Group items tagged

The U.S. government has extended a warning to U.S. citizens to keep out of a 50-mile evacuation zone surrounding the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.The alert, which expires Aug. 15 and was transmitted Thursday by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, advises that, although the situation at the Fukushima plant remains serious and dynamic, it is not a significant risk to U.S. citizens outside the evacuation zone.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we continue to recommend that U.S. citizens avoid travel to destinations within the 50-mile evacuation zone of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant,” the alert stated. “U.S. citizens who are still within this zone should evacuate or shelter in place.”In contrast, the Japanese government’s evacuation zone extends 12 miles away from the nuclear plant.

Transport routes between Tokyo and Sendai that run through the zone are open to the public and the U.S. government believes health and safety risks associated with using the routes are low, the alert states.“It is safe for U.S. citizens to use the Tohoku Shinkansen railway and Tohoku Expressway to transit through the area,” the alert states.

The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is coming under scrutiny after some conflicting stories have come out about the plants condition. One report says all reactors in Ukraine are on alert conditions, another claims Zaporizhia shut down after a problem but that no radiation was leaking out. The two reports on Twitter: russian_market russian_market ☰ ВСЕГДА ГОТОВ ☰ BREAKING NEWS: Incident at the Nuclear Power Plant in #Zaporizhia /Ukraine/, the Fifth block turned off automatically bit.ly/vIn8mT

12 Nov @russian_market ☰ ВСЕГДА ГОТОВ ☰ BREAKING NEWS: ALL NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS in Ukraine put on Alert after today’s incident at the Nuclear Power Plant in #Zaporizhia /Ukraine/ Lenta.ru is reporting a fault in the power systems but no emergency. Russian Market via Joop;nl is stating all nuclear plants in Ukraine are on alert. EURDEP is showing gradually lowering radiation levels over Europe over all and gradually lowering Iodine 131. Zaphorizhia is a possibility and the shutdown coincides with the levels dropping off in eastern Europe. But the radiation stations near the Krsko nuclear plant in Slovenia are still elevated compared to other areas. There is still the possibility of an outlier such as one of the medical reactors in Poland or Russia or yet another unknown source.

Fukushima Teacher Muzzled on Radiation Risks for School Children, Bloomberg by Takahiko Hyuga, July 28, 2011:

[... O]n a recent July morning, school children in Fukushima prefecture were taking off their masks and running around playgrounds in T-shirts, exposing them to a similar amount of annual radiation as a worker in a nuclear power plant. Toshinori Shishido, a Japanese literature teacher of 25 years, had warned his students two months ago to wear surgical masks and keep their skin covered with long-sleeved shirts. His advice went unheeded, not because of the weather but because his school told him not to alarm students. Shishido quit this week. “I want to get away from this situation where I’m not even allowed to alert children about radiation exposure,” said Shishido, a 48-year-old teacher who taught at Fukushima Nishi High School. [...]

Kiyoharu Furukawa, 57, assistant principal at Fukushima Nishi High: “I don’t think the children are safe either, and I know the radiation level is still high… These days, they are wearing short sleeves and no masks.”

A nuclear or radiological emergency presents complex public health, environmental and engineering challenges. A constant flow of detailed, reliable information is indispensable to be able to marshal and coordinate the needed response which includes the prompt mobilisation and dispatch of specialised human and equipment resources, as requested. The global focal point for such coordination and information exchange is the IAEA's Incident and Emergency Centre, or IEC. It is the IEC's task to inform many different official designated actors around the world as quickly as possible whenever a nuclear or radiological emergency occurs. A sustained and reliable information flow is one of the most important resources in effective incident and emergency response. New Platform

One of the IEC's tasks is to develop and improve the communication and coordination systems that deliver authenticated and verified information to the emergency responders who need it. During the emergency response to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, the IEC launched a new, secure web-based communications platform, the Unified System for Information Exchange on Incidents and Emergencies, or USIE. The new system, which had been in development since 2009, replaces two existing communication systems, thus simplifying the emergency information exchange. "The new USIE system delivers a solution the emergency response community needed and requested from the IAEA," said Denis Flory, IAEA Deputy Director General for Nuclear Safety and Security. "When the IAEA's Member States respond to a nuclear incident or emergency, they need a single, secure, straight-forward system that easily adapts to their needs. That is exactly what USIE does."

Alert System Like its predecessor systems, USIE is a secure website to which registered users have access. Instead of monitoring two separate systems that previously reported on different types of incidents, users now receive alerts from the new USIE system when new information is issued about any type of incident, ranging from a lost radioactive source to a full-scale nuclear emergency. The platform delivers alerts, based upon the user's preferences, via text messages delivered to a mobile device, or via email, or via fax. The system tracks multiple events, issuing information that has been authenticated by the country reporting an accident or incident. The platform meets demanding security standards thus offering its users the assurance that the information received is reliable.

[MAXIMUM ALERT] Neptunium 239 Potentially Detected In Saint Louis 9/14/11 Radioactive Rainfall.  Updates and video will follow shortly. The source has a calculated average 2.4 day half life. The half life matches Neptunium 239. Np239 decays into Plutonium 239. The source would probably be Americium 243 created in the MOX fuel reactor at Fukushima Unit 3

Updated to add: IF WE ARE LUCKY, the source will not be Americium 243 but rather Uranium 239 (in Fukushima); given the 2.4 day half life of Np 239, it is possible that source came directly across the jet-stream as Np-239. The result would be higher levels of Np-239 and Plutonium 239 the further west one went from Saint Louis. 

UPDATE 9/17/11: The video below records raw data being taken from the 1.33 mR/hr radioactive rainfall which fell in Saint Louis, Mo on 9/14/11. This data was taken after shorter half life contamination had mostly burned off. The data shown is from one hour total count readings taken of the radioactive source, and local background. The raw data from the later part of the video has yet to be fully analyzed.

Fish taken from a lake in northern Vermont had similar levels of strontium-90 and cesium-137 as fish taken from the Connecticut River near Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon. During a Feb. 3 meeting of the House Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources Committee in the Vermont Statehouse, committee members heard from Bill Irwin, chief of radiological health for the Vermont Department of Health. "We got preliminary results from our fish sample analysis from Lake Carmi in northern Franklin County," Irwin told the Reformer on Monday. Irwin said Lake Carmine, in Enosburg Falls, is about as far away from Yankee as you can get and still be in the Green Mountain State. "The results are that cesium-137 and strontium-90 in Lake Carmi fish is in the same range as Connecticut River fish," said Irwin. "We take this as some evidence that all fish in Vermont are likely to have radioactive cesium and strontium at these levels and that, as we've hypothesized, it is from nuclear weapons fallout and the releases of Chernobyl. All of us are glad to have proof and not just conjecture." The fish taken from Lake Carmi were small-mouth bass, he said, and were taken from the lake by Vermont Fish and Wildlife fisheries personnel. Cesium was found in both edible and inedible portions of the bass, he said, while strontium was found only in inedible portions, which include bones, the head, fins and scales. "There's no danger in eating the fish," said Irwin. "Should we ever find that there are reasons to restrict diet from any sampling for any kind of radioactive or toxicological events, we would keep in mind different cultures have different diets."

In the same analyses, the fish had almost 500 times more potassium-40 in them than they do cesium-137, he said. Potassium-40 is a naturally occurring radioactive material that is in nearly everything and was created when the planet was formed billions of years ago, said Irwin. A fish taken from the Connecticut River in 2010 had the highest levels of strontium-90 in bone that his department has seen in any samples. "In that same sample we did find very low but measurable amounts of strontium-90 in the meat of the fish," said Irwin, which could have been a sampling or contamination error. "But we don't know that." The sampling is part of an ongoing multi-state operation to help determine what is the level of the two radioactive isotopes in fish in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York. "We hope to further populate this data with fish taken from waters unaffected by nuclear power plants," said Irwin. The states are also working with the a Food and Drug Administration laboratory in Winchester, Mass., to develop sampling and analysis protocols. When more data has been assembled from around the region, Irwin said they hope to publish it in scientific journals. The results of the sampling from Lake Carmi will be posted soon on DOH's website, he said. When this year's fishing season begins, Fish and Wildlife personnel will be taking more fish for the Department of Health.

Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening standards or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.Officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regularly have decided original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.The result? Rising fears that these accommodations are undermining safety -- and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize nuclear power's future.

Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed -- up to 20 times the original limit. When cracking caused radioactive leaks in steam generator tubing, an easier test was devised so plants could meet standards.Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in AP's yearlong investigation. And many of them could escalate dangers during an accident.

Despite the problems, not a single official body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended dozens of reactor licenses.Industry and government officials defend their actions and insist no chances are being taken. But the AP investigation found that with billions of dollars and 19 percent of America's electricity supply at stake, a cozy relationship prevails between industry and the NRC.Records show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance. Studies are conducted by industry and government, and all agree existing standards are "unnecessarily conservative."

Government seems to plan to declare “Step2 is accomplished” on 12/16/2011 but actually nothing changes at the plants. Government wants to declare the complete of step 2 during this year to pull back the residents to the planned evacuation zone and minimize the alerting area.

However, Naraha and Hirono, where the government lifted the evacuating area, haven’t had more then half of the population come back. Schools are still closed too. Government can’t pull people back to the zone even if they declare the safety. Fukushima local government declared safety about “rice” but every time they did more radioactive rice was found. They mustn’t declare safety so easily.

Even though they “declare” the cold shut down, no risk of hydrogen explosion, massive decrease of radiation, nobody can actually measure the temperature of dropped nuclear fuel, and hydrogen level is not stable. Radiation is still emit by 60 million Bq/h, sea contamination is ongoing..

During the 1970s and 1980s, at the peak of the nuclear reactor construction, organized groups of protestors mounted dozens of anti-nuke campaigns. They were called Chicken Littles, the establishment media generally ignored their concerns, and the nuclear industry trotted out numerous scientists and engineers from their payrolls to declare nuclear energy to be safe, clean, and inexpensive energy that could reduce America’s dependence upon foreign oil. Workers at nuclear plants are highly trained, probably far more than workers in any other industry; operating systems are closely regulated and monitored. However, problems caused by human negligence, manufacturing defects, and natural disasters have plagued the nuclear power industry for its six decades. It isn’t alerts like what happened at San Onofre that are the problem; it’s the level 3 (site area emergencies) and level 4 (general site emergencies) disasters. There have been 99 major disasters, 56 of them in the U.S., since 1952, according to a study conducted by Benjamin K. Sovacool Director of the Energy Justice Program at Institute for Energy and Environment  One-third of all Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant.

At Windscale in northwest England, fire destroyed the core, releasing significant amounts of Iodine-131. At Rocky Flats near Denver, radioactive plutonium and tritium leaked into the environment several times over a two decade period. At Church Rock, New Mexico, more than 90 million gallons of radioactive waste poured into the Rio Puerco, directly affecting the Navajo nation. In the grounds of central and northeastern Pennsylvania, in addition to the release of radioactive Cesium-137 and Iodine-121, an excessive level of Strontium-90 was released during the Three Mile Island (TMI) meltdown in 1979, the same year as the Church Rock disaster. To keep waste tanks from overflowing with radioactive waste, the plant’s operator dumped several thousand gallons of radioactive waste into the Susquehanna River. An independent study by Dr. Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina revealed the incidence of lung cancer and leukemia downwind of the TMI meltdown within six years of the meltdown was two to ten times that of the rest of the region.

Although nuclear plant security is designed to protect against significant and extended forms of terrorism, the NRC believes as many as one-fourth of the 104 U.S. nuclear plants may need upgrades to withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters, according to an Associated Press investigation. About 20 percent of the world’s 442 nuclear plants are built in earthquake zones, according to data compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The NRC has determined that the leading U.S. plants in the Eastern Coast in danger of being compromised by an earthquake are in the extended metropolitan areas of Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chattanooga. Tenn. The highest risk, however, may be California’s San Onofre and Diablo Canyon plants, both built near major fault lines. Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, was even built by workers who misinterpreted the blueprints.  

As if the closing steel mills and automobile manufacturing plants weren't bad enough, some of the oldest, most risky atomic reactors in the U.S. are located in the Midwest. Worse still, they are on the shores of the Great Lakes, putting at risk the drinking water supply for 40 million people downstream in the U.S., Canada, and a large number of Native American First Nations. Altogether, 33 atomic reactors are located on the shorelines of the Great Lakes. Two of the most infamous of these radiologically risky "Rust Belt reactors" are Entergy Nuclear's Palisades in southwest Michigan, and FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse in northwest Ohio.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), a long-time watchdog on the nuclear industry, wrote the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about an acidic, radioactive leak representing a "crisis in the control room at the Palisades nuclear power plant." The leakage had been ongoing for a year, and was being "contained" in glorified buckets referred to by Entergy PR spokesman Mark Savage as "catch basins." Although the leak came to light when Palisades was forced to shutdown after its rate reached more than 30 gallons per day, it had been ongoing for months at a rate of 15 gallons per day. The tritiated and borated water is leaking from a 300,000 gallon Safety Injection Refueling Water storage tank, which is safety critical for both reactor core and radiological containment cooling. Whistleblowers contacted Washington, D.C. attorney Billie Pirner Garde, who alerted Rep. Markey, who wrote NRC. The NRC Office of Investigations has launched a probe into potential Entergy wrongdoing. On July 17th, NRC issued a "Confirmatory Action Letter" which enables Palisades to keep operating into 2013, even if the leak increases to nearly 38 gallons per day!

Markey demanded a copy of an internal Entergy report surveying its own workers on "safety culture" at Palisades. Michigan Radio obtained a copy, which reveals "a lack of accountability at all levels," and a workforce deeply distrustful of management, fearful that they will be harassed and punished if they dare to raise safety concerns.

I wrote on Monday November 14 about the paper by the international team of scientists on cesium-137 deposition simulation after the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, from March 20 to April 19.In the English paper that I linked, there was a map of cesium-137 deposition simulation in much wider area of Japan, which I showed in the post.But then, in the press release by Nagoya University (one of the scientists is from this university), I realized I should have linked the different map of cesium-137 deposition simulation on land and on the ocean. A whole lot of radioactive materials may have fallen on the ocean, the Pacific Ocean AND the Japan Sea. (Remember, this is a simulation map, not the actual measurement.)

Looking at the map, I don't think I want to eat anything from the Pacific Ocean. Or the Japan Sea. Abalone fishing just started in Iwate Prefecture.By the way, the paper and the researchers were criticized heavily on Twitter a couple of days ago (it still continues) from other researchers in Japan. Their beef was that the researchers of the paper withheld this information from the public when it could have made the difference in determining the government policy or in alerting more people on the possibility of much wider radiation contamination. Instead, the researchers waited for the peer review in the very prestigious scientific venue (the National Academy of Sciences of the United States) to be finished and the paper published. Some say the researchers had the temerity to say in their Nagoya University press release on November 15, "We request that the information in the paper not be used to spread a new set of "baseless rumors" [on the contamination]."

Well, as we have seen, they are not alone. There have been a lot of Japanese researchers who have done what they just did, announcing what could have been the vital information after their papers got accepted by foreign peer-reviewed magazines. I personally know one, whose radiation survey result in locations in Fukushima might have made a significant difference. But the researcher is still sitting on the data (though he was careless enough to put it on his website for a long time), because his paper is being peer-reviewed.But then there are researchers like Professor Yukio Hayakawa of Gunma University, who released the radiation contour map he created soon after the accident, to much ridicule from the establishment initially. And Professor Bin Mori of Tokyo University, who published his world-first discovery of bio-concentration of radioactive silver in spider on his personal blog, and allowed me to spread the information both in Japanese and in English so that more people know about it as soon as possible.

at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station near Blair, Nebraska, the river is already lapping at the Aqua Dams -- giant plastic tubes filled with water -- that form a stockade around the plant's buildings. The plant has become an island.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a "yellow finding PDF" (indicating a safety significance somewhere between moderate and high) for the plant last October, after determining that the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) "did not adequately prescribe steps to mitigate external flood conditions in the auxiliary building and intake structure" in the event of a worst-case Missouri River flood. The auxiliary building -- which surrounds the reactor building like a horseshoe flung around a stake -- is where the plant's spent-fuel pool and emergency generators are located.

OPPD has since taken corrective measures, including sealing potential floodwater-penetration points, installing emergency flood panels, and revising sandbagging procedures. It's extremely unlikely that this year's flood, no matter how historic, will turn into a worst-case scenario: That would happen only if an upstream dam were to instantaneously disintegrate. Nevertheless, in March of this year the NRC identified Fort Calhoun as one of three nuclear plants requiring the agency's highest level of oversight. In the meantime, the water continues to rise

Now that the Ministry of Agriculture has set the provisional safety standard for compost at 400 becquerels/kg, this is the first manure to exceed that limit. It was made in Ibaraki Prefecture, and was being sold in Kyoto.Low-level contamination spreads to the western half of Japan. Already, radioactive leaf compost have been found in Tottori Prefecture (Chugoku region) and Kagawa Prefecture (Shikoku region).From Mainichi Shinbun Japanese (12:35AM JST 8/3/2011):

The Kyoto prefectural government announced on August 2 that 4,990 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected from the manure labeled "made in Ibaraki Prefecture"; the level of radiation is more than 10 times the provisional safety limit of 400 becquerels/kg. The manure was sold at "Royal Home Center Mozume Branch" in Muko City in Kyoto. It is the first time radioactive cesium has been detected from the manure made in Ibaraki. According to the Kyoto prefectural government, the manure is sold by a dealer in Tokyo and labeled "Horse Manure" (5 liters), made from horse manure and rice hay. The prefectural government instructed the store to remove the manure from the store premise and to recall the product voluntarily. There's no information as to how many bags of this manure have already been sold.

The dealer who manufactured and sold the radioactive horse manure is Sowa Recycle Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo. (The name of the dealer was in the press release by the Kyoto government.) On the company's website there is no mention of the manure found radioactive in Kyoto.One bright spot in this case of radioactive compost and manure that came to light in late July: It all started with a citizen in Saitama Prefecture who went in to the garden center nearby in June to measure the radiation on the surface of a bag of leaf compost. Power of an individual.