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| Tweet Topic Started: April 11 2011, 02:28 PM (7,659 Views) | |
| Audi-Tek | October 8 2011, 07:58 PM Post #481 |
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Prince
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Council to adopt international standards on radiation exposure level....A science ministry panel decided Oct. 6 to adopt a radiation exposure level of 1 to 20 millisieverts a year as the benchmark for residents to safely live in Fukushima Prefecture, where a quake-stricken nuclear power plant is situated. The decision, by a task force of the ministry's Radiation Council, is in line with a recommendation by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. The council has been tasked with discussing standards for radiation exposure levels. An official decision on this matter is expected to be made as early as late October. The ICRP recommendations request that as low a value as possible be set as a target radiation exposure level during the transitional period from an emergency to normal living conditions. Under the recommendations, 1 millisievert should ultimately be the target figure. The central government cited the ICRP recommendations when it set radiation standards for defining evacuation zones and using school playgrounds as temporary shelters following the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The council's main role is to offer advice on radiation-related standards to ministries. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is expected to shortly ask the council to consider radiation standards for foodstuffs and advise on other matters. Given that the ministry relies heavily on the advice, the council had discussed since August how to incorporate the ICRP recommendations into domestic laws. The task force said it would be a very effective approach if municipal governments set specific target radiation values, for instance, 5 millisieverts or 10 millisieverts a year, based on radiation levels recorded by respective municipal areas. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 8 2011, 07:59 PM Post #482 |
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Prince
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With thermal station offline, Tohoku faces tight power supply...MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture -- Tohoku Electric Power Co. says there is no room for error in meeting electricity demand this winter, as the utility continues to rebuild a key thermal power station shattered by the March 11 disaster. The coal-fired Haramachi power plant is not expected to restart until summer 2013, and work to remove damaged large machinery from the facility began only about a month ago. "Under the current circumstances, even a brief interruption in operations is not allowed because it will have a significant impact (on supply capacity)," a Tohoku Electric Power official said. The utility serves the six prefectures in the Tohoku region plus Niigata Prefecture. These northeastern prefectures are cold in the winter, keeping maximum electricity consumption as high as in summer due to demand for heating. The Haramachi thermal power plant supplied 2 gigawatts of electricity of Tohoku Electric Power's pre-disaster supply capacity of 17.21 gigawatts. But on March 11, an 18-meter-high tsunami, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake, submerged its five-story main building up to the third-floor ceiling. Recovery work started the following day but stalled after the government on March 15 told residents within a 30-kilometer radius of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to stay indoors. The Haramachi facility is about 26 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima plant. But work is now progressing at the plant, which was shown to the media on Oct. 6 for the first time since the March 11 quake. "With rubble cleared from the plant site, recovery work has finally begun on a full scale," plant manager Kojiro Higuchi said. "We will try to reopen the plant as soon as possible." A ship that was anchored at a pier and loaded with 75,000 tons of coal was left aground more than 100 meters offshore. A coal unloader was torn apart by the tsunami, with its steel arms twisted as if they were made of putty. An electrostatic precipitator, key equipment that removes dust from smoke, was also rendered unusable when a large building that housed it collapsed in the tsunami. It will take about 18 months to reconstruct the building. Tohoku Electric Power's supply capacity will fall to 13 gigawatts this winter, below the maximum consumption of 14.7 gigawatts last winter. The utility plans to make up for any shortfall with 3.31 gigawatts provided by Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the Fukushima plant. "An extremely severe condition will continue," Makoto Kaiwa, president of Tohoku Electric Power, told a news conference on Sept. 30. "But we have no plans to implement rotating blackouts in principle." However, considering the shortage of surplus capacity, any operating problems at a major power station could jeopardize the company's scenario. Troubles have occurred at thermal power stations across the country partly because they are running at full capacity to make up for the nuclear power plants shut down due to the accident at the Fukushima plant. In August, Tohoku Electric Power suspended operations at an oil-fired power plant in Akita because of a piping problem. In addition, 16,500 kiloliters of heavy and light oil leaked at the Haramachi power plant after the tsunami damaged fuel tanks for power generators. Workers pumped out oil and removed oil-soaked soil until August. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 8 2011, 08:01 PM Post #483 |
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Prince
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The waste from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami On 11 March 2011 there was a legal vacuum in Japan concerning radioactive waste resulting from a nuclear disaster. Current waste management Law places technical and financial responsibility for waste from natural disasters with local authorities. However, this excludes radioactive waste. The Law on rehabilitation of contaminated soil excludes from its scope radioactive soils and waste. The Law on the management of radioactive materials and waste only concerns those inside the nuclear plants. No lessons have been learnt from previous accidents on Japanese and Ukrainian soils. The case of a damaged and leaking reactor turning vegetation, buildings, roads, urban, natural, and aquatic areas outside a nuclear plant into radioactive waste had not been considered. In Japan, incineration is the major means of waste disposal. There are hundreds of incinerators in urban areas. By the end of March, ash containing 100,000 to 140,000 Bq/kg of an "unknown radioactive substance" was recorded. Before the alert, a portion of the ash had been incorporated, according to usage, into the commercial production of cement. The ash contamination stems from the concentration of radioactivity incorporated into the biomass. Plants, tree leaves, bark, mosses, hedges, herbs and crops serve as the first receptacle for radioactive atmospheric fallout. It seems that in a reflex action, to safeguard private property, citizens flocked to their lawnmowers, chainsaws, mowers, to significantly get rid of suspect vegetable matter just prior to, or just after the first explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors. Additionally, these items of green waste were burned in household waste incinerators. The ashes concentrate in an order of magnitude of 10 times the radioactivity of the incinerated waste. Since mid-March, radioactive contamination has spread to the northern half of the archipelago, without triggering a formal warning, technical and behavioural instructions, or even inter-regional solidarity. Furthermore, under an agreement signed 10 days prior to the disaster, incinerators in Matsudo in Chiba Prefecture exported to the remote Akita Prefecture, about 500 km to the north, 40 tons of ash containing nearly 50,000 Bq/kg of caesium-137. They were partially buried in the municipal landfill in Kosamachi. Six containers were returned unopened to where they had originated. The city of Matsudo opened a temporary storage area in a car park for these ashes, whilst announcing that at the end of August the site would be saturated. Sludge from water and sewage treatment plants have also became radioactive waste. They concentrated the radioactivity of rain and surface water running off roofs, buildings, roads, cars from both natural and wastewater sources. A rebound of radioactivity is anticipated following the disastrous flooding experienced this summer. In mid-June, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment finally issued recommendations: - Between 100 and 8,000 Bq/kg of Caesium-137: ash and sludge may be deposited in household waste landfills. The Tokyo electoral district buried 6000t in a disposal site along the bay. - Between 8,000 and 100,000 Bq/kg: the waste can be landfilled in secure sites to be designated or existing sites dedicated to industrial waste. Constructive precautions such as roofing, the installation of geomembrane sealing or packaging, such as the encapsulation of drums of waste in concrete, shall be taken to reduce pollution of groundwater. - Above 100,000 Bq/kg: the waste must be confined in sealed packaging and the storage perimeter will be surrounded by piles of concrete in order to absorb radiation. Sites remain to be designated and local population refusal has begun. By way of comparison, in France, waste contaminated with 100 Bq/kg caesium-137 is normally considered Very Low Level waste and from 8000 Bq/kg as Intermediate Level waste. All these waste items should be stored in specialised ANDRA (National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management) sites. As of 30 July, according to information released by the Japanese Ministry of Health, 37,000 tons of sludge are to be treated as radioactive waste. As of the end of August, the Ministry of the Environment stated that the ash from 42 incinerators exceeds the threshold of 8000 Bq/kg and public service television and radio network Nihon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) surmised that there were now 50,000 tons of radioactive sludge. Some water treatment stations had to suspend their operations, their workers being exposed to unacceptable levels of radioactivity. It has only been since 28 July that the Japanese government has made plans to develop legislation placing responsibility for radioactive waste scattered in Fukushima Prefecture and other affected prefectures under the technical and financial responsibility of the State. This law has still not been enacted and it would require TEPCO and all nuclear reactor operators to fund waste management. Having failed to anticipate this type of radioactive contagion, Japan is in the process of simultaneously contaminating its logistical means and its household waste, water and sewage treatment facilities. 2. Per million tons In May 2011, the government issued a waste management plan for the double disaster of the earthquake and tsunami: classification is encouraged. The roles of the three levels, governmental, prefectural, territorial, were reiterated and defined. Cooperation for the elimination of waste between the prefectures and regions is encouraged. The risks from asbestos, treated wood, dioxins and toxic waste in the wrecks of cars and ships were underlined. No mention about radioactivity. The overall amount of post-earthquake and post-tsunami waste is still unclear: 25 million tons according to the government; 80 million according to experts at the Japan Research Institute; 100 million tons according to the Japanese national broadcaster; about half of the annual production of household waste throughout the Japanese archipelago according to Kyoto University or 15 times the annual waste production of the three most affected prefectures - Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi. In the port town of Ishinomachi, the tsunami waste was equivalent to 100 years of collection. The grouping of raw and sorted waste on temporary sites will take, according to estimations, another two to four years not to mention the complex recycling, disposal and monitoring phases which will last two to three decades. The preliminary phase of consolidation has come up against a crisis regarding available space. Interim storage facilities are installed in parks, stadiums, wasteland, on tarmac. This sudden and significant intake is partly due to a shortage of legal landfills. Recycling of all materials is complicated by the presence or suspected radioactive contamination and salt deposits in plant or demolition waste submerged by the tsunami. Incineration and co-incineration in cement kilns are encouraged by the government, prefectures and local authorities are eager to reduce waste volumes, while the radioactive contamination and salt deposits slow or prevent these operations. The excess salt is a pollutant for cement and salt green waste emit dioxins while burning. The accumulation of wood waste could reach 20 million tons. It was also feared and found that around the demolition rubble there was high asbestos level. The Law on the total prohibition of the use of asbestos only dates back to 2006. In the three tsunami target areas, one million tons of scrap metal would be available if they were to be eventually removed from the demolition magma and sorted, but even still recycling the second melting is going to cause problems with regard to technical acceptability due to radioactivity and subsequent risks for Japanese people and those further afield, should the scrap iron be exported. This summer, a new aggravating factor emerged. The waste has been invaded by millions of flies and other insects attracted by decaying food and moisture. 200,000 tons of fish and other seafood products stored in ports in industrial freezers were destroyed or damaged. A massive spraying of insecticide was carried out in June by the army or temporary fishing port workers. The Ministry of the Environment has stated that at least 55,000 tons of decomposing seafood were immersed across 50 miles of coastline. Sludge and sediment, generated by the tsunami, will be ocean dumped under certain conditions subject to multiple interpretations, which open up new concerns for the sea and its resources. 130 plants processing and storing toxic products have been destroyed or damaged by the tsunami. Hundreds of oil spills have been visible to the naked eye. 25,000 hectares of land, greenhouses and agricultural cooperatives have been washed out. The sludge and sediment are poly-polluted. Medical bodies have observed that amongst those most at risk from respiratory, asthma, skin and eye problems, a set of conditions had already been noticed after other disasters where the survivors were subjected to inhalation and clouds of toxic compounds and dust. This progress report was produced by Jonathan Senin, Miriam Potter, Charlotte Nithart, Christine Bossard and Jacky Bonnemains. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 8 2011, 08:05 PM Post #484 |
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Prince
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Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair: Events Like Fukushima Too Rare to Require Immediate Changes![]() Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, For those that think nothing has changed in United States' regulation since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami started the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility, think again. The pre-disaster mentality of "What could possibly go wrong?" has been replaced with reassurances that "Stuff like that hardly ever happens!" At least that is the impression conveyed by the current Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko, in a pair of early October interviews. During two NRC-sponsored events, Jaczko fielded questions first from nuclear industry professionals and those considered friendly to the expansion of nuclear power, and then, in a separate session two days later, responded to representatives from public interest groups and other individuals generally seen as opposed to nuclear energy. While the tone of the questions differed somewhat predictably in the two sessions, Chairman Jaczko's attitude did not. Jaczko took several opportunities to praise the NRC staff and the processes and protocols used by the commission, repeating in both panels that the primary duty of his agency is ensuring the safety of nuclear facilities in the United States. Beyond his broad assurances and patient, capable demeanor, however, many of the chairman's assertions about both the NRC process and the progress being made toward his stated safety goals highlighted notable contradictions and troubling biases inherent in America's nuclear regulatory regime. To be fair, the pre-Fukushima outlook was not exactly "What could possibly go wrong?" In terms of the types of accidents and the repercussions of contamination, containment breaches, radioactive releases, meltdowns, melt-throughs, and a host of other undesirable situations, regulators and industry insiders alike were probably quite aware of what could go wrong. But as US nuclear proponents and profiteers strove to convey the impression of an informed industry, they also moved to downplay the threats to public safety and made sure to stress that, when it came to disaster scenarios, they had it covered. If the disaster in Japan has proven one thing, though, it is that plant operators and nuclear regulators didn't have it covered. Events (or combinations of events) that were either not foreseen or not acknowledged leave Japan scrambling to this day to understand and mitigate an ever-evolving catastrophe that has contaminated land and sea, and exposed yet-untallied thousands of Japanese to dangerous levels of radiation. "As we saw in Fukushima," said Jaczko, "accidents still do happen in this industry. If we are thinking that they can't, we are in a dangerous place." But for US nuclear regulators, there needn't be any sense of urgency - or so believes the NRC chair. When asked why the agency doesn't hold up plant relicensing until new standards that include lessons learned from the Japanese disaster are in place, Jaczko expressed confidence in the current system: Bottom line is that changes get made at a plant ... some changes will be made quickly, some may take years. It doesn't matter where a plant is [in the process] - what is the licensing phase - but that changes get made. These are low frequency events, so we have some leeway. It is a posture Jaczko took again and again in what totaled over two-and-a-half hours of Q&A - accidents are very, very rare. Given the history of nuclear power, especially the very recent history, his attitude is as surprising as it is disturbing. Beyond the depressingly obvious major disasters in nuclear power's short history, unusual events and external challenges now manifest almost weekly in America's ageing nuclear infrastructure. The tornado that scrammed Browns Ferry; the flooding at Fort Calhoun; the earthquake that scrammed the reactors and moved storage casks at North Anna and posed problems for ten other facilities; and Hurricane Irene, which required a number of plants to take precautions and scrammed Calvert Cliffs when a transformer blew due to flying debris; all are external hazards that affected US facilities in 2011. Add to that two leaks and an electrical accident at Palisades, stuck valves at Diablo Canyon and failures in the reactor head at oft-troubled Davis Besse, and the notion that dangerous events at nuclear facilities are few and far between doesn't pass the laugh test. That these "lesser" events have not resulted in any meltdowns or dirty explosions does nothing to minimize the potential harm of a more serious accident, as has been all too vividly demonstrated in Japan. The frequency or infrequency of "Level 7" disasters (the most severe event rating - so far given to both Chernobyl and Fukushima) cannot be used to paper-over inadequate safeguards when the repercussions of these catastrophes are so great and last for generations. Storage Concerns Don't Concern Chairman Jaczko's seeming ease with passing current problems on to future generations was also in evidence as he discussed mid- and long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel. Though previously a proponent of an accelerated transfer of spent fuel from pools to dry casks, Jaczko now says, post-Fukushima, he has "no scientific evidence that one method is safer than the other." The chairman made a point of noting that some dry casks at Virginia's North Anna plant moved during the August earthquake, but said that it will be well over a year before we can evaluate what happened to wet and dry storage systems at Fukushima. While it is true a full understanding will have to wait until after Daiichi is stabilized and decontaminated, it is already apparent that the spent fuel pools, which require a power source to actively circulate water and keep the stored fuel cool, posed dangers that in some ways rivaled the problems with the reactors. (So far, no Japanese plants have reported any problems with their dry casks.) So obvious was this shortcoming, that the NRC's own staff review actually added a proposal to the Fukushima taskforce report, recommending that US plants take more fuel out of wet storage and move it to dry. Jaczko's newfound indifference is also odd in light of his own comments about dry casks as an alternative to a central nuclear waste repository. Asked in both sessions about the closing of Yucca Mountain (the proposed US site for spent nuclear fuel), the chairman buoyantly championed the possibility of using on-site dry casks for hundreds of years. The commission is taking the appropriate action to address the storage of spent fuel. We have come to the conclusion that, over the short- and medium-term, safe storage is possible. We are taking a look at what is the finite limit on current [dry] storage ... 200, 300, 400 years. Is there a time we have to move the fuel?... Nothing tells us we shouldn't generate the [radioactive] material. We don't see a safety concern out 100 years, or anything that says at 101 years, everything changes. Chairman Jaczko then added that, while the nuclear industry is generating waste that will require "long, long term storage or isolation," it is not unprecedented to assume this problem can be taken care of by "future generations." It is good that Jaczko has such faith in the future, because his depiction of the present is not actually that impressive. While the NRC chief repeatedly touted their "process" for evaluating risks, problems and proposals, he also painted a picture of a bureaucracy that has so far failed to fully act on the initiatives he has considered most important. Neither the fire-safety improvements Jaczko has championed since he came to the commission in 2005, nor the security enhancements required after 9/11/2001 have as yet been fully implemented. Process Is Everything Time and again, whether he was directly challenged by a question or simply asked for clarification, Jaczko referred to the NRC's "process." "We have a relicensing process," "there is an existing process [for evaluating seismic risk]," there is a process for determining evacuation zones, there is a process for incorporating lessons learned from Fukushima and there is a process for evaluating new reactor designs. Process, of course, is not a bad thing - in fact, it is good to have codified protocols for evaluating safety and compliance - but stating that there is a process is not the same thing as addressing the result. Too often, what might have sounded like a reasonable answer from the chairman was, in reality, a deflection. "The process knows all; trust in the process. I cannot say what will happen, and what I want to happen does not matter - there is a process." (This, of course, is a dramatization, not a direct quote.) Form over functionary. But Jaczko had barely started his second session when his reliance on process suffered an "unusual event," as it were. Asked about why the NRC seemed to be moving full-speed ahead with relicensing, rather than pausing to wait for Fukushima taskforce recommendations to be formalized, the agency chief first said, "There is an existing program, there are processes." But within a breath, Jaczko then said, when it comes to lessons learned from Fukushima being some sort of prerequisite for final license approval, "We are going to look on a case-by-case basis." Is deciding whether to apply new requirements on a "case-by-case basis" actually a process? Many would say it pretty much defines the opposite. The counterintuitive also took a star turn when it came time to consider new externalities and pending environmental impact surveys. Shouldn't the Fukushima taskforce findings be considered as part of a series of new environmental impact studies? Well ... "It is clearly new information, but does it affect the environmental impact survey? Because they are very, very low likelihood events, it is not part of environmental impact survey." Jaczko here seems to be saying that, unless you know in advance of the new study that the new information will alter the findings, you do not need to consider new information. Shocked, Shocked With such confidence in the commission and its process, would it be safe to assume that Jaczko is comfortable with the current state of nuclear safety in the United States? Perhaps surprisingly, and to his credit, the NRC head seems to say "no." As previously discussed, Jaczko expected faster action on fire safety and security upgrades. He also defended his going public with complaints about design problems with the AP1000 reactors proposed for Plant Vogtle: We had been going back and forth with [AP1000 designer] Westinghouse for two years. I felt [a lack of] openness; felt if you aired the issues, they get addressed. Now, I feel it was ... addressed. It ultimately forced these issues to get resolved. Chairman Jaczko was also asked what tech issues keep him up at night: Those components that are not replaceable, not easily inspectable. Those subjected to repeated exposure to high radiation, stresses that cause high degradation. Jaczko said he felt the commission had a handle on what radiation does to the concrete in the containment vessel, but he was less sure about the effect of "shock," which he defined as "repeated power trips" or scrams. Jaczko acknowledged that this increases stress on the containment vessels, and added, "Some places will not have 20 years [left] on pressure vessels. We get into an unknown piece of regulation on pressure vessel repair." That is a pretty stark revelation from a man so passionate about his agency's ability to, uh, process new data, but it highlights another facet of Jaczko's approach to regulation. Noting that New Jersey's Oyster Creek reactor was granted a renewed operating license for 20 years, but later negotiated with the state to shut down in ten years, Jaczko said, "Extension is an authorization to operate, not a requirement to operate." Relicensing, he said, might come with requirements for modifications or orders that they "monitor aging." Jaczko also said that states or facilities might decide it is not economically viable to keep a plant running for the full length of its license, "Like if you have a car and the clutch goes and you make a decision not to replace it." How to Regulate, Even Without the Regulatory Commission Yes, another deeply flawed automobile analogy, but note that Jaczko allows for, and maybe even expects, limits to a plant's life that are not regulated by the NRC. And in detailing such, the chief regulator of the US nuclear industry shows where citizens might exercise leverage when his NRC fails. First, there is that issue of economic viability. As previously discussed, the market has already rendered its verdict on nuclear power. In fact, it would be absolutely impossible to build or operate a nuclear plant without loan guarantees, tax breaks and subsidies from the federal government. The new construction at Vogtle is projected to cost nearly $15 billion (and these plants always go way over budget), and the Obama administration has had to pledge $8.33 billion in loan guarantees to get the ball rolling. Without that federal backstop, there would be no licensing battle because there wouldn't be the possibility of the reactors getting built. In fact, in this time of questionable nuclear safety, deficit peacockery and phony Solyndra outrage, it is illustrative to note: ... in fiscal year 2010 alone, $2.82 billion went to natural gas and petroleum interests (through direct expenditures, tax expenditures, research and development funds and loan guarantees); $2.49 billion to nuclear energy interests; and $1.13 billion to solar interests. Would any of the relicensing and new construction applications be before Jaczko's NRC if the energy-sector playing field were leveled? Second, at many points in the interview, federal regulator Jaczko referenced the power of the states. Early in the "pro" nuclear session, an anxious questioner expressed worry that states such as Vermont could play a role in the relicensing of reactors. While stating it was yet to be determined whether Vermont's authority overlapped with the NRC, its chairman stated plainly that states do play a role. "States decide what kind of generating sources they use," Jaczko said, "especially if the state has a public utility." When asked in the second panel if the NRC considers whether new rules or licensing delays will cause rate hikes for consumers, Jaczko said the final determination on rates was the purview of a state's public utilities commission (PUC): If the PUC denies charges, then they won't get our approval to go forward - but if the PUC denies a rate change, they [the plant operators] still have to make the improvement required. And when discussing how the NRC draws evacuation zones, Chairman Jaczko said that, in the end, it was the responsibility of the state and local governments, acting on data from the utilities and advice from the NRC, to determine where, when and how to evacuate in case of a nuclear accident. And, yes, that does sound again like some of the buck-passing that marked too much of these interviews, but it is also a roadmap for a possible detour around a recalcitrant or captured federal agency. If activists feel shut out of the regulatory process, they can attack the funding. If federal elected officials are not responsive (because they, too, have been captured by a deep-pocketed nuclear industry), concerned citizens can hit closer to home. As Jaczko says, states can choose their power sources, and states can define evacuation protocols that either better insure public safety or reveal continued operation of nuclear facilities to be untenable. Such action would not be easy - state and local officials have their own interests and conflicts - but it might prove easier than a broad federal play. Recent successes by those seeking to close aging coal-fired generators show that action at the individual plant level is possible. Open to Openness For anything to happen, of course, it is important that a dedicated and passionate citizenry organize around a tactic, or, if they prefer, a process. But it will also require a level of openness on the part of government. Sometimes that openness is offered, sometimes it is hard won, but without transparency, progress is hard to make and hard to measure. Jaczko repeatedly stated that he is a big advocate of openness, and he offered these interviews in that spirit. These two events obviously didn't go all the way in that direction - not even close - but the sessions had merit. Chairman Jaczko, despite all the problems detailed above, can still be admired for exhibiting something rather rare in today's political climate, a regulator that actually believes in regulation. He, in fact, conveys a passion for it. That some of that regulation is based on flawed assumptions, and that much of it is weak or never enforced, cannot be ignored, but if the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission advocates for the regulatory process (even when hiding behind it), then there is at least a process to improve.
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| Audi-Tek | October 8 2011, 11:24 PM Post #485 |
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Prince
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Another worker got exposed 10/8/2011 19:15 Tepco announced that a male worker in his 30s was exposed to high level of radiation. It is likely that he had a severe internal exposure too. He was checking the water leakage around the water purifying system today. He was externally exposed to 0.13 mSv/h gamma ray, 0.50 mSv/h beta ray. After finishing his task, they found radioactive material attached to his jaw, neck and on mask. They are going to have him tested by WBC. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 8 2011, 11:31 PM Post #486 |
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Prince
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Tokyo tap water in crisis According to the monitoring data published by the Ministry of Education, as seen in this post Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology quit measuring plutonium but they mistakenly published the contamination map of Tokyo, Kanagawa and north Kanto area. It was measured by a helicopter. Page 3 Radiation level of Tokyo (1m from the ground) Page 4 Cesium 134+137 on the ground in Tokyo Page 5 Cesium 134 on the ground in Tokyo Page 6 Cesium 137 on the ground in Tokyo Page 7 Radiation level of Kanagawa (1m from the ground) Page 8 Cesium 134+137 on the ground in Kanagawa Page 9 Cesium 134 on the ground in Kanagawa Page 10 Cesium 137 on the ground in Kanagawa Page 11 Radiation level of north kanto (1m from the ground) Page 12 Cesium 134+137 on the ground in north Kanto Page 13 Cesium 134 on the ground in north Kanto Page 14 Cesium 137 on the ground in north Kanto Overview: Gunma, Tochigi, and north Chiba have hot spots. also, Katsushika, Hachioji, and western part of Tokyo are very contaminated. Helicopter monitoring data is published the central area of Tokyo is less contaminated, it turns out. However, Okutama area, where Tokyo tap water comes is as dangerous as “contaminated area” in Chernobyl. According to the data above, 100,000 ~ 300,000 Bq/kg was measured in Okutama area. Tokyo Health Service Bureau repeated the same old moronic comment about this. “It is not harmful in the short term, but we will make sure to keep monitoring”,which means nothing. In addition to it, the monitoring map is also manipulated seemingly. More detailed evidence will be posted soon. As a brief report, they changed the color just in the main part of Tokyo. Considering the flow of the plume, it is very unnatural for the plume to have avoided just Tokyo. Tokyo tap water is likely to be seriously contaminated, but also, the main part of Tokyo is more polluted than the monitoring map. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 8 2011, 11:35 PM Post #487 |
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Prince
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Fukushima Daiichi NPS 8 October 2011 Photos![]() Link for more photos .......... http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-100811/daiichi-100811.htm |
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| Audi-Tek | October 9 2011, 03:00 PM Post #488 |
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Prince
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Fukushima children’s thyroid tests: Japan![]() TOKYO: Japan's Fukushima prefecture on Sunday began health check-ups of 360,000 children amid worries that radiation from a crippled nuclear plant had exposed them to the risk of thyroid abnormalities. Many parents demanded the tests, drawing parallels with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, after which locals reported thyroid disorders, a problem sometimes associated with radiation exposure. The screenings began after a recent unofficial survey reported that 10 out of 130 children evacuated from Fukushima had hormonal and other irregularities in the thyroid glands. The doctors who conducted the survey, however, added that they could not establish a link between the irregularities and the nuclear accident. Officials said they will test some 360,000 children under the age of 18, and will provide follow up tests during their lifetimes. The March 11 earthquake triggered a tsunami that tore into Japan's northeast coast, leaving 20,000 people dead or missing, while sparking meltdowns and explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It was the world's worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster. Radiation fears are a daily fact of life with reported cases of contaminated water, beef, vegetables, tea and seafood due to the Fukushima crisis. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 9 2011, 04:07 PM Post #489 |
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Prince
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TEPCO orchestrated 'personal' donations to LDP . Tokyo Electric Power Co. executives pumped tens of millions of yen in personal donations into Liberal Democratic Party coffers in a campaign apparently backed by the company's political lobbyists, an Asahi Shimbun investigation found. Although TEPCO's public relations department insists that the company does not encourage the donations, The Asahi Shimbun found that at least 448 of the company's executives donated a total of 59.57 million yen ($777,000) to a political fund-raising arm of the then ruling party between 1995 and 2009. Sources said TEPCO determined the amounts different ranks of executives should donate, with the chairman and president asked to contribute 300,000 yen, executive vice presidents asked to donate 240,000 yen and managing directors asked to give 120,000 yen. Senior staff were briefed about donations on taking up new positions and told exactly how much was appropriate for their jobs, the sources said. Between 2005 and 2009, 60 to 70 percent of TEPCO executives made individual donations to the People's Political Association (PPA), which takes political donations on behalf of the LDP, part of a pattern of giving across the nuclear industry that netted the party large sums. Political funding reports for 2007 show that about 70 percent of the executives at the nine electric power companies that operate nuclear power plants donated a total of about 25 million yen to the PPA. Those companies are also believed to have set donation amounts for different ranks of executives. Donations from executives of some companies were all concentrated in December. A former TEPCO executive explained that the donations were seen as part of the company's lobbying effort. "Because the company stopped corporate donations in 1974, the individual donations were considered an alternative," the former executive said. TEPCO also bought large numbers of tickets to fund-raising parties held by LDP lawmakers. TEPCO executives and former executives interviewed by The Asahi Shimbun revealed that the election to the Upper House in July 1998 of Tokio Kano, 76, a former TEPCO executive vice president running on the LDP ticket, coincided with a significant increase in the donations. A TEPCO executive in charge of political affairs was approached by a high-ranking PPA official and told that, since Kano had been elected, the LDP fundraisers wanted TEPCO executives to increase their donations. PPA political funds reports show that TEPCO executives donated a total of 3.34 million yen in 1998. That figure increased by 1.22 million yen to 4.56 million yen in 1999. The number of donors also increased from 26 to 32. A TEPCO executive in charge of political affairs served as a liaison with the PPA and contacted association officials about their individual donations. TEPCO's Corporate Affairs Department, which is responsible for its political lobbying, was in charge of briefing executives about the donations appropriate to their positions, and its staff do appear to have emphasized in their briefings that it was not compulsory to donate. However, some executives did feel pressured. A former branch head of TEPCO received a notice directly from the PPA asking for a donation and was advised by an official in TEPCO's Corporate Affairs Department: "Employees who are promoted to branch head have donated 70,000 yen annually. This is not a donation from the organization, but should be paid by the individual." "I was not supporting the LDP, but an official with the Corporate Affairs Department said, 'Former branch heads have made donations.' I felt I could not stop that practice and since I was a member of the organization I could not say no," the former branch head said. Another TEPCO executive admitted that ambitious employees were likely concerned about the effect on their careers of not donating. A former executive from the 1990s said: "Soon after being appointed, an official with the Corporate Affairs Department came and explained about donations by executives. The department made arrangements for the donation and, once it was made, annual notices came from the PPA for individual donations." A TEPCO public relations department official said: "(Individual donations by executives) are made based on the judgment of the individual and the company is not involved. We do not encourage such donations." A PPA official said: "We do not know the details about individual cases." But Hiroshi Kamiwaki, a professor of constitutional law at Kobe Gakuin University and joint head of a political funds monitoring group, said it was clear from the amount and timing of the donations that the company was involved. "While there have been similar suspicions in the past, TEPCO has never admitted the practice," he said. "The company should revise its opaque donation practices." . |
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| Audi-Tek | October 9 2011, 04:09 PM Post #490 |
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Prince
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Most municipalities undecided on where to store contaminated soil.. Only two of 59 municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture have decided where to build temporary storage areas for soil contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed. One reason so many have not yet decided on a location is uncertainty over where an intermediate storage facility for the radioactive soil will be established. In fact, all 59 municipalities contacted by The Asahi Shimbun said they did not want to host the intermediate storage facility. Another reason that municipalities have not picked sites for temporary storage of the contaminated soil is opposition from residents. "If something polluted should be brought nearby, we may no longer be able to drink our well water," said a 78-year-old man, whose home in Kawauchi is near a candidate site for a storage area. The central government will handle soil decontamination in the six municipalities that fall completely in either the no-entry zone or the area where preparations must be made for emergency evacuations around the Fukushima nuclear plant. Of the remaining 53 municipalities, 28 plan to compile a decontamination strategy while 19 are considering such a move. The six municipalities that have no intention of drawing up such plans are all located in the Aizu region, which is distant from the Fukushima plant. Officials in the Aizu municipalities said no districts under their jurisdiction had annual radiation levels exceeding 1 millisievert, the level at which the central government is using to determine areas that should be decontaminated. The only municipalities that have selected locations for temporary storage of contaminated soil are Izumizaki and Aizu-Bange. The temporary storage areas will be set up on municipality-owned land. Three other municipalities -- Fukushima, Otama and Samegawa -- have only selected temporary storage areas for certain areas under their jurisdiction. Many other municipalities said local residents will not agree to temporary storage areas if they do not know how long the areas will house the radioactive soil. Various municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture have been holding meetings to explain to residents plans for decontaminating the polluted soil. The village of Kawauchi held such a meeting on Oct. 7 in Koriyama, where many of the villagers have evacuated to. It was at the meeting where the 78-year-old man raised concerns about the well water. Kawauchi village is located within either the no-entry zone or the evacuation preparation area of the Fukushima plant. Although village officials had plans to set up five temporary storage areas, no conclusion was reached on Oct. 7 because of the many questions raised by local residents. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 9 2011, 04:10 PM Post #491 |
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Prince
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Tsunami survivors haunted by March 11. Some people are hitting the bottle heavily, while others are smoking more. What they all have in common is difficulty falling asleep. This is one of the findings of a survey into the health of survivors of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and the devastating tsunami it spawned. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare intends to follow health trends of 30,000 survivors over a 10-year period. They all live in the hardest-hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. The ministry on Sept. 22 released partial findings for coastal areas of Ishinomaki city in Miyagi Prefecture. Those areas were surveyed ahead of other places. Forty-three percent of the survivors displayed symptoms of sleep disorder. Anxiety and depression were also far more apparent than in a separate survey targeting the overall population. The ministry will be tasked to come up measures to deal with the problem. One idea under consideration is home visits by nurses. The surveys, carried out between late June and early August, targeted residents, aged 18 or older in the Ogatsu and Oshika districts of Ishinomaki. Both areas were devastated by tsunami. Of the 3,009 people in this category, 1,399 either received medical checkups or answered questionnaires. Their average age was 62.6. Thirty-five percent of the respondents said they slept for less than six hours. One question concerned symptoms they had experienced at least three times a week during the previous one-month period. Fifty-three percent said they took a long time to fall asleep, whereas 39 percent said they awoke in the middle of the night. A diagnosis of the responses suggested that 43 percent of the respondents likely have sleep disorder. This compares with 29 percent for the separate national survey that used the same international standards. On the basis of answers about feeling hypersensitive or despair, 7 percent of the respondents were diagnosed as needing expert assistance to treat anxiety and depression. This was more than double the 3 percent in the separate national survey. Thirty-seven percent said memories of the March 11 disaster kept haunting them even though they tried to put them out their mind. Thirty-five percent said they became very emotional every time they recall the events of March 11 and the days that followed. Twenty percent said they consumed more alcohol than before the disaster, whereas 34 percent said they smoked more. In blood tests and urine tests, however, the proportion of people with anomalies was little different from the national survey results. The research group tasked with carrying out the health surveys is supervised by the National Institute of Public Health. Iwate Medical University, Tohoku University and Fukushima Medical University are in charge of surveys in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, respectively. People living in evacuation shelters and temporary housing will be questioned at six-month intervals. Surveys will likely be carried out in Rikuzentakata and elsewhere in Iwate Prefecture from October to November, and in Sendai, Miyagi's prefectural capital, starting Sept. 26. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 10 2011, 01:38 AM Post #492 |
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Prince
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As compensation payouts begin, Tepco pays the price for its nuclear disaster![]() Months after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan, many residents are reluctant to go back to the cities and towns where they had lived. AIZUWAKAMATSU, Japan — Masato Muto, 40, works for the Tokyo Electric Power Co. in a rented one-story building. Only a clock and a calendar hang on the office walls, and most days, only angry people come through the front door. The nuclear evacuees who come to this Tepco branch office in Fukushima prefecture are greeted two ways. First, by a letter from the company president — taped to a whiteboard by the entrance — that apologizes for the “great inconvenience” and “anxiety” caused by “the accident.” Next, by an employee like Muto, one of the 1,700 Tepco workers dispatched to centers in Fukushima to help people collect payments for their lost jobs and homes — provided they first fill out the 60-page application form. Seven months after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, Tepco, which operated the facility, owes $50 billion in compensation to the tens of thousands who lived close to the nuclear plant. The payments could send the company into bankruptcy, a government panel recently said. At minimum, they will handcuff the utility giant for years, forcing it to cut jobs, sell its assets, and perhaps raise electricity rates for its 29 million customers. But Muto sees the payments differently— as a way that Tepco can at last help, not antagonize. Tepco, which so far has collected 6,000 applications, began sending evacuees their first compensation checks on Oct. 5. “The people who come here are furious — furious — about what happened,” Muto said. “They have a thorn stuck in their heart. A lot of people tell me, ‘I want to go home as soon as possible. I want my life back.’ ... What can I do? Well, the best way to help is to let them vent their anger. I have to get on my knees” and apologize. “This is the first step for us to then have a conversation about compensation.” The compensation process itself has drawn ridicule. Beginning last month, Tepco distributed to evacuees not only the meaty application pamphlet, but also a 156-page instruction manual. Lawmakers criticized the application form as needlessly complicated; even Muto acknowledges that it’s too big. Most evacuees, Muto said, can’t finish the application by themselves. They often need at least two hours of consultation at one of the four Tepco assistance centers in Fukushima. “My longest session was four hours,” Muto said. “Whew — I was so tired afterward. Before March 11, Muto had worked at Tepco’s headquarters in Tokyo; he’d been with the company for 16 years, since college graduation. He traveled sometimes to the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates, exploring deals to supply Tepco’s thermal power plants. Particularly in Japan, a country that reveres its biggest institutions, a job at Tepco meant stability and influence. The utility, with 37,000 employees and cozy alliances with the government, supplied electricity to the economic heart of the country. The average employee made 7.57 million yen — or nearly $100,000, at the current exchange rate. But Tepco managed, in the first months of the nuclear crisis, to squander most of its credibility and all of its goodwill. Its president disappeared from public, then resigned. It disclosed the meltdowns at the plant nearly two months after the fact. It spun false stories about the timeline of events at the facility, trying to pin blame on the government. “I imagine a lot of rank-and-file employees feel embarrassed by management,” said Jeff Kingston, author of “Contemporary Japan” and a professor at Tokyo’s Temple University. “Most Japanese are proud to be an employee. But nobody ever bargained for this. Tepco set a new low for corporate behavior.” The prestige of working for Tepco is now gone, and so are many of the perks. It once operated resorts and sponsored clubs for its employees; Muto was once a running back on the American football team. But since the disaster Tepco has booked $23 billion in losses. Economists say the company will either go bankrupt — a likely scenario if its idled nuclear reactors don’t re-start — or carry for years the baggage of debts to evacuees and lenders. Either way, said Tatsuo Hatta, an economist from Gakushuin University, “it’s a funeral company.” Muto says he feels no anger toward Tepco. His job is difficult, he said, but also important. His boss sent him to this mountainside town in mid-April to help establish a branch office — well before compensation applications were ready. Muto thinks he’ll be stationed here until at least the middle of next year. He lives in a rented apartment complex with several other Tepco employees. He has no wife or children. He’s a part-time musician, and, as his apartment, he relaxes by playing the electric piano, mostly a mix of jazz and bossa nova. His fifth album came out just a few weeks ago, and a friend helped him create the CD cover art — a hazy aquatic image of primordial critters, little snails and jellyfish, the image of life anew. The album is dedicated, the back of the CD case reads, to “all victims and survivors of the Great East Japan Earthquake.” But Muto does not try to commiserate with evacuees; his job requires listening and assistance. These days, about 30 people seeking compensation come every day to the Aizuwakamatsu help center. A few have told Muto, “You will never understand my sadness.” “That is probably true,” Muto said. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 10 2011, 01:49 AM Post #493 |
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Prince
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Don't add to grief of Fukushima residents.. The Osaka prefectural government has suspended a bridge construction project in Kawachi-Nagano after the city's residents voiced concern over radiation on girders produced by a construction company in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture. Liberal Democratic Party member Mitsuhide Iwaki referred to this subject Thursday at a meeting of the House of Councillors' special committee on reconstruction from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. "I was so sad to hear this news," Iwaki said. We believe many people must have shared Iwaki's feelings. At the meeting, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda pledged the government would "make absolutely sure" to publicize the safety, based on scientific evidence, of items produced near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. After the suspension of the construction project, the Koriyama company asked an inspection firm to measure the girders' radiation level, and confirmed they were lower than the International Commission on Radiological Protection's annual limit for permissible exposure. Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto apologized to Kawachi-Nagano residents for the prefectural government's insufficient explanation of the issue. "There are currently no [safety] problems [with the girders]," Hashimoto said. The prefectural government should have measured the girders' radiation level before suspending construction. The Osaka government said it had received complaints from residents in Fukushima Prefecture over the suspension.Good intentions, bad results More than half a year has passed since the March 11 disaster. However, people in Fukushima Prefecture and neighboring prefectures still suffer from rumors about radiation. Recently, events that had been planned to support victims of the disaster have backfired and caused them emotional pain. Plans to use firewood from the Takata-Matsubara pine grove in tsunami-hit Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate Prefecture, for the annual Kyoto Gozan no Okuribi bonfire festival in August were canceled due to radiation fears. The pine grove was one of the prefecture's scenic spots. Festival organizers at one point retracted the cancellation, but again decided not to use the firewood after detecting radioactive cesium on it. In September, the organizers of an annual fireworks festival in Nisshin, Aichi Prefecture, replaced fireworks produced in Kawamatamachi, Fukushima Prefecture, with those produced in Aichi Prefecture. Also, a citizens' group in Fukuoka canceled its project to support farmers in Fukushima Prefecture by establishing a shop in Fukuoka to sell Fukushima foods, after receiving complaints from residents worried about radiation. === Overcome fear with evidence People are anxious about radiation. What we need now is determination and effort to overcome such suspicions. To put determination into practice, scientific data must be prepared with the help of experts. A good example is Naritasan Shinshoji temple in Chiba Prefecture, which used wood from the Takata-Matsubara pine grove in its homa ritual of burning wood on which worshippers have written wishes. The temple asked an inspection agency to check the wood, and went ahead after learning no radioactive substances were detected on it. It is important for event organizers, as well as central and local governments, to explain data carefully and thoroughly to residents. People must also frequently liaise with the areas they want to support, to make advance arrangements. When the goodwill of organizers and governments backfires, it just exacerbates rumors about radiation. They must pay attention to the feelings of disaster victims and support them on a long-term basis. There are reports of children facing discrimination after evacuating from Fukushima Prefecture. Don't add to the grief of the Fukushima people. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 10 2011, 10:18 PM Post #494 |
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Prince
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This is a report compiled and published annually by Japan Chemical Analysis Center(JCAC). It contains environmental radioactivity and radiation data obtained in Japan. Link .......... http://www.kankyo-hoshano.go.jp/en/07/07.html |
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| Audi-Tek | October 10 2011, 11:47 PM Post #495 |
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Prince
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N-disaster price: Tepco to pay $50 bn? . Masato Muto, 40, works for the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) in a rented one-story building. Most days, only angry people come through the front door. The nuclear evacuees who come to this Tepco branch office in Fukushima prefecture are greeted two ways. First, by a letter from the company president — taped to a whiteboard by the entrance — that apologises for the “great inconvenience” and “anxiety” caused by “the accident.” Next, by an employee such as Muto, one of the 1,700 Tepco workers dispatched to centres in Fukushima to help people collect payments for their lost jobs and homes — provided they first fill out the 60-page application form. Seven months after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, Tepco, which operated the facility, owes $50 billion in compensation to the tens of thousands who lived close to the plant. The payments could send the company into bankruptcy, a government panel recently said. At minimum, they will handcuff the utility giant for years, forcing it to cut jobs, sell its assets and perhaps raise electricity rates for its 29 million customers. But Muto sees the payments differently— as a way that Tepco can at last help, not antagonise. Tepco, which has collected 6,000 applications, began sending evacuees their first compensation checks last week. “The people who come here are furious — furious — about what happened,” Muto said. “They have a thorn stuck in their heart. A lot of people tell me, ‘I want to go home as soon as possible. I want my life back.’ What can I do? Well, the best way to help is to let them vent their anger.” So Muto bows to the evacuees, dropping to his knees and apologising. The prestige of working for Tepco is gone, and so are many of the perks. It once operated resorts and sponsored clubs for employees. But since the disaster, it has booked $23 billion in losses. Economists say the company will either go bankrupt or carry for years the baggage of debts to evacuees and lenders. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 12 2011, 05:19 PM Post #496 |
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Prince
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Fukushima rice safe for distribution after tests![]() Rice harvested from Japan's nuclear accident-hit Fukushima prefecture is safe for distribution after tests showed that radioactive materials from the crops were below the limit set by the government, Kyodo agency reported on Wednesday. -- PHOTO: AFP TOKYO (REUTERS) - Rice harvested from Japan's nuclear accident-hit Fukushima prefecture is safe for distribution after tests showed that radioactive materials from the crops were below the limit set by the government, Kyodo agency reported on Wednesday. Radioactive readings from rice harvested in all districts of Fukushima where the crops were grown were below the 500 becquerels per kg limit set by the government, Kyodo said. Fukushima expanded the inspection spots nearly ten-fold to around 300 areas in September after radioactive cesium of 500 becquerels per kg was found in a sample of a pre-harvested rice in Nihonmatsu city, 56km west of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crippled by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 12 2011, 05:23 PM Post #497 |
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Prince
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Tokyo finds hot spot with higher radiation levels than evacuation zones around Fukushima. Updated: Wednesday, October 12, 3:25 PM TOKYO — Japanese officials have found a small area in Tokyo with higher levels of radiation than evacuation zones around the Fukushima nuclear plant. Tokyo’s Setagaya city’s mayor says concerned parents monitoring for radiation asked them to conduct further tests on a roadside spot near a kindergarten. Its radioactivity slightly exceeded that of an area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. Mayor Nobuto Hosakai says the cause is being investigated. He says rainwater containing radioactive particles had been dripping from the roof of a building by the sidewalk. Officials said Wednesday that an estimated annual exposure at the spot wouldn’t pose a health danger. They say the area has been closed off and city officials will also survey nearly 260 parks. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 12 2011, 05:26 PM Post #498 |
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Prince
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Bringing the Plight of Fukushima Children to the UN, Washington and the World. Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Kyoto speaks with Mark Selden in New York about recent developments in Fukushima and the US tour by anti-nuclear activists from Fukushima and other parts of Japan. “75% of Fukushima’s 300,000 children are going to schools that are so contaminated they would be radiation control areas in nuclear plants where individuals under 18 are not legally allowed. The Japanese government won’t evacuate people unless radiation levels are four times what triggered evacuation in Chernobyl,” Aileen Mioko Smith pointed out. The Fukushima earthquake tsunami nuclear power meltdown of March 11 opened the way for a far-reaching debate in Japan, the US and globally that could lead to rethinking the risks of radiation, the viability of nuclear power, and even to its elimination in some countries. When UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that the UN would convene a high-level meeting on nuclear energy and security, Aileen Mioko Smith was meeting in Hokkaido with Izumi Kaori of Stop Tomari, the citizens group campaigning to prevent reopening of the dangerous nuclear power plant. They decided on the spot: “We’ve got to go to Washington and New York to tell the world about the urgent threat of nuclear contamination unleashed by the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown, the special danger to children, the lies told by the nuclear power industry and the Japanese government, and the urgent need to close the world’s most dangerous nuclear power plants.” Together with organic farmers Sato Sachiko of Fukushima and her two children, Anzai Sachiko, an organic farmer near Tomari, and Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear who visited Fukushima, they have carried the urgent message that nuclear power plants must be closed in light of the disasters from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. And that the Fukushima disaster presents an extraordinary opportunity to halt nuclear power not only in Germany and Italy where governments have taken prompt action, but in Japan, the United States and elsewhere. Arriving in Washington on the six month anniversary of the March 11 Fukushima Daiichi meltdown, they have addressed the National Press Club, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the United Nations Human Rights Commission, as well as participating in an action at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant just 38 miles north of New York City. Their central messages to the American and to the Japanese people: • Save the children of Fukushima and Northeast Japan • End nuclear power everywhere drawing on the lessons of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima • Asylum for Fukushima refugees: help both in Japan and abroad. • UN stop promoting nuclear power. Given American and global concern about the Fukushima disaster and the future of nuclear power, they were able to gain attention in Washington. Media ranging from CNN as well as NHK and Kyodo News of Japan carried the messages they delivered first to the National Press Club and subsequently to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission where they also received briefings on nuclear safety. The latter was particularly important since the NRC had called on all US citizens living within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to leave. The Japanese government concerned about the costs of evacuating Fukushima city limited its evacuation to 20 kilometers with only additional evacuation of areas with expected annual dose of radiation of 20 millisievert or higher, including some hot spots outside that limit . In Chernobyl, citizens living in areas contaminated between 1 and 5 mSv/year received government aid if they wished to resettle. Precisely the cavalier attitude of the Japanese government, above all its decision to risk the health of infants and children by limiting evacuation to 20 kilometers, has led campaigners to call for learning from the people of Fukushima, not the Japanese government. And its corollary, pointedly expressed by organic farmer Sato Sachiko: “the lesson is that once it happens, it’s too big for anyone to deal with. The only solution is to prevent it from happening by closing nuclear power plants.” In August, the Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation, Green Action and four other Japanese NGOs submitted a report to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights describing the Japanese government’s violation of the human rights of Fukushima children and urging the UN come to Japan to investigate the situation. In New York City they carried their message to the United Nations and demonstrated in Dag Hammerskjold Plaza. As Japan’s Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko emerged from his speech on nuclear safety and security, where he stated his expectation that Japan would complete cold shutdown of all the reactors that continue to spew radiation into the air and sea, Sato Sachiko, who was addressing a rally outside shouted: “Save the children! You must not lie to the world about things getting better. How can you talk about safe nuclear power when the Japanese government can’t even protect the children of Fukushima!” The group’s next stop was the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant just 36 miles from New York City. “When we met with US officials,” Ms Sato commented, “they said they would learn from the lessons of Fukushima. They talked about taking necessary measures out to 50 miles in the event of disaster. But now that I’ve been here, I realize that there is no possible evacuation plan for the 20 million people within 50 miles of the Indian Point plant. As the Japanese delegates pointed out, the most urgent issue concerns the 300,000 children of Fukushima, above all those living in radiation hot spots both in Fukushima and beyond. The heart of the matter is the Japanese government’s evacuation policy. Following the meltdown, Japan established a twenty-kilometer evacuation zone from the plant, evacuating approximately 36,000 people out of Fukushima’s total population of just over 2 million. Including those who evacuated within the prefecture but outside the twenty kilometer zone, the number is still only a little larger than ten percent of the 400,000 plus evacuated from Chernobyl after the 1986 disaster which turned 2,000 villages into ghost towns. [See Fujioka Atsushi, Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima: A “Two-Headed Dragon” Descends into the Earth’s Biosphere.] To minimize the number of evacuees, the Japanese government arbitrarily raised the permissible level of annual radiation exposure from one millisievert to twenty mSv, a figure that is being applied not only to adults but to infants and pregnant women, those most vulnerable to radiation. By contrast, following Chernobyl, the Russian and Belorussian states evacuated everyone in localities with five mSv. A quarter of a century later, the evacuated areas remain uninhabitable, a prospect that could confront Fukushima if recent official projections prove accurate. How high a radiation level is twenty mSv/year? The Japanese government has legally compensated Japanese nuclear power plant workers who contracted cancer from as low as 5.2mSv exposure and higher. Now a substantially higher level of supposed safety (20 mSv) is to be applied to citizens, including infants and children in Japan. Indeed, the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT), choosing a strategy of reassurance over one of protection, produced a guide for teachers and parents in Fukushima which claimed that “weak” radiation doses such as 250 mSv over a number of years will have no health effects, and increased cancer risk was not recognized with cumulative doses of under 100 mSv. [Say Peace Project, “Protecting Children Against Radiation: Japanese Citizens Take Radiation Protection into Their Own Hands.”] Much of the discussion of the risk of radiation has centered on cancer. That is indeed an important concern. But the effects of cancer are played out over decades and it is frequently difficult to conclusively pinpoint the cause. What have been the short-term health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns? “With the Japanese government in general, and the Fukushima medical establishment in particular providing no comprehensive statistical health data, indeed, insisting that there are no health concerns, it is presently necessary to rely on evidence provided by Fukushima residents,” Smith explains. “These include numerous examples provided by parents who have challenged MEXT and Fukushima authorities demanding evacuation for the children. For example, there have been numerous reports of serious nose bleeding and of diarrhea that cannot be stopped . . . and not just in children. There have also been numerous examples of symptoms of atopic skin diseases and asthma getting worse after the accident.” We know, moreover, that the immediate effects of the Chernobyl disaster included elevated levels of numerous diseases including heart disease as well as birth normalities and stillbirths. [See introduction to Chris Busby, “Fukushima Children at Risk of Heart Disease.”] While the people of Fukushima and Japan’s Northeast face serious problems of health, evacuation, and long-term economic disaster, the potential for positive change in the wake of the multiple disasters and especially the Fukushima meltdown now exists. Today just 11 of Japan’s nuclear power plants are operating and those that are closed require stress tests before they can reopen. [Note: Following the interview, one more plant was closed pending testing. This presently leaves just 10 in operation.] Since March 11 just one of the closed plants, the dangerous plant at Tomari in Hokkaido has reopened, and it is the subject of an active campaign to Stop Tomari. Most important, the entire public dialogue has shifted with growing criticism of nuclear power and support for rapid development of renewable energy in the wake of passage of a renewable energy law which establishes a Feed-in Tariff system requiring power companies to purchase locally produced energy. Moreover, Japanese capital, led by businessman Son Masayoshi, has awakened to the potential of renewable energy as the next major frontier for Japanese industry. Finally, the fact that Japan succeeded in conserving energy to avert a serious power shortage with the majority of its nuclear plants closed makes clear the possibility for moving beyond nuclear power to renewable energy in future. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 12 2011, 06:49 PM Post #499 |
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Prince
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Temporary housing in stacked shipping containers welcomes first residents![]() ..ONAGAWA, Miyagi -- Temporary housing here built of stacked shipping containers began welcoming residents in earnest on Oct. 11, offering homes to many who have been without a place to call their own since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. There are now three two-story blocks built of the modified containers, totaling 45 residences. The country's first three-story block built using the technique is also now under construction at the site on the town's athletics field -- chosen to host the buildings for lack of level ground elsewhere in Onagawa -- and is expected to be finished by the end of October. The two-story blocks, expected to house a total of 108 people, were finished on Oct. 9. One of those to move in on Oct. 11, 64-year-old housewife Kiyono Matsu(censor)a, had been living in a disaster refugee shelter in a gymnasium next to the site, and spent the day hauling futons and other personal possessions to her and her husband's new second-floor apartment. Looking at the 30-square-meter dwelling with a wooden storage rack, Matsu(censor)a said, "We have a home here for the time being. The first thing I want to do is cook my husband's favourite vegetable dish." According to the Onagawa Municipal Government, as of Oct. 11 there were still six refugee shelters in the town serving 215 people. Of the 1,294 temporary housing units planned by the town, only the three-story container-based building with its 144 units remains uncompleted. When it is finished, construction on all of Miyagi Prefecture's 22,043 temporary housing units will have been completed. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 12 2011, 06:50 PM Post #500 |
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Prince
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Traveling aquarium helps to take kids' minds off Fukushima crisis..Children in Fukushima Prefecture don't have a whole lot to feel cheery about these days. A massive earthquake, a giant tsunami and a nuclear crisis put paid to that. But in an effort to encourage these children in this time of national crisis, a traveling aquarium is making the rounds of schools to show them that life in all its forms is a wonder to behold. Some 200 marine creatures, consisting of 20 varieties, are on show. The children are encouraged to touch the fish as part of their class work. A special truck carrying fish tanks from Aquamarine Fukushima in Iwaki is visiting local elementary schools and junior high schools. When the truck visited Kawamata-Minami Elementary School in Kawamata on Oct. 7, some 230 children squealed as they touched cloudy catshark, starfish and octopus and watched red sea bream and other varieties swimming around. The traveling show proved to be a special treat for children from Yamakiya Elementary School in Kawamata. They have been forced to take classes in vacant classrooms at Kawamata-Minami Elementary School because their school is located in an area where the central government had advised residents to evacuate due to high levels of radiation caused by the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 12 2011, 06:51 PM Post #501 |
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Prince
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More Fukushima evacuees do not want to return home...An increasing number of residents who evacuated from their communities near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are resigned to never return home, according to a survey. More than six months after the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake only 43 percent of the evacuees said they definitely want to return to where they used to live, compared with 62 percent in the first survey in June. The latest survey was conducted jointly between Sept. 20 and 29 by The Asahi Shimbun and a research team led by Akira Imai, a professor at Fukushima University specializing in local government policy, mainly through interviews with 287 evacuees who took part in the June survey. Forty-six percent of the respondents said they were now living apart from their family members. Concerned about effects of radiation, many evacuees moved their wives and children much farther away from the crippled nuclear plant. A combined 65 percent of the respondents said either they definitely "want to return" or "if possible, want to return." In the June survey, the combined total was 79 percent. Seventeen percent of respondents said either they "do not want to return very much" or "do not want to return" at all, an increase from the combined 12 percent in the June survey. A total of 169 respondents who said in June that they wanted to return to their communities also took part in the latest survey. Only 91 of them still wanted to return, while 42 others said they would like to return "if possible." Ten said they did not want to return. Kenichiro Nishiyama, 45, who worked for an automobile repair company in Namie, a town that lies in the no-entry zone of the plant, switched his response from "want to return" to "do not want to return." "The radiation level is just too high," Nishiyama said. "Even if they decontaminated the area, it would not be possible to revert immediately to the way it was in the past. Regrettably, there is nothing to do." After moving to four different evacuation centers, Nishiyama and his family settled in a rental unit in Nishigo in Fukushima Prefecture. Nishiyama found a new job, and his children have grown accustomed to life in the village. Families with children under 18 years old tended to have higher response rates to the question about whether the family lived separately. A 57-year-old homemaker now lives with her 59-year-old husband and 79-year-old mother-in-law in a rental unit in Iwaki in the prefecture. Her 35-year-old oldest son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren live in a rental unit in Tokyo. Before the disaster, they all lived together in Tomioka, which is only 9 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. She said her son absolutely refuses to return to Fukushima with his children. When asked how long they thought it would take before they could return to their former communities, 35 percent of the evacuees--the largest group--said "from one to less than five years." Underscoring how the Fukushima nuclear accident has turned the lives of many people upside down, 62 percent of respondents said they had no income prospects for their future lives. In addition, 42 percent said they had no prospect of returning to the job they held before the accident. The prolonged evacuation period has also turned Fukushima residents against nuclear energy. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said they were opposed to the use of nuclear energy, an increase from 70 percent in the June survey. The percentage of those in favor of nuclear energy fell to 19 percent from 26 percent in June. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 12 2011, 06:52 PM Post #502 |
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Prince
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Radioactive cleanup to be covered by state Decontamination plan calls for municipalities to offer storage sites.The government will be responsible for removing radioactive materials from all areas with levels exceeding 1 millisievert per year — stricter than the 5 millisieverts initially considered — according to an Environment Ministry preliminary report that stops short of saying where the waste will be temporarily, or permanently, stored. The changed threshold came after many local governments lashed out, prompting Environment Minister Goshi Hosono to repeatedly say the central government will expand the areas it takes responsibility for. Under the plan, the government will aim to halve radiation levels by August 2013 from August 2011 in areas whose contamination runs between 1 and 20 millisieverts per year. Areas facing further decontamination include schools and parks used by children. The government will aim for a 60 percent radiation reduction in those areas by the end of August 2013 compared with last August. Municipal governments, with financial support from the central government, will be responsible for decontaminating areas with annual radiation levels ranging from 1 to 20 millisieverts. The central government will directly handle decontamination work in the no-go zone within the 20-km radius of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant and the areas designated as "emergency evacuation preparation zones" where residents have been asked to prepare to flee in case the nuclear crisis worsens. In these areas, with the exception of locations with extremely high levels of radiation, including near the power plant, the central government will engage in decontamination and transport the removed radioactive soil and vegetation to designated temporary storage sites by the end of March 2014, according to the preliminary plan. A ministry official said the provisional goal is to bring down radiation levels to 20 millisieverts per year and less. For areas with extremely high levels of radiation, the government has yet to set a numerical target for reducing the contamination. The government will perform trials to assess the effectiveness of the planned procedures to remove radioactive materials and then set a target. The proposal was submitted and approved Monday by a panel of experts working out details for the decontamination effort. After receiving opinions from the public, the Environment Ministry will decide next month which municipalities will be subject to the decontamination effort, officials said. The plan is expected to set in motion the world's largest decontamination effort, covering all affected areas starting Jan. 1, when a ministry ordinance comes into force. Radioactive materials will be removed from soil, farmland, forests, buildings, streets, rivers, beaches, ports and lakes, but areas used often by children will be priority targets. The government has yet to decide where it will temporarily store the huge amounts of radioactive soil and vegetation to be removed. The plan merely states that the Environment Ministry must reach agreements with municipal governments to secure the temporary storage sites. The central government will be financially and technologically responsible for decontaminating areas with radiation levels between 1 and 20 millisieverts per year, but the municipal governments will have to provide locations for the temporary storage sites. Details on the temporary facilities for storing and managing the removed radioactive materi-als also have yet to be decided, except that they will have to be in the prefectures with "substantial amounts" of radioactive materials. The central government will bear ultimate responsibility for finding and ensuring the safety of the temporary storage sites. The plan does not name any candidate prefectures, but a ministry official said Fukushima will be included. The government must also secure the final disposal site for the waste, but nothing has been decided on this either. Also Monday, the Environment Ministry also said it will officially deem that disaster waste and ash with radioactive cesium of 8,000 becquerels per kilogram and less can be managed the same way as ordinary waste. This figure had been the provisional standard for contaminated ash. The disposal of ash and sludge containing radioactive cesium of more than 8,000 becquerels per kilogram will be directly handled and controlled by the central government, the ministry said. The waste containers will be sealed to prevent any leakage. Ash containing more than 8,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium had been found in 42 waste disposal facilities in Fukushima, Iwate, Tokyo and four other prefectures as of Aug. 24. A land ministry survey also revealed that sludge in sewage treatment facilities in Fukushima Prefecture and other areas in the Kanto region and ash from subsequent incineration were contained more than 8,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 12 2011, 07:18 PM Post #503 |
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Prince
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Japan mayor calls for nuclear reactor decommissioning.![]() Tsunami-crippled No. 3 reactor of Fukushima Daiichi The Tokaimura nuclear reactor 110km northeast of Tokyo must be decommissioned, the regional mayor has urged. Tokaimura Mayor Tatsuya Murakami is the first local leader in Japan to urge scrapping a reactor as Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda tries to rehabilitate the tarnished nuclear sector to help meet the nation's power needs. The reactor at Tokaimura, where Japan's commercial nuclear power industry was born in the late 1950s, has been shut since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan in March, triggering a crisis at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Only 10 of Japan's 54 commercial reactors remain operating seven months after the March disaster, as safety fears have left local authorities wary of restarting reactors once they go offline for routine maintenance. Murakami warned that if the wave that struck his village on March 11 had been slightly higher, the Tokai Daini reactor could have posed far graver danger than the Fukushima plant, as one million people live within a 30-km radius and it is much closer to Tokyo. A Tokaimura official has said that Murakami made his request at a meeting the day before with nuclear disaster minister Goshi Hosono. "Shouldn't the plant be decommissioned?" he was quoted as telling the meeting. The 33-year old reactor still has seven years before its operating licence expires and Tokyo Electric Power Co had been counting on the 1,100-megawatt facility to help it make up for the 4,700 megawatts of lost power from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant. It entered routine maintenance in May and is not due to restart until August 2012. Prime Minister Noda has said that offline reactors under maintenance should restart once local authorities confirm they are safe, taking a softer line than his predecessor Naoto Kan, who concluded in March that nuclear power was no longer worth the risk after the world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years. Japan's nuclear plant operators are preparing to report the results of reactor stress tests to the country's nuclear watchdog, the first step in a lengthy process that would ultimately require local authorities' approval for restarts. Since the onset of the Fukushima crisis, Murakami has called on Japan to better care for residents who were forced to leave Fukushima prefecture because of the crisis and to stop operating old reactors given lax safety rules and a lack of contingency plans. Murakami was Tokaimura's mayor in 1999 when a criticality accident at a Tokaimura uranium reprocessing facility resulted in two deaths, the worst nuclear accident in Japan until the Fukushima crisis. Japan Atomic Power, in which Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power is a major shareholder, brought its sole reactor at the Tokai Daini plant in Ibaraki prefecture to a state of cold shutdown on March 15. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 14 2011, 11:02 PM Post #504 |
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Prince
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TEPCO must handle compensation with sincerity The Yomiuri Shimbun Procedures related to compensation payments from Tokyo Electric Power Co. have been delayed for a regrettably long time. About a month ago, the utility began delivering about 70,000 copies of an application form for seeking damages related to the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but only a little more than 10 percent have been filled in and returned to TEPCO. This is apparently due primarily to the fact that the claims document has many pages and contains technical terminology that may bewilder victims of the nuclear crisis. TEPCO began distributing what it called "easy-to-understand guidelines" earlier this week, to help victims confirm what documents and information they need to file compensation claims. The booklet is only four pages and contains seven questions and answers on such topics as the location of evacuation centers and whether or not victims have receipts for crisis-related expenses. === Speed up procedures TEPCO says it will not change the original document for seeking damages, which is about 60 pages long, but will accept inquiries by phone and other means to help victims complete their damage claims within an hour or so, after going through the four-page guidelines. It is important for TEPCO to provide victims with good-hearted, detailed explanations. TEPCO must do its utmost to support victims in this way, to ensure compensation claims are processed more quickly. Victims reportedly have been puzzled by various issues, such as whether TEPCO's compensation scheme covers such things as losses caused by burglary after victims had evacuated their homes and higher living expenses caused by family members living separately during evacuation. TEPCO has held about 50 explanatory sessions regarding compensation for victims of the nuclear crisis. The utility should hold such sessions frequently in the future. Since inquiries are expected to increase because of the distribution of the guidelines, TEPCO should also add more telephone lines to its call centers to handle inquiries from victims and put more staff at its consultation offices. Many victims do not have receipts for expenses connected to their evacuation and related matters. TEPCO has rightly decided to pay a standard amount of damages even when victims have no receipts. The utility should listen carefully to each person's situation and respond appropriately to individual circumstances. Distrust on the part of victims has also hampered progress on compensation claims. === Troubling clause At one point, TEPCO showed victims a draft written agreement that required victims to promise, after receiving damages, that they would "never file any appeal regarding the compensation paid or make any demand for additional damages." TEPCO later deleted this statement from the final agreement. However, victims are understandably still fearful they will not fill out the claims document correctly, leading to delay in payment of compensation. People evacuated from Futabamachi, Fukushima Prefecture, are boycotting TEPCO's explanatory sessions on the grounds the company is untrustworthy. TEPCO must not repeat actions that could wound victims of the crisis. There also are problems with how to compensate business operators. Regarding the drop in revenue in tourist industries as a result of radiation fears, TEPCO decided to cut damages payments to such businesses by 20 percent, saying causes other than the Fukushima nuclear crisis were likely responsible for about that much of their lower income. Tourist-related companies in four prefectures, including Fukushima Prefecture, have objected vehemently. Such unilateral and uniform cuts could hardly obtain the public's understanding and support. TEPCO should quickly rethink its lower compensation for businesses. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 14 2011, 11:02 PM Post #505 |
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Prince
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Japan’s Latest Radiation Scare Was Caused by Nuclear Paint The elevated radiation levels discovered in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward have been confirmed—thankfully—as not having originated from the damaged Fukushima power plant. So what was causing the Geigers to jump? A stash of radium-226 under a home's floorboards. The mystery, though, is how they got there. Japan's Science Ministry discovered the cache Thursday which consisted of numerous bottles and vials containing a white, powdered substance believed to be radium. Some containers bore the label, Nihon Yako ("Luminous Japan")— radium-226 can be used as a luminous paint. Radiation levels at the surface of the bottles measured 600 microsieverts per hour. The elderly owner of the home said she was unaware of the materials stored beneath her. She reportedly had lived in the home from 1953 until February of this year while receiving about 30 mSv of exposure annually. Radium, when inhaled or ingested, accumulates in the bones and for every 100 mSv of exposure, increases one's chances of dying from cancer by one half percent. Authorities have removed the isotopes from the property and stored them at a radioactive isotope disposal agency for the duration of their 1,600-year half life. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 14 2011, 11:08 PM Post #506 |
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Prince
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Radioactive Hot Spots in Tokyo Point to Wider Problems![]() A patch of ground at Edogawa City Baseball Stadium in Tokyo, was found to have elevated levels of cesium. TOKYO — Takeo Hayashida signed on with a citizens’ group to test for radiation near his son’s baseball field in Tokyo after government officials told him they had no plans to check for fallout from the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Like Japan’s central government, local officials said there was nothing to fear in the capital, 160 miles from the disaster zone. Then came the test result: the level of radioactive cesium in a patch of dirt just meters from where his 11-year-old son, Koshiro, played baseball was equal to those in some contaminated areas around Chernobyl. The patch of ground was one of more than 20 spots in and around the nation’s capital that the citizen’s group, and the respected nuclear research center they worked with, found were contaminated with potentially harmful levels of radioactive cesium. It has been clear since the early days of the nuclear accident, the world’s second worst after Chernobyl, that that the vagaries of wind and rain had scattered worrisome amounts of radioactive materials in unexpected patterns far outside the evacuation zone 12 miles around the stricken plant. But reports that substantial amounts of cesium had accumulated as far away as densely populated Tokyo have raised new concerns about how far the contamination had spread, possibly settling in areas where the government has not even considered looking. The government’s failure to act quickly, a growing chorus of scientists say, may be exposing many more people than originally believed to potentially harmful radiation. It is also part of a pattern: Japan’s leaders have continually insisted that the fallout from Fukushima would not spread far, or pose a health threat to residents, or contaminate the food chain. And officials have repeatedly been proved wrong by independent experts and citizens’ groups that conduct testing on their own. “Radioactive substances are entering people’s bodies from the air, from the food. It’s everywhere,” said Kiyoshi Toda, a radiation expert at Nagasaki University’s faculty of environmental studies and a medical doctor. “But the government doesn’t even try to inform the public how much radiation they’re exposed to. The reports of hot spots do not indicate how widespread contamination is in the capital; more sampling would be needed to determine that. But they raise the prospect that people living near concentrated amounts of cesium are being exposed to levels of radiation above accepted international standards meant to protect people from cancer and other illnesses. Japanese nuclear experts and activists have begun agitating for more comprehensive testing in Tokyo and elsewhere, and a cleanup if necessary. Robert Alvarez, a former special assistant to the United State Secretary of Energy and a nuclear expert, echoed those calls, saying the Defense Project’s measurements “raise major and unprecedented concerns about the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.” The government has not ignored citizens’ pleas entirely; it recently completed aerial testing in eastern Japan, including Tokyo. But several experts and activists say the tests are unlikely to be sensitive enough to be useful in finding micro hot spots such as those found by the citizens’ group. Kaoru Noguchi, head of Tokyo’s health and safety section, however, argues that the testing already done is sufficient. Because Tokyo is so developed, she says, radioactive material was much more likely to have fallen on concrete, then washed away. She also said exposure was likely to be limited. “Nobody stands in one spot all day,” she said. “And nobody eats dirt.” Tokyo residents knew soon after the March 11 accident, when a tsunami knocked out the crucial cooling systems at the Fukushima plant, that they were being exposed to radioactive materials. Researchers detected a spike in radiation levels on March 15. Then as rain drizzled down on the evening of March 21, radioactive material again fell on the city. In the following week, however, radioactivity in the air and water dropped rapidly. Most in the city put aside their jitters, some openly scornful of those -- mostly foreigners -- who had fled Tokyo in the early days of the disaster. But not everyone was convinced. Some Tokyo residents bought dosimeters. The Radiation Defense Project, which grew out of a Facebook discussion page, decided to be more proactive. In consultation with the Yokohama-based Isotope Research Institute, members collected soil samples from near their own homes and submitted them for testing. Some of the results were shocking: the sample that Mr. Hayashida collected under shrubs near his neighborhood baseball field in the Edogawa ward measured nearly 138,000 becquerels per square meter of radioactive cesium 137, which can damage cells and lead to an increased risk of cancer. Of the 132 areas tested, 22 were above 37,000 becquerels per square meter, the level set for contaminated zones at Chernobyl. Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, said most residents near Chernobyl were undoubtedly much worse off, surrounded by widespread contamination rather than isolated hot spots. But he said the 37,000 figure remains a good reference point for mandatory cleanup because regular exposure to such contamination could result in a dosage of more than 1 millisievert per year, the maximum recommended for members of the public by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. The most contaminated spot in the Radiation Defense survey, near a church, was well above the 1.5 million level that required mandatory resettlement at Chernobyl. The level is so much higher than other results in the study that it raises the possibility of testing error, but micro hot spots are not unheard of after nuclear disasters. The relatively tame mainstream media, which is more likely to report on government pronouncements than grass roots movements, mainly ignored the citizen group’s findings. “Everybody just wants to believe that this is Fukushima’s problem,” said Kota Kino(censor)a, one of the citizen groups’ leaders and a former television journalist. “But if the government is not serious about finding out, how can we trust them?” Hideo Yamazaki, an expert in environmental analysis at Kinki University in western Japan, did his own survey of the city and says he, too, discovered high levels in the area where the baseball field is located. “These results are highly localized, so there is no cause for panic,” he said. “Still, there are steps the government could be taking, like decontaminating the highest spots.” Since then, there have been other suggestions that hot spots were more widespread than originally imagined. Last month, a local government in a Tokyo ward found a pile of composted leaves at a school that measured over two times Japan’s legally permissible level for compost. And on Wednesday, civilians who tested the roof of an apartment building in the nearby city of Yokohama -- further from Fukushima than Tokyo -- found high quantities of radioactive strontium on the roof of an apartment building. (There was also one false alarm this week when sky-high readings were reported in Setagaya in Tokyo; the government later said they were likely caused by bottles of radium, once widely used to make paint.) The government’s own aerial testing showed that although almost all of Tokyo had relatively little contamination, two areas showed elevated readings. One was in a mountainous area at the western edge of the Tokyo metropolitan region, and the other covered three wards of the city -- including the one where the baseball field is located. The metropolitan government said it had started preparations to begin monitoring food products from the nearby mountains, but the government acknowledged that food has been shipped from the area for months. . Mr. Hayashida, who discovered the high level at the baseball field, says that he is not waiting any longer for government assurances. He moved his family to Okayama, about 600 kilometers away. “Perhaps we could have stayed in Tokyo with no problems,” he said. “But I choose a future with no radiation fears.” |
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| Audi-Tek | October 14 2011, 11:14 PM Post #507 |
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Prince
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USD 74 bn lost in Fukushima disaster Tokyo, Oct 13 : Financial loss from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan has been estimated at USD 74 billion, the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission said Thursday. The dismantlement of four reactor tanks will cost USD 14.9 billion and USD 52 billion will be spent on compensation, clean-up of radioactive soil and other measures. The special government-backed fund set up after the disaster will finance the project. The fund is financed with money from the state budget and contributions from financial organisations and other utilities. TEPCO, the operator of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, will compensate the expenses over the next several years. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 16 2011, 09:05 PM Post #508 |
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Prince
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Study: Fukushima storage pool was vulnerable to aftershocks Aftershocks of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake could have significantly worsened the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in the weeks after the disaster, according to a government simulation. The storage pool in the No. 4 reactor, which had its building's roof blown off after a hydrogen explosion on March 15, was vulnerable to an aftershock and might have started leaking radioactivity within three hours of a hypothetical aftershock, the study found. Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the plant, initially said the pool was sturdy enough to withstand aftershocks, but Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization analysis completed at the end of June but only released on Oct. 14 says radioactive substances could have been discharged 2.3 hours after a temblor knocked out the pool's cooling system. The simulation, part of a 300-page report commissioned by Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, was based on the assumption that the pool would lose cooling water if it was cracked by an aftershock. After the uncooled fuel rods reached 900 degrees and damaged their casings, radioactive leaks would have begun, according to the study. It said the fuel rods would have begun melting as the temperature hit 2,800 degrees, 7.7 hours after the hypothetical loss of cooling functions. The storage pool is in the upper part of the No. 4 reactor building and contained 1,331 spent fuel assemblies and 204 new fuel assemblies. TEPCO completed work to reinforce it in July. The simulation is one of 39 analyses in the report, which is now available at the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization website. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 16 2011, 09:07 PM Post #509 |
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Prince
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Radioactive strontium found in Yokohama gutter YOKOHAMA -- Radioactive strontium has been found in a street gutter in Yokohama, appearing to confirm that the radioactive isotope has spread far beyond districts close to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Sediment in the gutter in the Okurayama district of Kohoku Ward contained 129 becquerels of radioactive strontium-89 and strontium-90 combined per kilogram, city officials announced on Oct. 14. The results follow an earlier report that deposits of strontium had been found on a nearby apartment building's rooftop. "We believe (the deposits) were caused by the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant," a city official said. "We cannot judge potential risks. We want to consult with the central government." Radioactive cesium of 39,012 becquerels per/kg was also detected in the sample from the gutter but it is the presence of strontium that makes the Yokohama reports exceptional. There had previously been no reports of strontium contamination beyond 100 kilometers of the Fukushima plant. Although Kohoku Ward is about 250 kilometers from the Fukushima plant, the concentration found in the gutter is higher than the 77 becquerels per kilogram detected in soil in Fukushima city between April and May. Dirt at the bottom of a dry fountain in the Shin-Yokohama district in Kohoku Ward was also found to contain 59 becquerels/kg of strontium and 31,570 becquerels per/kg of cesium. In mid-September, the city took dirt samples from the roof of an apartment building where a local resident had reported radioactive strontium, as well as from the gutter in Okurayama and the fountain in Shin-Yokohama. A private lab was commissioned to analyze the data. Although the city did not reveal the measurements from the apartment roof, saying it did not have permission from the occupants, the resident who filed the initial report said the city found 236 becquerels of strontium per kilogram. Dirt from the contaminated locations has since been removed and radiation levels in the atmosphere around the gutter in the Okurayama district have fallen to 0.13 microsievert per hour from 0.91 microsievert per hour, city officials said on Oct. 14. Atmospheric radiation at the fountain in Shin-Yokohama has fallen to 0.09 microsievert per hour from 0.13 microsievert per hour. Explaining the concentration of radioactive materials in particular areas, a city official said: "Dirt and water are likely to gather and accumulate in those spots. We would like to decontaminate such areas." |
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| Audi-Tek | October 16 2011, 09:09 PM Post #510 |
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Prince
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TEPCO wraps damaged reactor in protective cover![]() The building housing the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is wrapped with a protective cover on Oct. 14. (Provided by Tokyo Electric Power Co.) A makeshift canopy with protective shields built over a damaged reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has been completed, two weeks later than initially scheduled. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Oct. 14 that it finished work to envelop the badly damaged No. 1 reactor building with polyester fiber panels, a process it began in August to prevent further leakage of radioactive substances from the reactor. The cover--47 meters by 42 meters and 54 meters high--is installed with a ventilating system that absorbs radioactive materials through a filter. TEPCO said the system is capable of ventilating about 40,000 cubic meters of air per hour and reducing the density of radioactive substances to about one-tenth of the current level. The installation of the cover is expected to allow engineers to measure the accurate level of radioactive materials leaking from the reactor building. The cover was made easier to build by keeping the number of panels and other parts at a minimum. No screws or bolts were used to build it. According to TEPCO, the cover is designed to lean on the reactor building. The foundation was designed to move in a strong wind instead of crumbling and damaging the reactor building, even if the wind velocity exceeds its capacity. TEPCO expects to use the cover for about two years. TEPCO is also considering eventually enveloping the building with a more sturdy and airtight cover and begin an operation to retrieve damaged fuel rods. The ceiling of the No. 1 reactor building was destroyed and its steel framework was exposed after a hydrogen explosion occurred on March 12, the day after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant. TEPCO said that it plans to begin work to cover the No. 3 and No. 4 reactor buildings, which suffered severe damage to their ceilings after hydrogen explosions, next summer. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 16 2011, 09:11 PM Post #511 |
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Prince
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IAEA: Cleanup of low contaminated areas will be ineffectual Japan should take a pragmatic approach in cleaning up forests and areas with low radiation levels as it will likely prove ineffective despite the enormous amounts of time and costs, according to an international nuclear watchdog. Juan Carlos Lentijo, who leads a team of experts from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, told a news conference in Tokyo on Oct. 14 that the Japanese government should weigh the costs and time required to decontaminate against the safety benefits that will be achieved. Lentijo, an expert on decontamination, also said that it would be desirable to begin the cleanup of forests after assessing if the process will contribute to increased public safety. The 12-member team arrived in Japan on Oct. 7 to offer advice on the country's efforts to deal with decontamination after inspecting the operation under way in areas surrounding the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The team's report, released on Oct. 14, urged the government to be more realistic about decontamination. It said the full-scale cleanup of forests and areas where low levels of radiation are detected will be ineffective given the money and time that it will take. The decontamination operation is expected to cost the central government more than 1 trillion yen ($12.99 billion). It encompasses a wide range of areas because the Environment Ministry's guidelines for decontamination states that the state will be responsible for cleaning up the areas where the annual exposure to radiation from fallout from the crippled plant is estimated to reach 1 millisievert or more. Analysts say that the central government's operation could jeopardize similar work undertaken by other entities in terms of manpower and produce an enormous amount of topsoil scraped off from the ground surface. While the report is nonbinding, the IAEA experts were dispatched at the request of the Japanese government. Goshi Hosono, environment minister, told reporters that the government hopes to reflect some of the 12-point IAEA advice in specific actions in local areas, although the central government's guidelines will remain intact. Hosono's remarks indicated that the central government and local governments may take into account the IAEA suggestions when they together draw up decontamination plans. The report also said that in some areas, the topsoil does not need to be removed as much as 5 centimeters deep, a level currently set. The central government's estimate showed that the total amount of soil to be scrapped off 5 centimeters from the surface could reach 29 million cubic meters, or the equivalent of 23 Tokyo Dome stadiums. The report also said that the central and local governments should make efforts on final disposal sites for the contaminated soil and debris. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 16 2011, 09:14 PM Post #512 |
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Prince
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Japan: High radioactive cesium concentrations found in plankton off Fukushima shores By Xeni Jardin at 2:02 pm Saturday, Oct 15 From multiple news sources in Japan today: "Researchers from Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology collected plankton in waters up to 60 kilometers from the coast of Iwaki City in July. They found 669 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in animal plankton from waters 3 kilometers offshore." This is worrisome for many reasons, one of which is that plankton is a primary food for many fish that people in Japan consume. There is concern that this contamination will travel up the food chain. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 18 2011, 10:25 PM Post #513 |
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Prince
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Decontamination work underway in Fukushima, but many choosing not to return FUKUSHIMA -- District-wide radiation decontamination work got underway on Oct. 18 in the Onami district of Fukushima city, but regardless, many families are choosing to have their children live elsewhere to avoid exposure to radiation. One such family is that of Yoshiharu Suda, 61, whose house in the Onami district was the first to have decontamination work carried out on it. After the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, his only son, Takahiro, who is 18 and soon to leave the house for university, said he will not live in Fukushima Prefecture. The Onami district has high radiation levels, thought to have come from the heavily damaged nuclear plant. Located in the eastern part of Fukushima city, Onami is a hilly area around 60 kilometers removed from the nuclear plant, a farming landscape where the people have lived self-sufficiently. Suda also holds farmland, and he grew vegetables throughout all four seasons, sending a portion of his crops to market. After the nuclear plant disaster, however, his crops started fetching only about a tenth of their former prices, no longer even covering the cost of growing and harvesting them. He threw out his onions and gave up on planting rice, cucumbers and eggplant. "There's no point in growing contaminated crops," he said. "A supplemental income of around 400,000 yen a year gone, just like that." Another blow to Suda was Takahiro's difficult decision to leave the prefecture. Takahiro is a senior at high school, where a teacher had expressed confidence that Takahiro could find work at one of the prefecture's major corporations. However, in addition to unfavorable job-seeking conditions caused by the nuclear disaster, the area around his home was contaminated enough that it could be officially recommended for evacuation. "I'm worried about how much radiation exposure I've had," says Takahiro. "When I'm married and have kids, raising them in Fukushima will be a problem. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. should pay us proper compensation for destroying our lives." The city government is aiming for a reduction of atmospheric radiation levels in the district to below one microsievert per hour within the next two years, and it will conduct decontamination work on all 367 homes in the Onami district by the end of this year. Sixty-two homes that have 2.5 microsieverts per hour or more of radiation (two microsieverts per hour or more if there are pregnant women or people under 19 in the house) have been identified for emergency decontamination work, all of which is to be handled by private businesses. Decontamination of the remaining 305 homes and surroundings like roads used by children going to school will be divided between businesses and residents. The highest radiation at Suda's home was near a rain gutter, at 34 microsieverts per hour. When private sector workers hired by the city came to get measurements on Oct. 17, a measuring device that the city had prepared couldn't measure high enough, and one of the private sector workers' measuring devices had to be used. On Oct. 18, private sector workers wearing rain jackets, helmets and goggles used a pressure washer to clean from high places to low, starting with the roof and rain gutters. Garden trees that Suda's 88-year-old mother Satai had tended for half a century were all removed. There was still worry about how much the radiation levels would actually fall after the work was all done. Takahiro is scheduled to attend a university in Tokyo in spring of 2012. Suda says, "I'd like for him to take on this home, but considering the health risks, I can't force him." He added, "Even if the radiation levels fall, our old lives will not come back," and with leaden eyes, watched the decontamination work. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 18 2011, 10:27 PM Post #514 |
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Prince
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High levels of radiation detected near elementary school pool in Tokyo High levels of radiation were detected near a pool at an elementary school in Tokyo, prompting officials to cordon off the area. The Adachi Ward Office announced on Oct. 17 that 3.99 microsieverts of radiation per hour were detected near a machine house for a pool at the Higashifuchie Elementary School in the ward. According to the ward office, the high levels of radiation were observed five centimeters above the ground below a gutter attached to the machine house. Since there is no drainage, it is easy for water to accumulate in the area, ward officials said. Officials have taken such emergency measures as roping off the area to prevent people from entering. "We believe the levels detected are localized and would not affect human health, but we will look into our response as soon as possible," said a ward official in charge of crisis management. The radiation scare emerged after local residents voluntarily measured radiation and detected 1 microsievert or more per hour of radiation at five locations in the ward including the elementary school. The residents' move prompted the ward to conduct its own measurement, which has detected levels of radiation ranging from 0.43 to 0.95 microsieverts per hour at the four remaining locations including a park. Adachi Ward has set its own safety limit, at 0.25 microsieverts per hour, and is supposed to decontaminate an area if higher levels of radiation than the limit are detected. The radiation levels detected in the five locations all exceeded the ward's safety standards. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 18 2011, 10:31 PM Post #515 |
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Prince
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Criteria for 'cold shutdown' of Fukushima nuclear plant remain vague and ambiguous![]() Layout of cooling systems at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. (Mainichi) The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) unveiled a revised roadmap to contain the crippled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant on Oct. 17, clearly stipulating that they would aim for a stable condition called a "cold shutdown" of the reactors by the end of this year, but the criteria used to thrash out the work schedule are vague and ambiguous. It is still not clear whether they can judge that they have achieved a cold shutdown only by checking the temperatures of the bottoms of reactor pressure vessels. On the assessment of the amounts of radioactive substances being released from the nuclear reactors, the government and TEPCO, the operator of the troubled Fukushima nuclear complex, must come up with more detailed data than "provisional figures" in order to say definitely that they have "achieved" a cold shutdown. Furthermore, the government and TEPCO failed to show any direction on the timing of lifting of evacuation advisories -- the final goal of the nuclear disaster response roadmap, let alone prospects for measures that should be taken after a cold shutdown is achieved. According to the government's statements to the Diet, the definition of a cold shutdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant consists of 1) the temperatures of the bottoms of the reactor pressure vessels being held down below 100 degrees Celsius, 2) radioactive substances from the reactors being managed and controlled, and 3) stable maintenance of "circular cooling systems" designed to recycle radioactive water from the reactors as coolant. The temperatures of the bottoms of the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors, which suffered core meltdowns, have stayed below 100 degrees Celsius since Oct. 1, and these conditions served as the reason to decide to bring forward the target deadline to achieve a cold shutdown. But melted fuels are believed to have dropped to the floors of containment vessels from the pressure vessels, and therefore it is difficult to assess the conditions inside reactor cores by measuring the temperatures of the bottoms of the pressure vessels alone. According to the work schedule to stabilize the nuclear reactors released by TEPCO on Oct. 17, the temperature of the melted fuel that was dropped to the containment vessels is estimated to be about 150 degrees Celsius. EPCO official Junichi Matsumoto said, "There is no problem because the melted fuel is sufficiently cooled down by water injection from above." But Hiroshi Yamagata, an official of the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), only said, "We will discuss its validity from now on." According to the revised roadmap, the amounts of radioactive substances being released from the nuclear reactors are 40 million becquerels per hour at the No. 1 reactor, 10 million becquerels per hour at the No. 2 reactor, and 40 million becquerels per hour at the No. 3 reactor. The combined total amount of radioactive substances being released from the reactors stands at about 100 million bacquerels per hour, about one eight-millionth of what was measured on March 15, four days after the outbreak of the nuclear crisis. But on the amount of radioactive substances being released from the No. 3 reactor, which has yet to be fully measured, NISA said, "It is nothing but a provisional figure." They plan to measure the amount of radioactive substances again by the end of this year and see if the annual dose of radiation at the outer premises of the nuclear plant is held down below the legally acceptable level of less than one millisievert per year. On the lifting of evacuation advisories, Cabinet Office Parliamentary Secretary Yasuhiro Sonoda said, "Depending on progress in the work schedule, I believe it will be discussed little by little." But he stopped short of giving a specific timeframe for such discussions. |
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| Audi-Tek | October 18 2011, 10:34 PM Post #516 |
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Approaching winter brings isolation concerns for seniors living in temporary housing. RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate -- Hiroko Maeda, 64, often drives her car to visit elderly acquaintances who lived in the same district as her before the March 11 disasters. She worries, however, that winter will take away her ability to drive and isolate her companions. Maeda has nerve pain that tend to worsen during the winter months, making driving difficult. "I'm worried about from here on," she says. One morning, Maeda pulled up to a temporary housing complex's parking lot in her small silver car. She called out to Takeo Sasaki, 70, and seated him in the front passenger seat for a 30-minute ride to his dermatologist. "The autumn colors have started coming in a little, haven't they? The mountain plants, too," said Maeda while Sasaki nodded and looked out the window. When Sasaki said that he had stopped using medicine for his eczema because it had gotten better, however, Maeda's voice took a stricter tone. "Until the doctor says it's OK, you can't stop putting medicine on because your eczema will come back." Sasaki nodded. The district called Kawara where Maeda and Sasaki lived had many elderly residents, and they supported each other in their lives. Around 60 percent of the district's population was lost to the tsunami, and more than a few elderly who lost their homes there are now living isolated lives in temporary housing. Maeda, whose husband passed away long ago, sometimes visits some of the other former Kawara residents. "We're from the same community, after all. When times are hard we help each other. There's nothing unusual about it," says Maeda. Sasaki, who lived across from Maeda, lost his wife to the tsunami. His son is working away from home, and comes back once every four days. While his junior-high school age grandchild is at school, Sasaki is alone. While working as a plasterer, he fell from a roof and injured his neck, and ever since then he cannot move his fingertips. He rarely leaves the house, but does not complain about hardships or sadness. Maeda, who couldn't stand to see Sasaki left alone, has been helping him since he was living in an evacuation shelter. After driving Sasaki back to his home, Maeda visited the temporary housing unit of a 70-year-old man who also lived in the Kawara district. He lost his wife and son and now lives alone. He doesn't have a driver's license, so Maeda drives him when he needs to purchase large items like big blankets or carpets. Lately, the man said he hasn't been sleeping well. Maeda and he spent about an hour chatting over tea. When all was over, Maeda drove back to her temporary housing complex, about 20 minutes away. After arriving she voiced concern: "What should I do after it gets cold? When I start feeling bad I can't drive or move around easily." |
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| Audi-Tek | October 18 2011, 10:44 PM Post #517 |
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Prince
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Fukushima victims are desperate, angry, homeless About 80,000 people were forced to leave their homes by the nuclear crisis FUKUSHIMA, Japan — At last, victims of Japan's nuclear crisis can claim compensation. And they are angry. They are furious at the red tape they have to wade through just to receive basic help and in despair they still cannot get on with their lives seven months after the huge quake and tsunami triggered the world's worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. Shouts fill a room at a temporary housing complex where seven officials, kneeling in their dark suits, face 70 or so tenants who were forced to abandon their homes near the Fukushima nuclear plant after some of its reactors went into meltdown after the March 11 quake struck. "We don't know who we can trust!" one man yelled in the cramped room where the officials were trying to explain the hugely complex procedures to claim compensation. "Can we actually go back home? And if not, can you guarantee our livelihoods?" About 80,000 people were forced to leave their homes by the nuclear crisis. While the owner of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co, has made temporary payments to some victims, it was only last month that it finally began accepting applications for compensation. But the procedure is so complicated that it seems to just make things worse. After claimants have read a 160-page instruction manual, they then have to fill in a 60-page form and attach receipts for lodging, transportation and medical costs. "It's too difficult. I'm going to see how it goes. I don't want to rush and mess up," said Toshiyuki Owada, 65, an evacuee from Namie town, about 20 km (12 miles) away from the plant. Owada is one of many who still has not applied for compensation even though they have lost jobs or businesses and are running out of cash. Complex and unfair The complexity of the task is one deterrent. There is another — the perception that Tepco is not playing fair. Confidence in the authorities is low. The government is seen as having bungled its early response to the crisis and being secretive about what was really happening. Tepco is accused of failing to take sufficient safety measures at the Fukushima plant even though it knew the risks and then deliberately underplaying the extent of the accident. It is also seen as insensitive. One clause in the original instruction booklet telling victims they would have to agree to waive their right to challenge the compensation amount in order to receive payment provoked a public uproar. Chastised by the government, the company promised to drop the clause, issued a simplified 4-page instruction booklet and assigned 1,000 employees to Fukushima prefecture to help victims with the process. "There may be times when the content is difficult to understand or in some cases our employee in charge may not grasp it fully, but we would like to explain and respond as carefully as possible," said Tepco spokesman Naoyuki Matsumoto. A government panel overseeing the compensation scheme estimates claims are likely to reach 3.6 trillion yen ($46.5 billion) in the financial year to next March. Few claimants But so far just 7,100 individuals have applied to Tepco for compensation out of the 80,000 it send forms to. And of the 10,000 businesses in the Fukushima area, a mere 300 have submitted claims. The company expects a total of 300,000 claims from businesses given that the impact of the radiation crisis has been so widespread. Victims can sue but that is rare. Junichi Matsumoto, a Tepco official, said the utility faces about 10 lawsuits so far. He declined to disclose |
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| Audi-Tek | October 18 2011, 10:49 PM Post #518 |
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Fukushima and Chernobyl: Same Level on Disaster Scale; Very Different Disasters. hat’s the News: Japan raised its assessment of the severely damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to Level 7, “Major Accident,” the highest ranking on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. The explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 is the only other nuclear accident to be ranked at Level 7. Both accidents were extremely severe, the two largest nuclear power accidents ever—but there are some big, important differences between them. What’s Similar: A Level 7 accident is a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures,” according to the IAEA. Both plants clearly meet these criteria: Fukushima will require an extensive clean-up effort, and the international community is still working to make the area near Chernobyl safe. The situation at Fukushima also qualifies as Level 7 by the numbers. Japanese officials estimate the reactors have released between 370,000 and 630,000 terabecquerels (or, between 370 and 630 quadrillion becquerels) of radioactive material, far more than the equivalent of tens of thousands of terabequerels iodine-131 that is the cutoff for a Level 7 accident. A spokesman for Japan’s Industrial and Nuclear Safety agency said in a press conference that the Fukushima reactors are still releasing radiation, and total levels could eventually exceed those released by Chernobyl. What’s Different: The Fukushima reactors have containment structures, an extra safety layer that has helped limit the spread of radioactivity; Chernobyl had no containment structures. The two accidents happened under very different conditions: Fukushima’s reactors shut down after the March earthquake, then overheated as a result of later cooling system malfunctions. The reactor at Chernobyl, on the other hand, was still running when it exploded, causing a much larger release of heat. The accident at Chernobyl’s reactor was a full core meltdown, while the accident at Fukushima was a possible partial meltdown. The accident at Chernobyl unfolded much more quickly. The explosion there spewed debris and radioactive materials over a wide distance, and sparked a fire that burned for days. The surroundings had to be evacuated within hours. At Fukushima, the reactors have been releasing radiation at a much slower rate. To date, the Fukushima plant has released much less radiation: only one-tenth as much as Chernobyl, according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. Dr. Robert Peter Gale, leader of the medical team that responded to the Chernobyl accident, estimated that, if the situation doesn’t worsen, radiation from the Fukushima accident would cause fewer excess cancer cases an Chernobyl did. Chernobyl resulted in 6,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer, says Gale, while Fukushima would lead to few additional thyroid cancer cases, and 200 to 1,500 total additional cancer cases over the next half-century. (The actual number of cancers and deaths that resulted from Chernobyl is a scientifically and politically tricky question.) Precautions taken by Japan—including monitoring of food and water supplies and timely distribution of potassium iodide tablets—may lessen the severity of human health effects of the Fukushima accident, according to World Nuclear News. What’s the Context: The raising of Fukushima to a Level 7 accident doesn’t mean that the situation at Fukushima is worsening; in fact, the reactors’ condition seems increasingly stable. Link ...... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/04/14/fukushima-and-chernobyl-same-level-on-disaster-scale-very-different-disasters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiscoverPhysicsMath+%28Discover+Physics+%26+Math%29 |
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| Audi-Tek | October 18 2011, 10:52 PM Post #519 |
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Study: Nuclear Fission Reactions May Have Continued After Fukushima’s Alleged Shutdown What’s the News: A non-peer-reviewed study (pdf) publicized last week by radioactivity-detection expert Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress suggests that nuclear fission reactions continued at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station well after the plant’s operators had allegedly shut down the reactors there. The paper says there may be what are called “localized criticalities” have occurred in the plutonium and uranium left in the reactors—little pockets of fuel that have gone critical, propagating the nuclear chain reaction and generating potentially harmful radiation. The existence of criticalities is controversial: some researchers say there are certainly none; Dalnoki-Veress himself says it’s only a possibility. How the Heck: Over three days beginning March 13—two days after the earthquake and resulting tsunami—Tokyo Electric Power Company detected a neutron beam, a stream of radioactive particles that could be evidence of continued chain-reaction fission. The company observed the neutron beam 13 times, about a mile away from the reactors. The beam itself doesn’t pose a health risk, with radiation levels between 0.01 and 0.02 microsieverts per hour. (You’d get about as much radiation exposure from eating one-tenth to one-fifth of a banana.) After seawater was used to cool the reactors, the water had unusually high levels of chlorine-38, a radioactive isotope of chlorine. Chlorine-38 isn’t much of a radiation risk; its half-life is 37 minutes, so it disappears quickly. What’s strange is that chlorine-38 is formed when an atom of chlorine-37 (the stable, common chlorine isotope) absorbs a neutron. High levels of chlorine-38 mean there were lots of neutrons around, raising the possibility that melted bits of fuel may have gone critical. What’s the Context: An explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant came shortly after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. Workers are still pumping in seawater to keep the reactors’ fuel rods cool, with leaks and disposal of the now-radioactive water presenting a new set of problems. These localized criticalities, if they’re happening, could cause surges of radiation and heat, making cooling and containment work at the reactors even more perilous for workers. Not So Fast: Other experts are divided as to whether there’s even a chance that there are accidental fission reactions occurring. The dangerous conditions at the reactor make it difficult to get a good read on what, exactly, is going on. Nuclear safety expert Edwin Lyman told Time that he’d “be wary of attributing too much significance to a single anomalous measurement.” But Denis Flory, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency‘s nuclear safety department, said in a press conference that such reactions could potentially be occurring. Link ...... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/04/04/study-nuclear-fission-reactions-may-have-continued-after-fukushimas-alleged-shutdown/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiscoverPhysicsMath+%28Discover+Physics+%26+Math%29 |
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| Audi-Tek | October 18 2011, 10:54 PM Post #520 |
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Fukushima city begins decontamination of homes. Fukushima City began Tuesday its first decontamination of private properties, seven months after the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl spread radioactive materials over eastern Japan. The first such organised cleanup of peoples' homes by an affected municipality follows work by various communities in northeast Japan to decontaminate public areas such as schools, parks and daycare centres. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda visited the city for the second time since he took office less than two months ago, with many residents voicing frustration over what they see as a slow government response to the crisis. Tuesday's clean up comes amid growing concerns that potentially harmful contamination spread more widely than thought amid discoveries of radiation hot spots in areas such Chiba and in Tokyo more than 200 kilometres away. Fukushima City is home to roughly 300,000 residents and sits 60 kilometres (35 miles) northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crippled in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, that left around 20,000 dead or missing. Radiation emissions from the plant have since fallen as workers race to bring its crippled reactors into a safe state of cold shutdown by year-end, but Japan faces a huge operation to decontaminate areas nearby. Areas northwest of the plant were hit hardest by radiation due to wind patterns at the peak of the crisis. Tens of thousands remain evacuated from homes and businesses in a 20 kilometre (12 mile) radius no-go zone around the plant and some areas beyond. In Fukushima City, authorities plan to clean around 110,000 houses as well as streets and public buildings. On Tuesday work crews wearing face masks used high pressure hoses to wash down houses in the Onami district, where elevated levels of radiation contamination have been detected. They also cut trees in gardens and excavated top soil with the aim of reducing radioactivity readings there to below 1.0 microsievert per hour. Yoshiharu Suda, whose house was among the first to be cleaned, said he wished the decontamination effort had been made earlier. "I think it might be too late," he told national broadcaster NHK, standing in front of his house where radiation readings double the government target were detected Monday. The task of restoring towns and villages even in lightly contaminated zones is complicated, with high costs and logistical issues of where to store soil and sludge contaminated with substances such as caesium after it is removed. The government has sought to calm public fears and overcome mistrust of official radiation surveys, claiming that areas away from the immediate vicinities of the wrecked plant should be safe. But concerned citizens armed with their own measuring tools have been finding small localised "hot spots" with high radiation levels. In the Adachi ward in Tokyo, a drain in the back of a school pool registered 3.99 microsieverts per hour of radiation Monday night, prompting officials to decontaminate the area. Based on the Japanese science ministry's criteria, that level is equivalent to an annual dose of about 21 millisieverts -- above the 20 millisievert level that mandates a public evacuation. National Broadcaster NHK on Friday reported that a citizens' group in Funabashi City in Chiba, east of Tokyo, detected radiation levels of up to 5.82 microsieverts per hour at a local park, compared to official readings of 1.55 microsieverts per hour at the site. Variable winds, weather and topography result in an uneven spread of contamination, experts say, and radioactive elements tend to concentrate in places where dust and rain water accumulate such as drains and ditches. The accident has discouraged consumers from buying farm produce from Fukushima and surrounding regions following reported cases of contaminated water, beef, vegetables, tea and seafood. |
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2:10 AM Jul 11