Executive Summary
Part 1: SAFECAST PROJECT
1.1 Safecast Code
In 2014 we took a bold move and published the Safecast Code 1.0, which attempts to describe the Safecast project as a whole through a list of 10 attitudes that guide all of our efforts. You could call it our “code of conduct,” something we wrote to remind ourselves when we start to drift what our goals are and what we should be doing. We try to measure up to the attitudes in this list and encourage others to do the same.
In addition:
— We strongly feel data data about our environment should be open, easy to access and easy to understand.
— A second opinion about environmental data has to be available. In the age of the Internet of Things, that voice can come directly from citizens.
— Official groups such as governments, universities, and companies should publish data about the environment under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) public domain designation and acknowledge the importance of a third parties to validate their own data against.
1.2 Mobile Radiation Measurement
Safecast volunteers have been collecting radiation data using bGeigie mobile radiation sensors since April 2011. Over 600 bGeigies have been built, and have collected over 27,000,000 measurements. These cover almost all Japanese roads, with many areas repeatedly measured over time. We now have data from every continent, and more 65 countries. The Safecast dataset also now includes data from far corners such Sudan, Iraq, Antarctica and the Marshall Islands and sites of interest such as Chernobyl. The current work horse for mobile radiation measurement is the bGeigie Nano Kit of which more than 400 have been deployed since it was released it in mid 2013.
1.3 Stationary Radiation Measurement
In March, 2015, realtime.safecast.org launched. This new initiative is focused on deploying stationary radiation sensors in Japan and globally. Our goal is to deploy 25 fixed sensors in Fukushima in 2015, to form an independent real-time network. We will also continue to expand this network overseas.
1.4 Air Pollution Measurement
While the primary focus of Safecast until now has been radiation measurements, we’ve always intended for the project to grow to include other environmental data. We now have working prototypes of a modular Safecast air quality device, based on the bGeigie form factor, which can eventually be fused with other sensors.
1.5 Open Data (aka The Safecast API)
SAFECAST tries to set an example of openness in how we gather and present our data, and to demonstrate what the wider benefits of easy access to open data are for society as a whole. We’re convinced that the more open data is, the more useful it becomes.
In order to clarify our stance and encourage others to adopt similar policies, we recently posted a detailed FAQ about our openness and access features.
1.6 Data Visualization
Over the last year the online Safecast map has seen a tremendous amount of evolution and improvement. This has meant many new features and great speed improvements across the board. For iOS devices, version 1.7.1 of the Safecast app was released in March, 2014. The Safecast app for OS X was also introduced in July 2014, based upon the tile engine used by the mapping features of the iOS app. It provides a full desktop experience with the same dynamic and offline-capable functionality as the iOS app.
1.7 Activities
From the start, we’ve considered events and activities to be an important part of communicating what we are doing, building our community, and training our volunteers. We frequently hold workshops, hold hackathons, give talks, and participate in public symposia. We were also happy to be invited to speak at important symposia in Japan and overseas, including an IAEA expert meeting and a disarmament and non-proliferation conference at the VCDNP, both in Vienna, as well as a public symposium in Tokyo jointly organized by United Nations University and UNSCEAR.
1.8 Outreach
We consider outreach and collaboration with universities and other academic institutions to be valuable community and skill builders. Ongoing and new collaborations include ones with MIT Media Lab, Keio University, Aoyama University, Kanazawa Institute of technology, and San Diego State University.
1.9 Press & Publicity
Contributing to media is an important activity for Safecast, as it allows our message to be propagated to a larger audience and also helps us to connect to new volunteers. Not only do we appear in articles, we also have become a source for journalists who want to learn about radiation, and we have spent countless hours with reporters to share what we know and connect them with relevant people and organizations. In the past year we have had significantly more prominent coverage from mainstream Japanese media, including and 20-part series in the Asahi Shimbun and a 30-minute documentary on NHK World.
1.10 Funding & Support
We continue to benefit from the generosity of donors such as the Shuttleworth Foundation, which is sponsoring key areas of our activity this year, including the SCC2015 conference, as well as past support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Many companies continue to provide contributions in kind as well. We express our sincere gratitude to all for this invaluable support.
1.11 Always Improving
If you see anything you think could be done better, needs fixing, or can be complemented, or if you simply want to help out or to contribute, let us know at info@safecst.org.
And if you want to learn how to make your data open and more useable (as a citizen, company, university, or government body), we’re here to help.
Part 2: SITUATION REPORT
2.1- Issues at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Powerplant (FDNPP)
2.1.1 — Decommissioning roadmap
Everything that is being done now and which will be done on site until the year 2020 is merely preparation for the really hard work of removing the melted core material. There is a roadmap, and TEPCO is basically on schedule so far, but it gets much harder from this point forward. There is regulatory oversight, but we don’t think it is intrusive enough.
2.1.2 — Spent fuel pools
Despite loud portents of doom,TEPCO succeeded in safely removing all of the spent fuel from Unit 4 in December, 2014. This unit had the most fuel to remove, but the remaining three units will almost certainly be harder. The last are due to start being emptied in 2017. This fuel needs more secure long-term storage than in the common pool onsite, though there’s really no place else to put it yet.
2.1.3 — Water problems
We hear a lot about the water problems at the Daiichi site because they’re serious and are an obstacle to starting the other work which needs to be done. If we could see the water that’s causing the most trouble things would be a lot easier, but we can’t because it’s underground. The difficulty of the water problems has forced TEPCO to think ambitiously and innovatively, and appears to be advancing technology in some areas. But most of the other leaks which make the news (because they can be easily detected) have very low-tech, easily preventable causes.
2.1.4 — Radionuclide removal systems
The systems TEPCO uses for removing radionuclides from water onsite started as an unreliable hack, but have gradually grown and become more stable and sophisticated. It’s an incremental learning process that we’re very familiar with. TEPCO has spliced together several different systems to make it possible to scale up and add new capabilities, and initiate new technological developments. The overall system seems to be performing well now, but there are still several weak points where breakdowns could lead to even more delays in processing all the water that needs to be treated.
2.1.5 — Groundwater problems
Briefly put, the planned solution to the extremely challenging groundwater problem at the Daiichi site is an ambitious series of underground dams made of ice (frozen soil), and dozens of pumps. The pump part would be straightforward if the water wasn’t radioactive. All the eggs are in this basket, and we haven’t heard of a plan “B” in case it fails. Unless the groundwater problem is solved, it won’t be possible to carry out the next steps to prepare for removing the melted fuel.
2.1.6 — Melted fuel removal
This has only really been done once before, at Three Mile Island, where melted core removal was completed in 1990, so there are not many people with experience to call on for assistance. The job is too big for any one company to tackle, so a new, well-funded research institute has been established to incubate the kinds of technologies that will be necessary. The process will require decades.
2.2- Evacuees and Returnees
Their lives are uprooted, and their grievances are immense and deep-seated. Much of their plight is rooted in hastily made decisions about where to draw lines between the evacuated and those who were allowed to remain — assuming they wanted to, or would be financially able to leave if they didn’t. At the moment, not many evacuees want to return to their abandoned home towns despite enticements from all levels of government, but quite a few who lived outside the evacuation zones have returned. Meanwhile a huge disparity in compensation has driven communities even further apart.
2.3- Environment and Decontamination
The radioactive releases to the environment from Fukushima Daiichi are unprecedented in many respects, but also comparable in many ways to releases from other accidents and from nuclear weapons testing. Radionuclides are both persistent in the environment and mobile, and it’s of paramount importance to locate and track them as they disperse through the ocean and migrate into the soil and through watersheds, to know where to expect food species to be contaminated and by how much, and where the places where people live will require remediation, or even abandonment.
2.3.1 The land environment
Odd though it may seem to say it, it was fortunate that only about 20% of the radioactive releases from Daiichi ended up on land. Even that much has caused the displacement of over 160,000 people, and necessitated very costly remediation of farmland and living areas. Fortunately as well, most kinds of environmental radiation is not very difficult to detect and map. This is why SAFECAST exists.
2.3.1a Forests
About 70% of the fallout that fell over land ended up in forests, which will be impossible to effectively decontaminate, and where it will remain bioavailable to plants and wildlife for decades. Radionuclides have essentially hijacked the watershed, turning it into a cesium delivery system (while delivering smaller amounts of other nuclides as well). Fortunately researchers have a lot of experience tracking them in these environments.
2.3.1b Decontamination progress, plans, effectiveness
The area needing to be decontaminated is huge. When we investigated the effectiveness of the techniques being used two years ago, we concluded that it was only partly effective, and that in many situations it made more sense to wait for natural radioactive decay to take its course. In some cases decontamination appears to be what we call an “optical” solution — to show that efforts are being made. But much of the time it can make a big difference in radioactive exposures and doses. Regardless, it’s a management and communication nightmare, and we’re not surprised many residents remain skeptical.
2.3.2 The Ocean
The radioactive releases to the ocean were huge, but not really unprecedented. Many teams of oceanographers have been tracking and sampling the nuclides as they make their way across the Pacific, and predictions they made two years ago about how long it would take the ocean “plume” to reach the coast of North America, and how much cesium would be in it when it got there, have proven to be very accurate. As predicted, the levels are very low, lower than in the 1970’s for instance. But the plant is still leaking and major releases of contaminated water cannot be entirely ruled out. Meanwhile, the radioactive contamination on the seabed off the Fukushima coast has been mapped, and experts agree that only time will reduce the ongoing impact on marine species which live there, including many dining table mainstays. Close monitoring of the ocean environment is extremely important and will continue to be for years to come.
2.4- Food
Keeping contaminated food off the market is essential for minimizing internal exposures to radiation in people. This risk is chronic because cesium and other radionuclides remain in the environment for years — decades in many cases — usually migrating deeper into the soil, and even if the problem appears to be controlled at some point, it is still present. The Japanese government quickly instituted a food monitoring program in March 2011, and in scale and comprehensiveness it has been unprecedented. Not everything is checked, however, which is why the appearance of dozens of independent, citizens-run food testing labs all over the country is extremely welcome. Also welcome are independent tests of actual meals being eaten by residents of Fukushima and elsewhere. While the relative paucity of tests for strontium remains a matter of concern, the independent tests tend to support official findings, that less that 1% of the food being produced in Fukushima has above-limit concentrations of cesium, and virtually none of this is finding its way onto the market. Farmers themselves deserve almost all the credit for this. The biggest food risks — wild mushrooms and vegetables, and wild boar and other game — are well known, and will continue to pose problems for years to come.
2.5- Health
The concern about health damage from radiation exposure, and particularly the vulnerability of children, has made it the single most contentious issue surrounding the Fukushima disaster. Health concerns are the reason people were evacuated, and prompted many families to mistrust official assurances and to move away on their own. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the most likely radiation-related diseases, such as cancer and leukemia, will not appear for years after the exposures, and will only be detected by large-scale, long-term monitoring. The government quickly got such programs up and running, and the results so far give cause for cautions optimism, but it is too early to tell, and inadequate transparency and poor communication have left many citizens suspicious.
(end of Executive Summary)
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
2.1- Issues at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Powerplant (FDNPP)
