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Topic Started: April 11 2011, 02:28 PM (7,665 Views)
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Special report: Fukushima long ranked most hazardous plant.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant ranked as one of the most dangerous in the world for radiation exposure years before it was destroyed by the meltdowns and explosions that followed the March 11 earthquake.

For five years to 2008, the Fukushima plant was rated the most hazardous nuclear facility in Japan for worker exposure to radiation and one of the five worst nuclear plants in the world on that basis. The next rankings, compiled as a three-year average, are due this year.

Reuters uncovered these rankings, privately tracked by Fukushima's operator Tokyo Electric Power, in a review of documents and presentations made at nuclear safety conferences over the past seven years.

In the United States -- Japan's early model in nuclear power -- Fukushima's lagging safety record would have prompted more intensive inspections by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It would have also invited scrutiny from the U.S. Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, an independent nuclear safety organization established by the U.S. power industry after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, experts say.

But that kind of stepped-up review never happened in Tokyo, where the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency remains an adjunct of the trade ministry charged with promoting nuclear power.

As Japan debates its future energy policy after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, a Reuters review of the long-troubled record at Fukushima shows how hard it has been to keep the country's oldest reactors running in the best of times. It also shows how Japan's nuclear establishment sold nuclear power to the public as a relatively cheap energy source in part by putting cost-containment ahead of radiation safety over the past several decades.

"After the Fukushima accident, we need to reconsider the cost of nuclear power," Tatsujiro Suzuki, vice chairman of Japan's Atomic Energy Commission, told Reuters. "It's not enough to meet safety standards. The industry needs to search for the best performance."

In an illustration of the scale of the safety problems at Fukushima, Tokyo Electric had set a 10-year goal that insiders considered ambitious in 2007. The plan was to reduce radiation exposure for workers at Fukushima to bring the facility from near rock-bottom in the industry's global safety rankings to somewhere below-average by 2017, documents show.

"Severer management than before will be required," Tokyo Electric safety researcher Yasunori Kokubun and four other colleagues said in an English-language 2004 report. That report examined why Japan lagged other countries such as France and the United States in limiting radiation exposure for workers during plant maintenance.

The report came from an earlier period of corporate soul searching by Tokyo Electric, a politically powerful regional monopoly in Japan that ran the Fukushima power station and remains in charge of the clean-up work at the crippled plant expected to take a decade or more.

In 2002, the chairman and president of the utility were forced to step down after regulators concluded the company had routinely filed false reports during safety inspections and hid evidence of trouble at its reactors, including Fukushima. All 17 of Tokyo Electric's reactors were ordered shut down. The last of those did not restart until 2005.

COST-SAVING CULTURE

As part of a bid to win back public trust, the utility promised to repair a "safety culture" it said had failed in the scandal. Teams of newly empowered radiation safety managers were created and began to audit the company's nuclear operations, including Fukushima. They also reported back findings to other nuclear plant operators and regulators. None of the utility's safety managers who gave those archived presentations responded to requests for comment for this report.

One problem, according to one of those early assessments, was that Tokyo Electric's managers on the ground tended to put cost savings ahead of a commitment to keep driving worker radiation doses "as low as reasonably achievable," the international standard for safety.

Take maintenance, for instance. Japanese plants are required to shut down every 13 months for almost four months at a time -- twice as long as the U.S. average. Tepco was slow to invest in the more expensive radiation safety precautions needed during maintenance, thus lowering the cost of operating Fukushima before the accident.

But that focus on costs also kept Tepco from developing a more active commitment to worker safety that could have helped it navigate the March disaster, officials now say.

After the earthquake, contract workers at Fukushima were sent in without radiation meters or basic gear such as rubber boots. Screening for radiation from dust and vapor inhaled by workers was delayed for weeks until experts said the testing was almost meaningless. At least 39 workers were exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation, five times the maximum allowed in a normal year.

Fukushima Daiichi, built in a poor region on Japan's Pacific Coast to supply power to Tokyo, was pushed into crisis by the massive March 11 earthquake and the tsunami that hit less than an hour later. The backup power systems meant to keep its radioactive fuel cool were disabled, leading to meltdowns, explosions and radiation spewing into the environment, forcing the evacuation of more than 80,000 residents.

Goshi Hosono, the government minister appointed to coordinate Japan's response to the Fukushima crisis, said he was not aware of the details of Fukushima's radiation safety record before March 11 and declined to comment on that basis.

But he said the utility had failed to protect workers in the chaos that followed the accident, prompting a reprimand from government officials and a decision by regulators to take charge of radiation health monitoring at the plant.

"In normal times, radiation monitoring would be left to the plant operator, but these are not normal times," Hosono told Reuters.

HIGHER RADIATION IN OLD PLANTS

In a June report to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Japanese officials said basic design failures, a fatal underestimation of tsunami risk and a chaotic decision-making process had contributed to the disaster. But they also said Tokyo Electric's "safety culture" had failed it again.

Outside experts agreed. "The main root causes of this man-made disaster can be found in (Tokyo Electric's) ineffective -- exemplary poor -- safety practices and track record," said Najim Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California and former U.S. government science advisor.

In response to questions about the radiation safety record at Fukushima, Tokyo Electric said that radiation exposure for each individual worker at the plant had been kept below the regulatory standard. The overall radiation level remained relatively high because the plant's six reactors were all between 30 and 40 years old at the time of the accident, the utility said.

"Because it was an older plant it required longer maintenance periods and more intensive repair work," Tokyo Electric spokeswoman Ryoko Sakai said. "For that reason, the overall radiation exposure was higher than our other plants."

The General Electric-derived design of the reactors at Fukushima posed a particular safety challenge during routine shutdowns because radioactive steam is allowed to circulate through the power-generating turbine. That means that large parts of the power plant pose a radiation risk during repairs, experts say.

But even compared to other boiling water reactors, Fukushima stood out for its risks. At the start of the decade, each of its reactors had exposed workers to 2.5 times the amount of radiation they would have faced in an average U.S. reactor of the same design. By 2009, that gap had narrowed, but exposure at Fukushima was still 1.7 times the U.S. average and equivalent to subjecting workers on the site to a collective 1,500 full-body CT scans each year.

Because of Fukushima's high radiation, Tokyo Electric brought in thousands of workers each year, often to work just a few days on the most hazardous jobs. The utility employed almost 9,000 contract workers annually on average at the plant over the past decade, according to records kept by Japan's trade ministry.

Those workers were needed in part to allow Tokyo Electric to meet the international safety standard Japan had committed to in 2001. Under that standard, workers were limited to 20 millisieverts of radiation exposure in an average year, equivalent to getting two CT scans at work.

But even with its extraordinary work force, the average contract worker at Fukushima was exposed to 73 percent more radiation than the average nuclear worker at other plants in Japan over the past decade, according to a Reuters review of data from Japan's trade and industry ministry. The same worker was also exposed to almost three times the amount of radiation that Tokyo Electric's own staff faced. The average radiation dose ran almost a third higher than for U.S. workers at similar plants.

The number of Fukushima workers near the annual limit for radiation also remained troublingly high. Over the past five years, each Fukushima reactor exposed almost 300 workers to between 10 and 20 millisieverts of radiation, the Reuters review of the data showed. The comparable figure for U.S. reactors of similar design was just 22 workers per reactor with those kinds of exposure levels.

'THIS SITUATION IS THE WORST'

Part of the reason was that Fukushima maintenance work took almost three times longer than comparable jobs at U.S. plants -- more than four months on average. But American utilities have also spent heavily as a group on steps to reduce worker exposure, including building mock-up reactors so workers could rehearse dangerous jobs almost as commandos would.

"We are ready and willing to spend money to reduce worker doses," said John Bickel, a nuclear safety expert who has consulted for the NRC and the IAEA. "I would characterize that there is an intense competition in the U.S. to be the lowest."

By contrast, critics of the Japanese nuclear industry cite records showing how Tokyo Electric and other utilities shifted the health risks of operating nuclear plants to a group of relatively poor and sometimes homeless day laborers desperate for a quick payday.

"Nuclear power is based on discrimination, a system in which the people who are working to protect nuclear safety end up on the streets and are given the cold shoulder by society. All of us who use electricity are responsible for this system," said Yuko Fujita, a former physics professor at Keio University who has campaigned for nuclear worker safety in Japan for over 20 years.

To be sure, Tokyo Electric had taken steps to reduce the amount of radiation workers faced. It changed the chemistry of water piped through the reactors to reduce corrosion in pipes. It developed robots and remote-controlled probes to inspect hazards rather than sending in workers. And it used radiation shields such as lead "blankets" wrapped around pipes during maintenance to limit radiation in places workers had to be.

Those measures had reduced the overall radiation exposure for workers at Fukushima to a third of the 1978 peak by the start of the past decade, the records show.

But by 2006, Tokyo Electric safety managers had decided that they had to take on a tougher problem to make any more progress. They needed to reform the basic organization of the utility, where maintenance managers faced no pressure to meet targets for reducing radiation exposure for the thousands of contractors and day laborers, two reports show.

The only more dangerous plants from 2003 to 2005 on that basis had been the Tarapur nuclear plant in India, where two reactors shared the basic Fukushima design, and the Perry nuclear plant on Lake Erie outside Cleveland, Ohio.

Perry, which is operated by FirstEnergy Corp, was cited by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a series of safety mistakes during a maintenance period in April. In that incident, regulators said four workers were exposed to high levels of radiation after being sent to retrieve a radiation monitor near the reactor's core. The plant has been the target of NRC safety inspections for more than three years because of what U.S. regulators call "human performance" issues in safety management.

COMPLACENCY SETS IN

Tokyo Electric did not come to terms with its own management and organizational problems related to safety until recent years, the record shows.

Shiro Takahira, a Tokyo Electric manager in charge of radiation safety, showed a conference in October 2006 a chart depicting Fukushima Daiichi as the third-worst nuclear plant in the world in terms of worker exposure to radiation.

"This graph could be a good driving force to improve our process," Takahira told the radiation safety conference in Niigata, Japan, according to remarks posted by the organizer. Takahira said Tokyo Electric had traditionally "put more weight on cost effectiveness" than the need to keep driving radiation exposure down. "There has been no standard mechanism to promote (the standard of 'as low as reasonably achievable') systematically and continuously," he said.

By late 2006, radiation safety managers such as Takahira had won a seat at the table in planning repair jobs at nuclear plants including Fukushima. By 2007, the company set a goal of getting the annual radiation at each Fukushima reactor to about 2.5 sieverts, a more manageable dose equivalent to about 250 CT scans for workers. That would mean Fukushima was still lagging the industry but by a narrower margin.

The full-year radiation for 2008 and 2009 came in just below 2.5 sieverts of exposure per reactor, just under the goal managers had set in 2007. On a three-year rolling basis, the exposure was 2.53 sieverts per reactor between 2007 to 2009.

"We had largely reached our target by 2009," said Tokyo Electric's Sakai.

At that point, some of the urgency behind the safety campaign appeared to drain. "We'll continue to try to reduce occupational exposures by every possible measure after cost performance evaluations," Shunsuke Hori, a Tokyo Electric safety manager, said at a September 2009 conference in Aomori, Japan.

Hori was one of two Tokyo Electric safety managers who published what amounted to a declaration of victory after the nascent effort to improve radiation safety.

"The reliability of Japanese nuclear plants is now quite high," Hori and another Tokyo Electric manager, Akira Suzuki, wrote in a radiation health journal. "The Japanese nuclear industry has over 40 years of radiation protection experience, and it is believed that more radiation control will be possible in the future using this experience."

The upbeat assessment was published in a little-read scientific journal, Radiation Protection Dosimetry, on April 26, 2011, the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

On the ground in Fukushima that day, white smoke was still steaming off three of the reactors, and residents to the northwest had started a wider round of evacuations.
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Thursday, July 28, 2011

Threat to food chain grows as contamination spreads

By AYA TAKADA
Bloomberg

Radiation fallout from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant poses a growing threat to the nation's food chain as unsafe levels of cesium found in beef on supermarket shelves were also detected in more vegetables and in the ocean.
More than 2,600 cattle have been contaminated, Kyodo News reported Saturday, after the Miyagi Prefectural Government said 1,183 cattle at 58 farms were fed hay containing radioactive cesium before being shipped to meat markets.

Agriculture minister Michihiko Kano has said officials didn't foresee that farmers might ship contaminated hay to cattle ranchers. That highlights the government's inability to think ahead and to act, said Mariko Sano, secretary general for Shufuren, a housewives organization in Tokyo.

"The government is so slow to move," Sano said. "They've done little to ensure food safety."

Aeon Co., the country's biggest supermarket chain, said Monday 4,108 kg of beef suspected of being contaminated was inadvertently put on sale at 174 stores nationwide. Supermarkets started testing beef after the Tokyo Metropolitan Government found radioactive cesium in slaughtered cattle this month.

The government on July 19 banned cattle shipments from Fukushima Prefecture, though not before some had been slaughtered and shipped to supermarkets. A ban on shiitake from another part of Fukushima took effect Saturday because of cesium levels, the health ministry said.

"Some areas still have high radiation . . . and if you also eat products from these areas, you'll get a considerable amount of radiation," said Sentaro Takahashi, a professor of radiation control at Kyoto University. "This is why the government needs to do something fast."

Radiation in food is measured in becquerels, a gauge of the strength of radioactivity in materials such as iodine-131 and cesium-137.

As much as 2,300 becquerels of cesium per kg was detected in the contaminated beef, according to a July 18 statement from the health ministry. The government limit is 500 becquerels per kg.

Seafood is another concern after cesium-134 in seawater near the Fukushima plant climbed to levels 30 times the allowed safety standards last week, according to tests performed by Tokyo Electric Power Co, NHK reported.

"We need to monitor the cesium-134 level detected in seawater around the plant," Tetsuo Ito, head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University, said. "The increase could be from seawater churned by swells from the recent typhoon, but it's possible that contaminated groundwater leaked from the plant."

The nation has no centralized system to check for radiation contamination of food, leaving local authorities and farmers conducting voluntary tests. Produce including spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea, milk, plums and fish have been found contaminated with cesium and iodine as far as 360 km from the Fukushima plant.

Hay contaminated with as much as 690,000 becquerels per kg, compared with a government safety standard of 300 becquerels, has been fed to cattle. Cattle with unsafe levels of the radioactive element were detected in four prefectures, the health ministry said Saturday.

A becquerel represents one radioactive decay per second, which involves the release of atomic energy that can damage human cells and DNA, with prolonged exposure causing leukemia and other forms of cancer, according to the World Nuclear Association.

Four months after the earthquake and tsunami damage to the Fukushima plant, local governments short of equipment, staff and funds are struggling to test all farm products.

The government is considering whether it's feasible to test all cattle to prevent shipments of tainted meat to market, according to Yasuo Sasaki, senior press counselor for the farm ministry.

On June 6, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the plant released about 770,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material into the air between March 11 and 16, doubling an earlier estimate.

That's about 14 percent of the radiation emitted in the Chernobyl disaster. About 2 million people in Ukraine are under permanent medical monitoring, 25 years after the accident, according to the nation's embassy in Tokyo.

While 203 people were hospitalized and 31 died after the explosion at Chernobyl, about 400,000 children are considered to have received significant doses of radiation to their thyroid that merit monitoring, the embassy added.

Cases of thyroid cancer in Belarus, which neighbors Ukraine, increased for at least 10 years after 1986 in children younger than 14 and for almost 20 years among 20-24 year olds, according to research by Shunichi Yama(censor)a of Nagasaki University, who was appointed as an adviser to Fukushima Prefecture on radiation exposure.
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Decontamination delayed / TEPCO fails to meet goal in removing radioactivity from water

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Decontamination of highly radioactive water at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has been proceeding at a snail's pace because of various malfunctions and other problems.

Even though one month has passed since decontaminated water began to be used to cool the plant's reactors, the average operating rate of the decontamination system is only 63 percent.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the plant in Fukushima Prefecture, had planned to reduce the contaminated water to a safe level by early August.

However, TEPCO said the decontamination operation rate for the week up to Tuesday was 58 percent. The rate was 54 percent the previous week.

About 29,000 tons of radioactive water have been decontaminated so far, an average operation rate of 63 percent.

The system, which was built in less than two months, has frequently broken down due to faulty valve operations and a malfunctioning alarm system. Last Friday, it stopped working for eight hours due to a power outage.

TEPCO's target operation rate is 90 percent. The utility expected the operation rate this month would be 80 percent, but later lowered this to 70 percent. The current rate does not even meet this target.

By early August, TEPCO had intended to lower the level of radioactive water accumulated in the basement of the reactors to ensure it would not flow out of the plant, even though rainwater would be allowed to enter.

However, the decontamination operation target will not be reached until late September, two months behind schedule, according to the company.

To help facilitate decontamination operations, TEPCO is planning to introduce new machinery manufactured by Toshiba Corp. and other companies next month.

"As we're operating a brand-new system, it's not surprising there are some problems," said Junichi Matsumoto, a TEPCO spokesman on nuclear issues. "But we've solved most of the problems that have occurred in the initial phase. When we start using the new equipment, the [system's] rate of operation should increase."

Decontamination work has been further delayed by the inflow of rainwater and groundwater.

Last week, torrential rain brought by a typhoon poured into the plant's reactors. As a result, the quantity of radioactive water increased by 3,000 tons over the past week, registering about 120,700 tons as of Tuesday.

Of the decontaminated water, about 390 tons have been used to cool the reactors each day, but this water automatically becomes radioactive again.

Due to its poor cooling efficiency, the No. 3 reactor requires nine tons of water per hour, more than two times that used to cool Nos. 1 and 2 reactors. TEPCO is therefore considering a more efficient cooling method that uses less water.
(Jul. 29, 2011)
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1,500 tons of radioactive sludge cannot be buried

Nearly 50,000 tons of sludge at wastewater treatment facilities has been found to contain radioactive cesium as the result of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Over 1,500 tons is so contaminated that it cannot be buried for disposal.

Water treatment facilities in eastern and northeastern Japan have been discovering sludge containing cesium.

The health ministry says there is 49,250 tons of such sludge in 14 prefectures in eastern and northeastern Japan.

A total of 1,557 tons in 5 prefectures, including Fukushima and Miyagi, was found to contain 8,000 or more becquerels per kilogram. This sludge is too radioactive to be buried for disposal.

The most contaminated sludge, with 89,697 becquerels per kilogram, was discovered at a water treatment facility in Koriyama City, Fukushima.

The ministry says 76 percent of the roughly 50,000 tons of radioactive sludge is being stored at water treatment plants and they have no ways to dispose of most of it.

It says more than 54,000 tons of additional sludge has not been checked for radioactive materials.

The ministry plans to study how to dispose of the radioactive sludge.

Friday, July 29, 2011 04:35 +0900 (JST)
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.Torrential rain hits Niigata & Fukushima
Torrential rain in Niigata and Fukushima prefectures in northern Japan has caused rivers to overflow, raising the danger of more landslides.

The Meteorological Agency says a downpour of about 110 millimeters per hour is believed to have fallen in Uonuma City, Niigata, and Tadami Town in neighboring Fukushima on Friday.

In Niigata and Fukushima prefectures, two people are missing. One man in Fukushima was caught in a mudslide as he was building a sandbag barrier in an attempt to hold off the floods.

Rainfall in Tadami has reached a record 400 millimeters over the past 24 hours and 300 millimeters in Kamo City in Niigata.
Sanjo City in Niigata has seen total rain approaching 700 millimeters since Wednesday. Authorities there have issued an evacuation advisory to all households -- a total population of 104,000.

Niigata and Fukushima prefectures have issued a similar advisory to 38,000 households containing 114,000 people.

Additional rainfall of up to 200 millimeters is expected in parts of Niigata and Fukushima through late Saturday afternoon.

The agency expects the current rain to total more than 400 millimeters -- the same level as the downpour that killed 16 people in the 2 prefectures 7 years ago.

It is calling on residents to stay alert for floods, landslides, thunder and strong winds.
Friday, July 29, 2011 21:14 +0900 (JST)

Typhoon Ma-On hits Japan
The Shikoku area was hit on Tuesday and torrential rains were expected until Friday as Fukushima workers take caution.
At 0800GMT (1700 local time) on Tuesday, the centre of Typhoon Ma-On was located approximately 45km south of Shikoku, Japan.

Effects of the storm could be felt into northern Honshu with clouds and rain bands extending 900km northeast.

With winds as fast as 198km per hour, the storm has prompted workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to take safety measures.

While the typhoon is not expected to hit the region that is home to the plant, torrential rain is feared in the disaster-ravaged northeast through Thursday.

"Emergency workers reduced the amount of cooling water to inject into reactor numbers one and two out of fears that rain water may increase contaminated water levels as the typhoon comes," said TEPCO spokesperson Ai Tanaka.

"We are also making preparations to protect the facility as high waves are expected."

Ma-On is expected to stay close to the Japanese coast or just onshore of Shikoku as it moves to the northeast.

It is then expected to hit land just south of Osaka on around 00GMT on Wednesday. By then, winds are expected to have have decreased to the intensity of a tropical storm.

The Japanese Meteorological Agency’s radar has been indicating rainfall amounts for Shikoku and central Honshu between 30 and 50mm per hour.

Until 48 hours after the storm first hit, and as it progresses to the east, total accumulations across the region could exceed well over 400mm.

Flooding, wind damage and storm surge will continue to be factors until the storm returns to the Pacific Ocean, expected on Friday morning.
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Torrential rain hits Niigata, Fukushima

Torrential rain in Niigata and Fukushima prefectures in northern Japan has caused rivers to overflow, raising the danger of landslides.

Authorities have issued an evacuation order, or advisory, to about 296,000 people in 21 municipalities.

In Niigata's Sanjo City, more than 10,000 people were ordered to evacuate after a dike collapsed.

A 67-year-old man in Niigata Prefecture was found in a stream and later confirmed dead.

5 people are missing in the region.

Since Wednesday, more than 650 millimeters of rain has been recorded in some parts of Fukushima. Sanjo City in Niigata has gotten more than 1,000 millimeters.

The Meteorological Agency is calling on people to be on the alert for floods, landslides, lightning, and strong winds.

Saturday, July 30, 2011 11:57 +0900 (JST)
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Japan floods claim first victim
Posted: 30 July 2011 1141 hrs

TOKYO: Floods claimed their first victim in Japan and nearly 300,000 people were urged to flee their homes on Saturday as a weather system that killed dozens on the Korean peninsula swept the country.

Local governments in the central province of Niigata and tsunami-hit Fukushima issued the guidance after the national weather agency urged citizens to be on maximum alert against more flooding and mudslides.

Helicopter footage on NHK showed bridges over the Shinano River in Niigata partially submerged, while trees and telephone polls had been knocked down.

Kamo City in Niigata was extensively flooded, with water submerging roads.

Forecasters warned that the rains could continue to be torrential after reaching 1,000 millimetres (40 inches) to date in Sanjo City, Niigata, 250 kilometres (155 miles) northwest of Tokyo, since they started Wednesday.

A total of 296,000 people had been asked to evacuate their homes by early Saturday, according to public broadcaster NHK, but no compulsory orders were issued despite muddy swollen rivers, broken dykes and flooded houses.

The same weather saw record rainfall kill at least 59 people in South Korea earlier this week, leaving thousands more homeless.

The first Japanese victim, Eiichi Murayama, 67, was confirmed dead in Tokamachi City, in Niigata, early Saturday.

"We found a car fallen in River Nakasawa last night... and found the driver's body downstream this morning," an official at Niigata police said of the drowned man.

Four other people are missing in the area, including a 93-year-old woman who was swept away in a river and a 25-year-old man who was believed to have fallen into a flooding river while driving, police said.

Officials had requested the Self-Defence Force dispatch troops to join the
search for missing people and help those stranded by mudslides and floods.

A 63-year-old man was listed as missing in Fukushima, whose Pacific coasts were hit by a massive tsunami on March 11 that crippled an atomic power plant in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

More than 40 people who had spent a night in cars and buses after being stranded on a road blocked by mudslides and flooding in Fukushima were rescued unhurt.

"I couldn't sleep. I had some food but couldn't swallow a bite" out of fears that further mudslides would hit the stranded cars, a woman told NHK.

The weather agency has warned quake-hit regions are more prone to mudslides as the tremors had worsened ground conditions.

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Tepco Says Highest Radiation Detected at Fukushima Dai-Ichi

(Updates with company comment from second paragraph.)

Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, said it detected the highest radiation to date at the site.

Geiger counters, used to detect radioactivity, registered more than 10 sieverts an hour, the highest reading the devices are able to record, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility, said today. The measurements were taken at the base of the main ventilation stack for reactors No. 1 and No. 2.

The Fukushima plant, about 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo, had three reactor meltdowns after the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and backup generators. Radiation leaks displaced 160,000 people and contaminated marine life and agricultural products.

The utility, known as Tepco, tried to vent steam and gas the day after the earthquake as pressure in reactor No. 1 exceeded designed limits. A buildup of hydrogen gas subsequently caused an explosion that blew out part of the reactor building.

"I suspect the high radiation quantity was an aftermath of venting done," Matsumoto told reporters in Tokyo. "The plant is not running. I don't think any gas with high radiation level is flowing in the stack."

Tepco sent three workers around the ventilation stack today after a gamma camera detected high radioactivity levels in the area yesterday, Matsumoto said. The workers were exposed to as much as 4 millisieverts during the work, he said.

The utility will create a no-go zone around the stack and cover the area with protective material, he said.


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Japanese rice to be tested for radioactive cesium
UK | REUTERS | 1 August 2011

(Reuters) – More than a dozen regional governments in Japan will conduct tests to determine whether locally grown rice contains too much radioactive cesium, farm ministry officials said on Monday, as food safety worries spill into the country’s traditional staple.

Public fears over radiation in food have grown after the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years at Fukushima plant in northeast Japan, and excessive levels of radiation have been found in beef, vegetables, tea, milk, seafood and water.

The government on Monday ordered Iwate prefecture in northern Japan to halt shipments of beef cattle after radiation exceeding safety standards was found in some Iwate beef, expanding the target of shipment ban from Fukushima and Miyagi.

For rice, at least 14 prefectural governments in north and east Japan, which account for more than 40 percent of the country’s total rice output, will test their rice before their harvest season to determine whether levels of cesium exceeds the safety standards, a farm ministry official said.

If the level of cesium in rice exceeds the government-imposed cap of 500 becquerels per kilogram, shipments from locally produced rice will be halted, the official added.

“Continuous consumption of rice containing cesium above the government-imposed limit of 500 becquerels per kg over a year will result in internal radiation exposure above 5 millisieverts, one of the more conservative standards for radiation exposure set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection,” said the Japanese health ministry.

One becquerel means the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second.

Japan, which produced about 8.3 million tonnes of rice last year for food consumption, mostly consumes its own produce, though it exported some 1,900 tonnes last year to countries including Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Chiba prefecture, north of Tokyo which has an early harvest deadline, plans to carry out its tests in the next two days, said Shigetoshi Abe, a Chiba prefectural government official, adding the central government’s response has been too slow.

“We had been telling the central government that tests will be needed for Chiba as quickly as possible at least a month and a half ago,” he said.

Abe is not overly worried about the test results, but said Chiba will conduct extra tests for rice showing cesium levels of 200 becquerels per kilogram or more, given the importance of rice in the Japanese diet, after the initial rounds of checks are done.

News of the tests comes as farmers in northern Japan are already struggling with multiple environmental pressures, including those in Niigata and Fukushima, which saw heavy rainfall last week.

“I am more worried about the effects of harmful rumors spreading concerning radiation,” said a Fukushima rice farmer, who declined to be named due to worries about the reputation of his grain
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USA | Tepco Reports Second Deadly Radiation Reading at Fukushima Plant USA | BLOOMERG | 2 August 2011

Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported its second deadly radiation reading in as many days at its wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant north of Tokyo.

The utility known as Tepco said yesterday it detected 5 sieverts of radiation per hour in the No. 1 reactor building. On Aug. 1 in another area it recorded radiation of 10 sieverts per hour, enough to kill a person “within a few weeks” after a single exposure, according to theWorld Nuclear Association.

Radiation has impeded attempts to replace cooling systems to bring three melted reactors and four damaged spent fuel ponds under control after a tsunami on March 11 crippled the plant. The latest reading was taken on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor building and will stop workers entering the area.

“This does emphasize what care has to be taken,” Richard Wakeford, a visiting professor of epidemiology at the University of Manchester’s Dalton Nuclear Institute in England, said in a telephone interview. “They have to put robots into those areas where they might expect high radiation levels. It’s no real substitute for human access.”

The 10 sieverts of radiation detected on Aug. 1 outside reactor buildings was the highest the Geiger counters used were capable of reading, indicating the level could have been higher, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility, said at a press conference.

“In the area surrounding the breach of containment you’d expect high levels of contamination and those high levels would be difficult to predict,” Wakeford said. “You can dig them up if they’re on the soil and contain it or wash it down if it’s on the side of a building.”
Tepco Criticism

Tepco was forced to pump water into the three reactors after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disabled cooling systems. The company in May estimated there would be 200,000 tons of radiated water in basements and other areas of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant by December.

“If nuclear fuels melted through containment chambers, Tepco will find even higher radiation readings after water in building basements is removed,” said Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University.

Tepco has been criticized by the government for withholding radiation data and other missteps that have compounded the crisis, which led to 160,000 people being evacuated from near the plant.

Radiation leaks from the Fukushima reactors have spread over 600 square kilometers, Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan, said in a research report published on May 24 and given to the government.
Pockets of Soil

Radioactive soil in pockets of areas outside the exclusion zone around the plant have reached the same level as in Chernobyl following a reactor explosion in the former Soviet Union territory 25 years ago, the report said.

The threats to Japan’s food chain are also multiplying as radioactive cesium emissions from the Fukushima plant spread. Contaminated beef has been found on supermarket shelves around the country, forcing the government to ban cattle shipments from areas in northern Japan.

The latest high radiation readings are probably coming from materials released during early failed attempts to release pressure in containment vessels and vent hydrogen gas to prevent explosions that damaged reactor buildings, Matsumoto said. There were about 2,760 workers at the plant on Aug 1.

Tepco on April 17 set out a so-called road map to end the crisis by January, aiming to bring down radiation levels at the plant within three months and then achieve a so-called cold shutdown where reactor temperatures fall below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit).
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JAPAN | Safety agency slams TEPCO for lax ID checks on nuclear plant workers TOKYO (Kyodo) — The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reprimanded Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Monday for failing to conduct adequate identity checks on workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The agency found about the lax security as a result of an on-site investigation it conducted on July 7 after the utility was unable to contact more than 180 workers engaged in operations to bring the crippled nuclear plant under control.

The utility only checked photocopies of identification such as drivers’ licenses in judging whether workers should be allowed to enter the premises of the plant, breaching the utility’s in-house rules to prevent the theft of uranium and plutonium, the agency said in a statement.

The agency also found cases where TEPCO did not individually distribute entry passes to plant workers but handed them to their supervisors, it said. A nuclear safety agency official said the agency, however, decided against revoking TEPCO’s license to install and operate nuclear reactors as the inadequate identification checks “do not constitute systematic and deliberate wrongdoing” and were rather a result of situations created by the crisis at the plant.

TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told reporters “So far there has been no case of suspicious persons entering the plant’s premises.”

In late June, TEPCO alerted the nuclear safety agency that it was unable to contact some Fukushima plant workers as it sought to determine workers’ internal radiation exposure.
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JAPAN | Radioactive leaf soil sold nationwide after gov’t prevention measures fail

Posted on August 2, 2011

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Display shelves from which goods containing leaf soil were removed are pictured at a do-it-yourself store in Tokyo on Aug. 2, 2011. (Mainichi)

Bags of leaf soil contaminated with highly radioactive cesium have been shipped and sold throughout the country for more than a month after the central government failed to detect the contamination and take preventative measures fast enough.

Leaf soil produced in Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture, has been found to contain highly radioactive cesium. Some of the leaf soil contained fallen leaves from a resort area in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture, about 100 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. Bags of leaf soil were shipped and sold mainly at do-it-yourself stores across the country after the government did not set the allowable limit of cesium in leaf soil or did not give instructions to soil producers promptly.

The radioactive contamination was brought to light after someone posted video footage on YouTube on June 24. The video, which shows a radiation counter beeping when put on a bag of leaf soil at a do-it-yourself store, has so far amassed about 100,000 views. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced the allowable limit for cesium on Aug. 2 — eight days after it released information on the radioactive contamination in leaf soil.

On July 25, about a month after the video was posted on YouTube, the Akita Prefectural Government announced that it had detected 11,000 becquerells of cesium in leaf soil per 1 kilogram at a do-it-yourself store in Akita. On July 27, the Tottori Prefectural Government said it had detected 14,800 becquerells of cesium in leaf soil per 1 kilogram at a do-it-yourself store in Tottori. They were produced by different leaf-soil makers but both of them are based in Kanuma. There are about 60 producers of soil for gardening and fertilizer in Kanuma, which is known for its high-quality “Kanuma soil.” The leaf-soil producers talked about the video on YouTube from the beginning. One of the producers said, “We were in great fear because fallen leaves collected after the quake disaster were about to be shipped to shops. But we went ahead and shipped them because there were no instructions from the government.”

Immediately after the cesium contamination was brought to light, 72,000 becquerells of cesium were detected in fallen leaves in the northern part of Tochigi Prefecture. The president of a fertilizer company which shipped leaf soil to a do-it-yourself store chain said, “I went pale … We have caused great damage to the horticulture industry. If we had known the leaves were dangerous, we could have been more careful.” The company mixed the fallen leaves collected after the quake disaster with other leaves procured earlier, and therefore it had to stop producing leaf soil completely.

A gardening company in Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, which was collecting fallen leaves at the request of the fertilizer company angrily said, “We cannot pay salaries to our employees because we cannot receive money for the fallen leaves we delivered. Who will compensate us for that?” The company collects fallen leaves in resort areas in Nasushiobara and Nasu in northern Tochigi Prefecture from autumn to summer each year. Fertilizer companies then buy the fallen leaves and mix them with foreign bark and the like and ship them as leaf mold.

According to the Japan DIY Association, sales of gardening goods such as leaf soil have been steadily rising in recent years as gardening becomes popular. That’s why the impact of the radioactive contamination has been spreading through the industry and consumers.

When the first case of contamination was announced on July 25, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries told prefectural governments to restrain the use, distribution and production of leaf soil made in 17 prefectures from Tohoku to Tokai regions. Then, Cainz Home, a major do-it-yourself chain, removed 179 kinds of gardening goods such as leaf soil and incubated soil from the shelves at its stores across the country. People in the industry complained that the government should have set safety standards much earlier.

Some of the radioactive cesium contained in soil can be absorbed by agricultural crops. Some shops have been recalling leaf soil. People who bought the product have been calling shops to ask whether it was safe to use it for their vegetable gardens and the like. “Even with leaf soil contaminated with the levels of radiation detected so far, it is hard to imagine that cesium in agricultural crops will exceed the allowable limit of radiation,” said a farm ministry official.
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Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011

Saga chief sought to spin reactor talks
Kyodo

SAGA — Saga Gov. Yasushi Furukawa admitted Monday that he suggested the idea of soliciting emails during a government-sponsored TV program to express public support for restarting reactors at its Genkai nuclear power plant.

Furukawa said he told Kyushu Electric Power Co. executives in a June 21 meeting that email or Internet solicitation would be necessary to gather positive opinions on restarting the halted reactors. The local, industry ministry-sponsored TV program was aired live on June 26.

Although he has denied that he was trying to instruct them to fake public opinion, it is likely he will come under pressure to resign.

Kyushu Electric recently admitted it attempted to fabricate local public support for restarting two reactors at the Genkai power plant by urging employees of the utility and its affiliates to send comments in favor of the issue to the TV program via email and fax.

The issue has been complicated by nuclear safety fears generated by the radiation-spewing Fukushima No. 1 plant.

Furukawa's remarks were sent to about 100 people, mostly Kyushu Electric employees, and "there is a sufficient possibility that his comments triggered the mail scandal," said Nobuo Gohara, head of Kyushu Electric's third-party panel set up to probe the case.

The prefectural government said that the governor had received about 130 emails by Monday morning to protest his comments.
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Lethal radiation levels linger at Fukushima Daiichi

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(Image: Tepco)

As workers continue their efforts to secure the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, new sources of deadly doses of radiation have been uncovered at the plant.

This photo from a gamma ray camera at the plant shows radiation levels exceeding 10 sieverts per hour (in red) - the maximum level the camera can detect - at the base of a ventilation stack between reactors 1 and 2. Exposure to radiation at this level can lead to serious illness or death within seconds.

Debris leftover from emergency venting completed after the quake could be the source of these radiation hot spots, according to the Tokyo Electric Power Company. They claim the radiation is located in an area away from recovery efforts. Workers are busy removing radioactive water and installing a new cooling system so the damaged reactors can be shutdown. Company regulations prevent workers from being exposed to more than 250 millisieverts of radiation a year.

Japan endured yet another earthquake on Monday along the country's south coast. The Hamaoka nuclear power plant, located 40 kilometres from the epicentre of the 6.1 magnitude quake, reported no damage.
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Fukushima's nuclear cauldron: Retirees who want to go in

Fukushima's radiation has hit deadly levels for the second day, according to Tepco, making efforts to bring the nuclear plant under control difficult. Japan’s retired skilled laborers say they are ready to relieve younger workers.

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Nobuhiro Shiotani is cofounder of the Skilled Veterans Corps, who wants to help solve the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors.

Nothing makes Nobuhiro Shiotani angrier than to be called a "kamikaze."
Certainly, the sober and precisely spoken retired scientist does not look like a World War II suicide pilot. And he is insistent that his plan to lead 300 elderly pensioners in a bid to stabilize the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is motivated not by some mad death wish but by pure rationality.

"Older people taking the risk is much less damaging to our society than asking the younger generation following us to take it," Dr. Shiotani says, adding bluntly, because we are nearer the end of our lives anyway.

RELATED Meltdown 101: A brief glossary of terms

Shiotani and an old friend, former plant engineer Yasuteru Yamada, founded the Skilled Veterans Corps (SVC) in April, less than a month after a tsunami overwhelmed the cooling system at Fukushima, causing the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

By writing letters and e-mails, using Twitter, and sending out a call to action at various blogs, the two men have drawn more than 300 retired engineers and scientists, ranging in age from 60 to 78, into their group. All are offering to use their skills and experience to help cool the reactors following the partial meltdown at the heavily contaminated site. "To my surprise we've received quite a large number of favorable responses," says Shiotani. "They all say they think it's their duty not to leave this negative heritage to younger generations."

Seven members of the veterans group worked at Fukushima during their active careers, he adds. "They feel like mothers who have lost their children."

With their backgrounds as nuclear plant designers, electrical engineers, radiation regulators, and physicists, the retirees "could if they wish get a decent job at Fukushima, but they have chosen us," says Shiotani. "They want to work not for money, but for something fundamental and essential for society."
Called to action

Shiotani himself, a materials engineer, says he feels motivated to volunteer at Fukushima by a personal sense of responsibility.

The plant, he says, "is a grandchild of science. The crisis was caused by human error, and the mess created by scientists and engineers should be cleared up by scientists and engineers themselves. As a physicist I feel it is indirectly partly my fault."
So far the Japanese government and the plant's operator, Tepco, have responded hesitantly to the SVC's proposal.
"The government has said it will welcome our help, but that could be just lip service," says Shiotani. "But they have not rejected us flatly."

Tepco "is quite reluctant to accept us because they are quite proud," he adds. "They want to be able to say they can contain the accident themselves."

But the group's organizers say they detect some movement in official attitudes. The first time he met Tepco executives, "they just pretended to be surprised by our proposal," Shiotani recalls. "Probably to them we are crazy guys."

At a second meeting with officials from both Tepco and the government, however, "my impression was that they were softening," says Shiotani. "Reluctantly they started to consider us."

Some 3,000 people are working at the Fukushima site at the moment, but most of them are unskilled laborers, and all have to be regularly relieved in order to avoid excessive exposure to radiation. Several are reported to have absorbed more than the legal limit already. And about 9,000 workers have been involved in the four-month operation to stabilize the plant.

A handful of SVC members plan to visit Fukushima Daiichi for the first time soon, according to Shiotani. But bravery has its practical aspects, and he is still bogged down in the prosaic problems of insurance.
Appeal to expand insurance coverage

"We are very conscious about our safety … and we have no intention to send our members to Fukushima without insurance," Shiotani says firmly. "I think that's quite reasonable."

The problem is that Japanese state-run insurance plans do not cover volunteers, and private plans do not cover radiation risks. "We are asking government officials and lawmakers to make some sort of government-supported insurance for volunteers," explains Shiotani. "But I have no confidence how soon they can act."

Tepco's recent reports of a second day of deadly radiation levels might not help matters.

In the meantime, Shiotani and his colleagues are working with younger volunteers on fundraising and meeting members of parliament in a bid to win political support for their project.
One thing they are not doing, he says, is arguing over the merits of nuclear power.

"I just hate disputes amongst us, and it has nothing to do with repairing the reactors," he says. "We will have plenty of time after we have brought the reactors to a stable state to debate and argue.

"I've enjoyed the benefits of the Fukushima plant for such a long time, why not thank them by providing some help?" he adds. "Criticizing is very easy, but it's not so easy to make things better. That's why we are sweating so much."
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Cattle farmers protest against Tokyo Electric

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TOKYO, Japan - Around 350 beef cattle farmers from many areas of Japan stage a demonstration against Tokyo Electric Power Co. in front of the utility's head office in Tokyo on Aug. 3, 2011. The farmers demanded that TEPCO pay compensation in connection with the contamination of beef with radioactive cesium amid the nuclear crisis at the company's Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
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3 top Japanese nuclear officials to be axed amid crisis

TOKYO, Aug. 4, Kyodo

Industry minister Banri Kaieda said Thursday he plans to sack three top officials in charge of nuclear power policy to hold them responsible for the handling of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The three officials are Kazuo Matsunaga, vice minister for economy, trade and industry, Nobuaki Terasaka, head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, and Tetsuhiro Hosono, head of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.

Kaieda said he will reveal details later. The minister, who has expressed his intent to resign to take responsibility for confusion over the stalled restart of nuclear reactors, did not specify when he will do so and only said, ''I will decide on my own.''
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JAPAN | TEPCO reports cooling system’s reliability

Posted on August 4, 2011 by fukushimanewsresearch


JAPAN | NHK | 4 August 2011

The operator of the Fukushima power plant says it could restart injecting water into its crippled reactors within 3 hours after mechanical problems or power failure halt the plant’s cooling system.

Tokyo Electric Power Company made the claim in a report to the industrial ministry’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on Wednesday.

The agency asked TEPCO to report how it will deal with the failure of the cooling system, which recycles decontaminated radioactive water as coolant for reactors.

The report says TEPCO could restart the system within 30 minutes of a loss of power or the water pumps breaking down by using extra pumps and emergency generators.

If problems occur simultaneously, TEPCO says it will use fire engines to restart injecting coolant water within 3 hours.

The report admits that if the circulation of coolant water is suspended for several hours, temperatures in the reactors could climb high enough to cause radioactive releases, or another hydrogen explosion.

The company says it would increase the amount of coolant water to the maximum levels in such an emergency.

TEPCO’s report is expected to help the government review an emergency evacuation advisory for local residents.
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JAPAN | TEPCO finds more areas with dangerous radiation levels

Posted on August 4, 2011

JAPAN | ASAHI SHIMBUN | 4 August 2011

Extremely high radiation levels were detected in a second area on the grounds of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Aug. 2.

The area is close to the spot where radiation levels of 10 sieverts or more per hour were found on Aug. 1, the highest levels recorded since the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear crisis.

TEPCO said levels at the second area could possibly exceed 10 sieverts per hour.

The second spot, 10 meters above ground and only a few meters from the first spot, is along piping used to vent gases to lower pressure within the containment vessel in case of emergency.

In addition, TEPCO said radiation levels exceeding 5 sieverts per hour were found inside the air-conditioning room on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor building. The building is connected to the two outdoor spots via the piping system.

Those levels are the highest recorded indoors so far.

TEPCO released photos of the outdoor areas, which were near the bottom of an exhaust stack that stands between the No. 1 and No. 2 reactor buildings.

“It is possible that radioactive substances, derived from fuel rods that melted inside the nuclear reactor, were carried through the piping and adhered to its inner walls when gases were vented during the early phase of the crisis,” said Junichi Matsumoto, acting general manager of TEPCO’s Nuclear Power and Plant Siting Division.

The high radiation levels were discovered when a gamma ray camera, which can locate sources of high radiation, was used on July 31 to survey the area. Precise radiation levels were not available at the second spot because it lay beyond the reach of the dosimeter.
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Fresh #typhoon is moving towards #Japan
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4 August 2011

450,000 people were made homeless by the powerful earthquake and massive tsunami that devastated Japan in March.

Five months on many people are still living in shelters and temporary accommodation.

Affected residents admit that they "must endure" the hard times ahead.

In part two of our series, BBC Breakfast's Jenny Hill returned to Japan to see how the country has been coping after the disaster.


Video Link .......... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14399551
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A post from twitter..

TEPCO demands bill payment from a mushroom farmer who cant pay the bill, because mushroom sales went down to nothing. The farmer asked compensation. No from TEPCO, because 'it's just because of the fear of radiation, not actual harm done by radiation.' Then, the farmer asked to delay the electricity stop (because it will destroy his mushroom in greenhouse), but TEPCO said no to him. The doc from TEPCO said, no compensation for any damage due to electricity stop (because the farmer is supposed to pay, anyway) To complaints from the farmer, the TEPCO worker said, "Sue us. We will fight against you."
this is just one, there must be more like this.
more from rockhopper - I read somewhere a while ago, in Miyagi or Iwate, evacuees had to pay the bill. In this case, radiation was not cause yes But, I am sure that incidents like this mushroom farmer must be a lot, in Fukushima and surrounding prefs. I don't know what happened to them eventually. related, but still I (some people) thought that govt should have paid the bill, because evacuees do not have a job, no nothing. But, I am sure that incidents like this mushroom farmer must be a lot, in Fukushima and surrounding prefs. I don't know what happened to them eventually.
related, but still I (some people) thought that govt should have paid the bill, because evacuees do not have a job, no nothing.
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TEPCO may use 'shower spray' on troubled reactor.

okyo Electric Power Co. is considering changing the method of injecting water into the No. 3 reactor at its hobbled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant as the current system isn't cutting it.

The No. 3 reactor is consuming nearly three times the coolant water that the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors are taking to cool down their fuel rods, as a considerable amount is missing the target.

TEPCO said that the pressure vessels in the No. 1 through No. 3 reactors, where fuel meltdowns have occurred, currently have temperatures at the bottom between about 90 and 120 degrees. In the meantime, the amount of water pumped in daily to maintain the temperatures at these levels is about 216 tons for the No. 3 reactor, as opposed to 84 tons for the No. 2 reactor, which is about the same size and contains roughly the same number of fuel rods, and 91 tons for the No. 1 reactor, which is smaller.

The question is, why is this discrepancy occurring?

TEPCO said that in all three reactors, coolant water is being injected from outside the shroud, a major component covering the core.

Analysis conducted so far has hinted at the possibility that, unlike in the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors, part of the melted fuel in the No. 3 reactor did not fall through to the bottom of the pressure vessel but has stayed on the grid-like core support plate. The current injection method cannot pump water into there, resulting in inefficient cooling and increasing the amount of radioactive water.

The new water injection method under consideration is based on the use of an emergency cooling system called a "core spray." It can pour water down like a shower above the fuel rods, resulting in more efficient cooling and the use of less coolant water, TEPCO said.

Much has been learned about the state of the cooling pipe systems since workers regained access to the reactor buildings.

On Aug. 3, TEPCO conducted tests on the operability of valves along the piping.

"We plan to make decisions in two or three weeks," a TEPCO official said

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City resorts to secret dumping to deal with piles of radioactive dirt


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Dump trucks unload bags containing radioactive dirt at a temporary disposal site in Fukushima Prefecture on July 28. (Satoru Murata

FUKUSHIMA--Deep in the mountains, a 4-ton dump truck unloads burlap bags that land with a thud in a hole shaped like a swimming pool 25 meters long and more than 2 meters deep.

Another dump truck soon arrives, also filled with burlap bags.

The two male workers in the first truck wash off the tires and then rumble off.

The Fukushima city government has not made this place known to the public, even to residents living near the area. That's because it is the dumping site for huge amounts of radioactive sludge and dirt collected by city residents cleaning up and decontaminating their neighborhoods.

"(If we did make the site public), garbage from other residents might come flooding in," a Fukushima city official said, emphasizing that the disposal site is only "temporary."

The Asahi Shimbun was not the only witness to this secret dumping operation. A 74-year-old man who lives near the site with six family members, including his two grandchildren, said he has seen many dump trucks coming and going.

"I am strongly opposed to them bringing such a large amount of radioactivity-contaminated dirt here," he said. "Even if authorities say it is a 'temporary' dumpsite, can they tell what they will do next?"

The answer, for now, is "no."

Municipal officials say they are also frustrated because the central government has made no decision on a final disposal site for the contaminated sludge and dirt.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency's decontamination manual released in July says municipalities can bury such waste if radioactivity levels are 8,000 becquerels or less per kilogram. But the manual does not mention final disposal sites.

"We are aware of the need to show our policy," a NISA official said. However, the agency does not appear to be close to deciding on where the contaminated waste will end up.

That delay has led to the secrecy among municipal officials.

"It would be difficult to gain the consent of residents when we try to secure a waste disposal site," a Fukushima municipal official said. "The national government does not mention anything about how we can specifically cope with the situation under such circumstances."

The situation is expected to worsen.

The site where the dump trucks buried the burlap bags on July 28 was about 8 kilometers from the final collection point in Fukushima city. On that day, the first dump truck was filled with bags of radioactive dirt in just 20 minutes.

Fukushima Prefecture is encouraging citizens to rid their neighborhoods of radioactive substances that spewed during the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. It offers subsidies of up to 500,000 yen ($6,370) per neighborhood association for that purpose.

But as the clean-up efforts increase, the radioactive sludge and dirt pile up.

At 6 a.m. on July 24, as many as 3,753 residents and cleaning company workers in Fukushima city's Watari district started clearing gutters and ditches of radioactive dirt.

The district, located opposite the Fukushima Prefectural Office across the Abukumagawa river, has recorded higher levels of radioactivity than most other parts of the city.

The volunteers used shovels to put the unwanted dirt into burlap bags.

One woman in her 60s involved in the effort complained, "Tokyo residents benefit from the nuclear power plant, but we're forced to clean gutters because of the radioactive fallout."

After four hours of cleaning, 5,853 bags of dirt were piled high. Radiation levels dropped to half in some areas, an official said.

The 67-year-old leader of the neighborhood association glanced at a dosimeter and said, "As we had feared, the figure has passed the (permissible) level."

It was 9.9 microsieverts of radiation, the maximum measurement of the dosimeter.

One resident asked the neighborhood association leader where the bags would go.

"I asked that to a city official once," the leader said. "I was told not to ask this particular question since it's not that simple."
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Panel lists five key challenges at Fukushima.

Five key challenges stand in the way of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s efforts to stabilize the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and eventually remove damaged fuel from its reactors, according to a government panel.

An expert committee of the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan, which met for the first time on Aug. 3, said five major technical problems will have to be overcome before a decommissioning process that could take several decades can start.

TEPCO will have to remove about 3,100 fuel rods from fuel pools of the No. 1-No. 4 reactors and store them in a common pool for shared use.

It must stabilize the reactor cooling system and set up a sustainable system for treating radioactive water.

It will also have to prepare to remove damaged fuel that has been discharged into reactor containment vessels and treat radioactive waste discharged during the decommissioning process.

Finally, the committee said, TEPCO will have to clearly explain how the accident happened and use those findings to remove the fuel rods.

The whole process is likely to take many years. The government and TEPCO said in July that nuclear fuel would be removed from fuel pools at the plant within three years, but TEPCO said removing rods from the reactors might start 10 years from now.
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Computer freezes, suspend polluted water treatment system
TEPCO on October 5, the PC freezes and temporary water treatment system to control the pollution of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, announced that it had suspended the operation of the system for about two hours.
Become unmanageable because of the large number of computer processes the signals were fully restored when you restart the computer. The injection into the reactor did not interfere.
Processing system, the conventional apparatus and the French company Areva's U.S. Kyurion, the addition of a new radioactive substance removal device developed by Toshiba and the U.S. show. 100 pumps, controlled by a PC that is loaded into the truck bed to the flow control valve of hundreds of places. Were frequent problems or abnormal operation of the valves in the past.
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FRANCE | Japanese parents live with radiation fea

FRANCE | AFP | 5 August 2011

FUKUSHIMA, Japan — Parents living near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant are facing a nightmare dilemma: evacuate their children or live with the fear that radiation will make them sick.

Since the crisis started on March 11, authorities have raised the exposure limit for children to that used for atomic plant workers in many countries but have sought to reassure families their children are safe.

Some people have listened to the official advice, then voted with their feet and moved out of the fallout zone — but most have stayed, reluctant to give up their jobs, homes and lives, despite the lingering fear.

In Fukushima city, home to 300,000 people, playgrounds are eerily quiet while children play indoors, one layer removed from the dangers of the atomic plant 60 kilometres (40 miles) away on the tsunami-ravaged coast.

Most schools have banned children from playing football or baseball on outdoor fields or splashing around in swimming pools exposed to the sky. The windows of classrooms remain shut despite a summer heat wave.

More than 300 children have left the city’s elementary and junior high schools since April, says the education board in Fukushima, where town workers have been washing down the walls of school buildings.

“We fully understand the feelings of parents, but we want them to act calmly,” board official Yoshimasa Kanno told AFP, adding that the city will hand a radiation dosimetre to every student by September.

One mother, Sachiko Sato, 53, who lives in Kawamata, just 35 kilometres from the crippled plant, has moved her two children to another town, although she has stayed behind in the family home.

“We asked ourselves what’s most important to us,” she said. “For some people it’s their job, for others its family ties. For me it’s my children’s future.”

Another parent, Hiroshi Ueki, 40, a former kindergarten worker, moved his wife and two sons, aged one and four, to Matsumoto in the mountainous prefecture of Nagano, 280 kilometres away.

Remembering family life in their home town, he said, “everyday I used to tell my sons: ‘Don’t touch this. Don’t eat that. Don’t take your mask off’.”

“When we got to Nagano, my son was still asking me: ‘Dad, can I touch this flower? Can I touch that car? Can I play in the rain?’ When I heard him say that, I was almost crying.”

Ueki is one of a growing number of local citizens who, in a movement rarely seen in consensus-seeking Japan and fuelled over the past four months by social media, are challenging the government.

“The government is saying it’s safe and secure,” said Ueki, who is back in Fukushima, trying to convince other parents to leave.

“But they can really only say that 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now — if nothing has actually happened by then.”

Japan’s radiation limit was raised from 1.0 to 20 millisieverts per year after Japan’s worst quake on record triggered a tsunami that slammed into the Fukushima plant, triggering a series of meltdowns and explosions.

In Fukushima city, authorities now estimate aerial exposure of 5.4 to 13.6 millisieverts per year — not counting, critics point out, any internal exposure from food or dust contaminated with radioactive isotopes.

Fears were fuelled when a recent test showed small amounts of radioactive substances in the urine samples of all of the 10 children surveyed.

According to the Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation, which carried out the tests with a French non-government group, 1.3 becquerels of caesium-137 per litre was found in the urine of a seven-year-old boy.

Japan’s central government downplayed the concern, with the education and science minister, Yoshiaki Takagi, stating that the level was too low to affect children’s health immediately.

Many doctors have also advised parents in Fukushima not to overreact if their children suffer symptoms such as bleeding or diarrhoea, saying they are unlikely to be related to radiation under current exposure levels.

But they also argue that authorities should not reach hasty and easy conclusions, saying that the findings at least show that children in Fukushima have been exposed to a certain level of radioactivity.

Radiation safety experts agree that children face a higher risk from radiation-linked cancers and other diseases than adults, but they disagree on just how high the risk is, amid a global dearth of long-term studies.

“It has been medically proven that children can be at greater risk of radiation exposure than adults,” said Tokyo paediatrician Makoto Yamada.

“No-one can accurately predict the eventual physical impact of radiation on people in Fukushima,” Yamada told AFP. “It is the authorities’ duty to take careful measures considering the worst-case scenario.”

One radiation expert, Toshiso Kosako of Tokyo University, quit his government advisory job in tears in April when the radiation limit was raised, saying he wouldn’t expose his own children to those levels.

Another fearful Fukushima parent is medical worker Masayoshi Tezuka, 42, who evacuated his two daughters for a while, then brought them back, citing the stress of splitting the children from their working parents.

Tezuka said he was shocked when he recently saw pictures of Ukrainian children with neck scars from surgery for thyroid cancer, blamed on radiation exposure from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

“In my mind I swapped their faces with those of my daughters,” he said. “It was dreadful. I’m still wondering if this is what will one day happen to my daughters. That fear is still haunting me.”
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JAPAN | NHK | 5 August 2011

Industry minister Banri Kaieda says an independent panel has begun investigating allegations that nuclear safety regulators repeatedly tried to influence public symposiums on the use of nuclear energy.

On Friday, Kaieda told reporters that a third-party task force is looking into claims that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency intervened in town meetings with the help of local power companies.

He said the panel will thoroughly investigate allegations that Chubu and Shikoku electric power companies, under the agency’s instructions, lined up participants and requested that they ask prearranged questions in favor of nuclear power.

He added that Japan’s other major utilities will also be subject to investigations for potentially engaging in similar dubious conduct.

Kaieda said that he wants the task force to propose a set of guidelines on to what extent the government should be involved in organizing public symposiums.

JAPAN | NHK | 5 August 2011

Prime Minister Naoto Kan will express his resolve to reduce Japan’s dependency on nuclear energy at the August 6th ceremony to mark the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.

The prime minister will deliver a speech at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony on Saturday, the 66th anniversary of the bombing.

Kan is expected to call on his country to lead international talks on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation to work toward a world without nuclear arms.

He is also expected to say that the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant caused anxiety around the world, and announce plans to review Japan’s energy policy in total.
In addition, Kan will announce his intention to implement stringent safety measures in operating nuclear power plants.

He will stress that the Fukushima accident is a lesson for mankind, and that it is Japan’s duty to inform people around the world about it.

Regarding the prime minister’s speech at the ceremony, some government officials are against mentioning nuclear power policy. They contend atomic bombs and nuclear power plants are different issues.

But Kan has apparently decided to include nuclear power policy in his speech and emphasize his resolve to reduce dependence on nuclear energy.
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Yokohama City Finally Admits It May Have Been Feeding School Children with Radioactive Beef

Yokohama City officials, from the ex-Daiei CEO mayor on down, denied and refused to do anything about it since one of the city’s assemblymen first raised the issue back in April of school lunches in the city using beef from cows that were possibly contaminated with radioactive materials. The officials asserted that any food items were “safe as long as they are sold in the marketplace”. (See my post here for the assemblyman’s effort with concerned citizens of Yokohama to force the city to stop the use of beef in school lunches.)

Now, the city’s Board of Education finally admits that the city may have fed as many as 67,000 kids in elementary schools in the city with radioactive beef.

Yokohama City announced on August 5 that the meat from 19 cows in Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate that may have been fed with rice hay contaminated with radioactive cesium may have been used in school lunches at the city’s 127 elementary schools (for about 67,000 pupils).
According to the Health and Education section of the city’s Board of Education, the meat from 19 cows were used 12 times between April 19 and June 21 as the ingredient for school lunches. The testing for radioactive materials in the meat was never done, and the meat has probably been all consumed. The Health and Education section of the Board of Education says “We don’t know if we can trace the meat at all.”

So, the concerned citizens in Yokohama was raising the issue since April, and the they were dead right. They raised the issue with the city, and the city refused to do anything. Why? They could have tested the meat in April, and could have stopped using it. Instead, they did nothing, forced kids to eat school lunches (many parents were upset with school principals refusing to allow home-made lunch). Too afraid to find out? Too cheap to test?

It was only July 11 that Yokohama City finally stopped using the beef for lunch, several days before the summer break. They switched to pork, as if pork were safe. (More than 10,000 pigs have been moved from Fukushima and scattered throughout Japan since April, and there is no way to trace the movement as there is no unique identification system for pigs.)

Needless to say, it is not just elementary schools. That’s what the city officials have admitted to. School lunches for kindergartens and nursery schools, and for junior high schools, are also prepared in the city’s facilities and distributed to these schools.
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UPDATE: Checking the Yokohama assemblyman’s message board, it’s just unreal what’s going on there. And by no means Yokohama is unique in this. Some of what’s happening:

The city is still intent on sending the school kids to the summer school in Nikko, in Tochigi Prefecture, where the radiation is high;
Many schools don’t allow children to carry water bottles to schools, and say they have to drink tap water;
Many schools still don’t allow home-made lunches, and one school demands the parents that they make exactly the same lunch as the school lunch if they insist on home-made lunch for their children. Some schools collect monthly lunch fees from the parents even if their children carry home-made lunches;
Schools are planning to have children do the yard cleanup after the summer break.

Parents, pull your children out of schools. Any school.
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Fukushima I Nuke Plant: 700 Liters of Highly Contaminated Water Leaked



Indie | EX-SKF | 5 August 2011

The water leaked (for nth time) somewhere in the contaminated water treatment system at Fukushima I Nuke Plant. This time, what’s notable is not that the system leaked but the density of radioactive materials in that leaked water. I’m surprised TEPCO actually announced the numbers:

Cesium-134: 5.5 million becquerels/cubic centimeter
Cesium-137: 6.27 million becquerels/cubic centimeter

They are much, much higher than the numbers below that TEPCO last announced (July 15) as the densities of radioactive materials in the water before the treatment:

Cesium-134: 1,500,000 becquerels/cubic centimeter (1.5 x 10^6)
Cesium-137: 1,700,000 becquerels/cubic centimeter (1.7 x 10^6)

So, in the 700 liters of water that leaked, there are:

Cesium-134: 5.5 million x 1000 x 700 = 3,850,000,000,000 or 3.85 terabecquerels
Cesium-137: 6.27 million x 1000 x 700 = 4,389,000,000,000 or 4.389 terabequere
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Contaminated Water Treatment System Comes to a Dead Stop (Again)

The pumps failed, and TEPCO doesn’t know why. Some of the pumps for Kurion’s system stopped, and couldn’t be restarted. One of the pumps in Areva’s system that feed chemicals stopped, and the backup pump didn’t work. The entire system is down.
TEPCO is looking into the cause of the trouble, and is trying to get the system back online quickly.
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HIROSHIMA PEACE SYMPOSIUM: Fukushima disaster should trigger nuclear disarmament


JAPAN | ASAHI SHIMBUN | 7 August 2011

HIROSHIMA–The crisis at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has driven home the need to accelerate nuclear disarmament, experts told a recent symposium here in the city that felt the power and the horrors of the world’s first atomic bombing.

Civilian use of nuclear energy, or nuclear power generation, can be as dangerous as its military applications, or nuclear weapons, panelists said at the International Symposium for Peace 2011, held at the International Conference Center Hiroshima on July 31.

“Whatever its source, the harm to health of ionizing radiation is the same. The same chain reaction drives nuclear fission in reactors and bombs,” said Tilman Ruff, who chairs the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “Releases of radioactivity similar to or larger than those from a nuclear bomb can come from nuclear reactors and spent fuel ponds.”

Kazumi Mizumoto, vice president of Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City, said the Fukushima disaster should not be seen as an accident at a single nuclear power plant but as a case that exposed the risks inherent in the entire system of nuclear power generation.

“Japan uses uranium fuel at 54 nuclear power reactors, stores spent nuclear fuel in storage pools and (plans to) dispose of radioactive waste at a final disposal site,” Mizumoto said. “All the processes involve risks, and all the processes are subject to human errors. If an error does occur, risks are enormous.”

Experts also said civilian use of nuclear energy is often a source of suspicions about military use.

Japan, which is pushing the nuclear fuel recycling program, or extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel for use in fast breeder reactors, is not an exception.

“Japan has continued to accumulate plutonium, which has raised doubts in the international community that it is actually seeking to use nuclear energy for military applications,” Mizumoto said. “Japan has adhered to a suspected system.”

Ruff said: “Japan is the only state without nuclear weapons to be amassing a large stockpile of separated plutonium: a nuclear arsenal in waiting.”

Motoko Mekata, professor at Chuo University’s Faculty of Policy Studies, said the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons increases sharply if nuclear fuel recycling spreads.

“Japan should take the initiative and withdraw from the nuclear fuel recycling program at a time when many other countries hope to carry out nuclear fuel recycling,” Mekata said.

About 700 people attended the symposium, titled “The Road to Abolition–What Civil Society Needs to Do Now.” The annual symposium, held in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, was the 17th.

It was hosted by Hiroshima city, the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation and The Asahi Shimbun, and supported by Nagasaki city, the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, Hiroshima Home Television Co. and Nagasaki Culture Telecasting Corp.

Asahi Shimbun editorial writer Toshiaki Miura served as coordinator for the panel discussion.

Experts said a global movement toward nuclear disarmament has made little progress since U.S. President Barack Obama pledged that the United States will work toward “a world without nuclear weapons” in a speech in Prague in April 2009.

The Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament has long failed to start meaningful negotiations on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, designed to stop production of highly enriched uranium or plutonium for nuclear weapons, bound by its rules of consensus.

“One country can stop the negotiation from beginning,” George Perkovich, vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said. “Pakistan has for a number of years wanted to block this negotiation. Many people believe that China is not unhappy with Pakistan blocking this negotiation.”

Experts said the conventions that prohibit anti-personnel land mines and cluster munitions, for which a small group of “middle power” countries and nongovernmental organizations laid the foundations, can offer lessons for nuclear disarmament.

Negotiations that culminated in the land mine ban treaty are called the Ottawa Process after Canada, one of the prime movers, while those that resulted in the cluster bomb ban treaty are known as the Oslo Process after Norway.

Mekata, who has been involved in an international campaign to ban land mines, proposed starting a “Hiroshima Process” to push for a Negative Security Assurance Treaty.

Under the treaty, a nuclear power would guarantee that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear powers that are signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Mekata also suggested that a group of countries, including Japan, start a new round of negotiations on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, apart from the Conference on Disarmament.

Negotiations on prohibiting land mines or cluster bombs started as part of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Advocates set up separate forums outside the United Nations after the discussions reached a stalemate due to opposition from major powers.

“Why don’t we apply the start-where-we-can approach to nuclear disarmament, without bothering about countries that are opposed?” Mekata asked.

Major powers, such as the United States, Russia and China, have not signed the land mine ban treaty, which took effect in 1999, or the cluster bomb ban treaty, which went into force in 2010.

But Ruff said an important aspect of the two treaties is that they have even influenced the behavior of those opponents.

“Land mines have become unacceptable,” Ruff said. “There is no country, including those who are not signatories to the Ottawa Treaty, that exports land mines.”

Ruff said the two treaties are “inspiring examples of civil society collaborating with international organizations and a couple of determined governments (that changed) the argument from a military and strategic one of these arcane concepts that bear no relationship to what happens when you use the weapons to a humanitarian debate. I think that is what we desperately need with nuclear weapons.”

Experts said civil society has a crucial role to play in lobbying governments to act and pressing financial institutions to divest from companies that manufacture nuclear weapons.

Mekata said Japan’s megabanks decided to refrain from doing business with companies that manufacture cluster bombs following pressure from citizens.

“It is important to become ‘nagging’ citizens who raise their voices against what they oppose and what they doubt through local politicians or media,” Mekata said.

Perkovich said Obama’s goal of a world without nuclear weapons has met significant resistance both in the United States and in other major powers.

Referring to the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia, which took effect in February, Perkovich said, “It is a fairly minimal, not a very ambitious, treaty, but it was actually very hard to get ratified in the U.S. Senate.”

Perkovich said Obama has not received support from other major countries that he needs to make progress toward his goal.

“Everyone applauded, but then no one stepped up to say, ‘I’m a head of a major country and I will work with you.’ (Countries such as) Brazil and South Africa applauded but have gone off to do other things,” he said.

“This is a problem, and it’s hard for civil society to overcome when there is not leadership in other countries that want to work strongly with someone like Obama.”

An ultimate goal is to conclude a Nuclear Weapons Convention to prohibit nuclear weapons, which has been pushed by nongovernmental organizations.

The final document adopted at the NPT review conference in May 2010 for the first time included a reference to the convention. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on member states to start negotiations on the treaty.

“Everything that was wrong with chemical and biological weapons, land mines and cluster munitions is worse with nuclear weapons,” Ruff said. “It simply is inconsistent that we don’t have a comprehensive framework for the worst and most indiscriminate and inhumane weapons.”
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U.N. chief arrives in Japan as nuclear crisis simmers


JAPAN | JAPAN TODAY | 7 August 2011

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in Japan on Sunday, where he plans to visit the Fukushima nuclear disaster zone, as the crippled atomic power plant simmers and a food safety scare deepens.

The secretary-general will visit hard-hit Fukushima Prefecture later on Sunday night as one of the most senior foreign leaders to go to the area after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11 triggered the catastrophe.

On Monday, Ban will meet some of the 85,000 people who have been evacuated to shelters from areas around the plant after what has become the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

“I wanted to come to Japan as soon as possible after the tragedy of 11 March to express the solidarity and deep sympathy that the whole world feels for the people of your great country,” Ban said.

The U.N. chief will also meet Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto later on Monday in Tokyo.

Ban has convened a nuclear safety summit for the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September and he is expected to reinforce his calls for tougher international standards while in Japan.

Ban plans to visit Haragama beach at Soma, 40 kilometers north of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which continues to leak radioactive material. A 20-kilometer exclusion zone around the battered facility prevents him going much nearer.

In his meetings with Japanese leaders, the U.N. chief is also expected to request Japan’s Self-Defense Forces be dispatched for a peace-keeping operation in South Suda
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Fukushima evacuees briefly return home

Some evacuees in Fukushima Prefecture have briefly returned to their homes to prepare for the Bon holidays in mid-August.

One district in Kawamata Town is designated as an evacuation zone due to exposure to radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Almost all the residents of the district have left their homes.

The zone is off-limits, but the town allowed the evacuees to return to the area for 4 hours on Sunday to weed their homes and graves ahead of the Bon festival, when people pay visits to their ancestors' graves.

Some evacuees left flowers on the graves because they do not know if they can come again during the holidays.

Yoshiichi Miura, who is 65, says it's sad to see the district deserted and his ancestors would never have dreamed about such a situation.

He adds that he will continue to take care of the grave, even though he cannot return as often as he would like to.

Sunday, August 07, 2011 22:58 +0900 (JST)
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120,000 bldgs destroyed by tsunami

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The March 11 tsunami destroyed about 120,000 buildings in six prefectures in the Tohoku and Kanto regions, a government survey shows.

About 220,000 buildings, including houses, in the prefectures were damaged in the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry said.

It was the first comprehensive survey of building damage caused by the tsunami.

The ministry's survey also showed the percentage of destroyed buildings was markedly higher in areas where the onshore water level surpassed two meters, compared with areas where it was two meters or less.

Given the discovery, authorities may designate areas that were submerged by more than two meters of water in the March 11 tsunami as unfit for residences in drawing up reconstruction plans.

The ministry plans to put together detailed data for individual municipalities and provide them for their reference.

Conducted in June and July, the survey covered all tsunami-affected areas, excluding those close to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, to gauge damage to buildings.

A total of about 535 square kilometers of land was submerged by the tsunami in the six prefectures, the ministry said. About 40 percent of the area was submerged in more than two meters of water.

The ministry's analysis of the survey detailed the correlation between the amount of submergence and the amount of damage to buildings.

Thirty-four percent of buildings in areas submerged in water between 1.5 and two meters deep were destroyed, but the figure jumped to 72 percent in areas submerged in water between two and 2.5 meters deep.

The survey covered not only houses but also uninhabited buildings, such as factories, offices, schools and community centers, the ministry said.

Of the destroyed buildings, about 78,000 were completely washed away by the tsunami, according to the ministry.
(Aug. 9, 2011)
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Dosimeter figures questioned / People's fears raised, calmed depending on radiation readings

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Radiation dosimeters have become increasingly sought-after items, even outside Fukushima Prefecture, amid the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but the accuracy of the devices has been called into question.

Dosimeters help people measure radiation levels in their living environment, possibly easing radiation fears. But readings may vary, depending on the devices and how they are used.

As the readings are not necessarily accurate, some experts have urged people not to worry too much over the figures.

Last Wednesday, Chiyo Itakura, 41, who runs an acupuncture clinic in Nagareyama, Chiba Prefecture, demonstrated a dosimeter, slightly bigger than an ordinary mobile phone, in front of her house.

The government-set allowable limit for schoolchildren to engage in outdoor activities is 3.8 microsieverts per hour.

The dosimeter Itakura purchased last month for about 60,000 yen beeps at radiation levels exceeding 0.3 microsievert per hour.

When she measured the radiation level in front of her 3-year-old daughter's face, Ayaka, the device was silent as it showed a radiation level of 0.17 microsievert per hour. But at curbside, the Ukrainian-made device beeped as it read 0.57 microsievert per hour.

"I think the Ukraine has set a [lower] limit. So I wonder if the current radiation levels are OK for children," Itakura said.

However, Itakura said her current dosimeter tends to display higher readings compared with another dosimeter she previously used.

A member of the Tokatsu Geiger-kai, a group of about 50 people, Itakura shares data on radiation levels she measures with other members.

The Tokatsu area, in the northwestern part of Chiba Prefecture which includes Nagareyama, was named in a weekly magazine as a "hot spot" with high radiation levels.

This prompted the group to measure radiation levels in the area. The group said it has not detected radiation levels above the government-set level, but different dosimeters have shown different readings even at the same location.

Members of the group started to check radiation levels on their own because they were not satisfied with data provided by the government.

Aside from monitoring points in Fukushima Prefecture, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry releases daily data on radiation levels only at monitoring posts and neighboring areas, national universities and nuclear power facilities.

Daizo Yamazaki, head of the group, said, "Our data might not be very accurate, but we have to do what we can do to protect our families [from radiation]."

Due to people's concerns over radiation, sales of dosimeters are going extremely well.

Horiba Ltd., a Kyoto-based analytical and measuring instrument maker, used to sell about 100 dosimeters for educational purposes every year.

However, after the Great East Japan Earthquake, orders from various companies, public offices and individuals have flooded Horiba. Currently, the company is manufacturing 1,000 dosimeters a week.

S.T. Corp., a major air freshener maker, plans to introduce dosimeters, selling for 15,750 yen, in autumn, targeting mothers with children.

Tokyo Metropolitan University Prof. Masahiro Fukushi, an expert in radiation safety and control, warned: "Some dosimeters show differing levels of radiation. Results also differ depending on how the dosimeter is used."

This means that people may feel safer knowing radiation levels, but there is a possibility that inaccurate results may cause unnecessary concern.

"Please don't overreact to the results. It's better to compile accurate data with several dosimeters," Fukushi added.
(Aug. 9, 2011)
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City starts decontamination work

The Yomiuri Shimbun.


Posted Image
An excavator scrapes off the surface soil of a schoolyard at Kashima Primary School in Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, on Monday.

MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima--The Minami-Soma municipal government began decontamination work by removing radioactive substances throughout the city Monday, except for places inside the no-entry zone.

The work, being carried out in such locations as Kashima Primary School in the Kashima district, is aimed at reducing the level of radiation so the emergency evacuation preparation zone for the city can be scrapped. The zone lies outside the 20-kilometer-radius no-entry area of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but within 30 kilometers of the plant.

Under the municipal government's plan, the surface soil of playgrounds at primary and middle schools and kindergartens will be removed, while walls and rooftops of buildings will be cleaned with high-pressure hoses.

At 8 a.m. in Kashima Primary School, construction workers started removing soil about five centimeters deep with heavy machinery. The soil will be buried in a hole on the school grounds.

The city government has earmarked 960 million yen in its fiscal 2011 supplementary budget for the initial phase of the decontamination.

Decontamination work will be expedited in August and September at 35 public facilities--primary and middle schools, kindergartens, day-care centers and children's centers.

Subsidies will be given to private facilities such as kindergartens and day-care centers to conduct decontamination work on their own.

"We want schoolchildren to have a safe environment," Kashima Primary School Principal Masanori Monma said.
(Aug. 9, 2011)
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Minami-Soma to clean hot spots in city

The Yomiuri Shimbun


MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima--The government of Minami-Soma has revealed a plan to decontaminate all radiation-polluted areas of the city in cooperation with a University of Tokyo laboratory, with the exception of places inside the no-entry zone.

The joint project will be conducted with the university's Radioisotope Center, the municipal government said. It will exclude the no-entry zone, which lies within a 20-kilometer radius from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The project will be most intensively carried out in central parts of the city in August and September, leaving forests and other lower-priority locations to be decontaminated later.

The national government is considering dissolving the emergency evacuation preparation zone, which lies outside the 20-kilometer radius. However, it is feared that evacuees from Minami-Soma could stay away if the zone is dissolved while radiation levels there are still high.

With this in mind, the Minami-Soma government has decided to put together a supplementary budget for the decontamination project, municipal officials said.

"Because the central government hasn't made progress on decontamination, the city government will do what it can on its own," Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai said.

According to the city government, radioactive contamination in the city will be measured from the sky by using helicopters and other means. The city government will then map the contamination--showing which buildings and soil have high levels of radiation--and implement specialist cleaning in highly radioactive areas, based on advice from the center's experts.

In an example of the kind of location that would be subject to specialist decontamination, 33 microsieverts of radiation per hour have been detected in a drain at a kindergarten inside the evacuation preparation area.

In places with relatively low radiation levels, the city government plans to use high-pressure sprays to wash the walls of primary and middle schools, kindergartens and other public facilities. It plans to replace surface soil in schoolyards.

The Minami-Soma government will clean private houses and yards with cooperation from nonprofit organizations and volunteers.

Decontamination will be urgently implemented in August and September. The city government is assigning lower priority to forests and other places, and plans to clean these areas gradually after work in residential areas is finished.

The Minami-Soma government has earmarked 960 million yen in this fiscal year's supplementary budget for the initial costs of decontamination.

The city government said it would later consider whether to demand money to finance the measures from the central government and Tokyo Electric Power Co.

About 33,600 citizens have left Minami-Soma since the March 11 disaster, dropping the city's population to about 37,900.

Center Director Tatsuhiko Kodama said, "I hope residents will do what they can to play a leading role in decontamination, so the city will become a place to which people can return without fear."

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Report suggests second meltdown at reactor at Fukushima plant

BY TOMOOKI YASUDA STAFF WRITER

2011/08/09



A second meltdown likely occurred in the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, a scenario that could hinder the current strategy to end the crisis, a scientist said.

In that meltdown, 10 days after the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, the fuel may have leaked to the surrounding containment vessel, according to a report by Fumiya Tanabe, a former senior researcher at what was then the government-affiliated Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute.

His report will be announced at next month's meeting of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan.

Under Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s road map to deal with its crippled nuclear plant, reducing temperatures at the bottom of the core pressure vessel is one objective for bringing the accident under control. But if the fuel burned through the pressure vessel surrounding the No. 3 reactor and dropped into the containment vessel, that plan would be affected.

The No. 3 reactor was in a state of dry boil for about six hours until cooling water was pumped into the core from 9:25 a.m. on March 13.

Around 11 a.m. on March 14, the reactor building was hit by a large hydrogen explosion that was likely caused by a core meltdown, which led to fuel falling to the bottom of the pressure vessel.

According to data released by TEPCO, about 300 tons of water was pumped into the No. 3 reactor core daily until March 20, which likely cooled the fuel into a large clump.

However, between March 21 and 23, only about 24 tons of water was pumped in, while on March 24, about 69 tons entered the reactor.

One possible cause for the decline in water volume was that pressure within the pressure vessel increased, making it more difficult for water to enter the vessel.

According to Tanabe, who analyzed the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the United States when he was a researcher at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, the volume of water pumped in on those days was only between 11 and 32 percent of the amount needed to remove decay heat from the nuclear fuel in the core.

In such a situation, the fuel could reach high enough temperatures to begin melting again in just one day.

Tanabe also estimates that the second meltdown led to the release of large amounts of radioactive materials, and that much of the fuel fell through the pressure vessel to the surrounding containment vessel.

The fuel is now believed to have formed another clump after being cooled.

Achieving a cold shutdown with the fuel sufficiently cooled would mark the completion of the second step of TEPCO's road map for dealing with the Fukushima nuclear accident. The central government has compiled its own road map based on TEPCO's objectives.

However, Tanabe said: "In deciding if a cold shutdown has occurred, the location where temperatures are measured will depend on where the melted fuel is. A thorough analysis should be conducted on what has really occurred in the reactor core."

Even officials of TEPCO and the central government acknowledge that they do not know the specific condition of the core at the No. 3 reactor. But their view until now has been that the melted fuel has settled at the bottom of the pressure vessel.

One factor used by Tanabe in speculating that a second meltdown occurred is the increase in radiation levels from the morning of March 21 in areas downwind from the Fukushima No. 1 plant, such as the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant as well as the Kanto region municipalities of Kita-Ibaraki, Takahagi and Mito.

Initially, officials of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency explained that the higher radiation levels were caused by radioactive materials falling to the ground with the rain.

But there is also the possibility that additional radioactive materials emitted from the second meltdown may have been blown by the wind.

Between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on March 21, the pressure within the pressure vessel of the No. 3 reactor core increased sharply to about 110 atmospheres, likely caused by an explosion within the pressure vessel due to a lack of cooling of the fuel. That was probably the start of the second meltdown, Tanabe said.

As for the sudden pressure increase, Tanabe points to the possibility that the clump of melted fuel in the pressure vessel may have fallen apart due to a lack of cooling. The magma-like substance with high temperatures may have leaked out of the vessel and emitted large amounts of steam when it came in contact with water.

At the No. 3 reactor building, black smoke spewed from the reactor building on the afternoons of March 21 and March 23. Tanabe said the smoke may have been the result of what is referred to as a core-concrete reaction, when melted fuel comes in contact with the concrete of the containment vessel. Such a reaction typically occurs when insufficient cooling follows a core meltdown.

TEPCO officials said the black smoke was probably caused by rubber or lubricant oil catching fire.

They acknowledged the possibility that some of the fuel may have fallen into the containment vessel, but they did not explain how the fire started.

Kunihisa Soda, a former commissioner at the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan who is a specialist on severe accidents at nuclear plants, said the possibility of a second meltdown could not be ruled out. But he said that accurately estimating the level of possibility is impossible because of uncertainties surrounding the validity of the released data.

Tanabe also suggested that TEPCO officials think about what steps should be taken to monitor whether the fuel that has fallen into the containment vessel is being properly cooled.
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