Tag Archive: Fukushima


Flow of Tainted Water Is Latest Crisis at Japan Nuclear Plant

Filed under: Clean up, Contamination, Crossroads News : Changes In The World Around Us And Our Place In It, Disaster Management, Earth Watch Report, Global Community, Global Disaster Watch, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths, Radiation — Leave a comment
May 4, 2013

Kyodo News, via Associated Press

Gray and silver storage tanks filled with radioactive wastewater are sprawling over the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

By
Published: April 29, 2013

TOKYO — Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.

Multimedia
Graphic
Struggling to Contain Radioactive Wastewater

Groundwater is pouring into the plant’s ravaged reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there, before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on hulking gray and silver storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of 112 Olympic-size pools.

But even they are not enough to handle the tons of strontium-laced water at the plant — a reflection of the scale of the 2011 disaster and, in critics’ view, ad hoc decision making by the company that runs the plant and the regulators who oversee it. In a sign of the sheer size of the problem, the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, plans to chop down a small forest on its southern edge to make room for hundreds more tanks, a task that became more urgent when underground pits built to handle the overflow sprang leaks in recent weeks.

“The water keeps increasing every minute, no matter whether we eat, sleep or work,” said Masayuki Ono, a general manager with Tepco who acts as a company spokesman. “It feels like we are constantly being chased, but we are doing our best to stay a step in front.”

While the company has managed to stay ahead, the constant threat of running out of storage space has turned into what Tepco itself called an emergency, with the sheer volume of water raising fears of future leaks at the seaside plant that could reach the Pacific Ocean.

That quandary along with an embarrassing string of mishaps — including a 29-hour power failure affecting another, less vital cooling system — have underscored an alarming reality: two years after the meltdowns, the plant remains vulnerable to the same sort of large earthquake and tsunami that set the original calamity in motion.

There is no question that the Fukushima plant is less dangerous than it was during the desperate first months after the accident, mostly through the determined efforts of workers who have stabilized the melted reactor cores, which are cooler and less dangerous than they once were.

But many experts warn that safety systems and fixes at the plant remain makeshift and prone to accidents.

The jury-rigged cooling loop that pours water over the damaged reactor cores is a mazelike collection of pumps, filters and pipes that snake two and a half miles along the ground through the plant. And a pool for storing used nuclear fuel remains perched on the fifth floor of a damaged reactor building as Tepco struggles to move the rods to a safer location.

The situation is worrisome enough that Shunichi Tanaka, a longtime nuclear power proponent who is the chairman of the newly created watchdog Nuclear Regulation Authority, told reporters after the announcement of the leaking pits that “there is concern that we cannot prevent another accident.”

A growing number of government officials and advisers now say that by entrusting the cleanup to the company that ran the plant before the meltdowns, Japanese leaders paved the way for a return to the insider-dominated status quo that prevailed before the disaster.

Even many scientists who acknowledge the complexity of cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl fear that the water crisis is just the latest sign that Tepco is lurching from one problem to the next without a coherent strategy.

“Tepco is clearly just hanging on day by day, with no time to think about tomorrow, much less next year,” said Tadashi Inoue, an expert in nuclear power who served on a committee that drew up the road map for cleaning up the plant.

But the concerns extend well beyond Tepco. While doing a more rigorous job of policing Japan’s nuclear industry than regulators before the accident, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has a team of just nine inspectors to oversee the more than 3,000 workers at Fukushima.

And a separate committee created by the government to oversee the cleanup is loaded with industry insiders, including from the Ministry of Trade, in charge of promoting nuclear energy, and nuclear reactor manufacturers like Toshiba and Hitachi. The story of how the Fukushima plant ended up swamped with water, critics say, is a cautionary tale about the continued dangers of leaving decisions about nuclear safety to industry insiders.

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Nuclear power plant stricken in 2011 tsunami now leaking radioactive groundwater: report

The water contains strontium, a byproduct of nuclear fission, and the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is leaking it at a rate of 75 gallons per minute.

By / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, May 1, 2013, 2:35 PM
1K
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© Issei Kato / Reuters/REUTERS

Members of the media wear protective suits at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture in March. Two years after the disaster, contaminated groundwater containing radioactive strontium, a byproduct of nuclear fission, is leaking from the damaged reactor.

The Japanese nuclear plant stricken by a deadly tsunami two years ago is facing the dire issue of containing radioactive waste water, as operators rush to repair yet another possible disaster.

The March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami left the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant stricken, badly damaging its reactors, which serve to cool nuclear cores.

Now contaminated groundwater containing radioactive strontium, a byproduct of nuclear fission, is leaking from damaged reactor structures at an alarming rate of 75 gallons per minute.

PHOTOS: TOP 20 PHOTOS OF JAPAN TSUNAMI

Tanks of radiation-contaminated water are stored onsite at Fukishima.

© KYODO Kyodo / Reuters/REUTERS

Tanks of radiation-contaminated water are stored onsite at Fukishima.

The Dai-Ichi plant is owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, also known as Tepco, which has struggled to handle the plant’s meltdown and subsequent recovery.

The nuclear incident has been described as one of the most devastating in history, second only to Russia’s Chernobyl incident of the 1980s.

As the New York Times notes, news of the leaking groundwater comes at an embarrassing time for Tepco, which experienced a 29-hour power outage last month which affected another of the plant’s cooling systems.

RELATED: RADIOACTIVE WATER LEAK FEARED AT JAPAN NUKE PLANT

 

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‘A very fragile situation’: Leaks from Japan’s wrecked nuke plant raise fears

Filed under: Contamination, Disaster Management, Earth Watch Report, Global Community, Global Disaster Watch, Humanity, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths, Radiation — Leave a comment
May 1, 2013

Slideshow: Triple tragedy for Japan

An earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear meltdown — residents of Japan’s northeast coast suffered through three intertwined disasters after a massive 9.0 magnitude temblor struck off the coast on March 11, 2011.

Launch slideshow

By Arata Yamamoto and Ian Johnston, NBC News

TOKYO — Like the persistent tapping of a desperate SOS message, the updates keep coming. Day after day, the operators of the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have been detailing their struggles to contain leaks of radioactive water.

The leaks, power outages and other glitches have raised fears that the plant — devastated by a tsunami in March 2011 — could even start to break apart during a cleanup process expected to take years.

The situation has also attracted the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which sent a team of experts to review the decommissioning effort last month. They warned Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to clean up the site. A full report is expected to be released later this month.

Journalists have been given a rare glimpse inside Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled in the 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit the country two years ago. NBC News’ Arata Yamamoto reports.

The discovery of a greenling fish near a water intake for the power station in February that contained some 7,400 times the recommended safe limit of radioactive cesium only served to heighten concern.

There was also some reassuring news in February, when a report by the World Health Organization said Fukushima had caused “no discernible increase in health risks” outside Japan and “no observable increases in cancer above natural variation” in most of the country.

But for the most affected areas, the report said the lifetime risks of various cancers were expected to increase. For example, baby boys were predicted to have up to a 7 percent greater chance of getting leukemia in their lifetime and for baby girls the lifetime risk of breast cancer could be up to 6 percent higher than normal.

Independent nuclear expert John Large — who has given evidence on the Fukushima disaster to the U.K. parliament and written reports about it for Greenpeace — said there would be hundreds of tons of “intensely radioactive” material in the plant.

He said normally robots could be sent in to remove the fuel relatively easily, but this was difficult because of the damage caused by the tsunami.

Large said the plant was close to the water table, so it was difficult to stop water getting in and out.

“Until you can stop that transfer, you will not contain the radioactivity. That will go on for years and years until they contain it,” he said. “The structures of containment start breaking down. Engineered structures don’t last long when they are put in adverse conditions.”

Larged added: “It may have some marked effect on the health of future generations in Japan. What it will create is a Fukushima generation — like in Nagasaki and Hiroshima - where girls particularly will have difficulty marrying because of the stigma of being brought up in a radiation area.”

Leaks into the sea would not only affect the marine environment, Large said, as tiny radioactive particles would be washed up on the beach, dried in the sun and then blown over the surrounding countryside by the wind.

 

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Radiation Realities : Rosalie Bertel’s “Omnicide” – Should the public discover the true health cost(s) of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death.

Filed under: Biological Hazard, bureaucracy, Complacency / Apathy, Conspiracy Theories, Contamination, Corruption, crime, Crimes, Depravity, Earth Watch Report, Environmental, Extreme Political Correctness, Fundamental Rights, Genocide, Global Community, Government, Government Overreach, Greed, History, Human Rights, Humanity, Hypocrisy, Indoctrination, Lack Of Transparency, Main Stream Media Manipulations/Lies, Murder, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths, Power Struggle, Psy - Ops, Radiation, Research, Secrecy, Security, Special Interests, Unethical, World News — 1 Comment
April 27, 2013

Fukushima’s Catastrophic Aftermath Continues

image source

Stephen Lendman
Activist Post

In her book titled No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, nuclear power/environmental health expert Rosalie Bertell (1929 – 2012) said:

Should the public discover the true health cost(s) of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death.

In her article titled “Radioactivity: No Immediate Danger,” she coined a new word. “Omnicide” describes the ultimate human rejection of life. It’s “difficult to comprehend,” but it’s happening, she said.

She called industrial radioactive pollution “cumulatively greater than Chernobyl. We are now in a no-win situation with radioactive materials, where (it’s) acceptable to have cancer deaths, deformed children and miscarriages.”

Industry propaganda falsely claims nuclear power is clean and green. The nuclear fuel cycle discharges significant amounts of greenhouse gases.

It’s also responsible for hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and elements in the environment annually.

“Claiming nuclear production of energy is ‘clean,’ ” said Bertell, “is like dieting but stuffing yourself with food between meals.”

Separately, she said:

There is no such thing as a radiation exposure that will not do damage. There is a hundred per cent possibility that there will be damage to cells. The next question is: which damage do you care about?

All toxic hazards are serious, she explained. Nuclear radiation is worst of all. It threatens all human life. “Our present path is headed toward species death – whether fast with nuclear war or technological disaster, or slow, by poison.”

Global suicide is certain. Continued nuclear proliferation and Fukushima accelerated it.

March 11 marked its second anniversary. It’s perhaps the worst ever environmental disaster. Reliable experts call large parts of Japan unsafe. They’re too hazardous to live in.

According to Professor Hiroaki Koide, Tokyo’s as contaminated as Fukushima. Thousands of city residents protested. They oppose nuclear power. They want safe energy sources replacing it.

Radiation contamination is widespread. East Asia, North America, Europe and other areas are affected.

Hazardous air, water and land readings across many areas globally are many multiples too high. Future epidemic cancer levels are certain. It occurs when body cells divide and spread uncontrollably. If untreated, it metastasizes and kills.

Michel Chossudovsky calls Fukushima “a nuclear war without a war.” It’s an “unspoken crisis of worldwide nuclear contamination.”

Tens of thousands of children have confirmed thyroid abnormalities. They reflect the tip of the iceberg. Children are especially vulnerable. No radiation dose is safe.

Karl Grossman wants planet earth made a “nuclear free zone.” We barely made it through the last century without a “major nuclear weapons exchange,” he said.

Nuclear energy in all forms is unsafe. Safe, clean, renewable solar, wind, geothermal, and other energy sources are readily available.

Admiral Hyman Rickover (1900 – 1986) was the father of America’s nuclear navy. In January 1982, he told a congressional committee that until a few billion years ago, “it was impossible to have any life on earth.”

“There was so much radiation on earth you couldn’t have any life, fish or anything.” Gradually the amount subsided. “Now, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible.”

“Every time you produce radiation, (a) horrible force” is unleashed. “In some cases (it’s) for billions of years, and I think the human race is going to wreck itself.”

“I am talking about humanity. The most important thing we could do is start having an international meeting where we first outlaw nuclear weapons to start off with. Then we outlaw nuclear reactors, too.”

“The lesson for history is when a war starts, every nation will ultimately use whatever weapons are available. That is the lesson learned time and again.” “

“Therefore, we must expect, if another war, a serious war breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form. We will probably destroy ourselves.” Widespread contamination acts in slow motion.

Disturbing reports explain. In early April, around 120 tons of contaminated water leaked from Fukushima’s No. 1′s underground storage tank. It contained an estimated 710 billion becquerels of radioactivity.

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Article: 1097 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: (dave “who can do? ratmandu!” ratcliffe)
Subject: Radioactivity: No Immediate Danger? addressing our nuclear illiteracy
Summary: species annihilation–omnicide–is the ultimate human rejection o life
Keywords: our monoculture is a form of suicide; diversity gives us survival.
Date: 25 Jun 1995 21:33:42 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Lines: 414

Species annihilation . . . means a relatively swift (on the scale of civilization), deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction, and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act that requires a new word to describe it: “omnicide.” It is difficult to comprehend omnicide, but it may be possible to discern the preparations for it, and prevent its happening.

Excerpts follow from the 1991 article (starting 98 lines below) appearing in Ms. Magazine by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, on the no-win situation we, as the curators of Mother Earth, find ourselves in with the man-made radioactive materials created over the past fifty+ years. If we are to be successful in reversing this terminal radioactive poisoning of our home so the seventh generation of human’s yet to-be-born may also enjoy the gift of life and it’s challenges, we MUST inform and educate every person we come into contact with about the true facts of nuclear techonology and it’s lethal and terminal impact on all life on earth for all time.

– ratitor

We are now in a no-win situation with radioactive materials, where it has become acceptable to have cancer deaths, deformed children, and miscarriages. The “benefit,” oddly enough, is not the medical benefit, nor electricity–it is nuclear bombs. The same set of regulations is used for all three industries–energy, medical, and military–and when it comes to the bottom line, the cost benefit ratio is calculated on the basis of preventing a ten-megaton blast on London, Paris, or New York; the final judgment becomes what is needed for “national security.”Now nuclear power proponents have again mounted a synchronized international campaign to push nuclear reactors as a “solution” . . . [T]he reactor is only one small part of the nuclear fuel cycle. It cannot function without the large supporting network of mining, milling, fuel fabrication, enrichment, waste disposal, decommissioning, and the web of transportation linking these steps. Claiming nuclear production of energy is “clean” is like dieting but stuffing yourself with food between meals.

What are the alternatives for industrialized countries? A case study of the Federal Republic of Germany using 120 different energy efficiency improvements demonstrated that the nation could maintain its standard of living with a 70 percent reduction in end-use of energy. A 1983 study at M.I.T. Energy Laboratory in the U.S. concluded that improving energy usage by one percent a year caused no social strain and could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50% by 2050.

Promoting nuclear technology raises false expectations, usurps money better spent in energy efficiency, and substitutes emissions of radionuclides for emissions of carbon dioxide. The intelligent customer will not substitute one pollution for another, but will rather eliminate both by more efficient energy use. . . .

The unmasking of the human species’ terminal illness must involve dealing with violence: personal, family, city, national, and global. Some violence has been renounced, for example, a father’s right to kill his child: but other forms of violence still are seen as “socially useful,” for example, torture, imprisonment, killing children by sending them to war, and of course epidemic violence against women.

If, as a society, we are able to break out of this phase, it will be due to the careful building of a consensus in various social and political groups, which make an impact on the national power structures from within and from without. As they become more international in their thinking and acting, these groups are developing the infrastructure for the global village. Women, who have not become so unnaturally separated from their instincts, need to assume social roles for idea input, facilitating consensus decision-making, and seeing to the equitable implementation of plans and sustainability of the society’s work.

In a special way, women attend to the birthing and dying within society, and we have now turned this concern toward the process of species death–or the birthing of a new way of conducting human affairs that might avert such a death. The inclusion of women and a feminist perspective in the idea, decision-making, and implementation sectors of society is vital for species survival.

This implies for males a general reduction of power over other human beings and a playing down of masculine values, including conflict and violence within nations, workplaces, and families. Although men have always said they go to war for the sake of the women and children, it is apparent that men are willing to hurt or kill women and children in order to go to war, thinking they are serving their nation. There are beautiful aspects of nationalism that we can keep, like customs, language, lifestyle, food. But there is no reason why we need to raise standing armies and kill people who don’t agree with us.

We have much of the infrastructure in place; we have global communication, we have transportation, we know the way to cure most diseases, we have one and a half times as much food as we need for the global population. What we are talking about giving up is the right of a nation to force its own people to kill others, whether internally or externally. That is a very simple thing. Yet if we could do that we could begin to organize on the basis of a global village that would not only respect diversity, but be glad of it, because survival comes from an ability to cope with many changing situations, an ability to share when one part of the world has abundance and another part has need.

Our monoculture is another form of suicide; diversity gives us survival.

 

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HAZMAT – Japan, Prefecture of Fukushima, [Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant]

Filed under: Disaster Management, Earth Watch Report, Global Disaster Watch, Hazmat, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths — 2 Comments
April 11, 2013

Earth Watch Report -  Hazmat

 

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11.04.2013 HAZMAT Japan Prefecture of Fukushima, [Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant] Damage level
Details

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HAZMAT in Japan on Saturday, 06 April, 2013 at 08:44 (08:44 AM) UTC.

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Updated: Wednesday, 10 April, 2013 at 19:06 UTC
Description
The operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant said Tuesday it had detected a fresh leak of radioactive water from one of the facility’s storage tanks. Tokyo Electric Power Co. previously said two of seven huge underground tanks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had been leaking since Saturday if not earlier. The latest leak involves a tank that was being used to take water from one of the two that were leaking, TEPCO representative Masayuki Ono said. Up to 120 tonnes might have leaked from one of the tanks and smaller amount from the other two, but none of the radioactive water was believed to have reached the ocean, he said. TEPCO has halted the transfer of water to the third tank, diverting it to a fourth tank that remains intact. Two of the seven tanks are currently unused.

Ono said TEPCO has decided to stop using the two most damaged of the three leaking tanks as soon as they are emptied, but will use the other because of a tank shortage. “The underground tanks are not reliable,” Ono said. “But we must keep using some of them that are relatively in good shape while monitoring them closely. We just don’t have enough tanks on the ground that can accommodate the water.” The tanks are crucial to the management of contaminated water used to cool melted fuel rods at the plant’s reactors, which were damaged in March 2011 by an earthquake and resulting tsunami. They have since stabilized significantly but the melted fuel inside must be kept cool with water, which leaks out of the reactors’ holes and ruptures and flows into basement areas. Plant workers are scrambling to find extra tanks at the plans and believe they can find space from unused containers and underground tanks. The plant is being decommissioned but continues to experience glitches. A fuel storage pool temporarily lost its cooling system Friday, less than a month after the plant suffered a more extensive outage caused by a rat that short-circuited a switchboard, cutting off power to four storage pools for fuel rods and other key facilities.

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HAZMAT in Japan on Saturday, 06 April, 2013 at 08:44 (08:44 AM) UTC.

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Updated: Thursday, 11 April, 2013 at 03:10 UTC
Description
Tokyo Electric Power Co. must stop using sunken reservoirs to store radioactive water accumulating at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant once it has enough storage tanks, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Wednesday. Three of the seven reservoirs, which are basically lined trenches with surface covers, have been found to be leaking radioactive water, including seawater, leading Tepco to consider transferring some of the contents to more reliable tanks above ground. The water was cycled through reactors 1, 2 and 3, which suffered core meltdowns in 2011, to keep the units cool to prevent further massive fallout. The utility has said it cannot empty all the sunken reservoirs currently in use because there is not enough alternative storage capacity on the site now. Tepco plans to install tanks that can hold 15,000 tons by mid-April.

Motegi told a Diet committee that the radioactive water will be “swiftly” moved to tanks above ground and “after that, sunken reservoirs should not be used.” The situation regarding radioactive water leaks has been worsening since Tepco first announced it earlier this month, with more sunken cisterns found with problems increasing. There is speculation there may have been flaws in the construction of the reservoirs. All were built by Maeda Corp. Tepco also said Wednesday that it confirmed a small amount of radioactive substances outside the water-containment lining sheets laid between reservoir No. 1, the latest one found with leaks, and the soil. Radioactive water leaks to soil have already been reported around reservoirs Nos. 2 and 3. The utility said it has detected 0.11 becquerel of radioactive substances per cubic centimeter of water in soil outside the three lining layers of reservoir No. 1.

Radioactive water that escaped from that cistern may have seeped into the ground, according to Tepco. To boost oversight at the plant, which also recently saw the halt of its cooling system for spent-fuel pools, the Nuclear Regulation Authority said it will increase the number of on-site inspectors from eight to nine. The continued injections of water into reactors 1-3 is causing the massive accumulation of radioactive water. Water used to cool the damaged reactors is recycled as coolant after radioactive cesium and other substances have been removed in a processing facility. But the total amount of tainted water is rising because the existing water flow allows an influx of about 400 tons of groundwater a day.

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Radiation levels continue to increase in lakes, rivers north of Tokyo. Deadly levels of radiation found in food 225 miles from Fukushima. Media reports nothing.

Filed under: bureaucracy, Conspiracy Theories, Contamination, Corporate Assault on Our Lives And Our Health, crime, Depravity, Earth Watch Report, Environmental, Fraud, Global Disaster Watch, Government, Greed, Hypocrisy, Indoctrination, Lack Of Transparency, Land, Main Stream Media Manipulations/Lies, Murder, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths, Radiation, Research, Science, Seas / Oceans, Secrecy, Special Interests, The Atmosphere, Unethical, Water, Wildlife, World News — 4 Comments
April 8, 2013

Deadly levels of radiation found in food 225 miles from Fukushima: Media blackout on nuclear fallout continues

Monday, April 08, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

radiation

(NaturalNews) New data released by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) shows once again that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is far from over. Despite a complete media blackout on the current situation, levels of Cesium-137 (Cs-137) and Cesium-134 (Cs-134) found in produce and rice crackers located roughly 225 miles away from Fukushima are high enough to cause residents to exceed the annual radiation exposure limit in just a few months, or even weeks.

According to Fukushima-Diary.com, which posts up-to-date information about the Fukushima disaster, rice crackers and tangerines produced in the Shizuoka prefecture are testing high for both Cs-137 and Cs-134. Rice crackers, according to the data sheet, tested at 3.7 Becquerels per kilogram (Bq/Kg) of Cs-137, while tangerines tested at 1.46 Bq/Kg of Cs-134 and 3.14 Bq/Kg of Cs-137.

The Shizuoka prefecture is located about 80 miles southwest of Tokyo, which is highly concerning as it is actually farther away from Fukushima than Tokyo. This suggest that potentially deadly levels of radiation are still affecting large population centers across Japan, including those that are not even in close proximity to the Fukushima plant.

It is generally regarded that adult radiation workers should be exposed to no more than 50 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation per year in order to avoid serious health consequences. For children, this number is far lower, probably somewhere around 10 mSv, with this being on the high end. But the average adult and child eating these tainted foods at their current radiation levels will not only reach but exceed the safe maximum in just a few weeks.

Radiation levels continue to increase in lakes, rivers north of Tokyo

But food, of course, is not the only major source of radiation exposure in Japan. Other data also released by Fukushima-Diary.com shows that radiation levels in rivers, lakes and shorelines around Kashiwa City in Chiba, located about 20 miles northeast of Tokyo, are dangerously high and getting even higher.

Since radiation levels were last tested in the Otsu River back in September, detected levels have nearly tripled, jumping from 5,700 Bq/Kg to 14,200 Bq/Kg of radiation. Similar jumps were observed in lakes and shore soils, the former increasing from 7,600 Bq/Kg to 8,200 Bq/Kg of radiation, and the latter increasing from 440 Bq/Kg to 780 Bq/Kg of radiation.

Any increase in disease or death resulting from these continued radiation spikes, however, will more than likely be blamed on other causes besides radiation, so as to cover up the severity of the situation. The radiation component of radiation-induced heart disease, organ failure, and cancer, for instance, will simply be ignored, and any uptick in deaths, particularly among the elderly, declared normal.

Meanwhile, a recent Rasmussen Report found that more than one-third of all Americans believe radiation from Fukushima caused “significant harm” in the U.S. This is likely due to the fact that high levels of radiation were observed in soil, water, and even food all across America in the wake of the disaster.

Sources for this article include:

http://fukushima-diary.com

http://fukushima-diary.com

http://www.rasmussenreports.com

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Just released! – Japanese maritime research finds evidence of nuclear undersea dumps contamination!

Off shore waste dumping sites hit by recent multiple earthquakes off coast of Japan

……Regardless of how it got there, “there must be some loaded organic material somewhere in the sediment”, Kanda says…….

Extracts from December  2012 article…

Capture9

Capture7

There has been another 7 earthquakes reducing in intensity over the last couple of hours reducing to the 4.6 level so far..

“…..These dump areas have been getting a lot of strikes from off shore earthquakes during the last nearly 2 years. Why doesnt anyone talk about them?

The areas with dark hatchings are “special” waste sites likely for nuclear and biological wastes and the larger areas for lesser hazardous waste..

What effects are the effected dumps having on the sea life in the areas?

How much damage to the seabed is occurring near these off shore dumps?

watch the visualisation video next to the above pictures to match hits on the dumps…..”

2011年の日本の地震 分布図 Japan earthquakes 2011 Visualization map

2011年の日本の地震 分布図 Japan earthquakes 2011 Visualization map (2012-01-01)


Follow this link for details and supporting documentation for above

http://nuclear-news.net/2012/12/07/off-shore-waste-dumping-sites-hit-by-recent-multiple-earthquakes-off-coast-of-japan/#more-33941

Horizontal distribution of Fukushima-derived radiocesium in
zooplankton in the northwestern Pacific Ocean
Received: 31 December 2012 – Accepted: 27 February 2013 – Published: 2 April 2013
…The Kuroshio extension seemed to prevent the southward dispersion of radioactive cesium. The vertical distributions of radioactive cesium off the coast of northern Japan around FDNPP revealed complex patterns mainly due to the water mass interaction between Oyashio water and Kuroshio water…. Hideki Kaeriyama 2011 December
…..134 Cs in zooplankton was detected in all stations and ranged from 1.9 to 10.5Bqkg-dw−1 (Table 1). The highest activity concentration was recorded in subtropical station 68 while the lowest one was in subarctic station 106. 137 Cs was also observed in all zooplankton samples and ranged from 2.2 to 14.9Bqkg-dw−1 (Table 1). High 137Cs activity concentrations were observed at stations 68 and 71, 137Cs in other 10 stations were one order of magnitude lower than that in the two stations, and the lowest activity concentration was detected in station 106. 134Cs was lower than137Cs in all the stations because of faster decay of 134 Cs during the 10 months after the accident and the pre-existing bomb-produced 137Cs……
Image
134Cs and 137Cs were detected in zooplankton and seawater samples collected from 20 western North Pacific (500− 2100km from the FNPP1) 10months after the FNPP1 accident. Because of its short half-lives, detected 134Cs could only be derived from the
accident.
Image
Radiocesium activities in zooplankton were high at around 25◦N that was not corresponded with the horizontal distribution pattern of radiocesium activities in surface seawater. We also observed subsurface radiocesium maxima in the density 25 range of NPSMW in several subtropical stations. Zooplankton communities included many diel vertical migrants. Both results suggested that contaminated radiocesium in 6153BGD 10, 6143–6170, 2013
Image
Horizontal distribution of Fukushima-derived radiocesium
M. Kitamura et al.zooplankton were derived from subsurface radiocesium through the vertical migration of zooplankton in the subtropical stations. However, high activity concentrations of radiocesium in subsurface seawater did not necessarily follow higher radiocesium activity
in zooplankton.
Activity concentrations of radiocesium in zooplankton might be influ-enced not only environmental radiocesium activity concentration but also other factors that is still unknown.
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The Helen Caldicott Foundation, the symposium : Fukushima Consequences. The Lies, The Coverups, The Responsibility

Filed under: Contamination, Disaster Management, Earth Watch Report, Environmental, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths, Radiation, World News — 1 Comment
April 7, 2013

map made available by Nuclear Darkness:

 

*This map provides for some some safe zones that may have lowered radiation levels.  Although  with  nuclear  fallout there is  no place that  is  completely safe.  

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The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, Day 1

March 11, 2013

A unique, two-day symposium at which an international panel of leading medical and biological scientists, nuclear engineers, and policy experts will make presentations on and discuss the bio-medical and ecological consequences of the Fukushima disaster, will be held at The New York Academy of Medicine on March 11-12, 2013, the second anniversary of the accident.A project of The Helen Caldicott Foundation, the symposium is being co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Click on a bolded link below to jump to that section of the program.

Introductions
Moderator: Donald Louria, MD, Chairman Emeritus, Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey

Session One: DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF ACCIDENT

Former Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan (videotape)
Opening Address

Hiroaki Koide, Master of Nuclear Engineering, Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute (KURRI)
Specialist of Radiation Safety and Control

Arnie Gundersen, Nuclear Engineer, Fairewinds Associates
What Did They Know and When Did They Know it?

David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists
Another Unsurprising Surprise

Hisako Sakiyama, Member of Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission
Risk Assessment of Low Dose Radiation in Japan: What Became Clear in the Diet Fukushima Investigation Committee

Akio Matsumura, Founder of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders
What Did the World Learn from the Fukushima Accident?

Questions and Answers

Press Conference

Session Two: THE MEDICAL AND ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

Steven Starr, Clinical Laboratory Science Program, University of Missouri
The Implications of Massive Radiation Contamination of Japan with Radioactive Cesium

Timothy Mousseau, Department of Biological Sciences, University South Carolina
Chernobyl, Fukushima and Other Hot Places: Biological Implications

Ken Buesseler, Marine Scientist Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Fukushima Ocean Impacts

David Brenner, Center for Radiological Research, College of Physicians and Surgeons
Columbia University
Living with Uncertainty About Low Dose Radiation Risks

Questions and Answers

Watch Video Here

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The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, Day 2
March 12, 2013
A unique, two-day symposium at which an international panel of leading medical and biological scientists, nuclear engineers, and policy experts will make presentations on and discuss the bio-medical and ecological consequences of the Fukushima disaster, will be held at The New York Academy of Medicine on March 11-12, 2013, the second anniversary of the accident.A project of The Helen Caldicott Foundation, the symposium is being co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Click on a bolded link below to jump to that section of the program.

Session Three:
THE MEDICAL CONSEQUENCES OF BOTH THE CHERNOBYL AND FUKUSHIMA CRISES AS THEY RELATE TO NORTH AMERICA
Session Chair: Andrew Kanter, Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Alexey Yablokov, Russian Academy of Sciences
Lessons from Chernobyl

Wladimir Wertelecki, Former Chair of the Department of Medical Genetics University South Alabama
Congenital Malformations in Rivne Polossia and the Chernobyl Accident

Ian Fairlie, Radiation Biologist and Independent Consultant
The Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima: Nuclear Source Terms, Initial Health Effects

Steve Wing, Gillings School of Public Health, University North Carolina
Epidemiological Studies of Radiation Releases from Nuclear Facilities: Lessons Past and Present

Joe Mangano, Radiation and Public Health Project
Post Fukushima Increases in Newborn Hypothyroidism on the West Coast of USA

Robert Alvarez, Institute for Policy Studies
Management of Spent Fuel Pools and Radioactive Waste

Questions and Answers

Cindy Folkers, Beyond Nuclear
Post-Fukushima Food Monitoring in the US

Mary Olson
Nuclear Information and Resource Services, Gender Matters in the Atomic Age

Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear
Seventy Years of Radioactive Risks in Japan and America

David Freeman, Former Chair. Tennessee Valley Authority
My Experience with Nuclear Power

Herbert Abrams, Stanford University School of Medicine
The Hazards of Low Level Ionizing Radiation: Controversy and Evidence

Questions and Answers

Watch Video Here

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Two years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster is Japan facing a cancer time bomb?

TWO years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster local children are showing signs of cancer, prompting cries of a cover-up.

Published: Wed, March 27, 2013

LEGACY-No-one-knows-how-the-Fukushima-disaster-will-affect-the-health-of-the-area-s-children LEGACY: No one knows how the Fukushima disaster will affect the health of the area’s children

IN the shadow of the Fukushima nuclear power station life appears to have returned to normal. A farmer tends his cows and goes about his daily routine as dogs play round his feet. Signs of spring are everywhere and birds sing. But take a closer look and it’s all a sham.

The rice fields are overgrown with weeds as tall as a man. The rest of this village, near the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, is deserted. Washing still hanging on lines hints at the panic which engulfed this region of Japan.

The farmer is among a handful of people who defied an order by the authorities to evacuate. Beef from this area was once prized for its taste and quality but his cows, which graze within sight of the chimneys of the plant, should have been slaughtered and are now worthless.

Two years after an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown in the reactors at Fukushima, releasing clouds of radiation, the world has moved on.

Officially the mass evacuation was a success and the prompt action of a heroic band of workers at the crippled plant averted a nuclear catastrophe. No one has so far died as a result of radiation from Fukushima, insist the authorities. However there are growing concerns that the full scale of the disaster has yet to be seen. There are claims of complacency and a cover-up. It’s not the Japanese way to stage protests but there has been a series of anti-nuclear rallies in Tokyo, 160 miles south.

Most worrying are the results of tests carried out on more than 130,000 children who lived around Fukushima. More than 40 per cent have the early signs of thyroid cancer, while other forms of the disease may not become apparent for a decade.

While it’s true that people living very close by were evacuated within the first few days, damage may already have been done to their health. Many more, living up to 25 miles away, were not moved away until six weeks after the radiation escaped.

It’s also feared that the food chain has been contaminated. Radioactive material has been detected in a range of produce, including spinach, tea leaves, milk and beef, up to 200 miles distant. Fish caught near the plant this month were more than 5,000 times over safe radiation limits, according to Japan’s state broadcaster NHK.

Then there’s the daily risk of more radiation escaping from the smouldering plant, which is still not fully stable. It’s being cooled with vast amounts of water but workers are running out of tanks in which to store the contaminated liquid once it has done its job.

Read Full Article Here

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Almost third of US West Coast newborns hit with thyroid problems after Fukushima nuclear disaster

Published time: April 03, 2013 19:56
Edited time: April 04, 2013 19:43

A boy receives a radiation scan at a screening center in Koriyama in Fukushima prefecture (AFP Photo / Go Takayama)

A boy receives a radiation scan at a screening center in Koriyama in Fukushima prefecture (AFP Photo / Go Takayama)

Researchers have discovered that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has had far-reaching health effects more drastic than previously thought: young children born on the US West Coast are 28 percent more likely to develop congenital hyperthyroidism.

In examining post-Fukushima conditions along the West Coast, researchers found American-born children to be developing similar conditions that some Europeans acquired after the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

“Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the US, and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation,” researchers from the New York-based Radiation and Health Project wrote in a study published by the Open Journal of Pediatrics.

Children born after the 2011 meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant are at high risk of acquiring congenital hyperthyroidism if they were in the line of fire for radioactive isotopes. Researchers studied concentration levels of radioiodine isotopes (I-131) and congenital hypothyroid cases to make the association.
Just a few days after the meltdown, I-131 concentration levels in California, Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon and Washington were up to 211 times above the normal level, according to the study. At the same time, the number of congenital hypothyroid cases skyrocketed, increasing by an average of 16 percent from March 17 to Dec. 31, 2011. And between March 17 and June 30, shortly after the meltdown, newly born children experienced a 28 percent greater risk of acquiring hyperthyroidism.

Read Full Article Here

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Tokyo Electric Power Co. said thousands of gallons of highly radioactive water has leaked from an underground pool at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant and may have seeped into the soil.

Filed under: Disaster Management, Earth Watch Report, Global Disaster Watch, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths, World News — 2 Comments
April 7, 2013
DISASTER MANAGEMENT

Fukushima fuel cooling system stops again:TEPCO

by Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) April 5, 2013


Radioactive water may have leaked from Fukushima: TEPCO
Tokyo (AFP) April 6, 2013 – Radioactive water may have leaked into the ground from a tank at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the operator said Saturday, the latest in a series of troubles at the crippled facility.Up to 120 tonnes of contaminated water may have escaped from one of the seven underground reservoir tanks at the tsunami-damaged plant, according to a Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) spokesman.

The tank stores water used to cool down the reactors after radioactive caesium is removed but other radioactive substances remain.

“We are transferring the remaining water from the tank to others,” the TEPCO spokesman said, adding that the company believes the contaminated water was unlikely to flow into the sea.

The leakage came after one of the systems keeping spent atomic fuel cool at the plant temporarily failed on Friday, the second outage in a matter of weeks, underlining the precarious fix at the plant.

Nuclear fuel, even after use, has to be kept cool to prevent it from overheating and beginning a self-sustaining atomic reaction that could lead to meltdown.

The plant was hit by the giant tsunami of March 2011 as reactors went into meltdown and spewed radiation over a wide area, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes and polluting farmland.

 

One of the systems keeping spent atomic fuel cool at the Fukushima nuclear plant temporarily failed on Friday, the second outage in a matter of weeks, underlining the precarious fix at the plant.

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said an alarm sounded at the facility at 2:27 pm (0527 GMT), and technicians soon confirmed that the cooling system for the pool attached to reactor 3 was not working.

Nuclear fuel, even after use, has to be kept cool to prevent it from overheating and beginning a self-sustaining atomic reaction that could lead to meltdown.

The problem, which was fixed in about three hours, occurred as work crew placed a metal mesh around a switchboard in a bid to prevent small animals from touching it, a TEPCO spokesman told a press conference.

The measures were taken after a rat got inside the switchboard last month, causing a short-circuit that knocked out power for sections of the crippled plant and stopped cooling systems for four storage pools.

That time, it took nearly 30 hours for TEPCO to fully fix the problem.

The TEPCO spokesman said a wire or the mesh might have touched the ground while crews put the mesh in place, unintentionally grounding the equipment and knocking it offline.

TEPCO apologised for the problem, but stressed that it had not posed any immediate danger.

However, the incident served as a reminder of the precarious state of the Fukushima plant, more than two years after it was hit by the giant tsunami of March 2011, and critics were quick to jump on the fault.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

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Tepco Says Fukushima Plant Leaked 120 Tons of Radioactive Water

By Tsuyoshi Inajima – Apr 6, 2013 9:30 PM CT

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) said thousands of gallons of highly radioactive water has leaked from an underground pool at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant and may have seeped into the soil.

Tepco estimates about 120 tons (32,280 gallons) of radioactive water has escaped, company spokesman Daisuke Hirose said, adding it was uncertain how much contaminated water has soaked into the soil. While he said the utility plans to complete pumping the remaining water to other underground pools by April 9, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority today said “a small quantity” of radioactive water may be leaking from another tank.

The leak is the latest stumble in efforts to stabilize the plant after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. Tepco continues to inject water into the damaged reactors to cool them, and the leaked water contains about 710 billion becquerels of radiation, the most since the facility reached a stable state known as cold shutdown in December 2011, Hirose said.

 

Read Full Article Here

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Radioactive cesium in a fish caught in waters near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, equivalent to 7,400 times the state-set limit deemed safe for human consumption has been detected.

Filed under: Contamination, Earth Watch Report, Environmental, Global Disaster Watch, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths, Radiation, Seas / Oceans, Wildlife, World News — 1 Comment
March 18, 2013

Image Source

Record cesium level detected in fish caught near Fukushima nuclear plant

The Japan Times News

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday it detected a record 740,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in a fish caught in waters near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, equivalent to 7,400 times the state-set limit deemed safe for human consumption.

The greenling measuring 38 cm in length and weighing 564 grams was caught near a water intake of the four reactor units in the power station’s port on Feb. 21 during the utility’s operation to remove fish from the port.

Tepco has installed a net on the sea floor of the port exit in Fukushima Prefecture to make it hard for fish living near the sediments of contaminated soil to go elsewhere.

According to Tepco, the previous record of cesium concentration in fish was 510,000 Bq/kg detected in another greenling captured in the same area. Currently, fishermen are voluntarily suspending operations off the coast of the prefecture except for experimental catches.

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Nuclear Waste Curse

Filed under: Chemicals, Clean up, Contamination, Crossroads News : Changes In The World Around Us And Our Place In It, Environmental, Fraud, Global Community, Government, Humanity, Ineptitude, Lack Of Transparency, Land, Loot and Pillage, Nuclear, Nuclear Power Truths, Pollution, Radiation, Secrecy, Special Interests, Unethical, Water, Wildlife, World News — Leave a comment
February 24, 2013

Published on Feb 23, 2013

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/

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Fukushima residents to sue Japanese government over damages

Filed under: Community, Contamination, Crossroads News : Changes In The World Around Us And Our Place In It, Human Rights, Lack Of Transparency, Nuclear, Nuclear Plant Incidents, Nuclear Power Truths, Radiation, Secrecy, Security, World News — 2 Comments
February 9, 2013

Workers spray water to cool down the spent nuclear fuel in the fourth reactor building at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma, March 22, 2011.

Workers spray water to cool down the spent nuclear fuel in the fourth reactor building at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma, March 22, 2011.
Fri Feb 8, 2013 8:42AM GMT
Residents whose houses or farms have been hit by radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant will file a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government.

Japanese lawyers said on Friday that at least 350 residents were to file a case with Fukushima District Court on March 11, the second anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, to seek damages from the government.

On March 11, 2011, a nine-magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that inflicted heavy damage on the six-reactor Fukushima plant. Cooling systems of the plant’s reactors were knocked out, leading to meltdowns and the release of radioactivity.

Japan’s entire nuclear reactors were gradually taken offline for two months for maintenance or safety checks after the tsunami.

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs are also planning to sue the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), and seek more than 500 dollars in compensation for every month that the residents have been displaced because of the disaster.

The lawyers also called the lawsuit as the largest class-action on the matter against the state with one of them saying that the Japanese government promoted “nuclear power as a national policy and has been closely involved with it.”

“Being fully aware of the danger of losing power due to a tsunami, the government neglected its duty of preventing such an event,” said Izutaro Managi, a Japanese lawyer.

In July 2012, a Japanese parliamentary panel found that the incident at the Fukushima nuclear plant had been a “man-made disaster” and not only due to the tsunami.

The report, which was released on July 5, also criticized “governments, regulatory authorities and Tokyo Electric Power” for lacking “a sense of responsibility to protect people’s lives and society.”

The 2011 incident at Fukushima “could and should have been foreseen and prevented” and its catastrophic effects “mitigated by a more effective human response,” the report said.

MR/HSN

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