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Dr. Lyman is a professional antinuclear activist who has never actually operated a plant. He has a PhD in nuclear physics, but that does not mean that he ever studied anything about engineering or operations. It might not even mean that he studied anything about nuclear fuel.

Another bit worth noting here in case you haven’t been following along with the work Safecast has been doing so far, surface contamination is much higher than air contamination. There are two main reasons for this – “Fallout” literally means this radioactive crap fell out of the sky and found it’s new home on the ground, and much of contents of said crap are beta emitters. Beta radiation is lower energy than gamma so you need to get close to it to measure it – which in this case is the ground. If you only measure the air you miss the betas all together. Anyway. Surface is higher than air, and around 3000 CPM on the ground in the parking lot here is 10X the air levels. As occasionally happens when we are measuring out in public, people approach us to find out what we’re doing.

People are curious, and often they are concerned. Hiroko Ouchi was both. On top of that she was upset. She said that she hasn’t been able to get any information about the levels around them, the levels they are living in from the government or TEPCO. She said at first she wasn’t concerned because residents were told everything was fine and not to worry, but over time people started taking readings on their own and hearing about readings taken by others that suggested things weren’t all fine and this really stressed her out. This area is far enough away from the plant that no one is being officially evacuated, which means anyone who wants to leave has to do it on their own and pay for it themselves. This has caused a lot of trauma in the community as some people leave and some people stay. Ouchi-san said it is very upsetting for people to be in this position and have their questions go unanswered.

Once back in the car we decided to head east and see how close we could get to the exclusion zone. We watched the readings rise and fall, though generally increase on the whole the further we went. We have a device outside of the car, and several inside taking readings. At many points we would see a 25% increase depending on which side of the car we pointed a device towards. Very quick changes in very small areas here. At one point things seemed to be increasing very rapidly and at much higher jumps than we’d seen previously. We were so distracted by the drastic readings that we almost ran right into a roadblock staffed by several police officers who were standing around in the street. We turned past them and drove down the road a short ways and then stopped to look at our devices which were completely blowing up.

On my last transatlantic flight I measured over 800 CPM on the flight. Seeing over 1000 CPM in the car was a bit shocking, opening the door and putting the device on the ground in the middle of the street and seeing it climb, in a matter of seconds, to almost 16,000 CPM was, well, I still don’t even know how to describe it. I was completely taken aback by this. We were maybe one city block from where the officers were standing – outside and unprotected and decided we needed to go back and talk to them.

We measure radiation all the time, and were noticeably shaken after seeing the readings we just had, and these guys were being told there was nothing to worry about. Suddenly some sort of commanding officer arrived and told us we had to leave and everyone stopped talking to us. Like turning off a switch.

The officers were very polite and happy to talk to us. We asked them if they were concerned that they were standing outside all day with no protective gear and they told us their bosses have assured them it is perfectly safe and so they have to trust them. We told them about the readings we’d taken just steps from where they were and offered to show them personally that the levels were incredibly high – they declined saying they needed to trust the authorities. Which was weird, because to most people – they are the authorities

We got back in the car and drove about 1km away the other direction away from the roadblock.

There was a small restaurant that was closed up and seemed like a good place to stop, take some measurements and talk about what had just happened

This restaurant had signs taped in the window saying basically “Sorry we are closed for an undetermined period of time. Will try to reopen in the spring.”

It was here that we took our highest and most concerning readings of the day. The parking lot of the restaurant was active, but less than we’d just seen. But when we walked across the street – maybe 10 feet away, we measured over 20,000 CPM and 9 µSv/hr. We pulled out our SAM 940 to try and identify the isotopes and found things we weren’t expecting at all. So we grabbed some samples to send to a lab for professional analysis and got out of there quick.

As we were starting to wrap up a car drove by and came to a quick stop. Two gentlemen got out, one of them was a reporter for Asahi TV and the other was Tadao Mumakata, a resident of Koroyama who is working on a way to produce geiger counters locally. They knew about Safecast and were excited to run into us. We talked for a while and then decided to go get some food before heading back to Tokyo. We stopped at a smallish family restaurant and talked about our plans and goals, geiger counts and what we’d learned – hoping to pass some of this on and hopefully help someone skip over some of the early mistakes we’d made ourselves. They were happy for the info and we exchanged contacts for further discussion.

around 2:30 am we made it back and started dropping people off at their respective houses/hotels. But no spare moment could be wasted. At the final stop we uploaded the log files from the bGeigie – the geiger counter we had mounted outside of the car all day logging radiation and mapping it against GPS points. This produces a map of the whole drive, and dumps the data into our full database, filling in a few more pieces of the big picture.

And it really is a big picture. These places have never had the kinds of detailed measurements we’re taking, and the measurements that have happened haven’t been shared openly with the residents – who without question are the ones who need to have that info the most. I’ve known this since we started the project but seeing it first hand today and hearing people thank us for trying and for caring was heavy. This project is important and I’m so honored to be a part of it, and so glad to have others involved who have done the impossible to get us this far already.

Please contact Japan cat network (www.japancatnet.com)( my friends David/Susan) and /or JEARS (Japan earthquake animal rescue) on FB as they are doing great work in that evacuated area and perhaps would be interested in a collaborative effort to get data and ensure animal safety.

As the world’s ninth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, it should be (and is) a major priority for Korea to reduce emissions, and realistically that can only be accomplished by increasing the use of nuclear power. As Barack Obama noted with regard to the United States’ energy consumption, “Nuclear energy remains our largest source of fuel that produces no carbon emissions. It’s that simple. (One plant) will cut carbon pollution by 16 million tons each year when compared to a similar coal plant. That’s like taking 3.5 million cars off the road.” Environmentalists have traditionally disdained nuclear power, but even green activists cannot argue with that logic, and increasing numbers of them ― Patrick Moore, James Lovelock, Stewart Brand and the late Bishop Hugh Montefiore being prominent examples ― have become supporters of the smart use of nuclear power.

Second, the immediate dangers to human health of conventional air pollution outweigh the dangers of nuclear radiation. In 2009, the Seoul Metropolitan Government measured an average PM10 (particulate) concentration in the city of 53.8 g/m3, a figure that is roughly twice the level in other developed nations. According to the Gyeonggi Research Institute, PM10 pollution leads to 10,000 premature deaths per year in and around Seoul, while the Korea Economic Institute has estimated its social cost at 10 trillion won. While sulfur dioxide levels in the region have decreased significantly since the 1980s, the concentration of nitrogen dioxide in the air has not decreased, and ground-level ozone levels remain high. Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear power does not result in the release of any of these dangerous pollutants that fill the skies around Seoul, creating health hazards that are no less serious for often going unnoticed.

And third, the environmental and safety consequences of extracting and transporting fossil fuels are far greater than those involved with the production of nuclear power. Korea is one of the largest importers of Indonesian coal for use in power plants, for example. This coal is not always mined with a high level of environmental and safety protections, with a predictable result of air, water, and land pollution in one of Asia’s most biologically sensitive ecosystems. Coal mining is also one of the world’s more dangerous occupations, as evidenced by the many tragic disasters involving poorly managed Chinese mines. While natural gas is certainly a better option than coal, its distribution too can be problematic, whether by ship or through the recently proposed pipeline that would slice down through Siberia and North Korea to provide direct access to Russian gas.

What about truly green renewable energy, some might ask ― solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and tidal energy? Of course, Korea would be a safer and more sustainable place if these clean renewable resources were able to cover the country’s energy needs. However, the country is not particularly well suited for hydroelectric projects, while the other forms of renewable energy production are expensive, and are unfortunately likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The fact is that most Koreans will not want to pay the significantly higher energy prices that would result from the widespread use of clean renewables, and in a democratic society, the government is unlikely to force them to do so. Thus, we are left with two realistic options: fossil fuels or nuclear. From an environmental perspective, it would truly be a disaster to abandon the latter.

By Andrew Wolman Andrew Wolman is an assistant professor at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Graduate School of International and Area Studies, where he teaches international law and human rights.

the sheer amount of radioactive rubble is proving difficult to process. The municipal government of Kashiwa, in Chiba Prefecture to the west and south of Tokyo, recently shut down one of its main incinerators, because it can’t store any more than the 200 metric tons of radioactive ash it already has that is too contaminated to bury in a landfill.

According to the California-based Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN), burning Fukushima’s radioactive rubble is the worst possible way to deal with the problem. That’s because incinerating it releases much more radioactivity into the air, not only magnifying the contamination all over Japan but also sending it up into the jet stream. Once in the jet stream, the radioactive particles travel across the Northern Hemisphere, coming back down to earth with rain, snow, or other precipitation.

Radiation used to be a word that evoked serious concern in a lot of people. However, the nuclear industry and its supporters have done a masterful job in allaying public fears about it. They do this in significant part by relying on outdated and highly questionable data collected on Japanese atom bomb survivors, while at the same time ignoring and dismissing inconvenient but much more relevant evidence that shows the actual harmful effects of radiation exposure from nuclear accidents. Author Gayle Greene explains this well in a recent article here. In their attempt to win the public over to their viewpoint, nuclear proponents even trot out the dubious theory of radiation hormesis, which says that low doses of radiation are actually good for you, because they stimulate an immune response. Well, so does something that causes an allergic reaction. But I digress…

“Plutonium is biologically and chemically attracted to bone as is the naturally occurring radioactive chemical radium. However, plutonium clumps on the surface of bone, delivering a concentrated dose of alpha radiation to surrounding cells, whereas radium diffuses homogeneously in bone and thus has a lesser localized cell damage effect. This makes plutonium, because of the concentration, much more biologically toxic than a comparable amount of radium.”

different radioisotopes give off different kinds of radiation—alpha, beta, gamma, X ray, or neutron emissions—all of which behave differently. Alpha emitters, such as plutonium and radon, are intensely ionizing but don’t penetrate very far and generally can’t get through the dead layers of cells covering skin. But when they are inhaled from the air or ingested from radiation-contaminated food or water, they emit high-energy particles that can do serious damage to the cells of sensitive internal soft tissues and organs. The lighter, faster-moving beta particles can penetrate far more deeply than alpha particles, though sheets of metal and heavy clothing can block them. Beta particles are also very dangerous when inhaled or ingested. Strontium-90 and tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, are both beta emitters. Gamma radiation is a form of electromagnetic energy like X rays, and it passes through clothing and skin straight into the body. A one-inch shield of either lead or iron, or eight inches of concrete are needed to stop gamma rays, examples of which include cobalt-60 and cesium-137—one of the radionuclides of most concern in the Fukushima fallout

The behavior of radioisotopes out in the environment also varies depending on what they encounter. They can combine with one another or with stable chemicals to form molecules that may or may not dissolve in water. They can combine with solids, liquids, or gases at ordinary temperature and pressure. They may be able to enter into biochemical reactions, or they may be biologically inert.

In her book No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, Bertell notes that if they enter the body either through air, food, water, or an open wound, “They may remain near the place of entry into the body or travel in the bloodstream or lymph fluid. They can be incorporated into the tissue or bone. They may remain in the body for minutes or hours or a lifetime.”

radioactive elements, also known as radioisotopes or radionuclides, are unstable atoms. They seek stability by giving off particles and energy—ionizing radiation—until the radioisotope becomes stable. This process occurs within the nucleus of the radioisotope, and the shedding of these particles and energy is commonly referred to as ‘‘nuclear disintegration.’’ Nuclear radiation expert Rosalie Bertell describes the release of energy in each disintegration as ‘‘an explosion on the microscopic level.” This process is known as the “decay chain,” and during their decay, most radioactive elements morph into yet other radioactive elements on their journey to becoming lighter, stable atoms at the end of the chain. Some of the morphed-into elements are much more dangerous than the original radioisotope, and the decay chain can take a very long time. This is the reason that radioactive contamination can last so long

the EPA was so confident that Fukushima fallout would not be a problem for U.S. citizens that it stopped its specific monitoring of fallout from Fukushima less than two months after the meltdowns began. But neglecting to monitor the fallout will not make it go away. In fact, another enormous problem with radioactive contamination is that it bioaccumulates in the environment, which means it concentrates as it moves up the food chain.

Cecile Pineda lays it all out in her brilliant new book, Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step (Wings Press: San Antonio; www.ipgbook.com).

GE Mark I design includes waste storage pools perched 100 feet in the air. Around the world, thousands of tons of the most radioactive substances ever created are swung out of reactor cores and into these "swimming pools" to sit for months or years, suspended in air.

The presumption has been that they would somehow be removed and shipped to a central repository. But nowhere has one been approved. Nor has anyone devised a safe way to get the rods there if one is.

atomic reactors there and around the world remain far more vulnerable to seismic shocks than their builders want us to know.

The USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group, to include the cruiser USS Chancellorsville, the destroyer USS Preble and the combat support ship USNS Bridge, the guided-missile destroyers USS Fitzgerald, USS John S. McCain, USS McCampbell, USS Mustin and USS Curtis Wilbur continue relief operations off the east coast of Iwate prefecture. Three U.S. Navy liaison officers are on JS Hyuga to coordinate U.S. operations with Japan Maritime Self Defense force leadership.Helicopters from HS-4 and HSL-43 with the Reagan strike group, and HSL-51 from Carrier Airwing Five (CVW-5) in Atsugi, on the 18th delivered 28 tons of food, water, clothes, medicine, toiletries, baby supplies, and much needed kerosene to displaced persons at fifteen relief sites ashore. For two of the relief sites serviced, it was the first humanitarian aid they have received since the tsunami a week ago. Eight of the sites serviced made requests for specific aid, including a need for a medical professional.CVW-5 on Friday completed the relocation of 14 helos normally assigned to USS George Washington from Atsugi to Misawa Air Base in northern Honshu.

USS Cowpens continued its northerly track to rendezvous with the Reagan Carrier Strike Group. Cowpens is expected to join the Strike Group overnight. USS Shiloh is en route from Yokosuka to deliver relief supplies to the Strike Group.USS Blue Ridge, the flagship for the U.S. 7th Fleet, remains in the vicinity of Okinawa to conduct transfers of supplies and additional personnel to augment the staff.All 7th Fleet ships, including George Washington and USS Lassen which are currently conducting maintenance in Yokosuka, are preparing to go. Personnel have been recalled and leaves canceled.

Two P-3 Orion aircraft from Patrol Squadron Four conducted two aerial survey missions over ports and airfields in northern Honshu on Saturday. CTF-72 has embarked two liaison officers from Japan Maritime Self Defense Force on each mission. Aerial imagery captured on these missions is shared with Japan. VP-4 has established a detachment in Misawa with two aircraft and four aircrews. Radioactive iodine found in Tokyo drinking water10:07 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeFrom the Associated Press:TOKYO — Japan officials say radioactive iodine detected in drinking water for Tokyo and other areas.

A valuable resource on your entitlements during evacuations

The link for this Office of Personnel Management (OPM) handbook is: http://www.opm.gov/oca/compmemo/2008/HandbookForEmergencies(PayAndLeave)

Voluntary departure" updates at Misawa

Video: Yokosuka commander talks flights

Who is authorized to fly out?·         Command Sponsored and non-Command Sponsored Dependents of Uniformed and Civilian DoD personnelo    NOTE: Non-Command Sponsored dependents are only entitled to a round trip flight to the first destination in the United States. These dependents are not entitled to draw per diem or Safe Haven Allowance.What about girlfriends or significant others?They are not authorized departure. Only <span>Dependents</span> of Uniformed and Civilian DoD personnel are covered by the current authorization.

What about dependents of our NAFA/CFAY/ZAMA contractors?·         They will be allowed to board the plane and fly to the States, HOWEVER, as things currently stand, they are NOT entitled to any allowances or even to government-funded air travel out of NAFA.·         Funding issues should be worked through the contractor’s parent company, and the contractor sponsor should beware that he/she may ultimately be required to reimburse the U.S. Government for the value of the flight.

What about non-DoD American Citizens who aren’t contractors or attached to our bases?

Shimotsuke Shinbun (local Tochigi paper; 7/27/2011) reports that Tochigi Prefecture tested the leaves that went into the leaf compost bags, and they found 72,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium. The leaves were collected in the northern Tochigi in April, and was sold outside the prefecture from mid June to early July. The Tochigi prefectural government ordered the two sellers of leaf compost in Tochigi to recall what's been sold and refrain from shipping "voluntarily" (i.e. at the sellers' own cost, with no support from the government).Leaf composts are mainly used by the home gardeners. There may be many who hoped to grow their own, radiation-free vegetables and bought these bags to amend the soil for better growth of the seedlings. Well, that hope is dashed. The home gardeners may have ended up contaminating their own soil which may not have been contaminated before they put in the compost.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries couldn't even figure out that cattle farmers feed their cows with rice hay. What the individual home gardeners use for their small gardens was probably none of their concern, as the Ministry is there for the producers.

Meanwhile, government officials claimed there was nothing to worry about. "The quantities of radioactive materials reaching Canada as a result of the Japanese nuclear incident are very small and do not pose any health risk to Canadians," Health Canada says on its website. "The very slight increases in radiation across the country have been smaller than the normal day-to-day fluctuations from background radiation." In fact, Health Canada's own data shows this isn't true. The iodine-131 level in the air in Sidney peaked at 3.6 millibecquerels per cubic metre on March 20. That's more than 300 times higher than the background level, which is 0.01 or fewer millibecquerels per cubic metre.

"There have been massive radiation spikes in Canada because of Fukushima," said Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. "The authorities don't want people to have an understanding of this. The government of Canada tends to pooh-pooh the dangers of nuclear power because it is a promoter of nuclear energy and uranium sales."

Edwards has advised the federal auditor-general's office and the Ontario government on nuclear-power issues and is a math professor at Montreal's Vanier College.

It's not the risk to an individual that's the problem but how much society is at risk. When you are exposing millions of people to an insult, even if the average dose is quite small, we are going to see fatal health effects," he said.

ADDRESSES: The Draft SWEIS and its reference material are available for review on the NNSA/NSO Web site at: http://nnsa.energy.gov/nepa.

Texas has been experiencing a terrible heat wave this summer - along with much of the rest of the country. According to the Dallas Morning News, this heat wave has caused more than 20 power plants to shut down, including coal and natural gas plants. On the other hand, Texan wind farms have been providing a steady, significant supply of electricity during the heat wave, in part because wind farms require no water to generate electricity. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) noted on their blog: “Wind plants are keeping the lights on and the air conditioners running for hundreds of thousands of homes in Texas.”

This near-threat of a blackout is not a one-time or seasonal ordeal for Texans. Earlier this year, when winter storms were hammering the Lone Star State, rolling blackouts occurred due to faltering fossil fuel plants. In February, 50 power plants failed and wind energy helped pick up the slack.

Although far from the steady winds of the Great Plains, Cape Wind Associates noted that if their offshore wind farm was already operational, the turbines would have been able to harness the power of the heat wave oppressing the Northeast, mostly at full capacity. Cape Wind, vying to be the nation’s first offshore wind farm, has a meteorological tower stationed off Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts. If Cape Wind had been built, it could have been using these oppressive heat waves to operate New England’s cooling air conditioners. These three examples would suggest that the reliability of fossil fuels and nuclear reactors has been overstated, as has the variability of wind.

So just how much electricity can wind energy realistically supply as a portion of the nation’s energy? A very thorough report completed by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2008 (completed during President George W. Bush’s tenure) presents one scenario where wind energy could provide 20% of the U.S.’s electrical power by 2030. To achieve this level, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates energy costs would increase only 50 cents per month per household. A more recent study, the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (EWITS), shows that wind could supply 30% of the Eastern Interconnect’s service area (all of the Eastern U.S. from Nebraska eastward) with the proper transmission upgrades. As wind farms become more spread out across the country, and are better connected to each other via transmission lines, the variability of wind energy further decreases. If the wind isn’t blowing in Nebraska, it may be blowing in North Carolina, or off the coast of Georgia and the electricity generated in any state can then be transported across the continent. A plan has been hatched in the European Union to acquire 50% of those member states’ electricity from wind energy by 2050 - mostly from offshore wind farms, spread around the continent and heavily connected with transmission lines.

With a significant amount of wind energy providing electricity in the U.S., what would happen if the wind ever stops blowing? Nothing really - the lights will stay on, refrigerators will keep running and air conditions will keep working. As it so happens, wind energy has made the U.S. electrical supply more diversified and protects us against periodic shut downs from those pesky, sometimes-unreliable fossil fuel power plants and nuclear reactors.