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Fukushima Reactors Status of Reactors Reactor No. 1 Reactor No. 2 Reactor No. 3 Spent Fuel Pools Spent Fuel Pool No. 1 Spent Fuel Pool No. 2 Spent Fuel Pool No. 3 Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 Common Spent Fuel Pool Radiation Releases Plutonium Uranium Chernobyl Comparisons Criticality Japan Tokyo Area Outside Tokyo U.S. & Canada West Coast California Los Angeles San Francisco Bay Area Hawaii Seattle Canada Midwest East Coast Florida US Nuclear Facilities Pacific Radiation Facts Internal Emitters Health Children Testing Food Water Air Rain Soil Milk Longterm Strange Coverups? Video Home Terms About Contact     Cooling system for reactors and spent fuel pools stopped working three times over 16-day period at Alabama nuke plant » NHK: TEPCO doesn’t know where melted fuel is at in reactors or actual level of radioactive particles still being released — About to start checking July 29th, 2011 at 06:43 AM POSITION: relative; BORDER-BOTTOM-STYLE: none; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT-STYLE: none; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; WIDTH: 336px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; DISPLAY: inline-table; BORDER-TOP-STYLE: none; HEIGHT: 280px; VISIBILITY: visible; BORDER

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it will extract air from troubled reactors at the plant to measure the amount of radioactive substances. [...] The operation is intended to obtain accurate data on what kind of radioactive substances are being released and in what quantity. The air extraction is expected to begin later on Friday for the No.1 reactor and in early August for the No.2 unit. No plans have been decided for the No.3 reactor due to high radiation levels in part of its building.

that TEPCO doesn’t know where the melted fuel is or the actual level of radioactive particles still being released: TEPCO hopes the findings may also help the company grasp the extent of leakage of nuclear fuels into the containment vessels. Up to around one billion becquerels of radioactive substances arebelieved to be released every hour from reactors No.1, 2 and 3. It isnot known how accurate this figure is because it was worked out bytaking readings of the air on the plant’s premises.

Fukushima & Japan Tokyo Area Outside Tokyo Fukushima Reactors Status of Reactors Reactor No. 1 Reactor No. 2 Reactor No. 3 Spent Fuel Pools Spent Fuel Pool No. 1 Spent Fuel Pool No. 2 Spent Fuel Pool No. 3 Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 Common Spent Fuel Pool Radiation Releases Plutonium Uranium Longterm Chernobyl Comparisons Criticality US & Canada West Coast California Los Angeles San Francisco Bay Area Hawaii Seattle Canada Midwest East Coast Florida US Nuclear Facilities North Anna (VA) Calvert Cliffs (MD) World Europe France UK Germany Chernobyl Rest of Europe South America Russia Asia China South Korea Taiwan Rest of Asia Pacific Rad. Maps & Forecasts Radiation Maps Radiation Forecasts Rad. Facts Internal Emitters Health Testing Food Water Air Rain Soil Milk Strange Coverups? Children Video Home Log In Discussion Forum page_item

See all charts here.

Fukushima & Japan Tokyo Area Outside Tokyo Fukushima Reactors Status of Reactors Reactor No. 1 Reactor No. 2 Reactor No. 3 Spent Fuel Pools Spent Fuel Pool No. 1 Spent Fuel Pool No. 2 Spent Fuel Pool No. 3 Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 Common Spent Fuel Pool Radiation Releases Plutonium Uranium Longterm Chernobyl Comparisons Criticality US & Canada West Coast California Los Angeles San Francisco Bay Area Hawaii Seattle Canada Midwest East Coast Florida US Nuclear Facilities North Anna (VA) Calvert Cliffs (MD) World Europe France UK Germany Chernobyl Rest of Europe South America Russia Asia China South Korea Taiwan Rest of Asia Pacific Maps & Forecasts Radiation Maps Radiation Forecasts Rad. Facts Internal Emitters Health Testing Food Water Air Rain Soil Milk Strange Coverups? Children Video Home page_

plus cesium-134 (half-life of about 2 years) and silver-110m (half life about 250 days). Strontium-90's half life is about 30 years.

From Jiji Tsushin (8/24/2011)

China's State Oceanic Administration announced on August 24 that strontium-90 was detected in the firefly squid caught off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture in the amount that was 29 times as high as the marine organisms along the coast of China. Cesium-134, which is normally never detected in the marine organisms along the coast of China, and silver-110m, a gamma-ray emitter, were also detected.

Focus will turn to restoring areas damaged in the oil spill, which the coast guard says represents an important milestone

BP will officially be off the hook for any deposits of oil that wash up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico – unless they can be traced directly to the Macondo well, it has emerged.Under a plan approved by the Coast Guard on 2 November, the oil company will end active cleanup operations and focus on restoring the areas damaged by last year's oil disaster.The plan, which was obtained by the Associated Press, sets out a protocol for determining which areas of the Gulf still need to be cleaned, and when BP's responsibility for that would end.

The plan "provides the mechanisms for ceasing active cleanup operations", AP said.It went on to suggest the biggest effort would be reserved for the most popular, heavily visited beaches. More oil would be tolerated on remote beaches. BP will be responsible for cleaning up thick oil in marshes – unless officials decide it is best to let nature do its work.The agency quoted coast guard officials saying the plan represented an important milestone in restoring the Gulf. BP has set aside about $1bn for restoration.The Obama administration has been indicating for some time that the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, which began on 20 April 2010 with an explosion on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers, was moving into a second phase.Earlier on Tuesday, the US government rolled out a new five-year plan for selling offshore drilling leases.The proposal was a radically scaled back version of the president's earlier plans for offshore drilling – put forward just a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon blowout – that would have opened up the Arctic and Atlantic coasts for drilling.

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

Heavy rain brought by a tropical storm has increased the level of radioactive contaminated water at the basements of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Typhoon Ma-on moved east off the southern coast of Japan's main island of Honshu. 115 millimeters of precipitation was recorded in Namie Town, north of the plant, between Tuesday and Thursday. Rain has been gathering in the buildings housing the reactors because the roofs were severely damaged by hydrogen explosions that occurred after the initial March 11th disaster. Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, the plant's operator, says that at 7 AM local time on Thursday, the level of contaminated water pooled at the basement of the building of the No. 1 reactor was 44 centimeters up from the previous day. Officials at the utility say that there is no immediate danger of the contaminated water spilling out. But it is likely that the level of water will continue to rise for the time being. TEPCO says they are monitoring the situation.

Heavy rain brought by a tropical storm has increased the level of radioactive contaminated water at the basements of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Typhoon Ma-on moved east off the southern coast of Japan's main island of Honshu. 115 millimeters of precipitation was recorded in Namie Town, north of the plant, between Tuesday and Thursday. Rain has been gathering in the buildings housing the reactors because the roofs were severely damaged by hydrogen explosions that occurred after the initial March 11th disaster. Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, the plant's operator, says that at 7 AM local time on Thursday, the level of contaminated water pooled at the basement of the building of the No. 1 reactor was 44 centimeters up from the previous day. Officials at the utility say that there is no immediate danger of the contaminated water spilling out. But it is likely that the level of water will continue to rise for the time being. TEPCO says they are monitoring the situation.

Heavy rain brought by a tropical storm has increased the level of radioactive contaminated water at the basements of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Typhoon Ma-on moved east off the southern coast of Japan's main island of Honshu. 115 millimeters of precipitation was recorded in Namie Town, north of the plant, between Tuesday and Thursday.

(UPDATE-CORRECTION: the contaminated area according to the Chinese is "252,000 square-kilometer", and not "252,000 square-meter" as in the initial post.) ---------------------------------- China sent a survey ship and taking seawater samples off the coast of Fukushima back in June and July. The State Oceanic Administration now says the contamination of the Pacific Ocean may extend as far as 800 kilometers (497 miles) off the coast of Fukushima, as reported by the Science and Technology Daily (ST Daily) in China, according to Asahi Shinbun.

China's State Oceanic Administration cites the result of the environmental survey it did in the western Pacific Ocean off the coast of Fukushima and says a much wider area of the Pacific Ocean is contaminated with radioactive materials than the Japanese government has announced, and that the possibility cannot be eliminated that radioactive materials have entered the ocean under the Chinese control".

The Chinese paper "Science and Technology Daily (electronic version)" reported on August 15 as the State Oceanic Administration's written response to their inquiry.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency plans to start testing fish off the coast of British Columbia for the presence of radiation stemming from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year. The agency has not yet released any specific details on the testing program, but did say it expects the test results to be well below Health Canada's actionable levels for radiation.

Fisheries activist Alexandra Morton with the Raincoast Research Society says she supports the testing, but calls the announcement a political move. Morton says millions of sockeye have started returning to the Fraser River and the fishing season is already well underway. Salmon are a particular concern to Morton and others because their wide-ranging migration patterns can take them right across the Pacific Ocean to the coast of Japan.

"If they were actually concerned about the health of people and the fish, they would have started this actually at the beginning of the commercial openings. But to release this two days before the disease hearings at the Cohen inquiry, to me it's a political statement, it's a political effort to appear responsible," she said.

To say that Tuesday's east coast earthquake surprised everyone would be an understatement.

This is why our best bet is planning for the worst. And when we look at the US nuclear energy infrastructure, it becomes clear that we aren't planning for the worst – not even close

We had a pretty good warning earlier this year, when the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused an even bigger tragedy when the Fukushima nuclear power plant suffered a meltdown. Tuesday's earthquake was the worst on the east coast of the US since 1944, measuring at 5.8 on the Richter scale. And while we certainly avoided the kind of crisis that Japan has endured, two nuclear reactors near the site, at the North Anna nuclear power plant, were shut down following the quake. The plant temporarily lost power and halted operations until it switched to back-up generators. Twelve other plants around the country were put on alert following the quake.

Published: Dec 16, 2011 By: CBSNewsOnline Description: It is estimated a debris field the size of Calif. is headed toward the U.S. West Coast

Watch video here

Stars and Stripes reporters across Japan and the world are sending disaster dispatches as they gather new facts, updated in real time. All times are local Tokyo time.  Japan is 13 hours ahead of the East Coast. So for example, 8 a.m. EDT is 9 p.m. in Japan.

No increase in Yokota radiation levels   11 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeLatest advisory from Yokota’s Facebook page says base officials there just checked with emergency managers and they have confirmed that the radiation levels at Yokota remain at the same background levels we experience every day (even prior to the quake)."To ensure everyone's safety, we are scanning air samples repeatedly every day, we're checking the water daily and we are inspecting aircraft ... and vehicles as they arrive," the Facebook page says.-- Dave Ornauer

The latest on Navy support to Japan   10:20 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeU.S. 7th Fleet has 12,750 personnel, 20 ships, and 140 aircraft participating in Operation Tomodachi. Seventh Fleet forces have delivered 81 tons of relief supplies to date.USS Tortuga is in the vicinity of Hachinohe where she will serve as an afloat forward service base for helicopter operations. CH-53 Sea Stallion aircraft from attached to Tortuga delivered 13 tons of humanitarian aid cargo on Friday, including 5,000 pounds of water and 5,000 MREs, to Yamada Station, 80 miles south of Misawa.USS Essex, USS Harpers Ferry and USS Germantown with the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived off the coast of Akita prefecture Saturday. Marines of the 31st MEU have established a Forward Control Element in Matsushima to coordinate disaster aid planning with officials. They are scheduled to move to Sendai later Saturday.

Even though she got zero attention here in the U.S., Lauren Moret's important message was heard loud and clear around the world on the Internet:

"Fukushima's radiation affects thousands of miles across the ocean! The west coast of North America is thousands of miles across the vast Pacific Ocean, a long way from Fukushima Daiichi and the radioactive solids, liquids, and gases being released daily and recklessly to poison both near and far. Already we are seeing the effects in North America. Air filters from cars in Seattle have been analyzed for hot particles and indicate that Seattle residents are inhaling 5 hot particles a day, in Tokyo it is 10 hot particles a day, in Fukushima Prefecture it is 30-40 times higher -- 300-400 hot particles a day. Hot particles and alpha emitters such as Uranium and Plutonium have not even been mentioned by the government or TEPCO, nor has their contribution to total radiation released been considered. Alpha particles are biologically 20 times more damaging than beta particles. "Iodine 131 in drinking water in San Francisco was reported by UC Berkeley to be 18,100% times higher than the EPA drinking water standard, yet the US government quit measuring it. Infant mortality in Berkeley and other west coast cities was reported by Dr. Janette Sherman to have increased 35% since March 11, after the Fukushima disaster. The babies are the first to die. Infant mortality in Philadelphia, PA. Where the highest Iodine 131 levels in drinking water measured in the US have been reported, has increased 45 percent since March 11. People on the west coast of the United States and even in Arizona are reporting a metallic taste in their mouths -- an indication of radioactive particles in the air as in Japan."

"On the night of June 14, a nuclear incident occurred in the Reactor 3 building in the spent fuel pool when huge bursts of gamma ray fluorescence lit up the night sky and turned the reactor building as bright as the sun, indicating the spent fuel rods and melted uranium and plutonium were boiling off, vaporized along with the rest of the fission products.

You’ve likely heard this argument before: “The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, so we can’t rely on renewable energy.” However, a series of recent events undermine the false dichotomy that renewable energies are unreliable and that coal, nuclear and natural gas are reliable.

There are too many reasons to list in a single blogpost why depending on fossil and nuclear energies is dangerous, but one emerging trend is that coal, natural gas and even nuclear energy are not as reliable as they are touted to be. Take for instance the nuclear disaster still unfolding in Japan. On March 11, that country experienced a massive earthquake and the resulting tsunami knocked out several nuclear reactors on the coast. Three days later, an operator of a nearby wind farm in Japan restarted its turbines - turbines that were intentionally turned off  immediately after the earthquake. Several countries, including France and Germany, are now considering complete phase-outs of nuclear energy in favor of offshore wind energy in the aftermath of the Japanese disaster. Even China has suspended its nuclear reactor plans while more offshore wind farms are being planned off that country’s coast.

In another example much closer to home, here in the Southeast, some of TVA’s nuclear fleet is operating at lower levels due to extreme temperatures. When the water temperatures in the Tennessee River reach more than 90 degrees, the TVA Browns Ferry nuclear reactors cannot discharge the already-heated power plant water into the river. If water temperatures become too high in a natural body of water, like a river, the ecosystem can be damaged and fish kills may occur. This problem isn’t limited to nuclear power plants either.

Six months after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, the news flow from the stricken nuclear power plant has slowed, but scientific studies of radioactive material in the ocean are just beginning to bear fruit.The word from the land is bad enough. As my colleague Hiroko Tabuchi reported on Saturday, Japanese officials have detected elevated radiation levels in rice near the crippled reactors. Worrying radiation levels had already been detected in beef, milk, spinach and tea leaves, leading to recalls and bans on shipments.

Off the coast, the early results indicate that very large amounts of radioactive materials were released, and may still be leaking, and that rather than being spread through the whole ocean, currents are keeping a lot of the material concentrated. Most of that contamination came from attempts to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools, which flushed material from the plant into the ocean, and from direct leaks from the damaged facilities.

Working with a team of scientists from other institutions, including the University of Tokyo and Columbia University, Mr. Buesseler’s Woods Hole group in June spent 15 days in the waters off northeast Japan, studying the levels and dispersion of radioactive substances there and the effect on marine life.The project, financed primarily by the Moore Foundation after governments declined to participate, continued to receive samples from Japanese cruises into July.

France's CEREA has the simulation map of ground deposition of cesium-137 from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident on its "Fukushima" page. It not only shows Japan but also the entire northern Pacific Rim, from Russian Siberia to Alaska to the West Coast of the US to the entire US. According to the map, the US, particularly the West Coast and particularly California, may be more contaminated with radioactive cesium than the western half of Japan or Hokkaido. It looks more contaminated than South Korea or China. Canada doesn't look too well either, particularly along the border with US on the western half.

From CEREA's Fukushima page: Atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides from the Fukushima-Daichii nuclear power plant CEREA, joint laboratory École des Ponts ParisTech and EdF R&D Victor Winiarek, Marc Bocquet, Yelva Roustan, Camille Birman, Pierre Tran Map of ground deposition of caesium-137 for the Fukushima-Daichii accident. The simulation was performed with a specific version of the numerical atmospheric chemistry and transport model Polyphemus/Polair3D. The parametrisations used for the transport and physical removal of the radionuclides are described in [1,2,3,4]. The magnitude of the deposition field is uncertain and the simulated values of deposited radionuclides could be significantly different from the actual deposition. In particular, the source term remains uncertain. Therefore, these results should be seen as preliminary and they are likely to be revised as new information become available to better constrain the source term and when radionuclides data can be used to evaluate the model simulation results.

The page also has the animated simulation of cesium-137 dispersion from March 11 to April 6, 2011. If the Japanese think they are the only ones who have the radiation and radioactive fallout from the accident, they are very much mistaken, if the simulation is accurate. (Meteorological institutes and bureaus in Austria, Germany, and Norway all had similar simulation maps.) Radioactive materials spewed out of Fukushima I Nuke Plant went up and away on the jet stream, reaching the other side of the Pacific. When the fallout from explosions (March 14, 15) reached the US West Coast, it came with an unusually heavy rainfall in California.

No one wants to think about the massive aqueous deposition of radioactive materials into the Pacific Ocean, that much is now clear. By September estimates of released contamination had risen to over  3,500 terabecquerels of cesium-137 released into the sea directly from the plant between March 11 and the end of May. Another 10,000 terabecquerels of cesium fell into the ocean after escaping from the reactors in the form of steam.

Initially reports had quieted concerns by stating that the materials would be diluted so vastly that the radioactivity would not be able to accumulate, and would not affect the environment.  The experts claimed they would track the deposition and floating radioactive debris field making its way on a trans-Pacific trip to the United States. Apparently, the experts in Japan didn't get the message.  The Japanese regularly tested the seawater only for 'popular' Iodine and Cesium isotopes instead of all known fission-produced radioactive materials, for the first 3 months after the disaster.  By March 31st, radioactive contamination concentration was 4,385 times the legal limit, up from 3,355 times on Tuesday, according to Kyodo. In response, the government had pledged to increase radiation monitoring on land and by sea and to consider increasing the evacuation zone — however time has shown little action would follow these vows.

Experts Don't Fear A Radiation Graveyard Water was constantly required for the workers to be able to get any cooling into Reactors 1-4, when water went in, steam came out.  The ocean quickly became the radiation dumping ground, as untold tonnes of contaminated water has been confirmed to have directly flowed into the ocean, and TEPCO continually assured Japanese citizens that the majority of dispersal would occur over the Pacific.