Fukushima radiation alarms doctors Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation. Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 18 Aug 2011 14:09
Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.
"How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.
"The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant.
There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation.
Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming.
According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs.
Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas.
Distrust of the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster is now common among people living in the effected prefectures, and people are concerned about their health.
Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming.
When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure.
10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays.
It is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv.
TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings.
The Fukushima disaster has been rated as a "level seven" on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). This level, the highest, is the same as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and is defined by the scale as: "[A] major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."
The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters are the only nuclear accidents to have been rated level seven on the scale, which is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the scale used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times more severe than the previous level.
Doctors in Japan are already treating patients suffering health effects they attribute to radiation from the ongoing nuclear disaster.
"We have begun to see increased nosebleeds, stubborn cases of diarrhoea, and flu-like symptoms in children," Dr Yuko Yanagisawa, a physician at Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, told Al Jazeera.
She attributes the symptoms to radiation exposure, and added: "We are encountering new situations we cannot explain with the body of knowledge we have relied upon up until now."
"The situation at the Daiichi Nuclear facility in Fukushima has not yet been fully stabilised, and we can't yet see an end in sight," Yanagisawa said. "Because the nuclear material has not yet been encapsulated, radiation continues to stream into the environment."
Health concerns
Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, reporting from Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, said of the recently detected high radiation readings: "It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami, but no one realised until now."
Workers at Fukushima are only allowed to be exposed to 250 mSv of ionising radiation per year.
Junichi Matsumoto, a TEPCO spokesman, said the high dose was discovered in an area that does not hamper recovery efforts at the stricken plant.
Yet radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit was detected in processed tea made in Tochigi City, about 160km from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to the Tochigi Prefectural Government, who said radioactive cesium was detected in tea processed from leaves harvested in the city in early July.
The level is more than 3 times the provisional government limit.
Yanagisawa's hospital is located approximately 200km from Fukushima, so the health problems she is seeing that she attributes to radiation exposure causes her to be concerned by what she believes to be a grossly inadequate response from the government.
From her perspective, the only thing the government has done is to, on April 25, raise the acceptable radiation exposure limit for children from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year.
"This has caused controversy, from the medical point of view," Yanagisawa told Al Jazeera. "This is certainly an issue that involves both personal internal exposures as well as low-dose exposures."
Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan Executive Director, said: "It is utterly outrageous to raise the exposure levels for children to twenty times the maximum limit for adults."
"The Japanese government cannot simply increase safety limits for the sake of political convenience or to give the impression of normality."
Authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low-dose ionizing radiation are published in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII (BEIR VII) report from the US National Academy of Sciences.
The report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence proving there is no exposure to ionizing radiation that is risk-free.
The BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of all forms of cancer other than leukemia of about 1-in-10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1-in-100,000; and a 1-in-17,500 increased risk of cancer death.
Dr Helen Caldicott, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is equally concerned about the health effects from Japan's nuclear disaster.
"Radioactive elements get into the testicles and ovaries, and these cause genetic disease like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation," she told Al Jazeera. "There are 2,600 of these diseases that get into our genes and are passed from generation to generation, forever."
So far, the only cases of acute radiation exposure have involved TEPCO workers at the stricken plant. Lower doses of radiation, particularly for children, are what many in the medical community are most concerned about, according to Dr Yanagisawa.
"Humans are not yet capable of accurately measuring the low dose exposure or internal exposure," she explained, "Arguing 'it is safe because it is not yet scientifically proven [to be unsafe]' would be wrong. That fact is that we are not yet collecting enough information to prove the situations scientifically. If that is the case, we can never say it is safe just by increasing the annual 1mSv level twenty fold."
Her concern is that the new exposure standards by the Japanese government do not take into account differences between adults and children, since children's sensitivity to radiation exposure is several times higher than that of adults.
Al Jazeera contacted Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office for comment on the situation.
Speaking on behalf of the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Relations for the Prime Minister's office, Noriyuki Shikata said that the Japanese government "refers to the ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection] recommendation in 2007, which says the reference levels of radiological protection in emergency exposure situations is 20-100 mSv per year. The Government of Japan has set planned evacuation zones and specific spots recommended for evacuation where the radiation levels reach 20 mSv/year, in order to avoid excessive radiation exposure."
The prime minister's office explained that approximately 23bn yen ($300mn) is planned for decontamination efforts, and the government plans to have a decontamination policy "by around the end of August", with a secondary budget of about 97bn yen ($1.26bn) for health management and monitoring operations in the affected areas.
When questioned about the issue of "acute radiation exposure", Shikata pointed to the Japanese government having received a report from TEPCO about six of their workers having been exposed to more than 250 mSv, but did not mention any reports of civilian exposures.
Prime Minister Kan's office told Al Jazeera that, for their ongoing response to the Fukushima crisis, "the government of Japan has conducted all the possible countermeasures such as introduction of automatic dose management by ID codes for all workers and 24 hour allocation of doctors. The government of Japan will continue to tackle the issue of further improving the health management including medium and long term measures".
Shikata did not comment about Kodama's findings.
Kodama, who is also a doctor of internal medicine, has been working on decontamination of radioactive materials at radiation facilities in hospitals of the University of Tokyo for the past several decades.
"We had rain in Tokyo on March 21 and radiation increased to .2 micosieverts/hour and, since then, the level has been continuously high," said Kodama, who added that his reporting of radiation findings to the government has not been met an adequate reaction. "At that time, the chief cabinet secretary, Mr Edano, told the Japanese people that there would be no immediate harm to their health."
Kodama is an expert in internal exposure to radiation, and is concerned that the government has not implemented a strong response geared towards measuring radioactivity in food.
"Although three months have passed since the accident already, why have even such simple things have not been done yet?" he said. "I get very angry and fly into a rage."
According to Kodama, the major problem caused by internal radiation exposure is the generation of cancer cells as the radiation causes unnatural cellular mutation.
"Radiation has a high risk to embryos in pregnant women, juveniles, and highly proliferative cells of people of growing ages. Even for adults, highly proliferative cells, such as hairs, blood, and intestinal epithelium cells, are sensitive to radiation."
'Children are at greater risk'
Early on in the disaster, Dr Makoto Kondo of the department of radiology of Keio University's School of Medicine warned of "a large difference in radiation effects on adults compared to children".
Kondo explained the chances of children developing cancer from radiation exposure was many times higher than adults.
"Children's bodies are underdeveloped and easily affected by radiation, which could cause cancer or slow body development. It can also affect their brain development," he said.
Yanagisawa assumes that the Japanese government's evacuation standards, as well as their raising the permissible exposure limit to 20mSv "can cause hazards to children's health," and therefore "children are at a greater risk".
Nishio Masamichi, director of Japan's Hakkaido Cancer Centre and a radiation treatment specialist, published an article on July 27 titled: "The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation".
In the report, Masamichi said that such a dramatic increase in permitted radiation exposure was akin to "taking the lives of the people lightly". He believes that 20mSv is too high, especially for children who are far more susceptible to radiation.
"No level of radiation is acceptable, for children or anyone else," Caldicott told Al Jazeera. "Children are ten to 20 times more sensitive than adults. They must not be exposed to radiation of any level. At all."
In early July, officials with the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission announced that approximately 45 per cent of children in the Fukushima region had experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, according to a survey carried out in late March. The commission has not carried out any surveys since then.
"Now the Japanese government is underestimating the effects of low dosage and/or internal exposures and not raising the evacuation level even to the same level adopted in Chernobyl," Yanagisawa said. "People's lives are at stake, especially the lives of children, and it is obvious that the government is not placing top priority on the people's lives in their measures."
Caldicott feels the lack of a stronger response to safeguard the health of people in areas where radiation is found is "reprehensible".
"Millions of people need to be evacuated from those high radiation zones, especially the children."
Dr Yanagisawa is concerned about what she calls "late onset disorders" from radiation exposure resulting from the Fukushima disaster, as well as increasing cases of infertility and miscarriages.
"Incidence of cancer will undoubtedly increase," she said. "In the case of children, thyroid cancer and leukemia can start to appear after several years. In the case of adults, the incidence of various types of cancer will increase over the course of several decades."
Yanagisawa said it is "without doubt" that cancer rates among the Fukushima nuclear workers will increase, as will cases of lethargy, atherosclerosis, and other chronic diseases among the general population in the effected areas.
Yanagisawa believes it is time to listen to survivors of the atomic bombings. "To be exposed to radiation, to be told there is no immediate effect, and afterwards to be stricken with cancer - what it is like to suffer this way over a long period of time, only the survivors of the atomic bombings can truly understand," she told Al Jazeera.
Radioactive food and water
An August 1 press release from Japan's MHLW said no radioactive materials have been detected in the tap water of Fukushima prefecture, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters.
The government defines no detection as "no results exceeding the 'Index values for infants (radioactive iodine)'," and says "in case the level of radioactive iodine in tap water exceeds 100 Bq/kg, to refrain from giving infants formula milk dissolved by tap water, having them intake tap water … "
Yet, on June 27, results were published from a study that found 15 residents of Fukushima prefecture had tested positive for radiation in their urine.
Dr Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University, has been to Fukushima prefecture twice in order to take internal radiation exposure readings and facilitated the study.
"The risk of internal radiation is more dangerous than external radiation," Dr Kamada told Al Jazeera. "And internal radiation exposure does exist for Fukushima residents."
According to the MHLW, distribution of several food products in Fukushima Prefecture remain restricted. This includes raw milk, vegetables including spinach, kakina, and all other leafy vegetables, including cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and beef.
The distribution of tealeaves remains restricted in several prefectures, including all of Ibaraki, and parts of Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba, Kanagawa Prefectures.
Iwate prefecture suspended all beef exports because of caesium contamination on August 1, making it the fourth prefecture to do so. Due to caesium contaminated straw, beef exports have been banned in four Japanese prefectures [EPA]
Jyunichi Tokuyama, an expert with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, told Al Jazeera he did not know how to deal with the crisis. He was surprised because he did not expect radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, 300km from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
"The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive," Tokuyama told Al Jazeera.
Kamada feels the Japanese government is acting too slowly in response to the Fukushima disaster, and that the government needs to check radiation exposure levels "in each town and village" in Fukushima prefecture.
"They have to make a general map of radiation doses," he said. "Then they have to be concerned about human health levels, and radiation exposures to humans. They have to make the exposure dose map of Fukushima prefecture. Fukushima is not enough. Probably there are hot spots outside of Fukushima. So they also need to check ground exposure levels."
Caldicott said people around the world should be concerned about the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Radiation that continues to be released has global consequences.
More than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water has been released into the ocean from the stricken plant. Scientists warn that tuna caught off the Pacific coastal prefecture in northern Japan are now at risk of being radioactive [EPA]
"Those radioactive elements bio-concentrate in the algae, then the crustaceans eat that, which are eaten by small then big fish," Caldicott said. "That's why big fish have high concentrations of radioactivity and humans are at the top of the food chain, so we get the most radiation, ultimately."
On August 6, the 66th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said: "Regarding nuclear energy, we will deeply reflect over the myth that nuclear energy is safe. We will thoroughly look into the cause of the [Fukushima] accident, and to secure safety, we'll implement fundamental measures while also decreasing the degree of dependence on nuclear power generation, to aim for a society that does not rely on nuclear power."
But doctors, scientists, agricultural experts, and much of the general public in Japan feel that a much more aggressive response to the nuclear disaster is needed.
Kodama believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas. He cited Japan's itai itai disease, when cadmium poisoning from mining resulted in the government eventually having to spend 800 billion yen to decontaminate an area of 1,500 hectares.
"How much cost will be needed if the area is 1,000 times larger?"
Portland families helping families from Fukushima Posted: Aug 19, 2011 1:37 AM Updated: Aug 19, 2011 1:39 AM By Natalie Brand - email
* Hahako Network * Portland Host Families
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) -
More than five months after the devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, families in the disaster zone are still struggling to live normal lives. However, Portland families are reaching out to help, hosting moms and children from Fukushima and allowing them a much needed break.
"I think it's part of the healing process," said Chifumi Brown, who's from Japan, but now lives in Portland. She invited a mom from Fukushima, Yoshie Arai, and her son, Tatsuki, 10, to stay with them for a few weeks.
They've enjoyed not only the best of a Portland summer, but also the activities taken for granted, such as playing outside, riding bikes, hiking and eating fresh fruits and vegetables. Yoshie Arai says she has to keep her son indoors back home, where she worries about radiation and the impact to her son's health.
"Yoshie told me her 10-year-old son started having symptoms," said Brown. "Nose bleeding and fevers. That's made her feel like it's time to get away."
Brown told Fox 12 when Tatsuki first arrived in Portland at the end of July, he appeared pale and suffered from nightmares following the disaster.
Now, thousands of miles away from daily aftershocks and concern over health, food, safety, Tatsuki and Yoshie Arai can relax, laugh and briefly escape the stresses of life in the aftermath of an unprecedented disaster.
"Just a normal life like we have here is like a dream for them," said Kurumi Conley, who's also hosting a family from Japan. She opened her home in Northeast Portland Thursday to the host families and their visitors Thursday, allowing them a chance to talk and share their experiences.
"As a mother, you do whatever is best for your child," said Chifumi Brown. "I think that's universal."
Brown's guests, the Arai family, head back to Japan this weekend.
"There's a lot of unknown," said Brown, speaking on behalf of Yoshie. "How long this is going to last; what is (safe) and what is not. Hearing her personal story is just really heartbreaking."
Yoshie Arai, whose husband stayed behind in Japan to work, said she's nervous to return, but grateful for their time here and new friendships made in Portland.
Marine biologist Alexandra Morton sees a need to test returning sockeye salmon for radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
“There was a large release of radioactive material in the water and in the air,” Morton told the Straight in a phone interview from her home on Malcolm Island. “I suspect that this generation of sockeye were out of the way, probably on their way home. But my sense of this is we need to test everywhere we can. As soon as I heard about this, I covered my gardens. I suspect that government doesn’t know how to deal with this, and in the face of it they just don’t want us to know.”
An estimated four million sockeye have started coming back to the Fraser River, and people in the fishing industry are catching them.
Ernie Crey, fisheries advisor to the Sto:lo Tribal Council, agrees with Morton. “I think it’s a practical idea,” Crey told the Straight by phone. Asked if the returning fish are safe, he said: “I don’t know. This is a good question.”
However, Crey doesn’t expect the federal government to go ahead and test salmon for radiation. “That’s not something DFO [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] is going to voluntarily do or Health Canada or Environment Canada,” he said.
Responding by email to a query by the Straight, Fisheries and Oceans spokesperson Lara Sloan wrote that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency “would be responsible for deciding what fish for consumption would need to be tested for food safety”.
CFIA spokesperson Mark Clarke said the agency could not comment by the Straight ’s deadline.
According to Morton, sockeye are known to go as far out as the Bering Sea, and from there, swim back across the Pacific Ocean. “So they have to turn homewards at some point…but also they’re right out in the open Pacific…and they go on a big circle there,” she said. “They’re eating plankton that’s eating smaller things.”
Host: “Workers at Japan’s Fukushima plant say the ground underneath the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is escaping through the cracks” [...]
Dr. Robert Jacobs, Hiroshima Peace Institute: “It’s a very serious and alarming development because this started to happen specifically after two large earthquakes in the last few weeks, there was a 6.4 on the 31 of July 31 and a 6.0 on August 12″ [...]
“It’s an indication that radioactive material is moving under the ground” [...]
“When you have a fragile structure that’s already suffered a great deal of damage and when you have continual aftershocks at the level of six-point, or there’s been some even higher, what we have now is we have the radioactive core that has melted down into the basement, into the bottom of the containment vessel of these reactors, and if the radiation level is going down, where it’s been monitored inside the buildings, and if the water pressure is going down, and the temperature is going down, it’s not that the radiation is just suddenly going away, it means that the radioactive material, the melted core, is simply moving further away from where it’s been measured. And it may have — as a result of these aftershocks — be moving down out of the building itself.” [....]
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01:51 PM
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Posts: 9122 From: Waleska, GA, USA Registered: Jan 2004
Fukushima radiation alarms doctors Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation. Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 18 Aug 2011 14:09
Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.
"How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.
"The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant.
There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation.
Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming.
According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs.
Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas.
Distrust of the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster is now common among people living in the effected prefectures, and people are concerned about their health.
Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming.
When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure.
10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays.
It is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv.
TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings.
The Fukushima disaster has been rated as a "level seven" on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). This level, the highest, is the same as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and is defined by the scale as: "[A] major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."
The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters are the only nuclear accidents to have been rated level seven on the scale, which is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the scale used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times more severe than the previous level.
Doctors in Japan are already treating patients suffering health effects they attribute to radiation from the ongoing nuclear disaster.
"We have begun to see increased nosebleeds, stubborn cases of diarrhoea, and flu-like symptoms in children," Dr Yuko Yanagisawa, a physician at Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, told Al Jazeera.
She attributes the symptoms to radiation exposure, and added: "We are encountering new situations we cannot explain with the body of knowledge we have relied upon up until now."
"The situation at the Daiichi Nuclear facility in Fukushima has not yet been fully stabilised, and we can't yet see an end in sight," Yanagisawa said. "Because the nuclear material has not yet been encapsulated, radiation continues to stream into the environment."
Health concerns
Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, reporting from Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, said of the recently detected high radiation readings: "It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami, but no one realised until now."
Workers at Fukushima are only allowed to be exposed to 250 mSv of ionising radiation per year.
Junichi Matsumoto, a TEPCO spokesman, said the high dose was discovered in an area that does not hamper recovery efforts at the stricken plant.
Yet radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit was detected in processed tea made in Tochigi City, about 160km from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to the Tochigi Prefectural Government, who said radioactive cesium was detected in tea processed from leaves harvested in the city in early July.
The level is more than 3 times the provisional government limit.
Yanagisawa's hospital is located approximately 200km from Fukushima, so the health problems she is seeing that she attributes to radiation exposure causes her to be concerned by what she believes to be a grossly inadequate response from the government.
From her perspective, the only thing the government has done is to, on April 25, raise the acceptable radiation exposure limit for children from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year.
"This has caused controversy, from the medical point of view," Yanagisawa told Al Jazeera. "This is certainly an issue that involves both personal internal exposures as well as low-dose exposures."
Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan Executive Director, said: "It is utterly outrageous to raise the exposure levels for children to twenty times the maximum limit for adults."
"The Japanese government cannot simply increase safety limits for the sake of political convenience or to give the impression of normality."
Authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low-dose ionizing radiation are published in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII (BEIR VII) report from the US National Academy of Sciences.
The report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence proving there is no exposure to ionizing radiation that is risk-free.
The BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of all forms of cancer other than leukemia of about 1-in-10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1-in-100,000; and a 1-in-17,500 increased risk of cancer death.
Dr Helen Caldicott, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is equally concerned about the health effects from Japan's nuclear disaster.
"Radioactive elements get into the testicles and ovaries, and these cause genetic disease like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation," she told Al Jazeera. "There are 2,600 of these diseases that get into our genes and are passed from generation to generation, forever."
So far, the only cases of acute radiation exposure have involved TEPCO workers at the stricken plant. Lower doses of radiation, particularly for children, are what many in the medical community are most concerned about, according to Dr Yanagisawa.
"Humans are not yet capable of accurately measuring the low dose exposure or internal exposure," she explained, "Arguing 'it is safe because it is not yet scientifically proven [to be unsafe]' would be wrong. That fact is that we are not yet collecting enough information to prove the situations scientifically. If that is the case, we can never say it is safe just by increasing the annual 1mSv level twenty fold."
Her concern is that the new exposure standards by the Japanese government do not take into account differences between adults and children, since children's sensitivity to radiation exposure is several times higher than that of adults.
Al Jazeera contacted Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office for comment on the situation.
Speaking on behalf of the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Relations for the Prime Minister's office, Noriyuki Shikata said that the Japanese government "refers to the ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection] recommendation in 2007, which says the reference levels of radiological protection in emergency exposure situations is 20-100 mSv per year. The Government of Japan has set planned evacuation zones and specific spots recommended for evacuation where the radiation levels reach 20 mSv/year, in order to avoid excessive radiation exposure."
The prime minister's office explained that approximately 23bn yen ($300mn) is planned for decontamination efforts, and the government plans to have a decontamination policy "by around the end of August", with a secondary budget of about 97bn yen ($1.26bn) for health management and monitoring operations in the affected areas.
When questioned about the issue of "acute radiation exposure", Shikata pointed to the Japanese government having received a report from TEPCO about six of their workers having been exposed to more than 250 mSv, but did not mention any reports of civilian exposures.
Prime Minister Kan's office told Al Jazeera that, for their ongoing response to the Fukushima crisis, "the government of Japan has conducted all the possible countermeasures such as introduction of automatic dose management by ID codes for all workers and 24 hour allocation of doctors. The government of Japan will continue to tackle the issue of further improving the health management including medium and long term measures".
Shikata did not comment about Kodama's findings.
Kodama, who is also a doctor of internal medicine, has been working on decontamination of radioactive materials at radiation facilities in hospitals of the University of Tokyo for the past several decades.
"We had rain in Tokyo on March 21 and radiation increased to .2 micosieverts/hour and, since then, the level has been continuously high," said Kodama, who added that his reporting of radiation findings to the government has not been met an adequate reaction. "At that time, the chief cabinet secretary, Mr Edano, told the Japanese people that there would be no immediate harm to their health."
Kodama is an expert in internal exposure to radiation, and is concerned that the government has not implemented a strong response geared towards measuring radioactivity in food.
"Although three months have passed since the accident already, why have even such simple things have not been done yet?" he said. "I get very angry and fly into a rage."
According to Kodama, the major problem caused by internal radiation exposure is the generation of cancer cells as the radiation causes unnatural cellular mutation.
"Radiation has a high risk to embryos in pregnant women, juveniles, and highly proliferative cells of people of growing ages. Even for adults, highly proliferative cells, such as hairs, blood, and intestinal epithelium cells, are sensitive to radiation."
'Children are at greater risk'
Early on in the disaster, Dr Makoto Kondo of the department of radiology of Keio University's School of Medicine warned of "a large difference in radiation effects on adults compared to children".
Kondo explained the chances of children developing cancer from radiation exposure was many times higher than adults.
"Children's bodies are underdeveloped and easily affected by radiation, which could cause cancer or slow body development. It can also affect their brain development," he said.
Yanagisawa assumes that the Japanese government's evacuation standards, as well as their raising the permissible exposure limit to 20mSv "can cause hazards to children's health," and therefore "children are at a greater risk".
Nishio Masamichi, director of Japan's Hakkaido Cancer Centre and a radiation treatment specialist, published an article on July 27 titled: "The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation".
In the report, Masamichi said that such a dramatic increase in permitted radiation exposure was akin to "taking the lives of the people lightly". He believes that 20mSv is too high, especially for children who are far more susceptible to radiation.
"No level of radiation is acceptable, for children or anyone else," Caldicott told Al Jazeera. "Children are ten to 20 times more sensitive than adults. They must not be exposed to radiation of any level. At all."
In early July, officials with the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission announced that approximately 45 per cent of children in the Fukushima region had experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, according to a survey carried out in late March. The commission has not carried out any surveys since then.
"Now the Japanese government is underestimating the effects of low dosage and/or internal exposures and not raising the evacuation level even to the same level adopted in Chernobyl," Yanagisawa said. "People's lives are at stake, especially the lives of children, and it is obvious that the government is not placing top priority on the people's lives in their measures."
Caldicott feels the lack of a stronger response to safeguard the health of people in areas where radiation is found is "reprehensible".
"Millions of people need to be evacuated from those high radiation zones, especially the children."
Dr Yanagisawa is concerned about what she calls "late onset disorders" from radiation exposure resulting from the Fukushima disaster, as well as increasing cases of infertility and miscarriages.
"Incidence of cancer will undoubtedly increase," she said. "In the case of children, thyroid cancer and leukemia can start to appear after several years. In the case of adults, the incidence of various types of cancer will increase over the course of several decades."
Yanagisawa said it is "without doubt" that cancer rates among the Fukushima nuclear workers will increase, as will cases of lethargy, atherosclerosis, and other chronic diseases among the general population in the effected areas.
Yanagisawa believes it is time to listen to survivors of the atomic bombings. "To be exposed to radiation, to be told there is no immediate effect, and afterwards to be stricken with cancer - what it is like to suffer this way over a long period of time, only the survivors of the atomic bombings can truly understand," she told Al Jazeera.
Radioactive food and water
An August 1 press release from Japan's MHLW said no radioactive materials have been detected in the tap water of Fukushima prefecture, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters.
The government defines no detection as "no results exceeding the 'Index values for infants (radioactive iodine)'," and says "in case the level of radioactive iodine in tap water exceeds 100 Bq/kg, to refrain from giving infants formula milk dissolved by tap water, having them intake tap water … "
Yet, on June 27, results were published from a study that found 15 residents of Fukushima prefecture had tested positive for radiation in their urine.
Dr Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University, has been to Fukushima prefecture twice in order to take internal radiation exposure readings and facilitated the study.
"The risk of internal radiation is more dangerous than external radiation," Dr Kamada told Al Jazeera. "And internal radiation exposure does exist for Fukushima residents."
According to the MHLW, distribution of several food products in Fukushima Prefecture remain restricted. This includes raw milk, vegetables including spinach, kakina, and all other leafy vegetables, including cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and beef.
The distribution of tealeaves remains restricted in several prefectures, including all of Ibaraki, and parts of Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba, Kanagawa Prefectures.
Iwate prefecture suspended all beef exports because of caesium contamination on August 1, making it the fourth prefecture to do so. Due to caesium contaminated straw, beef exports have been banned in four Japanese prefectures [EPA]
Jyunichi Tokuyama, an expert with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, told Al Jazeera he did not know how to deal with the crisis. He was surprised because he did not expect radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, 300km from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
"The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive," Tokuyama told Al Jazeera.
Kamada feels the Japanese government is acting too slowly in response to the Fukushima disaster, and that the government needs to check radiation exposure levels "in each town and village" in Fukushima prefecture.
"They have to make a general map of radiation doses," he said. "Then they have to be concerned about human health levels, and radiation exposures to humans. They have to make the exposure dose map of Fukushima prefecture. Fukushima is not enough. Probably there are hot spots outside of Fukushima. So they also need to check ground exposure levels."
Caldicott said people around the world should be concerned about the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Radiation that continues to be released has global consequences.
More than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water has been released into the ocean from the stricken plant. Scientists warn that tuna caught off the Pacific coastal prefecture in northern Japan are now at risk of being radioactive [EPA]
"Those radioactive elements bio-concentrate in the algae, then the crustaceans eat that, which are eaten by small then big fish," Caldicott said. "That's why big fish have high concentrations of radioactivity and humans are at the top of the food chain, so we get the most radiation, ultimately."
On August 6, the 66th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said: "Regarding nuclear energy, we will deeply reflect over the myth that nuclear energy is safe. We will thoroughly look into the cause of the [Fukushima] accident, and to secure safety, we'll implement fundamental measures while also decreasing the degree of dependence on nuclear power generation, to aim for a society that does not rely on nuclear power."
But doctors, scientists, agricultural experts, and much of the general public in Japan feel that a much more aggressive response to the nuclear disaster is needed.
Kodama believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas. He cited Japan's itai itai disease, when cadmium poisoning from mining resulted in the government eventually having to spend 800 billion yen to decontaminate an area of 1,500 hectares.
"How much cost will be needed if the area is 1,000 times larger?"
Host: Doctor running clinic where plant workers can get medical care says many employees hide amount of radiation they’ve been exposed to by ditching personal monitors… the reason? If they exceed the limit there is no more work.
Doctor: … When they go into dangerous areas they leave radiation meters behind, the real radiation count is much higher, that’s a fact.
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dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Friday, August 19, 2011 High Radiation Right Next to Children's Swimming Pool in Kawasaki City
The government authorities, whether national or municipal, say they've been measuring the radiation at parks and schools where children go, but they've been criticized for picking the least contaminated locations to measure.
Here's a case in Kawasaki City, where a citizens' group measured on their own, found a high radiation location in a park that the city said it had measured, and alerted the city about the highly radioactive dirt right next to the swimming pool that children are using since early July.
Kawasaki City announced it measured 0.90 microsievert/hour at the side of the swimming pool in Hirama Park in Kamihirama, Nakahara-ku (special ward), exceeding the target level of 0.19 microsievert/hour set by the Ministry of Education and Science. According to the [Kanagawa] prefectural crisis management division, it is the highest level of air radiation measured in Kanagawa.
The city collected the dirt from the location to have it analyzed, and 12,400 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was found. The city has decided to close the swimming pool temporarily, starting August 19.
The national government allows sewer sludge to be buried as long as the amount of radioactive materials is 8,000 becquerels/kg and lower. The city has put the plastic tarp over the dirt, and will decide how to dispose the radioactive dirt after consulting with the experts.
The location where the high radiation was measured is right next to the building in which the dressing rooms for the swimming pool users are located. The poolside is just beyond the fence nearby. According to the park management, the area is used to store collected leaves. After cleaning the pool on July 7 to prepare for the pool opening, the leaves and dirt were stored in the 15 square-meter area.
The citizen volunteer group "Peace and Smile Project Kawasaki" measured the near-surface radiation in this area on August 14, which measured 0.50 microsievert/hour at 5 centimeters off the ground. The group alerted the city. When the city measured the same area on August 15, it was 0.66 microsievert/hour (5 centimeters off the ground), and it was 0.90 microsievert/hour on August 18. The radiation levels at the pool entrance and the pool side were below the target level.
市公園管理課は「この場所の放射線量が高い原因は分からない」としている。
The park management says, "We don't know why the radiation is so high in this area".
Kawasaki City measured the radiation levels at 447 locations including parks and schools in June, but they were all below the target level [of 0.19 microsievert/hour]; the maximum level measured was 0.17 microsievert/hour.
Yukon to test for radiation in caribou herd CBC News Posted: Aug 19, 2011 10:07 AM CT Last Updated: Aug 19, 2011 2:35 PM CT Read 23 comments23 Back to accessibility links Supporting Story Content Story Sharing Tools
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Researchers plan to test for radiation in Yukon's local food supply some six months after a Japanese nuclear disaster. Researchers plan to test for radiation in the Porcupine Caribou Herd following Japan's nuclear disaster earlier this year.Researchers plan to test for radiation in the Porcupine Caribou Herd following Japan's nuclear disaster earlier this year. The Associated Press
The Northern Contaminants Program will test caribou for radiation as part of its ongoing effort to monitor the Porcupine Caribou Herd.
The move comes after a nuclear power plant in Japan was severely damaged in March following an earthquake and tsunami, which spewed radiation into the air and water for weeks after the accident.
The decision to test for radiation is being done in part to alleviate worries of residents in the area, said Dr. Brendan Hanley, Yukon's Chief Medical Officer of Health.
"There have apparently been some of those questions from citizens," said Hanley. "This is in part an answer, or an attempt to answer some of those questions."
But Hanley said he's confident the test results will prove the food supply is radiation free.
"There is really no indication from any of the monitoring that has been going on since the incident in Japan back in March that there's been any significant fallout," he said.
"This is just one extra way of making sure that it hasn't worked its way into the food chain to any significant degree."
Hanley said a similar study conducted after the Chernobyl Nuclear accident 25 years ago found that radioactivity in caribou did not reach unsafe levels.
Test results on the Porcupine Caribou herd will be available next year.
Large Zone Near Japanese Reactors to Be Off Limits By MARTIN FACKLER Published: August 21, 2011
TOKYO — Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday. Related
The formal announcement, expected from the government in coming days, would be the first official recognition that the March accident could force the long-term depopulation of communities near the plant, an eventuality that scientists and some officials have been warning about for months. Lawmakers said over the weekend — and major newspapers reported Monday — that Prime Minister Naoto Kan was planning to visit Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is, as early as Saturday to break the news directly to residents. The affected communities are all within 12 miles of the plant, an area that was evacuated immediately after the accident.
The government is expected to tell many of these residents that they will not be permitted to return to their homes for an indefinite period. It will also begin drawing up plans for compensating them by, among other things, renting their now uninhabitable land. While it is unclear if the government would specify how long these living restrictions would remain in place, news reports indicated it could be decades. That has been the case for areas around the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine after its 1986 accident.
Since the Fukushima accident, evacuations have been a sensitive topic for the government, which has been criticized for being slow to admit the extent of the disaster and trying to limit the size of the areas affected, despite possible risks to public health. Until now, Tokyo had been saying it would lift the current evacuation orders for most areas around the plant early next year, when workers are expected to stabilize Fukushima Daiichi’s damaged nuclear reactors.
The government was apparently forced to alter its plans after the survey by the Ministry of Science and Education, released over the weekend, which showed even higher than expected radiation levels within the 12-mile evacuation zone around the plant. The most heavily contaminated spot was in the town of Okuma about two miles southwest of the plant, where someone living for a year would be exposed to 508.1 millisieverts of radiation — far above the level of 20 millesieverts per year that the government considers safe.
The survey found radiation above the safe level at three dozen spots up to 12 miles from the plant. That has called into question how many residents will actually be able to return to their homes even after the plant is stabilized.
Some 80,000 people were evacuated from communities around the plant, which was crippled by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and towering tsunami on March 11. Many of those residents now live in temporary housing or makeshift refugee shelters, and are allowed back to their homes only for brief, tightly supervised visits in which they must wear protective clothing. A version of this article appeared in print on August 22, 2011, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Large Zone Near Japanese Reactors to Be Off Limits. http://www.nytimes.com/2011...ia/22japan.html?_r=2
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phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Taking this article at face value - an area 25 times over the limit could be cleaned up to within the safe limits with a reasonable amount of effort.
Depends on the amount of land they are talking about. I would imagine it would quite time consuming and expensive to decontaminate all land within 12 miles from the plant. If it is just a few hot spots it do able, but seeing as they are planning on a dead zone, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Just like with Chernobyl, it's cheaper to just move people away and declare it a dead zone than it is to try and clean it up. And frankly, it's impossible to completely clean it up. You'd have to remove and dispose of cubic miles of soil, vegetation, structures, etc. The cost would be trillions, and the entire nuclear industry on the whole planet doesn't have enough money to pay for it. Heck, governments don't have the money to pay for it.
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carnut122 Member
Posts: 9122 From: Waleska, GA, USA Registered: Jan 2004
Decontaminating is a "moving target." They can clean up thousands of areas and still have more as long as radiation is escaping the plant and/or they continue to find more hot-spots. Besides, isn't "decontamination" just another word for "we moved it from here to over there?"
Wired Science News for Your Neurons Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Radioactive Longer Than Expected
* By Alexis Madrigal Email Author * December 15, 2009 | * 2:32 pm | * Categories: Health, Physics *
433730990_4e758ead27_b1
agu2009_bugSAN FRANCISCO — Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in history, created an inadvertent laboratory to study the impacts of radiation — and more than twenty years later, the site still holds surprises.
Reinhabiting the large exclusion zone around the accident site may have to wait longer than expected. Radioactive cesium isn’t disappearing from the environment as quickly as predicted, according to new research presented here Monday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Cesium 137’s half-life — the time it takes for half of a given amount of material to decay — is 30 years. In addition to that, cesium-137’s total ecological half-life — the time for half the cesium to disappear from the local environment through processes such as migration, weathering, and removal by organisms is also typically 30 years or less, but the amount of cesium in soil near Chernobyl isn’t decreasing nearly that fast. And scientists don’t know why.
It stands to reason that at some point the Ukrainian government would like to be able to use that land again, but the scientists have calculated that what they call cesium’s “ecological half-life” — the time for half the cesium to disappear from the local environment — is between 180 and 320 years.
“Normally you’d say that every 30 years, it’s half as bad as it was. But it’s not,” said Tim Jannik, nuclear scientist at Savannah River National Laboratory and a collaborator on the work. “It’s going to be longer before they repopulate the area.”
In 1986, after the Chernobyl accident, a series of test sites was established along paths that scientists expected the fallout to take. Soil samples were taken at different depths to gauge how the radioactive isotopes of strontium, cesium and plutonium migrated in the ground. They’ve been taking these measurements for more than 20 years, providing a unique experiment in the long-term environmental repercussions of a near worst-case nuclear accident.
In some ways, Chernobyl is easier to understand than DOE sites like Hanford, which have been contaminated by long-term processes. With Chernobyl, said Boris Faybishenko, a nuclear remediation expert at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, we have a definite date at which the contamination began and a series of measurements carried out from that time to today.
“I have been involved in Chernobyl studies for many years and this particular study could be of great importance to many [Department of Energy] researchers,” said Faybishenko.
The results of this study came as a surprise. Scientists expected the ecological half-lives of radioactive isotopes to be shorter than their physical half-life as natural dispersion helped reduce the amount of material in any given soil sample. For strontium, that idea has held up. But for cesium the the opposite appears to be true.
The physical properties of cesium haven’t changed, so scientists think there must be an environmental explanation. It could be that new cesium is blowing over the soil sites from closer to the Chernobyl site. Or perhaps cesium is migrating up through the soil from deeper in the ground. Jannik hopes more research will uncover the truth.
“There are a lot of unknowns that are probably causing this phenomenon,” he said.
Beyond the societal impacts of the study, the work also emphasizes the uncertainties associated with radioactive contamination. Thankfully, Chernobyl-scale accidents have been rare, but that also means there is a paucity of places to study how radioactive contamination really behaves in the wild.
“The data from Chernobyl can be used for validating models,” said Faybishenko. “This is the most value that we can gain from it.”
Update 12/28: The second paragraph of this story was updated after discussion with Tim Jannik to more accurately reflect the idea of ecological half-life. http://www.wired.com/wireds...9/12/chernobyl-soil/
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dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Sunday, August 21, 2011 #Radioactive Sludge in Kindergartens in Tokamachi City, Niigata
Tokamachi City in Niigata Prefecture is located 205 kilometers west of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. It's not even under the plume according to Professor Hayakawa's map.
Tokamachi is the green arrow. Fukushima I Nuke Plant is the red tag "D". (Map created at Jukurabe.)
Tokamachi City in Niigata Prefecture announced on August 22 the result of the survey of radioactive materials in the soil in nursery schools and kindergartens in the city. 18,900 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was found in the sludge at the bottom of the container that collects rainwater at a public nursery school, and 27,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was found in the yard compost pile at a private kindergarten.
If the level of radioactive cesium exceeds 8,000 becquerels/kg up to 100,000 becquerels/kg, it has to be temporarily stored at a controlled processing plant. The city will consult the prefectural government as to how to dispose the sludge and the yard compost.
The samples were taken on August 12, and tested at a testing laboratory in Niigata. At both locations, the air radiation levels at 1 meter above the ground was 0.10 microsievert/hour and 0.14 microsieverts/hour, both of which were within the normal range.
Decontaminating is a "moving target." They can clean up thousands of areas and still have more as long as radiation is escaping the plant and/or they continue to find more hot-spots. Besides, isn't "decontamination" just another word for "we moved it from here to over there?"
Yep - just like we do with cleaning up pretty much anything else. We put it somewhere that we aren't, like a landfill. But we don't just landfill low level radioactive contamination. Yes the collected contamination of the cleanup will be considered low level contamination.
Yes there may be hot spots that aren't considered worth cleaning up. But it would surely make sense that there are hot spots that are worthy of remediation.
Radiation isn't spewing from the plant like it did in the early stages.
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dennis_6 Member
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Potent radiation leak halts water decontamination operations at Fukushima plant
Operations to decontaminate highly radioactive water at the crisis-stricken Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant came to a 13-hour halt when a section of pipe emitting 3 sieverts of radiation per hour in one decontamination system was discovered, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has announced.
According to TEPCO, the high radiation emissions from the pipe section were discovered at just after 7 a.m. on Aug. 22 while workers were doing the first ever change-out of a decontamination system part for absorbing radioactive cesium. Work on the part change was stopped immediately. After washing radioactive mud away from the area, radiation levels dropped, and decontamination operations resumed at about 8:15 p.m., though the delay pushed replacement of the cesium absorption component back to Aug. 23. TEPCO officials apparently still do not know what caused the radiation leak.
The water decontamination system, called "Sally," was built by electronics and heavy machinery giant Toshiba Corp. There are high expectations for Sally's performance after two other decontamination systems at the site -- one made in the United States and the other in France -- continued to have problems and delays.
This is the third time for high radiation emissions to be discovered at the plant in August. On Aug. 1, emissions of 10 sieverts per hour were detected coming from the substructure of exhaust pipes in the No. 1 and 2 reactor housings, while on Aug. 2 emissions of more than 5 sieverts per hour were found in the air conditioning room in the No. 1 reactor building.
Japan Triples Airborne Radiation Checks as ‘Hot Spots’ Spread Q By Tsuyoshi Inajima and Yuji Okada - Aug 24, 2011 12:25 AM CT
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Maher on Japan Nuclear Crisis, Okinawa Bases
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Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Kevin Maher, senior associate at NMV Consulting, LLC, and former head of the State Department’s office of Japan affairs, spoke Aug. 19 in Tokyo with Bloomberg's Mike Firn about the Japanese government's handling of the March 11 earthquake and ensuing nuclear crisis. Maher led the U.S. State department's Japan task force in the aftermath of the earthquake. (Source: Bloomberg)
Japan will more than triple the number of regions it checks for airborne radiation as more contaminated “hot spots” are discovered far from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power station.
The government said it will increase radiation monitoring by helicopter to 22 prefectures from the six closest to the plant, which began spewing radiation after an earthquake and tsunami struck the station in March. The plan comes after radioactive waste more than double the regulatory limit was found 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the plant this week.
Authorities have refused to give a cumulative figure for radiation released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant after estimating in June that fallout in the six days following the quake was equal to 15 percent of total radiation released in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The authorities have been too slow to widen airborne radiation testing, said Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute in Osaka.
“The government should have expanded the monitoring area by helicopters much earlier to ease concerns among the public,” Ito said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Officials on Aug. 12 found compost in a kindergarten yard in Tokamachi city, Niigata prefecture containing radioactive cesium measuring 27,000 becquerels per kilogram, Kenichiro Kasuga, an official at the city’s disaster prevention department, said by phone. Legal Limit
Under Japanese law, waste measuring over 8,000 becquerels per kilogram must be treated as radioactive waste and can’t be buried in a landfill.
City officials found sludge measuring 18,900 becquerels per kilogram from radioactive cesium on the same day as part of tests done at 60 educational and childcare facilities, Kasuga said. The city government is storing the waste in drums until the government sets final guidelines for its disposal, he said.
“We still don’t know why this level of cesium was found in the compost,” Kasuga said.
The hotspots in Niigata were likely caused by wind blowing northwest towards the prefecture in the days following the Fukushima accident, Kinki University’s Ito said.
The government will begin monitoring radiation levels in 16 prefectures from Aomori, in the far north of the main island of Honshu, to Aichi in central Japan 460 kilometers (290 miles) from the plant by the end of October, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology said in a statement on its website yesterday. Monitoring Radioactivity
Radiation monitoring has taken place in four other prefectures and in Gunma and the western part of Fukushima prefecture, said Hirotaka Oku, a spokesman at the science and technology ministry.
Checks in Ibaraki and Yamagata prefecture were completed in August and the findings will be released soon, he said, without specifying when.
The discovery of radiation at Niigata kindergartens coincides with the start of the rice harvest in the prefecture that was the country’s biggest producer last year with 7 percent of the total. Radiation from Dai-Ichi has already been found in food including beef, tea and spinach.
So far, early tests on rice haven’t detected radiation, Shingo Gocho, assistant director in Niigata prefecture’s agricultural division said by phone yesterday. The government is taking samples from 45 areas in 29 villages, towns and cities that make up the prefecture’s growing area, he said. The crops won’t be shipped until the results are known, he said. Food Checks
Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare plans to conduct radiation checks in food produced in about 100 cities, towns and villages in 14 prefectures because local governments hadn’t tested produce by the end of July despite requests by the central government, said an official at the ministry, who declined to be identified, citing internal rules.
The central government will become move involved in testing food to ease concerns among consumers and provide more data, the official said. Radiation checks on produce including vegetables, meat and eggs will be carried out at the National Institute of Health Sciences and the findings will be released as soon as possible, the official said.
Tokyo Electric’s Dai-Ichi plant released about 770,000 tera becquerels of radioactive materials between March 11 and March 16, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on June 6.
Japan’s government is under-reporting the amount of airborne radiation across the country, said Tom Gill, an anthropology professor at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, citing his studies in Fukushima prefecture since March. Higher Radiation
The “maximum” radiation level given for Fukushima prefecture on Aug. 13 was 2.64 microsieverts per hour in the village of Iitate 40 kilometers northwest of the Dai-Ichi plant, Gill said, according to figures from the Science Ministry published daily in national newspapers.
That compares with the official reading in the village itself the next day of 14.2 microsieverts per hour, he said, showing a picture he took of the reading on that day. He was speaking at a presentation in Yokohama near Tokyo on Aug. 19.
The government excludes the highest readings among 20 measuring stations in the village from the data it collates for publication, Gill said.
“Distrust and cynicism of central government is pretty much universal across Fukushima now,” he said.
Medical tests on children living in three towns near the plant between March 24 and 30 found 45 percent of those surveyed suffered low-level thyroid radiation exposure, Japan’s government said earlier this month. Thyroid Cancer
Children are more susceptible to poisoning from radioactive iodine, which can accumulate in the thyroid and cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. None of the children’s thyroid glands exceeded the safety threshold of 0.2 microsievert per hour set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, the government said at the time.
The Fukushima disaster is the worst since a reactor exploded at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union 25 years ago. About 2 million people in Ukraine are still under permanent medical monitoring, according to the nation’s embassy in Tokyo.
A becquerel represents one radioactive decay per second, which involves the release of atomic energy that can damage human cells and DNA, with prolonged exposure causing leukemia and other forms of cancer, the World Nuclear Association says.
To contact the reporters on this story: Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at tinajima@bloomberg.net; Yuji Okada in Tokyo at yokada6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Teo Chian Wei at cwteo@bloomberg.net
Excessive Radiation Found in Sea Organisms Near Japan's Nuke Plant 2011-08-24 19:36:26 Xinhua Web Editor: Guo Biological samples taken from waters in the Western Pacific region east of Fukushima, Japan show excessive radiation levels, said a statement from China's State Oceanic Administration on Wednesday.
The administration suggested that government agencies intensify radiation testing of marine products from the targeted waters to protect public health in China.
According to the statement, the levels of strontium-90, a radioactive isotope of strontium, found in squids are 29 times higher than the average background level of samples taken from China's coastal waters.
This indicates that these waters have been clearly affected by radioactive material that leaked from the crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima during the massive earthquake and tsunami disaster on March 11, the statement said.
The samples were also found to contain argentum-110m and cesium-134, which are normally difficult to detect in biological samples from China's coastal waters, the statement said.
The administration sent professional personnel to these waters in June to monitor the impact of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, as well as its impact on China's territorial waters.
During their 18-day voyage ending on July 4, the monitoring team collected air, water and biological samples from the target areas.
Radioactive cesium-137 and strontium-90 have been detected in all water samples while cesium-134 has been found in 94 percent of the samples, the statement said.
The highest amounts of cesium-137 and strontium-90 in the samples were 300 times and 10 times, respectively, the amount of natural background radiation in China's territorial waters. http://english.cri.cn/6966/...8/24/2743s655052.htm
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Aug 25th, 2011
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Remember when people were saying Japan isn't the Soviet Union and the information about the reactors was truthful? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Government's move to monitor online sparks public outcry
August 24, 2011
By KAZUYO NAKAMURA / Staff Writer
While the government defends its new monitoring program of online postings concerning the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to stem the spread of "inaccurate" information, critics say it harkens back to Big Brother.
The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy said tweets on Twitter and postings to blogs will be monitored for groundless and inaccurate information that could inflame and mislead the public.
The agency said it is trying to "track down inaccurate information and to provide correct ones instead."
But critics are skeptical about the agency's motive, especially because the government has been under fire for failing to provide an accurate picture of what has been occurring at the plant and the spread of radioactive contamination.
The cost for the project was earmarked in an extra government budget to finance the rebuilding of northeastern Japan ravaged by the March 11 disaster.
The agency announced details of the monitoring project in late June when it solicited bids.
An advertising company in Tokyo won the contract, which is estimated at 70 million yen ($913,000).
The project started this month and will likely continue until March.
The agency said the Internet is overrun by discussions that are often unsubstantiated. One example, it said, is a posting that recommended mouthwash containing iodine as a safeguard against possible exposure to radiation.
Upon identifying erroneous information, the agency will carry at its website "correct information" in a Q&A format after consulting with experts.
The agency will not demand that the original texts and postings be deleted. It will also not ask for the posters' identity.
But the agency's new project drew fire on the Internet immediately after it was announced.
Some blasted it as suppression of free speech. Others criticized the government for trying to weed out information that it deems unfavorable, at the same time it appears ill-equipped to send out information properly and in a timely manner.
The Japan Federation of Bar Associations denounced the project in a statement on July 29, arguing it threatens to infringe on freedom of speech.
"The government will likely restrict free discussions by unilaterally criticizing what it regards as 'inaccurate' and imperil freedom of expression," said the statement released under the president's name.
Kazuo Hizumi, a lawyer who compiled the statement, raised doubts about the legitimacy of government surveillance.
"Many people look to online information because they do not trust what the government says," he said. "Providing accurate information is what the government is supposed to do in the first place; not spending money on a project to interfere with circulation of information."
An official at the agency in charge of the undertaking acknowledged that the government had problems in regards to handling the information.
But the official said that many people appear to misunderstand the project.
"We are listening to public opinion and trying to sending out reliable information by showing grounds for it and making it easier for people to comprehend," the official said.
Shinya Ichinohe, associate professor of law on information at Keiwa College, said that the public outcry over the project is understandable, given how the government has handled information pertaining to the Fukushima crisis.
But keeping track of online texts and postings alone will not likely dampen discussion on the Internet.
"If the government gets an idea of how the public obtains information and tries to improve the way it sends out reports based on its findings, the undertaking will be rather positive," Ichinohe said. By KAZUYO NAKAMURA / Staff Writer http://ajw.asahi.com/articl...shima/AJ201108116035
[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 08-25-2011).]
TOKYO — Japan's government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs, a news report said Thursday.
Government nuclear experts, however, said the World War II bomb blast and the accidental reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, which has seen ongoing radiation leaks but no deaths so far, were beyond comparison.
The amount of caesium-137 released since the three reactors were crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami has been estimated at 15,000 tera becquerels, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, quoting a government calculation.
That compares with the 89 tera becquerels released by "Little Boy", the uranium bomb the United States dropped on the western Japanese city in the final days of World War II, the report said.
The estimate was submitted by Prime Minister Naoto Kan's cabinet to a lower house committee on promotion of technology and innovation, the daily said.
The government, however, argued that the comparison was not valid.
While the Hiroshima bomb claimed most of its victims in the intense heatwave of a mid-air nuclear explosion and the highly radioactive fallout from its mushroom cloud, no such nuclear explosions hit Fukushima.
There, the radiation has seeped from molten fuel inside reactors damaged by hydrogen explosions.
"An atomic bomb is designed to enable mass-killing and mass-destruction by causing blast waves and heat rays and releasing neutron radiation," the Tokyo Shimbun daily quoted a government official as saying. "It is not rational to make a simple comparison only based on the amount of isotopes released."
Government officials were not immediately available to confirm the report.
The blinding blast of the Hiroshima bomb and its fallout killed some 140,000 people, either instantly or in the days and weeks that followed as high radiation or horrific burns took their toll.
At Fukushima, Japan declared a 20-kilometre (12 mile) evacuation and no-go zone around the plant after the March 11 quake and tsunami triggered the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.
A recent government survey showed that some areas within the 20-kilometre zone are contaminated with radiation equivalent to more than 500 millisieverts per year -- 25 times more than the government's annual limit.
I agree with the government. Comparing the two is a non-story. What matters is what levels the people are exposed to, and how they are exposed to it. If the cesium is released in a sealed metal box instead of aerosolized into the environment, the results will be completely different.
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 08-26-2011).]
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01:04 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Remember when people were saying Japan isn't the Soviet Union and the information about the reactors was truthful?
One of the major problems is the amount of mis-information that is being spread by non-technical thinkers. In a world of free speech what is the responsibility of the government when there are people out there intentionally or non-intentionally misrepresenting the information to the public?
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01:08 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
I would imagine that '29 times higher than the average background level...' means that the levels are quite low and within acceptable limits for human consumption. It would be quite revealing to see the actual numbers.
quote
Originally posted by dennis_6:
Excessive Radiation Found in Sea Organisms Near Japan's Nuke Plant 2011-08-24 19:36:26 Xinhua Web Editor: Guo Biological samples taken from waters in the Western Pacific region east of Fukushima, Japan show excessive radiation levels, said a statement from China's State Oceanic Administration on Wednesday.
The administration suggested that government agencies intensify radiation testing of marine products from the targeted waters to protect public health in China.
According to the statement, the levels of strontium-90, a radioactive isotope of strontium, found in squids are 29 times higher than the average background level of samples taken from China's coastal waters.
This indicates that these waters have been clearly affected by radioactive material that leaked from the crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima during the massive earthquake and tsunami disaster on March 11, the statement said.
The samples were also found to contain argentum-110m and cesium-134, which are normally difficult to detect in biological samples from China's coastal waters, the statement said.
The administration sent professional personnel to these waters in June to monitor the impact of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, as well as its impact on China's territorial waters.
During their 18-day voyage ending on July 4, the monitoring team collected air, water and biological samples from the target areas.
Radioactive cesium-137 and strontium-90 have been detected in all water samples while cesium-134 has been found in 94 percent of the samples, the statement said.
The highest amounts of cesium-137 and strontium-90 in the samples were 300 times and 10 times, respectively, the amount of natural background radiation in China's territorial waters. http://english.cri.cn/6966/...8/24/2743s655052.htm
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 08-26-2011).]
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01:12 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Just once I'd like to hear you acknowledge the economic damage from Fukushima, in Japan and eventually world wide. I'd like to hear you acknowledge that having tens of thousands of human beings, families, evicted forcibly from their homes, lands, farms, ranches, for who knows how long (so far it looks like years, maybe decades, maybe forever) is a very high cost to pay for "cheap" nuclear power. Just once I'd like you to acknowledge that Fukushima isn't some mistake that we can brush off like it's no big deal.
Just once...
But you're blind to all of that. To you, the damage wrought by Fukushima, fundamentally by engineering mistakes by human beings, is just a "cost of doing bidness".
Just once...
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01:59 PM
carnut122 Member
Posts: 9122 From: Waleska, GA, USA Registered: Jan 2004
One of the major problems is the amount of mis-information that is being spread by non-technical thinkers. In a world of free speech what is the responsibility of the government when there are people out there intentionally or non-intentionally misrepresenting the information to the public?
What if the ones spreading the mis-information is the utility company and the government?
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09:28 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
This is what Wikipedia says about the evacuation zone "A nuclear emergency was declared by the government of Japan on 11 March 2011. Later Prime Minister Naoto Kan issued instructions that people within a 20 km (12 mile) zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant must leave, and urged that those living between 20 km and 30 km from the site to stay indoors.[297][298] The latter groups were also urged to evacuate on 25 March.[299]"
I don't have any idea how you expect this to have a 'world wide' economic damage so I can't acknowledge that.
The evacuation zone was a radius of 12.5 miles from the plant. It was then extended to 18.75 miles. The area is basically 1/2 of a circle since only 1/2 is on land. I have heard there are hot spots in the zone but I haven't heard how much of the zone is uninhabitable. I expect that people will move back into at least parts of the area. Considering the radiation levels I would expect over time that even if the area isn't remediated, that the levels would become within acceptable limits at some time.
How many people have been displaced and what the costs of that displacement vs the economic benefits of the plant, and/or the benefits of Japan's nuclear power isn't something I have seen any official figures on.
Fukushima is a serious problem. It is the larges nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It is not a problem to be brushed off. We need to learn from our problems and do our best not to repeat them.
I will not however acknowledge some list of damages based on dreamed up damages that has then been extrapolated to totally unrealistic proportions. I like to keep things real.
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 08-26-2011).]
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10:04 PM
Aug 31st, 2011
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Tokyo, Aug. 30 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Co. <9501> said Tuesday that a man in his 40s who had worked to help contain the radiation crisis at the firm's crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has died of acute leukemia. The total radiation doses the worker received at the plant stood at 0.5 millisievert, TEPCO officials said, adding that the worker's death has nothing to do with his work at the nuclear plant in northeastern Japan, which suffered serious damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The man worked at the Fukushima plant for seven days from early August. His jobs included radiation exposure management, the officials said.. He became ill and was hospitalized after finishing the seven-day work. TEPCO received a report of his death on Aug. 16, the officials said. A medical checkup prior to his work at the plant showed no problems in his health. He suffered no internal radiation exposure, the officials said.
Soil at 34 spots in six Fukushima Prefecture municipalities has been contaminated with levels of radioactive cesium higher than the standard used for forcible evacuations after the Chernobyl disaster, it has been learned.
According to a soil contamination map submitted at a study meeting of the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, six municipalities recorded more than 1.48 million becquerels of cesium 137 per square meter--the standard used for forced resettlement after the 1986 Chernobyl accident.
The 34 spots are in no-entry and expanded evacuation zones around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The data reinforces comments outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan made Saturday. "There's a possibility that residents of some areas will be unable to [return and] live there for a long period of time," he said.
According to the survey, the six municipalities were Okumamachi, Futabamachi, Namiemachi, Tomiokamachi, Iitatemura and Minami-Soma.
The ministry checked soil contamination levels in about 2,200 locations around the nuclear plant.
The spot with the highest concentration of cesium 137 as of June 14--about 15.45 million becquerels per square meter--was in Okumamachi, a town in the heart of the no-entry zone. When levels of cesium 134 were added to the measurement, the level of the two radioactive isotopes reached about 29.46 million becquerels at that location.
More than 3 million becquerels of cesium 137 were detected in 16 locations in Okumamachi, Futabamachi, Namiemachi and Tomiokamachi.
The highly contaminated spots extend northwest from the nuclear plant.
* 17:12 30 August 2011 by Andy Coghlan * For similar stories, visit the Energy and Fuels Topic Guide
Alarmist predictions that the long-term health effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan will be worse than those following Chernobyl in 1986 are likely to aggravate harmful psychological effects of the incident. That was the warning heard at an international conference on radiation research in Warsaw, Poland, this week.
One report, in UK newspaper The Independent, quoted a scientist who predicted more than a million would die, and that the prolonged release of radioactivity from Fukushima would make health effects worse than those from the sudden release experienced at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine.
"We've got to stop these sorts of reports coming out, because they are really upsetting the Japanese population," says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, who is attending the meeting. "The media has a hell of a lot of responsibility here, because the worst post-Chernobyl effects were the psychological consequences and this shouldn't happen again."
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency report that the release of radioactivity from Fukushima is about 10 per cent that of Chernobyl. "There's very little leakage now," says Thomas. "The Japanese did the right thing at the right time, providing stable iodine to ensure that doses of radioactive iodine to the thyroids of children were minimal," she says.
Naoto Matsumura, Japanese Rice Farmer, Refuses To Leave Fukushima Nuclear Zone Japan Farmer
ERIC TALMADGE 08/31/11 07:53 AM ET AP
TOMIOKA, Japan — Vines creep across Tomioka's empty streets, its prim gardens overgrown with waist-high weeds and meadow flowers. Dead cows rot where they were left to starve in their pens. Chicken coops writhe with maggots, a sickening stench hanging in the air.
This once-thriving community of 16,000 people now has a population of one.
In this nuclear no-man's land poisoned by radiation from a disaster-battered power plant, rice farmer Naoto Matsumura refuses to leave despite government orders. He says he has thought about the possibility of getting cancer but prefers to stay – with a skinny dog named Aki his constant companion.
Nearly six months after Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, the 53-year-old believes he is the only inhabitant left in this town sandwiched between the doomed Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station to the north and another sprawling nuclear plant to the south.
"If I give up and leave, it's all over," he told The Associated Press. "It's my responsibility to stay. And it is my right to be here."
Matsumura is an anomaly in a country where defiance of the government is rare and social consensus counts above everything else. Yet, Matsumura's quiet civil disobedience speaks loudly of the dilemma facing the more than 100,000 silent "nuclear refugees" who were displaced by the March 11 disaster.
Tokyo was quick to establish evacuation zones around the plant but has been slow to settle the refugees. A government order forbids them from going back to their homes in a half dozen towns around Fukushima Dai-ichi that were declared off-limits after the tsunami-stricken nuclear plant started spewing radioactivity.
"We are already being forgotten," said Matsumura, a leathery but clean-cut man with the sturdy build of a farmer. "The rest of the country has moved on. They don't want to think about us."
Tomioka's city hall has been moved to a safer city in Fukushima prefecture, where thousands of its residents live in makeshift shelters. Thousands more have scattered across the country.
The town itself is sealed behind police barriers, which hide the heart of the nuclear no-go zone, an area that is officially too dangerous for human habitation.
Officers are sent into Tomioka each day to search for burglars or violators of the keep-out order. By law, anyone caught inside the zone can be detained and fined.
But authorities mostly turn a blind eye to Matsumura, though he says he has been confronted by the police a few times. If there are other holdouts, they have escaped detection.
"Some people stayed behind, some stayed with me in my house," he said. "But the last one left a few weeks ago. He asked me to take care of his cats."
Tomioka official Tomio Midorikawa, who is in charge of the town's living and environment division, said the last resident was persuaded to leave in early August – the same time Matsumura claims his neighbor left. He was not aware of Matsumura.
Without electricity or running water, Matsumura fires up a pair of old generators each night and draws his water from a local well. He eats mostly canned foods, or fish that he catches himself in a nearby river. He said that once or twice a month, he makes his way to a city outside the zone in his mini pickup truck to stock up on supplies and gas.
He has taken it upon himself to tend to the town's abandoned cats and dogs, including the wolflike Aki.
"I've gone to Tokyo a couple of times to tell the politicians why I'm here," he said. "I tell them that it was an outrage how the cows were left to die, and how important it is for someone to tend to the family graves. They don't seem to hear me. They just tell me I shouldn't be here to begin with."
Matsumura said he did leave once, but the ensuing experience only strengthened his desire to return.
"I drove to a relative's house thinking I would stay there," he said. "But she wouldn't let me in the door, she was too afraid I was contaminated. Then I went to an evacuation center, but it was full. That was enough to convince me to come home."
The tsunami disaster left nearly 21,000 people dead or missing and touched off fires, explosions and meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant. The amount of radioactive cesium released into the environment since has been estimated to be equal to 168 Hiroshimas, making it the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl.
No one – including Matsumura – is suggesting the exclusion zone be lifted altogether. The connection between radiation and cancer or other health problems is well established, and experts agree it could be decades until the nuclear zone is safe. Some point to the example of Chernobyl, which 25 years later is still mostly void of human life.
"The contaminants will be there for decades, centuries, millennia," said Timothy Mousseau, a biologist with the University of South Carolina who has studied Chernobyl for more than a decade and recently returned from a preliminary research trip to Fukushima.
Even so, local authorities are increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress toward resolving the nuclear Diaspora.
Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, a partially evacuated town near Tomioka, said in an interview it was reasonable at first for Tokyo to establish a geometric ring extending outward from the center of the plant. But he believes data collected since should be used to fine-tune the exclusion area to reflect the actual amounts of contamination.
"We have invested millions in developing a system to measure radiation," he said. "But it is like the whole thing is being decided by someone behind a desk with a 500 yen ($5) compass."
Further fanning the anger among the displaced, compensation from the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs the plant, has stalled in a bureaucratic labyrinth.
Before the crisis began, the average annual income in Tomioka was about 3.5 million yen ($35,000).
Matsumura said he has received about 1 million yen ($10,000) in compensation, far less than he would have earned from selling his rice and other produce. TEPCO, reeling financially from the accident, has put off a final decision on further compensation until the plant is stabilized. The money already handed out will be subtracted from the amount it eventually settles on.
Officials say some restrictions may be lifted by the end of the year if the Fukushima reactors are brought to a stable shutdown.
Beyond that, the future remains a mystery.
"There are many tasks ahead before we will be able to return to our town, including decontamination and the rebuilding of our sewage system, roads and infrastructure," Tomioka Mayor Katsuya Endo said in a recent post on the town's website. "But we must maintain our hope, and gradually move forward."
Matsumura now likens himself to the Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender until decades after the end of World War II.
As a heavy rain began to fall, he walked down an overgrown mountain path to his rice paddy. He pulled up a plant by its roots, twisted it between his fingers then tossed it into an irrigation ditch with a resigned sigh.
There will be no cash crop this year. Or maybe ever again.
Two day care centers and a high school building in Fukushima Prefecture remain contaminated with high levels of radioactive matter even after they underwent cleanup work, Greenpeace Japan said.
On the ground of the yard at one day care center, the radiation was as high as 0.9 microsieverts per hour, or nearly 8 millisieverts per year, while the reading below its roof reached 7.1 microsieverts, according to the environmental group's findings earlier this month, Greenpeace said Monday.
A maximum reading at the high school was 7.9 microsieverts per hour and the other day care center registered 0.2 microsieverts per hour.
People living in areas with radiation of 5 millisieverts or higher per year were ordered out after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, said Kazue Suzuki, a member of the Greenpeace investigative team. "Children should be evacuated until further cleanup work brings down the amount of radioactivity to a safe level."
Facilities accommodating children can be polluted with radioactive matter that has fallen on nearby buildings and the ground around them, so cleaning up children's facilities alone is not sufficient to ensure safety, said Jan Vande Putte, chief of the Greenpeace team. http://search.japantimes.co...in/nn20110831a8.html
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03:38 PM
Sep 1st, 2011
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Groundwater around Fukushima nuke plant to be protected by underground steel barrier In this June 12, 2011 photo released on July 5, 2011, by Tokyo Electric Power Co., masked workers in protective outfits prepare to drop a sliding concrete slab into a slit of the upper part of the sluice screen for the Unit 2 reactor at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, in their effort to decrease the leaking of radiation contaminated water into the ocean. (AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co.) In this June 12, 2011 photo released on July 5, 2011, by Tokyo Electric Power Co., masked workers in protective outfits prepare to drop a sliding concrete slab into a slit of the upper part of the sluice screen for the Unit 2 reactor at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, in their effort to decrease the leaking of radiation contaminated water into the ocean. (AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co.)
Construction of an underground barrier at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to prevent leaking radioactive materials from reaching ground water will begin this year and be completed in about two years, plans released on Aug. 31 revealed.
The plans, announced by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), include use of a workboat and a temporary pier by the plant to speed up construction. According to the utility, the barrier will be built of between 600 and 700 22-meter-long steel sheet piles driven into the ground and stretch some 800 meters. The approximate 10-meter space between the steel barrier and the existing dike will also be filled with concrete.
Simulations conducted using benign substances that mimic the properties of radioactive materials showed the barrier at the coastal plant would stop the dangerous materials from reaching the ocean. The barrier is expected to last for 30 years.
The barriers are specifically intended to prevent contaminated water in buildings housing reactors 1 to 4 and their turbine buildings from seeping into the local ground water. TEPCO will continue to monitor ground water conditions both during and after the barrier's construction.
Major typhoon headed to Japan, worries grow about heavy rainfalls in disaster zone
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By Associated Press, Published: September 1
TOKYO — A major typhoon is headed toward Japan and is expected to cross over the western and central areas of the archipelago Friday and Saturday.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said Typhoon Talas was traveling slowly at 6 miles per hour (10 kilometers per hour) on Friday. It packed winds of up to 110 mph (180 kph) and setting off downpours and strong winds. http://www.washingtonpost.c...IQAtEohvJ_story.html Copyrighted, more at link...
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09:40 PM
Sep 3rd, 2011
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Press Release (Sep 03,2011) Detection of radioactive materials in the soil in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (31st release)
As part of monitoring activity of the surrounding environment, we conducted an analysis of plutonium contained in the soil collected on March 21 and 22 at the 5 spots in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. As a result, plutonium 238, 239 and 240 were detected. (Previously announced)
As a result of plutonium and strontium analysis in the soil from the samples at the 3 periodic sampling spots collected on August 15, plutonium 238, 239, and 240 and strontium 89 and 90 were detected as shown in the attachment 1 and 2.
In addition, as a result of nuclide analysis of the gamma ray contained in the soil, radioactive materials were detected as shown in the attachment 3.
Today, we informed the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and the government of Fukushima Prefecture of the results.
Press Release (Sep 03,2011) Detection of radioactive materials in the soil in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (31st release)
As part of monitoring activity of the surrounding environment, we conducted an analysis of plutonium contained in the soil collected on March 21 and 22 at the 5 spots in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. As a result, plutonium 238, 239 and 240 were detected. (Previously announced)
As a result of plutonium and strontium analysis in the soil from the samples at the 3 periodic sampling spots collected on August 15, plutonium 238, 239, and 240 and strontium 89 and 90 were detected as shown in the attachment 1 and 2.
In addition, as a result of nuclide analysis of the gamma ray contained in the soil, radioactive materials were detected as shown in the attachment 3.
Today, we informed the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and the government of Fukushima Prefecture of the results.
