Seven-year temporal variation of Caesium-137 discharge inventory from the port of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant: continuous monthly estimation of Caesium-137 discharge in the period from April 2011 to June 2018

Abstract

ABSTRACT After direct discharges of highly contaminated water of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (1 F) from April to May 2011, Kanda suggested that relatively small amounts of run-off of radionuclides from the 1 F port into the Fukushima coastal region subsequently continued by his estimation method. However, the estimation period was limited to up to September 2012. Therefore, this paper estimatesthe discharge inventory up to June 2018. In the missing period, the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings have continued efforts to stop the discharge, and consequently, the radionuclide concentration in seawater inside the 1 F port has gradually diminished. We show the monthly discharge inventory of 137Cs up to June 2018 by two methods, i.e., Kanda method partially improved by the authors and a more sophisticated method using Voronoi tessellation reflecting the increase in the number of monitoring points inside the 1 F port. The results show that the former always yields overestimated results compared with the latter, but the ratio of the former to the latter is less than one order of magnitude. Using these results, we evaluate the impact of the discharge inventory from the 1 F port into the coastal area and radiation dose upon fish ingestion.