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Japan will more than triple the number of regions it checks for airborne radiation as more contaminated “hot spots” are discovered far from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power station. The government said it will increase radiation monitoring by helicopter to 22 prefectures from the six closest to the plant, which began spewing radiation after an earthquake and tsunami struck the station in March. The plan comes after radioactive waste more than double the regulatory limit was found 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the plant this week.

Authorities have refused to give a cumulative figure for radiation released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant after estimating in June that fallout in the six days following the quake was equal to 15 percent of total radiation released in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The authorities have been too slow to widen airborne radiation testing, said Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute in Osaka.

“The government should have expanded the monitoring area by helicopters much earlier to ease concerns among the public,” Ito said in a telephone interview yesterday.

About 19 percent of airborne fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster was deposited in Japan, and only about 2 percent made it to other land areas in Asia and North America, according to a study published this week by the European Geosciences Union. The bulk was absorbed by the Pacific Ocean.

Opponents of nuclear energy have seized on the European study because it describes the total release at Fukushima as “massive.” It finds that twice as much cesium 137 was released at Fukushima than originally reported. And it says “high concentrations” reached North America and Europe. It examines two radionuclides in particular–xenon 133 and cesium 137–and measures the total release in terabecquerels.

Altogether, we estimate that 6.4 TBq of 137Cs, or 19 percent of the total fallout until 20 April, were deposited over Japanese land areas, while most of the rest fell over the North Pacific Ocean,” the authors write. “Only 0.7 TBq, or 2 percent of the total fallout were deposited on land areas other than Japan.” Scientists generally regard ocean absorption of fallout preferable to land deposits, because water absorbs radiation and the volume of the ocean dilutes it. On land, radioactive isotopes can be consumed by livestock and concentrated in milk and other food sources. The study also notes that airborne emissions of cesium 137 continued until March 19, when Japanese authorities began spraying water on the spent fuel pool of reactor #4. “This indicates that emissions were not only coming from the damaged reactor cores, but also from the spent-fuel pool of unit 4 and confirms that the spraying was an effective countermeasure.”

TEPCO has announced that as of today, the final additions to the enclosure structure at No. 1 reactor building have been made (air circulation and filtration equipment) and that the inspection of the structure and systems by NISA is completed satisfactorily. The structure itself has been completed for a while, but this might be considered as the official commissioning of the entire structure and ventilation system.-TEPCO has also announced that it will drastically increase the amount of water being injected to No. 1 reactor in order to cut down on evaporation inside the structure. It appears that the high humidity environment is hampering the ability to work inside, so TEPCO will increase the feed rate through the feed line (normal feedwater injection line) upward from 4 cubic meters per hour to 7.5 cubic meters per hour over four days. When the conditions of the plant are ascertained at that point TEPCO will further increase water flow. This will also reduce drastically any gaseous emissions to the enclosure from the damaged reactor.

TEPCO has discovered a nearly or else completely sheared axle shaft casing on the overhead crane at the common spent fuel building at Fukushima Daiichi. The cause is yet unknown, and no hazard is posed at this time. -TEPCO is almost ready to place the gas handling system (improvised arrangement) at No. 2 reactor plant (to handle gases in the primary containment) into operation. This system will filter out radioactive airborne contaminants. Similar systems will be employed eventually at all three reactors.

Finally, airborne releases from Fukushima Daiichi continue to decline .. contrary to many reports on anti-nuclear sites .. as shown by these two panels from a report issued by the Japanese Prime Minister's office.

More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.

Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers has focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.

Also worrying, industry experts say, are cleanup methods used by the construction companies that create loose contamination that can become airborne or enter the water.

An unstoppable tide of radioactive trash and chemical waste from Fukushima is pushing ever closer to North America. An estimated 20 million tons of smashed timber, capsized boats and industrial wreckage is more than halfway across the ocean, based on sightings off Midway by a Russian ship's crew. Safe disposal of the solid waste will be monumental task, but the greater threat lies in the invisible chemical stew mixed with sea water.

This new triple disaster floating from northeast Japan is an unprecedented nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) contamination event. Radioactive isotopes cesium and strontium are by now in the marine food chain, moving up the bio-ladder from plankton to invertebrates like squid and then into fish like salmon and halibut. Sea animals are also exposed to the millions of tons of biological waste from pig farms and untreated sludge from tsunami-engulfed coast of Japan, transporting pathogens including the avian influenza virus, which is known to infect fish and turtles. The chemical contamination, either liquid or leached out of plastic and painted metal, will likely have the most immediate effects of harming human health and exterminating marine animals.

Many chemical compounds are volatile and can evaporate with water to form clouds, which will eventually precipitate as rainfall across Canada and the northern United States. The long-term threat extends far inland to the Rockies and beyond, affecting agriculture, rivers, reservoirs and, eventually, aquifers and well water.   Falsifying Oceanography

Thyroid cancer cases have more than doubled since 1997 in the United States, while deadly industrial practices that contaminate groundwater with radiation and other carcinogens are also rising. New information released by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 56,460 people will develop thyroid cancer in 2012 and 1,780 will die from it.

From 1980 to 1996, thyroid cancer increased nearly 300%, while the population increased by (again) 18%. Most thyroid cancers don’t develop for 10-30 years after radiation exposure, but the monstrous spike in thyroid cancer from 1980-2012 is only partly the result of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 (TMI). Pennsylvania, with its nine nuclear reactors, does have the highest incidence of thyroid cancer across nearly all demographics among 45* states, reports epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA, of the Radiation and Public Health Project. In 2009, he analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control’s national survey of thyroid cancer incidence for the years 2001-2005 and compared it with proximity to nuclear power stations, finding:

M]ost U.S. counties with the highest thyroid cancer incidence are in a contiguous area of eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and southern New York. Exposure to radioactive iodine emissions from 16 nuclear power reactors within a 90 mile radius in this area … are likely a cause of rising incidence rates.

Abstract Source: J Environ Radioact. 2011 Dec 27. Epub 2011 Dec 27. PMID: 22206700

Article Affiliation: Environmental Research Department, SRI Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Savanoriu 231, 02300 Vilnius, Lithuania.

Analyses of (131)I, (137)Cs and (134)Cs in airborne aerosols were carried out in daily samples in Vilnius, Lithuania after the Fukushima accident during the period of March-April, 2011. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs ranged from 12 μBq/m(3) and 1.4 μBq/m(3) to 3700 μBq/m(3) and 1040 μBq/m(3), respectively. The activity concentration of (239,240)Pu in one aerosol sample collected from 23 March to 15 April, 2011 was found to be 44.5 nBq/m(3). The two maxima found in radionuclide concentrations were related to complicated long-range air mass transport from Japan across the Pacific, the North America and the Atlantic Ocean to Central Europe as indicated by modelling. HYSPLIT backward trajectories and meteorological data were applied for interpretation of activity variations of measured radionuclides observed at the site of investigation. (7)Be and (212)Pb activity concentrations and their ratios were used as tracers of vertical transport of air masses. Fukushima data were compared with the data obtained during the Chernobyl accident and in the post Chernobyl period. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs were found to be by 4 orders of magnitude lower as compared to the Chernobyl accident. The activity ratio of (134)Cs/(137)Cs was around 1 with small variations only. The activity ratio of (238)Pu/(239,240)Pu in the aerosol sample was 1.2, indicating a presence of the spent fuel of different origin than that of the Chernobyl accident.

AbstractAnalyses of (131)I, (137)Cs and (134)Cs in airborne aerosols were carried out in daily samples in Vilnius, Lithuania after the Fukushima accident during the period of March-April, 2011. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs ranged from 12 μBq/m(3) and 1.4 μBq/m(3) to 3700 μBq/m(3) and 1040 μBq/m(3), respectively. The activity concentration of (239,240)Pu in one aerosol sample collected from 23 March to 15 April, 2011 was found to be 44.5 nBq/m(3). The two maxima found in radionuclide concentrations were related to complicated long-range air mass transport from Japan across the Pacific, the North America and the Atlantic Ocean to Central Europe as indicated by modelling. HYSPLIT backward trajectories and meteorological data were applied for interpretation of activity variations of measured radionuclides observed at the site of investigation. (7)Be and (212)Pb activity concentrations and their ratios were used as tracers of vertical transport of air masses. Fukushima data were compared with the data obtained during the Chernobyl accident and in the post Chernobyl period. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs were found to be by 4 orders of magnitude lower as compared to the Chernobyl accident. The activity ratio of (134)Cs/(137)Cs was around 1 with small variations only. The activity ratio of (238)Pu/(239,240)Pu in the aerosol sample was 1.2, indicating a presence of the spent fuel of different origin than that of the Chernobyl accident.

Fukushima’s cesium and other airborne emissions have already dwarfed Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and all nuclear explosions including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

16 months later, the worst may be yet to come.

our lives are still threatened every day by a Unit 4 fuel pool left hanging 100 feet in the air. At any moment, an earthquake we all know is coming could send that pool crashing to the ground.

We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again -Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer Rubble from quake- and tsunami-hit areas to be disposed in Tokyo, Mainichi, September 29, 2011: [Emphasis Added] [...] Tokyo decided to process rubble from disaster-hit areas after detecting only 133 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram of ash generated after rubble was incinerated [...] [D]ue to radiation fears, little progress has been made in efforts to dispose of such waste. [...] The metropolitan government intends to transport approximately 500,000 metric tons of rubble to facilities in the capital and dispose of them over a 2 1/2-year period from this coming October to March 2014. [...] The waste will be separate into burnable and unburnable items. Burnable waste will be incinerated [...] Tokyo Metropolitan Government will regularly measure the amount of radiation in the incinerated ash [...]

See also: “We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again” — Clouds of radiation continue across to Pacific Northwest (VIDEO): At 7:30 in (Transcript Summary) Arnie Gundersen, chief nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates: US would be burying 8,000 Bq/kg radioactive waste underground for thousands of years Lots of serious ramifications from burning of nuclear waste Material from Fukushima that was on the ground is now going airborne again Towns now getting cesium redeposited on them by the burning of nuclear material Clouds of radiation recontaminating areas deemed clean or low Continues across to the Pacific Northwest We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again >> Have your voice be heard. Visit the discussion thread: What should be done about Japan burning radioactive debris until at least March 2014? <<

The main trade group for the nuclear power industry, the Nuclear Energy Institute, spent $580,000 in the first quarter lobbying federal officials about financial support for new reactors, safety regulations and other issues, according to a disclosure report. That's 32 percent more than the $440,000 the trade group spent in the second quarter of last year and 6 percent more than the $545,000 it spent in the first quarter of 2011. The nuclear crisis in Japan last March brought about by the earthquake and tsunami led to calls for tighter safety regulations for nuclear plants in the United States.

NEI, based in Washington, lobbied the government on measures designed to ensure the nation's 104 commercial reactors can withstand natural disasters. It also lobbied on a measure that would require nuclear operators to transfer radioactive spent nuclear fuel from cooling pools inside or near reactor cores to dry casks further from the reactors. In the Japanese nuclear accident, crowded pools of spent nuclear fuel overheated when the nuclear station's cooling power was knocked out. NEI also lobbied the government over environmental regulations. Congress is considering measures that would delay new clean air and clean water rules and curb the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to issue rules by forcing the EPA to factor in the cost of their implementation in addition to medical and scientific evidence.

There also are several measures under consideration that would block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. Nuclear power generation produces no greenhouse gases and none of the airborne toxins such as mercury that EPA clean air rules target. But many nuclear plants use outdated cooling systems that consume enormous amounts of water. Replacing those cooling systems with newer systems that use less water is expensive. NEI also lobbied for funds for research and development for smaller, cheaper reactors and other nuclear technologies.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — Pickup trucks believed present at the world's first nuclear bomb test, coke and whiskey bottles, a calendar and a toothbrush are just a few of the items unearthed by a cleanup of one of Los Alamos National Laboratory's original toxic dump sites, where the detritus of the 1940s Manhattan Project was strewn through some of northern New Mexico's most scenic mesas and canyons.More important, workers also extracted 43,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris and toxic soil — all beneath highly specialized containment domes — from what is known as Area B, just across the street from a strip of local businesses, and just more than a mile from downtown Los Alamos.The three-year, $212 million excavation project on the six-acre site was completed last month, and lab officials boast that environmental conditions there will soon be suitable for residential development.That's the good news.

But cleaning up the greater 40-square mile lab complex, situated 25 miles northwest of Santa Fe at the top of a series of canyons whose storm waters run into the Rio Grande, is far from complete. And this summer's massive Las Conchas fire that singed lab property heightened environmental and safety fears associated with more than 70 years of nuclear production and experiments."I think every time that there is some natural event that has ... the potential for disturbing radioactive sources, everybody becomes very interested in what is going on," said Ralph Phelps, chairman of the Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board.Although lab officials downplayed the fire danger at the time, Phelps said the waste and contaminated buildings at the 63-acre site known as Area G definitely pose a safety threat to northern New Mexico.

As a result, Gov. Susana Martinez and the Citizens Advisory Board have increased pressure on the National Nuclear Safety Administration, which runs the lab for the Department of Energy, to accelerate removal of thousands of barrels of plutonium-tainted waste stored in Area G, the lab's last active dump site. Those barrels gained national focus when the state's largest ever wildfire forced a nearly weeklong evacuation of both the lab and the entire town of Los Alamos."Fire up here is something that the folks have been through," Phelps said. "... If a fire were to reach that that area and heat that stuff up and rupture the drums, there is the potential that some of that could go airborne."Martinez sent lab officials a letter asking that they reprioritize their cleanup plans, which are laid out in a consent order with the state requiring remediation of 90 percent of toxic waste on lab property by 2015 at a cost of some $2 billion.

Tatsuhiko Kodama began his 27 July testimony to Japan's parliament with what he knew. In a firm, clear voice, he said that the Radioisotope Center of the University of Tokyo, which he heads, had detected elevated radiation levels in the days following the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. But when it came to what wasn't known, he became angry. "There is no definite report from the Tokyo Electric Power Company or the government as to exactly how much radioactive material has been released from Fukushima!" he shouted.

Kodama's impassioned speech was posted on YouTube in late July and has received nearly 600,000 views, transforming him into one of Japan's most visible critics of the government. But he is not alone. Almost six months after an earthquake and tsunami triggered the meltdowns, other researchers say that crucial data for understanding the crisis are still missing, and funding snags and bureaucracy are hampering efforts to collect more. Some researchers warn that, without better coordination, clean-up efforts will be delayed, and the opportunity to measure the effects of the worst nuclear accident in decades could be lost. Kodama and a handful of Japanese scientists have become so frustrated that they are beginning grassroots campaigns to collect information and speed the clean-up.

Since the crisis began, the Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japanese government have churned out reams of radiation measurements, but only recently has a full picture of Fukushima's fallout begun to emerge. On 30 August, the science ministry released a map showing contamination over a 100-kilometer radius around the plant. The survey of 2,200 locations shows a roughly 35-kilometer-long strip northwest of the plant where levels of caesium-137 contamination seem to exceed 1,000 kilobecquerels per square metre. (After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, areas with more than 1,480 kilobecquerels per square metre were permanently evacuated by the Soviet authorities. In Japan, the high-radiation strip extends beyond the original forced evacuation zone, but falls within a larger 'planned evacuation zone' that has not yet been completely cleared.)

Soon after Japan's triple disaster, I suggested that an official cover-up of a nuclear-weapons program hidden inside the Fukushima No.1 plant was delaying the effort to contain the reactor meltdowns. Soon after the tsunami struck, the Tokyo Electric Power Company reported that only three reactors had been generating electricity on the afternoon of March 11.. (According to the initial report, these were the older GE-built reactors 1,2 and 6.). Yet overheating at five of the plant's six reactors indicated that two additional reactors had also been operating (the newer and more advanced Nos. 3 and 4, built by Toshiba and Hitachi). The only plausible purpose of such unscheduled operation is uranium enrichment toward the production of nuclear warhead

On my subsequent sojourns in Japan, other suspicious activities also pointed to a high-level cover-up, including systematic undercounts of radiation levels, inexplicable damage to thousands of imported dosimeters, armed anti-terrorism police aboard trains and inside the dead zone, the jamming of international phone calls, homing devices installed in the GPS of rented cars, and warning visits to contacts by government agents discouraging cooperation with independent investigations. These aggressive infringements on civil liberties cannot be shrugged off as an overreaction to a civil disaster but must have been invoked on grounds of national security.

One telltale sign of high-level interference was the refusal by science equipment manufacturers to sell isotope chromatography devices to non-governmental customers, even to organizations ready to pay $170,000 in cash for a single unit. These sensitive instruments can detect the presence of specific isotopes, for example cesium-137 and strontium-90. Whether uranium was being enriched at Fukushima could be determined by the ratio of isotopes from enriched weapons-grade fissile material versus residues from less concentrated fuel rods.

Contamination Outside Fukushima, Asia Pacific Journal by Matthew Penney, September 4, 2011:

The Japanese government has taken the position that no one outside of the vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi plant is likely to suffer health effects from the radiation that has been released since March. Many Japanese, especially parents of young children, are doubtful.

[The August 22 issue of AERA magazine, published by Asahi Shimbun, ran a feature on contamination in the Kanto region which] begins by reiterating a point that has been made frequently by critics of the Japanese government – that we simply do not know what effects low levels of radiation and the presence of isotopes in the human body will have on long-term health.

SOURCE: News: Actual Fukushima worker warns to get out of Japan before Spring comes, Fukushima Diary by Mochizuki, October 5, 2011 [Translated Oct. 4 Tweet by] Happy20790 ハッピー

[...] Speaking of the pine, the pollen next year is very “serious”. I have an allergy too.

[Translated Oct. 4 Tweet by] Happy20790 ハッピー

Even as thousands of Japanese workers struggle to contain the ongoing nuclear disaster, low levels of radiation from those power plants have been detected in foods in the United States. Milk, fruits and vegetables show trace amounts of radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima Daichi power plants, and the media appears to be paying scant attention, if any attention at all. It is as if the problem only involves Japan, not the vast Pacific Ocean, into which highly radioactive water has poured by the dozens of tons, and not into air currents and rainwater that carry radiation to U.S. soil and to the rest of the world. And while both Switzerland and Germany have come out against any further nuclear development, the U.S. the nuclear power industry continues as usual, with aging and crumbling power plants receiving extended operating licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as though it can’t happen here. But it is happening here, on your dinner plate.

According to Greenpeace, the ocean around large areas of Japan has been contaminated by toxic radioactive agents including cesium, iodine, plutonium and strontium. These radioactive agents are accumulating in sea life. Fish, shellfish and sea vegetables are absorbing this radiation, while airborne radioactive particles have contaminated land-based crops in Japan, including spinach and tea grown 200 miles south of the damaged nuclear plants. Meanwhile, on U.S. soil, radiation began to show up in samples of milk tested in California, just one month after the plants were damaged. Radiation tests conducted since the nuclear disaster in Japan have detected radioactive iodine and cesium in milk and vegetables produced in California. According to tests conducted by scientists at the UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering, milk from grass fed cows in Sonoma County was contaminated with cesium 137 and cesium 134. Milk sold in Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, Vermont and Washington has also tested positive for radiation since the accident. 

Thanks to the jet stream air currents that flow across the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. is receiving a steady flow of radiation from Fukushima Daichi. And while many scientists say that the levels of contamination in food pose no significant threat to health, scientists are unable to establish any actual safe limit for radiation in food. Detection of radioactive iodine 131, which degrades rapidly, in California milk samples shows that the fallout from Japan is reaching the U.S. quickly