Fukushima's ground zero: No place for man or robot

 

By Aaron Sheldrick and Minami Funakoshi

 

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A member of the media, wearing a protective suit and a mask, looks at the No. 3 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan in this February 10, 2016 file photo.

Reuters/Toru Hanai/Files

 

The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima's nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean "ice wall" around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t how to dispose of highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks around the site.

Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-metre high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods.

Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) 9501.t, has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed.

“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohiro Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning said in an interview. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation.”

The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.

But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda said.  

Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.“It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.  

IRRADIATED WATER

Tepco, which was fiercely criticized for its handling of the disaster, says conditions at the Fukushima power station, site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in Ukraine 30 years ago, have improved dramatically. Radiation levels in many places at the site are now as low as those in Tokyo.

More than 8,000 workers are at the plant at any one time, according to officials on a recent tour. Traffic is constant as they spread across the site, removing debris, building storage tanks, laying piping and preparing to dismantle parts of the plant.

Much of the work involves pumping a steady torrent of water into the wrecked and highly radiated reactors to cool them down. Afterward, the radiated water is then pumped out of the plant and stored in tanks that are proliferating around the site.

What to do with the nearly million tonnes of radioactive water is one of the biggest challenges, said Akiro Ono, the site manager. Ono said he is “deeply worried” the storage tanks will leak radioactive water in the sea - as they have done several times before - prompting strong criticism for the government. 

The utility has so far failed to get the backing of local fishermen to release water it has treated into the ocean.

Ono estimates that Tepco has completed around 10 percent of the work to clear the site up - the decommissioning process could take 30 to 40 years. But until the company locates the fuel, it won’t be able to assess progress and final costs, experts say.

The much touted use of X-ray like muon rays has yielded little information about the location of the melted fuel and the last robot inserted into one of the reactors sent only grainy images before breaking down.

ICE WALL

Tepco is building the world’s biggest ice wall to keep  groundwater from flowing into the basements of the damaged reactors and getting contaminated.

First suggested in 2013 and strongly backed by the government, the wall was completed in February, after months of delays and questions surrounding its effectiveness. Later this year, Tepco plans to pump water into the wall - which looks a bit like the piping behind a refrigerator - to start the freezing process.

Stopping the ground water intrusion into the plant is critical, said Artie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer.

“The reactors continue to bleed radiation into the ground water and thence into the Pacific Ocean,” Gunderson said. "When Tepco finally stops the groundwater, that will be the end of the beginning.”

While he would not rule out the possibility that small amounts of radiation are reaching the ocean, Masuda, the head of decommissioning, said the leaks have ended after the company built a wall along the shoreline near the reactors whose depth goes to below the seabed.

“I am not about to say that it is absolutely zero, but because of this wall the amount of release has dramatically dropped,” he said.

Above is from:  http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-disaster-decommissioning-idUSKCN0WB2X5

Federal application filed for freight railroad that would slice through Boone County

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  The Great Lakes Basin Railroad would allow freight to move more quickly from coast to coast.

 

• By Isaac Guerrero
  Staff writer

  Rockford Register Star

   

  Posted Mar. 8, 2016 at 7:04 PM
  Updated Mar 8, 2016 at 7:04 PM

• The proposed Great Lakes Basin railroad would travel south from an existing railroad that runs through Milton, Wisconsin. From there, the tracks would head south through Boone County and east to Indiana, terminating south of Michigan City, Indiana. PROVIDED IMAGE

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  Posted Mar. 8, 2016 at 7:04 PM

  ROCKFORD — A group of investors has asked the federal government for permission to build and operate a roughly $8 billion railroad that, if approved, could accelerate economic development and job creation in the Rock River Valley.

  The proposed 243.5-mile Great Lakes Basin Railroad would bypass Chicago as it travels a track alignment that resembles a giant “C” linking Milton, Wisconsin, to Pinola, Indiana, according to the application submitted late Monday to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board in Washington D.C.

  The Great Lakes Basin Railroad would slice through Boone County and link to the Chicago Rockford International Airport via a spur. A mammoth jet repair hub is being built at the airport, which is expected to make the region more attractive for cargo business. The addition of a proximate freight railroad that would be used by all major U.S. freight shippers could enhance the prospect for industry in and around the Rockford airport, supporters of the project have said.

  Some Boone County farmers have voiced opposition to the Great Lakes Basin plan because it would slice a 200-foot-wide railroad right-of-way through their property. Those behind the project say they'll pay a fair price for private land they must acquire to build the railroad. But if the feds approve their project, they'll be granted the power of eminent domain — the right of government or its agent to seize private land for a greater public use in exchange for compensation to the landowner.

  The Great Lakes Basin Railroad would move goods more quickly from coast to coast by relieving traffic congestion on the jumble of freight tracks that snake through Chicago. The project, supporters say, would improve freight rail safety, minimize traffic delays and locomotive idling time and reduce train whistle noise. Congestion is to blame for, on average, 30-hour delays for freight moving through Chicago. Shifting some of that freight traffic to the Great Lakes Basin route could shave up to 26 hours off a one-way shipment through Chicago, thus saving shippers considerable money, according to the application filed with the federal government on Monday.

• ABOVE IS FROM: http://www.rrstar.com/article/20160308/NEWS/160309492/0/SEARCH/?Start=2

NYTimes Opinion: It’s Not Too Late!

The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist

It’s Not Too Late!

David Brooks MARCH 8, 2016

 

It’s 2 a.m. The bar is closing. Republicans have had a series of strong and nasty Trump cocktails. Suddenly Ted Cruz is beginning to look kind of attractive. At least he’s sort of predictable, and he doesn’t talk about his sexual organs in presidential debates!

Well, Republicans, have your standards really fallen so low so fast? Are you really that desperate? Can you remember your 8 p.m. selves, and all the hope you had about entering a campaign with such a deep bench of talented candidates?

Back in the early evening, before the current panic set in, Republicans understood that Ted Cruz would be a terrible general election candidate, at least as unelectable as Donald Trump and maybe more so. He is the single most conservative Republican in Congress, far adrift from the American mainstream. He’s been doing well in primaries because of the support of “extremely conservative” voters in very conservative states, and he really hasn’t broken out of that lane. His political profile is a slightly enlarged Rick Santorum but without the heart.

On policy grounds, he would be unacceptable to a large majority in this country. But his policy disadvantages are overshadowed by his public image ones. His rhetorical style will come across to young and independent voters as smarmy and oleaginous. In Congress, he had two accomplishments: the disastrous government shutdown and persuading all his colleagues to dislike him.

There is another path, one that doesn’t leave you self-loathing in the morning. It’s a long shot, but given the alternatives, it’s worth trying. First, hit the pause button on the rush to Cruz. Second, continue the Romneyesque assault on Trump. The results on Saturday, when late voters swung sharply against the Donald, suggest it may be working.

Third, work for a Marco Rubio miracle in Florida on March 15. Fourth, clear the field for John Kasich in Ohio. If Rubio and Kasich win their home states, Trump will need to take nearly 70 percent of the remaining delegates to secure a majority. That would be unlikely; he’s only winning 44 percent of the delegates now.

The party would go to the convention without a clear nominee. It would be bedlam for a few days, but a broadly acceptable new option might emerge. It would be better than going into the fall with Trump, which would be a moral error, or Cruz, who in November would manage to win several important counties in Mississippi.

This isn’t about winning the presidency in 2016 anymore. This is about something much bigger. Every 50 or 60 years, parties undergo a transformation. The G.O.P. is undergoing one right now. What happens this year will set the party’s trajectory for decades.

Since Goldwater/Reagan, the G.O.P. has been governed by a free-market, anti-government philosophy. But over the ensuing decades new problems have emerged. First, the economy has gotten crueler. Technology is displacing workers and globalization is dampening wages. Second, the social structure has atomized and frayed, especially among the less educated. Third, demography is shifting.

Orthodox Republicans, seeing no positive role for government, have had no affirmative agenda to help people deal with these new problems. Occasionally some conservative policy mavens have proposed such an agenda — anti-poverty programs, human capital policies, wage subsidies and the like — but the proposals were killed, usually in the House, by the anti-government crowd.

The 1980s anti-government orthodoxy still has many followers; Ted Cruz is the extreme embodiment of this tendency. But it has grown increasingly rigid, unresponsive and obsolete.

Along comes Donald Trump offering to replace it and change the nature of the G.O.P. He tramples all over the anti-government ideology of modern Republicanism. He would replace the free-market orthodoxy with authoritarian nationalism.

Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.

He offers to use government on behalf of the American working class, but in negative and defensive ways: to build walls, to close trade, to ban outside groups, to smash enemies. According to him, America’s problems aren’t caused by deep structural shifts. They’re caused by morons and parasites. The Great Leader will take them down.

If the G.O.P. is going to survive as a decent and viable national party, it can’t cling to the fading orthodoxy Cruz represents. But it can’t shift to ugly Trumpian nationalism, either. It has to find a third alternative: limited but energetic use of government to expand mobility and widen openness and opportunity. That is what Kasich, Rubio, Paul Ryan and others are stumbling toward.

Amid all the vulgarity and pettiness, that is what is being fought over this month: going back to the past, veering into an ugly future, or finding a third way. This is something worth fighting for, worth burning the boats behind you for.

The hour is late and the odds may be long. But there is still hope. It’s a moment for audacity, not settling for Ted Cruz simply because he’s the Titanic you know.

Above is from:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/opinion/its-not-too-late.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-2&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article

Rauner offers $60M in incentives to Feds

 

 

Above is from:  http://www.sj-r.com/news/20160304/rauner-offers-additional-60m-in-incentives-from-state-for-proposed-federal-spy-agency-relocation-site-in-southern-illinois?rssfeed=true

Letter: Vote Michelle Courier for Boone County state's attorney

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• Rockford Register Star

• Posted Mar. 6, 2016 at 9:01 AM

  Michelle Courier was the chief of the civil division in McHenry County. That included a larger staff of attorneys and professional staff compared to the entire office staff she now leads. She has the leadership experience that Boone County needs.

  I am currently sitting as an elected official on the Boone County board. I have served on the board with both Tricia Smith and Michelle Courier. Her opponent claims she can do better. This election is a no-brainer. The only qualified candidate is Michelle Courier — not just because she is already in the office, but because she has proven she can do the job and do it well.

  I am voting for Michelle Courier, and I hope you will too.

  — Kenneth E. Freeman, Boone County board, District 3

Boone County farmers opposed to Great Lakes Basin Railroad project

 

 

 

Mar. 5, 2016 at 8:29 PM

GARDEN PRAIRIE — A 60-acre farm near Marengo and Denny roads has been in the Daniels family for generations.

It's been a place of solitude and a fertile place to raise cattle and grow corn, alfalfa and soybeans.

"We've spent generations here," Ang Daniels said. "I know nothing other than this area."

Now, she believes the farm is threatened by the proposed Great Lakes Basin Railroad that would slice through the family's property, affecting farmland and causing unwanted noise.

"We chose to live in a rural area, not an urban area," said Daniels, 53. "I do believe it will affect property values."

The $8 billion, 281-mile loop would be the nation's largest railroad project in more than a century. The plan, in its current form, would extend an existing railroad linking Milwaukee and Brodhead, Wisconsin, to a new line through Boone County — with a western spur at the Chicago Rockford International Airport — then south to Lee County and east to Indiana before ending north in Michigan City, Indiana.

The route would bypass Chicago and thus provide quicker transportation of goods from coast to coast. The project's backers say they'll finance the railroad privately. However, they'll have to acquire vast stretches of private land via eminent domain — the right of a government or its agent to take property at fair market value for public use.

That concerns farmers and residents in Boone County who say the project would scar the land, disrupt natural resources and cause property values to plummet.

"I understand you have to have infrastructure, but that's why you have towns," Daniels said. "Farmland is for farming."

An earlier version of the railroad snaked through Winnebago County, but was scrapped after backers determined an environmental impact study to assess the effects along the Sugar River and Winnebago and Rock counties would have delayed the project.

Frank Patton, CEO of Great Lakes Basin Transportation Corp., said he'd like to start building the railway by 2019. He said the project will be a boon to the farming industry.

"What we're trying to do is modernize the logistics system, not just for agriculture but for the entire (railroad) system," Patton said. "In our minds, the farmers are one of the groups that are the big winners."

The railroad, he said, will carry grain, corn, ethanol and the products that derive from them.

About 20 people gathered Wednesday to discuss the project during a Boone County Planning, Zoning and Building Committee meeting. Farmers and other county residents expressed concerns about the impact the project could have on their lives.

Committee Chairman Denny Ellingson said he shares some of the concerns.

"Personally, I think they looked at a map and went, 'This is the least-populated area, so the least people will fight it,' and just drew the line there," Ellingson said.

Daniels told the committee the railroad will "totally distort Boone County as a farming community."

"This is the some of the most fertile ground in the state of Illinois — look at any of the reports," she said. "I understand we have to look at economic development. But at some point, we have to preserve our farmland, because you don't ever get that back. You don't grow that again next year. (When) it's gone, it's gone, and that's my concern."

More meetings will take place, but dates are undetermined.

Patton, meanwhile, defended the concept of eminent domain.

"Without eminent domain, we wouldn't have any roads, we wouldn't have any forest preserves, we wouldn't have anything that is built on land that someone else at one time owned," Patton said. "If people don't like the law, they can change it. That's what democracy is all about. Eminent domain goes back to Abraham Lincoln."

Committee members and county residents said they didn't know the Great Lakes Basin Railroad proposal existed. Patton contends the plan has been discussed publicly for two years.

Last fall, he pitched the project to the Rockford Metropolitan Agency for Planning board of directors. A Google Earth document detailing the project will be available on the Great Lakes Basin Railroad website in coming days.

"We are trying to be as transparent as possible," Patton said. "We've received ongoing tremendous support from the agricultural (community). They believe (the railroad) will much more efficiently move agricultural products to the user."

For 35 years, Lee Bozeman, 67, has owned 10 acres on Edson Road south of Capron. He rents out seven acres to a local farmer who plants corn or soybeans. He said the railroad would be about 200 feet from his property.

"I don't see any economic (benefit) here in Boone County," Bozeman said. "Boone County won't be getting any dollars out of this."

An oil pipeline buried in Bonus Township in 2007 and upgraded last year caused little consternation, because they "don't see it, don't hear it," Bozeman said.

Kathi Waite owns five acres on Edson Road where she's raising a horse, a cow and chickens. She said the railroad will either run through her property or just west of it.

"If it hits our property, we'll end up losing our home. If they skirt our property, it's going to basically make it impossible to sell our home," Waite said. "Our property is going to devalue. No one wants to live like that."

Waite also is worried about chemical spills.

"This is all farm country out here with very fertile soil," she said. "(If) those chemicals spill into the ground, who knows what could happen?"

Waite said residents should band together to oppose the project.

"This is an issue that is not going to go down without a fight," she said. "I really think some kind of committee has to be formed by Boone County so that we can at least try to fight this. I don't know if it'll do any good."

Adam Poulisse: 815-987-1344; apoulisse@rrstar.com; @adampoulisse

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/article/20160305/NEWS/160309631/0/SEARCH/?Start=3

“402 Conferences” in Boone County

 

Georgette Braun: A step that avoids jury trials at issue in Boone County state's attorney race

By Georgette Braun
Staff writer

Posted Mar. 6, 2016 at 9:01 AM
Updated Mar 6, 2016 at 3:28 PM

A courtroom tool widely used in Winnebago County and elsewhere in Illinois that can avoid lengthy and costly jury trials isn't used in Boone County.

But it would be if Tricia Smith wins her bid against incumbent Michelle Courier on the Republican ballot in the March 15 primary election for Boone County state's attorney. There is no Democratic candidate on the primary ballot.

At issue: so-called "402 conferences," which refer to the long-standing Illinois Supreme Court Rule 402. The rule is usually invoked in a felony case. It allows a judge, prosecutor and defense attorney to meet behind closed doors without the presence of the defendant. The aim is for the judge to suggest an appropriate sentence should the defendant plead guilty.

Courier told me she has a policy not to participate in 402 conferences. It's required that all three parties be involved in such talks. "We believe it benefits the defense more than the state," she said. "I don't know why prosecutors use that, and I don't know how it benefits victims."

Tricia Smith told me that if she's elected state's attorney, she'd participate in the meetings. "I don't think it's not being tough on crime, ... and you get the end result without having to put (victims) through trial," she said. Smith said 402 conferences can be a "good tool to use to help move cases through the system, because part of the problem in Boone County is long wait times" for trials.

Smith said it takes an average of 788 days for jury trial felony cases to move through Boone County court, compared with 563 days to close such cases in Ogle County. Smith said jury trials are expensive considering witness expenses, juror fees and time spent on each trial by the judge, court officials and the state's attorney's office.

Courier said Boone County isn't comparable to Ogle County. "We have twice as many felony cases," she said. And while 402 conferences may "reduce the number of cases, it does not serve justice," Courier said. In addition, she said, "our closure rates are higher now than they have ever been."

Winnebago County State's Attorney Joe Bruscato said 402 conferences "offer us an excellent opportunity to bring about resolution of a case," noting that "both parties are free to reject" the judge's sentencing recommendation. The meetings typically take less than an hour, he said. His office doesn't keep track of how many times it participates in the meetings.

Courier said the smaller size of Boone County's court system could pose a problem for the conferences. Boone County has a single felony judge who could be "conflicted out of a case," if that judge learns too much evidence through a 402 conference prior to a case, Courier said. "In Winnebago, that is less of an issue because of a number of judges."

A Freeport-based judge says 402 conferences are useful and not one-sided. "I would not say it benefits anyone more than anybody else," said Judge James M. Hauser, associate circuit judge of the 15th Judicial Circuit in Stephenson County. "It benefits the whole system." Hauser said in courtrooms where he presides that use of 402 conferences is "more than occasional."

Here's what typically goes on in the judge's chamber behind closed doors. The prosecution presents facts of the case from police reports and conversations with witnesses. Additionally, the prosecution points out factors of the case that may have bearing on the sentencing, including whether the defendant had been in jail before, lacked remorse, or how much harm had been done to the victim. The defense would then explain the person's involvement in the alleged offense and factors that could make the sentence less serious.

A 402 conference is sometimes held, Hauser said, when a person with a criminal record cooperates with police to provide information on another criminal. "Police have to use bad guys to catch bad guys," he said. The prosecutor and defense attorney go to the judge, who has to determine or approve sentencing, to explain: "This is why we are giving him a sweetheart deal, because he worked with SLANT," Hauser said. He was referring to the State Line Area Narcotics Team. "They don't want to put that out there in open court," he said. But they want the judge to know that the defendant "lived up to his end" of the bargain.

Another situation in which 402 conferences are used: when the victim in a domestic battery case may not want to testify in court, so the prosecutor, defense attorney and judge agree to sentencing that includes getting the accused into counseling. "Should the defendant reject the recommendations of the 402 conference, the case can still precede to trial," Hauser said.

Another judge, though, says 402 conferences should not be used. Robert J. Steigmann is an appellate court justice with the Fourth District. In a court case filed March 4, he said, "As is almost always the case, defense counsel sought to get the trial court involved — ostensibly so that the court could be a 'preliminary feel' about a possible sentence.

"But defense counsel's transparent motive was to convince the court that it should tell the prosecutor he should go along with defendant's request for probation and not insist on at least a three-year prison sentence. When the court indicated that it thought the State's offer of three years was 'a very good offer,' the case ultimately proceeded to a jury trial. ... The easiest way, of course, is for trial courts never to be involved in plea bargaining."

In his 12 1/2 years as a trial judge, he said he never participated in 402 conferences and "was able to achieve the same number of negotiated pleas as judges who participated in such conferences."

Lou Bianchi, McHenry County state's attorney, told me 402 conferences should be used "sparingly and cautiously. We don't want to use (the judge) as a mediator," he said.

Ryan Swift, a Rockford-based defense attorney, told me he participates in 402 conferences in 5 percent to 10 percent of the cases he handles. "In my experience, more often than not, it is beneficial to do it," Swift said.

Rockford-based defense attorney Jerry Lund said he participates in 402 conferences at least once a week on behalf of his clients, mostly in Winnebago County. With regard to Boone County's policy, he said: "If a prosecutorial agency has a policy to not do 402 conferences, it really impedes ... the opportunity to seek a resolution to the case prior to trial."

Georgette Braun: 815-987-1331; gbraun@rrstar.com; @GeorgetteBraun

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/news/20160306/georgette-braun-step-that-avoids-jury-trials-at-issue-in-boone-county-states-attorney-race/?Start=3