce the amount of water going into these buildings that have cracks in the foundation. The other alternative is to prevent the radiation from going out. Well, the horse is already out of the barn on that. The radiation is pretty much thoroughly throughout not just the reactor containment but also the other buildings. But it’s still critical to seal all those penetrations that are leaking. You have to find the leaks and plug them. Now that’s exacerbated by the fact that this already a very high radiation zone. It’s not like you can send somebody in with a caulking gun to slap some caulking in these. The radiation levels are frequently near lethal and finding and stopping those leaks – there’s a priority to get the nuclear fuel out of those nuclear reactors. But it’s going to be extraordinarily difficult because of the high radiation levels. So the best solution for the amount of water that’s being built up – 400 tons a day – is to drop the water table and to prevent any further water from going in. Fairewinds has been approached by two American manufacturers with solutions to the problems at Daiichi and trying to get that technology implemented in the Daiichi cleanup. The Japanese have rejected both of these American manufacturers. And I’m sure there’s been others. But the fact of the matter is that the technology for the Zeolite trench is in use in America right now at the West Valley site and has a proven track record of being very, very effective. So we’re in a situation where an effective American technology is being prevented from being implemented in Japan by either the Japanese government or Tokyo Electric, and I really don’t know which.

AM: Well, Arnie thank you very much for explaining to us the basic issues, and I’m sure there are so many other issues, and this nuclear accident has raised enormous issues that human beings have never experienced. But, we have to continue to study and also to bring wisdom of international team together. I cannot think of any other way to suggest except to bring wisdom, experience, and please help Japan and the world. Thank you again Arnie, Maggie, Helen, for all of your efforts.

MG: Hi, this is Maggie Gundersen, and I wanted to thank you for watching this video. I also want to thank you for helping us do this work. We have an incredible crew here at Fairewinds, and they’ve worked hard to bring you the cutting edge information about nuclear safety in the world. We put a lot of energy and a lot of heart into our work, and we give you answers that you’re never going to get from the mainstream media. Please help us. Please contribute: either send a check, or donate via paypal, and help us to continue to bring you the cutting edge information you care about. Thank you.