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Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant."How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives. "The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant. There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation. Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming.According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs.

Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas.Distrust of the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster is now common among people living in the effected prefectures, and people are concerned about their health.Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming.When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure. 10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays.

t is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami. The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv. TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings.

To whom does scientific debate belong? That was a central question raised by many of the 200-plus people who attended a citizens' forum in Tokyo on Oct. 12, as they criticized the ways in which the Japanese government and radiation specialists working for it are assessing and monitoring the health effects of the ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The daylong conference, organized by the Japanese citizens' groups SAY-Peace Project and Citizens' Radioactivity Measuring Station (CRMS), featured experts who dispute much of the evidence on which the government has based its health and welfare decisions affecting residents of Fukushima Prefecture and beyond. Organizers of the event were also demanding that the government take into consideration the views of non-experts — and also experts with differing views from those of official bodies such as the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). The Japanese government has constantly referred to the ICRP's recommendations in setting radiation exposure limits for Fukushima residents.

One of the driving forces for the citizens' forum was a desire to challenge the conduct and much of the content of a conference held Sept. 11-12 in Fukushima, titled the "International Expert Symposium in Fukushima — Radiation and Health Risk." That conference, sponsored by the Nippon Foundation, involved some 30 scientists from major institutions, including the ICRP, the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Although the proceedings were broadcast live on U-stream, the event itself was — unlike the Tokyo forum — closed to the public. Some citizens and citizens' groups claimed that this exclusion of many interested and involved parties — and the event's avowed aim of disseminating to the public "authoritative" information on the health effects of radiation exposure — ran counter to the pursuit of facilitating open and free exchanges among and between experts and citizens on the many contentious issues facing the nation and its people at this critical time.

In particular, there was widespread criticism after the Fukushima conference — which was organized by Shunichi Yamashita, the vice president of Fukushima Medical University and a "radiological health safety risk management advisor" for Fukushima prefectural government — that its participants assumed from the outset that radioactive contamination from the plant's wrecked nuclear reactors is minimal. Critics also claimed that the experts invited to the conference had turned a collective blind eye to research findings compiled by independent scientists in Europe in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in present-day Ukraine — specifically to findings that point to various damaging health consequences of long-term exposure to low-level radiation. So it was that those two citizens' groups, angered by these and other official responses to the calamity, organized the Oct. 12 conference held at the National Olympics Memorial Youth Center in Shibuya Ward. Among the non-experts and experts invited to attend and exchange their views were people from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, constitutional law and pediatrics. On the day, some of the speakers took issue with the stance of the majority of official bodies that the health damage from Chernobyl was observed only in a rise in the number of cases of thyroid cancers.

External radiation is not counted in this number, as opposed to their draft plan in July which did include external radiation, and it is in addition to the natural radiation exposure (by which is meant pre-Fukushima natural).The experts on the Commission didn't rule on the radiation limit for children, leaving the decision to the Ministry of Health and Labor as if the top-school career bureaucrats in the Ministry would know better.Yomiuri and other MSMs are spinning it as "tightening" the existing provisional safety limits on food.From Yomiuri Shinbun (10/27/2011):

The Food Safety Commission under the Cabinet Office has been deliberating on the health effect of internal radiation exposure from the radioactive materials in food. On October 27, it submitted its recommendation to set the upper limit on lifetime cumulative radiation from food at 100 millisieverts.

On receiving the recommendation, the Ministry of Health and Labor will start setting the detailed guidelines for each food items. They are expected to be stricter than the provisional safety limits set right after the Fukushima I Nuclear Plant accident. The Radiation Commission under the Ministry of Education will review the guidelines to be set by the Ministry of Health and Labor, and the new safety limits will be formally decided.

Jerry Cuttler, a tireless researcher on the topic of the health effects of low level radiation, sent me an article titled Toward Improved Ionizing Radiation Safety Standards from the July 2011 issue of Health Physics, a peer-reviewed journal about radiation safety. (Unfortunately, like many peer reviewed journals, Health Physics is not available for free online. It is possible to purchase individual articles or to gain access if you have a membership or access to a university or corporate library.)

he article explains in clear, but scientific terms, how radiation at low average levels can result in increasing the latency period of cancer development past the end of a natural lifespan. We all have the potential for developing cancer, but we also have finite lives. Dr. Raabe’s research has led him to the conclusion that low average doses of radiation that might add up to a substantial cumulative dose do not kill off cancer cells, but they delay the ability of those cells to do any real damage until after their host organism is dead from other causes anyway.

Clearly the development of a radiation-induced malignant tumor from either protracted ionizing radiation exposures or acute exposures is not the result of a single random interaction of the ionizing radiation with an isolated cell. Hence, the term stochastic as used by the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) is not appropriate. The following conclusions indicate that major revisions of the ICRP methodology and standards are needed, and other currently accepted ionizing radiation risk models should be improved to provide more meaningful and realistic estimates of ionizing radiation cancer risk: Cancer induction risk associated with protracted or fractionated ionizing radiation exposure is a non-linear function of lifetime average dose rate to the affected tissues and exhibits a virtual threshold at low lifetime average dose rates;

The government will set more stringent standards for radiation levels in food following new recommendations on the issue by the Food Safety Commission. According to the commission, health problems would emerge if accumulated radiation exposure over an individual's lifetime exceeded 100 millisieverts. Health minister Yoko Komiyama said Oct. 27 the new standards would take effect early next year and would be more strict than the temporary ones now in place. She cited the "need to secure food safety." Komiyama's announcement came on the day the commission issued its new report revising its position on health dangers from radiation contaminated food.

It revised past statements that the 100-millisievert limit included external exposure to radiation from the environment. Commission members said appraising radiation exposure from the environment was outside of their jurisdiction. The lifetime figure of 100 millisieverts is based on the assumption that radiation exposure comes only from food and does not include any external radiation exposure. The commission's recommendation will serve as the basis for new maximums for radiation levels in food from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, which are expected to be ready early next year. Health ministry officials will have to wrestle with how to incorporate health effects from external radiation exposure into the new guidelines. Parts of Fukushima Prefecture have recorded high levels of radiation following the disaster at the nuclear power plant there.

Another key issue is whether to issue different guidelines for different age groups. Children are more easily affected by radiation than adults, but there are concerns that establishing different standards for different ages will cause confusion among consumers. Health ministry officials have estimated that if individuals ate food tainted with radioactive materials from the Fukushima nuclear accident for one year, the average level of radiation exposure across all age groups would be about 0.1 millisievert. Based on that estimate, a person who lived to 100 would be exposed to about 10 millisieverts of radiation over a lifetime. The temporary food radiation standards now in place were calculated on the premise that total annual radiation exposure from food should not exceed 17 millisieverts. The temporary standards for vegetables and meat were set at 500 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. That standard was used by the farm ministry to decide if orders should be implemented to ban shipments of food products exceeding the standard. According to calculations by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, if an adult consumed 200 grams of food containing 500 becquerels of cesium-137 per kilogram every day for a year, the total annual exposure amount would be about 0.5 millisievert.

As efforts to end the nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant drag on, it is important for the central and local governments to step up their efforts to closely examine the health conditions of people concerned and to decontaminate areas contaminated by radiation.

The people who have been most affected by radiation from the Fukushima plant are workers, both from Tepco and from subcontractors, who have been trying to bring the radiation-leaking plant under control. In the nation's history, these workers rank second only to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of their exposure to radiation, therefore the possibility cannot be ruled out that they will develop cancer. Tepco and the central government must do their best to prevent workers' overexposure to radiation and take necessary measures should workers become overexposed to radiation. It is of great concern that little has been disclosed regarding the conditions of the workers at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Tepco and the central government should disseminate information on the actual working conditions of these people, even if such information seems repetitious and includes what they regard as minor incidents. People are forgetful. They need to be informed. Such information will help raise people's awareness about the issue of radiation and its impact on health.

It must not be forgotten that exposure to radiation has long-term effects on human health. In the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, the number of leukemia cases started to increase among bombing survivors two years after the bombs were dropped. In the case of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, thyroid cancer began to appear among children several years after the disaster happened. Particular attention should be paid to the health of children. In view of these facts, it is logical that the Fukushima prefectural government has developed a program to monitor the health of all residents in the prefecture, who number about 2 million, throughout their lifetime. It has also started examining the thyroids of some 360,000 children who are age 18 or younger. Detailed and long-term area-by-area studies should be carried out to record cancer incidences. In August, the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan estimated that the Fukushima accidents released a total of 570,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances, including some 11,000 terabecquerels of radioactive cesium 137.

The linear no-threshold model (LNT) is a method for predicting the long term, biological damage caused by ionizing radiation and is based on the assumption that the risk is directly proportional to the dose at all dose levels. In other words, the sum of several very small exposures have the same effect as one larger exposure. The LNT model therefore predicts higher risks than either the threshold model, which assumes that very small exposures are negligible, or the radiation hormesis model, which predicts the least risk by assuming that radiation at very small doses can be beneficial.

Because the current data is inconclusive, scientists disagree on which method should be used. Before the nuclear industry existed, the only health concerns were based more around natural occurring radiation and our bodies had a mechanism to protect us by the release of melatonin for example. Higher levels of radiation were found to in areas where radioactive elements existed naturally and, some have proven to be fatal. As the nuclear industry started and the science of ionizing radiation damage matured, the industry had to develop guidelines which could be used to set limits. Unfortunately those limits were established on the basis of probabilities of getting cancers etc. to the body due to the exposures. Acute and Chronic doses were established. The devastation caused by the bombing in Japan were used to form some basis of exposure.  That information has had application in the nuclear industry through the years.

Companies that hire workers who are untrained and uneducated about working in areas where the risk of receiving radiation exposure and dose exists,  should be fined if those workers are found to be unfamiliar with their work, safety, protective clothing and proper procedures. The industry throughout the world hires these workers sometimes referred to as “Road Whores”, some of which have experience and are trained, but many of which are labor type workers doing the seemingly least important but necessary tasks.

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.

Tokyo Shinbun is a regional newspaper covering Kanto region of Japan. It has been reporting on the Fukushima accident and resultant radiation contamination in a more honest and comprehensive manner than any national newspaper. (Their only shortcoming is that their links don't seem to last for more than a week.)Their best coverage on the subject, though, is not available digitally but only in the printed version of the newspaper. But no worry, as there is always someone who transcribes the article and post it on the net for anyone to see.

In the 2nd half of the January 27 article, Tokyo Shinbun details what kind of workers are currently working at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant: migrant workers young (in their 20's) and not so young (in their 60's), untrained, $100 a day. Some of them cannot even read and write.

Right now, 70% of workers at the plant are migrant contract workers from all over Japan. Most of them have never worked at nuke plants before. The pay is 8000 yen to 13,000 yen [US$104 to $170] per day. Most of them are either in their 20s who are finding it difficult to land on any job, or in their 60s who have "graduated" from the previous jobs."

The Japanese government is about to set 100 millisieverts as lifetime, cumulative acceptable radiation exposure standard, counting both internal and external radiation exposure, and this is on top of the average 1.5 millisievert/year natural radiation exposure.Up till now, the acceptable radiation exposure has been 1 millisievert per year, in addition to the natural radiation exposure in Japan which is about 1.5 millisievert per year. There has been no standard for lifetime cumulative radiation exposure.

how many people, other than the nuke plant workers, have been tested with the whole body counters? Answer: not many. Reasons often cited are: background radiation too high in Fukushima for proper testing; there are not many whole body counters in Japan, 100 at most. Then, I read that a man from Iitate-mura in Fukushima demanded he be tested for radiation using the whole body counter. He finally got his wish several months after the start of the accident, and they refused to tell him the number. He still doesn't know how much radiation he's received.

Nuclear plant workers suffer internal radiation exposure after visiting Fukushima, Mainichi, May 22, 2011:

The government has discovered thousands of cases of workers at nuclear power plants outside Fukushima Prefecture suffering from internal exposure to radiation after they visited the prefecture, the head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said. [...] The revelation has prompted local municipalities in Fukushima to consider checking residents’ internal exposure to radiation. Nobuaki Terasaka, head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told the House of Representatives Budget Committee on May 16 that there were a total of 4,956 cases of workers suffering from internal exposure to radiation at nuclear power plants in the country excluding the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, and 4,766 of them involved workers originally from Fukushima who had visited the prefecture after the nuclear crisis. [...] But as of May 16, only about 1,400 workers have gone through checkups — roughly 20 percent of the total number of workers. And only 40 of the workers have had their test results confirmed. [...]

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. [...]

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20001 NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.

This study was supported by Environmental Protection Agency Grant #X-826842-01, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Grant #NRC-04-98-061, and U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology Grant #60NANB5D1003. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.

This is the seventh in a series of reports from the National Research Council (NRC) prepared to advise the U.S. government on the relationship between exposure to ionizing radiation and human health. In 1996 the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was requested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to initiate a scoping study preparatory to a new review of the health risks from exposure to low levels of ionizing radiations. The main purpose of the new review would be to update the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation V (BEIR V) report (NRC 1990), using new information from epidemiologic and experimental research that has accumulated during the 14 years since the 1990 review. Analysis of those data would help to determine how regulatory bodies should best characterize risks at the doses and dose rates experienced by radiation workers and members of the general public

Professor Kodama is the head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo.Professor Kodama's anger is now directed toward the government's non-action to protect people, especially children and young mothers, from internal radiation exposure. His specialty is internal medicine using radioisotope, so he says he has done the intense research on internal radiation:

I have been in charge of antibody drugs at the Cabinet Office since Mr. Obuchi was the prime minister [1998-]. We put radioisotopes to antibody drugs to treat cancer. In other words, my job is to inject radioisotopes into human bodies, so my utmost concern is the internal radiation exposure and that is what I have been studying intensely.

The biggest problem of internal radiation is cancer. How does cancer happen? Because radiation cuts DNA strands. As you know, DNA is in a double helix. When it is in a double helix it is extremely stable. However, when a cell divides, the double helix becomes single strands, doubles and becomes 4 strands. This stage is the most vulnerable.

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:

Advocates for atomic workers sickened by on-the-job radiation exposure at places like the Miamisburg Mound Plant say they’re outraged by a training manual for a federal compensation program that refers to a hypothetical claimant as “Freddy Krueger,” the name of a horror movie character whose face was badly burned.The undated Labor Department manual, used in training people who screen applicants for possible compensation and medical benefits, also refers to the pathologist in a hypothetical dead worker’s case as the fictitious serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, administered by the Labor Department, provides medical benefits and compensation for sick atomic workers, if it is shown their illnesses were caused by occupational exposures. Workers suffering from cancers and some other illnesses known to be caused by radiation exposures can receive lump-sum payments, as can certain survivors.For decades, the Energy Department claimed that none of its workers was sickened by radioactive exposures. Since the program was established in 2001, it has paid $7.4 billion in compensation and doctor bills for more than 86,000 claimants.Jerison obtained the manual in a Freedom of Information Act request to Labor and found it riddled with pop-culture references.

The manual’s jocular attitude toward workers who have suffered from cancers and other serious illnesses is “indicative of the disrespect that’s shown to claimants” by Labor Department officials, said worker advocate Deb Jerison of Yellow Springs, who heads a nonprofit that helps sick atomic workers and their survivors obtain federal benefits. Some of the workers have died from their illnesses.Labor officials did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

The Nuclear Safety Commission headed by Haruki "Detarame" Madarame disclosed on July 4 that the test conducted in late March had found 45% of 1,080 children tested in Fukushima Prefecture had internal radiation exposure at thyroid gland, according to Tokyo Shinbun. 3 months, that seems to be the amount of time that these government people must feel safe to disclose what they had known all along. After 3 months, people may forget, and/or people will give up because the disclosure is too late.

The NSC says the levels were low, and there was no need for more detailed evaluation. If you look at the numbers, though, you may wonder how they came to the conclusion. To them, 100 millisieverts per year body dose equivalent for 1 year old (or 0.2 microsievert/hour) was acceptable because the ICRP says so. Since the highest they found was 50 millisieverts per year body dose equivalent, they concluded there was no need for further testing.

Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission disclosed on July 4 that the survey done in late March on 1,000 children living near Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant had revealed that 45% of the children were exposed to radiation at the thyroid gland. Commissioner Shigeharu Kato says "The radiation level was not the level that would require more detailed examination."

Analysis of the fallout measured during the period 11:14~12:14 in Taito-ku, Tokyo on March 15 28was calculated into a 24-hour dose. See the main table above. The total becomes 2021Bg/m3  equivalent to 210uSv/day. The analysis was presented at Koide’s university seminar class on March 18. See 28Page 13 of this PDF. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government measured I131, I132 and Cs134, Cs137 in 28Fukazawa, Setagaya-ku, which were detected every hour on March 15. Their 28total readings for I131, I132, Cs134, Cs137 was 1247.8Bq/m3 equivalent to 141.9uSv/day. Monitoring post in Setagaya, Tokyo [pdf] Koide says that Kimura’s measurement data covers the radioactive particles collected, but gaseous 28nuclides could not be measured. He thinks that the total internal and external 28radiation exposure including gaseous nuclides was about 1mSv/day on March 2815.

The following video streams show Koide’s testimony (in Japanese only – no subtitles) at the House of Councilors on May 23: • http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14906087 • http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14907869

The U.S. government's top nuclear regulator said Monday that no one has died as a result of exposure to radiation from Japan's Fukushima Daiiche nuclear power plant, which was hit by a tsunami in March. He did say that some people died at the plant as a result of the tsunami itself. “What we know right now, there have been no fatalities we are aware of that are directly related to radiation exposure," said Gregory B. Jaczko, the chairman of the U.S Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "I believe there were a few workers who were killed at the plant because they were performing work and when the Tsunami hit, they lost their life.”

NISA and METI have acknowledged the possibility of active fault zones directly underneath the reactor buildings of multiple nuclear power plants after the March 11th earthquake. Two more nuclear sites, Monju and Mihama both in Fukui Prefecture,  have been ordered to carry out further investigation of “crush zones”. The operators of the plants, Kansai Electric Power Company and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, had surveyed the sites before they applied for permission to build the plants.