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Topic Started: April 11 2011, 02:28 PM (7,664 Views)
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Excessive radioactive cesium found in Fukushima fish: Greenpeace


Posted on August 9, 2011


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In this photo taken on March 31, 2011 by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and released by Japan Defense Ministry on, April 1, JMSDF personnel all in protective suits are aboard a tugboat towing a U.S. military barge carrying pure water towards the quay of the tsunami-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex in Okumamachi, Fukushima Prefecture. (AP Photo/Japan Defense Ministry)

TOKYO (Kyodo) — Fish caught at a port about 55 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant contained radioactive cesium at levels exceeding an allowable limit, the environmental group Greenpeace said Tuesday.

The samples taken at Onahama port in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, in late July, included a species of rockfish that measured 1,053 becquerels per kilogram. The reading, the highest among the samples, is well in excess of the government-set limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram, according to a study conducted by the environmental group.

The other samples, which were all rock trout, measured between 625 and 749 becquerels per kilogram, again exceeding the provisional limit.

The second such study of marine products was conducted over three days from July 22 in Iwaki and the town of Shinchi with cooperation of fishermen and those related to the fisheries industry in Fukushima. A total of 21 samples taken in the study were analyzed at a research institute in France, according to the group.

“There is no allowable limit for internal exposure that can conclusively be said not to pose any problems,” Greenpeace said in a petition submitted to Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Tuesday, noting the need to keep consumption of the food containing elevated levels of radioactive materials to a minimum.

The petition also calls for tougher marine-product monitoring and for requiring businesses to display the level of radioactive materials contained in food products on the label
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14,000 Fukushima children change schools in wake of quake, nuclear crisis

Posted on August 9, 2011 by fukushimanewsresearch

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JAPAN | MAINICHI | 9 August 2011

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Teachers see children onto a bus after the end of lessons at Oguni Elementary School in Date, Fukushima Prefecture, on June 30. The school has instructed children to wear masks, hats and long sleeves to protect them from radioactive materials. (Mainichi)

Some 14,000 children who attended public elementary and junior high schools in Fukushima Prefecture before the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear crisis have since changed schools or will change schools during the summer holiday, it has been learned.

A survey by the Fukushima Prefectural Board of Education found that 1,081 students are due to move out of the prefecture during the current summer holiday. Fears about radiation were cited in three-quarters of these cases. After the outbreak of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, many students moved out of evacuation zones within a 30 kilometer radius of the plant, but there are reportedly now more children moving out of nonrestricted areas of central Fukushima Prefecture.

Education board officials said that as of July 15, 7,672 students had moved out of the prefecture in the wake of the disaster, while about 4,500 students had moved to other schools in the prefecture. A total of 755 plan to move to other schools within Fukushima Prefecture during the summer holidays, in addition to the 1,081 who are due to move outside the prefecture.

“There are probably many people who decided to wait until the end of the first term to switch schools, considering the burden on their children,” a prefectural education board representative commented.

Figures from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology show that about 165,000 students were enrolled at public elementary or junior high schools in Fukushima Prefecture as of May 1 this year. About one-tenth of these students were forced to switch schools in the wake of the disaster. Including students at private schools, high school students and young children who have not yet started school, the number of “evacuated” minors is even higher.

Since the outbreak of the ongoing nuclear crisis, many schools within a 30 kilometer radius of the stricken nuclear plant have been holding lessons in the buildings of other schools. Analysis by the prefectural board of education found that over half of the 12,000 or so students who had moved schools as of July 15 were originally attending schools located within 30 kilometers of the nuclear power plant. The latest survey was conducted in line with the end of the first term of the school year.
In this photo taken July 26, 2011, playground equipment stands in front of Karino Elementary School, which was used as an evacuation shelter in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture. (AP Photo)

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In this photo taken July 26, 2011, playground equipment stands in front of Karino Elementary School, which was used as an evacuation shelter in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture. (AP Photo)

Meanwhile, about half of the students due to transfer to other schools within Fukushima Prefecture during the summer holidays cited a move to a temporary housing unit or another accommodation facility as the reason.

There were also cases in the prefectural city of Soma in which children returned to their homes from places to which they had earlier evacuated.
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Japan ignored own radiation forecasts

Posted on August 9, 2011 by fukushimanewsresearch

NAMIE, Japan (AP) — Japan’s system to forecast radiation threats was working from the moment its nuclear crisis began. As officials planned a venting operation certain to release radioactivity into the air, the system predicted Karino Elementary School would be directly in the path of the plume emerging from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.

But the prediction helped no one. Nobody acted on it.

The school, just over six miles (10 kilometers) from the plant, was not immediately cleared out. Quite the opposite. It was turned into a temporary evacuation center.

Reports from the forecast system were sent to Japan’s nuclear safety agency, but the flow of data stopped there. Prime Minister Naoto Kan and others involved in declaring evacuation areas never saw the reports, and neither did local authorities. So thousands of people stayed for days in areas that the system had identified as high-risk, an Associated Press investigation has found.

At Karino Elementary in the town of Namie, about 400 students, teachers, parents and others gathered in the playground at the height of the nuclear crisis stemming from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Many ate rice balls and cooked in the open air.

They were never informed of the predictions that they were at risk. In an interview with the AP, Namie’s mayor said it took more than 24 hours for him to realize — from watching TV — that the evacuees were in danger. He sent buses to move some of them out. But, unaware of the risks, they were taken to another part of town also forecast to be in the plume’s path. Most were left to fend for themselves.

“When I think about it now, I am outraged,” Principal Hidenori Arakawa said. “Our lives were put at risk.”

Documents obtained by the AP, interviews with key officials and a review of other newly released documents and parliamentary transcripts indicate that the government’s use of the forecast data was hamstrung by communication breakdowns and a lack of even a basic understanding of the system at the highest levels.

It’s unclear how much radiation people might have been exposed to by staying in areas in the path of the radioactive plume, let alone whether any might suffer health problems from the exposure. It could be difficult to ever prove a connection: Health officials say they have no plans to prioritize radiation tests of those who were at the school.

But the breakdown may hold lessons for other countries with nuclear power plants because similar warning systems are used around the world. This was their first test in a major crisis.

The Japanese network — built in 1986 at a cost of $140 million (11 billion yen) — is known as SPEEDI, short for the System for Prediction of Environment Emergency Dose Information. It has radiation monitoring posts nationwide and has been tested in a number of drills, including one the prime minister led for the Hamaoka nuclear facility just last year.

Even so, according to the prime minister’s office, Kan and his top advisers never asked for or received the data. Despite taking part in the Hamaoka drill, Kan admitted he didn’t understand how SPEEDI worked or how valuable the data was.

“I had no idea what sort of information was available,” he told Parliament on June 17. “I didn’t know anything about it then, and there was no way I could make a judgment.”

In two post-crisis assessments, a report to the International Atomic Energy Agency and an annual white paper on science and technology, his government has said the network “failed to perform its intended function.”

A senior member of Kan’s crisis team, Nuclear Safety Commission chief Haruki Madarame, went so far as to say the SPEEDI data was no better than “a mere weather report.”

He said the predictions were of no value because they lacked accurate radiation readings. Some of the system’s monitoring capabilities were compromised by the tsunami and ensuing power outages, and the utility that runs the Fukushima plant, TEPCO, did not provide readings of its own.

But SPEEDI officials say Madarame’s position reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what their system is designed to do.

When the amount of radioactivity that has been leaked is known, that is entered into its system, along with weather and terrain data, and a hazard map is generated. If the amount is not known — as was the case with Fukushima — a standard and relatively low value of one becquerel is used.

While that won’t show the actual radiation risk, it will show the general pattern and direction of the plume. Then when the size of the leak becomes known, the map can be updated. If the actual leak turns out to be 100 becquerels, for example, the results would be multiplied by 100.

That technique allowed SPEEDI to produce reports hours before officials began venting disabled reactors — when there would have been less radiation to measure outside the nuclear plant even if the system’s monitoring equipment had been working perfectly.

In the Fukushima case, later data proved the forecasts to be highly accurate. Most of Namie, for example, has since been declared too dangerous for habitation.

“We are offended by allegations that SPEEDI failed to function the way it was supposed to,” Akira Tsubosaka, a senior official in charge of operations, told the AP. “SPEEDI was not used to determine evacuation zones. It should have been.”

SPEEDI, run by the education and science ministry, provides its data to other government agencies such as the nuclear safety agency for passage up the chain and then dissemination to local authorities.

Officials won’t say why that didn’t happen, sticking to their position that the data was useless anyway.

But the government response has been sharply criticized by one of Kan’s top science advisers, who later quit in protest, according to a confidential report to the prime minister that was obtained by the AP.

“The SPEEDI radiation forecasts were not properly utilized and a situation was invited in which residents were made vulnerable to more exposure than necessary,” Toshiso Kosako, also a professor at the University of Tokyo, wrote in late April.

Ironically, low-level officials were quick to seek the SPEEDI data.

Bureaucrats familiar with SPEEDI commissioned at least 18 tailor-made forecasts in the first 24 hours, as the government was pushing TEPCO to open vents to avert an explosion.

The venting would release radioactive substances into the air. So, according to documents obtained by the AP, the forecasts included several to gauge that danger.

One issued at 3:53 a.m. — about 13 hours after the crisis began — predicted the plume would drift across Namie and several other towns.

The forecasts were relayed to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency but they did not reach decision-makers.

In Japan, the legal responsibility for setting evacuation zones falls on the central government and the prime minister. Local officials then are tasked with implementing the orders.

Instead of following the patterns of radioactive dispersion suggested by SPEEDI, the central government simply set up a six-mile (10-kilometer) evacuation zone around the plant. That did not include a broad swath of land that SPEEDI predicted would be affected.

The mayors of two towns that have since been almost completely evacuated told the AP that the government did not inform them of even that decision — let alone provide SPEEDI data — so they had to act on their own. They said they were unable to assess the risks adequately because they were not privy to the SPEEDI reports.

“We got nothing until more than a week later,” said Katsunobu Sakurai, the mayor of Minami-Soma. “People were unnecessarily exposed to possible dangers. We believe the central government must come clean on this.”

“The first I heard of the 10-kilometer zone was when I saw the news on TV,” said Namie Mayor Tamotsu Baba. Namie’s municipal government has since been evacuated to Nihonmatsu, a city 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the plant.

Because Karino Elementary sits just outside the six-mile (10-kilometer) evacuation zone, it was used as a gathering area for evacuees.

Later in the day, at the mayor’s order, some evacuees were taken by bus to another part of Namie called Tsushima, which SPEEDI data suggested was also dangerous. Others, including Principal Arakawa and his family, went in the same direction by car.

Masako Mori, a senior opposition member of Parliament from Fukushima, told the AP that two alternative routes would have led away from the areas identified as high-risk by SPEEDI. The third — to Tsushima — led along the plume’s expected path.

“We didn’t have any information. But it turns out we were taking the most dangerous route,” Arakawa said. “None of us knew.”

Mori said SPEEDI data should have been used to get people out of the area much faster.

The evacuees at shelters in the Tsushima district — including about 8,000 residents of Namie — were not told to move farther away until March 16, five days into the crisis.

Mori, who also is a trial lawyer, raised the possibility of lawsuits against the government.

“The government unnecessarily exposed people to radiation, failing to observe its legal obligation to protect the citizens,” she said. “It could be held responsible for compensation for the possible damage caused by its errors.”

Exposure to radiation can lead to a variety of cancers — as it did in Chernobyl. Babies, children and pregnant women are at the highest risk.

Mori, along with Namie’s mayor and the school principal, are seeking full-body radiation tests for all children who were at the school. The tests measure internal exposure such as inhaled radioactive particles and could be key to understanding the health impact. But Fukushima health officials say they have no particular plan to test the Karino evacuees, because they don’t have the resources and are instead focusing on groups, such as pregnant women, from the general area.

Thousands across the region have requested full-body tests, and only 340 have gotten them so far. None had dangerously high levels of contamination, though that does not rule out future health problems.

The Fukushima health office said it is looking into ways to speed up the process.
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Japan 'to mull backup capital city for emergencies'

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan will consider creating a backup capital in case a major terrorist attack or natural disaster like the March 11 earthquake strikes Tokyo, a news report said Monday.

A new panel will discuss the idea as early as the autumn and it will be organised by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Jiji Press reported, citing unnamed sources.

The move comes amid concern that a major disaster in the heart of Tokyo -- where prominent political and economic functions are concentrated -- could cause grave damage to the entire country, the report said.

The panel is expected to consider moving part of Tokyo's capital functions to a distant location unlikely to be affected by the same disaster.

In addition, it will also look at how such a backup capital will function, including whether it should have a full time staff at any time.

Osaka governor Toru Hashimoto has proposed making his western Japan prefecture the country's subcapital.

Japan, located at the junction of four tectonic plates, experiences 20 percent of the strongest quakes recorded on Earth each year. Geologists have warned that Tokyo is particularly vulnerable to powerful quakes.
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Over the last few days, I have been trying to wrap my mind around the headline that the Fukushima evacuation zone will be lifted. A segment of this video answers this question from the perspective of a Fukushima resident: He feels that the government does not base its decisions on scientific data and that Japanese newspapers do not report on scientific data!
NOW that makes sense!

This video program is long – Here is a recap of the interview section. I found this section gave me a greater understanding of those living within Fukushima. Many of my questions have been answered.

Recommend third section of video: Starting at: 1:35:30 and ending at: 2:23:44
The host asks his Fukushima guest to share his opinion on questions posed by Al Jazeera news to the shows host.
1) Do you think the Japanese government is giving you the correct information? 99 percentage of people of Fukushima don’t trust the government, according to his guest
2) How do people conceive the information the government releases – for example, lifting the evacuation zone in Fukushima? The host and the guest feels that the government does not base it decisions on scientific data and Japanese newspapers do not report on scientific data – and that there is NO scientific reason to lift the ban! Hence there is no trust of government.
3) There is a threat of rising radiation levels in the last couple weeks - What is the reaction to this? 10% (+-14,000) of school children are transferring outside of the Fukushima school district- this proves that parents do not trust the government at all.
4) The guest is a parent of two and his wife is pregnant with their third child – they live 40-50 kilometers away from the Fukushima NPP, which is not part of the evacuation zone. If you had the resources, would you move out of the area? For guest, he does not think he needs to leave his home, at this time.
5) Do you think it is safe? He does think it is safe, in terms of the radiation contamination, the guest believes [the radiation] has NOT reached a level that would require them to leave. He does add, that he does not think safety is guaranteed , because the Fukushima NPP has not recovered from the disaster and the continued aftershocks may cause more damage. There is a hot spot, in the guests town, and people from that area have left. The guest describes parks and playgrounds that are empty and now filled with weeds. Parents of pre-school children tend to keep their children indoors. Some elementary school children continue to play outside. Currently, it is the parents responsibility to decide.
6) What is the anti-nuclear movement to you? Are there any demonstrations going on? Guest reports there are infrequent demonstrations of 500-600 people in Fukushima area.
7) Why don’t more Fukushima residents demonstrate? Because many have friends and family who work for TEPCO, or a related company! That is the reason they can not stand out against nuclear power (now that makes sense!)
8) Why don’t more people in Japan protest? Even before this disaster, Japan people did not trust the government. So they feel it would be a waste of time. Host adds that people are just too tired from the earthquake and tsunami. The guest reports that he has been busy repairing damage to his home and taking care of his family after the disaster. They are TOO tired to FIGHT! (you can hear it in is voice...)


You may have stumbled on the http://youtu.be/cpAtRdq0EiI. This video is titled 311-disaster-update-47 and is 2:23:44 minutes long. The stated goal of the program is to introduce Japanese culture to English speakers. http://yokosonews.com/news/311-disaster-update-47/

The first segment the host covers recent news stories – disaster scams, 14,000 children leave Fukushima schools to go elsewhere, ...

The next segment introduces the viewer to the Festival to honor the dead (Buddhist dance to calm the soul of the dead)– this segment had many technical difficulties.
by Mid Valley
Edited by Audi-Tek, August 10 2011, 06:46 PM.
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Japan’s Rice Crop Tested for Contamination From Fukushima Plant
By Kanoko Matsuyama - Aug 10, 2011 4:01 PM GMT



Japan’s rice harvest is a time of festivities celebrated even by the emperor as farmers reap the rewards of four months of labor in a 2,000-year-old tradition. Not this year, with radiation seeping into the soil.

Farmers growing half of Japan’s rice crop are awaiting the results of tests to see if their produce has been contaminated by radiation from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s wrecked Fukushima atomic plant. Rice, used in almost all Japanese meals and the key ingredient in sake, is being tested before the harvest starts this month. Radiation exceeding safety levels was found in produce including spinach, tea and beef.

Shigehide Ohki, a 61-year-old farmer near Tokyo, this week passed the first hurdle after a preliminary round of tests showed no trace elements of radioactive cesium, the main source of concern. Losing his crop of about 80 tons of rice would “destroy” him, he said.

“I’m very relieved and I’m telling customers that I can be 90 percent certain my rice is safe,” said Ohki, who’s been farming rice for 40 years in Katori about 190 kilometers (118 miles) south of the nuclear station. “But I’m also saying it’s not the end yet because we still have to pass the main part of the survey after the harvest.”

The government is asking 17 prefectures in eastern Japan to test farmland for radiation, an area accounting for 54 percent of domestic rice production. If initial surveys show a certain level of radiation, wider tests will be carried out, the government said.
Rice Threat

Authorities will ban shipments from areas where they find rice containing cesium exceeding 500 becquerels a kilogram, the government’s legal limit for grains. Any contaminated produce will be destroyed.

“Rice may be the next product where contamination will be discovered as it’s being grown in tainted soil and water,” Yoko Tomiyama, chairwoman of the Consumers Union of Japan, said in an interview. “Higher radiation levels have been detected in prefectures beyond Fukushima.”

Authorities in Chiba on Aug. 9 said that the first five of 49 preliminary tests, including Okki’s farm, didn’t detect radiation in rice, according to the prefecture’s website. Rice from 277 areas in the prefecture will be tested after harvest, the website said.

Japan, the world’s sixth-biggest rice grower according to the United Nations, produced 8.5 million tons of rice last year valued at 1.8 trillion yen ($23 billion). The country is the sixth-largest consumer by capita of the staple.
Spewing Radiation

Food containing radioactive cesium or iodine that exceeded the official standards has been found as far as 360 kilometers from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station, which began spewing radiation after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. About 160,000 residents near the plant have been evacuated.

Consumer concerns over food safety deepened after the government, which repeatedly made assurances products on the market are safe, confirmed last month that beef tainted by cesium was sold in stores.

Five months after the nuclear disaster, Japan is still struggling to build a centralized system to check for radiation contamination of food, leaving local authorities and farmers conducting voluntary tests.

“The government didn’t have guidelines to prepare for possible problems and has only been reacting to developments, so the farmers were getting worried,” Masaki Takagi, the head of the farmer’s cooperative in Takomachi in Katori district. “It should’ve confirmed the safety of the soil before we started planting. We had to do the testing ourselves.”
Soil Tests

The government advised local authorities in April to carry out soil tests to determine areas safe for planting, Osamu Yoshioka, an official who advises on testing farm produce at the Ministry of Agriculture.

“As far as rice is concerned, we asked for testing in two stages because it’s the nation’s staple,” Yoshioka said. “It’s a random survey because we can’t check everything. I don’t think we’ll see much tainted rice in harvest.”

Farmers in Fukushima were allowed to plant rice on 67,720 hectares of paddies outside the evacuation zones around the Fukushima plant, accounting for production of 363,680 metric tons this year.

“Planting was done in April and May, after the level of radiation in the air had fallen,” said Shigeo Uchida, an agronomist and senior scientist at National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba. “Generally, cesium doesn’t spread much from soil to grains.”
Trading Suspended

Trading in rice futures on the Tokyo Grain Exchange was suspended this week after prices surged by the daily limit, when the bourse relisted the grain for the first time since 1939. Rice rose by its maximum limit the next day on concern radiation will spread to crops and curb supply.

Japan is self-sufficient in rice production and the government protects domestic growers from foreign competition with a tariff of 341 yen ($4.35) a kilogram on imports. The tarriff is eight times the latest international price for rice quoted by the International Monetary Fund.

The government plans to store 880,000 tons of domestic food-rice in its reserve at the end of June next year, unchanged from a year earlier.

The importance of rice goes beyond its status as a food staple. Cultivating the crop is so labor-intensive that families often pooled together to grow and harvest each other’s crops and combined their irrigation systems. It was this shared experience that may have fostered the notion of “wa,” or harmony, that remains a key element of Japanese culture today, academics say.
Symbolism of Rice

Japan’s first emperor is also said to have been a farmer and could communicate with gods to secure a good harvest, according to Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin and author of “Rice as Self.”

Every November, the emperor has a meal of newly harvested rice in one of the most important festivities in the royal calendar, according to the Imperial Household Agency.

This year, farmers like Ohki will lead prayers for a safe harvest.

“I was stunned when spinach grown in my area was found to be tainted,” Ohki said last last week, while watching testers hack off rice stalks on his farm to carry out checks. “I had finished planting by then and the future suddenly looked very bleak.”
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Do I Dare to Eat a Peach? Fukushima Citizens and Farmers Struggle with Food Safety

Call it slipper security. To get clearance into the food radiation testing center at Fukushima Agricultural Technology Center, you have to change shoes three times. The first time, you get a black pair. The second time, after your heels are scanned by a Geiger counter and deemed radiation-free, you change into a pair of plastic house shoes emblazoned with a yellow nuclear symbol. And finally, before entering the testing lab itself, the indoor footwear urgency rating is kicked up a notch with a red nuclear label.

No precaution is too small when the eyes of the nation are on you. Since June 20, local government officials have been trying to make sure every kind of food grown, slaughtered or caught on a line in Fukushima prefecture has been brought to this laboratory to be tested for iodine 131 and cesium 137 and 134. All three radioactive elements were spewed into the atmosphere after the explosions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in March, settling across the bucolic countryside surrounding the plant in a tasteless, odorless and potentially toxic dust. The exact amount and degree of the contamination is still unknown, but the radiation has shown up in local foods like (censor)ake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, fish, beef, and spinach, among others.

Every day at the lab, government employees fan out to Fukushima farms to gather samples from the fields. In a clean, white room that smells like fresh cucumber and onion, workers in grey jumpsuits and latex gloves use long razor blades to mince everything from apples to beef to rice into a fine roux. The specimens are then ferried in small plastic containers into the lead bellies of the four-foot-tall analysis machines, where, after 33 minutes, the verdict comes in on an adjacent computer screen. Since June, as many as 5000 samples have been analyzed before shipping out to consumers around Japan.

Most have been well below the legal limit of 500 becquerels of radiation per kilogram. But is ‘most' enough? In July, reports surfaced that beef shipped out of the Fukushima region and distributed widely around the nation contained cesium levels well above that limit. The cattle, which the local government says had been tested externally for radiation, were evidently given irradiated feed. Today, beef shipments from Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Tochigi prefectures have been banned until new inspection plans for cattle are submitted and approved by Tokyo.

The Fukushima government initiated the testing program to prevent this kind of thing from happening. But with four machines, ten staff trained to use them and hundreds of miles of farmland to monitor, the task is overwhelming. (The center recently got the greenlight to purchase six more machines, which are made by the U.S. company Canberra, but is still waiting on their delivery.) Samples of local beef were being tested before the irradiated shipments were discovered, but radiation was not detected, says Kiichi Tairako, the general manager for the promotion of agricultural safety at the center.

Experts agree that the beef did not pose any health risk to those who accidentally ate an irradiated steak or two, but a regular diet of food tainted with iodine or cesium could increase a person's risk of cancer. By halting beef shipments, one problem has been temporarily contained. (Selling fish caught in Fukushima's waters is still banned.) Containing the fear that other food is also contaminated will not be as easy. “Some people are concerned that the beef will be a setback,” Tairako says. Some of the items the center has analyzed have been found to have high radiation levels exceeding the legal limit, but those have been in the minority.“I hope consumers will understand that," he says.

They haven't come around yet. Throughout Fukushima City, wooden crates of fragrant pink peaches wait, nestled in their individual wrapping, for customers to take them home. But sales of the region's famous summer fruit are slipping, says the local chamber of commerce, despite the extra levels of testing that the both the city and the prefecture have done in the orchards this summer to ensure people they are safe to eat.

A newly formed non-profit in Fukushima City has started its own food testing. An anti-nuclear group in France donated a small analysis machine to the group, and now every day residents bring food from the market or their gardens in for a free test into the Citizens' Radioactivity Monitoring Station (CRMS). Most of the tests show radiation levels well under the legal limit of 500 bequerels per kilo. But on a recent Saturday morning at CRMS headquarters, Hiroshi Hasegawa, a volunteer, points out a plastic container of (censor)ake mushrooms that had measured 8850. The ground (censor)ake sits on a bookshelf, sealed with a strip of yellow tape. The group is not sure what to do with it. “I was very nervous when I had to grind it,” Hasegawa says. “Don't touch it.”

It's the farmers, of course, who are hanging onto the bottom rung of all this uncertainty. And they're not hanging on by much. Before May, all agricultural shipments out of the prefecture were prohibited. That ban has been lifted, but farmers' products, if they test positive for cesium or iodine at the laboratory, could still be worthless. “I'm worried about my rice,” says Kuniei Kanno, a farmer in the town of Koriyama, south of Fukushima City. Though he lost his entire spring broccoli harvest under the ban, he went ahead and planted his rice paddies. His land does not have high radiation levels, but he still doesn't know yet whether the rice it yields will be legal to sell or not.

It's a gamble that hundreds of rice farmers throughout Fukushima have chosen to take. Like their peaches, Fukushima farmers are famours for their rice, and even this year electric green spouts of young rice paddies occupy every flat patch of land in the region. The government has promised the farmers will be compensated for their losses — along with fishermen and tens of thousands of evacuees — but Kanno, for one, has yet to see any money. Last week, Japan's parliament approved a plan to help TEPCO tackle its enormous compensation bill to Japanese citizens that could run as high as $100 billion. Under the new law, the government will put $26 billion annually into a fund that will also receive contributions by TEPCO and Japan's other nuclear power plants.

What is less clear is whether the money will come in time. Fukushima's farmers will need to stay solvent until the trust between the people and land — a centuries-old bond that was broken this March, not by a natural disaster but a man-made one — is rebuilt test by test, harvest by harvest. “They say, ‘We're going to pay, we're going to pay, we're going to pay,” Kanno says. “But they never say when.”


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Water treatment system enjoys record-high 77 percent operating rate

The operating rate of a radioactive water treatment system at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant stood at a record 77.4 percent between Aug. 3 and 9 after the system became operational on June 28, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) announced Aug. 10.

But Junichi Matsumoto, deputy chief of TEPCO’s nuclear power division, said there may be a slight delay in achieving the utility’s objective of treating radioactive water through the circulating injection cooling system within this year due to a series of mishaps.

The plant operator said the system treated about 6,500 cubic meters during the Aug. 3-9 period, topping its target of 5,040 cubic meters, after it replaced a sludge-filled piping unit with a new one.

But lightning and malfunctioned pumps temporarily stalled treatment operations, bringing the amount of contaminated water to 121,140 cubic meters as of Aug. 9, down by only 2,740 cubic meters from July 12. TEPCO said it plans to gradually raise the system’s operating rate to 80 to 90 percent.


Meanwhile, a water circulation cooling system for the spent fuel pool at the plant’s No. 1 reactor began Aug. 10, attaining the objective of operating the cooling system at fuel pools at the No. 1 to 4 reactors. The objective is part of “Step 2″ (three to six months from mid-July) of a road map, unveiled July 19, to bring the crisis under control.

TEPCO fixed a faulty measuring instrument and succeeded in checking the fuel pool’s temperature inside the No. 1 reactor. It stood at 46 degrees centigrade at 5 p.m. on Aug. 10.
Edited by Audi-Tek, August 12 2011, 05:50 PM.
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Clash over restarting Tomari nuclear reactor averted



JAPAN | JAPAN TIMES | 12 August 2011

SAPPORO — The industry ministry narrowly avoided clashing with Hokkaido over restarting commercial operations of a Tomari nuclear power plant reactor by opting to await Gov. Harumi Takahashi’s consent.

After the No. 3 reactor cleared the final test to check its safety Thursday, industry minister Banri Kaieda told reporters he hopes to issue a certificate on the completion of regular checks “as soon as possible” after winning Hokkaido’s consent.

Takahashi is expected to give her approval in the coming days after discussing the issue with local governments.

But the move will delay by several days the completion of an unusually long scheduled inspection process and the resumption of commercial operations at the reactor.

The reactor is already generating electricity at full capacity under a so-called adjustment operation in the inspection’s final phase, so restarting commercial operations would effectively make no difference in terms of its electricity output.

But the local government has expressed caution about approving the restart of commercial operations due to the public’s heightened concerns about nuclear power.

As the reactor 3 adjustment operation has already taken about five months, the industry ministry urged Hokkaido Electric Power Co. to apply for the final test of the inspection process to allow commercial operations to resume.

But after Takahashi criticized the ministry’s move for “disregarding” the safety of locals, Kaieda phoned the governor Wednesday to inform her that he would “await” her decision.
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Nuke regulation inadequate, admits sacked NISA chief

Posted on August 12, 2011 by fukushimanewsresearch

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JAPAN | JAPAN TIMES | 12 August 2011

The Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant crisis showed regulations are inadequate, sacked Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency chief Nobuaki Terasaka said, but he insisted he did his best to deal with the world’s worst nuclear accident in 25 years.


At his last new conference Wednesday before he officially leaves the post Friday, Terasaka admitted “not enough” had been done in some respects, while there “may have been other ways” to respond to the crisis. But he did not elaborate, saying the government’s accident investigation committee is looking into the cause of the incident triggered by the March 11 megaquake and tsunami.

“We have done our best to respond to the accident since March 11 in the face of various criticism. The evaluation (of our response) should be conducted elsewhere,” said Terasaka.

As NISA is under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Terasaka has become the third top METI official to be effectively fired over the handling of the crisis. He will be replaced Friday by Hiroyuki Fukano, METI’s director general for commerce and distribution policy.

METI and NISA have been under fire since the crisis started over such issues as delayed public announcements, power supply problems and alleged attempts to manipulate public opinion to show support for nuclear power.

It was unclear how Terasaka felt about being sacked, as he said only that he heard industry minister Banri Kaieda wanted to refresh the leadership to deal with issues concerning nuclear safety regulations. Terasaka only said he “accepted the story as it is.”

But Terasaka did say he was aware of the possibility that reactor fuel had been damaged “in some way” on March 12. The government admitted in June three reactors had suffered meltdowns.
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Half of rice harvest to be tested for cesium

JAPAN TIMES | 12 August 2011

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The rice harvest is traditionally a time of festivities celebrated even by the Emperor, as farmers reap the rewards of four months of labor in a 2,000-year-old tradition. But not this year, with radiation seeping into the soil.

Farmers growing half of the nation’s rice crop are awaiting the results of tests to see if their produce has been contaminated by radiation from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Rice, used in almost all meals and the key ingredient in sake, is being tested before the harvest starts this month. Radiation exceeding safety levels has so far been found in produce including spinach, tea and beef.

Shigehide Oki, a 61-year-old farmer near Tokyo, this week passed the first hurdle after a preliminary round of tests showed no trace elements of radioactive cesium, the main source of concern. Losing his crop of about 80 tons of rice would “destroy” him, he said.

“I’m very relieved and I’m telling customers that I can be 90 percent certain my rice is safe,” said Oki, who’s been farming rice for 40 years in Katori, Chiba Prefecture, about 190 km south of the nuclear station. “But I’m also saying it’s not the end yet because we still have to pass the main part of the survey after the harvest.”

The government is asking 17 prefectures in eastern Japan to test farmland for radiation, an area accounting for 54 percent of domestic rice production. If initial surveys show a certain level of radiation, wider tests will be carried out, the government said.

Authorities will ban shipments from areas where they find rice containing cesium exceeding 500 becquerels per kg, the government’s legal limit for grains. Any contaminated produce will be destroyed.

“Rice may be the next product where contamination will be discovered, as it’s being grown in tainted soil and water,” Yoko Tomiyama, chairwoman of the Consumers Union of Japan, said in an interview. “Higher radiation levels have been detected in prefectures beyond Fukushima.”

Authorities in Chiba on Tuesday said the first five of 49 preliminary tests, including Oki’s farm, didn’t detect radiation in rice, according to the prefecture’s website. Rice from 277 areas in the prefecture will be tested after the harvest, the website said.

Five months into the nuclear disaster, the government is still struggling to build a centralized system to check for contaminated food, leaving local authorities and farmers to conduct voluntary tests.

“The government didn’t have guidelines to prepare for possible problems and has only been reacting to developments, so the farmers were getting worried,” said Masaki Takagi, head of the farmer’s cooperative in the Takomachi district in Katori. “It should’ve confirmed the safety of the soil before we started planting. We had to do the testing ourselves.”

The government advised local authorities in April to carry out soil tests to determine areas safe for planting, said Osamu Yoshioka, an official who advises on testing farm produce at the farm ministry.

“As far as rice is concerned, we asked for testing in two stages because it’s the nation’s staple,” Yoshioka said. “It’s a random survey because we can’t check everything. I don’t think we’ll see much tainted rice in the harvest.”

Farmers in Fukushima were allowed to plant rice on 67,720 hectares of paddies outside the evacuation zones around the Fukushima plant, accounting for production of 363,680 metric tons this year.

“Planting was done in April and May, after the level of radiation in the air had fallen,” said Shigeo Uchida, an agronomist at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba. “Generally, cesium doesn’t spread much from soil to grains.”

Trading in rice futures on the Tokyo Grain Exchange was suspended this week after prices surged by the daily limit, when the bourse relisted the grain for the first time since 1939. Rice rose by its maximum limit the next day on concern radiation will spread to crops and curb supply.

Japan is self-sufficient in rice production and the government protects domestic growers from foreign competition with a tariff of ¥341 per kg on imports. The tariff is eight times the latest international price for rice quoted by the International Monetary Fund.

The government plans to store 880,000 tons of domestic rice for food in its reserve at the end of next June, the same as this year.

The importance of rice goes beyond its status as a food staple. Cultivating the crop is so labor-intensive that families often pooled together to grow and harvest each other’s crops and combined their irrigation systems. It was this shared experience that may have fostered the notion of “wa,” or harmony, that remains a key element of Japanese culture today, some academics say.

Japan’s first Emperor is also said to have been a farmer and could communicate with gods to secure a good harvest, according to Emiko Onuki-Tierney, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin.

Every November, the Emperor has a meal of newly harvested rice in one of the most important festivities in the royal calendar, according to the Imperial Household Agency.

This year, farmers like Oki will lead prayers for a safe harvest.

“I was stunned when spinach grown in my area was found to be tainted,” Oki said last week, while watching testers hack off rice stalks on his farm to carry out checks. “I had finished planting by then and the future suddenly looked very bleak.”
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Radiation measurement experts trained


JAPAN | NHK | 12 August 2011

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant plans to train about 4,000 workers as experts on the safety of irradiated areas.

The government plans to consider lifting evacuation orders for zones which are deemed safe after it achieves the second phase of bringing the plant under control. In the second stage, the government aims to significantly reduce the amount of radiation emitted from the plant.

To determine the safety of the 20-kilometer no-entry zone and the evacuated areas, a large number of experts on radiation exposure will be required. Tokyo Electric Power Company is now training staff for that purpose.

TEPCO plans to have about 4,000 workers take the training by the end of the year. Around 1,900 workers have already completed it.

The Natural Resources and Energy Agency also plans to train 250 personnel by year-end.

TEPCO will have the experts control exposure for workers at the Fukushima plant and measure radiation levels to confirm the evacuated zones are safe enough for people to return home.
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Govt releases plan to deal with N-ash

JAPAN | YOMIURI | 12 August 2011

The Environment Ministry has drafted a plan to bury the ash of incinerated radioactive debris and sludge that is contaminated with more than 8,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram in a carefully regulated manner to prevent leakage in final disposal sites.

The ministry submitted the draft plan to the Disaster-Related Waste Safety Assessment Committee, its advisory body, on Wednesday. The ministry will officially decide its policy on how to bury the radioactive ash by the end of August at the earliest.

In June, the ministry announced it would allow ash with radioactive cesium levels measuring less than 8,000 becquerels per kilogram to be buried. At that time, the ministry advised that ash exceeding that amount be temporarily stored.

Regarding how to bury ash exceeding 8,000 becquerels, the draft plan released on Wednesday said it is necessary to ensure that the contaminated ash would not mix with rainwater or groundwater.

The draft plan has suggested several possibilities, such as using disposal sites with roofs to shield the ash from rain water, a drainage treatment system to prevent underground water from being contaminated, placing the ash in highly durable containers or solidifying ash with cement.

For ash contaminated with more than 100,000 becquerels per kilogram, the draft urged that isolated disposal sites similar to those used for toxic heavy metals be used.

The ministry did not expect that ash with more than 8,000 becquerels per kilogram would be detected outside of Fukushima Prefecture.

However, since late June, ash with more than 8,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram was found in incineration facilities in Tokyo, Chiba and other prefectures.
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Local govts worried by N-ash



JAPAN | YOMIURI | 12 August 2011

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Bags of radioactive incineration ash stored in a garbage processing plant in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, on Wednesday.

CHIBA–With residents living near final disposal sites voicing concern and some local governments refusing to accept it, the Tohoku region is reconsidering its arrangement to store ash–some of it radioactive–from the Tokyo megalopolis in its local landfills, it has been learned.

In Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, up to 47,400 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium was found in ash at two garbage processing plants in July.

The figure is about six times the government’s interim limit for ash to be disposed of in land reclamation.

But the Matsudo government did not report this information to Kosakamachi, Akita Prefecture, which accepted and finally disposed of the ash.

As a result, 39.5 tons of the problematic ash was buried at a Kosakamachi landfill facility.

The Kosakamachi town government consequently sent a letter of protest to the mayor of Matsudo. The letter said Kosakamachi would refuse accepting any more ash from the city, canceling an agreement made on March 1.

The letter was harshly critical of the Matsudo city government, saying: “The ash was shipped [to us] before the radioactivity results were known. [Matsudo] neglected its responsibility as the ash producer. We feel this situation is extremely regrettable.”

Residents of Kosakamachi also voiced fears about the issue.

“I fear that rainwater may reach the ash and seep into river and pollute our drinking water,” said Yuko Asari, a 55-year-old company employee living near the landfill.

Six containers carrying about 60 tons of the ash and other garbage were stopped near a JR train station in Akita Prefecture and then sent back to Matsudo on Monday.

Ash containing radioactive cesium exceeding the interim limit was also detected in other towns in northwestern Chiba Prefecture, where radiation levels are high compared with surrounding areas.

Up to about nine times the limit was detected in Kashiwa, and up to 3.5 times in Nagareyama.

In Matsudo, about 30 tons of radioactive ash is being temporarily stored in a parking lot and other places. But the city government has said the storage space will become full by the end of this month.

Similarly, about 140 tons of ash is being stored in Nagareyama. The city government has said those storage facilities will reach capacity by about mid-September.
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Giant tent to go up over Japan nuclear reactor

TOKYO – The operator of Japan's damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is building a huge tent to cover one of the worst-hit reactors, officials said Friday.

Officials hope the cover will keep radioactive materials that have already leaked from spreading, prevent rainwater seepage and offer a barrier from possible leaks or blasts in the future.

The tent is being erected to provide a temporary replacement for the No. 1 reactor's outer housing shell, which was destroyed in an explosion caused by high pressure the day after Japan's deadly earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Construction of the tent and its foundation began this week, Koji Watanabe, a spokesman for the power utility, said Friday.

The work couldn't begin until now because the location was too dangerous for workers to operate in.

The tent is made up of airtight polyester. It will stand 177 feet (54 meters) tall and stretch 154 feet (47 meters) in length. It is held up by a metal frame.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials have struggled to come up with ways to mitigate the dangers from the plant since the disaster struck five months ago, sending reactors into meltdowns, releasing radiative particles into the environment and causing the world's world nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.

Work at the plant has been hindered by the continuing threat of radiation to workers.

Earlier this month, TEPCO said an area where potentially lethal levels of radiation were detected near Unit 1 has been sealed.

It said radiation exceeded 10 sieverts — 40 times the highest level allowed for an emergency workers to be exposed to — at two locations near a duct connected to a ventilation stack. The area required no immediate work and was closed off.

If the tent over reactor No. 1 proves successful, similar coverings will be constructed over other reactors on the plant. The areas around the other reactors are also highly risky to work in.

The tent is expected to be completed by the end of September, Watanabe said.
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Heat Wave in Japan on Thursday, 11 August, 2011


A blistering summer heatwave in Japan has claimed four lives and seen 900 people hospitalised this week, media said Friday, amid an energy saving campaign due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The mercury has risen above 35 degrees centigrade (95 degrees Fahrenheit) for three days in a row in much of Japan, where the thermostats of most air-conditioners have been turned down to reduce electricity consumption. More than two-thirds of Japan's nuclear reactors are offline five months after the March 11 quake and tsunami sparked the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Four people died of heat stroke on Thursday -- two farmers, a security guard and a construction worker -- said the Asahi daily. More than 900 people have been taken to hospital with heatstroke symptoms, including about 20 in serious condition, said the Kyodo News agency. Since the start of July, more than 21,000 people in Japan have been rushed to hospital due to the summertime heat, and 32 of them have died, according to data from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. This weekend is one of the busiest travel times of the year in Japan, when millions return to their home towns for the Obon festival to honour their ancestors, and when many take their summer holiday.
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Mushrooms Join Growing List of Radioactive Threats to Japan’s Food Chain

Mushrooms joined the threats to Japan’s food chain from radiation spewed by Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, as the country expands efforts to limit the effects of the disaster.

Japan is under pressure to enhance food inspections as it has no centralized system for detecting radiation contamination. About two-thirds of Japan’s prefectures now plan to check rice crops, the Mainichi newspaper reported yesterday, citing its own survey. Half of Japan’s rice is grown within range of emissions from the crippled nuclear plant, and farmers are awaiting the results of tests before harvesting begins this month.

“By strengthening inspection on rice, we want to make sure only safe produce are in the market,” Agriculture Minister Michihiko Kano said at a press conference on Aug. 12.

Nameko mushrooms grown in the open air in Soma, a city about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the plant damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, were found to contain nine times the legal limit of cesium, the local government said Aug. 12. Japan’s farm ministry asked growers in Fukushima prefecture to refrain from harvesting mushrooms off raw wood left outside, public broadcaster NHK reported Aug. 13.

Authorities in Fukushima and neighboring prefectures are conducting spot checks on a range of products in cooperation with local farmers. Radiation exceeding safety levels has been found in produce, tea, milk, fish and beef sourced as far as 360 kilometers from the nuclear plant.
Importing Vegetables

Kansai Super Market Ltd. (9919) bought a 30 percent stake in Masami Cattle Ranch Inc. in California, to enable the farm to expand production and supply vegetables to Kansai stores in Japan, according to a statement the Hyogo prefecture-based supermarket chain made to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The European Union plans to strengthen radiation inspection on imported seafood, both from waters near Japan and from farther out in the Pacific, NHK said Aug. 13.

Levels of cesium-134 in seawater near the Fukushima plant’s No. 3 reactor rose to levels 30 times the allowed safety standards last month, according to tests performed by Tokyo Electric Power Co, NHK reported at the time.

Japan may join a U.S.-led treaty under which governments agree to prevent excessive claims against other members for compensation from nuclear accidents, the Nikkei newspaper said yesterday, without giving the source of the information.
Contaminated Trees

The nation’s forestry agency urged Fukushima prefecture to prevent shipments of any wood or charcoal that has been stored outdoors since the nuclear crisis, the Yomiuri newspaper said two days ago. Jiji Press reported that the farm ministry ordered the local authorities to conduct tests on trees used for mushroom growing.

Last month, hay contaminated with as much as 690,000 becquerels a kilogram, compared with a government safety standard of 300 becquerels, was found to have been fed to cattle. Beef with unsafe levels of the radioactive element was detected in four prefectures, according to the health ministry.

Japan’s wheat crop will have little impact from the nuclear disaster as cesium levels in the roots of the plants are low, and the effect on the wheat spikes for consumption are likely to be small, NHK said yesterday, citing a Tokyo University study.

Radioactive iodine has been detected in the thyroids of half of 1,000 Fukushima children, NHK reported, citing findings from a group led by Satoshi Tashiro, a professor at Hiroshima University. Tashiro said the children should continue to be monitored though the levels are low and not thought to pose a threat to health, according to the report posted Aug. 13 on the broadcaster’s website.

Prolonged exposure to radiation in the air, ground and food can cause leukemia and other cancers, according to the London- based World Nuclear Association.
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Japan Prepares for Its First Import of Radioactive Waste Since Earthquake

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The vessel Pacific Grebe set sail Aug. 3 to Japan from Britain with more than 30 metric tons of radioactive waste on board.


Japan is preparing to receive its first import of highly radioactive waste since March, when an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The vessel Pacific Grebe set sail Aug. 3 to Japan from Britain with more than 30 metric tons of radioactive waste on board. The cargo, Japanese spent fuel reprocessed in the U.K., is returning sealed in 76 stainless steel canisters packed into 130-ton containers. It will arrive early next month at the Mutsu-Ogawara port in northern Honshu for delivery to Japan Nuclear Fuel’s nearby Rokkasho storage site.

About 400 kilometers south of the port, thousands of workers are struggling to contain radiation leaks from the meltdown of three reactors at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant, which amounts to 300 tons of waste.

The Fukushima disaster and the voyage of the 5,100-ton Pacific Grebe highlights the dilemma facing Japan and the world’s nuclear industry: Radioactive waste is deadly and needs to be locked away for thousands of years, so how can any storage site be guaranteed safe and permanent?

“It’s a very big problem with no acceptable solution,” said Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster’s school of biomedical sciences, who studied Sweden’s nuclear waste storage proposals. “And more waste is being produced every year.”

The issue ensnared U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009 when he canceled plans to build a permanent repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada due to opposition from local residents and politicians. That was after 20 years of work and an investment of $10 billion.
Not Permanent

Japan’s Rokkasho isn’t designated as a permanent storage site for nuclear waste -- despite costing almost 3 trillion yen ($39 billion) to build its five facilities on 740 hectares (1,828 acres) and having 2,450 staff on site. Japan won’t have a permanent site operational until the 2040’s, according to Yuichiro Akashi, a spokesman for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan. The group aims to identify a location by 2017, he said.

“It’s a tough situation considering how long it takes to build one,” Akashi said. “A final repository is something we can’t do without so the work will continue.”

Meantime, radioactive waste is piling up and Rokkasho’s storage space for spent nuclear fuel is more than 90 percent full; it has capacity for 3,000 tons and contains 2,834 tons, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. spokesman Hirotake Tatehana said.

Rokkasho, three kilometers from the Pacific coast in Aomori prefecture, stores two main types of waste: spent fuel from reactors, and what’s left over after spent fuel is processed to extract uranium and plutonium for reuse. The latter is what’s arriving on the Pacific Grebe.
Storage Shortage

Japan contracted the U.K. and France to process its fuel in the 1970s and the waste from the procedure is shipped back for storage. The Pacific Grebe cargo is the second of 11 that will return a total of 900 canisters of waste, each weighing about 400 kilograms. Japan is now building its own spent fuel processing plant at Rokkasho.

For waste from processed spent fuel, Rokkasho can hold 2,880 canisters and has reserve capacity for another 3,000, said Tatehana.

Before Fukushima, Japan’s 54 reactors produced 1,000 tons of spent fuel a year, which after processing would fill Rokkasho’s capacity within four years, according to Bloomberg News calculations. One ton of spent fuel creates one canister of waste, said Joonhong Ahn, a professor in the nuclear engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Japan’s response to the storage space dilemma for spent fuel is the same as the U.S., which is to keep it in reactor buildings.
Spent Fuel

The fuel is stored in 40-feet deep pools of circulating water that cool the uranium rods removed from reactor cores every three years and block release of radiation. The fuel still contains 20 times the amount of radiation that would kill a human if exposed for one hour, according to U.S. regulators.

“Japan has 1,000 tons of spent fuel coming out of reactors every year, and there are 7 more years before the spent fuel pools are filled,” said Taro Kono, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and opponent of nuclear power.

“Tokyo Electric Power Co. is building a facility that will give us another 5 years, so after 12 years we have no place to put spent fuel,” said Kono. “At that point nuclear reactors will be shut because there’s no place for the fuel.”
Work Suspended

Construction of the Tokyo Electric storage site in Mutsu city, about 40 kilometers north of Rokkasho, has been suspended since the Fukushima disaster.

In the U.S., 78 percent of the almost 72,000 tons of spent fuel generated during the past four decades is in cooling pools across the country, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Another 2,000 tons of spent fuel is added each year, the Institute for Public Policy estimates.

Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami showed the vulnerability of spent fuel cooling pools. The tsunami knocked out power, which led to hydrogen explosions that blew the roof off reactor buildings exposing spent fuel pools as they lost cooling water and leaked radiation. Unlike fuel inside a reactor, the pools have no blast-proof containment.

Loss of water in the spent fuel storage pool at the No. 4 reactor was the biggest risk at the Fukushima plant, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chief Gregory Jaczko said March 17.
Spent Fuel

Reactor pool No. 4 contained 142 tons of fuel that would burn on exposure to the atmosphere and release radiation, Marvin Resnikoff, a nuclear physicist for Washington-based Physicians for Social Responsibility, said in a telephone press conference the same day.

Moving spent fuel from pools inside reactor buildings will be a priority, the NRC said in a review of the U.S. nuclear industry after Fukushima.

Companies such as closely held Holtec International Corp., based in Jupiter, Florida, may benefit from that decision. It has a process that stores spent fuel in steel and concrete casks that cost as much as $2 million each, according to the NRC. The casks are typically still stored in nuclear power plants.

After the scrapping of Yucca Mountain as a storage site, Obama set up a commission to find a solution. In a draft report on July 29, it suggested that communities “volunteer to be considered to host a new nuclear-waste management facility.”

Japan’s attempt at that approach didn’t work. In 2007, the mayor of Toyo town on the southern island of Shikoku ran for reelection on a plan to host a nuclear waste dump in exchange for about 2 trillion yen in government and corporate subsidies over 60 years. He lost the election and the plan was rejected.
Rokkasho Challenge

“The idea that these facilities would be around for thousands of years would not be a popular topic,” said Michael Friedlander, who has 13 years of experience running nuclear power plants in the U.S. “The reality of it is until there is an alternative that’s what we are looking at.”

Japan also faces technological challenges in processing spent fuel. Reprocessing at Rokkasho has been delayed 18 times since 1997 and is now due to start in Oct. 2012, according to Japan Nuclear Fuel.

Another proposed solution to the waste problem is a so- called fast-breeder reactor called Monju, the Japanese god of wisdom, designed to use processed fuel from Rokkasho. That’s also faced repeated delays. In theory, a reactor like Monju would “breed” more fissionable fuel than it consumes and reduce waste. In reality, Monju isn’t working, LDP’s Kono said.

“Back in 1967 the government was saying that a fast breeder reactor would be ready in 20 years, in the 1970s they said it will take 30 years. What will happen in 2050 is that they’ll say it will probably be available in 70 years,” Kono said. “We’re not going to have it, and we know it.”
Never Made Sense

Monju’s problems include a fire in 1995 that shut it for 15 years, and in June Japan’s atomic energy agency extracted a 3.3 metric ton fuel-exchange device that had been stuck inside the reactor vessel for about 10 months following a malfunction.

“The Japanese reprocessing and fast breeder program has never made sense from safety, security or economic perspectives,” Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist for the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists in the U.S., said in an e-mail. “It makes even less sense now after Fukushima.”

Elsewhere, the storage search continues. After three decades of research, the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co. picked the town of Forsmark in March to build a repository that will have corrosion-resistant copper canisters buried 500 meters in crystalline basement rock, isolated from human contact for at least 100,000 years. Its analysis covers “periods as long as a million years,” according to the company’s website.
‘Silly’

It’s “silly” to assume the waste will not leak from the canisters and pollute the Baltic Sea over such a long period, Ulster University’s Busby said.

While building a storage facility takes two to three years and can be done to withstand known tsunami and earthquakes, the dangers of the future cannot be forecast, U.S. nuclear engineer Friedlander said. Guaranteeing a permanent site is difficult, because no one can prove that it can last thousands of years.

Yet, endless debate on long-term storage doesn’t provide a solution to the nuclear waste that is here and needs to be dealt with, Friedlander said.

“How do you know that that is the strongest earthquake you could ever experience and how do you know that you could provide security for a hundred thousand years? It turns into an academic discussion. How do you know anything?

‘‘You do the best job you can with the information and materials that you have available to you today. And you just decide that you are going to do it.’’
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Fukushima farmers in a jam / Fruit growers see orders plunge due to fears over radiation


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The Yomiuri Shimbun/Shigeru Yui picks peaches at his farm in the Ozaso district of Fukushima on Monday.


FUKUSHIMA--As Shigeru Yui carefully picked a plump peach from a tree on his farm in the Ozaso district in Fukushima last week, he was impressed with what he saw.

"The peaches are large and contain a lot of sugar. They grew really well," he said, unable to suppress a smile.

But not everything is quite so rosy for Yui and other farmers in Fukushima Prefecture, which is often called the "fruit kingdom" and is the nation's second-largest producer of peaches.

Shipments of Fukushima's signature akatsuki peaches would normally be peaking about now.

The fruit is a popular summer gift, but orders have plummeted this year, even though the levels of radioactive material detected in the fruit since the crisis began at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are much lower than government-set interim limits.

Unless consumers stop shunning this produce, the problems afflicting peach farmers could soon spread to growers of other fruit--such as pears and apples--whose shipments are scheduled to peak later this month.

Yui, 54, harvested this year's first akatsuki peaches last Monday. The peach has a distinctive red tinge, and the branches were groaning under the weight of the fruit.

Based on advice from a local JA group agricultural cooperative, Yui carefully and deliberately plucked his peaches so that not even a tiny quantity of radioactive material would get on his fruit.

To prevent his fruit from touching the tree's leaves, Yui placed containers for harvested peaches on the back of his truck, not on the ground.

Radiation checks on Akatsuki peaches produced in Fukushima on Aug. 2 and 3 detected 23 to 54 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram--far lower the interim limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram.

In July, as in usual years, Yui notified about trusted 600 clients--some of whom he has dealt with for about 30 years--by letter that his fruit was ready.

But this year, he also enclosed a map showing his farm is more than 60 kilometers from the troubled nuclear plant, and copies of certificates showing prefectural government checks guaranteeing the safety of his peaches.

Yui also sent peaches to an inspection institute in Hyogo Prefecture for checks to confirm they were safe.

Despite his efforts, Yui has received only 30 percent of the orders for gift peaches that he would get in a normal year.

"I want to raise this figure to 50 percent of last year," Yui said. "The quality of my peaches is even better than usual. I'll be really disappointed if nobody eats them."

Some farmers are in an even more desperate predicament. A 62-year-old fruit farmer in Date in the prefecture has received only 10 percent of orders for gifts compared with past years.

"I feel consumers are shunning Fukushima products," he said.

The prefecture ranked third in national pear production in 2010, and fifth in apple production.

"If other fruit starts suffering due to fears caused by [radiation] rumors, I won't be able to stay in business," the farmer said. "Some of my fellow farmers have said the same thing."

Alarmed by the situation, 60 officials from the prefectural government and JA Zen-noh Fukushima, a prefectural economic organization for farmers of the JA group, in late July distributed 12,000 leaflets explaining peaches and summer vegetables were safe at major supermarkets and 22 shops operated by the organization.

The Fukushima vice governor also visited markets in Sapporo, Osaka and three other cities to beat the drum for peaches grown in the prefecture.

The entities also produced leaflets emphasizing the safety of Fukushima peaches that farmers can include with fruit that is shipped out.

JA Fukushima Chuokai, a prefectural branch of the JA group, and other concerned entities have formed an association to promote local produce and consumption of it inside the prefecture. The association asked about 100 companies with offices in the prefecture to use peaches grown in the prefecture as summer gifts.

Hajime Yoshida, chief of the prefectural government's farm products distribution division, said a lot was at stake.

"If Fukushima's peaches, which are famous nationwide, don't sell, then no farm product grown in our prefecture will stand a chance. We'll do everything we can," Yoshida said.
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Team to bore into tectonic plates


An international research team will use the deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu to bore into an area where two tectonic plates meet to study the movements of the plates that caused the Great East Japan Earthquake, according to sources.

The vessel will drill about 1,000 meters through the seabed in waters off Miyagi Prefecture in an area of greatest tectonic movement at the time of the March 11 earthquake, and bedrock samples will be examined. The seabed is from 6,000 to 7,000 meters below sea level.

The research, the first of its kind, will be conducted next spring at the earliest. The team hopes the study will be the first step in revealing the mechanism of the magnitude-9 earthquake.

The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the owner of the Chikyu, will participate in the research from Japan.

The research will be one of the projects conducted by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, which comprises Japan, the United States and 22 other countries.

According to scientists, the tectonic plates are believed to have moved more than 20 meters near the Japan Trench. However, it is unknown why they moved so much.

Some scientists pointed to the possibility that faults branching off from the boundary of the plates also moved, intensifying the tsunami.

The research team believes frictional heat remains at the boundary of the plates and the faults for one or two years after the plates moved. The research team will measure the temperature of the rock and study any deformity caused by heat to learn which faults moved at the time of the earthquake. The team will also study how far the boundary and faults moved, and the speed of the movement.

It will also analyze how stable the plates were before the March 11 earthquake.

According to Hans Larsen, vice president of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, various data have been accumulated since the earthquake, such as earthquake waves and crustal movements.

Larsen said it was important to study the faults and the boundary of the plates soon after the earthquake. If the study determines why the boundary moved so much, it would contribute in discovering the mechanism of giant earthquakes, he said.
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Radiation Bankrupts Japanese Cattle Ranch With $5.6 Billion in Liabilities
Aug 15, 2011 10:11 AM GMT

Agura Bokujo, operator of a cattle ranch north of Tokyo, became Japan’s biggest corporate failure this year after consumer fears over beef contaminated with radiation damaged sales, Tokyo Shoko Research said.

The closely held company in Tochigi prefecture had 433.1 billion yen ($5.6 billion) in liabilities, Tokyo Shoko said on its website today, citing Agura’s application for bankruptcy protection on Aug. 9.

In its earnings report for the year ended March 2011, Agura had liabilities of 62 billion yen, said Kazufumi Masuda, a spokesman for Tokyo Shoko, which tracks corporate bankruptcy data.

Radiation from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has entered Japan’s food chain in recent months, contaminating products from beef to milk and fish. Cattle with unsafe levels of radiation have been found in four Japanese prefectures after they were fed with hay contaminated with as much as 690,000 becquerels a kilogram, compared with a government safety standard of 300 becquerels.

The discovery rattled consumer confidence after the government, which had assured shoppers that food sold in the market was safe, confirmed radiation contaminated beef had been sold in stores. Companies affected included Aeon Co., Japan’s biggest supermarket chain.

Sales at Agura Bokujo were damaged by the discovery, Tokyo Shoko said in a statement last week, and followed a drop in demand since the discovery of foot-and-mouth disease in southern Miyazaki prefecture last year, the statement said.

Food containing radioactive cesium or iodine that exceeded the official standards has been found as far as 360 kilometers (224 miles) from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station, which began leaking radiation after the station was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Japan’s government is still trying to put together a centralized system to check for radiation contamination of food, leaving local authorities and farmers conducting voluntary tests.
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Japan using Fukushima people as human Guinnea Pigs

Video Link ........ http://youtu.be/rr2PmjdpLqM
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Japan hiding results of Fukushima children’s thyroid cancer screenings in new information blackout
Part of: Nuclear meltdown in Japan , Access to information

Japan's nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Safety Commission, has denied public access to the results of thyroid check-ups for more than 1,000 Fukushima children that were exposed to radiation after the March 11 natural disasters made Fukushima Daiichi the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Charles Digges, 15/08-2011

The incident is yet another unsettling reminder of the tight ties between Japan’s nuclear industry and its regulators, who, it has recently been proved, have distorted, ignored and outright lied about the impact the radiation still spewing from the tsunami-rocked Fukushima Daiichi plant has and will have.

Last week, it was revealed that the Japanese government ignored its own multi-million dollar radiation forecasting system, thereby evacuating hundreds of schoolchildren directly into the path of the radiation plume emitted from the plant. Similarly, no data is available on the exposure on those erroneously settled into zones of high radiation.

According to environmentalists, it will - as in the case of Chernobyl - be a matter of decades before the full extend of radiation on the human population of Japan can begin to be tallied.

Though, while data on human exposure continues to be sparse, it is now clear that the radioactive isotope caesium 137 from Fukushima Daiichi has invaded Japan’s food chain from mushrooms to fish to rice and beef.

Japan has meanwhile indicated it will set up a new nuclear safety watchdog under the auspices of the Environment Ministry as part of an effort to tighten safety standards that were criticized while the watchdog was under the control of the Trade Ministry – something many Japanese officials have told Bellona was a direct conflict of interest.

Critics of Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission’s decision to hush up the thyroid screens have accused the commission of denying the public accurate information about the crisis.

“I think it is vital for the nuclear safety commission to be one hundred percent open about information regarding radiation after the Fukushima accident in order to start to build up its trust among the Japanese public,” said Nils Bøhmer, Bellona’s nuclear physicist, of secreting the children’s thyroid data.

The Nuclear Safety Commission had earlier uploaded the test results of more than 1,000 children who were checked to see if radioactive substances were accumulating in their thyroids.

But it has been revealed that earlier this month the commission removed the data from its website, citing confidentiality factors for the patients involved, ABC news reported.

Japanese health specialists have slammed the commission’s decision, saying the commission fears a negative public reaction to children's exposure to radiation from the crippled Fukushima plant.

Children in Japan had already been put at far higher risk when on May 25, Japan’s Education Ministry weakened nuclear safety standards in schools, allowing children to be exposed to 20 times the amount of radiation than was previously permissible. This means Japanese children are allowed to be exposed to as much radiation annually as a German nuclear power plant worker, or 20 milisieverts a year.

Dose limits for civilians in most countries using nuclear power, including Japan, says the London-based World Nuclear Association, are set at 1 milivsievert per year.

Revelations of another cover-up are especially damaging for the pro-nuke lobby at a time when the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan and the nuclear industry are heavily divided about the future role of nuclear energy in Japan.

Kan – a former environmental campaigner – last week spoke out in favor of phasing out nuclear power in Japan. But his handling of the Fukushima crisis has put his political career in severe doubt and Kan has taken steps toward resignation, but has made no formal announcement about when he may step down.

Japan’s nuclear industry – which arguably, according to observers, has more clout than Kan’s ailing administration – contends Japan will suffer a 20 percent energy shortage if nuclear power plants that went offline on March 11 are not turned back on.

But public outrage and weekly protests numbering in the hundreds of thousands will likely drown that out. Kan himself proposed that he would like 20 percent of Japan’s energy to come from alternative sources during the decade beginning in 2020.

The new nuclear watchdog at the Environment Ministry is hoped by environmentalists to close the revolving door between nuclear industry promotion and regulation.

“I believe that the decision to move the watchdog under the auspices of the Ministry of the Environment is a good step forward in the process of regaining public trust,” said Bellona’s Bøhmer.

That public trust was shattered throughout the ongoing crisis as public officials prevaricated about events and technicians with knowledge of Fukushima Daiichi came forward with shocking, decades-silenced information.

Many engineers that had participated in making the General Electric Mark 1 reactor – which constitutes five of the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi – came forward with accounts that they had been ignored by Japanese and American authorities when they pointed out fatal flaws in the Mark 1’s design.

Of main concern was the small size of the containment vessel that allowed for hydrogen pressure build-up when overheating. Three reactor buildings at Fukushima Daiichi exploded early in the crisis for this reason.

And two weeks before the disaster began, regulators and industry agreed to grant a 10-year operational life span extension to 40-year-old reactor No 1 at Fukushima Daiichi despite the fact that regulators pointed out dozens of flaws in the diesel back up generators for the reactor’s cooling system, including salt water corrosion and metal fractures.

When the 15-metre tsunami hit, primary and back-up power for coolant was completely lost – the single most important factor driving the ongoing crisis. Seawater had to be sprayed and dumped on overheating reactors from fire trucks and helicopters. Now that water is massively contaminated and presenting constant flood threats.

Three months after the fact, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) announced that three of Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors experienced full core meltdowns and massive releases of radiation within the first three days of the catastrophe.

The Environment Ministry, while less powerful than the trade ministry which previously both regulated and promoted nuclear power, is seen as relatively untainted by the collusive ties with industry which plagued the existing safety agency.

The new agency will, as expected, combine the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) with another government advisory body. Experts have warned that the organization change alone may not be enough to restore tattered public faith in Japanese utilities or ensure effective oversight.

"We've decided to separate the nuclear safety regulation division of the NISA from the trade ministry, and unify atomic safety-related affairs under the Environment Ministry," Kan told his ministers, according to Reuters.

The new regulator will bring together 500-600 officials from existing agencies and will consider imposing tougher regulations on nuclear power plants, nuclear crisis minister Goshi Hosono has said.

"It is a theme of national proportions, and a conclusion needed to be reached swiftly," Hosano told reporters on Friday.
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Traces of radioactive sulfur measured at Scripps Pier reveal extent of leakage from damaged Fukushima reactor


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Air laden with radioactive sulfur can be traced to the source near the Fukushima reactor in Japan using data collected by NOAA. Image Credit: Gerardo Dominguez


UCSD Press Release

Atmospheric chemists at UCSD have reported the first quantitative measurement of the amount of radiation leaked from the damaged nuclear reactor in Fukushima, Japan, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.

Their estimate, reported August 15 in the early, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based on a signal sent across the Pacific Ocean when operators of the damaged reactor had to resort to cooling overheated fuel with seawater.

“In any disaster, there’s always a lot to be learned by analysis of what happened,” said senior author Mark Thiemens, dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at UCSD. “We were able to say how many neutrons were leaking out of that core when it was exposed.”

On March 28, 15 days after operators began pumping seawater into the damaged reactors and pools holding spent fuel, Thiemens’ group observed an unprecedented spike in the amount of radioactive sulfur in the air in La Jolla. They recognized that the signal came from the crippled power plant.

Over a four-day period ending on March 28, they measured 1,501 atoms of radioactive sulfur in sulfate particles per cubic meter of air, the highest they’ve ever seen in more than two years of recordings at the site.

Even intrusions from the stratosphere — rare events that bring naturally produced radioactive sulfur toward the Earth’s surface — have produced spikes of only 950 atoms per cubic meter of air at this site.

Neutrons and other products of the nuclear reaction leak from fuel rods when they melt. Seawater pumped into the reactor absorbed those neutrons, which collided with chloride ions in the saltwater. Each collision knocked a proton out of the nucleus of a chloride atom, transforming the atom to a radioactive form of sulfur.

When the water hit the hot reactors, nearly all of it vaporized into steam. To prevent explosions of the accumulating hydrogen, operators vented the steam, along with the radioactive sulfur, into the atmosphere.

In air, sulfur reacts with oxygen to form sulfur dioxide gas and then sulfate particles. Both blew across the Pacific Ocean on prevailing westerly winds to an instrument at the end of the pier at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography where Thiemens’ group continuously monitors atmospheric sulfur.

Using a model based on NOAA’s observations of atmospheric conditions at the time, the team determined the path air took on its way to the pier over the preceding 10 days and found that it led back to Fukushima.

Then they calculated how much radiation must have been released.

“You know how much seawater they used, how far neutrons will penetrate into the seawater and the size of the chloride ion. From that you can calculate how many neutrons must have reacted with chlorine to make radioactive sulfur,” said Antra Priyadarshi, a post-doctoral researcher in Thiemens’ lab and first author of the paper. Gerardo Dominguez, another member of Mark Thiemens’ research group, is also an author of the report.

After accounting for losses along the way as the sulfate particles fell into the ocean, decayed, or eddied away from the stream of air heading toward California, the researchers calculated that 400 billion neutrons were released per square meter surface of the cooling pools, between March 13, when the seawater pumping operation began, and March 20, 2011.

Concentrations a kilometer or so above the ocean near Fukushima must have been about 365 times higher than natural levels to account for the levels they observed in California.

The radioactive sulfur that Thiemens and his team observed must have been produced by partially melted nuclear fuel in the reactors or storage ponds. Although cosmic rays can produce radioactive sulfur in the upper atmosphere, that rarely mixes down into the layer of air just above the ocean, where these measurements were made.

The nuclear reaction within the cooling seawater marked sulfur that originated in a specific place for a discrete period of time. That allowed researchers to time the transformation of sulfur to sulfur dioxide gas and sulfate particles, and measure their transport across the ocean, both important factors for understanding how sulfate pollutants contribute to climate change.

“We’ve really used the injection of a radioactive element to an environment to be a tracer of a very important process in nature for which there are some big gaps in understanding,” Thiemens said.

The event also created a pulse of labeled sulfur that can be traced in the streams and soils in Japan, to better understand how this element cycles through the environment, work that Thiemens and colleagues in Japan have already begun.
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Five Months on: Japan’s Earthquake, Tsunami Cleanup Update (PHOTOS)

By IBTimes Staff Reporter | Aug 16, 2011 02:47 AM EDT

These pictures of a massive ship resting on a roof speak a thousand words about the magnitude of the devastating earthquake that triggered a huge tsunami in Japan early this year.

Debris and wrecks cluttered across coastal regions of Japan following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami of March 11.

The cleanup efforts are going on as Japan strives to recover from the aftermath of the disaster, including nuclear radiation releases around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Below are a few before and after photos of the cleanup progress in some tsunami-stuck areas of Japan.

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Combination photo shows a boat sitting on top of a building on March 28, 2011 and the same building with the boat removed on August 13, 2011 following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck Otsuchi on March 11, 2011.
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A combination photo shows a ship in a devastated area of Kesennuma on March 17, 2011 and August 12 , 2011 following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that stuck the area on March 11, 2011.
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A combination photo shows a street in Kesennuma on March 17, 2011 and August 12, 2011 following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck the area on March 11, 2011.
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Combination photo shows rescue workers searching through rubble in front of a Shinto shrine in Otsuchi on March 14, 2011 and the same area cleared of debris on August 13, 2011 following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck the area on March 11, 2011.
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Combination photo shows damage in Rikuzentakata on April 2, 2011 and the same scene cleared of debris on August 14, 2011 following the devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck the area on March 11, 2011.
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Combination photo shows a destroyed shop in Otsuchi on March 15, 2011 and on August 13, 2011 following the earthquake and tsunami that struck the area on March 11, 2011.

Source: REUTERS
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Dispatches from the No-Go Zone
Aug. 15, 2011



By Pio d'Emilia



There are many other ways of spending time, but I find wandering around inside Fukushima Prefecture’s supposedly sealed 20-kilometer “exclusion zone” has a special, although at times macabre, fascination.



The more time you spend inside, the more you get, somehow, addicted. That this beautiful region, crafted by dedicated farmers into one of the world’s showcases for organic agriculture and eco-sustainable tourism, is becoming yet another example of nuclear devastation is difficult to swallow. Since March 11, I have entered the zone legally and illegally seven times, including one night-visit following a small team of female animal activists trying, at any cost, to save abandoned pets.



I’ve spent so much time there that I could easily guide a tour. I knew the region from before. Being a soccer fan and a lover of agritourism, I’ve visited the J-Village many times. I even organized there, right before the 2002 World Cup, the epoch-making clash between the FCCJ team and a group of lawmakers, which we won 3-1. I stayed in some beautiful bed-and-breakfast accommodation, which had been mushrooming in the region – until March.



It was especially painful to see the Soma Bokujo, a farm I once stayed at with friends, totally abandoned, raided by crows and pigs and rotting with a carpet of decomposed, liquefied corpses of cows. This disgusting sight should be enough in itself to immediately bring about the disbandment worldwide of the nuclear industry. It should also lead to the moral indictment, if not legal prosecution, for crimes against humanity of all those who have contributed to promoting, designing and building the plants – those who have offered kickbacks to profit from this lucrative, but socially devastating business.



I covered the tsunami tragedy from day one, and was among the first journalists to arrive in Kesennuma after a hair-raising eight-hour drive from Akita, where taxi drivers (who were much more cooperative than any authority, police included) helped me rent a car from an unlisted company.



I met Katsunobu Sakurai, the brave mayor of Minamisoma, without an appointment, at the city office around noon on April 1, after taking my first tour of the off-limits zone (it was not particularly well guarded. At the checkpoint, a policeman just asked who I was and why I was going inside, without checking my ID). I met Bill Powell, the Shanghai TIME correspondent, on his way out of the city hall. Assuming he had just met the mayor, I asked him for his first impressions. “I didn’t meet him,” Powell said. “He’s busy.” I took my chances anyway, asking his secretary for a brief meeting. To my surprise, the mayor agreed almost right away to meet me. Being born the same year means a lot in Japan – we found we both came into the world in 1954, and began a strong, personal friendship. Probably thanks to my long TV report that made him well known in Italy, many Italian institutions and private citizens have raised money for the reconstruction of Minamisoma.



Reconstruction implies that the present unclear situation will not, at least, become worse. Despite recent rumors of the government shrinking the no-go zone and even the possibility of an early return for evacuees, I’m afraid this is not the case. But I really hope the people of Minamisoma will be able to stay where they are, if not return to the evacuated zone.



I reached the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi plant on my first journey inside the zone. I didn’t see much, and I didn’t bother stepping out of the car. The geiger counter showed 98 microsieverts/hour (three times the amount I measured at the same spot on July 12 – when I last went there embedded in a yakuza-provided minivan taking day workers to the plant) and I didn’t want to risk of being held or questioned about my presence there.



was left. Houses were locked, convenience stores full of goods, ATMs unabused. Many people, most of them elderly, were still hiding out inside the zone, some of them with no visible protection. They were even willing to speak with a foreign journalist. The most common thing I heard was: “Why should we bother leaving? We are old, there is no way that such low radiation exposure could do us any harm. If I have to die, let me die on my own futon.”



This is difficult to disagree with, especially if, then and even more now, there are places outside the zone where evacuation has been advised but not yet ordered – where radiation is much higher than inside most of the perimeter. In Iitate-mura, just a few meters from an inhabited home, I found a “hot spot” with ground-level radiation of up to 140 microsieverts/hour.



After the tightening of the entry ban on April 20 – a right and overdue decision – I didn’t expect the total abandonment of the zone. I didn’t expect everything to be left inside to rot with no sense of moral or ethical responsibility.



The scenario had totally changed when I went back inside in June and July with a formal permit issued by the Minamisoma office (even the brave, no-nonsense mayor had to work through thick layers of bureaucracy, eventually issuing a permit for a “survey,” not “reporting”).



You could encounter hundreds of cows enjoying total if ephemeral freedom after wandering away from farms. Pigs had started to enter abandoned homes, which despite the rush, had been cleaned and tidied by their owners. But most disgusting of all were the decomposing carcasses of hundreds of cows left unattended on farms. Months have passed, but I still can’t get away from that revolting stink.



A sad-looking, young officer from the Minamisoma Agriculture, Fish and Forestry Department said this shameful situation stemmed from a central government decision, taken while local authorities were negotiating with farmers, to perform euthanasia on big livestock. It was wishful thinking. There was no follow up to the government order: no veterinarians, the only people allowed to put the animals down, could be found and there was no legally required cooperation from the animal owners. The situation is now “politically” frozen, but the hot weather is causing mass rotting. Unless the cows are able to reach “M-Bokujo,” one of the 13 private farms owned by Seiji Murata, who refuses to kill a single animal and still manages to somehow take care of them, thousands are doomed to die and become supper for pigs and crows.



This is not the only sad thing. Houses have been robbed, convenience stores burgled, hospitals raided for drugs and ATMs smashed and emptied. A total of ¥200 million has been stolen inside the zone, some local media report, probably not by foreigners – who are usually blamed – but by local, disgruntled youngsters.



“If there wasn’t much to do around here before the incident, there is nothing now,” says T.M., a convicted “former” Sumiyoshikai yakuza who is one of the thousands of Tepco subcontractors. He supplies the plant with temporary cleaning workers, as well as cranes and machinery for debris disposal. He admits it’s a good business.



“To dispose of the debris from a standard house, we charge about ¥1 million, with costs limited to ¥200,000-¥250,000,” T.M. says. “We usually charge around ¥200,000 per worker per day to our direct client (this is not Tepco; there are at least another couple of companies in-between). But the worker, at the end of the day, gets less than a third of this.



“You may think we are making too much profit, but trust me, we are getting just a small slice of the cake. Nothing compares to the huge money that American and French companies, like Areva, make for their useless machines!”



Like all yakuza, T.M. is – or at least pretends to be – a socially motivated man of honor. Not only does he show us around, totally unchecked, inside J-Village, he drives us to the plant and sets up evening meetings with workers. He takes us around for a whole day, suggesting stories and trying to accommodate our wishes. He shows us the house in Naraha-machi where a whole family has refused to evacuate, and takes us to his family grave, where we pay our respects to his ancestors.



He shows us what he calls a shameful place: Futaba Hospital in Okuma, where the entire staff, including doctors and nurses, reportedly left the day of the tsunami, abandoning the mostly elderly patients. According to Kyodo News, 14 patients, who were rescued two days later, died on the bus taking them to another hospital.



But there are also signs of human kindness, and unexpected hope. Odaka, once a city with a population of 12,000, is still totally abandoned – just as the tsunami left it. My good friend and photographer Pierpaolo Mittica, who has already published a book on Chernobyl, is shooting there for a new book on Fukushima. A book, he says, he never imagined he would have to do. On a visit there on July 12, we hear noises. A group of workers, with no protection at all, is packing up for the day. They have been privately hired to fix the roof of a house. “We don’t even know the owner,” says one. “We got the assignment over the phone. ‘Please fix the roof, so the rain does not get inside.’ He paid ¥300,000 in advance. We just finished.”



It’s difficult to imagine Odaka, where at night the streetlights are amazingly still on (the city has a contract with Tohoku Denryoku, Tepco’s competitor) getting back to normal anytime soon. But the idea that somebody has spent money to fix a roof there is reassuring. And, I must admit, it moved us both to tears on leaving.





Pio d’Emilia is the Far East correspondent for Sky TG24 and author of a book on the aftermath of the quake, Lo tsunami nucleare.


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News: August 15, 2011
Posted by Mochizuki on August 15th, 2011


Posted Image
[Whistle-blowing from a Fukushima worker]

Fuel rods have melted out and it might be reacting under ground.

In early August,an actual Fukushima worker emailed to his friends.
“A lot of the cracks came up in the ground,massive steam is coming up from there.It’s too smoggy here,can’t see a thing.It seems like nuclear reaction is happening underground.Now we are evacuating.Watch out for the direction of wind.”

Whistle-blower in the gov
“I’ve heard that steam is coming up from the cracks in the ground.We are afraid of it.”

Another Fukushima worker,
“Near the reactors,there are a lot of the cracks in the ground,steam splashed out from there sometimes.and we have detected 10Sv/h at 6 places unlike gov’s announcement.”

[We couldn't be deceived anymore]

8/15/2011,Tepco confessed there is a huge pool on the basement floor of Fukushima,which is shared by units 1~4. They stock 6400 nuclear spent fuel rods in it, and groundwater is flowing into the pool through broken duct.

Now the massively contaminated water is in it at least 9.0t.

6400 fuel rods is about 140% of the total fuel rods in the reactors.

Actually Fukushima nuc plants are built on underground water vein,they always needed to pomp up groundwater. However,because of the accident,they stopped pomp up the water.This fact has not been published yet.

They say Tepco “found” this trouble on 8/13,but they can’t not know the fact since the very beginning of the accident.

Massive steam splashing out might have something to do with this.

Link to info...... http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/08/news-8152011/#.Tkqoo9FYL0g.twitter
Edited by Audi-Tek, August 16 2011, 07:48 PM.
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Residents frustrated by 'hot spot' designation

Yasushi Totoki and Shinji Hijikata / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

A growing number of residents have expressed discontent over the differing standards applied by the government to designate sites found to be high in radioactive substances as areas recommended for evacuation in the ongoing nuclear crisis.

In addition to the 30-kilometer zone set by the central government for evacuation following the outbreak of the crisis, the government in June decided to designate hot spots and recommended evacuation for people living near them.

A total of 245 households in Minami-Soma, Date and Kawauchimura, all in Fukushima Prefecture, have been designated as such spots.

During a meeting held early this month by the Minami-Soma municipal government to explain the designation of the hot spots to residents, Atsushi Tanno, 68, a farmer, expressed his dissatisfaction with the policy implemented by the central and municipal governments.

"It's strange that only empty houses left unattended have been designated as such spots," he said.

Tanno serves as the head of a mountain district comprising 50 households. Residents of the two designated households voluntarily evacuated from the houses immediately following the outbreak of the nuclear crisis.

Residents who remained in the district have been busy cleaning, watering and weeding gardens as well as washing down entrances in an effort to decrease the amount of radiation.

The decision to designate a house as a hot spot is based on radiation levels measured at entrances and the middle of gardens.

What this means, however, is that the more eagerly residents tackle decontamination, the greater the chances that their houses will not be designated as spots for evacuation, rendering those who may want to evacuate ineligible for financial assistance. Such an irony has only added to the discontent in the region.

Radiation measured one meter above ground at annual total of 20 millisieverts is the standard the government has set to designate specific spots as recommended for evacuation.

But the areas subject to recommended evacuation differ depending on when measurements were taken. The threshold for recommendation was 3.2 microsieverts per hour in June and 3.1 microsieverts per hour in July. However, some areas were designated as subject to recommended evacuation even if they recorded radiation at less than the regulatory levels.

A house in Ryozenmachi, Date, for example, recorded 1.5 microsieverts per hour, less than half the regulated limit, but was registered as a spot recommended for evacuation. Meanwhile, a house in the same district that recorded 2.6 microsieverts per hour in late July was not designated as a spot for recommended evacuation.

These inconsistent judgments are due to the fact that Date and Minami-Soma municipal governments adopted different rules for designating hot spots in line with the central government's guidance that decisions of local governments can be respected.

In the case of the Date municipal government, if a house recorded radiation beyond the standard value, it added other households in the same community with a pregnant woman and children aged 12 or younger in a list of spots recommended for evacuation.

But there have been cases in which houses with radiation levels higher than the government-set limit were designated as spots recommended for evacuation even though their immediate neighbors were not.

In Minami-Soma, households with children of high school age or younger were advised to evacuate if a level of 2 microsieverts or more was measured at 50 centimeters above the ground.

But in at least one case, different decisions were made for two families--one led by Morio Onami, 68, and the other by his son--who live in houses less than two meters apart in Ryozenmachi.

Why? Although the two houses recorded radiation below the regulated limit, only the son's household was recommended for evacuation because it includes the son's 8-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son.

"We have lived together on the same property," Onami said. "I don't know why we were not recommended to evacuate together with my son's family."

The central government's policy of not disclosing which households are designated for evacuation due to privacy concerns has also aroused anxiety among residents.

"I feel elderly people have been forgotten. The unity of the community has become weakened over 'being designated or not,'" Onami said.

===

Experts critical

Some experts are also critical about the situation.

Masamichi Nishio, director of the National Hospital Organization Hokkaido Cancer Center, said it is not reasonable to designate hot spots on a house-by-house basis as radiation levels are influenced by living conditions such as cleaning and watering.

"As the aim of designation is to recommend evacuation, all households living in an area where average radiation levels are high should be designated for evacuation," he said.

Conversely, Hirotada Hirose, professor emeritus at Tokyo Women's Christian University, said he believes the government should designate each household, not the whole area, to keep costs as low as possible.

An expert on disaster psychology studies, Hirose said: "Nondisclosure of designated spots will make residents anxious. Information related to public health should be disclosed."

===

Govt delay led to 'hot spots'

By Masatoshi Imai / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

The designation of spots recommended for evacuation is a product of the government's delayed response to the radiation leak following the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Some residents have expressed anger from the beginning, saying, "It's too late to be designated now."

In the aftermath of the crisis, the government designated the area within a 20-kilometer radius from the Fukushima plant as a no-entry zone. Areas outside the no-entry zone but likely to have high radiation levels were designated in April as areas where evacuations to be led by local governments were strongly recommended.

Then came the so-called hot spots, sites outside these zones where high levels of radiation were measured. The government decided in June to designate such spots as areas recommended for evacuation.

As these sites are spots rather than areas, the government decided to apply the designation house-by-house and left the decision to evacuate up to the residents.

The government designated 113 households in Date, Fukushima, on June 30, 59 households in Minami-Soma of the same prefecture on July 21, followed by 72 households in the same city and one household in Kawauchimura of the prefecture on Aug. 3.

Households that receive the hot spot designation are eligible to receive financial support for evacuation by the government.
(Aug. 17, 2011)
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Fukushima radiation alarms doctors
Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation.
Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 18 Aug 2011 14:09


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Residents of Ohkuma-cho attend a memorial service for the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami on 24 July 2011 in Ohkuma-cho, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, 20 km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant [EPA]

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

"How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

"The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant.

There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation.

Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming.

According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs.

Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas.

Distrust of the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster is now common among people living in the effected prefectures, and people are concerned about their health.

Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming.

When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure.

10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays.

It is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv.

TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings.

The Fukushima disaster has been rated as a "level seven" on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). This level, the highest, is the same as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and is defined by the scale as: "[A] major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."

The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters are the only nuclear accidents to have been rated level seven on the scale, which is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the scale used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times more severe than the previous level.

Doctors in Japan are already treating patients suffering health effects they attribute to radiation from the ongoing nuclear disaster.

"We have begun to see increased nosebleeds, stubborn cases of diarrhoea, and flu-like symptoms in children," Dr Yuko Yanagisawa, a physician at Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, told Al Jazeera.

She attributes the symptoms to radiation exposure, and added: "We are encountering new situations we cannot explain with the body of knowledge we have relied upon up until now."

"The situation at the Daiichi Nuclear facility in Fukushima has not yet been fully stabilised, and we can't yet see an end in sight," Yanagisawa said. "Because the nuclear material has not yet been encapsulated, radiation continues to stream into the environment."

Health concerns

Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, reporting from Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, said of the recently detected high radiation readings: "It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami, but no one realised until now."

Workers at Fukushima are only allowed to be exposed to 250 mSv of ionising radiation per year.

Junichi Matsumoto, a TEPCO spokesman, said the high dose was discovered in an area that does not hamper recovery efforts at the stricken plant.

Yet radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit was detected in processed tea made in Tochigi City, about 160km from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to the Tochigi Prefectural Government, who said radioactive cesium was detected in tea processed from leaves harvested in the city in early July.

The level is more than 3 times the provisional government limit.

Yanagisawa's hospital is located approximately 200km from Fukushima, so the health problems she is seeing that she attributes to radiation exposure causes her to be concerned by what she believes to be a grossly inadequate response from the government.

From her perspective, the only thing the government has done is to, on April 25, raise the acceptable radiation exposure limit for children from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year.

"This has caused controversy, from the medical point of view," Yanagisawa told Al Jazeera. "This is certainly an issue that involves both personal internal exposures as well as low-dose exposures."

Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan Executive Director, said: "It is utterly outrageous to raise the exposure levels for children to twenty times the maximum limit for adults."

"The Japanese government cannot simply increase safety limits for the sake of political convenience or to give the impression of normality."

Authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low-dose ionizing radiation are published in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII (BEIR VII) report from the US National Academy of Sciences.

The report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence proving there is no exposure to ionizing radiation that is risk-free.

The BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of all forms of cancer other than leukemia of about 1-in-10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1-in-100,000; and a 1-in-17,500 increased risk of cancer death.

Dr Helen Caldicott, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is equally concerned about the health effects from Japan's nuclear disaster.

"Radioactive elements get into the testicles and ovaries, and these cause genetic disease like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation," she told Al Jazeera. "There are 2,600 of these diseases that get into our genes and are passed from generation to generation, forever."

So far, the only cases of acute radiation exposure have involved TEPCO workers at the stricken plant. Lower doses of radiation, particularly for children, are what many in the medical community are most concerned about, according to Dr Yanagisawa.

"Humans are not yet capable of accurately measuring the low dose exposure or internal exposure," she explained, "Arguing 'it is safe because it is not yet scientifically proven [to be unsafe]' would be wrong. That fact is that we are not yet collecting enough information to prove the situations scientifically. If that is the case, we can never say it is safe just by increasing the annual 1mSv level twenty fold."

Her concern is that the new exposure standards by the Japanese government do not take into account differences between adults and children, since children's sensitivity to radiation exposure is several times higher than that of adults.

Al Jazeera contacted Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office for comment on the situation.

Speaking on behalf of the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Relations for the Prime Minister's office, Noriyuki Shikata said that the Japanese government "refers to the ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection] recommendation in 2007, which says the reference levels of radiological protection in emergency exposure situations is 20-100 mSv per year. The Government of Japan has set planned evacuation zones and specific spots recommended for evacuation where the radiation levels reach 20 mSv/year, in order to avoid excessive radiation exposure."

The prime minister's office explained that approximately 23bn yen ($300mn) is planned for decontamination efforts, and the government plans to have a decontamination policy "by around the end of August", with a secondary budget of about 97bn yen ($1.26bn) for health management and monitoring operations in the affected areas.

When questioned about the issue of "acute radiation exposure", Shikata pointed to the Japanese government having received a report from TEPCO about six of their workers having been exposed to more than 250 mSv, but did not mention any reports of civilian exposures.

Prime Minister Kan's office told Al Jazeera that, for their ongoing response to the Fukushima crisis, "the government of Japan has conducted all the possible countermeasures such as introduction of automatic dose management by ID codes for all workers and 24 hour allocation of doctors. The government of Japan will continue to tackle the issue of further improving the health management including medium and long term measures".

Shikata did not comment about Kodama's findings.

Kodama, who is also a doctor of internal medicine, has been working on decontamination of radioactive materials at radiation facilities in hospitals of the University of Tokyo for the past several decades.

"We had rain in Tokyo on March 21 and radiation increased to .2 micosieverts/hour and, since then, the level has been continuously high," said Kodama, who added that his reporting of radiation findings to the government has not been met an adequate reaction. "At that time, the chief cabinet secretary, Mr Edano, told the Japanese people that there would be no immediate harm to their health."

Kodama is an expert in internal exposure to radiation, and is concerned that the government has not implemented a strong response geared towards measuring radioactivity in food.

"Although three months have passed since the accident already, why have even such simple things have not been done yet?" he said. "I get very angry and fly into a rage."

According to Kodama, the major problem caused by internal radiation exposure is the generation of cancer cells as the radiation causes unnatural cellular mutation.

"Radiation has a high risk to embryos in pregnant women, juveniles, and highly proliferative cells of people of growing ages. Even for adults, highly proliferative cells, such as hairs, blood, and intestinal epithelium cells, are sensitive to radiation."

'Children are at greater risk'

Early on in the disaster, Dr Makoto Kondo of the department of radiology of Keio University's School of Medicine warned of "a large difference in radiation effects on adults compared to children".

Kondo explained the chances of children developing cancer from radiation exposure was many times higher than adults.

"Children's bodies are underdeveloped and easily affected by radiation, which could cause cancer or slow body development. It can also affect their brain development," he said.

Yanagisawa assumes that the Japanese government's evacuation standards, as well as their raising the permissible exposure limit to 20mSv "can cause hazards to children's health," and therefore "children are at a greater risk".

Nishio Masamichi, director of Japan's Hakkaido Cancer Centre and a radiation treatment specialist, published an article on July 27 titled: "The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation".

In the report, Masamichi said that such a dramatic increase in permitted radiation exposure was akin to "taking the lives of the people lightly". He believes that 20mSv is too high, especially for children who are far more susceptible to radiation.

"No level of radiation is acceptable, for children or anyone else," Caldicott told Al Jazeera. "Children are ten to 20 times more sensitive than adults. They must not be exposed to radiation of any level. At all."

In early July, officials with the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission announced that approximately 45 per cent of children in the Fukushima region had experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, according to a survey carried out in late March. The commission has not carried out any surveys since then.

"Now the Japanese government is underestimating the effects of low dosage and/or internal exposures and not raising the evacuation level even to the same level adopted in Chernobyl," Yanagisawa said. "People's lives are at stake, especially the lives of children, and it is obvious that the government is not placing top priority on the people's lives in their measures."

Caldicott feels the lack of a stronger response to safeguard the health of people in areas where radiation is found is "reprehensible".

"Millions of people need to be evacuated from those high radiation zones, especially the children."

Dr Yanagisawa is concerned about what she calls "late onset disorders" from radiation exposure resulting from the Fukushima disaster, as well as increasing cases of infertility and miscarriages.

"Incidence of cancer will undoubtedly increase," she said. "In the case of children, thyroid cancer and leukemia can start to appear after several years. In the case of adults, the incidence of various types of cancer will increase over the course of several decades."

Yanagisawa said it is "without doubt" that cancer rates among the Fukushima nuclear workers will increase, as will cases of lethargy, atherosclerosis, and other chronic diseases among the general population in the effected areas.

Yanagisawa believes it is time to listen to survivors of the atomic bombings. "To be exposed to radiation, to be told there is no immediate effect, and afterwards to be stricken with cancer - what it is like to suffer this way over a long period of time, only the survivors of the atomic bombings can truly understand," she told Al Jazeera.

Radioactive food and water

An August 1 press release from Japan's MHLW said no radioactive materials have been detected in the tap water of Fukushima prefecture, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters.

The government defines no detection as "no results exceeding the 'Index values for infants (radioactive iodine)'," and says "in case the level of radioactive iodine in tap water exceeds 100 Bq/kg, to refrain from giving infants formula milk dissolved by tap water, having them intake tap water … "

Yet, on June 27, results were published from a study that found 15 residents of Fukushima prefecture had tested positive for radiation in their urine.

Dr Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University, has been to Fukushima prefecture twice in order to take internal radiation exposure readings and facilitated the study.

"The risk of internal radiation is more dangerous than external radiation," Dr Kamada told Al Jazeera. "And internal radiation exposure does exist for Fukushima residents."

According to the MHLW, distribution of several food products in Fukushima Prefecture remain restricted. This includes raw milk, vegetables including spinach, kakina, and all other leafy vegetables, including cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and beef.

The distribution of tealeaves remains restricted in several prefectures, including all of Ibaraki, and parts of Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba, Kanagawa Prefectures.

Iwate prefecture suspended all beef exports because of caesium contamination on August 1, making it the fourth prefecture to do so.
Jyunichi Tokuyama, an expert with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, told Al Jazeera he did not know how to deal with the crisis. He was surprised because he did not expect radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, 300km from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

"The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive," Tokuyama told Al Jazeera.

Kamada feels the Japanese government is acting too slowly in response to the Fukushima disaster, and that the government needs to check radiation exposure levels "in each town and village" in Fukushima prefecture.

"They have to make a general map of radiation doses," he said. "Then they have to be concerned about human health levels, and radiation exposures to humans. They have to make the exposure dose map of Fukushima prefecture. Fukushima is not enough. Probably there are hot spots outside of Fukushima. So they also need to check ground exposure levels."

Caldicott said people around the world should be concerned about the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Radiation that continues to be released has global consequences.

More than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water has been released into the ocean from the stricken plant.
Those radioactive elements bio-concentrate in the algae, then the crustaceans eat that, which are eaten by small then big fish," Caldicott said. "That's why big fish have high concentrations of radioactivity and humans are at the top of the food chain, so we get the most radiation, ultimately."

On August 6, the 66th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said: "Regarding nuclear energy, we will deeply reflect over the myth that nuclear energy is safe. We will thoroughly look into the cause of the [Fukushima] accident, and to secure safety, we'll implement fundamental measures while also decreasing the degree of dependence on nuclear power generation, to aim for a society that does not rely on nuclear power."

But doctors, scientists, agricultural experts, and much of the general public in Japan feel that a much more aggressive response to the nuclear disaster is needed.

Kodama believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas. He cited Japan's itai itai disease, when cadmium poisoning from mining resulted in the government eventually having to spend 800 billion yen to decontaminate an area of 1,500 hectares.

"How much cost will be needed if the area is 1,000 times larger?"
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Japan weather site.


Link ..... http://www.kachelmannwetter.de/japan/japan.html
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[Never ending story]

Fukushima will not be decommissioned for about 100 years or longer.

Even a normal nuclear plant,which has not had a problem, takes 30 years to be decommissioned.

Now that fuel rods have melted-out,there is no technology to pick them up,decommission process will continue even after we all die.
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Japanese Bruce Willis,Mr.Yoshida is the chief of Fukushima workers.
He apologizes for all the disaster and shows us how they work.

Link to video........ http://youtu.be/BWszWfyQc-Y
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Police say Japanese have returned $78 million in missing cash after quake.

In the five months since a devastating earthquake struck, Japanese police say they've received $78 million in missing cash and valuables that citizens have found in the rubble and promptly turned in.

Thousands of missing wallets contained $48 million in cash, and nearly 6,000 more safes turned in by volunteers contained an extra $30 million, the Japanese Police Agency told ABC News' Akiko Fujita. Most of the found money has been returned to its owners, after police used identifying documents in the safes to track down them down.

"The fact that these safes were washed away meant the homes were washed away too," Koetsu Saiki of the Miyagi Prefectural police force told ABC News. "We had to first determine if the owners were alive, then find where they had evacuated to."

Some wallets and safes were most likely pocketed, but the scale of honesty in the wake of disaster is still striking.

"The fact that a hefty 2.3 billion yen in cash has been returned to its owners shows the high level of ethical awareness in the Japanese people," Ryuji Ito, professor emeritus at Yokohama City University, told The Daily Mail.
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US envoy: Tokyo didn't take charge when crisis hit

TOKYO – Early in the Fukushima nuclear crisis, U.S. officials felt that nobody in Japan's government was taking charge, and Washington considered evacuating American troops in a worst-case scenario, a retired U.S. envoy said Thursday.

When the March 11 earthquake and tsunami set off the crisis by crippling the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and sending it toward meltdown, Prime Minister Naoto Kan's administration initially acted as if it was the plant operator's problem, not the government's, former diplomat Kevin Maher said.

"There was nobody in charge. Nobody in the Japanese political system was willing to say 'I'm going to take responsibility and make decisions,'" said Maher, who coordinated U.S. offers to help Tokyo deal with the crisis.

"Nothing was taking place at Fukushima Dai-ichi in terms of the government solving the problem" until about a week later when Tokyo and Washington launched a joint task force, he told a news conference.

The Japanese Prime Minister's Office said it had no immediate reaction to Maher's remarks.

Maher, a former director of the U.S. State Department's Japan office, had been dismissed for allegedly making insulting remarks about Okinawan people in an off-the-record talk with university students in December. But he was called back for duty on the task force when the crisis struck, and his retirement was postponed until April.

Maher coordinated more than 100 American nuclear, defense and other officials dispatched by Washington to work with the Japanese government as the reactors rapidly deteriorated.

Japan initially was not forthcoming with details of the crisis, while independent U.S. information indicated at least two of the plant's six reactor cores were melting down, he said.

"We were very worried about what was going to happen to Japan," he said, adding that U.S. officials drafted a plan to evacuate some of the nearly 50,000 Japan-based American service people in a worst-case scenario involving plumes of radiation. They also considered evacuating nearly 100,000 American civilians in Tokyo, but eventually recommended only a 50-mile (80-kilometer) evacuation zone.

"The worst-case scenario was, 'Would you have to move U.S. forces out of Japan if there were threat of radiation?'" he said.

"Fortunately that did not happen," he said, because such a pullout could have caused a "tremendous negative impact" on the U.S-Japan security relationship.

It took Japan about two months to acknowledge that the cores of three reactors at Fukushima had melted in the first few days of the crisis.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday that the reactors are still leaking small amount of radiation — about one 10-millionth of the amount released after several explosions in mid-March that eventually forced about 100,000 people to evacuate their homes. TEPCO and the government say they plan to bring the reactors to a stable shutdown state by early January.

Maher said he sympathized with Japanese evacuees and expressed optimism that their communities could be cleaned up and restored.

"It can be done," he said, adding that it requires a huge expenditure and a very "decisive approach."

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Hartmann - Fukushima...is this the China Syndrome?

Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear joins Thom Hartmann. Meanwhile, Japan is not out of the danger zone...in fact the nuclear crisis is getting worse and worse! We've recently learned from Japan that the amount of radiation released was more than 20 times that from the Hiroshima bomb, and now it looks they may be experiencing the early stages of a total China Syndrome meltdown. And is the United States in danger too?

Must watch video link.......... http://youtu.be/baya8-agPs4
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Inside Fukushima – interactive guide

Earlier this month, Kazuma Obara became the first photojournalist to gain unauthorised access to the power plant and produced an exclusive glimpse of life inside the facility

Link to interactive guide...... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2011/aug/20/fukushima-interactive-guide
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KAZUMA OBARA.

Kazuma Obara is a freelance Photojournalist based on Japan.
Born in Iwate, Japan, one of the regions hit hard by the earthquake and tsunami in March of this year. He was studying at Days Japan Photojournalist School, while he was a full-time employee at a Mitsubishi UFJ Lease&Finance in Kyoto. On March 14, 3 days after the triple disaster, he left his job to pursue his passion.

«JAPAN TSUNAMI VICTIMS -Portrait- by KAZUMA OBARA. Link .... http://kazumaobara.com/2011/08/japan-tsunami-victims.html


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TEPCO: No1 reactor temperature down

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says all thermometers at the troubled No.1 reactor has registered temperatures lower than 100 degrees Celsius.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, said on Saturday that all 19 thermometers at the No.1 reactor showed readings below 100 degrees as of 11 PM on Friday. It added the stable condition was unchanged 12 hours later.

As part of its effort to bring the plant under control, TEPCO has been working to achieve cold shutdown of reactors No.1, 2 and 3. The reactors' temperatures should continuously remain below 100 degrees.

TEPCO says its efforts to cool down the reactors are beginning to bear fruit.

But in order to actually achieve cold shutdown, the utility firm has to accomplish other goals, one being able to maintain stable conditions even if an emergency occurs.

TEPCO also said the 2 other reactors remained higher than the 100-degree benchmark, as of 11 AM on Saturday.

The 3 reactors were in operation when the March earthquake and tsunami struck the plant.

Sunday, August 21, 2011 08:58 +0900 (JST)

New system improves Fukushima decontamination

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has succeeded in increasing the capacity of a water decontamination system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant by 1.5 times.

The utility began to use a Japanese-made system on Thursday along with a French-made system to remove radioactive substances from water. The water is then being injected back into the reactors to cool them.

TEPCO decided to introduce the new system as the existing decontamination system was plagued with problems, and the foreign-made components repeatedly clogged up.

The firm tested the performance of the new equipment for 2 days by running the contaminated water through it after the water had gone through the existing device.

Full-fledged operation of the new system alone began on Friday night.

TEPCO says the decontamination level using both systems has been increased by 1.5 times to 70 tons per hour from the original 45 tons.

The system's operating rate has been only 69 percent of full capacity, far below the initial target of 90 percent.

The firm hopes the new addition will boost the capacity and help achieve stable circulatory cooling of the reactors.

Sunday, August 21, 2011 01:59 +0900 (JST)
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Sunday, Aug. 21, 2011

Cesium detected in a Miyagi boar
Kyodo

SENDAI — Radioactive cesium more than four times the safety limit has been detected in the meat of a wild boar killed in Kakuda, Miyagi Prefecture, officials said.

It is the first time radioactive contamination exceeding the limit has been found in a wild animal or bird in the prefecture, the officials said Friday.

They said they will ask residents not to eat meat from wild animals or birds.

The meat of the boar, which local hunters caught in the mountains in Kakuda on Aug. 7 as part of a city extermination request, was found to have 2,200 becquerels of cesium per kilogram. The provisional safety limit is 500 becquerels per kg.
Hot spots mapped

The science ministry has published a map on ***ulative radiation estimates and hot spots five months since start of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

In giving estimates for 50 locations in the no-entry zone for the first time, the ministry said Friday a spot in the town of Okuma, 3 km southwest of the plant, had an estimated accumulative radiation of 278 millisieverts.

The annual radiation exposure limit for humans is 1 millisievert.

The government has urged people living in areas around the plant, where annual exposure is likely to exceed 20 millisieverts, to evacuate.
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Test on to coax cesium in paddy soil up to surface

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Chemistry test: A worker sprays a chemical mixed in water on a rice field in an experiment to decontaminate soil Saturday in Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture. KYODO PHOTO

FUKUSHIMA — A government-affiliated research institute began experiments Saturday to decontaminate soil in rice fields in the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, where radiation levels are high due to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis.

Iitate is among the areas designated for evacuation and planting rice has been banned.

The experiment by the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, based in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, is focusing on making cesium rise to the surface so it can be removed.

The institute conducted the test by spraying a water-mixed chemical that will harden the soil. After about a week, when the water has evaporated, the cesium is expected to appear on the rice field's surface, several centimeters thick like a white scab.

It should then be possible to scrape away the hardened cesium with farm machines, lowering the field's radiation level.

"It makes it easier to detect which places to scrape away (because the cesium can easily be seen) and the contaminated soil will not scatter around," said Tatsuya Naka, a lead researcher at NARO, which sprayed the chemical on about 10 ares Saturday.

Before conducting the experiment, NARO checked the radiation level of nearby soil and detected 65,900 becquerels per kilogram from the surface to 2.5 cm deep. The figure was 1,330 becquerels per kilogram from 2.5 cm to 5 cm below the surface and almost none 5 cm and deeper.

A separate experiment by another research institute showed that if soil 4 cm from the surface with 10,000 becquerels per kilogram of radiation is taken away, the radiation level will be reduced to about 2,600 becquerels per kilogram.
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