Japanese Nuclear Plant Starts Pumping Millions of Gallons of Radioactive Water Into Pacific

Japanese Nuclear Plant Starts Pumping Millions of Gallons of Radioactive Water Into Pacific

TOKYO -- Workers were pumping more than 3 million gallons of contaminated water from Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear power complex into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, freeing storage space for even more highly radioactive water that has hampered efforts to stabilize the plant's reactors.

The government has also asked Russia for a ship that is used to dispose of liquid nuclear waste as it tries to decontaminate the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, whose cooling systems were knocked out by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11. The plant also plans to bring in a floating storage facility.

But these other storage options have been slow to materialize, so the pumping began late Monday. It was expected to take about two days to get most of the less-radioactive water out.

"It was inevitable," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference Tuesday. "The measure was to prevent highly radioactive water from spreading. But we are dumping radioactive water, and we feel very sorry about this."

Radioactivity is quickly diluted in the ocean, and government officials said the dump should not affect the safety of seafood in the area.

But the stress of announcing more bad news appears to wearing on officials with the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Co. One official teared up and his voice began shaking as he gave details at a news conference near the plant.

The crisis has unfolded as Japan deals with the aftermath of twin natural disasters that devastated much of its northeastern coast. Up to 25,000 people are believed to have died and tens of thousands lost their homes.

Since the disaster, water with different levels of radioactivity has been pooling throughout the plant. People who live within 12 miles (20 kilometers) have been evacuated and have not been allowed to return.

The pooling water has damaged systems and the radiation hazard has prevented workers from getting close enough to power up cooling systems needed to stabilize dangerously vulnerable fuel rods.

On Saturday, they discovered a leak where radioactive water was pouring into the ocean.

Radiation exceeding the legal limit has been measured in seawater over the past few weeks, though calculating the exact contamination has vexed TEPCO. Japan's nuclear safety agency ordered the utility last week to reanalyze samples; new results released Monday showed unchanged or lower levels of radiation than previously reported.

The less-radioactive water that officials are purposely dumping into the sea is up to 500 times the legal limit for radiation.

"We think releasing water with low levels of radiation is preferable to allowing water with high levels of radiation to be released into the environment," said Junichi Matsumoto, a TEPCO official.

The need to make room for the highly radioactive water became more urgent when TEPCO discovered the extent to which it was leaking into the ocean, Matsumoto said.

Workers need to get rid of the highly radioactive water, but first they need somewhere safe to put it. Much of the less-radioactive water being dumped into the sea is from the tsunami and had accumulated in a nuclear waste storage building.

The building is not meant to hold water, but it's also not leaking, so engineers decided to empty it so they can pump in the more-radioactive water. The rest of the water going into the sea is coming from a trench beneath two of the plant's six reactors.

Also Monday, a spokesman for the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom, Sergei Novikov, told reporters that Japan had requested Russia send it a vessel used to dispose of liquid nuclear waste from decommissioned submarines.

Novikov said Moscow was awaiting the answers to some questions before granting the request.

More water keeps pooling because TEPCO has been forced to rely on makeshift methods of bringing down temperatures and pressure by pumping water into the reactors and allowing it to gush out wherever it can. It is a messy process, but it is preventing a full meltdown of the fuel rods that would release even more radioactivity into the environment.

"We must keep putting water into the reactors to cool to prevent further fuel damage, even though we know that there is a side effect, which is the leakage," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency. "We want to get rid of the stagnant water and decontaminate the place so that we can return to our primary task to restore the sustainable cooling capacity as quickly as possible."

Engineers have been using unusual methods to try to stop the more highly radioactive water from leaking into the sea.

An attempt to seal a crack in a maintenance pit discovered Saturday with concrete failed, and clogging it with a special polymer mixed with sawdust and shredded newspapers didn't work, either.

They dumped milky white bath salts into the system around the pit Monday to try to figure out the source of the leak, but it never splashed out into the ocean.

In the meantime, workers plan to install screens made of polyester fabric to try to stop some of the contamination in the ocean from spreading.

Although the government eventually authorized the dumping of the less-radioactive water, Edano said officials were growing concerned about the sheer volume of radioactive materials spilling into the Pacific and would be investigating its effects. It is not clear how much water has leaked in addition to what is being dumped purposely.

Experts said Monday that at this point, they don't expect the discharges to pose widespread danger to sea animals or people who might eat them.

"It's a very large ocean" with considerable powers of dilution, noted William Burnett of Florida State University.

Very close to the nuclear plant -- less than half a mile (800 meters) or so -- sea creatures might be in danger of problems like genetic mutations if the dumping goes on a long time, he said. But there shouldn't be any serious hazard farther away "unless this escalates into something much, much larger than it has so far," he said.

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Holder Blames Congress for Forcing Hand on Military Commissions for 9/11 Detainees

Holder Blames Congress for Forcing Hand on Military Commissions for 9/11 Detainees

Congress tied the Obama administration's hands in trying the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and his accomplices, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday, announcing that he was left without a choice and has referred the cases to the Defense Department for trial. 

In stark language, Holder lambasted Congress for imposing restrictions blocking any detainees from being tried in the U.S., saying that the "unwise and unwarranted restrictions" undermine the U.S. in counter-intelligence and counter-terror efforts.

Expressing his disappointment in no uncertain terms, the attorney general said that as a native New Yorker, he knows as well as anyone the federal court's capacity to try the suspects. He added that he's intimately familiar with the cases, much moreso than congressional members -- or the public -- who opposed allowing the cases to be held in the United States.

"Do I know better than them? Yes. I respect their ability to disagree but they should respect that this is an executive branch function, a unique executive branch function," Holder said in a press conference.

As a result, Holder said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006, after being captured in Pakistan in 2003, and four alleged Sept. 11 co-conspirators will face prosecution by a military commission in Guantanamo.  "Prosecutors from both the Departments of Defense and Justice have been working together since the beginning of this matter, and I have full faith and confidence in the military commission system to appropriately handle this case as it proceeds," Holder said.

The other terror suspects are Walid Muhammed Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Bin Al Shibh, Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawsawi. The five detainees are accused of killing 2,976 people -- all named in an 81-page indictment dismissed and unsealed Monday by a federal judge.

"Because a timely prosecution in federal court does not appear feasible, the attorney general intends to refer this matter to the Department of Defense to proceed in military commissions," reads the order to dismiss signed by U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy.

The decision to return the detainees to a military commission is a reversal from Holder, who announced in November 2009 that he would move the trials to a civilian court in the United States. Supporters said it sent the right message to the rest of the world that U.S. courts were the fairest and best venue for trials. 

At the time, President Obama said it was Holder's decision. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday's decision again remained with Holder. 

"The president's primary concern here is that the perpetrators ... of that terrible attack on the American people be brought to justice as swiftly as possible and as fairly as possible," Carney said before Holder's remarks. 

After Holder's original announcement, attempts to place the suspects in a New York City courtroom were met with fierce resistance from area residents who said they didn't want to deal with another possible terror threat in downtown Manhattan that the case would bring. A potential plan to house the suspects in a prison in Thomson, Ill., also faced considerable scrutiny. 

During the lame-duck session last December, Congress acted to prevent the federal trials by attached to a defense authorization bill provisions that prohibited detainees from being brought to trial in the United States. 

Family members of the victims said they were pleased with Holder's decision despite his reasoning. 

"I am frankly shocked by the attorney general's comments," said David Beamer, the father of Todd Beamer, who is credited with preventing United Flight 93 from hitting its target. The plane instead crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa.

"I guess one of my reactions is is I'm thankful there are three branches of government because the last thing I want to see is KSM returning to New York City for a civilian trial," Beamer said.  

Debra Burlingame, head of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, said the group is "relieved" Obama "abandoned his plan" to bring the conspirators to U.S. soil. 

"We are grateful to the president for reversing his decision, conveyed to the families just last month, to go forward with civilian trials and seek repeal of congressional legislation that stripped funding for that effort," said Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which was forced into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

"We have great confidence in the military commissions legal framework, which is fair, lawful, effective and consistent with our tradition and values as a nation," she said. 

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said that the military commissions are the appropriate place for the trials.

"This means with certainty that the trial will not be in New York. While not unexpected, this is the final nail in the coffin of that wrong-headed idea," Schumer said. 

But ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, which vehemently opposes military courts, said the Obama administration's decision "is completely wrong."

"There is a reason this system is condemned: it is rife with constitutional and procedural problems and undermines the fundamental American values that have made us a model throughout the world for centuries. Attorney General Holder's previous decision to try the 9/11 defendants in federal court was absolutely the right call but this flip flop on the part of the Obama administration is devastating for the rule of law and greatly undermines America's standing abroad," Romero said.

J.D. Gordon, a former Defense Department spokesman for secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, said trusting the civilian jury with some of the most dangerous terror suspects "is really a flawed mistake." Gordon noted that Mohammed and the other co-conspirators were already going through the military commission process before the Obama administration halted the case. 

"I think they ran into the buzz saw of reality where the American public didn't see it in their best interest to hold Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian trial where he could theoretically be acquitted there and also where he'd have a chance to have his rhetoric used against us," Gordon said. 

With the case now returning to the military commission, the process will start all over again. After the administration announced in 2009 it planned to move the trials to federal court, the military withdrew its charges without prejudice -- an action that effectively allowed it to preserve its legal position so that if the cases returned to the commissions in the future, the men could be charged again. 

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Holder should try to have more faith in the military commission process. 

"The United States has a long history of successfully utilizing military tribunals dating back to the American Revolution, and it's why Congress set up the military commission process. Instead of taking this opportunity to blame Congress for preventing the 9/11 terrorists from having civilian trials, the administration should assure Americans that it will keep all terrorists off U.S. soil and utilize the military commission process in Guantanamo Bay to its full extent," Grassley said.

As the Justice Department prepared to announce its reversal, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday also decided to pass on a case that would have further determined the legal rights of the detainees kept at Guantanamo Bay.

The justices turned away a petition asking them to establish the standards of evidence lower court judges should use to determine if the detainees can remain locked up while waiting for their cases to be heard.

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