Japan Soil Measurements Surprisingly High
by Jocelyn Kaiser on 25 March 2011, 6:14 PM | Permanent Link | 12 Comments
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Concerns about radiation in Japan have now spread to the soil surrounding the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. One level that was reported this week was high enough to suggest people in that area should be evacuated, an expert says. But he cautions that it's hard to draw conclusions about these spot measurements without more data.

Today, Japanese officials told the population living up to 30 kilometers from the plant that they should consider leaving the area, expanding the previous 20-kilometer radius evacuation zone. But according to news reports, the advice stems from difficulties in supplying the region with food and water, not radiation levels.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday the Japanese science ministry began to report measurements of cesium-137 in upland soil around the plant. The levels are highest from two points northeast of the plant, ranging from 8690 becquerels/kilogram to a high of 163,000 Bq/kg measured on 20 March from a point in Iitate about 40 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima plant.

The soil measurements are more significant for evacuation purposes than radioactivity in the air, says nuclear engineer Shih-Yew Chen of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, because cesium dust stays underfoot while air is transient. Levels of cesium-137 are also more important than soil readings of iodine-131, which is short-lived and more of a concern in milk and vegetables. "It's the cesium that would prompt an evacuation," says Chen.

Based on a rough estimate, a person standing on soil with 163,000 Bq/kg of cesium-137 would receive about 150 millisieverts per year of radiation, says Chen. This is well above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard of 50 millisieverts per year for an evacuation. (Per day, it's 0.41 millisieverts, which is equivalent to four chest x-rays.) But Chen adds, "one point [of data] doesn't mean that much."

The hot spot is similar to levels found in some areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in the former Soviet Union. Assuming the radiation is no more than 2 centimeters deep, Chen calculates that 163,000 Bq/kg is roughly equivalent to 8 million Bq/m2. The highest cesium-137 levels in some villages near Chernobyl were 5 million Bq/m2.

For our complete coverage of the crisis in Japan, see our Japan Earthquake page. For Science's answers to reader questions about the crisis, see our Quake Questions page.
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Re cap so far...
Melt through of pressure vessels
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...Fukushima-plant.html
Unit 2 containment Vessel leaking
http://news.xinhuanet.com/e...04/18/c_13834199.htm
Worse than thought
http://www.salem-news.com/a...ushima-worse-dj2.php
Government doubles estimate on radiation leaked at Fukushima
http://www.tokyotimes.jp/po...ed+at+Fukushima.html
Dozens of workers from Fukushima nuclear plant 'cannot be found'
http://www.theaustralian.co...frg6so-1226080166533


Down play this. lol

Your "worse than thought is a rehash of the same story you posted twice so far" It quote the same fault laden "study" from the same people who are getting weak minded people to believe things that aren't true. Do you believe if you post a version of it a forth time it will become more truthful?

Your "Melt through of pressure vessels" story talks about a leaking pressure vessel but then has a picture of something totally different. More misleading journalism.

quote Originally posted by dennis_6: Re cap so far... Melt through of pressure vessels http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...Fukushima-plant.html Unit 2 containment Vessel leaking http://news.xinhuanet.com/e...04/18/c_13834199.htm Worse than thought http://www.salem-news.com/a...ushima-worse-dj2.php Government doubles estimate on radiation leaked at Fukushima http://www.tokyotimes.jp/po...ed+at+Fukushima.html Dozens of workers from Fukushima nuclear plant 'cannot be found' http://www.theaustralian.co...frg6so-1226080166533 Down play this. lol

[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 06-22-2011).]

By Julian Ryall, Tokyo

1:06AM BST 09 Jun 2011

The findings of the report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a "melt-through" as being "far worse than a core meltdown" and "the worst possibility in a nuclear accident."

A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the company is presently revising the road-map for bringing the plant under control, including the time required to achieve cold shutdown of the reactors.

In a best-case scenario, the company says it will be able to achieve that by October, although that may have to be revised in light of the report.

Water that was pumped into the pressure vessels to cool the fuel rods, becoming highly radioactive in the process, has been confirmed to have leaked out of the containment vessels and outside the buildings that house the reactors.

Tepco said it is trying to contain the contaminated water and prevent it from leaking into the sea, but elevated levels of radiation have been confirmed in the ocean off the plant.
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The radiation will also have contaminated the soil and plant and animal life around the facility, making the task of cleaning up more difficult and expensive, as well as taking longer.

The experts have also yet to come up with a plan for decommissioning the ruined plant. Studies have estimated that the cost of the accident at Fukushima may rise as high as $250 billion over the next 10 years.

The pressure vessel of the No. 1 reactor is now believed to have suffered damage just five hours after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contrary to an estimation released by Tepco, which estimated the failure at 15 hours later.

Melt-downs of the fuel in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors followed over the following days with the molten fuel collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessels before burning through and into the external steel containment vessels.

The fuel appears to be stable at present as it is being cooled by water pumped into the vessels, although it will complicate the emergency recovery plan put forward by the government.

The report comes after Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency doubled its initial estimate of the amount of radioactivity that was released from the plant in the days immediately after it was destroyed by the tsunami.

In early April, the agency said some 370,000 terabecquerels escaped from the facility. It now believes that figure was 770,000 terabecquerels. One terabecquerel is a trillion becquerels, the standard measure of radiation, while the permissible level of iodine-131 for vegetables and fish is 2,000 becquerels per kilogram.

Combined, the two announcements will raise further questions about the true scale of the problem at the plant and the measures being taken to get the situation under control.

"The recovery effort at the plant is likely to be more difficult as they will not be able to use their previous plan to contain the fuel," Yoshiaki Oka, a professor of nuclear science at Tokyo's Waseda University told The Daily Telegraph.

"So it may take longer and be more difficult, but it is something they have to do.

"But we now know that this happened at the very beginning of the accident, so I see no particular additional effects on human health," he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...Fukushima-plant.html

Another article that states the pressure vessels were melted through and the excuse that an article is invalid because it has a random picture of the plant in it, is BS. Thats like saying the Joplin Tornado didn't happen because there was an aerial pic of Joplin before the tornado in the article.

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 06-23-2011).]

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: I already read the headline and can deduce it lacks basic scientific and journalistic standards. I have never said high levels or any levels of radiation are good for anyone. I am not surprised you are trying to promote lies about what I have said. Clearly Fukushima is far worse than 3 Mile Island. Can you find a single example where I have made some statement that it was not worse, after it became worse that TMI? Or is it that again you have no problem with totally distorting the truth to fit your alarmist storyline? Many people died at Chernobyl. There has yet to be a single death attributable to radiation at Fukushima. Seems to me to be quite easy to judge which one is worse. But then I am not a fear monger poster.

So you know more than the Physicist that CNN was interviewing? Seriously?

Nope. I am not trying to minimize this catastrophe. The number of immediate fatalities is a number that can be easily measured and is without dispute. I know you like to quote pie in the sky numbers of fatalities that can't be actually measured or proven and you know I will dismiss them so why go there?

What do we know for sure:

No exploding core

No cloud of radioactive gas that drifted over populated areas

No deaths of emergency workers from acute radiation poisoning.

So seriously do you think this disaster is as equal to or worse than Chernobyl?

Seriously?

And btw, the wacko story that tries to put TMI close to this disaster or Chernobyl is a joke. The most humorous line is ""With Three Mile Island... ... you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end.

I take it that the wacko states that TMI has not ended because the building is still standing there.

quote Originally posted by JazzMan: You edited your post, but I'm replying to the original post: Just curious, are directly-attributable deaths the only criteria you use to develop a personal understanding of how bad a reactor accident is? Assuming that's the case, on a scale of 1-10, with deaths a 10, how would you rate: Loss of habitable land Loss of farmland/pasture Loss of family homes and communities Economic costs-taxpayer money spent cleaning up the mess and bailing out the utility/reactor owner Economic costs of resettlement and restitution for loss of businesses, homes, farms, income, jobs, ranches, etc. Medical costs associated with long-term treatment of illnesses caused directly and indirectly by the accident, including PTSD, cancer, etc. (Note, because Japan has a top-notch national health care service, these costs will be borne by the taxpayer anyway.) You keep repeating the fact that nobody's died (yet) as a direct result of Fukushima, and your intent in doing so seems to be to say that nuclear power is safe. Yes, it's true nobody's died (yet), but I gotta say I'm disappointed that you can't seem to acknowledge the fact that the living have suffered greatly from Fukushima, that the needs of the living matter too. One person dies and it's a tragedy, but over 60,000 (and maybe more if the exclusion zone is bumped to 30km as is now being talked about) people are driven off their land, out of their homes, and you don't even blink an eye. Do you even care about the Fukushima refugees? Or is nuclear power so important to you that their lives, their suffering, is trivial by comparison?

[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 06-23-2011).]

To specifically answer your question.

NONE of them comes close to the cost of a human life.

So let me ask you. What would be your equation as to the the the quantity of each of the things you stated to equal a human life?

quote Originally posted by JazzMan: You edited your post, but I'm replying to the original post: Just curious, are directly-attributable deaths the only criteria you use to develop a personal understanding of how bad a reactor accident is? Assuming that's the case, on a scale of 1-10, with deaths a 10, how would you rate: Loss of habitable land Loss of farmland/pasture Loss of family homes and communities Economic costs-taxpayer money spent cleaning up the mess and bailing out the utility/reactor owner Economic costs of resettlement and restitution for loss of businesses, homes, farms, income, jobs, ranches, etc. Medical costs associated with long-term treatment of illnesses caused directly and indirectly by the accident, including PTSD, cancer, etc. (Note, because Japan has a top-notch national health care service, these costs will be borne by the taxpayer anyway.) You keep repeating the fact that nobody's died (yet) as a direct result of Fukushima, and your intent in doing so seems to be to say that nuclear power is safe. Yes, it's true nobody's died (yet), but I gotta say I'm disappointed that you can't seem to acknowledge the fact that the living have suffered greatly from Fukushima, that the needs of the living matter too. One person dies and it's a tragedy, but over 60,000 (and maybe more if the exclusion zone is bumped to 30km as is now being talked about) people are driven off their land, out of their homes, and you don't even blink an eye. Do you even care about the Fukushima refugees? Or is nuclear power so important to you that their lives, their suffering, is trivial by comparison?

quote Originally posted by carnut122: Hey Phonedawgz, are you still as confident about nuclear power in light of the fact that two US nuclear power plants are on the verge of being flooded out? If I'm not mistaken, those two plants would be upwind from you.

It's more likely that I would die by getting hit by a car, on my birthday while checking my mail box, than I would suffer any ill effects from non-comunist industrial nuclear power.

I am more likely to win the lottery twice than suffer any ill effects of the two power plants that you are referring to.

It's more likely that I would die from the stress of reading wacko nuclear posts than die from one of the power plants that you posted about.

So am I worried? Nope.

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: To specifically answer your question. NONE of them comes close to the cost of a human life. So let me ask you. What would be your equation as to the the the quantity of each of the things you stated to equal a human life?

I've never said they equal a human life, and you know it. What I have said, repeatedly, and what you have ignored, repeatedly, is the fact that all the factors are also important when making the decision if nuclear fission is a good decision or bad. You want to make it either or, a super-simplistic way of looking at things (but pretty standard for your ideology) that ignores so many other factors that it's essentially meaningless.

The fact of the matter is, that once you start factoring in costs of cleaning up nuclear disasters, the full costs, not just the cost in lives, nuclear fission is just not an economically viable means of producing electricity.

That one reactor complex in Fukushima will likely cost the Japanese economy nearly as much as all the other damage from the earthquake and tsunami combined. One little plant, just a few acres in size, will end up putting a dent in the Japanese economy that they will likely not be able to recover from in all the years left to you, me, and your children, their children, probably even their grandchildren.

Is that equal to a human life? Of course not! But only a true moron would ignore all the other costs just to push a personal ideological agenda. I know you're not a moron, your posts in technical are proof of that, so what are you when you ignore or downplay all the rest?

BTW, if there was no radioactive cloud released over the rest of Japan, how do you explain all the radiation contamination in the dozens of square miles around the plant? Maybe the radiation took a cab? LOL.

quote Originally posted by maryjane: They do seem to have their own special brand of problems over there. http://www.reuters.com/arti...dUSTRE75N0H320110624 3.3 ton "device" falls into reactor vessel and got stuck. I guess that "device" doesn't have a normal name. (Is that where my flying car went? )

Maybe it's a blowout preventer from BP's well in the Gulf? Gotta be something useful to do with one of those...

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: It's more likely that I would die by getting hit by a car, on my birthday while checking my mail box, than I would suffer any ill effects from non-comunist industrial nuclear power. I am more likely to win the lottery twice than suffer any ill effects of the two power plants that you are referring to. It's more likely that I would die from the stress of reading wacko nuclear posts than die from one of the power plants that you posted about. So am I worried? Nope.

So if government agents showed up at your door and told you to get out and leave all your stuff behind, that maybe you'd be able to go back someday, maybe even by next year, you'd have no problem with obeying? With living in a refugee evacuation center for a few months, maybe a year or two? With waiting a year or two ( or maybe never) to be compensated for the loss of your home, your land, your farm?

Credulity: Stretched to the point of breaking...

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: You don't actually believe that do you?

Actually, I do.

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Radioactive substances detected in children's urine in Fukushima

Jun 30, 2011, 10:29 GMT

Tokyo - A small amount of radioactive substances was found from urine samples of all of 10 children in Fukushima surveyed by a Japanese civic association and a French nongovernmental organization, the groups said Thursday.

David Boilley, president of the Acro radioactivity measuring body, told a news conference in Tokyo that the survey on 10 boys and girls aged between 6 and 16 in Fukushima city suggested there was a high possibility that children in and near the city had been exposed to radiation internally, Kyodo News reported.

The highest levels found by the survey were 1.13 becquerels of radioactive cesium-134 per 1 litre of urine from an 8-year-old girl, and 1.30 becquerels of cesium-137 in a 7-year-old boy, Kyodo said.

The city is located 60 kilometres north-west of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, which has been leaking radiaoactive material into the environment since it was hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The radiation levels detected did not represent an immediate risk to health, but those two isotopes of cesium have half-lives of two and 30 years respectively, raising concerns about the long-term contamination of the environment and locally grown foodstuffs.

The Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation, consisting of local parents, said the group would urge the central and local governments to have all citizens in the prefecture undergo detailed tests soon.

Acro previously investigated radiation exposure of children who lived near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which runs the plant, started its work Thursday to transfer low-level radiation-tainted water to a large floating container, which has a capacity to collect about 10,000 tons of water.

TEPCO said some 8,000 tons of water that the operator has stored at a temporary tank would be moved to the container, which is berthed along the quay near the plant, Kyodo reported.

The water came from the turbine buildings of reactors 5 and 6, and most of the water was believed to be seawater left after devastating tsunami waves hit the plant on March 11.

TEPCO has struggled to deal with 110,000 tons of contaminated water at the plant while a newly-installed water-treatment system has halted several times due to water leaks and other technical problems.
http://www.monstersandcriti...s-urine-in-Fukushima

Revealed: British government's plan to play down Fukushima

Internal emails seen by Guardian show PR campaign was launched to protect UK nuclear plans after tsunami in Japan

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* Rob Edwards
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 June 2011 21.36 BST
* Article history

Fukushima
Government officials launched a PR campaign to ensure the accident at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan did not derail plans for new nuclear power stations in the UK. Photograph: AP

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.

"This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally," wrote one official at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), whose name has been redacted. "We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear."

Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power.

The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who sits on the Commons environmental audit committee, condemned the extent of co-ordination between the government and nuclear companies that the emails appear to reveal.

"The government has no business doing PR for the industry and it would be appalling if its departments have played down the impact of Fukushima," he said.

Louise Hutchins, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, said the emails looked like "scandalous collusion". "This highlights the government's blind obsession with nuclear power and shows neither they, nor the industry, can be trusted when it comes to nuclear," she said.

The Fukushima accident, triggered by the Japan earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, has forced 80,000 people from their homes. Opinion polls suggest it has dented public support for nuclear power in Britain and around the world, with the governments of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Thailand and Malaysia cancelling planned nuclear power stations in the wake of the accident.

The business department emailed the nuclear firms and their representative body, the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), on 13 March, two days after the disaster knocked out nuclear plants and their backup safety systems at Fukushima. The department argued it was not as bad as the "dramatic" TV pictures made it look, even though the consequences of the accident were still unfolding and two major explosions at reactors on the site were yet to happen.

"Radiation released has been controlled – the reactor has been protected," said the BIS official, whose name has been blacked out. "It is all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation like this."

The official suggested that if companies sent in their comments, they could be incorporated into briefs to ministers and government statements. "We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public.

"Anti-nuclear people across Europe have wasted no time blurring this all into Chernobyl and the works," the official told Areva. "We need to quash any stories trying to compare this to Chernobyl."

Japanese officials initially rated the Fukushima accident as level four on the international nuclear event scale, meaning it had "local consequences". But it was raised to level seven on 11 April, officially making it a major accident" and putting it on a par with Chernobyl in 1986.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has released more than 80 emails sent in the weeks after Fukushima in response to requests under freedom of information legislation. They also show:

• Westinghouse said reported remarks on the cost of new nuclear power stations by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, were "unhelpful and a little premature".

• The company admitted its new reactor, AP1000, "was not designed for earthquakes [of] the magnitude of the earthquake in Japan", and would need to be modified for seismic areas such as Japan and California.

• The head of the DECC's office for nuclear development, Mark Higson, asked EDF to welcome the expected announcement of a safety review by the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, and added: "Not sure if EDF unilaterally asking for a review is wise. Might set off a bidding war."

• EDF promised to be "sensitive" to how remediation work at a UK nuclear site "might be seen in the light of events in Japan".

• It also requested that ministers did not delay approval for a new radioactive waste store at the Sizewell nuclear site in Suffolk, but accepting there was a "potential risk of judicial review".

•  The BIS warned it needed "a good industry response showing the safety of nuclear – otherwise it could have adverse consequences on the market".

On 7 April, the office for nuclear development invited companies to attend a meeting at the NIA's headquarters in London. The aim was "to discuss a joint communications and engagement strategy aimed at ensuring we maintain confidence among the British public on the safety of nuclear power stations and nuclear new-build policy in light of recent events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant".

Other documents released by the government's safety watchdog, the office for nuclear regulation, reveal that the text of an announcement on 5 April about the impact of Fukushima on the new nuclear programme was privately cleared with nuclear industry representatives at a meeting the previous week. According to one former regulator, who preferred not to be named, the degree of collusion was "truly shocking".

A spokesman for the DECC and BIS said: "Given the unprecedented events unfolding in Japan, it was appropriate to share information with key stakeholders, particularly those involved in operating nuclear sites. The government was very clear from the outset that it was important not to rush to judgment and that a response should be based on hard evidence. This is why we called on the chief nuclear inspector, Dr Mike Weightman, to provide a robust and evidence-based report."

A DECC source played down the significance of the emails from the unnamed BIS official, saying: "The junior BIS official was not responsible for nuclear policy and his views were irrelevant to ministers' decisions in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake."

Tom Burke, a former government environmental adviser and visiting professor at Imperial College London, warned that the British government was repeating mistakes made in Japan. "They are too close to industry, concealing problems, rather than revealing and dealing with them," he said.

"I would be much more reassured if DECC had been worrying about how the government would cope with the $200m-$300m of liabilities from a catastrophic nuclear accident in Britain."

The government last week confirmed plans for eight new nuclear stations in England and Wales. "If acceptable proposals come forward in appropriate places, they will not face unnecessary holdups," said the energy minister, Charles Hendry.

The NIA did not comment directly on the emails. "We are funded by our member companies to represent their commercial interests and further the compelling case for new nuclear build in the UK," said the association's spokesman.

"We welcome the interim findings of the independent regulator, Dr Mike Weightman, who has reported back to government that UK nuclear reactors are safe."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/e...-play-down-fukushima

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 06-30-2011).]

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Monday, June 13, 2011

High level of strontium found at Fukushima plant
Kyodo

Radioactive strontium up to 240 times the legal concentration limit has been detected in seawater samples collected near an intake at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday.

The utility said the substance was also found in groundwater near the plant's Nos. 1 and 2 reactors. The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it is the first time that the substance has been found in groundwater.

The agency said it is necessary to carefully monitor the possible effects of the strontium on fishery products near the plant.

Strontium tends to accumulate in bones and is believed to cause bone cancer and leukemia.

Meanwhile, Tepco on Sunday completed preparations to begin testing a newly installed radioactive water treatment system at the Fukushima plant soon, after it finished fixing an adsorption device designed to remove radioactive substances, company officials said.

The utility is expected to begin testing the system, intended to decontaminate highly radioactive water that is accumulating at the site and hampering work to restore the damaged plant, as early as Monday. The company is a couple of days behind the schedule to put the system into full operation, initially planned for June 15, it said.

The utility's preparations to begin testing the system hit a snag Sunday as the amount of water run through the adsorption device was lower than planned, indicating the possibility that piping or other parts may be clogged. The planned level of water recovered later, it said.

The utility is investigating the cause of the snag, the officials said.

Tepco initially planned to begin testing the radioactive water treatment system last Friday but postponed it because water leaks were found in the equipment that day.

The utility said that even if the start of the system's operation is delayed, it does not mean that leaks of contaminated water into the environment would occur "immediately."

The operation of the system is seen as crucial to containing the three-month-old nuclear crisis, as the decontaminated water is expected to eventually be recycled as a coolant for the reactors, which lost their cooling functions as a result of the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

Water has been injected into some of the reactors to keep the nuclear fuel cool, but vast pools of water containing large amounts of radioactive substances have been found on the plant's premises as a side effect of the water-injection measure.

The system, set up at a facility where the highly radioactive water from the Nos. 2 and 3 units has been transferred, is expected to be able to treat about 1,200 tons per day, reducing the concentration of radioactive substances to around one-thousandth to one-ten thousandth.
http://search.japantimes.co...in/nn20110613a1.html

Call for Chris Huhne to resign over Fukushima emails

Former party chief executive in Scotland says Huhne must go over 'conspiracy' to protect nuclear industry

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* Rob Edwards
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 July 2011 22.03 BST
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chris-huhne
Chris Huhne faces mounting criticism over his department's attempts to co-ordinate a PR strategy around the Fukushima disaster. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

A prominent Liberal Democrat has called for Chris Huhne to resign immediately as energy and climate change secretary after emails were released detailing his officials' efforts to co-ordinate a PR response to the Fukushima disaster with the nuclear industry. Civil servants in the energy and business departments were apparently trying to minimise the impact of the disaster on public support for nuclear power.

Andy Myles, the party's former chief executive in Scotland, said: "This deliberate and (sadly) very effective attempt to 'calm' the reporting of the true story of Fukushima is a terrible betrayal of liberal values. In my view it is not acceptable that a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister presides over a department deeply involved in a blatant conspiracy designed to manipulate the truth in order to protect corporate interests".

The leader of the Lib Dems in the European parliament, Fiona Hall, said nuclear plans should be put on hold.

"These emails corroborate my own impression that there has been a strange silence in the UK following the Fukushima disaster ... in the UK, new nuclear sites have been announced before the results of the Europe-wide review of nuclear safety has been completed. Today's news strengthens the case for the government to halt new nuclear plans until an independent and transparent review has been conducted."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/u...ima-emails-criticism