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D'coda Dcoda

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: 450 Tonnes of Groundwater Per Day Seeping into Reactor/Turbine... - 0 views

ex-skf.blogspot.com/...-nuke-plant-450-tonnes-of.html

damage

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 20 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Since the end of June when the contaminated water treatment system started the operation, total 50,000 tonnes of groundwater have seeped into the reactor buildings and turbine buildings at Fukushima I Nuke Plant. Now, the total amount of contaminated water (highly contaminated water plus not-so-highly contaminated, treated water) at the plant has grown from 127,000 tonnes at the end of June to 175,000 tonnes as of October 18, according to Asahi Shinbun.Does TEPCO have any plan to stop the flow of groundwater into the reactor buildings and turbine buildings, which just adds to the amount of highly contaminated water to be treated and stored? TEPCO is fast running out of storage space, even with cutting down more trees to make room for the storage tanks.Other than spraying the low-contamination, treated water on the premise, the answer is no. No plan, as TEPCO is running out of money that it is willing to spend on Fukushima I Nuke Plant.From Asahi Shinbun (10/19/2011):
  • It has been discovered that the contaminated water has increased by 40% in 4 months inside the reactor buildings and turbine buildings at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, with the inflow of ground water of about 50,000 tonnes. The flow still continues. TEPCO may run out of storage space for the treated, still-contaminated, water. There is also a possibility of the highly contaminated water overflowing from the buildings if a problem at the water treatment facility and a heavy rain coincide.
  • According to the calculation done by Asahi Shinbun based on the data published by TEPCO, about 450 tonnes of ground water per day have been flowing into the buildings of Reactors 1 through 4 since the end of June when the contaminated water treatment facility started the operation. It is considered that there are damages in the walls of the buildings.
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  • The amount of groundwater into the buildings fluctuates with the rainfall. At the end of September when it rained heavily because of a typhoon, the amount of ground water doubled, and about 7,700 tonnes of water seeped into the buildings in that week.
  • The groundwater would mix with the contaminated water in the basement of the buildings, and this highly contaminated water is being sent to the water treatment facility. After the density of radioactive materials in the water is lowered and salt removed, the treated water is being used for cooling the reactors.
  • When the circulatory water injection and cooling system started in late June, there were 127,000 tonnes of contaminated water (highly contaminated water plus the treated water with low contamination). However, as the result of the groundwater inflow, there are now 175,000 tonnes of contaminated water, a 40% increase, as of October 18. None of the water could be released outside the plant.
  • Concentrated, highly saline waste water after the desalination process is stored in the special tanks. As more water is processed, more tanks are needed. TEPCO is installing 20,000 tonnes storage tanks every month. To secure the space for the tanks the company has been cutting down the trees in the plant compound. There is a system to evaporate water to reduce the amount of waste water, but it is not currently used.
  • The water level in the turbine buildings where the highly contaminated water after the reactor cooling accumulates is 1 meter below the level at which there is a danger of overflowing. It is not the level that would cause immediate overflow after a heavy rain. However, if the heavy rain is coupled with a trouble at the water treatment system that hampers the water circulation, the water level could rise very rapidly.
  • The treatment capacity of the water treatment facility is 1,400 tonnes per day. TEPCO emphasizes that the facility is running smoothly and the circulatory water injection system is stable. However, if the current situation continues where groundwater keeps coming into the buildings that needs to be treated, the water treatment facility will be taxed with excess load, which may cause a problem.
  • It is difficult to stop the inflow of groundwater completely, and TEPCO is not planning any countermeasure construction. Regarding the continued inflow of groundwater into the buildings, TEPCO's Junichi Matsumoto says, "We have to come up with a more compact water treatment system in which we can circulate water without using the basements of the buildings. Otherwise we would be stuck in a situation where we have to treat the groundwater coming into the basements." However, there is no prospect of fundamentally solving the problem.And there will be no such prospect, as TEPCO is now proven to be very good at looking the other way. Over 10 sieverts/hour ultra-hot spot? Not a problem, we will just cordon off the area. What is causing 10 sieverts/hour radiation? Why it's not our problem. How much over 10 sieverts/hour? We don't know because we don't measure such things. High hydrogen concentration in the pipe? Not a problem, we will just blow nitrogen gas. What is causing the high hydrogen concentration? It's not our problem. A worker died after 1 week of work at the plant. Why? It's not our problem, it's the subcontractor's problem...
D'coda Dcoda

Effect of contaminated soil on food chain sparks fears [10Sep11] - 0 views

search.japantimes.co.jp/...nn20110911a3.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 11 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Six months after the nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture, the public's awareness of the threat posed by radiation is entering a new phase: the realization that the biggest danger now and in the future is from contaminated soil.
  • The iodine-131 ejected into the sky by the Fukushima No. 1 power station disaster was quickly detected in vegetables and tap water — even as far away as Tokyo, 220 km south of the plant. But contamination levels are now so low they are virtually undetectable, thanks to the short half-life of iodine-131 — eight days — and stepped up filtering by water companies.
  • But cesium is proving to be a tougher foe. The element's various isotopes have half-lives ranging from two to 30 years, generating concern about the food chain in Fukushima Prefecture, a predominantly agricultural region, as the elements wash fallout into the ground. The root of the problem is, well — roots. Cesium-134 and cesium-137 are viewed as potential health threats because vegetables can absorb the isotopes from the soil they're planted in.
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  • "Until early spring, produce was contaminated (on the surface with radioactive materials) that the No. 1 plant discharged into the atmosphere. But now, the major route of contamination is through plant roots," said Kunikazu Noguchi, a radiation protection expert at Nihon University. Whether absorption by plant roots can affect human health remains to be seen. Experts are warning that the region's soil and agricultural products will require close monitoring for many years.
  • At the moment, sampling data collected by the various prefectural governments indicate that no vegetables, except for those grown in Fukushima Prefecture, have been found to contain more than the government's provisional limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram since June. Likewise, as of Sept. 7, samples of pork, chicken, milk and fruit had also tested within the provisional radiation limit, apart from Fukushima products and tea from Chiba, Kanagawa, Gunma, Tochigi, Saitama and Ibaraki prefectures.
  • In fact, the amount of radioactive materials in most of the food sampled has been steadily declining over the past few months, except for produce from Fukushima. "The results of Fukushima's sampling tests show the amountof radioactive material contained in vegetables has dropped sharply in recent months, including those grown in areas with high radiation levels," Noguchi said. "People shouldn't worry about it much (for the time being)," he said. "But mushrooms and other vegetables grown in contaminated forests are likely tocontain high levels of radioactive materials."
  • Now that soil in a wide area of eastern Japan has been contaminated with cesium, experts are calling for close monitoring of soil and produce. The education ministry conducted soil surveys in June and July at 2,200 locations within 100 km of the crippled plant. At 34 locations in six municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture, including Minamisoma, Namie and Iitate, the data said cesium levels had exceeded 1.48 million becquerels per sq. meter — the same level that was used to define the exclusion zone around Chernobyl in 1986. Yasuyuki Muramatsu, a radiochemistry professor at Gakushuin University, said that agricultural contamination will likely peak this year because cesium binds more strongly with minerals in soil as time passes, making it more difficult to be absorbed by plant roots.
  • "Data from the Chernobyl disaster show that radioactive cesium in soil tends to become fixed more strongly to clay minerals as time passes. So agricultural contamination will lessen next year," he said. Muramatsu urged that special caution should be taken over products grown in soil rich in organic matter, such as in forested areas. "If the soil is rich in organic matter, it makes (cesium) more easily transferable to plants. . . . Forest soil is rich in organic matter, so people should be careful," he said.
  • his year, it's very important to conduct thorough surveys. The contamination will continue for a long time, so data collection is essential," Muramatsu said. "We need to be prepared for the following years by recording data this year and studying the rate at which cesium in the soil is absorbed by each kind of produce," Muramatsu said. In the meantime, the radioactivity itself will continue to weaken over the years. Cesium-134 has a half-life of 2 years and cesium-137 a half-life of 30 years, meaning the radiation they emit will drop by half in 2 years and 30 years.
  • The ratio of cesium-134 to cesium-137 in the Fukushima accident is estimated as 1-to-1, while the ratio during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was 1-to-2. This indicates the radiation in Fukushima will weaken at a faster rate than at Chernobyl. Between April and early August, the farm ministry tested soil at some 580 locations in six prefectures, including Fukushima, Tochigi and Gunma, to get a better picture of the full extent of contamination.
  • According to the results, 40 locations in Fukushima Prefecture had an intensity exceeding 5,000 becquerels per kilogram — the government's maximum limit for growing rice. Many municipalities within 30 km of the Fukushima No. 1 plant were banned from planting rice based on similar tests conducted in April. In addition, the ministry has asked 17 prefectures in eastern Japan to conduct two-phase radiation tests on harvested rice.
  • So far, none of the tests performed on unmilled rice — including from Fukushima — exceeded the government's limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram. Masanori Nonaka, an agriculture professor at Niigata University who specializes in soil science, said rice grown in contaminated areas is likely to be tainted, but to what extent is anyone's guess. White rice, however, may prove to be safe, Nonaka said. Because most of the radioactive material will adhere to the bran — the part of the husk left behind after hulling — about 60 percent of the cesium can be removed just by polishing it, he explained. Other foods, such as marine produce, won't be as easy to handle, experts say. After the Chernobyl accident, for example, the radioactive contamination of fish peaked between 6 to 12 months after the disaster. The Fisheries Agency, meanwhile, has asked nine prefectures on the Pacific coast to increase their sampling rates to prevent contaminated fish from landing in supermarkets.
D'coda Dcoda

Los Alamos lab begins removing radioactive soil from canyons to prevent contamination f... - 0 views

enenews.com/amination-spreading-after-fire

nuclear energy

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 13 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Contaminated soil a concern at Los Alamos lab, Reuters, July 11, 2011: [...] crews at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have begun removing contaminated soil from nearby canyons out of a concern that flash flooding could wash toxins into the Rio Grande [that supplies drinking water for Santa Fe and many other communities] officials said on Monday. [...] The soil in the canyons above Los Alamos National Laboratory, the linchpin of American’s nuclear weapons industry, contains materials with trace amounts of radiation [...] Over the weekend, about 1,200 cubic yards of contaminated soil was removed primarily from two canyons — Los Alamos and Pajarito — that run through lab property, [ Fred deSousa, spokesman for the lab's environmental control division] said.
  • An Assessment of Los Alamos National Laboratory Waste Disposal Inventory, Radioactive Waste Management Associates, November 2009:
  • Since the beginning of its operations LANL has disposed of millions of gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste throughout the laboratory grounds and in the canyons that surround the laboratory. [...]
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  • Hundreds of stacks throughout the laboratory released unfiltered gaseous waste directly from plutonium-processing hoods. The LAHDRA Project Team has developed a system of priority indices and determined that between 1944 and 1966, plutonium was the most significant contaminant released. LAHDRA estimated that the total amount of plutonium released by LANL throughout its history, even with the improved filtering systems in later years, exceeded 170 curies. [...]
  • The waste discharge at LANL began in 1944 during the development of the atomic bomb. Due to time pressures, secrecy of the project, and general lack of knowledge at the time about the dangers of radioactive materials, the laboratory took poor precautions in its disposal of radioactive and other hazardous wastes during its early years of operations. Initially, the waste, in the form of liquids, drums and cardboard boxes, was released into the canyons or deposited into unlined pits completely untreated; poor records were maintained about the volumes and activities of these releases. By the 1960s, the waste disposal practices significantly improved and better records were kept. [...]
  • This report compiles the available information about the waste disposed of at each Material Disposal Area and into the three canyons, including any recent soil and water sampling results. Some of the sites with the highest deposits of radioactive contaminants include MDA’s C, G, and H with respective inventories of up to 49,679 curies, 1,383,700 curies, and 391 curies. Routine sampling of soil and water is regularly performed and radionuclide contamination above background levels is often found at the burial sites (e.g. TA-21). [...]
  • The potential for LANL-origin contaminants to reach the Rio Grande River may vary, depending on the underground formations and the types of waste disposed of at each disposal site. The potential may be quite large, as the 2006 Santa Fe Water Quality Report stated a “qualified detection of plutonium-238”was detected in Santa Fe drinking water supplies4. The US DOE has also reported the detection of LANL radionuclides in Santa Fe drinking water since the late 1990s5. Plutonium is the main ingredient in the core or trigger of the nuclear weapons that were developed and produced at LANL, and approximately 423,776 cubic feet (ft3) (12,000 cubic meters (m3)) of plutonium contaminated waste is buried in unlined disposal pits, trenches, and shafts at the LANL site. This early detection of plutonium in Santa Fe drinking water may be an indicator of an approaching plutonium contamination plume in Santa Fe groundwater. And of course, plutonium is only one of many LANL-origin contaminants. [...]
  • As previously discussed, information pertaining to the wastes disposed of by LANL is not always complete or fully available and so many of the types and quantities of waste disposed of at various LANL technical areas remain unknown.  [...]
  • D'coda Dcoda on 13 Jul 11
     
    Includes report about methods used by Los Alamos to store nuclear waste and risks
D'coda Dcoda

Ten Most Radioactive Places on Earth [26Sep11] - 0 views

brainz.org/-most-radioactive-places-earth

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 26 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • While the 2011 earthquake and worries surrounding Fukushima have brought the threat of radioactivity back into the public consciousness, many people still don't realize that radioactive contamination is a worldwide danger. Radionuclides are in the top six toxic threats as listed in the 2010 report by The Blacksmith Institute, an NGO dedicated to tackling pollution. You might be surprised by the locations of some of the world’s most radioactive places — and thus the number of people living in fear of the effects radiation could have on them and their children.
  • 10. Hanford, USA
  • The Hanford Site, in Washington, was an integral part of the US atomic bomb project, manufacturing plutonium for the first nuclear bomb and "Fat Man," used at Nagasaki. As the Cold War waged on, it ramped up production, supplying plutonium for most of America's 60,000 nuclear weapons. Although decommissioned, it still holds two thirds of the volume of the country’s high-level radioactive waste — about 53 million gallons of liquid waste, 25 million cubic feet of solid waste and 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater underneath the area, making it the most contaminated site in the US. The environmental devastation of this area makes it clear that the threat of radioactivity is not simply something that will arrive in a missile attack, but could be lurking in the heart of your own country.
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  • 9. The Mediterranean
  • For years, there have been allegations that the ‘Ndrangheta syndicate of the Italian mafia has been using the seas as a convenient location in which to dump hazardous waste — including radioactive waste — charging for the service and pocketing the profits. An Italian NGO, Legambiente, suspects that about 40 ships loaded with toxic and radioactive waste have disappeared in Mediterranean waters since 1994. If true, these allegations paint a worrying picture of an unknown amount of nuclear waste in the Mediterranean whose true danger will only become clear when the hundreds of barrels degrade or somehow otherwise break open. The beauty of the Mediterranean Sea may well be concealing an environmental catastrophe in the making.
  • 8. The Somalian Coast
  • The Italian mafia organization just mentioned has not just stayed in its own region when it comes to this sinister business. There are also allegations that Somalian waters and soil, unprotected by government, have been used for the sinking or burial of nuclear waste and toxic metals — including 600 barrels of toxic and nuclear waste, as well as radioactive hospital waste. Indeed, the United Nations’ Environment Program believes that the rusting barrels of waste washed up on the Somalian coastline during the 2004 Tsunami were dumped as far back as the 1990s. The country is already an anarchic wasteland, and the effects of this waste on the impoverished population could be as bad if not worse than what they have already experienced.
  • 7. Mayak, Russia
  • 3. Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan
  • 6. Sellafield, UK
  • Located on the west coast of England, Sellafield was originally a plutonium production facility for nuclear bombs, but then moved into commercial territory. Since the start of its operation, hundreds of accidents have occurred at the plant, and around two thirds of the buildings themselves are now classified as nuclear waste. The plant releases some 8 million liters of contaminated waste into the sea on a daily basis, making the Irish Sea the most radioactive sea in the world. England is known for its green fields and rolling landscapes, but nestled in the heart of this industrialized nation is a toxic, accident-prone facility, spewing dangerous waste into the oceans of the world.
  • 5. Siberian Chemical Combine, Russia
  • Mayak is not the only contaminated site in Russia; Siberia is home to a chemical facility that contains over four decades' worth of nuclear waste. Liquid waste is stored in uncovered pools and poorly maintained containers hold over 125,000 tons of solid waste, while underground storage has the potential to leak to groundwater. Wind and rain have spread the contamination to wildlife and the surrounding area. And various minor accidents have led to plutonium going missing and explosions spreading radiation. While the snowy landscape may look pristine and immaculate, the facts make clear the true level of pollution to be found here
  • 4. The Polygon, Kazakhstan
  • Once the location for the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons testing, this area is now part of modern-day Kazakhstan. The site was earmarked for the Soviet atomic bomb project due to its “uninhabited” status — despite the fact that 700,000 people lived in the area. The facility was where the USSR detonated its first nuclear bomb and is the record-holder for the place with the largest concentration of nuclear explosions in the world: 456 tests over 40 years from 1949 to 1989. While the testing carried out at the facility — and its impact in terms of radiation exposure — were kept under wraps by the Soviets until the facility closed in 1991, scientists estimate that 200,000 people have had their health directly affected by the radiation. The desire to destroy foreign nations has led to the specter of nuclear contamination hanging over the heads of those who were once citizens of the USSR.
  • The industrial complex of Mayak, in Russia's north-east, has had a nuclear plant for decades, and in 1957 was the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents. Up to 100 tons of radioactive waste were released by an explosion, contaminating a massive area. The explosion was kept under wraps until the 1980s. Starting in the 1950s, waste from the plant was dumped in the surrounding area and into Lake Karachay. This has led to contamination of the water supply that thousands rely on daily. Experts believe that Karachay may be the most radioactive place in the world, and over 400,000 people have been exposed to radiation from the plant as a result of the various serious incidents that have occurred — including fires and deadly dust storms. The natural beauty of Lake Karachay belies its deadly pollutants, with the radiation levels where radioactive waste flows into its waters enough to give a man a fatal dose within an hour.
  • Considered one of the top ten most polluted sites on Earth by the 2006 Blacksmith Institute report, the radiation at Mailuu-Suu comes not from nuclear bombs or power plants, but from mining for the materials needed in the processes they entail. The area was home to a uranium mining and processing facility and is now left with 36 dumps of uranium waste — over 1.96 million cubic meters. The region is also prone to seismic activity, and any disruption of the containment could expose the material or cause some of the waste to fall into rivers, contaminating water used by hundreds of thousands of people. These people may not ever suffer the perils of nuclear attack, but nonetheless they have good reason to live in fear of radioactive fallout every time the earth shakes.
  • 2. Chernobyl, Ukraine
  • Home to one of the world’s worst and most infamous nuclear accidents, Chernobyl is still heavily contaminated, despite the fact that a small number of people are now allowed into the area for a limited amount of time. The notorious accident caused over 6 million people to be exposed to radiation, and estimates as to the number of deaths that will eventually occur due to the Chernobyl accident range from 4,000 to as high as 93,000. The accident released 100 times more radiation than the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs. Belarus absorbed 70 percent of the radiation, and its citizens have been dealing with increased cancer incidence ever since. Even today, the word Chernobyl conjures up horrifying images of human suffering.
  • 1. Fukushima, Japan
  • The 2011 earthquake and tsunami was a tragedy that destroyed homes and lives, but the effects of the Fukushima nuclear power plant may be the most long-lasting danger. The worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the incident caused meltdown of three of the six reactors, leaking radiation into the surrounding area and the sea, such that radiative material has been detected as far as 200 miles from the plant. As the incident and its ramifications are still unfolding, the true scale of the environmental impact is still unknown. The world may still be feeling the effects of this disaster for generations to come.
D'coda Dcoda

Heavy Rain Increases Contaminated water at Fukushima Plant [21Jul11] - 0 views

www3.nhk.or.jp/...21_19.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 22 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
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  • 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.
  • D'coda Dcoda on 22 Jul 11
     
    this article won't highlight
D'coda Dcoda

Mainstream Censors Radiation Threat [24Aug11] - 0 views

americanfreepress.net/?p=266

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 25 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Explosions and fires caused additional damage to other reactors and released vast quantities of poisonous radioactive materials into the environment. Livestock, crops and drinking water within a 75-mile radius of the accident were immediately contaminated. Now, reports of lethal doses of radiation as far as 200 miles away are starting to become more commonplace
  • In the United States, a recent report by Janette Sherman, M.D. and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano indicate a 35-percent spike in infant mortality throughout the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, the true extent of the damage and radioactive contamination caused by the Fukushima disaster continues to be downplayed or ignored entirely by the mainstream media. Getting to the truth has been difficult.
  • In an exclusive interview with AFP, Gunderson gives a timely assessment of the ongoing crisis in Japan and aprises us of what he expects to unfold in the future. “On the bright side, the reactors are in better condition than they’ve been in the last three months,” sayd Gunderson. “Right now, TEPCO has managed to avoid creating new pools of contaminated water by treating existing water through the Areva system.”
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  • Areva is a process, devised by a French firm of the same name, whereby radioactive isotopes are bound together by chemicals that are injected into the contaminated water of a reactor’s cooling system.
  • These standards are also being applied to humans. According to Gunderson, “Kids are now allowed to get the same dosages as adult nuclear workers would get in the U.S. It’s a complete distortion of radiation physics.” Another recent development that has Gunderson concerned is the buildup of radioactive sewage that poses a catastrophic risk to drinking water. “Before the accident, they used to turn the sewage into building blocks,” says Gunderson. “Now they can’t. So they have these enormous piles of sewage sludge that can’t be disposed of.  It’s not yet in the ground water, but it’s heading that way.”
  • “What’s happening off site is frightening,” says Gunderson. “Dangerous levels of radioactive contamination are being found in kids’ urine, mothers’ breast milk and animal meat. I’m estimating that over the course of the next 20 years, there’ll be a million cancers. If they’re not caught soon enough, many of those will be fatal.” “The first cancers will affect the thyroids,” Gunderson predicts. “They take about three years. In three to five years it’ll move on to the lungs. In the northern prefectures, I expect a 20 percent increase in lung cancers.”
  • Instead of taking steps to raise public awareness about the dangers of exposure to contaminated food products that will contribute to these cancer risks, the Japanese government is doing just the opposite. “They’re raising the radiation standards,” Gunderson reports. “Before, 600 becquerels [measure of radioactivity] were the most you could have in beef. Now they’ve raised the bar to 6,000. They’re telling people it’s safe.”
  • Gunderson continued, “They’re cooling the reactors by pouring treated water into the top and onto the floor. That has a tendency to build up lots more radioactivity in the filters that are trapping it, but it’s not building up any more water, and that’s a good thing because they’ve run out of space on site.”
  • The Japanese have also initiated a campaign to get people to return to homes as close as 20 miles from the site of the accident. They’re clearing streets and playgrounds, but everything else is still contaminated. “On the sides of the roads where the runoff is, we’re seeing 50,000- 60,000 becquerels in a pound of dirt,” adds Gunderson.
  • “My biggest concern is that the Japanese are burning rubbish,” he says. “Farmers in rural areas are burning their contaminated crops and those in urban areas are burning their trash. If two pounds of material has less than 8,000 becquerels, the government allows it to be burned.”
  • Gunderson says the government also allows blending of highly contaminated material with material that isn’t, creating an even more lethal mix that, when burned, revolatilizes the deadly, cancer-inducing cesium. The resulting plumes not only drift into neighboring communities, he said, but are also caught up in wind currents that reach the western coast of the United States and Canada.
D'coda Dcoda

Permitted Un-Safe Radiation levels allowed in Food [20Sep11] - 1 views

http://foodwatch.de/foodwatch/content/e36/e68/e42217/e44994/e45033/2011-09-20pressreleasefoodwatch_IPPNW_EN_ger.pdf Diigo won't highlight on pdf's, this one is important and concerns current level...

food and drink

started by D'coda Dcoda on 07 Oct 11 no follow-up yet
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima: Towards the Formation of a Radioactive Graveyard in the Pacific Ocean? [22Oc... - 0 views

fukushimaupdate.com/graveyard-in-the-pacific-ocean

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 22 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
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  • TEPCO intentionally dumped radioactive materials into the ocean, as they had no additional room for storage, the levels showed no signs of decreasing, and all desalination hopes were falling woefully short.  It would also be found that many leaks around, and inside of the reactors were also finding their way into the Pacific, but the public was told that there would not be any risk to them, or the living creatures in the sea. After 7 months however, impact can be found all over the island nation, and spreading throughout the ocean, despite the expectations it would merely be diluted exponentially. In September, scientists from the government's Meteorological Research Institute and the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry announced their findings at a meeting of the Geochemical Society of Japan, adding that some of the cesium will also flow into the Indian Ocean and, eventually, reach the Atlantic.
  • Floating Radioactive Debris Reaching Hawaii Sooner Than Expected The researchers believed that the cesium had initially dispersed into the Pacific from the coast of Fukushima Prefecture but would be taken to the southwest by the prevailing currents at a depth of around 1,300 feet. Researchers thought it would take years to reach the islands. But now, according to a University of Hawaii researchers, the debris will arrive sooner than expected.  ....Since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, researchers have been predicting it would take about two years for the debris from Japan to hit Hawaii's west-facing beaches. “We have a rough estimate of 5 to 20 million tons of debris coming from Japan,” said UH computer programming researcher Jan Hafner.
  • ..Their path back to Russia crossed exactly across the projected field of the debris.  Soon after passing the Midway Islands on Sept. 22, they hit the edge of the tsunami debris.   “They saw some pieces of furniture, some appliances, anything that can float, and they picked up a fishing boat,” said Hafner.  It was a 20-foot fishing boat with the word "Fukushima" on it.  “That's actually our first confirmed report of tsunami debris,” said Hafner...  Source: kitv.com 
  • The Public Concern Was Never Really An 'Official' concern In the first few days after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, government authorities and the company were criticized for not providing information in a timely fashion. A Kyodo News survey released Sunday found that 58% of respondents did not approve of the government's handling of the crisis at the nuclear plant. More than two weeks later, updates provided via news conferences, press releases, data charts and Twitter feeds have become very frequent and very technical. To a lay person, the onslaught of numbers and unfamiliar terms can feel indecipherable.
  • "The question is, what is a reasonable interval to give people information?" said Dr. Robert Peter Gale, an American physician and expert on radiation who consulted on the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and is now advising Japan's government. "Instead of just releasing each data point you get, sometimes it's better to base things on an average of readings over a period of time." Source: LA Times
  • This ruse would only work, if the officials could hold off on monitoring and tracking the deposition as long as possible, until the plume had finally moved away from the coastline. TEPCO had intentionally dumped over 11 tons of water in the first few weeks, all of which contained high concentrations of radioactive materials. There would be further reports that would be difficult to quantify, including unknown amount of contaminated water leaked into the ocean from a damaged reservoir, and a plethora of uncharted and un-monitored leaks from the reactors. After dealing with the spring, the tsunami season arrived and even more contamination entered the sea through fallout from the air, and through precipitation runoff.
  • By March 26th, the news broke that levels near the reactor were 1,250 times the legal limits, as the levels of I-131 reported just a few hundred meters offshore boomed to ten times the already increased levels in a matter of days.  Tepco also reported levels of caesium-137 - which has a longer half life of about 30 years - almost 80 times the legal maximum. Findings throughout the summer challenged experts and officials however, as radiation levels found contamination in some parts had risen over 3,000 times the normal levels. "This is a relatively high level," nuclear safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said in a televised news conference. Drinking 500ml of fresh water with the same concentration would expose a person to their annual safe dose, Mr Nishiyama said, but he ruled out an immediate threat to aquatic life and seafood safety.
  • "Generally speaking, radioactive material released into the sea will spread due to tides, so you need much more for seaweed and sea life to absorb it," Mr Nishiyama said. Pledges to Monitor and Track Contamination Left Unattended Japanese officials said they would check the seawater about 20 miles (30km) off the coast for radiation back in March, yet even though finding contamination, resumed testing withing 20 km, and downplayed the effects by stating they expected it to show there is no need to be concerned about any possible effect to fish.
  • By the time that current reaches the Central Pacific, there are branches heading more towards Alaska and the South—that gets harder to predict,” said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute told Jeff McMahon, a reporter for Forbes. “But that’s one of the things that several people hope to do by measuring these isotopes even at levels when they’re not harmful. We could actually track those ocean currents and better understand the circulation pattern in the Pacific.” Japanese Science and Fisheries Agencies Late Decision to Expand Testing On Marine Products to Weekly Testing 20-30 km Around Fukushima Daiichi
  • The science ministry and the Fisheries Agency will strengthen testing on marine products and widen the survey for seawater for radiation contamination from the damaged Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The tests on marine products will be conducted once a week, in principle, depending on the size of the fish hauls, in Fukushima, Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures. The government eased restrictions on land use outside the 20-kilometer no-entry zone around the plant in September. It will now test waters 20-30 km from the plant for radiation, and eventually survey seawater beyond 280 km from the coast using more accurate instruments, officials said.
  • Sources: ajw.asahi.com, via Nuclear News | What The Physics? Forbes.com SkyNews TEPCO IAEA
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Devastating review of Yablokov's Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People ... - 0 views

atomicinsights.com/...eople-and-the-environment.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 23 Oct 11 - No Cached
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  • book titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment in a publication called the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. The roots of the decision remain murky. Within a few months after the first printing of the book, Ted Rockwell, a long time member of the Academy, started working to convince NYAS leaders that the decision to print was a grave error that was bad for science and posed a significant risk to the reputation of the Academy as a source of sound, peer-reviewed information. As part of his effort, he encouraged the current editor of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences to appoint reviewers and to post the results of those reviews.
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Slaughter in Minamisoma [26Oct11] - 0 views

fukushima-diary.com/...slaughter-in-minamisoma

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 27 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • On location report from Minami Soma – Strontium continues to be detected – “Too early for evacuees to be returning home.” Nationally declared “emergency evacuation preparedness zones” have been simultaneously lifted, however excessive risks may remain. Lab results from a radioactive contamination survey commissioned by Minami Soma City Council yield shocking results. - Desipite the lifting of the “emergency evacuation preparedness zone” designation, the perception is that contamination questions linger. - 59,000 people lived within the 20-30km “emergency evacuation preparedness zone”, 28,000 have relocated. Citizens view the lifting of the designation as good news, but unease persists.
  • From a local council perspective, the sooner evacuees return to start rebuilding the better. - Citizens infuriated with fuzzy official statements regarding severity of contamination, particularly when they have to consider the safety of their own kids. - Local government testing reveals strontium contamination, further complicating the situation. 17 spots around Minami Soma were tested, and four locations showed 33 – 1,113 Bq/kg of strontium contamination, including 100 Bq/kg from an area previously covered by the recently lifted evacuation advisory zone. - Regarding the possibility of internal exposure, Strontium is much more serious than cesium. As explained by a researcher from the Japanese Atomic Energy Institute, biological half life of cesium is 100 days vs 50 years for Strontium, which mimics calcium in the body.
  • It’s reasonable to expect that where there is cesium, there is also strontium, however it takes much longer to run tests for strontium and there are very few labs equipped to run the tests. - On the same day that the evacuation advisory zone was lifted, MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) finally released results of strontium testing carried out around the plant. - Of the samples, collected since June, Futuba (inside the 20km zone) was the highest, at 5,700 Bq/m2 (note the change in unit from kg to square meters). Of particular concern were results from within the lifted evacuation advisory zone: Minami Soma (three locations: 600, 260, 160 bq/m2), Tamura (610 Bq/m2), Kawauchi (380、130、39 Bq/m2) and Hirono (220、150、120、76、61 Bq/m2). - Plutonium also detected for the first time outside the plant, however official attitude is to ignore the results, as ‘compared to cesium the quantities are minuscule, therefore the focus will remain on cesium’.
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  • Government decontamination efforts questioned by a local fish dealer, who points out that the road outside his shop, used by school students, was washed down with a high pressure hose. He says all the sand and dirt simply shifted and accumulated in the gutter, raising the radiation level there. Radioactive dirt then blows back onto the road from neighboring fields. - Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries finally decided in October to survey contamination in the hills and forested areas – every time the wind blows it brings more contamination down from the heavily contaminated hills. - In summary, ignoring isotopes other than cesium is not acceptable, after Chernobyl the Ukrainian govt. produced accurate contamination maps for each separate nucleotide, and Japan should do so urgently. Residents lack of faith in the government’s lifting of the zone is entirely understandable.
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How To Remove Radioactive Iodine-131 From Drinking Water [07Apr11] - 0 views

blogs.forbes.com/...iodine-131-from-drinking-water

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 04 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • The Environmental Protection Agency recommends reverse osmosis water treatment to remove radioactive isotopes that emit beta-particle radiation. But iodine-131, a beta emitter, is typically present in water as a dissolved gas, and reverse osmosis is known to be ineffective at capturing gases. A combination of technologies, however, may remove most or all of the iodine-131 that finds its way into tap water, all available in consumer products for home water treatment.
  • When it found iodine-131 in drinking water samples from Boise, Idaho and Richland, Washington this weekend, the EPA declared: An infant would have to drink almost 7,000 liters of this water to receive a radiation dose equivalent to a day’s worth of the natural background radiation exposure we experience continuously from natural sources of radioactivity in our environment.” But not everyone accepts the government’s reassurances. Notably, Physicians for Social Responsibility has insisted there is no safe level of exposure to radionuclides, regardless of the fact that we encounter them naturally:
  • There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.” via Physicians for Social Responsibility, psr.org No matter where you stand on that debate, you might be someone who simply prefers not to ingest anything that escaped from a damaged nuclear reactor. If so, here’s what we know: Reverse Osmosis The EPA recommends reverse osmosis water treatment for most kinds of radioactive particles. Iodine-131 emits a small amount of gamma radiation but much larger amounts of beta radiation, and so is considered a beta emitter:
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  • Reverse osmosis has been identified by EPA as a “best available technology” (BAT) and Small System Compliance Technology (SSCT) for uranium, radium, gross alpha, and beta particles and photon emitters. It can remove up to 99 percent of these radionuclides, as well as many other contaminants (e.g., arsenic, nitrate, and microbial contaminants). Reverse osmosis units can be automated and compact making them appropriate for small systems. via EPA, Radionuclides in Drinking Water
  • However, EPA designed its recommendations for the contaminants typically found in municipal water systems, so it doesn’t specify Iodine-131 by name. The same document goes on to say, “Reverse osmosis does not remove gaseous contaminants such as carbon dioxide and radon.” Iodine-131 escapes from damaged nuclear plants as a gas, and this is why it disperses so quickly through the atmosphere. It is captured as a gas in atmospheric water, falls to the earth in rain and enters the water supply.
  • Dissolved gases and materials that readily turn into gases also can easily pass through most reverse osmosis membranes,” according to the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. For this reason, “many reverse osmosis units have an activated carbon unit to remove or reduce the concentration of most organic compounds.” Activated Carbon
  • That raises the next question: does activated carbon remove iodine-131? There is some evidence that it does. Scientists have used activated carbon to remove iodine-131 from the liquid fuel for nuclear solution reactors. And Carbon air filtration is used by employees of Perkin Elmer, a leading environmental monitoring and health safety firm, when they work with iodine-131 in closed quarters. At least one university has adopted Perkin Elmer’s procedures. Activated carbon works by absorbing contaminants, and fixing them, as water passes through it. It has a disadvantage, however: it eventually reaches a load capacity and ceases to absorb new contaminants.
  • Ion Exchange The EPA also recommends ion exchange for removing radioactive compounds from drinking water. The process used in water softeners, ion exchange removes contaminants when water passes through resins that contain sodium ions. The sodium ions readily exchange with contaminants.
  • Ion exchange is particularly recommended for removing Cesium-137, which has been found in rain samples in the U.S., but not yet in drinking water here. Some resins have been specifically designed for capturing Cesium-137, and ion exchange was used to clean up legacy nuclear waste from an old reactor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (pdf).
D'coda Dcoda

Accelerate decontamination , Japan [26Aug11] - 1 views

search.japantimes.co.jp/...ed20110826a1.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 25 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Some 100,000 people are still living as evacuees away from their homes in the wake of the severe accidents at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Kyodo News has reported that some 17,000 children in Fukushima Prefecture have changed schools or kindergartens because of radiation fears. Of these children, some 8,000 moved out of the prefecture.
  • Given this situation, it is imperative that the central government vigorously push the work of decontaminating areas contaminated with radioactive substances released from the nuclear power reactors. The central and local governments also should provide psychological care to both children who moved to new schools or kindergartens and children who have remained at their schools and kindergartens.
  • The Diet is expected to soon enact a special law under which the central government will be responsible for disposing of highly radioactive rubble and sludge, and decontaminating radioactive soil. In some cases, the central and local governments will carry out decontamination work together. The cost will be shouldered by Tepco.
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  • To accelerate the decontamination work, the Kan administration has decided to set up an office to deal with radioactive contamination within the Cabinet and a decontamination team in Fukushima Prefecture.
  • The education and science ministry estimates that radiation accumulation at 35 places inside the warning area in a period of one year from the start of the nuclear fiasco will exceed 20 millisieverts per year, a level sufficient enough to trigger an evacuation order. At 14 of these places, it is estimated that the radiation level will be more than 100 millisieverts per year. At one place, it is estimated that the level will be 508.1 millisieverts per year and at another 223.7 millisieverts per year.
  • The data underline the need for the central government to carry out decontamination work methodically and with perseverance. It also should take a serious look at the fact that radioactive contamination has spread outside Fukushima Prefecture. Beef cows in many parts of eastern Japan were fed on radioactive rice straw and the cows were was shipped to all the prefectures except Okinawa. Radioactive contamination has also been detected in sludge of sewage treatment plants in many parts of eastern Japan.
  • The central government must establish methods to decontaminate areas so that local governments can easily emulate them. It is expected to collect necessary data from a model project in the Ryozan area in Date, Fukushima Prefecture. Decontamination will be carried out in an area of 100-meter-by-100-meter square that will include agricultural fields and houses with extremely high radiation levels.
  • Depending on the nature of soil, the central government will try several decontamination methods such as directing high pressure water to wash away radioactive substances and removing soil after hardening it with chemicals. After determining the cost and benefit of the contamination work, and the amount of radioactive substances collected, it will write a decontamination manual as well as develop computer software to measure the effect of decontamination work.
  • Another problem is how to deal with radioactive rubble in areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and radioactive sludge that has accumulated at sewage treatment plants. Decontamination of areas contaminated with radioactive substances will also produce contaminated soil. The central government must hurriedly find places for long-term storage of contaminated rubble, sludge and soil.
  • Your Party has made a reasonable proposal concerning decontamination work. It calls for giving priority to decontaminating areas close to Fukushima No. 1, radiation "hot spots," as well as kindergartens and parks. Its main aim is to minimize the effect of radiation on children and pregnant women. The central government and other parties should carefully study the proposal and take legislative and other necessary actions.
  • To ensure effective decontamination, detailed radiation maps will be indispensable. A reliable system to accurately gauge radiation levels of various foods also should be set up. Decontamination will be a difficult and time-consuming task. It is important that the central and local governments give accurate information about the situation to local residents and avoid giving a false hope about when evacuees can return to their homes. The central government envisages a long-term goal of limiting people's radiation exposure to 1 millisievert per year. But Mr. Shunichi Tanaka, a former acting chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who carried out decontamination work in Iidate and Date in Fukushima Prefecture, says that in some places in the prefecture, it is impossible to lower the radiation level to 1 millisievert per year and that a realistic goal should be 5 millisieverts per year. Informed public discussions should be held on this point.
  • D'coda Dcoda on 25 Aug 11
     
    A letter to the editor of Japan Times
D'coda Dcoda

Groundwater Coming into Reactor Bldg and Turbine Bldg Basements at #Fukushima I Nuke Pl... - 0 views

ex-skf.blogspot.com/...ell-us-series-groundwater.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 20 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • From Tokyo Shinbun (7:06 AM JST 9/20/2011):
  • Large amount of groundwater flowing into the basements at Fukushima I? Obstacle to the work to wind down the accident
  • It's been revealed that there is a possibility that several hundred tonnes of groundwater may be flowing into the basements of reactor buildings and turbine buildings in Reactors 1 through 4 at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. The amount of contaminated water should have decreased by now to slightly over 50,000 tonnes, based on the amount of water processed. However, there are still over 80,000 tonnes of highly contaminated water remaining in the basements. TEPCO has admitted to the possibility of groundwater flowing into the basements, whose walls may have been damaged in the earthquake and are letting in the water. This may affect the future work to wind down the accident.
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  • Tokyo Shinbun calculated the hypothetical amount of the remaining contaminated water, based on the data published by TEPCO on the amount of contaminated water transfer and the amount of water injection into the reactors. According to our calculation, about 100,000 tonnes of contaminated water should have been reduced to about 51,600 tonnes by September 13.
  • However, the latest estimate by TEPCO from the actual water levels in the basements is 81,300 tonnes, leaving 30,000 tonnes or so gap from the calculated amount.
  • So far, TEPCO has explained that the contaminated water is not decreasing as fast because of the rainwater. Around Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, there have been 3 heavy rainfalls since July. Part of the rain may have entered the buildings through the damaged rooftops. However, the contribution of rainwater to the water in the basements is not big enough to explain the 30,000 tonnes difference.
  • It has been pointed out before that the groundwater may be flowing into the basements through cracks in the basement walls, and now that possibility is even more heightened. We showed the result of our calculation to TEPCO, and they answered "The water may be flowing in in the order of 100 tonnes per day".
  • If the groundwater is indeed flowing into the basements, the amount of contaminated water to be treated will be further increased, necessitating the decrease of water being injected into the reactors. The work to wind down the accident may be affected in many ways.I don't know whether TEPCO means "100 tonnes per day per unit" or "100 tonnes per day per each building" or "100 tonnes per day at the plant".In the latest announcement on the contaminated water processing on September 14, TEPCO is processing about 1,500 tonnes per day.
D'coda Dcoda

EPA Finds Compound Used in Fracking in Wyoming Aquifer [10Nov11]f - 0 views

www.propublica.org/...ng-compound-in-wyoming-aquifer

fracking natural gas fresh water contamination

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • As the country awaits results from a nationwide safety study on the natural gas drilling process of fracking, a separate government investigation into contamination in a place where residents have long complained [1] that drilling fouled their water has turned up alarming levels of underground pollution. A pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing, according to new water test results [2] released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency.
  • The findings are consistent with water samples the EPA has collected from at least 42 homes in the area since 2008, when ProPublica began reporting [3] on foul water and health concerns in Pavillion and the agency started investigating reports of contamination there. Last year -- after warning residents not to drink [4] or cook with the water and to ventilate their homes when they showered -- the EPA drilled the monitoring wells to get a more precise picture of the extent of the contamination.
  • The Pavillion area has been drilled extensively for natural gas over the last two decades and is home to hundreds of gas wells. Residents have alleged for nearly a decade [1] that the drilling -- and hydraulic fracturing in particular -- has caused their water to turn black and smell like gasoline. Some residents say they suffer neurological impairment [5], loss of smell, and nerve pain they associate with exposure to pollutants. The gas industry -- led by the Canadian company EnCana, which owns the wells in Pavillion -- has denied that its activities are responsible for the contamination. EnCana has, however, supplied drinking water to residents.
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  • The information released yesterday by the EPA was limited to raw sampling data: The agency did not interpret the findings or make any attempt to identify the source of the pollution. From the start of its investigation, the EPA has been careful to consider all possible causes of the contamination and to distance its inquiry from the controversy around hydraulic fracturing. Still, the chemical compounds the EPA detected are consistent with those produced from drilling processes, including one -- a solvent called 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE) -- widely used in the process of hydraulic fracturing. The agency said it had not found contaminants such as nitrates and fertilizers that would have signaled that agricultural activities were to blame.
D'coda Dcoda

Nuclear safety: A dangerous veil of secrecy [11Aug11] - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...2011877118599802.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 12 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • There are battles being fought on two fronts in the five months since a massive earthquake and tsunami damaged the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. On one front, there is the fight to repair the plant, operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and to contain the extent of contamination caused by the damage. On the other is the public’s fight to extract information from the Japanese government, TEPCO and nuclear experts worldwide.
  • The latter battle has yielded serious official humiliation, resulting high-profile resignations, scandals, and promises of reform in Japan’s energy industry whereas the latter has so far resulted in a storm of anger and mistrust. Even most academic nuclear experts, seen by many as the middle ground between the anti-nuclear activists and nuclear lobby itself, were reluctant to say what was happening: That in Fukushima, a community of farms, schools and fishing ports, was experiencing a full-tilt meltdown, and that, as Al Jazeera reported in June, that the accident had most likely caused more radioactive contamination than Chernobyl
  • As recently as early August, those seeking information on the real extent of the damage at the Daiichi plant and on the extent of radioactive contamination have mostly been reassured by the nuclear community that there’s no need to worry.
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  • The money trail can be tough to follow - Westinghouse, Duke Energy and the Nuclear Energy Institute (a "policy organisation" for the nuclear industry with 350 companies, including TEPCO, on its roster) did not respond to requests for information on funding research and chairs at universities. But most of the funding for nuclear research does not come directly from the nuclear lobby, said M.V. Ramana, a researcher at Princeton University specialising in the nuclear industry and climate change. Most research is funded by governments, who get donations - from the lobby (via candidates, political parties or otherwise).
  • “There's a lot of secrecy that can surround nuclear power because some of the same processes can be involved in generating electricity that can also be involved in developing a weapon, so there's a kind of a veil of secrecy that gets dropped over this stuff, that can also obscure the truth” said Biello. "So, for example in Fukushima, it was pretty apparent that a total meltdown had occurred just based on what they were experiencing there ... but nobody in a position of authority was willing to say that."
  • This is worrying because while both anti-nuclear activists and the nuclear lobby both have openly stated biases, academics and researchers are seen as the middle ground - a place to get accurate, unbiased information. David Biello, the energy and climate editor at Scientific American Online, said that trying to get clear information on a scenario such as the Daiichi disaster is tough.
  • "'How is this going to affect the future of nuclear power?'That’s the first thought that came into their heads," said Ramana, adding, "They basically want to ensure that people will keep constructing nuclear power plants." For instance, a May report by MIT’s Center For Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (where TEPCO funds a chair) points out that while the Daiichi disaster has resulted in "calls for cancellation of nuclear construction projects and reassessments of plant license extensions" which might "lead to a global slow-down of the nuclear enterprise," that  "the lessons to be drawn from the Fukushima accident are different."
  • "In the United States, a lot of the money doesn’t come directly from the nuclear industry, but actually comes from the Department of Energy (DOE). And the DOE has a very close relationship with the industry, and they sort of try to advance the industry’s interest," said Ramana. Indeed, nuclear engineering falls under the "Major Areas of Research" with the DOE, which also has nuclear weapons under its rubric. The DOE's 2012 fiscal year budge request to the US Congress for nuclear energy programmes was $755m.
  • "So those people who get funding from that….it’s not like they (researchers) want to lie, but there’s a certain amount of, shall we say, ideological commitment to nuclear power, as well as a certain amount of self-censorship."  It comes down to worrying how their next application for funding might be viewed, he said. Kathleen Sullivan, an anti-nuclear specialist and disarmament education consultant with the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs, said it's not surprising that research critical of the nuclear energy and weapons isn't coming out of universities and departments that participate in nuclear research and development.
  • "It (the influence) of the nuclear lobby could vary from institution to institution," said Sullivan. "If you look at the history of nuclear weapons manufacturing in the United States, you can see that a lot of research was influenced perverted, construed in a certain direction."
  • Sullivan points to the DOE-managed Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California in Berkley (where some of the research for the first atomic bomb was done) as an example of how intertwined academia and government-funded nuclear science are.
  • "For nuclear physics to proceed, the only people interested in funding it are pro-nuclear folks, whether that be industry or government," said Biello. "So if you're involved in that area you've already got a bias in favour of that technology … if you study hammers, suddenly hammers seem to be the solution to everything."
  • And should they find results unfavourable to the industry, Ramana said they would "dress it up in various ways by saying 'Oh, there’s a very slim chance of this, and here are some safety measure we recommend,' and then the industry will say, 'Yeah,yeah, we’re incorporating all of that.'" Ramana, for the record, said that while he's against nuclear weapons, he doesn't have a moral position on nuclear power except to say that as a cost-benefit issue, the costs outweigh the benefits, and that "in that sense, expanding nuclear power isn't a good idea." 
  • The Center for Responsive Politics - a non-partisan, non-profit elections watchdog group – noted that even as many lobbying groups slowed their spending the first quarter of the year, the Nuclear industry "appears to be ratcheting up its lobbying" increasing its multi-million dollar spending.
  • Among the report's closing thoughts are concerns that "Decision-making in the  immediate aftermath of a major crisis is often influenced by emotion," and whether"an accident like Fukushima, which is so far beyond design basis, really warrant a major overhaul of current nuclear safety regulations and practises?" "If so," wonder the authors, "When is safe safe enough? Where do we draw the line?"
  • The Japanese public, it seems, would like some answers to those very questions, albeit from a different perspective.  Kazuo Hizumi, a Tokyo-based human rights lawyer, is among those pushing for openness. He is also an editor at News for the People in Japan, a news site advocating for transparency from the government and from TEPCO. With contradicting information and lack of clear coverage on safety and contamination issues, many have taken to measuring radiation levels with their own Geiger counters.
  • "The public fully trusted the Japanese Government," said Hizumi. But the absence of "true information" has massively diminished that trust, as, he said, has the public's faith that TEPCO would be open about the potential dangers of a nuclear accident.
  • A report released in July by Human Rights Now highlights the need for immediately accessible information on health and safety in areas where people have been affected by the disaster, including Fukushima, especially on the issues of contaminated food and evacuation plans.
  • A 'nuclear priesthood' Biello describes the nuclear industry is a relatively small, exclusive club.
  • The interplay between academia and also the military and industry is very tight. It's a small community...they have their little club and they can go about their business without anyone looking over their shoulder. " This might explain how, as the Associated Press reported in June, that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was "working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nationalise ageing reactors operating within standards or simply failing to enforce them."
  • However, with this exclusivity comes a culture of secrecy – "a nuclear priesthood," said Biello, which makes it very difficult to parse out a straightforward answer in the very technical and highly politicised field.  "You have the proponents, who believe that it is the technological salvation for our problems, whether that's energy, poverty, climate change or whatever else. And then you have opponents who think that it's literally the worst thing that ever happened and should be immediately shut back up in a box and buried somewhere," said Biello, who includes "professors of nuclear engineering and Greenpeace activists" as passionate opponents on the nuclear subject.
  • In fact, one is hard pressed to find a media report quoting a nuclear scientist at any major university sounding the alarms on the risks of contamination in Fukushima. Doing so has largely been the work of anti-nuclear activists (who have an admitted bias against the technology) and independent scientists employed by think tanks, few of whom responded to requests for interviews.
  • So, one's best bet, said Biello, is to try and "triangulate the truth" - to take "a dose" from anti-nuclear activists, another from pro-nuclear lobbyists and throw that in with a little bit of engineering and that'll get you closer to the truth. "Take what everybody is saying with a grain of salt."
  • Since World War II, the process of secrecy – the readiness to invoke "national security" - has been a pillar of the nuclear establishment…that establishment, acting on the false assumption that "secrets" can be hidden from the curious and knowledgeable, has successfully insisted that there are answers which cannot be given and even questions which cannot be asked. The net effect is to stifle debate about the fundamental of nuclear policy. Concerned citizens dare not ask certain questions, and many begin to feel that these matters which only a few initiated experts are entitled to discuss.  If the above sounds like a post-Fukushima statement, it is not. It was written by Howard Morland for the November 1979 issue of The Progressive magazine focusing on the hydrogen bomb as well as the risks of nuclear energy.
  • The US government - citing national security concerns - took the magazine to court in order to prevent the issue from being published, but ultimately relented during the appeals process when it became clear that the information The Progressive wanted to publish was already public knowledge and that pursuing the ban might put the court in the position of deeming the Atomic Energy Act as counter to First Amendment rights (freedom of speech) and therefore unconstitutional in its use of prior restraint to censor the press.
  • But, of course, that's in the US, although a similar mechanism is at work in Japan, where a recently created task force aims to "cleanse" the media of reportage that casts an unfavourable light on the nuclear industry (they refer to this information as "inaccurate" or a result of "mischief." The government has even go so far as to accept bids from companies that specialise in scouring the Internet to monitor the Internet for reports, Tweets and blogs that are critical of its handling of the Daiichi disaster, which has presented a unique challenge to the lobby there.
  • "They do not know how to do it," he said of some of the community groups and individuals who have taken to measure contamination levels in the air, soil and food
  •  Japan's government has a history of slow response to TEPCO's cover-ups. In 1989, that Kei Sugaoka, a nuclear energy at General Electric who inspected and repaired plants in Japan and elsewhere, said he spotted cracks in steam dryers and a "misplacement" or 180 degrees in one dryer unit. He noticed that the position of the dryer was later omitted from the inspection record's data sheet. Sugaoka told a Japanese networkthat TEPCO had instructed him to "erase" the flaws, but he ultimately wrote a whistleblowing letter to METI, which resulted in the temporary 17 TEPCO reactors, including ones at the plant in Fukushima.
  • the Japanese nuclear lobby has been quite active in shaping how people see nuclear energy. The country's Ministry of Education, together with the Natural Resources Ministry (of of two agencies under Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry - METI - overseeing nuclear policies) even provides schools with a nuclear energy information curriculum. These worksheets - or education supplements - are used to inform children about the benefits of nuclear energy over fossil fuels.
  • There’s reason to believe that at least in one respect, Fukushima can’t and won’t be another Chernobyl, at least due to the fact that the former has occurred in the age of the Internet whereas the latter took place in the considerably quaint 80s, when a car phone the size of a brick was considered the height of communications technology to most. "It (a successful cover up) is definitely a danger in terms of Fukushima, and we'll see what happens. All you have to do is look at the first couple of weeks after Chernobyl to see the kind of cover up," said Biello. "I mean the Soviet Union didn't even admit that anything was happening for a while, even though everybody was noticing these radiation spikes and all these other problems. The Soviet Union was not admitting that they were experiencing this catastrophic nuclear failure... in Japan, there's a consistent desire, or kind of a habit, of downplaying these accidents, when they happen. It's not as bad as it may seem, we haven't had a full meltdown."
  • Fast forward to 2011, when video clips of each puff of smoke out of the Daiichi plant make it around the world in seconds, news updates are available around the clock, activists post radiation readings on maps in multiple languages and Google Translate picks up the slack in translating every last Tweet on the subject coming out of Japan.
  • it will be a heck of a lot harder to keep a lid on things than it was 25 years ago. 
Dan R.D.

Despite billions spent on cleanup, Hanford won't be clean for thousands of years [09Fe... - 0 views

www.oregonlive.com/...te_billions_spent_on_clea.html

nuclear waste disposal cleanup costs risk

shared by Dan R.D. on 25 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Some radioactive contaminants at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation will threaten the Columbia River for thousands of years, a new analysis projects, despite the multibillion-dollar cleanup efforts by the federal government.
  • The U.S. Department of Energy projections come from a new analysis of how best to clean up leaking storage tanks and manage waste at Hanford, a former nuclear weapons production site on 586 square miles next to the Columbia in southeastern Washington.
  • Oregon officials say the results, including contamination projections for the next 10,000 years, indicate the federal government needs to clean up more of the waste that has already leaked and spilled at Hanford instead of capping and leaving it, a less-expensive alternative.
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  • "We think it should force a re-look at the long-term cleanup plan at Hanford," said Ken Niles, assistant director of the Oregon Department of Energy. "We don't want that level of contamination reaching the Columbia River."
  • The U.S. Department of Energy report says the risks from some high-volume radioactive elements, including tritium, strontium and cesium, have already peaked and should diminish relatively quickly. For all locations at Hanford, the peak radiological risk has already occurred, the report says.
  • Much of Hanford's radioactivity comes from strontium-90 and cesium-137, which have half-lives of roughly three decades, the GAO said, meaning much of the risk should fall relatively quickly.
  • Hanford produced nuclear materials from 1944 through 1988, operated nine nuclear reactors to produce plutonium and generated millions of gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste. Some of the waste was dumped directly into ditches, some was buried in drums and some was stored in 177 huge underground tanks, including 149 leak-prone single-walled tanks.
  • It's now the nation's most contaminated radioactive cleanup site.
  • A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in September on tank cleanup said the total estimated cost has risen dramatically and could go as high as $100 billion, well above the current $77 billion estimate. The latest deadline for completing cleanup is 2047, though cleanup dates have been steadily pushed back.
  • But Mary Beth Burandt, an Energy Department manager, said the agency is undecided and will likely propose steps to address public concerns. Such steps could include more treatment, barrier walls to block contaminant flows and limits on long-lived radioactive elements in incoming waste.
  • Health risks from Hanford's contamination are long-term, not immediate. They're expressed in terms of cancer cases after a lifetime of drinking well water from the site, with a one in 10,000 risk considered high. But many of the contaminant levels at the site exceed health benchmarks by wide margins.
D'coda Dcoda

Living with Fukushima City's radiation problem [08Dec11] - 0 views

www.greenpeace.org/...38305

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • While people in the 20 km exclusion zone around the Fukushima disaster site have been evacuated, the residents of this densely populated city have already waited nine months for decontamination of their houses, gardens and parks without getting any official government support for relocation, not even for children and pregnant women. We spent four days in Fukushima City doing a radiation survey in the neighbourhoods of Watari and Onami. People there have been left to cope alone in a highly contaminated environment by both the local and national governments. Our radiation experts found hot spots of up to 37 microSieverts per hour in a garden only a few meters away from a house and an accumulation of radioactivity in drainage systems, puddles and ditches. Overall, the radiation levels in these neighbourhoods are so high that people receive an exposure to radiation just from external sources that is ten times the annual allowed dose. How high their internal exposure is from eating contaminated food and inhaling or ingesting radioactive particles remains unknown, since no government program is keeping track of this.
  •  Parks are the most contaminated areas in Fukushima City. Some are marked with signs: “Due to radioactive contamination, don’t spend more than one hour per day in this park.” Even on sunny days last week, the parks where empty
  • Even inside their houses, they have to worry about radiation. We measured the rooms of an elderly lady’s house who is expecting her grandchildren for Christmas. She wanted to know what the safest place was for her grandchildren to sleep.   People in Fukushima City are worried about their health, especially families with children and pregnant women. We walked around with dosimeters and radiation detection equipment and were aware of what we are exposed to and of the risk we were taking. The residents of Fukushima City had one government survey at their house last July, if any at all. Detected hotspots where left unmarked, no instructions were given on how to behave in a radioactive environment. Since then, only 35 of the thousands of houses that need to be decontaminated have been cleaned by the government.  
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  • The decontamination done by the local authorities is both uncoordinated and thoroughly inadequate. The subcontractors they are using are badly instructed, risking their own health and spreading the radioactive contamination instead of removing it. We found radioactive run-off water from a decontamination process leaking directly into the environment. And because there is no storage site for radioactive waste from decontamination work, the waste is buried directly on people’s property, sometimes only a few meters away from their houses. The Japanese government doesn’t know how to deal with the massive contamination caused by the nuclear disaster. Instead of protecting people from radiation, they are downplaying the risks by increasing the allowed radiation levels far above international standards. And professors like Dr. Yamashita, who make statements like ‘If you smile, the radiation will not affect you’ are being employed as official advisors on radiation health risk.
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima Update: Why We Should (Still) Be Worried [20Jan12] - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/should-still-be-worried-2012-1

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 22 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • you would think the Japanese government would be doing everything in its power to contain the disaster. You would be wrong—dead wrong.
  • nstead of collecting, isolating, and guarding the millions of tons of radioactive rubble that resulted from the chain reaction of the 9.0 earthquake, the subsequent 45- to 50-foot wall of water that swamped the plant and disabled the cooling systems for the reactors, and the ensuing meltdowns, Japanese Environment Minister Goshi Hosono says that the entire country must share Fukushima’s plight by accepting debris from the disaster.
  • an estimated 20 million tons of wreckage on the land, much of which—now ten months after the start of the disaster—is festering in stinking piles throughout the stricken region. (Up to 20 million more tons of rubble from the disaster—estimated to cover an area approximately the size of California—is also circulating in the Pacific.)
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  • 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.
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima plant workers exposed to radiation [09Oct13] - 0 views

www3.nhk.or.jp/...20131009_23.html

fukushima workers

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 09 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • D'coda Dcoda on 09 Oct 13
     
    Workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have caused a fresh leak of contaminated water by mistakenly detaching a pipe. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, says 6 workers were sprayed with the contaminated water and are being checked for radiation exposure. TEPCO says the workers mistakenly detached a water pipe from a joint near a desalination device on Wednesday morning. The accident caused about 7 tons of contaminated water to leak for about 50 minutes. TEPCO says the water is contained inside a 60-meter-long, 12-meter-wide barrier that surrounds the device. The water is highly radioactive, containing 34 million becquerels of beta ray-emitting material per liter. Worker errors have been occurring frequently at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, as TEPCO struggles to keep the facility under control.
D'coda Dcoda

700 Tons of Radiactive Water Found in New Bldg at Fukushima [02Aug11] - 0 views

www3.nhk.or.jp/...01_32.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 02 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Highly radioactive water has been found in the basement of a building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant near the storage facility for contaminated water. Tokyo Electric Power Company said on Monday that it discovered about 700 tons of contaminated water on Saturday in the basement of an on-site building. The utility said the water contained 19,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium 134 per cubic centimeter, and 22,000 becquerels of cesium 137 --- both very high levels.
  • Highly radioactive water has been found in the basement of a building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant near the storage facility for contaminated water. Tokyo Electric Power Company said on Monday that it discovered about 700 tons of contaminated water on Saturday in the basement of an on-site building.
  • Highly radioactive water has been found in the basement of a building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant near the storage facility for contaminated water. Tokyo Electric Power Company said on Monday that it discovered about 700 tons of contaminated water on Saturday in the basement of an on-site building. The utility said the water contained 19,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium 134 per cubic centimeter, and 22,000 becquerels of cesium 137 --- both very high levels.
  • D'coda Dcoda on 02 Aug 11
     
    This won't highlight so you'll need to visit the page. It says that highly radioactive water was discovered in another building's basement and they don't know how it got there.
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