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Of 10 nuclear power plant workers who have developed cancer and received workers' compensation in the past, nine had been exposed to less than 100 millisieverts of radiation, it has been learned.

The revelation comes amid reports that a number of workers battling the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant were found to have been exposed to more than the emergency limit of 250 millisieverts, which was raised from the previous limit of 100 millisieverts in March.

According to Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry statistics, of the 10 nuclear power plant workers, six had leukemia, two multiple myeloma and another two lymphatic malignancy. Only one had been exposed to 129.8 millisieverts but the remaining nine were less than 100 millisieverts, including one who had been exposed to about 5 millisieverts.

SOURCE: East Power workers, the possibility of internal traced Fukushima No. 1 original の 発, Nikkei, October 8, 2011 Google Translation TEPCO is 08, the internal exposure of male workers in their 30s (exposure) may have announced. That men had been working in the field confirm that occurred the same day desalination water leakage in the first nuclear power plant in Fukushima. To conduct detailed investigation on whole-body counter to measure radiation dose. External dose 0.13 mSv per hour male rays, beta radiation was 0.50 mSv per hour. Completed the verification process of the leakage and contamination of the physical examination was conducted, chin and neck, showed that the radioactive material deposited on the surface of the mask. East Power Atomic Force site headquarters の Matsumoto Junichi The Acting Minister of wa the same day afternoon の correspondent met で “water を か ぶ っ ta wa け で は な い と think う. ど う い っ た situation で pollution shi ta ka confirm し た い” と out べ ta.

SOURCE: News: Another worker got exposed, Fukushima Diary by Mochizuki, October 8, 2011 Tepco announced that a male worker in his 30s was exposed to high level of radiation. It is likely that he had a severe internal exposure too. He was checking the water leakage around the water purifying system today. [...] After finishing his task, they found radioactive material attached to his jaw, neck and on mask. [...]

Expert tells court former employees of Dimona nuclear facility who were diagnosed with cancer were exposed to year's-worth of radiation on a daily basis

Workers at the

The

Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.

TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

"They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"

Part 2: Workers Pushed to Their Limits TEPCO is preparing to spend decades in J-Village. Workers have spread gravel around the large soccer stadium and in a number of adjacent areas. Here they have placed row after row of gray trailers. There are 40 per row and they sit two stories high, extending right up to the blue plastic seats in the stands. The stadium's large scoreboard still hangs behind this makeshift community. The stadium clock has stopped at 2:46 p.m., which was the moment when the earthquake cut off the electricity here and at the power plant 20 kilometers (12 miles) away. Now, the power is on again and white neon lights illuminate the rows of trailers. In one room the workers can pick up bento boxes. Next door TEPCO has built a laundromat with more than a hundred washing machines. Behind the main building in J-Village, buses are parked on the former soccer fields and debris is stored in large plastic bags on the tartan track.

Stacks of Contaminated Suits In the courtyard of the main building, TEPCO has had a small store built, where workers can purchase cigarettes and tea. Some of them, still wearing their work overalls, have gathered around a number of ashtrays and are smoking in silence. There is an Adidas advertisement glued to one of the doors and an obsolete warning sign: "No SPIKES!" An exhausted worker is asleep on the floor in the hallway.

In the window of the atrium hang huge banners for TEPCO Mareeze, the soccer team that belongs to the energy company. In the center of the building stands a panel with a large white and green map of J-Village. There was a time when this was there to help athletes find their way around. Now, a man in a TEPCO uniform stands here and uses a red felt pen to post the current radiation levels for over a dozen different places on the premises. Three TEPCO employees are sitting nearby with their laptops. The workers hand them their daily dosimeters. In return, they are given a receipt that resembles a cash register sales slip and shows the dose of radiation that they have received that day.

Nov. 9 — “A journalist of Shukan Asahi, Mr.Imanishi was invited to go into the site by an actual Fukushima worker,” reports Mochizuki. The journalist reported that “the spent fuel pool of reactor 4 is completely ‘exposed’,” Mochizuki writes. For the video below Mochizuki summarizes Imanishi’s comments: The wall and ceiling of Reactor No. 4′s building was completely blown off by “some explosion” “The spent fuel pool is totally left outside, out of control so what you can even see it from out of the reactor” “The wall of the reactors are about 1m thick of huge concrete mass. It is blown off.” “It shows how much the explosion(s) were more massive that they were announced by the government.”

The survey meter went overscale, so no one knows how high the actual radiation really is. TEPCO hasn't updated the "survey map (contamination map)" of the plant for about a month, and I've been wondering why. (They have a new one out now, but it doesn't mention the exhaust duct at all.)

If you are exposed to 10 sieverts radiation in a short time, you will be dead.Photo is from Kyodo News Japanese, with the original photo by the Ministry of Defense. The exhaust duct is where the black arrow is pointing

Not clear from the Jiji article below, but the Kyodo article does say the meter went overscale and the accurate measurement is not available.

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.

Related Story Content Story Sharing Tools Share with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Related Related Links Japan PM feared nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl Special Report: Disaster in Japan Japan ignored own radiation forecasts FAQ: Radiation's health effects Timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex FAQ: Nuclear reactorsAccessibility Links Beginning of Story Content TOKYO –

 Related Story Content Story Sharing Tools Share with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Related Related Links Japan PM feared nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl Special Report: Disaster in Japan Japan ignored own radiation forecasts FAQ: Radiation's health effects Timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex FAQ: Nuclear reactors Accessibility Links Beginning of Story Content TOKYO –  The scars of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014. 'I think Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes.' —Shoji Sawada, theoretical particle physicist But a weightless byproduct of this country’s March 11 disaster is expected to linger for much longer.  The Japanese learned a lot about the risks posed by radiation after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Now, once again, they are facing this invisible killer. This time, the mistake is of their own making. "I’m afraid," says Shoji Sawada, a theoretical particle physicist who is opposed to the use of nuclear energy .  Sawada has been carefully monitoring the fallout from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. “I think many people were exposed to radiation. I am afraid [they] will experience delayed effects, such as cancer and leukemia.” Evacuation zone Japan's government maintains a 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, with no unauthorized entry allowed. The government has urged people within a 30-km radius of the plant to leave, but it's not mandatory. Some people say the evacuation zone should include Fukushima City, which is 63 km away from the plant. At the moment, the roughly 100,000 local children are kept indoors, schools have banned soccer and outdoor sports, pools were closed this summer, and building windows are generally kept closed. A handful of people argue the government should evacuate all of Fukushima prefecture, which has a population of about 2 million.  Sawada dedicated his career to studying the impact radiation has on human health, particularly among the survivors of Japan’s atomic bombings. His interest is both professional and personal. When he was 13 years old, his mother urged him to flee their burning home in Hiroshima. She died, trapped beneath rubble . “I think Tokyo Electric Power Company [TEPCO], as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes,” he says. Those mistakes have been clearly documented since the earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns and explosions at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi, some 220 kilometres northeast of Tokyo. Warnings to build a higher tsunami wall were ignored; concerns about the safety of aging reactors covered up; and a toothless nuclear watchdog exposed as being more concerned with promoting atomic energy than protecting the public

The scars of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014.

Radioactive substances detected in children’s urine in Fukushima, DPA, June 30, 2011:

A small amount of radioactive substances was found from urine samples of all of 10 children in Fukushima surveyed [...] David Boilley, president of the Acro radioactivity measuring body, told a news conference in Tokyo that the survey on 10 boys and girls aged between 6 and 16 in Fukushima city suggested there was a high possibility that children in and near the city had been exposed to radiation internally, Kyodo News reported. [...] The city is located 60 kilometres north-west of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station [...]

In the town in the 20km evacuation area, Minami soma shi, more than half of the students of elementary school and junior high school students turned out to be internally exposed. Among 527 samples: 199 → 10 Bq/kg 65 → 10~20 Bq/Kg 3 → 20~30 Bq/Kg 1 → 30~35 Bq/Kg Newspaper says, adults take 100 days to detox it all, children take 30 days to detox it all.

However, this comment is questionable. 30 Bq/Kg means 600 Bq in whole body if the child weighs 20kg. This is only Cs-137, so including Cs-134, it would be about 1,200 Bq. Strontium is likely to be in his body about 300 Bq, so the total can be nearly 1,500 Bq. “children take 30 days to detox it all” It has been longer than 7 months since 311. Children must have been detoxing it everyday.

This number, “1,500 Bq” is after the daily detoxing. so it does not make any sense. Additionally, Strontium is hard to be detoxed from body. Finally, a question remains: what about the rest of the kids?

TONY EASTLEY: Still in Japan and the ABC has obtained documents revealing the lengths being taken to keep work at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant secret and to stop workers there from actually talking to the media.One former worker at the plant has told the ABC how they were given sub-standard protective gear after the accidents.North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy reports from Iwaki City in Fukushima.MARK WILLACY: Inside the leeching and twisted remains of the Fukushima nuclear plant 3000 workers are labouring to stabilise the melted reactor cores.It's dirty and dangerous work, and some workers claim they're being exposed and exploited.

: "I was not told how much radiation I would be exposed to or how high the radiation would be," says this man who worked at the Fukushima plant during the meltdowns. "They just gave me an anorak to wear and sent me to work. I worked at installing vents inside the reactor buildings to get rid of the steam so we could avert another explosion," he tells me.There's a good reason why this Fukushima worker doesn't want his identity revealed and that's because like others, he's been gagged.The ABC has obtained a document drawn up by one of the Fukushima subcontractors. It demands that its employees at the plant keep all of their work secret and under no circumstances are they permitted to talk to the media.

But that hasn't stopped Hiroyuki Watanabe from snooping about

Residents outside the Fukushima exclusion zone were likely most exposed to radiation in the four months after the nuclear plant was wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the local government said on Tuesday. Their exposure of 19 millisieverts is just below the annual limit set by an international nuclear safety body, it said.

The greatest exposure was in the town of Iitate, where residents were allowed to take their time to leave, located 40 km (25 miles) northwest of the plant and outside the 20 km evacuation zone imposed by the government.

According to the estimates, those living within the 20 km zone, who were urged to leave quickly, were likely exposed to 0.18 to 2.3 millisieverts in the four months after the disaster. That is less than the estimated 0.84-19 millisieverts for those living near the plant but outside the evacuation zone.

Can Japan do better than Chernobyl?, Australian Broadcasting Corporation by Dr Margaret Beavis, Jan. 6, 2012:

[...] There have been many failures in the handling of this situation. But perhaps the greatest relate to the government’s duty of care to protect Japanese citizens. The government failed to act on information about radioactive plumes. In doing so it exposed many communities to harmful radiation, and many evacuated into even higher radioactive areas. In addition, the government has declared the “safe” allowable limits for radiation exposure can be changed from the internationally accepted levels of 1 mSv to 20 mSv a year. Women and children are particularly sensitive to radiation exposure. Subjecting children to 20mSv a year for five years will result in about 1 in 30 developing cancer. After Chernobyl anyone likely to be exposed to more than 5 mSv a year was evacuated, and those in areas of 1-5 mSv were offered relocation and bans were placed on eating locally produced food.

Finally, there is an ongoing culture of poor monitoring, poor information release and cover up. It continues to significantly under report radiation levels, claiming total radiation releases at approximately half the level of observed releases detected by world wide Nuclear Test Ban Treaty monitoring sites. Current radioactivity levels are measured at 1 metre off the ground, not at ground level where children play and where radioactivity levels are significantly higher. [...] From a public health perspective the Japanese government continues to fail to protect its people, particularly its children. To quote Tilman Ruff, Associate Professor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, “At this point, the single most important public health measure to minimi[s]e the health harm over the long term is much wider evacuation.” [...]