nuke.news

"Last April 20 the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published an on-line article entitled "Short-term and Long-term Health Risks of Nuclear-Power-Plant Accidents" by Dr. Eli Glatstein and five other authors. The article was riddled with distortions and misinformation, and overall was very poor research. As the NEJM is a peer reviewed journal and has a significant letters section, I wrote a letter pointing out some of the errors committed by the authors, and a longer piece containing a comprehensive critique. The NEJM demands that letters to the journal contain material that has not been submitted or published elsewhere, so I had to refrain from submitting my longer piece anywhere until the NEMJ made a decision on my letter. When my letter did not appear after a couple of weeks I inquired, and was told that the article would soon appear in the printed version of the Journal, and that no letters about the article could be published until after the print version came out. The printed version finally appeared on June 16."

"A radiation medicine expert has concluded the former head of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant did not become ill as a result of radiation exposure, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday. Makoto Akashi, executive director of the National Institute of Radiological Science, reviewed the cumulative amount of radiation Masao Yoshida, 56, was exposed to since the nuclear crisis started in March and informed Tepco of his view Thursday night, the utility said. Yoshida was relieved of his post Thursday to undergo medical treatment. He was hospitalized Nov. 24. There has been much speculation that his illness was caused by excessive radiation exposure, as he had led efforts to contain the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out three reactors. But the utility again declined to disclose further details on Yoshida's illness or his cumulative radiation exposure since the nuclear crisis started, citing privacy reasons."

"TEPCO: Melted fuel ate into containment vessel The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has announced the results of an analysis on the state of melted fuel in the plant's Number 1 unit. The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, and several research institutes made public their analyses on the melting of fuel rods at 3 of the plant's units at a government-sponsored study meeting on Wednesday. The analyses were based on temperatures, amounts of cooling water and other data. TEPCO said that in the worse case, all fuel rods in the plant's Number 1 reactor may have melted and dropped through its bottom into a containment vessel. The bottom of the vessel is concrete covered with a steel plate. The utility said the fuel may have eroded the bottom to a depth of 65 centimeters. The thinnest part of the section is only 37 centimeters thick. TEPCO also said as much as 57 percent of the fuel in the plant's Number 2 reactor and 63 percent in the Number 3 reactor may have melted, and that some of the melted fuel may have fallen through reactor vessels. Wednesday, November 30, 2011 20:02 +0900 (JST)"

"30 October 2011 TOKYO - Thousands of people angered by Japan's nuclear power plant accident rallied in Fukushima on Sunday to demand full compensation for victims of the crisis, and swift decontamination of their neighbourhoods. The rally in Fukushima city, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the plant, was attended by around 10,000 people, its organisers estimated. 'Our town should be decontaminated at the earliest possible date and our life should be restored as it was before March 11,' Tamotsu Baba, mayor of Namie town, told the rally, according to Jiji Press. A 9.0-magnitude earthquake and monster tsunami on March 11 crippled the plant's cooling systems and sparked reactor meltdowns, a series of explosions and the release of huge amounts of radiation into the environment. All the 21,000 residents in Namie, just north of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, were forced to evacuate from their homes and remained sheltered in the region, also called Fukushima, and elsewhere in the country. More than seven months after the disaster, tens of thousands of people remain evacuated from homes and businesses in a 20 kilometre (12 mile) no-go zone around the plant and in pockets beyond. Fully decontaminating those areas is expected to take decades. "

"Study: Fukushima storage pool was vulnerable to aftershocks Previous ArticleResponse overwhelming for Fukushima decontamination workshops Next ArticleIAEA: Cleanup of low contaminated areas will be ineffectual October 15, 2011 By TATSUYUKI KOBORI / Staff Writer Aftershocks of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake could have significantly worsened the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in the weeks after the disaster, according to a government simulation. The storage pool in the No. 4 reactor, which had its building's roof blown off after a hydrogen explosion on March 15, was vulnerable to an aftershock and might have started leaking radioactivity within three hours of a hypothetical aftershock, the study found. Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the plant, initially said the pool was sturdy enough to withstand aftershocks, but Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization analysis completed at the end of June but only released on Oct. 14 says radioactive substances could have been discharged 2.3 hours after a temblor knocked out the pool's cooling system. "

"Fukushima shiitake cesium spikes Kyodo FUKUSHIMA - Radioactive cesium exceeding the designated limit has been detected in shiitake grown in greenhouses at a farm in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, the prefectural government said. The prefecture said Saturday it has asked the city of Soma and dealers to stop shipment of the mushrooms, and a local agricultural cooperative has begun recalling them after they were found to contain 850 becquerels of cesium per kilogram, exceeding the 500-becquerel limit set by the state. The farm in question has grown the mushrooms on beds made of a mixture of wood chips and nutrients, and the wood chips used in them are suspected to have been contaminated with the radioactive substance, according to the local government. The mushroom beds were sold by the Soma agricultural cooperative. The farm has shipped 1,070 100-gram packages of shiitake since Oct. 24, and they are believed to have been sold at nine supermarkets in the prefecture from Tuesday. No other shiitake produced by the farm have entered the market, it said."

"Active faults under Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s Higashidori nuclear power complex in Aomori Prefecture are grounds for a reassessment of the seismic safety of the plant, according to a recent study. The new report released Monday by researchers including Mitsuhisa Watanabe, professor at Toyo University, may affect a decision whether to restart the plant's reactor, which is currently shut down, as well as the earthquake-proof safety screening for other nuclear plants. However, Tohoku Electric, which runs the single-reactor plant, and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which is building a new reactor in the same Higashidori complex, said the faults were shaped by the swelling of water-bearing strata and deny there are active faults that cause earthquakes under the plant site."

" Bulgaria's 30-year-old plan to build a nuclear power plant in an earthquake-prone area on the Danube may become the European Union's first atomic project doomed by Japan's disaster, leaving a $2 billion hole in the ground. The EU's poorest member faces a "mission impossible" to finish the Russian-designed plant because the Fukushima accident will require it to borrow an extra $2.1 billion for improved safety measures and insurance, according to a report by the research group Balkans and Black Sea Studies Center of Sofia."

"The agitation against Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) is a prelude to an-all India uprising for a total moratorium on nuclear energy, said a former Atomic Energy Commission scientist. "We will soon launch an all-India agitation demanding a total ban on nuclear power plants," Dr MP Parameswaran, who holds India's first PhD in nuclear engineering told DNA. Many top scientists in the country have expressed their desire to join this nation-wide agitation."

"The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March released far more radiation than the Japanese government has claimed. So concludes a study1 that combines radioactivity data from across the globe to estimate the scale and fate of emissions from the shattered plant. The study also suggests that, contrary to government claims, pools used to store spent nuclear fuel played a significant part in the release of the long-lived environmental contaminant caesium-137, which could have been prevented by prompt action. The analysis has been posted online for open peer review by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. "

"To whom does scientific debate belong? That was a central question raised by many of the 200-plus people who attended a citizens' forum in Tokyo on Oct. 12, as they criticized the ways in which the Japanese government and radiation specialists working for it are assessing and monitoring the health effects of the ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The daylong conference, organized by the Japanese citizens' groups SAY-Peace Project and Citizens' Radioactivity Measuring Station (CRMS), featured experts who dispute much of the evidence on which the government has based its health and welfare decisions affecting residents of Fukushima Prefecture and beyond."

"At last, victims of Japan's nuclear crisis can claim compensation. And they are angry. They are furious at the red tape they have to wade through just to receive basic help and in despair they still cannot get on with their lives seven months after the huge quake and tsunami triggered the world's worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. Shouts fill a room at a temporary housing complex where seven officials, kneeling in their dark suits, face 70 or so tenants who were forced to abandon their homes near the Fukushima nuclear plant after some of its reactors went into meltdown after the March 11 quake struck."

"Health ministry regulations stipulate that nuclear power station workers can be exposed to a maximum of 100 millisieverts over five years, and 50 millisieverts in a single year. However, in the case of an emergency such as a nuclear accident, they can be exposed to up to 100 millisieverts during work to bring the plant under control. In the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the ministry raised the upper limit to 250 millisieverts. The ministry concluded that workers who are exposed to 100 to 250 millisieverts during efforts to tame the Fukushima nuclear crisis must be withdrawn from further work for five years on the grounds that the conventional regulations apply to the Fukushima crisis."

"The question of how much and where radioactive materials were dispersed by the hydrogen explosions at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant have been of the utmost importance to residents of both Fukushima Prefecture and beyond, and one we began to pursue soon after the nuclear disaster started to unfold. The government initially designated the area within a 20-kilometer radius of the power plant an evacuation zone, while those living between 20 kilometers and 30 kilometers from the plant were instructed to remain indoors. However, high levels of radiation were being detected even beyond those areas. A long-term advisory to stay indoors had not been a part of the government's disaster preparedness guidelines, and would pose too great a burden on residents. It seemed to us that a designation of evacuation zones based on actual radiation measurements was necessary."

"The unprecedented disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, in which fuel meltdowns were found to have taken place simultaneously at three reactors, poses a massive challenge to the media. Looking back, did we promptly deliver accurate information that could save the lives of the public? Reflecting upon our experiences gathering information from the disaster areas, as well as from the Prime Minister's Office, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), and other groups and individuals, what can we say about our coverage of the ongoing crisis?"

"A geological study has indicated an Aomori Prefecture village which hosts a nuclear power plant may have been hit by huge tsunamis at least five times during the past 1,000 years, a researcher said Saturday. The tsunamis that broke over Higashidori village are believed to have reached up to 1.3 kilometers inland, according to Kazuomi Hirakawa, a specially appointed professor at Hokkaido University. The village hosts Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s Higashidori nuclear power plant, which faces the Pacific Ocean, while other nuclear-related facilities, including a temporary storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, are also located in the area surrounding the village on the Shimokita Peninsula."

"A critical lesson from this quake is that our available record of seismic data is too short to assess the amount of seismic hazard in a given area, Kanamori said. "One should consider all available geophysical data to assess the possibility of a rare event with grave consequence and prepare for it," he added."

"The Radiation Graphs are made from data from monitoring posts setup by the Prefectural Offices, TEPCO and NISA. I am focusing on these as they are only in Japanese and provide a different view on the MEXT Radiation Data that everyone else is graphing. Please note that the graphs do have different scales depending on the data. All Radiation readings are converted to μSv/h for consistency. Thanks & Notice Thank you to all the people on Twitter who have also been providing valuable and accurate information about the events since the Earthquake, Friday 11th March 2011. To everyone who is following the Earthquake, Radiation and Water Graphs, please note that I will usually no longer updating these files after 2011.04.09 00:00 JST. I want to thank everyone for the support and to the people who have viewed the graph page in the past 4 weeks more than 100,000+ times. I hope this has helped everyone to make sense of all the numbers floating around easier to understand. It's now up to the Government / Prefectural Offices to make these graphs to help people understand more clearly."

"For those that think nothing has changed in United States' regulation since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami started the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility, think again. The pre-disaster mentality of "What could possibly go wrong?" has been replaced with reassurances that "Stuff like that hardly ever happens!""

""The estimated source terms for iodine-131 are very constant, namely 1.3 x 10^17 becquerels per day for the first two days (US station) and 1.2 x 10^17 becquerels per day for the third day (Japan)," the institute said in a German-language statement posted on Wednesday on its website. "For cesium-137 measurements, (the US station) measured 5 x 10^15 becquerels, close, while Japan had much more cesium in its air. On this day, we estimate a source term of about 4 x 10^16." A "becquerel" is the unit that measures how many radioactive nuclei decay per second, and the "source term" refers to the quantity and type of radioactive material released into an environment. "The nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl had a source term of iodine-131 at 1.76 x 10^18 becquerels of cesium-137 at 8.5 x 10^16 bequerels," the statement added. "The estimated for Fukushima source terms are thus at 20 percent of Chernobyl for iodine, and 20-60 percent of Chernobyl for cesium.""