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Topic Started: April 11 2011, 02:28 PM (7,656 Views)
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Japan Revives a Sea Barrier That Failed to Hold.

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Japan's Failed Breakwaters: Nori Onishi reports on the failure of breakwater systems in protecting against large waves along Japan's coastline.



Read full article.......... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/world/asia/japan-revives-a-sea-barrier-that-failed-to-hold.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Findex.jsonp
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Fukushima's No. 3 reactor likely triggered hydrogen blast.


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The floor of the fifth level of the No. 4 reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant (Tokyo Electric Power Co.)


The hydrogen explosion that spewed radioactive materials from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant’s No. 4 reactor building on March 15 was likely caused by gas leaking from the neighboring No. 3 reactor.

Investigators found extensive damage on the fourth floor of the No. 4 reactor building near an air duct connected by pipe to the No. 3 reactor, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said on Nov. 10.

During a Nov. 8 inspection, TEPCO also found subsidence of the floor of the fourth level and evidence that the floor above had been pushed upward. A net covering an air intake on the fifth floor appeared to have been blown outward.

TEPCO’s theory is that hydrogen released by a core meltdown at the No. 3 reactor passed backward through the pipes of an emergency gas processing system into the No. 4 reactor building, causing an explosion near the fourth floor duct. Evidence consistent with such a backflow has also been found.

The theory runs counter to TEPCO’s initial suspicion that the explosion at the No. 4 reactor involved hydrogen released because of damage to fuel rods in the reactor’s own spent fuel storage pool.

Camera footage of the pool has shown no damage to the fuel rods, and TEPCO officials say hydrogen would have accumulated on the fifth floor or the top level if it had been generated by fuel rods in the storage pool.
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Radioactive cesium spread as far as Gunma-Nagano border.


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The science ministry released maps on Nov. 11 showing aerially measured accumulations of radioactive cesium from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in 18 prefectures.

Measurements were taken for the first time in six prefectures--Iwate, Toyama, Yamanashi, Nagano, Gifu and Shizuoka--in addition to the previously available contamination maps of 12 prefectures, providing an almost complete picture of eastern Japan.

Radioactive cesium has contaminated areas as far west as the border between Gunma and Nagano prefectures, and as far north as the southern part of Iwate Prefecture, according to officials.

The combined concentration of cesium-134 and cesium-137 exceeded 30,000 becquerels per square meter in certain areas of four municipalities in southern Iwate Prefecture--Oshu, Hiraizumi, Ichinoseki and Fujisawa--and parts of four municipalities in eastern Nagano Prefecture--Karuizawa, Miyota, Saku and Sakuho.

A concentration exceeding 60,000 becquerels per square meter was found near the border of Oshu and Ichinoseki cities and near the border of Saku city and Sakuho town.

The high cesium concentration levels in southern Iwate Prefecture and northern Miyagi Prefecture are said to have formed due to rainfall after a radioactive plume spread from the plant following the nuclear accident. Eastern areas of Nagano Prefecture may have been contaminated by a plume that moved southward from Gunma Prefecture.

In the latest round of measurements, the science ministry fine-tuned its methods by subtracting levels of naturally existing background radiation. The adjustments have led to considerably reduced areas in Niigata Prefecture, where the concentrations exceeded 10,000 becquerels per square meter, but high concentrations were still found in parts of Uonoma city and neighboring areas close to the border with Fukushima Prefecture.

The science ministry defines places with a concentration of more than 10,000 becquerels per square meter as "areas affected by the nuclear accident." No contamination was detected to the west of areas near the Gunma-Nagano border.

"It is possible the plume did not reach the other side of the mountains," a ministry official said.
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Pictures: The Nuclear Cleanup Struggle at Fukushima


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Surveying a Reactor’s Ruin

They grapple with radioactive decay inside the reactor, massive volumes of contaminated water and soil, and hot spots found far from the restricted zone surrounding Fukushima Daiichi.

These are just a few of the major challenges Japanese officials face eight months after the world's second-worst nuclear accident.

A team of radiation experts dispatched by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), shown here donning protective suits as they examined reactor unit 3 on October 11, warned Japan to "avoid over-conservatism" in its cleanup choices. Meanwhile, the government and TEPCO (the Tokyo Electric Power Company) face constant pressure from communities and citizen groups who worry remediation efforts are not aggressive enough.

The focus of the workers has changed substantially since the first weeks after the March 11 tsunami inundated the coastal power plant, crippling its crucial back-up cooling system, and in turn causing explosions and radioactive emissions. The initial releases of radioactive material amounted to about 10 percent of the fallout from Chernobyl; still, emissions were high enough that Fukushima joined that 1986 disaster in Ukraine as the only incident to be classified a "major accident" on the internationally accepted event scale.

Link to rest of article....... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/11/pictures/111111-nuclear-cleanup-struggle-at-fukushima/
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A Visit to Fukushima Begins.


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After returning from work at Fukushima nuclear plant on Friday, a worker stepped from a radiation screening machine.

Eight months after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese government is opening the compound and surrounding area to the media for the first time. On Friday, officials took a group of reporters, including Martin Fackler of The New York Times, on a tour of J-Village, a former sports center near the plant that is now being used to house workers laboring to bring the plant’s reactors under control. On Saturday, the reporters will tour the plant itself.

J-Village sits exactly on the edge of the 12-mile evacuation zone around the plant. It is here that workers and vehicles are screened for radiation. The complex has 12 soccer fields, which are now used as helipads, places to store heavy equipment and parking lots, as well as sites to decontaminate cars and helicopters.

J-Village has 400 staff, including a doctor and 2 nurses, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, the company that runs the Fukushima plant. The village operates 24 hours.

Every day, up to 3,300 workers pass through to go to Fukushima Daiichi, according to Takashi Kurita, a Tepco spokesman. (A much smaller number go to Fukushima Daiini, a nearby plant.)

My dosimeter showed 0.45 microsieverts per hour in front of Center House, a central building where the Tepco briefing was held. That is about the same as background levels in most parts of the United States.

Next, we visited a covered Astroturf soccer field that has been converted for use as a facility for monitoring workers’ internal radiation exposure. Inside one large white tent, there was a row of big machines with seats that looked like almost like cubicles. The only features at each station was a lit-up green button and a tiny LCD screen.

A Tepco guide showed us how the machines work: people sit in the seat, press the green button and wait while being scanned for gamma emissions. A positive reading would mean that they had gamma-emitting contaminants on their skin, clothing or in their bodies. After 60 seconds, the machine gives its ruling. (I was negative.)

Workers at Fukushima Daiichi are given the “whole body counter” checks every month. Before March 11, when the disaster began, they were tested every three months.

Next stop: a soccer stadium that has been converted into dorms for Tepco employees. There are 1,000 rooms in prefabricated, two-story buildings on the field, surrounded by rows of empty blue bleachers.

Dorms at J-Village house Tepco workers. Contractors live offsite, in apartments or inns. In nearby prefabricated buildings, there was a cafeteria and a laundry for workers.

The tour continued with a stop in a room where workers change into protective hazmat suits before going to the plant. A poster showed that a worker going to Fukushima Daiichi needed a full suit with mask, while someone going to Fukushima Daiini needs only a surgical mask and gloves and can wear street clothes.

Workers line up cafeteria-style to take gloves, booties, suits and surgical masks. Masks — boxes and boxes of them — were stored in a nearby room. Workers are also given personal radiation measuring devices, which are checked on their return for total radiation exposure.

Returning workers take off protective clothing in a room covered in pink plastic sheets. After taking off protective clothing, workers are scanned for radiation by a machine called a “gate monitor,” which looked similar to the new body-imaging devices used by airport security.

Discarded protective clothing is treated as radioactive waste and stored on a covered soccer practice field marked by off-limits signs. The used clothing was visible in piles. Some was put into white, square storage containers the size of beds, stacked four high. A Tepco guide (there were several) said every discarded piece of protective clothing has been kept here since March 17. The total so far: 480,000 sets.

The medical center has never treated a case of radiation exposure. Fukushima Daiichi did have a radiation exposure case in March, but the person was treated elsewhere.

Some 2,400 workers have come for checks, but mostly for colds.

To give some sense of the scale of the contamination, consider that 500 tons of water have been collected from the area where vehicles are hosed down.

I interviewed one worker with a company called Atox who was in charge of cleaning cars: Toshiro Iinuma, 56. He said he worked at Fukushima Daiichi for 39 years as a maintenance worker, and was there on March 11. He said that after the quake, workers poured out onto a roadway, then moved to high ground.

Mr. Iinuma said doing his job, he can see that progress is being made at the plant. The cars are coming back less contaminated than before, he said.

Back at Center House, I interviewed other workers.

Hiroyuki Shida, 57, who measures radiation levels, manages contaminated waste for Tepco Environmental Engineering, a Tepco subsidiary. “The mood inside Fukushima Daiichi is totally different now than it was in beginning,” he said. “It is much more relaxed, and more comfortable.”

He said that while the government set maximum radiation exposure limits for plant workers at 250 millisieverts per year, his company set its own standard of 20 millisieverts. When employees hit that level, they are given jobs away from plant.

He said that although radiation levels are coming down at the plant, there are hot spots, so workers have to be careful.

Shinichi Koga, 27, a construction worker, said that he has been working at Fukushima Daiichi since April. He said working conditions are still difficult, but have gotten better. He especially noted what he called more “psychological support” than before. There is food, and places to rest. “We are not all crammed together like we were before,” he said.
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Is Post-Fukushima Japan Safe for Tourists?


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A man guides tourists in Tokyo on June 30, 2011. The number of foreign visitors to Japan plunged after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March


When Lady Gaga went to Japan for a benefit concert for tsunami victims in June, she found herself taking on an unfamiliar role — that of tourism promoter. In characteristic Gaga form, she didn't hold back anything either, saying at a news conference that she wanted "to run around Tokyo, enjoy the beautiful city and kiss all the beautiful little monsters and scream at the top of my lungs that everyone should come visit this beautiful place."

The country could certainly use a pop-star plug. Japan's international-tourist numbers have plunged this year, hit by the double whammy of a record-breaking high yen and the lingering radiation concerns from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Eight months have passed since the devastating earthquake and tsunami, but many tourists are still hesitant about traveling to Japan. Connie Yang, a Singapore-based lawyer, says her family usually takes a ski holiday in the winter on the northern island of Hokkaido, but they won't be going this year. "We definitely decided not to come to [Japan] this winter due to radiation scares because we have young children, and [we] decide where we are going about eight months before our actual trip," she says. Many others likely have the same question on their minds: Is it really safe to visit again?
For the tourism industry, the disaster couldn't have come at a worse time. The country was just starting to see the results of an aggressive tourism campaign started in 2003 to boost revenue from foreign tourists as a way of offsetting the economic problems brought on by an aging and shrinking population. In 2010, foreign visitors reached 8.6 million, a 26% increase over the previous year. And as hoped, the country was becoming an increasingly popular destination among Asian travelers, particularly the luxury-obsessed Chinese. Average spending for Chinese tourists in 2010 reached $1,600 per visit — close to the amount spent by American and British tourists. The Chinese also spent the most on consumer goods among tourists from major countries — about $1,000 per visitor.

Optimism was so high, the government set an ambitious goal of attracting 25 million foreign visitors by 2020. Now that figure seems to be impossibly out of reach. In the month after the March 11 disaster, the number of visitors plunged by more than 60%. Foreign arrivals had begun to rebound by September — Japan received 539,000 visitors that month — but the numbers were still 25% lower than they were in September 2010.

The government hasn't helped make the case that Japan is indeed safe to visit again. In October there was an outcry in the media after residents in and around Tokyo conducted their own independent radiation tests and found several areas of contamination. This flew in the face of repeated assurances from the government that radiation from Fukushima had not spread 150 miles (240 km) south to the capital and didn't pose a risk to residents. A comprehensive decontamination program will finally be implemented in northeastern Japan when a new cleanup law takes effect on Jan. 1. Still, it could take years to collect and store the tons of contaminated soil in the region.

Equally worrisome is food safety. Japan has yet to establish a centralized system for detecting radiation in food products, leaving the job to local authorities and the farmers themselves. Foods like spinach, mushrooms, tea, bamboo shoots, milk and plums as far as 220 miles (350 km) from Fukushima have been contaminated with iodine and radioactive cesium, which can damage cells and lead to an increased risk of cancer. Seafood is also a major concern. In July, the waters near the Fukushima reactors were found to contain 30 times the allowable safety level of cesium-134. On Monday, however, a government official tried to prove that water collected from the basement of the crippled reactors was now safe by drinking a glass of it live on Japanese television.

Compounding the confusion over food safety was a government announcement on Oct. 28 that it would raise the allowable amount of radiation in food products — with no clear explanation why. The decision has worried experts who say that food contaminated with radiation poses a greater health risk than environmental exposure. The Tokyo government is no longer taking any chances. On Tuesday it began a large-scale radiation-monitoring program of food products in shops, which it says it will continue through March.
There are many foreigners, however, who are deciding to go to Japan despite the risks. "I wasn't particularly concerned about radiation at a personal level, but very concerned and sad for the huge population that had to be evacuated," said Andy Levy, a university professor from England who visited in July and August. His tour guide, Tyler Palma, with the company Inside Japan, believes positive publicity is crucial to bringing visitors back. "It's really important that people know [Japan] is safe again and radiation levels are down," he says. Ulrich Fiedler, a gallery owner from Berlin who visited in November, said he was touring areas far from the nuclear disaster and was only in Japan for a week, so he wasn't overly concerned either. "I was a little worried about the seawater contamination because we've eaten a lot of fish," he said, adding, "If I had to live here, I'd be worried."

Many hotels and tour companies are now offering special deals to try to drum up business. One ski company, SkiJapan.com, says it's giving away free nights at hotels to attract customers this winter. Traditional inns are also running promotions. The Kashiwaya Ryokan in Gunma prefecture northwest of Tokyo is offering rooms at half price to foreigners on the condition they post impressions of their stay on TripAdvisor and Facebook. And the Japan Tourism Agency announced in October a proposal to offer free round-trip airfare to 10,000 foreign residents next year, pending budgetary approval.

With incentives like these, there may not be a better time to go to Japan.



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Fukushima residents exposed to up to 23 millisieverts of radiation.


FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) — The Fukushima Prefecture government said Monday residents of three municipalities near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are estimated to have been exposed to up to 23 millisieverts of radiation in the four months after the accident caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
"As annual radiation exposure of up to 100 millisieverts poses no specific cancer risks, the estimated radiation is unlikely to cause any adverse health effect," Fukushima Medical University Vice President Shunichi Yama(censor)a told a press conference. "It is important to reduce future radiation exposure as much as possible."
While the allowable radiation exposure limit is set ordinarily at 1 millisievert per year, the International Commission on Radiological Protection has recommended an emergency limit of 20 to 100 millisieverts.
Of 9,474 residents, excluding nuclear plant workers, in Namie, Kawamata and Iitate, 5,636 persons, or 57.8 percent, were exposed to radiation of less than 1 millisieverts during the four months, the local government said.
Those exposed to radiation of 1 to less than 10 millisieverts totaled 4,040 persons, or 41.4 percent.
Some 71 people were exposure to 10 millisieverts or more, including two people exposed to more than 20 millisieverts. The maximum exposure was 23 millisieverts.
Radiation of 20 millisieverts was adopted as the standard for designating the planned evacuation zone — outside the 20-kilometer emergency evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Including nuclear plant workers, the number of residents of the three municipalities exposed to 10 millisieverts or more of radiation totaled 95 people. The maximum exposure among that larger group was estimated at 47.2 millisieverts.
The prefectural government is now conducting a health survey of all its approximately 2 million residents. They were sent questionnaires, asking where they were after the nuclear crisis began and how they acted since then.
However, only 52.1 percent of the questionnaires sent to the residents of the three municipalities, and 21 percent of all the questionnaires sent throughout the prefecture, had been collected as of the end of January, according to the local government.
(Mainichi Japan) February 20, 2012 http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews…..6000c.html
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Tsunami debris to drift back from US West Coast-VIDEO.



A US research institute says some of the debris created by a massive tsunami that hit Japan last March will likely wash ashore on Hawaii after drifting close to the US West Coast.
About 3 million tons of debris, including wrecked buildings and fishing boats, are confirmed to be floating on the Pacific.
Research is under way by a Kyoto University-led group of scientists and a US research institute to foresee where and when the debris would drift ashore. Japan will send a team of scientists and environment ministry officials to Hawaii later this month.
A US study shows that the tsunami debris will pass through waters north of Hawaii this year, and approach the US West Coast next year.
The direction of drift of most of the debris will then shift toward Hawaii in 2014 and some will likely wash ashore on Hawaii.
The Japanese government plans to draw up a map of the drifting debris and the timing of its arrival by the end of March, incorporating the US study result.

(Source) Video here http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/en…..19_14.html
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TEPCO to cement 73,000 sq meters of seabed off Fukushima


TOKYO —

The operator of Japan’s tsunami-crippled nuclear plant is to cover a large swathe of seabed near the battered reactors with cement in a bid to halt the spread of radiation, the company said Wednesday.

A clay-cement compound will be laid over 73,000 square meters of the floor of the Pacific in front of the Fukushima Daiichi plant on the nation’s northeast coast, said Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO).

The area is equivalent to around 10 soccer pitches.

“This is meant to prevent further contamination of the ocean… as sample tests have shown a relatively high concentration of radioactive substances in the sea soil in the bay,” a company spokeswoman said.

Reactors at the plant went into meltdown after their cooling systems were knocked out by the monster tsunami of March last year, which was generated by a huge undersea earthquake.

Contaminated water from the plant leaked into the sea and radioactive particles concentrated on the seabed. Scientists fear ocean currents could pollute areas further afield.

The cover will be 60 centimeters thick, with 10 centimeters expected to be eaten away by seawater every 50 years, the TEPCO official said.
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Trust Deficit - Worst Fallout of Fukushima


TOKYO, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - Kazuya Tarukawa, 36, left a secure job in the Japanese capital to tend to his family’s organic farm located 100 km away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor.

Although falling outside the evacuation zone, set at 60 km from ground zero by the Japanese government, the Tarukawa farm is not immune to suspicions of contamination as consumers grow increasingly wary of radiation contamination.

Ten days after the disaster at the Fukushima plant on Mar. 11, 2011, Tarukawa’s 74-year-old father, Hisashi Tarukawa, committed suicide in despair.

"My father was devastated after the meltdown in the Fukushima nuclear reactor and reports of radiation contamination spread. He felt hopeless about not only his future but also for agriculture in Japan," the younger Tarukawa told IPS.

The farm, that produces a variety of vegetables in the summer, has been carefully tilled for eight generations, a legacy that in the past decade included organic farming under the devoted efforts of the now deceased Tarukawa.

"The nuclear accident has wiped all our efforts away," said Tarukawa’s son and successor, who struggles with bouts of deep despair himself.

Farmers in the area are still struggling to come to terms with the fact that one of the worst fallouts of the Fukushima nuclear accident is the blow it dealt to the Japanese food industry, once respected worldwide reputation for quality standards.

"Japanese marine and agricultural products are reeling from domestic and international rejection due to radiation fear," says Prof. Ryota Koyama, an expert on food safety at Fukushima University.

"The time has come to develop new safety policies that are based on both scientific evidence and social concerns, a critical step towards dealing with this issue," said Koyama.

The past few months have seen the government scrambling to regain public trust with food grown in Fukushima and the neighbouring areas by scraping away contaminated top soil from local farms.

Other measures include pledges to conduct new testing for Cesium 137, a dangerous radioactive material, on more than 25,000 farms, establishing more stringent safety ratings from April this year and also intensifying screenings for the element in stores.

Cesium 137 has a half-life of around 30 years and is a known cause of cancer.

This month, the Japanese health ministry proposed a special limit of 50 becquerels (measure of cesium) per kilogram for milk and food items for infants, to lower their exposure to radiation.

A panel of scientists has already approved the proposal, while pointing out in a release that new measures for all food items have "secured special considerations for children."

But anti-nuclear activists and parents who are continuing to lobby for better protection standards for children in Fukushima insist on they will not be satisfied until the government takes steps to evacuate the entire younger generation to fully safe areas.

According to estimates made by the influential Asahi Shimbun newspaper in September 2011, an area of more than 8,000 sq km had accumulated cesium 137 levels of 30,000 becquerels per sq metre.

The contaminated area estimated included almost half of Fukushima prefecture, the third largest in Japan, covering 13,782 sq km. It included 1,370 sq km in Tochigi, 380 sq km in Miyagi and 260 sq km in Ibaraki, prefecture adjacent to Fukushima.

Asahi Shimbun calculated the size of the contaminated area based on a distribution map of accumulated cesium 137 levels measured from aircraft and released by the science ministry on Sep. 8, 2011.

Fukushima and the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl are both rated at ‘level 7’, the worst on the International Nuclear Event Scale because the quantities of radioactive materials released exceeded several tens of thousands of terabecquerels.

"Testing that indicated unsafe contamination level was initially done by farmers rather than the government," observed Masai Shiina, spokesperson for the Fukushima Mothers Network to Protect Children. "Trust is broken with officials."

According to Koyama, increasing public angst and mistrust of the government has raised the importance of developing nuclear safety standards that are based not on scientific measurements alone.

"The public refusal to be appeased by scientific safety levels proposed by the government supports the dire need for the inclusion of a social approach to the current nuclear contamination," he pointed out.

A prospect that Koyama pushes in his research on food contamination is developing a variety of safety levels based on food items to replace the current limit set at 100 becquerels.

At issue is the development of tougher standards on staples such as rice while fruits can stay at current levels, following a system practised in Ukraine.

Koyama advocates dissemination of clear information on the dangers posed by various kinds of radioactive contamination such as the fact that Cesium can be controlled over several decades whereas radiation exposure from plutonium at Chernobyl lasts much longer.

Farmer Kitaburo Tanno, who gave up his eight-hectare farm in Nihonmatsu, located 45 km from the damaged reactor, agrees that honest information from the government is the only way to save Japanese agriculture.

"I decided to move away from my farm soon after the accident because I could no longer trust information from the government. I would have appreciated an honest assessment for farmers who could then move on with the support of public funds. This did not happen," he explained to IPS.

More than 100,000 people, mostly younger people, have left Fukushima to escape radiation contamination.

The mass migration is bound to affect agriculture production in the rich farming areas of the northeast prefecture a major agricultural base for Japan, leaving the government with having to make tough choices and decisions.
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Plant chief: Fukushima nuke plant still vulnerable.


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Stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant buildings of Tokyo Electric Power Co., are seen in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012. Japan next month marks one year since the March 11 tsunami and earthquake, which triggered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. (AP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno, Pool)


OKUMA, Japan — Japan's tsunami-hit Fukushima power plant remains fragile nearly a year after it suffered multiple meltdowns, its chief said Tuesday, with makeshift equipment — some mended with tape — keeping crucial systems running.
An independent report, meanwhile, revealed that the government downplayed the full danger in the days after the March 11 disaster and secretly considered evacuating Tokyo.

Journalists given a tour of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant on Tuesday, including a reporter from The Associated Press, saw crumpled trucks and equipment still lying on the ground. A power pylon that collapsed in the tsunami, cutting electricity to the plant's vital cooling system and setting off the crisis, remained a mangled mess.

Officials said the worst is over but the plant remains vulnerable.

"I have to admit that it's still rather fragile," said plant chief Takeshi Takahashi, who took the job in December after his predecessor resigned due to health reasons. "Even though the plant has achieved what we call 'cold shutdown conditions,' it still causes problems that must be improved."

The government announced in December that three melted reactors at the plant had basically stabilized and that radiation releases had dropped. It still will take decades to fully decommission the plant, and it must be kept stable until then.

The operators have installed multiple backup power supplies, a cooling system, and equipment to process massive amounts of contaminated water that leaked from the damaged reactors.

But the equipment that serves as the lifeline of the cooling system is shockingly feeble-looking. Plastic hoses cracked by freezing temperatures have been mended with tape. A set of three pumps sits on the back of a pickup truck.

Along with the pumps, the plant now has 1,000 tanks to store more than 160,000 tons of contaminated water.

Radiation levels in the Unit 1 reactor have fallen, allowing workers to repair some damage to the reactor building. But the Unit 3 reactor, whose roof was blown off by a hydrogen explosion, resembles an ashtray filled with a heap of cigarette butts.

A dosimeter recorded the highest radiation reading outside Unit 3 during Tuesday's tour — 1.5 millisievert per hour. That is a major improvement from last year, when up to 10 sieverts per hour were registered near Units 1 and 2.

Exposure to more than 1,000 millisievert, or 1 sievert, can cause radiation sickness including nausea and an elevated risk of cancer.

Officials say radiation hot spots remain inside the plant and minimizing exposure to them is a challenge. Employees usually work for about 2-3 hours at a time, but in some areas, including highly contaminated Unit 3, they can stay only a few minutes.

Since the March 11 crisis, no one has died from radiation exposure.

Tuesday's tour, organized by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, came as an independent group released a report saying the government withheld information about the full danger of the disaster from its own people and from the United States.

The report by the private Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation delivers a scathing view of how leaders played down the risks of the reactor meltdowns while holding secret discussions of a worst-case scenario in which massive radiation releases would require the evacuation of a much wider region, including Tokyo. The discussions were reported last month by the AP.

The report, compiled from interviews with more than 300 people, paints a picture of confusion during the days immediately after the accident. It says U.S.-Japan relations were put at risk because of U.S. frustration and skepticism over the scattered information provided by Japan.

The misunderstandings were gradually cleared up after a bilateral committee was set up on March 22 and began regular meetings, according to the report.

It credits then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan for ordering TEPCO not to withdraw its staff from the plant and to keep fighting to bring it under control.

TEPCO's president at the time, Masataka Shimizu, called Kan on March 15 and said he wanted to abandon the plant and have all 600 TEPCO staff flee, the report said. That would have allowed the situation to spiral out of control, resulting in a much larger release of radiation.

A group of about 50 workers was eventually able to bring the plant under control.

TEPCO, which declined to take part in the investigation, has denied it planned to abandon Fukushima Dai-ichi. The report notes the denial, but says Kan and other officials had the clear understanding that TEPCO had asked to leave.

But the report criticizes Kan for attempting to micromanage the disaster and for not releasing critical information on radiation leaks, thereby creating widespread distrust of the government.

Kan's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.

Kan acknowledged in a recent interview with AP that the release of information was sometimes slow and at times wrong. He blamed a lack of reliable data at the time and denied the government hid such information from the public.

The report also concludes that government oversight of nuclear plant safety had been inadequate, ignoring the risk of tsunami and the need for plant design renovations, and instead clinging to a "myth of safety."

"The idea of upgrading a plant was taboo," said Koichi Kitazawa, a scholar who heads the commission that prepared the report. "We were just lucky that Japan was able to avoid the worst-case scenario. But there is no guarantee this kind of luck will prevail next time."
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Fukushima: Far More 'Chronic and Lasting' Cesium Contamination Than Previously Believed.


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Workers begin pouring cement onto the seabed at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on Feb. 28



A "mind-boggling" amount of radioactive cesium, or twice the amount previously thought, may have spewed from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11, 2011 meltdown, Japanese scientists said Wednesday.
Also, French scientists announced Tuesday that the amount of cesium released caused a chronic and lasting contamination of the environment. It was essential for Japan to maintain vigilant monitoring of fruit, milk, mushrooms, game and fish, they said.

According to the United States Geological Survey, it took only 18 days for the radioactive particles from Fukushima to circle the globe.

In Vermont, state officials have just confirmed finding trace amounts of Fukushima's cesium-134 and cesium-137. The state said they would continue the collection of samples from surface and drinking water, milk, vegetation and maple products.

* * *

The Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, reports:

A mind-boggling 40,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive cesium, or twice the amount previously thought, may have spewed from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11 disaster, scientists say.
Michio Aoyama, a senior researcher at the Meteorological Research Institute, released the finding at a scientific symposium in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Feb. 28.

The figure, which represents about 20 percent of the discharge during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, is twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas.

It was calculated on the basis of radioactive content of seawater sampled at 79 locations in the north Pacific and is thought to more accurately reflect reality than previous simulation results.

Scientists believe that around 30 percent of the radioactive substances discharged during the crisis ended up on land, while the rest fell on the sea.

This makes it especially difficult to accurately evaluate the total amount of radioactive materials released. Thus, seaborne data is essential to the process.

The scientists measured cesium concentrations in seawater as of April and May last year. They then used a model of diffusion in the atmosphere and the oceans to evaluate the total amount of cesium released. The calculation produced estimates of 30-40 quadrillion becquerels.

The researchers also estimated that 24-30 quadrillion becquerels of that cesium reached the sea.

That combines the roughly 70 percent of the total discharge, which is thought to have reached the ocean, and the cesium content of radioactive water that Tokyo Electric Power Co., the nuclear plant operator, released from the plant to the sea.

* * *

The Agence-France Presse reports:

French Agency Calls Contamination at Fukushima 'Chronic and Lasting'

[...] “The initial contamination linked to the accident has greatly declined,” Didier Champion, crisis manager at the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), told reporters almost a year after the disaster.

“Today, and for many years to come, we will have a situation of chronic and lasting contamination of the environment.”

It was essential for Japan to maintain vigilant monitoring of fruit, milk, mushrooms, game and fish, Champion said.

“There are risks of chronic exposure at low dosage, and without care this can build up over time,” he warned.

* * *

Meanwhile, across the globe in Vermont, the Brattleboro Reformer reports:

Fukushima Radioactivity Discovered in Samples Taken in Bennington

Measurements taken at the USGS’ Bennington National Atmospheric Deposition Program sampling station showed minute traces of radiological materials that were produced as a result of the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power complex in Japan.
According to the USGS, it is estimated that it took 18 days for the radioactive particles from Fukushima to circle the earth. USGS scientists detected iodine -131, cesium-134, and cesium-137, the primary radioactive products released during an incident such as Fukushima.

In Vermont, Cesium-134 was measured at .86 picocuries per liter and cesium-137 was measured at 3 picocuries per liter. No iodine was discovered in samples taken in Vermont. [...]

In its own sampling, the Vermont Department of Health used monitoring stations around Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and an air sampling station in Burlington to measure the effects of Fukushima.

The reports are filed online at healthvermont.gov/enviro/rad/japan2011.aspx.

DOH, the Agency of Natural Resources and the Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets are continuing the collection of samples from surface and drinking water, milk, vegetation and maple products.

Mark Nilles, a hydrologist with the USGS, said the levels detected at the NADP sampling station were very low.

"When that goes into the surface water supply it’s going to be diluted even further," he said. [...]

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake centered off the Pacific Coast of Japan triggered a tsunami and a 14-meter tidal wave that inundated a large part of northern coastal Japan.

With the resulting massive flooding, the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station was left without primary or backup electric power and thus cooling water, leading to catastrophic failure among its six nuclear reactors.

Subsequent explosions led to a month-long discharge of radioactive material into the atmosphere, which has since spread around the globe. According to the USGS, it is estimated that it took 18 days for the radioactive particles from Fukushima to circle the earth.
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Greenpeace: Fukushima Disaster Caused by Japan's Nuclear Authorities, Not Tsunami.



Posted Image
Litate village, 40km northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Radiation levels found by the Greenpeace monitoring team are far above internationally recommended limits. (Christian Aslund / Greenpeace)



A new report released today by Greenpeace argues it was neither the 7.1 magnitude earthquake nor the raging tsunami that followed which deserve the real blame for the nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima Diachi power plant last year. Rather, according to 'The Lessons of Fukushima', the real disaster was caused by hubris, greed, and the fact that repeated warnings over the unsafe nature of the nuclear plant were 'downplayed and ignored'.
“While triggered by the tragic March 11th earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima disaster was ultimately caused by the Japanese authorities choosing to ignore risks, and make business a higher priority than safety,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner. “This report shows that nuclear energy is inherently unsafe, and that governments are quick to approve reactors, but remain ill-equipped to deal with problems and protect people from nuclear disasters. This has not changed since the Fukushima disaster, and that is why millions of people continue to be exposed to nuclear risks.”

The report was written by Dr. David Boilley, a nuclear physicist with the French independent radiation laboratory ACRO; Dr. David McNeill, Japan correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education; and Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with Fairewinds Associates. It was peer reviewed by Dr. Helmut Hirsch, an expert in nuclear safety.

“This disaster was predictable and predicted, but happened because of the age-old story of cutting corners to protect profits over people,” said Kazue Suzuki Greenpeace Japan Nuclear Campaigner. “The authorities are already recklessly pushing to restart reactors without learning anything from the Fukushima disaster and the people will once again be forced to pay the price of their government’s mistakes.”

“People should not be forced to live with the myth of nuclear safety and under the shadow of a nuclear disaster waiting to happen,” said Vande Putte. “Nuclear power must be phased out and replaced with smart investments in energy efficiency and renewable power. This approach will create millions of sustainable jobs, improve energy independence, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and will also ensure people will never again suffer radioactive fallout from a preventable disaster.“

Jan Baranek, writing at the Greenpeace blog, says:

... The first crucial lesson [of the report] is that “nuclear safety” cannot be created. While the nuclear industry wants us to believe that the chance of a major reactor accident is one in million, the real frequency has been one meltdown every decade, on average. Fukushima also showed how quickly the multiple barriers that we were assured would prevent a large release of radioactivity failed. In Japan, all the barriers collapsed during the first day, and a hydrogen blast allowed radiation to directly escape to open air.

The second lesson is that the institutions that we have trusted to protect people from nuclear risks also failed completely.
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Greenpeace: Fukushima Disaster Caused by Japan's Nuclear Authorities, Not Tsunami.



Posted Image
Litate village, 40km northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Radiation levels found by the Greenpeace monitoring team are far above internationally recommended limits. (Christian Aslund / Greenpeace)



A new report released today by Greenpeace argues it was neither the 7.1 magnitude earthquake nor the raging tsunami that followed which deserve the real blame for the nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima Diachi power plant last year. Rather, according to 'The Lessons of Fukushima', the real disaster was caused by hubris, greed, and the fact that repeated warnings over the unsafe nature of the nuclear plant were 'downplayed and ignored'.
“While triggered by the tragic March 11th earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima disaster was ultimately caused by the Japanese authorities choosing to ignore risks, and make business a higher priority than safety,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner. “This report shows that nuclear energy is inherently unsafe, and that governments are quick to approve reactors, but remain ill-equipped to deal with problems and protect people from nuclear disasters. This has not changed since the Fukushima disaster, and that is why millions of people continue to be exposed to nuclear risks.”

The report was written by Dr. David Boilley, a nuclear physicist with the French independent radiation laboratory ACRO; Dr. David McNeill, Japan correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education; and Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with Fairewinds Associates. It was peer reviewed by Dr. Helmut Hirsch, an expert in nuclear safety.

“This disaster was predictable and predicted, but happened because of the age-old story of cutting corners to protect profits over people,” said Kazue Suzuki Greenpeace Japan Nuclear Campaigner. “The authorities are already recklessly pushing to restart reactors without learning anything from the Fukushima disaster and the people will once again be forced to pay the price of their government’s mistakes.”

“People should not be forced to live with the myth of nuclear safety and under the shadow of a nuclear disaster waiting to happen,” said Vande Putte. “Nuclear power must be phased out and replaced with smart investments in energy efficiency and renewable power. This approach will create millions of sustainable jobs, improve energy independence, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and will also ensure people will never again suffer radioactive fallout from a preventable disaster.“

Jan Baranek, writing at the Greenpeace blog, says:

... The first crucial lesson [of the report] is that “nuclear safety” cannot be created. While the nuclear industry wants us to believe that the chance of a major reactor accident is one in million, the real frequency has been one meltdown every decade, on average. Fukushima also showed how quickly the multiple barriers that we were assured would prevent a large release of radioactivity failed. In Japan, all the barriers collapsed during the first day, and a hydrogen blast allowed radiation to directly escape to open air.

The second lesson is that the institutions that we have trusted to protect people from nuclear risks also failed completely.
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Probe Finds Japan Hid Dangers of Nuclear Disaster .


TOKYO (AP) - An independent investigation has found that Japan's government withheld information about the full danger of last year's Fukushima nuclear plant disaster from its own people and from its key ally the United States.

A report by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation says the decision may have put U.S.-Japan relations at risk in the first days after the accident.

The report, compiled over six months from interviews with more than 300 people, delivers a scathing view of how leaders played down the risks of last March's meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant following a massive earthquake and tsunami.



Link...... http://www.wgrz.com/news/national/article/158282/2/Probe-Finds-Japan-Hid-Dangers-of-Nuclear-Disaster-
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Workers at Fukushima plant toil away in deadly conditions.



Posted Image
A worker is screened for radiation before entering the emergency operation centre.


IWAKI —

To some of the men who earn as little as 8,000 yen a day to work inside Fukushima Daiichi, the plant at the center of a year-old nuclear disaster is far from safe—despite the official line.

Operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) and the Japanese government say the tsunami-crippled reactors are all in a “state of cold shutdown” and are keen to give the impression that there is just cleaning up to do.

They acknowledge it is the work of a few decades—perhaps 40 years—but nonetheless insist things are under control.

But that is not how those who spend their days inside the plant see it.

“I can clearly say it’s not safe at all,” said one worker in his 50s, a subcontractor who has been working on the plant’s cooling system since September.

The man did not want to be identified for fear of losing the 8,000 yen daily paycheck he receives.

“There are many spots where radiation levels are extremely high,” he told AFP.

The man said subcontractors like him were treated like animals.

In the height of summer with the mercury rising to 38 degrees Celsius, workers had to go for up to three hours at a time without water because they were unable to take off their masks.

There have been deaths on site—a 60-year-old subcontractor’s fatal heart attack in May was put down to overwork, according to a labor standards inspector—although TEPCO says none related to radiation exposure.

Chie Hosoda, a spokeswoman for the utility, admits conditions at the plant were unacceptable in the past, with the radiation exposure of some workers left unmeasured because of a shortage of dosimeters.

“But working conditions have improved now and we are strictly checking the radiation exposure of all workers,” Hosoda said.

Three of the four reactors at Fukushima Daiichi went into meltdown after the tsunami swamped their cooling systems last March.

Fuel began to overheat and the day after the waves struck, an explosion—the first of several—ripped through a reactor building.

Emergency workers tried to cool the rapidly heating rods with any water available, including from the sea.

A month on, Tokyo finally upgraded its assessment of the severity of the nuclear emergency to a maximum seven on an international scale—equal with Chernobyl.

It was not until May 5 that workers were able to get inside the reactor building for the first time, to see the enormity of the task ahead of them.

Engineers, nuclear experts and ordinary electricians are among the 3,600 people working at the plant every day and TEPCO says it has no problems securing a work force despite the obvious hazards.

But Katsuyasu Iida, secretary-general of Tokyo Occupational Safety and Health Center, a support group for low-paid workers, warned the utility may face a labor shortage “if it fails to improve working conditions.”

Many with experience in the industry shy away from the plant.

“Those who used to work at the Fukushima nuclear plant for a long time do not go to Daiichi because it’s dangerous,” one worker told the Tokyo Shimbun.

“Payment is not good and many of them do not want to lose their jobs by risking exposure to high levels of radiation,” the worker said.

TEPCO says at least 167 workers are no longer able to work in nuclear plants because their lifetime radiation exposure has topped 100 millisieverts—the upper limit for workers.

Experts warn that few permanent safety measures are in place at the plant, where the initial rush to contain the accident saw a series of improvised solutions.

They say that in another natural disaster—a big earthquake or another large tsunami—the plant could prove very vulnerable.

“The cooling system is not a proper one for normal nuclear reactors and is still a stop-gap measure,” said Kazuhiko Kudo, a nuclear reactor expert and professor at Kyushu University.

News of setbacks regularly emerge.

In early February, TEPCO said radioactive water had spilled out of one of the reactors after a valve in the cooling system jammed, frozen by sub-zero winter temperatures.

One of the biggest challenges is that scientists do not know exactly what they are up against and can only speculate what the inside of the reactors look like—how much of the fuel has melted and how far through containment vessels it has eaten.

“Stabilization of the plant is a prerequisite for an end to the accident,” Kudo said, adding that containment was still a priority and the risk of radiation was still high.

Freelance journalist Tomohiko Suzuki, who has written a book based on his experience working undercover at the plant last summer, said it was clearly still “in a state of crisis.”

“TEPCO was pushing for sloppy construction as it has been in a hurry to achieve cold shutdown as quickly as possible,” he said.

“TEPCO has to maintain this cold shutdown status for years and years to come, but can they make it happen without exposing plant workers to radiation? That’s the question.”
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Fears for safety at Fukushima one year on.


To some of the men who earn as little as $100 a day to work inside Japan's Fukushima Daiichi, the plant at the centre of a year-old nuclear disaster is far from safe -- despite the official line.

Operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) and the Japanese government say the tsunami-crippled reactors are all in a "state of cold shutdown" and are keen to give the impression that there is just cleaning up to do.

They acknowledge it is the work of a few decades -- perhaps 40 years -- but nonetheless insist things are under control.

But that is not how those who spend their days inside the plant see it.

"I can clearly say it's not safe at all," said one worker in his 50s, a subcontractor who has been working on the plant's cooling system since September.

The man did not want to be identified for fear of losing the 8,000 yen ($100) daily paycheck he receives.

"There are many spots where radiation levels are extremely high," he told AFP.

The man said subcontractors like him were treated like animals.

In the height of summer with the mercury rising to 38 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit), workers had to go for up to three hours at a time without water because they were unable to take off their masks.

There have been deaths on site -- a 60-year-old subcontractor's fatal heart attack in May was put down to overwork, according to a labour standards inspector -- although TEPCO says none related to radiation exposure.

Chie Hosoda, a spokeswoman for the utility, admits conditions at the plant were unacceptable in the past, with the radiation exposure of some workers left unmeasured because of a shortage of dosimeters.

"But working conditions have improved now and we are strictly checking the radiation exposure of all workers," Hosoda said.

Three of the four reactors at Fukushima Daiichi went into meltdown after the tsunami swamped their cooling systems last March.

Fuel began to overheat and the day after the waves struck, an explosion -- the first of several -- ripped through a reactor building.

Emergency workers tried to cool the rapidly heating rods with any water available, including from the sea.

A month on, Tokyo finally upgraded its assessment of the severity of the nuclear emergency to a maximum seven on an international scale -- equal with Chernobyl.

It was not until May 5 that workers were able to get inside the reactor building for the first time, to see the enormity of the task ahead of them.

Engineers, nuclear experts and ordinary electricians are among the 3,600 people working at the plant every day and TEPCO says it has no problems securing a work force despite the obvious hazards.

But Katsuyasu Iida, secretary-general of Tokyo Occupational Safety and Health Centre, a support group for low-paid workers, warned the utility may face a labour shortage "if it fails to improve working conditions".

Many with experience in the industry shy away from the plant.

"Those who used to work at the Fukushima nuclear plant for a long time do not go to Daiichi because it's dangerous," one worker told the Tokyo Shimbun.

"Payment is not good and many of them do not want to lose their jobs by risking exposure to high levels of radiation," the worker said.

TEPCO says at least 167 workers are no longer able to work in nuclear plants because their lifetime radiation exposure has topped 100 millisieverts -- the upper limit for workers.

Experts warn that few permanent safety measures are in place at the plant, where the initial rush to contain the accident saw a series of improvised solutions.

They say that in another natural disaster -- a big earthquake or another large tsunami -- the plant could prove very vulnerable.

"The cooling system is not a proper one for normal nuclear reactors and is still a stop-gap measure," said Kazuhiko Kudo, a nuclear reactor expert and professor at Kyushu University.

News of setbacks regularly emerge.

In early February, TEPCO said radioactive water had spilled out of one of the reactors after a valve in the cooling system jammed, frozen by sub-zero winter temperatures.

One of the biggest challenges is that scientists do not know exactly what they are up against and can only speculate what the inside of the reactors look like -- how much of the fuel has melted and how far through containment vessels it has eaten.

"Stabilisation of the plant is a prerequisite for an end to the accident," Kudo said, adding that containment was still a priority and the risk of radiation was still high.

Freelance journalist Tomohiko Suzuki, who has written a book based on his experience working undercover at the plant last summer, said it was clearly still "in a state of crisis".

"(TEPCO) was pushing for sloppy construction as it has been in a hurry to achieve cold shutdown as quickly as possible," he said.

"TEPCO has to maintain this cold shutdown status for years and years to come, but can they make it happen without exposing plant workers to radiation? That's the question."
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Frontline's Fukushima "Meltdown" Perpetuates Industry Lie That Tsunami, Not Quake, Started Nuclear Crisis.



In all fairness, “Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown,” the Frontline documentary that debuted on US public television stations last night (February 28), sets out to accomplish an almost impossible task: explain what has happened inside and around Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility since a massive earthquake and tsunami crippled reactors and safety systems on March 11, 2011–and do so in 53 minutes. The filmmakers had several challenges, not the least of which is that the Fukushima meltdowns are not a closed case, but an ever-evolving crisis. Add to that the technical nature of the information, the global impact of the disaster, the still-extant dangers in and around the crippled plant, the contentious politics around nuclear issues, and the refusal of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to let its employees talk either to reporters or independent investigative bodies, and it quickly becomes apparent that Frontline had a lot to tackle in order to practice good journalism.

But if the first rule of reporting is anything like medicine–”do no harm”–than Frontline’s Fukushima coverage is again guilty of malpractice. While “Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown” is not the naked apologia for the nuclear industry that Frontline’s January offering, “Nuclear Aftershocks,” was, some of the errors and oversights of this week’s episode are just as injurious to the truth.

And none more so than the inherent contradiction that aired in the first minutes of Tuesday’s show.

“Inside’” opens on “March 11, 2011 – Day 1.” Over shaking weather camera shots of Fukushima’s four exhaust towers, the narrator explains:

The earthquake that shook the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was the most powerful to strike Japan since records began. The company that operates the plant, TEPCO, has forbidden its workers from speaking publicly about what followed.

But one year on, they are starting to tell their stories. Some have asked for their identities to be hidden for fear of being fired.

One such employee (called “Ono” in the transcript) speaks through an interpreter: “I saw all the pipes fixed to the wall shifting and ripping off.”

Then the power went out, but as Frontline’s narrator explains:

The workers stayed calm because they knew Japanese power plants are designed to withstand earthquakes. The reactors automatically shut down within seconds. But the high radioactivity of nuclear fuel rods means they generate intense heat even after a shutdown. So backup generators kicked in to power the cooling systems and stop the fuel rods from melting.

Frontline then tells of the massive tsunami that hit Fukushima about 49 minutes after the earthquake:

The biggest of the waves was more than 40 feet high and traveling at over 100 miles an hour.

. . . .

At 3:35 PM, the biggest of the waves struck. It was more than twice the height of the plant’s seawall.

. . . .

Most of the backup diesel generators needed to power the cooling systems were located in basements. They were destroyed by the tsunami waters, meaning the workers had no way of keeping the nuclear fuel from melting.

The impression left for viewers is that while the quake knocked out Fukushima’s primary power, the diesel backup generators were effectively cooling the reactors until the tsunami flooded the generators.

It’s a good story, as stories go, and one that TEPCO and their nuclear industry brethren are fond of telling to anyone and everyone within the sound of their profit-enhanced, lobbyist-aided voices. They have told it so often that it seems to be part of the whole Fukushima narrative that less-interested parties can recount without so much as glancing at their talking points. Indeed, even Frontline’s writers thought they could toss it out there without any debate and then move on. One problem with that story, though–it’s not true.

I personally saw pipes that had come apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There’s no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant… I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for reactor one had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor.

Those are the words of a Fukushima maintenance worker who requested anonymity when he told his story to reporters for Great Britain’s Independent last August. That worker recalled hissing, leaking pipes in the immediate aftermath of the quake.

Another TEPCO employee, a Fukushima technician, also spoke to the Independent:

It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall…

Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.

Workers also describe seeing cracks and holes in reactor one’s containment building soon after the earthquake, and it has been reported that a radiation alarm went off a mile away from Fukushima Daiichi at 3:29 PM JST–43 minutes after the quake, but 6 minutes before the tsunami hit the plant’s seawall.

Indeed, much of the data available, as well as the behavior of Fukushima personnel, makes the case that something was going horribly wrong before the tsunami flooded the backup generators:

Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a former nuclear plant designer, describes what occurred on 11 March as a loss-of-coolant accident. “The data that Tepco has made public shows a huge loss of coolant within the first few hours of the earthquake. It can’t be accounted for by the loss of electrical power. There was already so much damage to the cooling system that a meltdown was inevitable long before the tsunami came.”

He says the released data shows that at 2.52pm, just after the quake, the emergency circulation equipment of both the A and B systems automatically started up. “This only happens when there is a loss of coolant.” Between 3.04 and 3.11pm, the water sprayer inside the containment vessel was turned on. Mr Tanaka says that it is an emergency measure only done when other cooling systems have failed. By the time the tsunami arrived and knocked out all the electrical systems, at about 3.37pm, the plant was already on its way to melting down.

In fact, these conclusions were actually corroborated by data buried in a TEPCO briefing last May–and they were of course corroborated by “Ono” in the opening minutes of Frontline’s report–but rather than use their documentary and their tremendous access to eyewitnesses as a way of starting a discussion about what really went wrong at Fukushima Daiichi, Frontline instead moved to end the debate by repeating the industry line as a kind of shorthand gospel.

This is not nitpicking. The implications of this point–the debate about whether the nuclear reactor, its cooling systems and containment (to say nothing yet of its spent fuel pools and their safety systems) were seriously damaged by the earthquake–are broad and have far-reaching consequences for nuclear facilities all over the globe.

To put it mildly, the pipes at Fukushima were a mess. Over the decade prior to the Tohoku quake, TEPCO was told repeatedly about the poor state of the plant’s pipes, ducts, and couplings. Fukushima was sighted numerous times for deteriorating joints, faked inspections and shoddy repairs. Technicians talk of how the systems didn’t match the blueprints, and that pipes had to be bent to match up and then welded together.

Fukushima was remarkably old, but it is not remarkable. Plants across Japan are of the same generations-old design. So are many nuclear reactors here in the United States. If the safety systems of a nuclear reactor can be dangerously compromised by seismic activity alone, then all of Japan’s reactors–and a dozen or more across the US–are one good shake away from a Fukushima-like catastrophe. And that means that those plants need to be shut down for extensive repairs and retrofits–if not decommissioned permanently.

The stakes for the nuclear industry are obviously very high. You can see how they would still be working overtime to drown out the evidence and push the “freak one-two punch” narrative. But it’s not the true story–indeed, it is dangerous lie–so it is hard to reconcile why the esteemed and resourceful journalists at Frontline would want to tell it.

* * *

That was not the only problem with Tuesday’s episode, but it is one of the most pernicious–and it presents itself so obviously right at the start of “Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown.” Also problematic was the general impression left at the end of the program. While mention is made of the 100,000 displaced by the 12-mile Fukushima exclusion zone, nothing is said about the broader health implications for the entre country–and indeed for the rest of the world as radioactive isotopes from Fukushima spread well beyond Japan’s borders.

Alas, though Frontline tells of the massive amounts of seawater pumped into the damaged facility, nothing much is said about the contaminated water that is leaving the area, spreading into groundwater, rivers and the Pacific Ocean. The show talks of the efforts to open a valve to relieve pressure inside one reactor, but does not address growing evidence that the lid of the containment vessel likely lifted off at some point between the tsunami and the explosion in building one. And there is a short discussion of bringing the now-melted-down reactors to “cold shutdown,” but there is no mention of the recent “re-criticality“–the rising temperatures inside one of the damaged cores.

And to that point–and to a point often made in these columns–this disaster is not over. “Japan’s Meltdown” is not in the past–it is still a dangerous and evolving crisis. The “devil’s chain reaction” that could have required the evacuation of Tokyo is still very much a possibility should another earthquake jolt the region. . . which itself is considered likely.

Sadly–disturbingly–Frontline’s Fukushima tick-tock ends leaving the opposite impression. They acknowledge the years of work that lie ahead to clean up the mess, but the implication is that the path is clear. They acknowledge the tragedy, but treat it as does one of the film’s subjects, who is shown at Frontline’s end at a memorial for his lost family–it is something to be mourned, commemorated and honored.

But Fukushima’s crisis is not buried and gone, and though radioactive water has been swept out to sea and radioactive fallout has been blown around the world, the real danger of Fukushima Daiichi and nuclear plants worldwide is not gone with the wind.

As noted above, it is a difficult task to accurately and effectively tell this sweeping story in less than an hour–but the filmmakers should have acknowledged that and either refocused their one show, or committed to telling the story over a longer period of time. Choosing instead to use the frame of the nuclear industry and the governments that seek its largess is not good journalism because it has the potential to do much harm.
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Fukushima and mental health

By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 9:55 am Thursday, Mar 1

Yesterday, I got to host an eye-opening Q&A with Dan Edge, a PBS FRONTLINE producer who just finished a documentary about what happened at Fukushima during the first few days of the nuclear crisis there.

During that discussion, we touched a bit on the psychological impact all of this—the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear meltdowns—has had on the Japanese people. From studies of what's happened to the people who lived near Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, we know that the fear and stress associated with these kinds of disasters can have complex and long-ranging health effects.

Today, Paul Voosen, a journalist with Greenwire, emailed me a story he wrote last year, during the first month of the Fukushima crisis, that delves into some of the science behind how disasters (and especially nuclear disasters) affect the human psyche. If you've already read it, it's worth reading again.

Certainly, lasting scars of emotional distress -- which, at its worst, can manifest itself as serious depression or post-traumatic stress, among other symptoms -- are what researchers found in young mothers and others directly affected by past nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and seven years later at the much more serious Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine.

"What's most striking," Bromet said, "both about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, which are obviously completely different events with different environmental consequences, is that the emotional consequences just never end."

The Fukushima crisis is, of course, an incredibly difficult situation for Japan's authorities and residents. Caution is more than justifiable when it comes to radiation, and the fear and stress that could stem from radiation risk warnings would be difficult to prioritize over immediate health concerns, said Johan Havenaar, a Dutch psychiatrist who has worked with Chernobyl evacuees.

"It is an understandably frightening situation for [the Japanese]," he said, "even if the risk is small and the measure predominantly precautionary. ... It would be unfair to suggest that the psychological effects -- i.e. their fears -- are unjustified."

What authorities should do, and often fail to do, is treat mental and physical health problems with equal respect, understanding that the two go hand in hand, Bromet said. They must respect the persistent fears that will form about radiation exposure in Japan, no matter how low the exposure and how this can take a permanent toll on people's lives, she said.

You can read the rest of this article at ... http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/03/24/24greenwire-psychological-risks-loom-in-tokyo-water-warnin-48865.html
Edited by Audi-Tek, March 2 2012, 12:47 AM.
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The Fukushima Question.




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The crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture as of February 2012.


How close did Japan really get to a widespread nuclear disaster?

With an eye to the first anniversary of the tsunami that killed 20,000 people and caused a partial meltdown at the Fukushima power plant in Japan, a recently formed nongovernmental organization called Rebuild Japan released a report earlier this week on the nuclear incident to alarming media coverage.

"Japan Weighed Evacuating Tokyo in Nuclear Crisis," screamed the New York Times headline, above an article by Martin Fackler that claimed, "Japan teetered on the edge of an even larger nuclear crisis than the one that engulfed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant."

The larger crisis was a worst-case scenario imagined by Japanese government officials dealing with the situation. If workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were evacuated, Fackler writes, some worried "[t]his would have allowed the plant to spiral out of control, releasing even larger amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere that would in turn force the evacuation of other nearby nuclear plants, causing further meltdowns."
Fackler quotes former newspaper editor and founder of Rebuild Japan Yoichi Funabashi as saying, "We barely avoided the worst-case scenario, though the public didn’t know it at the time."

To say that Japan "barely avoided" what another top official called a "demonic chain reaction" of plant meltdowns and the evacuation of Tokyo is to make an extraordinary claim. One shudders at the thought of the hardship, suffering, and accidents that would almost certainly have resulted from any attempt to evacuate a metropolitan area of 30 million people. The Rebuild Japan report has not yet been released to the public, but there is reason to doubt that Japan was anywhere close to executing this nightmare contingency plan.

The same day the New York Times published its story, PBS broadcast a Frontline documentary about the Fukushima meltdown that invites a somewhat different interpretation. In an interview conducted for that program, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan suggests that the fear of cascading plant failures was nothing more than panicked speculation among some of his advisers. "I asked many associates to make forecasts," Kan explained to PBS, "and one such forecast was a worst-case scenario. But that scenario was just something that was possible, it didn’t mean that it seemed likely to happen."
The authors of the Rebuild Japan report also spoke with Kan, along with about 300 others. According to the Times, these interviews turned up evidence that the Tokyo Electric Power Company was looking to abandon the teetering power plant, a plan that would have significantly worsened the crisis.

But was this ever really going to happen? Kan told PBS that his Cabinet members had said Tepco "wanted to withdraw," but adds that the company's CEO "would not say clearly [to Kan] that they wanted to withdraw, or that they wouldn’t withdraw." The producer of the Frontline documentary, Dan Edge, said in an interview posted to the PBS website that the Fukushima workers he interviewed said they were told they on the evening of March 14 that there would be a complete evacuation, but then told the next morning that there would not be.

All this suggests there was significant confusion and indecision, and there is no question that what happened at Fukushima demands critical investigation and accountability. Whether or not Tepco mismanaged Fukushima after the tsunami hit, there is evidence that company officials had delayed upgrading the plant ahead of time and ignored the risk of a tsunami large enough to breech the seawall.
The Rebuild Japan report seems, on its face, to have been produced by a highly credible team of "30 university professors, lawyers and journalists." But even a seemingly legitimate study deserves a skeptical eye. Yet Fackler and the Times chose not to quote a single independent expert on nuclear energy besides Rebuild Japan's Funabashi. It should have been a red flag that Rebuild Japan gave its report to journalists a full week before releasing it to the public, which prevented outside experts from evaluating its claims. Another hint that the report merited a contrary opinion was the fact that it excluded any account from Tepco executives, who refused to be interviewed by Rebuild Japan investigators.

There's no question that the findings from the Rebuild Japan study merited coverage, but the Times might have shown more awareness of the fallacy of the worst-case scenario. "In any field of endeavor," wrote physicist Bernard Cohen in his classic 1990 study, The Nuclear Energy Option, "it is easy to concoct a possible accident scenario that is worse than anything that has been previously proposed." Cohen goes on to spin a scenario of a gasoline spill resulting in out-of-control fires, a disease epidemic, and, eventually, nuclear war.

Cohen concludes his fantastical thought experiment by saying, "I have frequently been told that the probability doesn't matter—the very fact that such an accident is possible makes nuclear power unacceptable. According to that way of thinking, we have shown that the use of gasoline is not acceptable, and almost any human activity can similarly be shown to be unacceptable. If probability didn't matter, we would all die tomorrow from any one of thousands of dangers we live with constantly."

It was perfectly reasonable for the Japanese authorities to have imagined and considered the very worst possible course of events in the aftermath of Fukushima meltdown. But it's a mistake to oversell the risks of such a scenario in hindsight. Yes, things could have turned out much worse—just as they could have turned out much better. As the Times and the rest of the news media cover the anniversary of the tsunami, they would do well to keep Cohen's warning in mind.


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remember the GREENPEACE slogan, an old indian word? " Only when the last tree is gone............" ..we will think of Tchernobyl and Fukushima generation after gerneration as we hopefully do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
Edited by skibboy, March 2 2012, 03:55 AM.
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Trial and error as Fukushima cleans up .



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CLEAN UP: Workers spray the roof of a radiation-contaminated warehouse in Fukushima.

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CLEAN UP: A worker scoops up a layer of radiation contaminated soil and ice in the garden of a private home in Fukushima.



Workers in rubber boots chip at the frozen ground, scraping until they've removed the top 5 centimetres of radioactive soil from the yard of a single home. Total amount of waste gathered: roughly 60 tons.

One down, tens of thousands to go. And since wind and rain spread radiation easily, even this yard may need to be dug up again.

The work is part of a monumental task: a costly and uncertain effort by Japan to try to make radiation-contaminated communities inhabitable again. Some contractors are experimenting with chemicals; others stick with shovels and high-pressure water. One government expert says it's mostly trial and error.

The radiation leak has slowed considerably at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, nearly one year after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami sent three of its reactors into meltdown. Work continues toward a permanent shutdown, but the Japanese government declared the plant stable in December, setting the stage for the next phase: decontaminating the area so that at least some of the 100,000 evacuated residents can return.

Experts leading the government-funded project cannot guarantee success. They say there's no prior model for what they're trying to do. Even if they succeed, they're creating another problem they don't yet know how to solve: where to dump all the radioactive soil and debris they haul away.

The government has budgeted US$14 billion (NZ$17b) through March 2014 for the cleanup, which could take decades.

The uncertainty plays out at many levels. One of the workers at the house with the frozen ground said they weren't sure how to measure 5cm from the uneven ground or what to do with the snow on top of it.

"We often encounter situations that are not in the manual and wonder if we are doing the right thing," Takahiro Watanabe said as they wrapped up on a chilly February day. "Just to be safe, we packed the snow into the bags."

The 60 tons of radioactive waste sat in 60 waterproof bags, waiting to be carted away from the house in Fukushima city's Onami district. Some 60km from the nuclear plant, the neighbourhood is a "hot spot" - an area with high radiation readings that is outside the 20km ring that has remained closed since the early days of the crisis. Residents of hot spots were encouraged, but not ordered, to leave, and some, including the residents of the house that was decontaminated, have not moved out.

In the fading late afternoon light, Watanabe took a dosimeter in his bare hand and placed it on the ground, now covered with a fresh layer of replacement soil. It read 0.24 microsieverts per hour - close to the target level of 0.2 and about one-fifth of what it had been before. "Looks like it has come down a bit," he said.

But for how long? With so much radiation in the area, workers probably will have to return to redo this neighbourhood. And areas where children gather, such as parks, schools and playgrounds, will be held to an even stricter standard than homes and offices.
"You have to keep cleaning up," said Toshiaki Kusano, Fukushima city's top crisis management official. The city has a five-year decontamination plan, which he said could be extended.

For evacuees, a major step forward may come in the next few weeks, when officials hope to redefine the evacuation zone, possibly opening up some areas, based on radiation data.

Radiation accumulates in soil, plants and exterior building walls. Workers start cleaning a property by washing or chopping off tree branches and raking up fallen leaves. Then they clean out building gutters and hose down the roof with high-pressure water. Next come the walls and windows. Finally, they replace the topsoil with fresh earth.

Historically, the only parallel situation is Chernobyl, where the contaminated area - once home to 110,000 people - remains off-limits nearly 26 years after the nuclear power plant exploded.

"They abandoned the land," Environment Minister Goshi Hosono told a meeting of local officials and residents last month. "We won't give up. The land belongs to each village, to each resident. As long as there are people who want to return home, we'll do everything we can to help."

In an interview with a group of reporters, though, he conceded that such a massive cleanup is "untested."

In Hirono, a quiet seaside town just outside the 20-kilometer ring, 70-year-old Shuzo Okada hired workers to decontaminate his house but is not willing to live there yet.

Most of the 5500 residents have left because of radiation fears. The town office reopened recently, but Okada says the dosimeter readings he takes at his house are too high for comfort.

"I've had the whole house cleaned already, but it's not enough," he said. "We have to do it again and again. I hope we can come back some time. I'm an old man, so I'm not afraid of radiation. But I doubt younger people would want to come back."

Experts say it may be possible to clean up less-contaminated areas, but nothing is promising in the most contaminated places, where any improvement is quickly wiped out by radiation falling from trees, mountains and other untreated areas.

Most of the cleaning is taking place in less contaminated areas, but the government also launched pilot projects in 12 districts around the plant, most of them highly contaminated, in December. Major construction companies and others won government contracts to experiment with various methods to remove and compact the overwhelming volume of waste. Those found effective will be chosen for further cleanup starting in April.

The dozens of methods range from the relatively basic - soil removal and washing and scrubbing surfaces - to the more experimental, such as using chemicals to remove radioactive cesium from farmland, and dry ice to get it out of roads and other hard surfaces. Konoike Construction Co. has tested equipment that compresses soil into round waffle-like discs after absorbing moisture.

"It's largely trial and error," said Kazuaki Iijima, a radiation expert at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, which is supervising the pilot projects. "Decontamination means we are only moving contaminant from one place to another. We can at least keep it away from the people and their living space, but we can never get rid of it completely."

Then there's the question of finding places willing to accept an ever-growing pile of radioactive waste.

The Environment Ministry expects the cleanup to generate at least 100 million cubic metres of soil, enough to fill 80 domed baseball stadiums.

For now the waste is being bagged and buried in lined pits. Officials hope to build safer storage facilities somewhere inside the 20km zone within three years. The government launched the cleanup without definitive plans for the storage facilities; it plans to start discussing their location with local leaders later this month.

The waste would remain in the longer-term storage for 30 years, until half the radioactive cesium breaks down. Then it would still have to be treated and compacted - using technology that hasn't been fully developed yet - before being buried deep underground in enclosed containers.

With all the uncertainties swirling around the cleanup, many evacuees are torn between a desire to go back and worries about their health.

Masato Yamazaki, a 68-year-old retired electrician, misses the vegetable garden at his house in Namie, a highly contaminated town just northwest of the plant.

"I want to go home even tomorrow if radiation levels come down and electricity and water are restored," he said in his temporary home, a two-bedroom, subsidised apartment in Nihonmatsu that he shares with his wife, their daughter and two grandchildren.

His wife, Hiroko, 64, doesn't think that day will come. She became particularly sceptical after watching the cleanup of a park across from their apartment - she described it as a "cat and mouse chase" in which radiation seemed to be moved from one place to another.

It didn't help to learn that the foundation of their temporary housing had been built with gravel contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear plant. City inspectors say the level of radiation is safe, though everyone on the ground floor has moved out.

"I don't think decontamination works, and I don't feel safe about it," Yamazaki said. "I've given up hope of returning to our home."
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Japan Red Cross says whole year wasted in post-tsunami rebuilding.



The Japanese Red Cross said on March 7 an entire year has been lost in rebuilding tsunami-ravaged areas of the country because the central government and local authorities had failed to agree on a "master plan".

It also said that the slow pace of reconstruction was deepening mental suffering and called for intensified efforts to bring the region back to life.

A year after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11 unleashed a tsunami that killed about 16,000 and triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, about 326,000 people are still homeless. Nearly 3,300 remain unaccounted for.

"The central government has proposed different scenarios, but they were met with strong opposition from local governments and also people affected directly by the earthquake and tsunami," Japanese Red Cross President Tadateru Konoe told Reuters alongside a press event marking the anniversary.

"Without reaching any agreement on a master plan for rehabilitation and reconstruction, it's very difficult to even start a reconstruction process. I think the first thing is to hasten this process, then they can mobilize…

"I think that should be the very start of everything. So one year has been wasted in that sense because they haven't been able to reach any consensus."

Hopes that the triple disaster would jolt Japan out of longstanding economic and political torpor have so far proved unfounded.

Government debt accumulates, while key decisions keep being postponed and politicians have reverted to skirmishing in a deadlocked parliament. Public mistrust of officials and politicians has risen.

The Red Cross has raised 400 billion yen ($4.95 billion) over the past year in donations from Japan and abroad, providing 290 billion yen in cash payouts to affected residents.

It said Red Cross activities had shifted over the year from attending to the urgent medical needs of survivors, many of them elderly, to long-term support — including help in building temporary and permanent health facilities.

PSYCHOLOGICAL BURDENS

Uncertainty, it said, was deepening a sense of isolation felt by many survivors, adding to huge psychological burdens.

"The slow pace of reconstruction along Japan's devastated northeastern coastline is contributing to survivors' stress, as there is little clarity on how long they will have to remain in cramped temporary housing," it said in a statement.

Patrick Fuller, communications manager at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said people in affected areas were isolated — they had lost their homes and were separated from relatives forced to earn a living elsewhere.

"Just bringing a sense of well-being to people is really important. Even a year on, there's a lot of emotional scars the people are still dealing with," he told Reuters. "How do the people view their future? Is it sustainable to remain in some of these towns where life is coming back very slowly?"

Communities close to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, crippled by the disaster, have to cope with additional stress and anxiety over long-term effects of radiation released after reactor meltdowns at the station, the Red Cross said.

"Mothers won't let their children outside to play. They are living in an information vacuum," Konoe said in the statement.

The Japanese Red Cross plans to hold a conference in Tokyo in May to help set guidelines on helping people cope.

"The legacy of such disasters has taught us to do more to help people prepare for such eventualities," Konoe said in the statement.
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http://vimeo.com/38243916 ...very interesting look at developments...
Edited by skibboy, March 10 2012, 05:29 AM.
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Nuclear Cover-Up Yet More Extensive as FIrst Anniversary of Fukushima Disaster Arrives.



As the first anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster arrives, the cover-up involving nuclear power is more extensive than ever.

The Big Lie was integral to the nuclear push from its start.

Promoters of nuclear power discounted the seriousness of nuclear plant accidents, although government documents acknowledged the vast scale of catastrophe. As the Atomic Energy Commission's "WASH-740 update," done at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 1960s, repeatedly states about a major nuclear plant accident: "The possible size of the area of such a disaster might be equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania."

They pushed the "peaceful atom"--although knowing that any nation with a nuclear plant would have the materiel from it (the plutonium produced as a byproduct) and trained personnel to make atomic weapons.

They downplayed the effects of radioactivity claiming it needed to reach a "threshold" to cause harm--even as it became clear that any amount of radioactivity can injure and kill.

And nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter," they insisted.

And on and on"

The realities of nuclear power have become ever more evident--acutely so because of the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima.

But the Nuclear Big Lie continues bigger than ever.

In recent weeks, for example, there's been the move to negate what has been the U.S. government's benchmark analysis on the impacts of nuclear plant accidents. "Calculation Reactor Accident Consequences 2" (CRAC-2) was done for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories in 1982. It catalogues th e impacts from a meltdown with a breach of containment at every nuclear plant in the U.S.

It divides the consequences into "Peak Early Fatalities," "Peak Early Injuries," "Peak Cancer Deaths" and "Scaled Costs" for property damage--and the numbers are chilling.

For the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant north of New York City, for instance, it projects "Peak Early Fatalities" at 50,000, "Peak Early Injuries" at 167,000, "Peak Cancer Deaths" at 14,000 and "Scaled Costs" at $314 billion (in 1980 dollars).

The estimates turn out to be low considering the toll of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident.

But in January, the NRC put out a report that it intends to replace CRAC-2 with that it titles the "State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequences Analyses" or SOARCA. SOARCA flatly dismisses the high casualty and damage figures of CRAC-2 (and the WASH-740 update before it). Using as models the Surry nuclear station in Virginia and the Peach Bottom facility in Pennsylvania, each with two nuclear plants, the NRC declared that the "risks of public health consequences from severe accidents" at a nuclear plant "are very small."

The "long-term risk" of a person dying from cancer from a nuclear plant accident is less than one-in-a billion, says SOARCA. This is because "successful implementation of existing mitigation measures can prevent reactor core damage or delay or reduce offsite releases of radioactive material."

Tell that to the people impacted by Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Cindy Folkers of the organization Beyond Nuclear declares that the "NRC should immediately withdraw its absurd SOARCA report and get about the business of protecting the public health, safety, and the environment--its mandate--rather than doing the nuclear power industry's bidding."

Then there's the attempt to cover up Fuksushima impacts.

"Health impacts from the radioactive materials released in the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns will probably be too small to be easily measured," began a New York Times piece by Matthew Wald last week. That was based on a Health Physics Society program at the National Press Club.

But the Health Physics Society is a booster of nuclear technology. It wasn't supposed to be that. The health physics profession was founded in 1943 by Karl Z. Morgan, a physicist with an interest in the health effects of radioactivity. He was hired by the Manhattan Project, the World War II crash program to build atomic bombs, to deal with health issues caused by radioactivity at the project. Then, for more than two decades, he was director of health physics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He was the first president of the Health Physics Society. And he saw and protested the profession selling out.

"It is with much reluctance and regret that I now must recognize that the U.S. profession of health physics has become essentially a labor union for the nuclear industry--not a profession of scientists dedicated to protect the worker and members of the public from radiation injury," Dr. Morgan wrote in 1992.

The radioactivity that has fallen in Japan for many months from Fukushima will have enormous consequences to the people of Japan. The type of accident that occurred at Fukushima Daiichi was "something that never happened--a multiple reactor catastrophe"happening within 200 kilometers of 30 million people," notes Dr. Alexey Yablokov, lead author of Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Dr. Yablokov, a biologist, and two other scientists, in the 2009 book, published by the New York Academy of Sciences, find that 985,000 people died between 1986, the year of the Chernobyl accident, and 2004 from the radioactivity it released. He projects the Fukushima toll will be greater.

"The Fukushima disaster will be worse than Chernobyl," agrees Dr. Janette Sherman, toxicologist and editor of the Chernobyl book. She also points to the Fukushima disaster involving several nuclear plants along with spent fuel pools affecting a part of Japan "far more populated" than the region around Chernobyl.

Fukushima fall-out has already caused death in the U.S., Dr. Sherman and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project have determined.

Dr. Sherman and Mangano cross-checked data on infant mortality from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with records of Fukushima fallout from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and found that infant mortality spiked by an average of 35 percent in eight cities west of the Rocky Mountains, including San Francisco and Seattle, and by 48 percent in Philadelphia during the ten weeks after the accident began on March 11, 2011.

Infant mortality--defined as death of children from birth to one year old--is considered an early measure of radiation effects because there is rapid growth and cell division at this stage, increasing the impacts of radioactivity. Cancer is a subsequent consequence.

"A global increase in cancer can be expected from the Fukushima discharges," says Dr. Sherman, who has been an advisor to the National Cancer Institute and has studied the impacts of radiation since working for the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s.

Besides blowing in the wind, the radioactive poisons from Fukushima have been spread in food, which is why several countries have restricted food imports from Japan.

Moreover, the sea along the Fukushima site provides a vast pathway for spreading radioactivity. When radioactive poison gets into the marine environment a "concentration factor" kicks in as the radiation moves up the food chain. Small fish eat radiation-contaminated seaweed, and medium-size fish eat the small fish. Then big fish eat the medium-size fish and radioactivity becomes increasingly concentrated. Some of the fish are migratory, so it's not just sushi in Tokyo that's imperiled.

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry trade group, continues to insist: "No health effects are expected among the Japanese people as a result of the events at Fukushima." The American Nuclear Society proclaims on its website that "no public ill effects are expected from the Fukushima incident."

Mangano says that "the absurd belief that no one will be harmed by Fukushima is perhaps the strongest evidence of the pattern of deception and denial by nuclear officials in industry and government."

Further, last May 3,after doing at least weekly monitoring of radioactivity providing the data that Dr. Sherman and Mangano linked to infant mortality, the EPA announced it would only gather readings every three months. Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, described it as "inexplicable that EPA would shut down its radiation monitoring effort" while Fukushima discharges continued to fall on the U.S.
Inexplicable, but in line, says Dr. Jeffrey Patterson, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, with the "cover-up, a minimization of the effects of radioactivity, since the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology."

Here and there, there's been a break through the Fukushima cover-up--such the PBS television Frontline program, Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown, that aired last week with an interview with former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan in which he acknowledged that Japanese officials considered at one point an evacuation of the greater Tokyo area with its 30 million people. The New York Times, in a Page One story last week, also reported this based not on its own investigative work but on a six-month inquiry by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation that resulted in a 400-page report.

Yes, as WASH-740-update said decades ago, the scale of a major nuclear plant accident "might be equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania."

Another part of the cover-up since Fukushima has been the claim that there is no alternative to nuclear power. As Miranda Spencer wrote in last May's issue of Extra! magazine, with the Fukushima disaster "U.S. government and nuclear industry spin control kicked in, asserting that a similar disaster couldn't happen here, and that atomic power is here to stay"An option hardly mentioned: renewable energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal power."

This is especially important for the nuclear establishment because, as Spencer pointed out, "wind is already cheaper per kilowatt-hour than nuclear" and "the National Research Council estimates that by 2020, the cost of geothermal will be comparable to or lower than that of nuclear (10 cents/kwh versus 6-13 cents/kwh). Solar power, which the Council said "could potentially produce many times the current and projected future U.S. electricity consumption," is projected to cost anywhere from 8-30 cents/kwh. Also, "A Duke University study found that the cost of solar power has not only recently declined by half, but also is poised to become cheaper than nuclear, even in places that aren't always sunny." The claims, she accurately wrote, that safe, clean, renewable power is not here to substitute for atomic energy "simply don't stand up to scrutiny."

But "the story that emerged accordingly presented nuclear energy as a path with no real alternatives." This is despite Germany, Italy, Switzerland and other nations deciding, because of Fukushima, to pursue safe, clean, renewable power instead of nuclear power. It can be done.

"Renewable Energy Can Power the World, Says Landmark IPCC Study," headlined the British newspaper, The Guardian, also in May. It went on: "UN's climate change science body says renewable supply, particularly solar power, can meet global demand." The article, about a 1,000-page report of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added, however, that this is "only if governments pursue the policies needed to promote green power."

An especially grisly angle was taken in last week's The Economist magazine. In an article titled "Radiation and evolution, Surviving fallout," it reported on a study on birds around Chernobyl and Fukushima. "When researchers looked at the 14 bird species that lived in both regions, they found that the same level of radiation was associated with twice as large a drop in bird numbers in Fukushima as in Chernobyl."

The Economist said that Dr. Timothy Mousseau, professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina, co-author of the study published in Environmental Pollution, believes a "likely explanation is that evolution has already been at work near Chernobyl, killing off individual birds that cannot cope with the background radiation and allowing the genes of those that have some tolerance to be passed on. The birds at Fukushima are only beginning to face the evolutionary challenge of living in a radioactive world."

Does this point to the consequence of living in "a radioactive world" the elimination of huge numbers of people--with the more radiation-tolerant humans the survivors? Is this what we want? And is there no choice but to live in "a radioactive world."

Nobel Award-winning biologist Dr. George Wald once said of nuclear power: "If you were to read in the newspapers tomorrow that astronomers had a shocking piece of information for us, they had just found another star is going to collide with the sun and that would be curtains, we'd have eight months more to go and, finished--why--heavens above! You would put on your best clothes and go dancing in the streets--that's cosmic, that's fate. You could go out with dignity." But to die as a result of nuclear power, he said, "is so trivial, it's so ghastly ignoble as to be, I think, intolerable, altogether unacceptable." And he called for "the closing down of all nuclear power plants tomorrow."

That's more relevant--and urgent--than ever.

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Japan Earthquake and Tsunami timeline: one year on.


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Some towns were completely destroyed by the tsunami. Among the worst affected was the town of Minamisanriku - the above picture, taken from a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force helicopter the day after the tsunami struck, shows a scene of total devastation. 95% of the town's buildings were washed away, and around 9,500 people (half the town's population) remain missing or confirmed dead.


Link .................. http://news.ie.msn.com/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-timeline-one-year-on-35#image=1
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Japan earthquake one year on: Inside Fukushima.



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This picture shows the tangled remains of the Number 4 (right) and Number 3 reactor buildings at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power.



Link..... http://news.ie.msn.com/japan-earthquake-one-year-on-inside-fukushima-31#image=1
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In pictures: Japan earthquake clean-up operation - before and after.



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Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan, March 11, 2011

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Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan, February 17, 2012

Japan has come a long way a year since the devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. Some areas have been doing well in rebuilding their homes from what was left from the wreckage, and some not as much.

These before and after pictures of the country's worst tsunami-hit areas, including Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures in northeastern Japan, are a testament to how much the people of Japan have toiled in their recovery efforts for the past 12 months.


Link ........ http://news.ie.msn.com/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=160739281
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Japanese Officials Knew of Imminent Meltdown Shortly After Tsunami
Yukio Edano: 'I humbly accept criticism that I could not tell you of the possibility of meltdown'
- Common Dreams staff

As Japan and the world prepare for tomorrow's one-year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, government documents have been released revealing that top Japanese officials were directly warned of an imminent meltdown at the Nuclear plant but failed to take action and denied any such risks to the public. The report confirms suspicions of deceit in the government's handling of the disaster.

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International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts and TEPCO staff stand near Unit 3 , Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex (AP / Tokyo Electric Power Co.)


Agence France-Presse reports:

A summary of a government meeting held about four hours after a giant earthquake sent huge waves crashing into the atomic power station showed that one unidentified participant had cautioned of the risk of a meltdown.

“If the temperature of the reactor cores rises after eight hours, there is a possibility that a meltdown will occur,” the person said, according to the summary released on Friday. [...]

The revelation will add to the impression among the Japanese public that their political masters were less than transparent in their handling of the crisis. [...]

But the chief cabinet secretary at the time Yukio Edano, the public face of the government’s response to the crisis, repeatedly denied the notion of a meltdown for weeks after March 11.

Edano, now the minister of economy, trade and industry, told reporters late Friday after the records of the meetings were released: “I humbly accept criticism that I could not tell you of the possibility of meltdown.” [...]

The government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) maintained for months there had been no meltdown at Fukushima, despite repeated warnings from independent experts.

Tokyo was seen as being quick to silence dissent on the issue, with a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency being replaced after telling a news conference the day after the disaster that meltdown was a possibility.

Only in mid-May did the government and TEPCO admit that three of the six reactors suffered meltdowns.
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Invisible threat hangs over people of Fukushima .



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With their faces covered by masks, these children are restricted to indoor activities at Fukushima city's youth centre gymnasium. Photo: Reuters



THE noise levels soar inside Fukushima city's youth centre gymnasium as dozens of nursery school children are let loose on bouncy castles and pits filled with plastic balls.

The handful of teachers and volunteers on duty are in a forgiving mood: for the past year, the Fukushima nuclear disaster has robbed these children of the simple freedom to run around.

Instead, anxious parents and teachers have confined them to their homes and classrooms, while scientists debate the possible effects prolonged exposure to low-level radiation will have on their health.
''Many parents won't let their children play outside, even in places where the radiation isn't that high,'' says Koji Nomi of the Fukushima chapter of the Japanese Red Cross.''Unless they have the opportunity to run around, their physical strength is at risk of deteriorating. That in turn puts them at risk of succumbing to stress. Some are allowed to play outside for short periods every day, but that's not enough.''

Hundreds of thousands of children in the area have been living with similar restrictions since the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's triple meltdown last March, sending radioactive particles over a wide area.

The immediate threat of a catastrophic release has passed, but residents of several towns, including those outside the 20-kilometre exclusion zone, say they live in fear of the invisible threat in their midst.

Kumiko Abe and her family evacuated from Iitate, 39 kilometres from the power plant, weeks after the accident after a study by Tetsuji Imanaka, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, found unusually high pockets of radiation in the village. They now live in private accommodation in Fukushima city, but Ms Abe, 46, says she continues to take precautions to protect her nine-year-old daughter, Momoe.

''We have stopped eating rice grown by my husband's parents, and I never buy locally grown vegetables,'' she says. ''I started buying imported meat, and we drink only bottled water. I try not to hang out laundry on windy days … I'd like to be able to air our futons, but I can't.''

Her concerns centre on her daughter, who has a tiny lump on her thyroid gland. Doctors have assured her it is benign. ''Even though they say there's nothing to worry about, I'd like her to have more frequent tests.'' Ms Abe's anxiety is compounded by conflicting advice about the risk of exposure to low-level radiation.

Shunichi Yama(censor)a, a professor at Fukushima Medical University who acts as an adviser on radiation risk management to the local government, angered parents when he said exposure to 100 millisieverts a year - the level recommended for nuclear plant workers in an emergency - was safe, even for children. He has since claimed his comments were taken out of context.

A cumulative dosage of 100 millisieverts a year over a person's lifetime increases the risk of dying from cancer by 0.5 per cent, according to the International Commission on Radiological Protection. No study has yet linked cancer development to exposure at below that level but there is agreement that the Fukushima case is unprecedented.

Much of the unease stems from the wildly varying levels of radiation recorded in the same areas: in parts of Fukushima outside the evacuation zone, readings vary from negligible to as high as 50 millisieverts a year. Normally, the Japanese are exposed to about 1 millisievert of background radiation a year.

The emergence of thyroid cancers in children living near Chernobyl is in the back of many parents' minds, despite UN data showing that exposure to radioactive iodine, an established cause of the condition, was much lower in Fukushima.

Campaigners claim Japan's government has been too slow in providing health checks and information to residents. ''A year on, we are really not seeing basic health services being offered in an accessible way and we are not seeing accurate, consistent, non-contradictory information being disclosed to people on a regular basis,'' Jane Cohen, of Human Rights Watch, said.

The government has tried to ease health concerns with the launch of a testing program in Fukushima prefecture that will include 360,000 children aged up to 18. They will undergo thyroid checks every two years until they are 20, and every five years thereafter. In all, 2 million residents will be screened over the next 30 years, but so far only a fraction of those eligible have been tested.

''Our children have all been wearing glass badges [to measure radiation absorption] but only a few of them have been screened,'' says Mitsue Shiga, a teacher at a kindergarten in Fukushima city's Watari suburb. ''We don't allow the children to play outside at all.''

Medical professionals in the area say they lack the specialist equipment to quickly test and reassure residents. ''We have just one whole-body radiation counter but we need three,'' says the assistant director of Minamisoma municipal general hospital, Tomoyoshi Oikawa.

Anti-nuclear campaigners accuse the authorities of putting children's health at risk by ignoring calls to help women and young people leave at-risk areas outside the evacuation zone.

According to preliminary estimates, the doses of radiation received by people living near the nuclear facility were probably too small to have much of an effect on health, even among those who were in the vicinity during the meltdowns. But relatively small doses measured so far could pose problems for long-term attempts to properly gauge the Fukushima effect.

''There is no opportunity for conducting epidemiological studies that have any chance of success,'' the incoming president of the US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, John Boice, said recently. ''The doses are just too low. If you were to do a proposal, it would not pass scientific review.''

For a more comprehensive assessment of the accident's impact on health, Fukushima residents will have to wait for the UN scientific committee on the effects of atomic radiation to publish its findings in May 2013.

Iitate residents say the conflicting information has left them confused and fearful about the future. ''Young children were living in the village for months after the meltdown,'' says rice farmer Toru Anzai. ''We're being treated like lab rats. The authorities should have told us as soon as they knew the reactors had melted down and helped us leave immediately. That's why people here are so angry.''


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Nearing anniversary and still searching for bodies .

Almost one year after a massive tsunami killed thousands of people along Japan's coast and teams are still searching for around 300 left missing.


Video link ....... http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world-news/nearing-anniversary-and-still-searching-for-bodies-3113887.html
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Near Fukushima, a Big 'Guessing Game' Over Radiation's Long-Term Risks.


SUMMARY
Sunday marks a year since a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, causing a partial meltdown of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plants. In the first report in a series on Japan's recovery, Miles O'Brien documents the country's cleanup attempts as scientists decide whether residual radiation could be potentially harmful.


Transcript

RAY SUAREZ: Sunday will mark a year since the massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. The pair of tragic events killed as many as 20,000 people, and led to the partial meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plants.

The Japanese government is expected to be cleaning up radiation for years, and nearly 90,000 residents in an evacuation zone had to leave their homes, likely forever.
NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien recently returned to the area for a series of reports one year later.

Here's the first.

MILES O'BRIEN: Okay. And then the hood up?

MAN: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN: Near of edge of the Fukushima exclusion zone, the area deemed too hot for human habitation, we geared up for the trip inside.

Tyvek overalls with hoods, booties and masks, coverage from head to toe.

I'm wearing this suit not to protect myself against gamma radiation, but to ensure that any contamination which I pick up while I'm inside the exclusion zone doesn't stay with me when I leave.

We carried a pass that got us through the heavily guarded checkpoint, 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. We were traveling with scientists from the University of Tokyo, driving through abandoned cities and towns that once bustled with life, silent now, except for the menacing crescendo of our Geiger counter. It is an eerie post-apocalyptic scene.

At the Manami Elementary School in Naraha, life stood still at 2:46 on the afternoon of March 11, 2011. The blackboards are filled with untaught lessons, book bags left behind, shoes still in the cubbies. The scientists were gathering detailed readings, trying to assess the full extent of the radiation contamination nearly one year after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

MILES O'BRIEN: What was it like inside?

WOMAN: It was 0.2 something.

MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, it was 0.5.

The results were mixed. Inside, radiation contamination was relatively low, but out in the playground, too high for kids to play.

"If it's decontaminated, I think the school can open," said scientist Akira Sugiyama.

We visited another school in the city of Namie, a private preschool. There were hot spots, to be sure, but, overall, the readings were relatively low.

I asked the principal, Hitomi Uchimi, whether she wanted to come back.

"To be honest, I have mixed feelings," she told me. "I want to be back and at the same time, I think it's difficult. This area may read low radiation, but the mountains are reading high."

The hydrogen explosions at the nuclear plant a year ago launched radioactive isotopes into the air. They were blown by the wind, then fell with the dew and precipitation. As a result, the footprint of cesium-137, the most prevalent and persistent radioactive fallout, does not match the neat circles of the mandatory and voluntary evacuation zones, 20 and 30 kilometers from the plant.

There are plenty of hot spots outside those circles and some clean spots within, until you get close to the plant.

This is the town of Okuma. We're on Highway 6. We are about a kilometer from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, getting particularly high readings, 34 microsieverts per hour. This is an area where it is hard to imagine they will be remediating and repopulating any time soon.

The readings were 15 times what is considered permissible for radiation workers, 300 times more than the acceptable dose for average citizens. But if that standard were enforced here, it would prompt a dramatically larger evacuation. And that's not going to happen.

So the Japan government has said the standard for radiation workers, 20 millisieverts a year, will apply to everyone for now.

TATSUHIKO KODAMA, University of Tokyo: More than one million residents are living in high radioactivity area now.

MILES O'BRIEN: Tatsuhiko Kodama is a physician, professor and head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo. He's also become a YouTube sensation in Japan after this angry testimony before a committee at the parliament.

TATSUHIKO KODAMA (through translator): I am shaking with anger!

MILES O'BRIEN: He believes Tokyo has been slow to respond to the crisis, has withheld information, and has tried to downplay the concern. In fact, the government has been all over the map on what it deems allowable radiation levels for average citizens, at one time saying 33 millisieverts a year would be okay at a school playground.

They were saying higher levels than you would expect for a radiation worker for somebody in kindergarten.

TATSUHIKO KODAMA (through translator): So that was so crazy decision. So, I cannot believe what government is talking about.

MILES O'BRIEN: Given their history, they do not have to look far to get the most accurate scientific data on radiation exposition and its long-term effects on human beings. After all, the atomic age began here.

I went to Hiroshima to learn more about the famous Radiation Effects Research Foundation. Sitting high above a now thriving city, this joint Japan and U.S. project has tracked and studied 94,000 survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb attacks since 1947.

EVAN DOUPLE, Radiation Effects Research Foundation: This is a very exceptionally rare and unique opportunity.

MILES O'BRIEN: Evan Douple is the associate director of research here. He took me on a tour. In liquid nitrogen and 65 deep freezers, scientists here store thousands of blood, urine and other biological samples from bomb survivors and a large control group of their contemporaries who were unexposed.

Is there an aberration here?

MAN: Yeah.

MILES O'BRIEN: Researchers analyze stem cells and abnormal chromosomes, looking for signs of damage that can only be explained by exposure to radiation. And they conduct thorough medical exams on a large group of survivors every other year.

They have published now about 1,000 peer-reviewed studies and have found conclusive proof that radiation causes an increase in the rate of leukemia a few years after exposure and, over time, more solid cancers as well.

But below 100 millisieverts, no one here, after all these years, can detect any adverse effects.

EVAN DOUPLE: Extrapolating down, where we tend to have most of our survivors, because radiation is not such a strong mutagen, it becomes more and more difficult to show significance. So, as an epidemiology study, it's a big challenge to try to show effects that are significant at low doses.

MILES O'BRIEN: Scientists are now devising ways to study the people of Fukushima Prefecture, but it will be a challenge to connect the dots. While it is relatively easy to calculate the radiation dose that an atomic bomb survivor received in one instant, determining it for those who receive a very low dose for a very long time is much more of a guessing game.

It's a big job, isn't it?

KAZUO SAKAI, National institute of Radiological Sciences: It is. The target people is more than two million. So -- and that will be a very difficult, very challenging, challenging work.

MILES O'BRIEN: Kazuo Sakai is a radiation biologist with Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences. He says a gradual radiation dose is not as harmful as an instantaneous one.

KAZUO SAKAI: When you reduce dose rate, so the effect is becoming smaller and smaller.

MILES O'BRIEN: The body heals, doesn't it?

KAZUO SAKAI: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN: If you get it all in one shot, it is much more of a shock, right?

KAZUO SAKAI: Yeah, you are right.

MILES O'BRIEN: Right?

KAZUO SAKAI: Yeah.

MILES O'BRIEN: Sakai says six workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant sustained doses in excess of 250 millisieverts, but none have developed acute radiation sickness.

As for the general population, so far no sign of illnesses. At this hospital in Minamisoma, a city that straddles the 20 kilometer exclusion zone, residents line up all day to be tested for radiation exposure. So far, they have scanned 10,000 people. About half had detectable amounts of cesium-137, but all at levels far below the threshold for concern.

"It was unfortunate that people were exposed to radiation, but the radiation level is very low," says the hospital director, Yukio Kanazawa. "That's our conclusion."

At the conclusion of my journey into the hot zone, I too got a thorough check -- fortunately, no cause for concern.

Did I pass? No problem?

MAN: No problem.

MILES O'BRIEN: It was the end of a sad visit. There may be no proof that living with low levels of radiation contamination can make you sick, but the absence of evidence is not enough to wipe away the evidence of absence. And the emboldened wild boar will likely have free rein here for decades to come.


Check this video out - Near Fukushima, a Big 'Guessing Game' Over Long-Term Risks http://video.pbs.org/video/2208494532
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What Fukushima accident did to the ocean.





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A huge Buddha statue looks over the bay in 2011 in the tsunami-devastated city of Kamaishi, Japan


Ken Buesseler is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has studied marine radioactivity since Chernobyl in 1986 and led an international research cruise off Japan in June 2011.

(CNN) -- One year ago, a series of events began with an earthquake off the cost of Japan that culminated in the largest accidental release of radioactivity into the ocean in history.

We have to be careful and say "accidental" because in the late 1950s and early 1960s, 50 to 100 times more radioactivity was released worldwide as fallout from the intentional testing of nuclear weapons. The word "ocean" is also important, since Chernobyl in 1986 was hundreds of miles inland, so it had a smaller impact on the concentrations of radionuclides in the sea than was measured directly off Japan in 2011.

One year later, we have to ask, what do we know about Fukushima's impact on the ocean and levels of radioactive contaminants in water and fish?
In many ways we were fortunate that impacts were largely confined to the ocean. Certainly, the Japanese people continue to feel devastating effects of so large a release within their country, and many people may never be able to return to their homes. But in general the winds during the height of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were blowing offshore. As a result, more than three-quarters of the radioactivity fell on the ocean. This is important, as any that lands on soil remains in place, resulting in the potential for greater human exposure and increased chances of contamination to food supplies and property.

In the Pacific, however, the strong Kuroshio Current (similar to the Atlantic Gulf Stream) helped move any contamination quickly away from shore and diluted it by mixing it into deeper water.

This allowed us to report that by June 2011, even when we sampled within sight of the nuclear power plants, levels of cesium-137 and cesium-134 in the ocean, two primary products of nuclear fission, were elevated, but still below those considered of concern for exposure to humans. They were also well below biological thresholds of concern to the small fish and plankton we sampled, even if these were consumed by humans.

Several other groups have now confirmed our findings about levels of radioactivity up to 400 miles offshore.

Other measurements show trends that are more worrisome. Levels of radioactivity found in fish are not decreasing and there appear to be hot spots on the seafloor that are not well mapped. There is also little agreement on exactly how much radioactivity was released or even whether the fires and explosions at the power plant resulted in more radioactive fallout to the ocean than did direct releases of radioactivity caused by dumping water on the reactors to keep them cool.

Opinion: U.S. reactors still vulnerable, a year after Fukushima

Japan is taking what some think of as a precautionary measure by lowering the limits of radioactive contaminants in drinking water and food supplies, including seafood, on April 1.The new level for fish will be one-tenth of the acceptable level in the United States. Will Japan's new limits build consumer confidence or raise fears and questions about why more fish are considered unsafe for consumption? And why were fish caught last year considered safe, but now are not?

Despite the announcement in December that operators of the power plant had achieved cold shut down, we know they are still using tons of water to cool the reactors and that not all the water has been collected or treated. As a result, the ground around the site is like a dirty sponge, saturated with contaminated water that is leaking into the ocean.

Marine sediments are also collecting radioactive contaminants, exposing bottom-dwelling fish, shellfish and other organisms on the sea floor to higher levels of contaminants than those in the waters above. Little is known, however, about the level of contamination in the groundwater and on the seafloor and whether these will be a source of contaminants long after levels in the ocean have become diluted to the point that only the most sensitive instruments can detect them.

We do know that we can detect cesium at very dilute levels, well below those considered harmful. Using these sensitive techniques we can track the Fukushima contaminants as ocean currents carry the peak releases across the Pacific where they are expected to reach the U.S. West Coast in 2013-2014 at levels that are much lower than we measured off Japan in 2011 and thus not of concern to human health.

Two weeks ago, we held the largest international gathering of marine scientists studying radioactive substances in the ocean originating from Fukushima. Although we shared freely what each of us has learned in the last year, what we need today is also what we needed on March 11, 2011 — greater international coordination of long-term studies of the fate and consequences of the radiation. We've done the initial assessments. Now we need to begin answering the tougher questions, building public confidence in scientific studies by having multiple, independent groups at work, and ensuring we have the resources to build comprehensive, long-term studies.

As a scientist and a marine radiochemist, I am trained to provide answers about radioactivity in the ocean—how much is out there, where it is, and what its fate is likely to be in the future. Today, we haven't gone very far beyond the first question, which was key on March 11, 2011, but hardly seems sufficient one year later.
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MARCH 11--ONE YEAR ON / 20,000 households in disaster-hit areas may face relocation



Of 37 municipalities in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures surveyed by The Yomiuri Shimbun, 29 city, town and village governments are planning to relocate inland or to higher ground, or are considering it.

The mass relocation would affect about 20,000 households in 281 districts in the municipalities concerned.

These include 1,800 households in 98 districts of 10 municipalities in Iwate Prefecture; 16,600 households in 132 districts of 12 municipalities in Miyagi Prefecture; and 1,900 households in 51 districts of seven municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture.

In Miyagi Prefecture alone, 6,900 households in Ishinomaki would be affected, followed by 2,600 in Higashi-Matsushima and 2,000 in Sendai.

As some municipal governments replied that they were still in the process of surveying residents' wishes, the number of households affected will likely rise.

However, progress on the mass relocations varies greatly among the municipalities.

Among the 29 municipalities, 17, or nearly 60 percent, said they had obtained consent from residents in all or most of the affected districts.

In Wakabayashi Ward, Sendai, one district was designated as a potentially dangerous area in the event of a disaster. As a safety precaution, residents are required to relocate en masse.

However, residents have expressed a desire to rebuild the district, and some of them have taken steps toward filing a lawsuit to have the dangerous-area designation nullified.

Thirteen of the municipalities surveyed said relocation sites have yet to be decided.

An official of the town government of Yamada, Iwate Prefecture, said: "We don't know how much residential land damaged by the disaster will sell for or how much it will cost to buy land at the relocation sites.

"Also, as there are many people who are unsure whether they should relocate or move into public housing, we don't know how many households will be relocated," the official said.

An official of the town government of Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, said: "We have held ongoing talks with residents of tsunami-hit districts. But as the districts are in the no-entry zone and decontamination has not progressed, we still can't decide on relocation sites."

The survey also found that 17 municipal governments are planning to raise, or are considering raising, the ground levels of foundations of households after seawalls and other facilities are built. This will affect about 8,200 households across 30 districts.

The city government of Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate Prefecture, plans to rebuild two districts in the central part of the city in their original locations. The work will involve raising the ground levels of 2,500 households, the most among the municipalities.

Eleven municipal governments have created or are considering creating their own systems to finance the mass relocations or projects to raise ground levels.

The Sendai city government will waive up to 10 million yen in land rental fees for a period of 50 years for affected residents who build houses on the land at relocation destinations.

The town government of Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture, will subsidize up to 1.5 million yen of housing construction costs at the relocation sites.

However, the city government of Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, said it is unable to secure funds for such purposes, indicating widening gaps among the municipalities.
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Fukushima residents report various illnesses
Growing number of those living around destroyed Japanese nuclear plant cite health issues.

A debate is raging in Japan over the extent of the radiation contamination in the wake of last year's nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

The government says 13 per cent of the district is contaminated, nearly 2500 square kilometres of land or an area about the size of the US state of Rhode Island

The area's farming industry was worth $3.2bn a year, most of which is now destroyed.

The government says it has already spent $3bn to make the land safe, and needs another $6bn for the coming year.

Steve Chao reports from Minamisoma, a ciy in Fukushima, that some people say the radiation is continuing to make them ill.

Video link ....... http://www.aljazeera.com/video/asia-pacific/2012/03/20123914421232874.html
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Evacuees awaiting TEPCO compensation unable to go home ..


Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s delay in compensating victims of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is hindering evacuees ability to return home.

In late September, the government lifted its evacuation advisory for residents living in the emergency evacuation preparation zone, which was between 20 and 30 kilometers from TOKYO, March 6--the nuclear power plant. However, many residents are reluctant to return to their hometowns.

The village of Kawauchi in Fukushima Prefecture has officially announced that the village government, which was forced to relocate due to the crisis, plans to return to the village from April. Public services, including schools, will also resume in April.

However, Kazuhiro Igari, who evacuated from Kawauchi to temporary housing in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, said he is not ready to return to the village. "I want to go back to Kawauchi as soon as possible. However, I've decided to wait and see how things go there at least for this year," Igari, 38, said.
Igari's home in Kawauchi is located about 30 kilometers from the power plant. However, Igari said he and his children are unable to live safely there as their house has not been decontaminated yet.

TEPCO plans to pay the full value of houses and properties--the value before the nuclear crisis--located in areas where the amount of radiation exceeds 50 millisieverts annually. The return of residents to those areas is thought to be unlikely.

However, it is unclear whether TEPCO would compensate for Igari's home, which is located outside the 50-millisievert area. TEPCO has decided it will not compensate for houses and other properties outside the area, in principle, until the government issues a clear standard on compensation payments.

Igari worked at a medical equipment maker that had relocated from the town of Okuma--in the no-entry zone--to Iwaki due to the nuclear disaster. He had to quit his job because it was difficult to commute from Koriyama to Iwaki. Many Kawauchi residents now live in Koriyama.

Igari now lives off TEPCO salary compensation given to people who lost their jobs due to the nuclear crisis and government unemployment benefits. "Unless it becomes clear whether my house will be eligible for [TEPCO] compensation, I can't decide our future, such as my job, our house, anything," Igari said.

===

TEPCO refuses settlements

Meanwhile, there are many nuclear-disaster victims who are not satisfied with TEPCO's current compensation plan, which is based on the government's compensation guidelines.

Ryuzo Sato, 72, who evacuated from Okuma to Tokyo is one such person.

In September, Sato filed for alternative dispute resolution with the Center for Dispute Resolution for Compensating Damages from the Nuclear Power Plant Incident, demanding TEPCO pay about 45 million yen for damage caused by the nuclear accident.

Alternative dispute resolution is a process seeking to resolve civil disputes, such as compensation claims, through a neutral third-party institution instead of a court. The government's nuclear dispute resolution center mediates conflicts between nuclear-disaster victims and TEPCO over compensation payments.

On, Sato and TEPCO agreed on a settlement for the power company to pay about 23 million yen in damages for Sato's house and others items.

It took about six months to reach the settlement, as TEPCO had initially rejected the dispute resolution center's proposal, saying the center's suggested payment amount exceeded the compensation calculated under government's guidelines.

TEPCO is obliged to comply with the dispute resolution center's settlement proposals. However, of 1,124 cases nuclear-disaster victims filed with the center, only 13 of them had reached a settlement as of Feb. 29.

TEPCO is concerned about the possibility that compensation amounts would keep increasing if the power company agrees to settlements demanding TEPCO pay more than the compensation calculated under government guidelines.

However, disaster victims question TEPCO's delays in reaching settlements. Hideaki Omori, vice leader of a group of lawyers supporting nuclear-disaster victims, said TEPCO is "using starvation tactics on disaster victims having difficulties securing living expenses."

Some victims believe TEPCO is waiting for them to spend temporary payments received from the power company, expecting the victims to make concessions after experiencing difficulty making a living.

According to a Kawauchi municipal government survey conducted in late February on households with children, only 17 percent said they want to return to the village.

According to the survey, they cited financial problems as well as radiation concerns as reasons they do not want to return. If evacuees return, compensation for mental distress due to evacuation will end. Residents worry their earnings in Kawauchi could be lower than in the towns they are now living in. "I want to ask [TEPCO] to compensate in such a way that residents who return home will not suffer a loss of income," Mayor Yuko Endo said.

Mitsuyoshi Yanagisawa, a senior vice minister of economy, trade and industry, recently visited Fukushima Prefecture to meet with nuclear-disaster victims. Yanagisawa said it is better to develop places where victims can work rather than continue paying compensation to the victims after lifting the evacuation orders.

His remarks showed a huge gap between the government's view and those of victims, who want TEPCO to speed up compensation payments.

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Health uncertainties torment residents in Fukushima.



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Yuki Shishido, 15, receives a whole-body counter radiation check at Minimisoma City General Hospital in Minamisoma, just outside the 20-kilometer evacuation zone around the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.



FUKUSHIMA —

Yoshiko Ota keeps her windows shut. She never hangs her laundry outdoors. Fearful of birth defects, she warns her daughters: Never have children.

This is life with radiation, nearly one year after a tsunami-hit nuclear power plant began spewing it into Ota’s neighborhood, 60 kilometers away. She’s so worried that she has broken out in hives.

“The government spokesman keeps saying there are no IMMEDIATE health effects,” the 48-year-old nursery school worker says. “He’s not talking about 10 years or 20 years later. He must think the people of Fukushima are fools.

“It’s not really OK to live here,” she says. “But we live here.”

Ota takes metabolism-enhancing pills in hopes of flushing radiation out of her body. To limit her exposure, she goes out of her way to buy vegetables that are not grown locally. She spends 10,000 yen a month on bottled water to avoid the tap water. She even mail-ordered a special machine to dehusk her family’s rice.

Not everyone resorts to such measures, but a sense of unease pervades the residents of Fukushima. Some have moved away. Everyone else knows they are living with an invisible enemy.

Radiation is still leaking from the now-closed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, though at a slower pace than it did in the weeks after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. It’s not immediately fatal but could show up as cancer or other illnesses years later.

The uncertainty breeds fear. Some experts say the risks are quite low outside the 20-kilometer no-go zone, and people can take steps to protect themselves, such as limiting intake of locally grown food, not lingering in radiation “hot spots” such as around gutters and foliage, and periodically living outside the area. But risks are much higher for children, and no one can say for sure what level of exposure is safe.

What’s clear is Fukushima will serve as a test case that the world is watching for long-term exposure to low-dose radiation.

More than 280,000 people live in Fukushima city alone, though some have left, and many more live in surrounding towns, including many of the 100,000 who have been evacuated from the no-go zone.

“People are scared to death,” says Wolfgang Weiss, chairman of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, which is studying Fukushima. “They are thinking, ‘Tell me. Is it good or bad?’ We can’t tell them. Life is risky.”

It hasn’t helped that the government has given only the most optimistic scenarios of the risks to avoid mass panic.

Public skepticism of government assurances grew when the man appointed as health adviser for Fukushima Prefecture, Shunichi Yama(censor)a, repeatedly said exposure to 100 millisieverts of radiation a year was safe.

Studies have found that cancer risks rise at an annual exposure of 100 millsieverts or above but aren’t statistically detectable at lower levels. Below 100, experts can’t say for sure whether it’s safe, just that a link to cancer can’t be proven.

In Fukushima and nearby areas, outside the 20-kilometer evacuation zone, the annual exposure is 20 millisieverts in some places and as high as 50 in others. Before the disaster, people in Japan were exposed to about 1 millisievert of natural background radiation a year; in the United States the average is about 3 millisieverts.

The controversy earned Yama(censor)a a nickname: “Mr 100 Millisieverts.” Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s graduate school, stepped down as government adviser last year in a tearful protest of Yama(censor)a’s views.

Kouta Miyazaki is among those who have lost confidence in the government.

“Government officials should all come live in Fukushima for several years and bring their families. They’re all staying in places where it’s safe,” Miyazaki says. “We’re being told to get radiated and drop dead.”

Miyazaki, 40, closed his online business selling Fukushima peaches; he doubts anyone would buy them now. He plans to move away with his 15-year-old son, although that would mean living separately for a while from his wife, who works as a counselor in Fukushima.

The nature of the threat has changed over time. Initially, it was exposure to the large releases of radiation from explosions at the plant. The risk from leaks remains but at a much reduced level.

These days, the main danger is less obvious but just as real: consuming contaminated food and water and ingesting radioactive particles. Radioactive material has accumulated in gutters where rainwater collects and shrubs with leaves that suck in radiation.

The risk is cumulative. The radioactivity in one’s body builds up through various activities, including eating contaminated food every day or staying in a hot spot for an extended period.

Schools are restricting outdoor activities, and radiation meters dot the streets. Some people are using their own devices to measure radioactivity.

At area hospitals, thousands of people are on waiting lists to get their radiation levels measured with whole-body counters. One child at Minami Soma Hospital, southeast of Fukushima, was found with 2,653 becquerels of radioactive cesium.

It’s a big number, but is it dangerous? Jacques Lochard, an International Commission on Radiological Protection official advising Fukushima prefecture, says the child’s exposure could amount to as little as 0.3 millisieverts a year, or as much as 8 millisieverts, depending on how the child was exposed to the radiation.

All most residents know is that their bodies are contaminated. What the numbers mean is unanswered.

Kunihiko Takeda, a nuclear and ecology expert who has been more outspoken about the dangers than many others, says people become less afraid after he explains the risks.

“They are freed from the state of not knowing,” says Takeda, who has a blog with instructions on how parents can protect their children from radiation. “They now know what to do and can make decisions on their own.”

Lochard says he was sad to hear about a Fukushima woman whose children were too afraid to bring her grandchildren from Tokyo for visits. All the parents need to do, he said, is bring food from home and keep the children indoors.

Still, Lochard says, “There is no safe level. It is a small risk but not zero.”

After the 1986 Chernobyl accident, more than 6,000 thyroid cancers clearly linked to radioactive iodine were found in children and adolescents. A study by Weiss’ U.N. committee found exposure to iodine was lower in Fukushima than at Chernobyl. Still, parents are worried because the Chernobyl cancers didn’t emerge until a couple of years later.

“Nobody can say this is over. I’d be the last to say that,” Weiss says.

Mayor Shouji Nishida of Date, a city of 66,000 people in Fukushima prefecture, says his community is preparing for the future by relying less on the central government, and by adjusting expectations. He believes 5 millisieverts of radiation a year _ five times the typical amount of background radiation in Japan _ is a realistic goal.

“We are defining policies to live and coexist with radiation,” he says.
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Disposal sites in Japan refuse to accept 140,000 tons of radioactive waste

TOKYO — At least 140,000 tons of sewage sludge, ash and soil contaminated with radioactive materials has yet to be disposed of in Tokyo and six prefectures in the Kanto region of Japan following the crisis at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, a survey shows.

Under the central government-set criteria regarding radioactive materials, sewage sludge and ash with radiation levels up to 8,000 becquerels per kilogram can be put in landfills. But an increasing number of final disposal sites refuse to accept contaminated sludge and ash even if it meets the criteria, according to a survey by The Yomiuri Shimbun. In other situations, soil removed during decontamination work has been left at the original sites.

When The Yomiuri Shimbun asked local governments in Tokyo and six other prefectures with waste water processing facilities how they have handled sewage sludge, it found a total of 103,100 tons of sludge - including that which has been incinerated and reduced - was still at the facilities. Of that, about 52,700 tons was in Saitama Prefecture, the most among the seven prefectures.

The Yomiuri Shimbun surveyed 24 facilities in Tokyo and four other prefectures where radioactive cesium above 8,000 becquerels had been detected in ash.

The survey revealed about 6,500 tons of ash from general waste was still kept at the facilities. Of that, about 2,200 tons were in Ibaraki Prefecture and about 1,900 tons in Chiba Prefecture.

As for polluted soil removed in decontamination work, The Yomiuri Shimbun looked at 51 municipalities in five prefectures, which have been designated by the central government as areas for close contamination inspections, and found about 30,400 tons of polluted soil was temporarily stored there.

Many local governments in the Tokyo metropolitan area do not have their own final disposal sites for sewage sludge and ash.

The Nagareyama municipal government in Chiba Prefecture has about 750 tons of ash. The city previously sent ash to facilities outside the prefecture, such as one in Kosaka, Akita Prefecture, for final disposal.

However, since a maximum of 28,100 becquerels of radioactive materials per kilogram were detected in ash in July, such final disposal sites refused to accept ash from Nagareyama. Even ash en route to the disposal sites was returned to the city.

About 350 kilograms of the ash in the city meets the central government's standard, but the city is not hopeful of finding a final disposal site.

"The central government's criteria doesn't do anything to gain understanding from residents around final disposal sites. Unless something is done, we'll be forced to stop incinerating garbage," a city official said.

In Nasu and Nasu-Shiobara in Tochigi Prefecture, where decontamination work was carried out at primary and middle schools, about 11,800 tons of soil has been left in school compounds.

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One year after deadly earthquake and tsunami, UN pays tribute to Japan's resilience .


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Destroyed Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Photo: UNSCEAR/Wolfgang Weiss


United Nations, New York, March 2012 - A commemoration of the first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last year was held today at United Nations Headquarters, with senior officials paying tribute to the resilience of the survivors of the disaster and the efforts of the world body to help them.

The Great East Japan Earthquake, as it is known, and the ensuing tsunami, killed more than 15,000 people and destroyed cities and villages along the coast of the country's Tohoku region. The 11 March disaster also caused major damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
One year later, some 3,305 people are still listed as missing, and more than 340,000 others evacuated from the disaster zone have not been able to return.

“The world remembers. We know many people are still not back home. We realize the economic damage is enormous. And we understand that many wounds will never fully heal,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the concert, which was sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Japan and the Japan Foundation.

“These are the sad truths. But there are many hopeful signs,” he stated. “After the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japanese people stood up – and so did the international community.”

Mr. Ban, who saw the damage first-hand during a visit in August, recalled that the UN rushed in emergency help following the disaster. Countries donated what they could. Even schoolchildren from around the world sent messages of solidarity.

“When the earthquake struck, we immediately reached out to Japan… a country that had reached out so many times for the rest of the world.”

The concert, entitled “Overcoming the Disaster: Gratitude from Japan to the World,” featured the Japanese taiko drum troupe Ondeko-za and other musicians.

The concert was preceded by the opening of a photo exhibition – “Children and the 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: UNICEF at Work” – which pays tribute to the victims and showcases the humanitarian assistance, particularly the help provided by the UN Children’s Fund on the ground through the Japan Committee for UNICEF.

“Many of the images are heart-breaking. They serve as testimony to the scale and impact of the disaster,” Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, said at the opening.

“They are also a particular reminder of the potential consequences whenever a natural disaster imperils nuclear safety,” he added.

Mr. Akasaka noted that the UN responded rapidly and in many ways. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) dispatched a disaster assessment and coordination team. In addition, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) worked in the months since to ensure that nuclear safety standards worldwide are the highest possible.

For its part, UNICEF announced that it would provide support through the Japan Committee for UNICEF, which subsequently set up a rescue operation with the help of donations from thousands of people around the world and to the tireless commitment of volunteers.


Video Link ............... http://youtu.be/I0jA04k1RfM
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Lost and found: Japan one year later.


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Fukushima remains a ghost town nearly a year after the earthquake, the fourth-largest ever recorded, triggered a nuclear meltdown in the city.


From uncertainty to courage, distrust to control, and despair to hope.

Survivors of the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan have searched for what was lost, sometimes finding more.

"The broken glass has been swept away, the building cracks have been filled and repaired, the pavements have been evened out and to all appearances here in Tokyo, on the surface, everything continues as normal," Nicky Washida wrote on CNN iReport. "The 'wa' -- harmony -- has been restored. But scratch away just underneath and this is a city that has figuratively and literally been rocked to its core."

In the quest to rebuild their lives, Washida and four others found inner strength, compassion, community, new love and even a new life.


Read more link .......... http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/10/world/asia/japan-lost-and-found-ireport/index.html
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