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Twenty three workers were exposed to low levels of radiation after a leak at Chubu Electric Power Co.'s Hamaoka nuclear plant in central Japan, the company said on Wednesday. The amount of radiation from the leak of tainted water at the No 3 reactor was minimal and not enough to harm the workers' health, the company said. Operations at the plant, in the Shizuoka Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, have not been affected. The cause of the leak, which saw 53 liters of water contaminated by more than 300 times radiation the amount permitted, is being investigated.

Twenty three workers were exposed to low levels of radiation after a leak at Chubu Electric Power Co.'s Hamaoka nuclear plant in central Japan, the company said on Wednesday. The amount of radiation from the leak of tainted water at the No 3 reactor was minimal and not enough to harm the workers' health, the company said. Operations at the plant, in the Shizuoka Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, have not been affected. The cause of the leak, which saw 53 liters of water contaminated by more than 300 times radiation the amount permitted, is being investigated.

"Revelations that radiation-contaminated rice straw used as feed for beef cattle was produced far away from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant have sent shockwaves through the livestock farming community in Fukushima Prefecture. Consumers have also been filled with a sense of growing distrust in the government over delays in responding to the problem of radiation-tainted beef. Forty-two beef cows that ate rice straw contaminated with radioactive cesium were found to have been shipped from a livestock farm in the Fukushima Prefecture town of Asakawa from April 8. The rice straw had been supplied by a farmer in Shirakawa, about 75 kilometers away from the tsunami-hit nuclear power station."

Reporting from Yucca Flat, Nev. - A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada. Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and, in some cases, directly into aquifers. When testing ended in 1992, the Energy Department estimated that more than 300 million curies of radiation had been left behind, making the site one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the nation. During the era of weapons testing, Nevada embraced its role almost like a patriotic duty. There seemed to be no better use for an empty desert. But today, as Nevada faces a water crisis and

Reporting from Yucca Flat, Nev. - A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada. Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and, in some cases, directly into aquifers. When testing ended in 1992, the Energy Department estimated that more than 300 million curies of radiation had been left behind, making the site one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the nation. During the era of weapons testing, Nevada embraced its role almost like a patriotic duty. There seemed to be no better use for an empty desert. But today, as Nevada faces a water crisis and

State radiation regulators have cited EnergySolutions Inc. for its role in shipping a tanker that leaked radiation-tainted solvent from a duct-taped hose. Dane Finerfrock, director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control, signed the "Notice of Violation" on Thursday. It proposes a $2,500 fine and "corrective action" to make sure what he called a "mid-level violation" does not happen again. "Transportation regulations require the shipment to remain intact during shipping," Finerfrock said Friday, "and it didn't." The case involved a leaky hose that forced the Carbon County hazardous materials team to respond March 31.

Who is in charge of protecting Americans from products made from radioactively tainted metal? The answer: No one. Officials with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, all said their agencies are troubled by the spread of contaminated metal and items made from it, a Scripps Howard News Service investigation shows.

Admittedly, it sounds like bad science fiction, but long-term exposure to such products as diverse as reclining chairs, common kitchen utensils and tableware, elevator buttons and construction steel could be a long-term health hazard. That's because radioactively tainted metal is increasingly turning up in common consumer goods and industrial products, thanks to widespread use of radioactive isotopes, increased recycling in the United States that sometimes inadvertently processes them and imports of metal products from countries like China that have a relaxed attitude toward consumer safety. And there are reports that exporters in China, India, the former Soviet bloc and some African nations are taking advantage of the fact that the United States has no regulations specifying unacceptable levels of radiation in imports.

Longtime readers of La Jicarita News are aware that we've written numerous articles regarding the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA). This program, enacted by Congress in 2000, is supposed to provide financial compensation and medical benefits for workers at federal nuclear facilities who have been made ill by exposure to radiation and other toxins in the workplace, but in fact has provided benefits for only about 28 percent of claimants nationally and less than 20 percent of claimants from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Moreover, claimants have to undergo a lengthy bureaucratic process, which testimony before Congressional committees has demonstrated is often tainted by incompetency and insensitivity by government administrators. Knowing all that I was still surprised by the seeming indifference to sick workers' suffering displayed by number crunching bureaucrats from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Department of Labor (DOL), which administers EEOICPA, at the February 17-19 meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health (ABRWH) in Albuquerque.

"Children exposed to 137Caesium (137C) released from the Chernobyl disaster fallout show signs of breathing difficulties, according to research published online this week in Environmental Health Perspectives. The research adds changes in lung function to the list of health problems associated with long-term exposure to the radiation. "The long term prognosis of these children is poor," Erik Svendsen and colleagues write. "Some will probably develop significant respiratory problems as they age." Chernobyl was the most serious nuclear accident in history. One of the plant's reactors exploded in 1986, showering radioactive material across many European countries with parts of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine worst hit. The health of people living in these countries has been affected by the radiation, which is known to cause thyroid cancer, leukaemia, cataracts, and cardiovascular disease. More than twenty years after the event people living in some areas continue to be exposed to radioisotopes that linger in the environment through tainted water supplies and locally grown food. One of these is the Ukrainian farming district of Narodickesky, which lies 80km west of the nuclear power plant. The region experienced "considerable" radioactive fallout from the disaster leaving the soil in some areas heavily contaminated with 137C, according to the authors. "

The Limerick Nuclear Power Plant wasn't the source of radioactive sludge that was to be sent to two local landfills from a Royersford sewage treatment plant. The Montgomery County power plant was one of about a dozen clients that sent radiation-tainted uniforms to a commercial laundry that serves nuclear plants and nuclear-medicine facilities throughout the region, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state Department of Environmental Protection said Wednesday.

Reporting from Fernald Preserve, Ohio - Amid the family farms and rolling terrain of southern Ohio, one hill stands out for its precise geometry. The 65-foot-high mound stretching more than half a mile dominates a tract of northern hardwoods, prairie grasses and swampy ponds, known as the Fernald Preserve. Contrary to appearances, there is nothing natural here. The high ground is filled with radioactive debris, scooped from the soil around a former uranium foundry that produced crucial parts for the nation's nuclear weapons program. A $4.4-billion cleanup transformed Fernald from a dangerously contaminated factory complex into an environmental showcase. But it is "clean" only by the terms of a legal agreement. Its soils contain many times the natural amounts of radioactivity, and a plume of tainted water extends underground about a mile. Nobody can ever safely live here, federal scientists say, and the site will have to be closely monitored essentially forever.

Reporting from Fernald Preserve, Ohio - Amid the family farms and rolling terrain of southern Ohio, one hill stands out for its precise geometry. The 65-foot-high mound stretching more than half a mile dominates a tract of northern hardwoods, prairie grasses and swampy ponds, known as the Fernald Preserve. Contrary to appearances, there is nothing natural here. The high ground is filled with radioactive debris, scooped from the soil around a former uranium foundry that produced crucial parts for the nation's nuclear weapons program. A $4.4-billion cleanup transformed Fernald from a dangerously contaminated factory complex into an environmental showcase. But it is "clean" only by the terms of a legal agreement. Its soils contain many times the natural amounts of radioactivity, and a plume of tainted water extends underground about a mile. Nobody can ever safely live here, federal scientists say, and the site will have to be closely monitored essentially forever.

Utah has long been the safety valve for states without disposal for radiation-tainted waste. Railroad cars hauled all but 5 percent of the nation's low-level radioactive waste last year to the EnergySolutions Inc. disposal site in Tooele County. But hospitals, universities and nuclear plants that generate low-level waste are beginning to worry about the long-term outlook for a small fraction of the waste they generate, material that has been outlawed in Utah because it is too radiologically hot.

Since last summer, 36 states have had nowhere to dump the radioactively tainted metal, material and products that have come to light within their borders. In July, a waste site in Barnwell, S.C. -- which served two-thirds of the country as the burial place for material contaminated with low-level radioactivity -- shut its doors after battling neighborhood opposition for years. With no disposal site for most states -- including California, Texas, Florida and New York -- castoff radioactive material is piling up at factories and, in turn, increasingly getting lost, said John Williamson, administrator of Florida's Bureau of Radiation Control.

A duct-tape hose repair on a tanker of radiation-tainted toxic waste led to a potentially dangerous leak last month in Carbon County. The incident occurred March 31, when an employee at Price Canyon weigh station noticed a wet stain on the back of a tanker transporting material from the EnergySolutions Inc. site in Tooele County. A Carbon County hazmat team was called in and found up to a half-gallon of material had come from the broken and taped-over hose. The tanker contained 3,000 gallons of waste solvent destined for a U.S. Energy Department toxic waste incinerator in Tennessee. "Crews inspected the area and found no contamination to the environment," said Mark Walker, a spokesman for EnergySolutions, the nation's largest radioactive waste company.

After a Knoxville metal recycler melted nuclear material that had inadvertently infiltrated its mill, the company learned its lesson: The combination of radiation detectors and a watchful eye can prevent massive, costly messes. The Knoxville company, Gerdau Ameristeel, has since weeded out radioactive isotopes sent to it with scrap metal at least 50 times, according to reports from a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission database. Gerdau Ameristeel has developed an elaborate firewall to keep out castoff nuclear material, according to Jim Turner, corporate environmental director of the Toronto-based company, which has an executive office in Tampa, Fla.

Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world. Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction. A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found that -- because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination -- no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States.

Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world. Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction.

"The sun has only just risen in Iwaki-Yumoto when groups of men in white T-shirts and light blue cargo pants emerge blinking into the sunlight, swapping the comfort of their air-conditioned rooms for the fierce humidity of a Japanese summer. Four months on from the start of the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, this hot-spring resort in north-east Japan has been transformed into a dormitory for 2,000 men who have travelled from across the country to take part in the clean-up effort 30 miles away at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Iwaki-Yumoto has come to resemble corporate Japan in microcosm. Among its newest residents are technicians and engineers with years of experience and, underpinning them all, hundreds of labourers lured from across Japan by the prospect of higher wages. They include Ariyoshi Rune, a tall, wiry 47-year-old truck driver whose slicked-back hair and sideburns are inspired by his idol, Joe Strummer. For five days a week, Rune is in thrall to the drudgery of life as a "nuclear gypsy", the name writer Kunio Horie gave to contract workers who have traditionally performed the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs for Japan's power utilities."