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A leading biophysicist has cast a critical light on the government’s reassurances that Americans were never at risk from Fukushima fallout, saying “we really don’t know for sure.”

When radioactive fallout from Japan’s nuclear disaster began appearing in the United States this spring, the Obama Administration’s open-data policy obligated the government to inform the public, in some detail, what was landing here.

Covering the story, I watched the government pursue what appeared to be two strategies to minimize public alarm:

9/6 (5:26pm): We tested a topsoil sample and a dried manure sample from the Sacramento area. The manure was produced by a cow long before Fukushima and left outside to dry; it was rained on back in March and April. Both samples showed detectable levels of Cs-134 and Cs-137, with the manure showing higher levels than the soil probably because of its different chemical properties and/or lower density. In addition, a soil sample from Sonoma county was tested. This sample had been collected in late April but we had not had the chance to test it until now.

One interesting feature of the Sacramento and Sonoma soil samples is that the ratio of Cesium-137 to Cesium-134 is very large — approximately 17.6 and 5.5, respectively. All of our other soil samples until now had shown ratios of between 1 and 2. We know from our air and rainwater measurements that material from Fukushima has a cesium ratio in the range of approximately 1.0 to 1.5, meaning that there is extra Cs-137 in these two soil samples. The best explanation is that in addition to Fukushima fallout, we have also detected atmospheric nuclear weapons testing fallout in these soils. Weapons fallout contains only Cs-137 (no Cs-134) and is known to be present in older soils (pre-1963). Both of these samples come from older soils, while our samples until this point had come from newer soils. This direct comparison between Fukushima fallout and atmospheric weapons fallout in these soils shows that the fallout from Fukushima in Northern California is significantly less than the amount of Cs-137 that still remains from weapons testing, which has had nearly 50 years to disperse and decay.

About 19 percent of airborne fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster was deposited in Japan, and only about 2 percent made it to other land areas in Asia and North America, according to a study published this week by the European Geosciences Union. The bulk was absorbed by the Pacific Ocean.

Opponents of nuclear energy have seized on the European study because it describes the total release at Fukushima as “massive.” It finds that twice as much cesium 137 was released at Fukushima than originally reported. And it says “high concentrations” reached North America and Europe. It examines two radionuclides in particular–xenon 133 and cesium 137–and measures the total release in terabecquerels.

Altogether, we estimate that 6.4 TBq of 137Cs, or 19 percent of the total fallout until 20 April, were deposited over Japanese land areas, while most of the rest fell over the North Pacific Ocean,” the authors write. “Only 0.7 TBq, or 2 percent of the total fallout were deposited on land areas other than Japan.” Scientists generally regard ocean absorption of fallout preferable to land deposits, because water absorbs radiation and the volume of the ocean dilutes it. On land, radioactive isotopes can be consumed by livestock and concentrated in milk and other food sources. The study also notes that airborne emissions of cesium 137 continued until March 19, when Japanese authorities began spraying water on the spent fuel pool of reactor #4. “This indicates that emissions were not only coming from the damaged reactor cores, but also from the spent-fuel pool of unit 4 and confirms that the spraying was an effective countermeasure.”

Impact Seen As Roughly Comparable to Radiation-Related Deaths After Chernobyl; Infants Are Hardest Hit, With Continuing Research Showing Even Higher Possible Death Count

An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986.

The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.The IJHS article will be published Tuesday and will be available online as of 11 a.m. EST at http://www.radiation.org . Just six days after the disastrous meltdowns struck four reactors at Fukushima on March 11, scientists detected the plume of toxic fallout had arrived over American shores. Subsequent measurements by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found levels of radiation in air, water, and milk hundreds of times above normal across the U.S. The highest detected levels of Iodine-131 in precipitation in the U.S. were as follows (normal is about 2 picocuries I-131 per liter of water): Boise, ID (390); Kansas City (200); Salt Lake City (190); Jacksonville, FL (150); Olympia, WA (125); and Boston, MA (92)

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.)

The impacts on the ocean of releases of radionuclides from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plants remain unclear. However, information has been made public regarding the concentrations of radioactive isotopes of iodine and cesium in ocean water near the discharge point. These data allow us to draw some basic conclusions about the relative levels of radionuclides released which can be compared to prior ocean studies and be used to address dose consequences as discussed by Garnier-Laplace et al. in this journal.(1) The data show peak ocean discharges in early April, one month after the earthquake and a factor of 1000 decrease in the month following. Interestingly, the concentrations through the end of July remain higher than expected implying continued releases from the reactors or other contaminated sources, such as groundwater or coastal sediments. By July, levels of 137Cs are still more than 10 000 times higher than levels measured in 2010 in the coastal waters off Japan. Although some radionuclides are significantly elevated, dose calculations suggest minimal impact on marine biota or humans due to direct exposure in surrounding ocean waters, though considerations for biological uptake and consumption of seafood are discussed and further study is warranted.

there was no large explosive release of core reactor material, so most of the isotopes reported to have spread thus far via atmospheric fallout are primarily the radioactive gases plus fission products such as cesium, which are volatilized at the high temperatures in the reactor core, or during explosions and fires. However, some nonvolatile activation products and fuel rod materials may have been released when the corrosive brines and acidic waters used to cool the reactors interacted with the ruptured fuel rods, carrying radioactive materials into the ground and ocean. The full magnitude of the release has not been well documented, nor is there data on many of the possible isotopes released, but we do have significant information on the concentration of several isotopes of Cs and I in the ocean near the release point which have been publically available since shortly after the accident started.

We present a comparison of selected data made publicly available from a Japanese company and agencies and compare these to prior published radionuclide concentrations in the oceans. The primary sources included TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), which reported data in regular press releases(3) and are compiled here (Supporting Information Table S1). These TEPCO data were obtained by initially sampling 500 mL surface ocean water from shore and direct counting on high-purity germanium gamma detectors for 15 min at laboratories at the Fukushima Dai-ni NPPs. They reported initially results for 131I (t1/2 = 8.02 days), 134Cs (t1/2 = 2.065 years) and 137Cs (t1/2 = 30.07 years). Data from MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology—Japan) were also released on a public Web site(4) and are based on similar direct counting methods. In general MEXT data were obtained by sampling 2000 mL seawater and direct counting on high-purity germanium gamma detectors for 1 h in a 2 L Marinelli beaker at laboratories in the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. The detection limit of 137Cs measurements are about 20 000 Bq m–3 for TEPCO data and 10 000 Bq m–3 for MEXT data, respectively. These measurements were conducted based on a guideline described by MEXT.(5) Both sources are considered reliable given the common activity ratios and prior studies and expertise evident by several Japanese groups involved in making these measurements. The purpose of these early monitoring activities was out of concern for immediate health effects, and thus were often reported relative to statutory limits adopted by Japanese authorities, and thus not in concentration units (reported as scaling factors above “normal”). Here we convert values from both sources to radionuclide activity units common to prior ocean studies of fallout in the ocean (Bq m–3) for ease of comparison to previously published data.

Silver-110m, half life about 250 days, wouldn't have been discovered unless the control rods had melted at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.There was the news in early April that radioactive silver was detected in South Korea. There was no way the same nuclide wasn't falling in Japan if it could fly all the way to Korea, I thought

It was not until 2PM on July 29 that the Ministry of Education and Science announced the "reading of environmental radioactivity level by prefecture [Fallout]" for March 2011.

What's the point of telling us now? Just for the record?Radioactive materials that were falling in the Kanto region in March, other than iodine-131, cesium-134 and -137, are:

Soon after Japan's triple disaster, I suggested that an official cover-up of a nuclear-weapons program hidden inside the Fukushima No.1 plant was delaying the effort to contain the reactor meltdowns. Soon after the tsunami struck, the Tokyo Electric Power Company reported that only three reactors had been generating electricity on the afternoon of March 11.. (According to the initial report, these were the older GE-built reactors 1,2 and 6.). Yet overheating at five of the plant's six reactors indicated that two additional reactors had also been operating (the newer and more advanced Nos. 3 and 4, built by Toshiba and Hitachi). The only plausible purpose of such unscheduled operation is uranium enrichment toward the production of nuclear warhead

On my subsequent sojourns in Japan, other suspicious activities also pointed to a high-level cover-up, including systematic undercounts of radiation levels, inexplicable damage to thousands of imported dosimeters, armed anti-terrorism police aboard trains and inside the dead zone, the jamming of international phone calls, homing devices installed in the GPS of rented cars, and warning visits to contacts by government agents discouraging cooperation with independent investigations. These aggressive infringements on civil liberties cannot be shrugged off as an overreaction to a civil disaster but must have been invoked on grounds of national security.

One telltale sign of high-level interference was the refusal by science equipment manufacturers to sell isotope chromatography devices to non-governmental customers, even to organizations ready to pay $170,000 in cash for a single unit. These sensitive instruments can detect the presence of specific isotopes, for example cesium-137 and strontium-90. Whether uranium was being enriched at Fukushima could be determined by the ratio of isotopes from enriched weapons-grade fissile material versus residues from less concentrated fuel rods.

The EPA re-calibrated (rigged) Japan nuclear radiation monitoring equipment causing them to report lower levels of radioactive fallout after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown than what was detected before the disaster. I recently programmed an application to pull all of the EPA radiation monitoring graphs for all major US cities and complied them into an easy to use web interface. Of course we took the data being reported with a grain of salt under the suspicion that the Feds were fiddling with the results. Now, an investigative report looking into why the much of the EPA radiation monitoring equipment was offline when the Fukushima nuclear meltdown occurred reveals that EPA has in fact rigged radiation monitoring equipment to report lower values of radiation.

RadNet – the EPA’s front-line, radiological detection network is severely flawed and suffers from maintenance and reliability issues. The lack of consistent data and the number of units offline (a techie term for broken) at the time they were most needed shows that the EPA was not prepared for this emergency. Besides that fact the broken system left us all unprotected; the confusion, apprehension and fear witnessed as people try to wade through the incomplete and inaccurate data online is evidenced by an exchange on the UC Berkely website over this RadNet graph:

The graph shows that this monitoring station was one of the units actually running on  3/11 . The readings were significantly higher prior to 3/11 and drop to a much lower level  afterwards. This is an indication that the units were running in an uncalibrated condition and were adjusted only after the events at Fukushima. Who is responsible for assuring that the system is up and running?  The EPA contracted this responsibility to a private company, Environmental Dimensions, Inc.

Radioactive substances from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have now been confirmed in all prefectures, including Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture, about 1,700 kilometers from the plant, according to the science ministry. The ministry said it concluded the radioactive substances came from the stricken nuclear plant because, in all cases, they contained cesium-134, which has short half-life of two years. Before the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, radioactive substance were barely detectable in most areas.

the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's survey results released on Nov. 25 showed that fallout from the Fukushima plant has spread across Japan. The survey covered the cumulative densities of radioactive substances in dust that fell into receptacles during the four months from March through June. Figures were not available for Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, where the measurement equipment was rendered inoperable by the March 11 disaster. One measurement station was used for each of the other 45 prefectures. The highest combined cumulative density of radioactive cesium-134 and cesium-137 was found in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, at 40,801 becquerels per square meter. That was followed by 22,570 becquerels per square meter in Yamagata, the capital of Yamagata Prefecture, and 17,354 becquerels per square meter in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward.

The current air radiation level in Ibaraki Prefecture is about 0.14 microsievert per hour, equivalent to an annual dose of about 1 millisievert, the safety limit for exposure under normal time international standards. Large amounts of radioactive dust fell in Tokyo, but a separate survey has detected relatively low accumulations of cesium in the soil. "Tokyo has smaller soil surfaces than other prefectures, but road and concrete surfaces are less prone to fixate cesium deposits, which were probably diffused by the wind and rain," a ministry official explained.

The aftermath of the tsunami that ransacked the Japanese coast led to one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in the history of the world. Now, two researchers believe it may also have played some role in killing tens of thousands of Americans. “[It’s] 155,000 deaths,” Joseph Mangano said, ”so we’re not talking about an increase from three to five deaths. We’re talking about quite a few.”

Mangano works at the Radiation and Public Health Project. The report he co-authored for a medical journal suggesting a link between Fukushima fallout and an increase in deaths in the United States has stirred up some controversy. “The authors appeared to start at a conclusion,” Scientific American’s Michael Moyer wrote, “ – babies are dying because of Fukushima radiation – and work backwards, torturing their data to fit their claims.” But Mangano said his critics miss the point.

“We have not stated conclusively that Fukushima fallout killed 22,000 Americans,” he said. Instead, he and co-author Dr. Jannette Sherman cite numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly morbidity report. That data showed a large spike in deaths – particularly infant deaths – in the 14 weeks following the Fukushima meltdown.

Tokyo – Takeo Hayashida signed on with a citizens’ group to test for radiation near his son’s baseball field in Tokyo after government officials told him they had no plans to check for fallout from the devastated Fukushima …

Then came the test result: the level of radioactive cesium in a patch of dirt just yards from where his 11-year-old son, Koshiro, played baseball was equal to those in some contaminated areas around Chernobyl. The patch of ground was one of more than 20 spots in and around the nation’s capital that the citizens’ group, and the respected nuclear research center they worked with, found were contaminated with potentially harmful levels of radioactive cesium. “Everybody just wants to believe that this is Fukushima’s problem,” said Kota Kinoshita, one of the group’s leaders and a former television journalist. “But if the government is not serious about finding out, how can we trust them?”

Kaoru Noguchi, head of Tokyo’s health and safety section, however, argues that the testing already done is sufficient. Because Tokyo is so developed, she says, radioactive material was much more likely to have fallen on concrete, then washed away. She also said exposure was likely to be limited.

Radiation fallout from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant poses a growing threat to Japan’s food chain as unsafe levels of cesium found in beef on supermarket shelves were also detected in more vegetables and the ocean. More than 2,600 cattle have been contaminated, Kyodo News reported July 23 [...] Japan has no centralized system to check for radiation contamination of food, leaving local authorities and farmers conducting voluntary tests. Products including spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea, milk, plums and fish have been found contaminated with cesium and iodine as far as 360 kilometers from Dai-Ichi. [...]

The dose is still safe, says Tokonami. Gerry Thomas, a radiation health expert at Imperial College London, adds that radiation exposures from Fukushima were far lower than those from Chernobyl. "Personally, I do not think that we will see any effects on health from the radiation, but do expect to see effects on the psychological well-being of the population," she says. But Kodama says that residents of Namie and other towns inside the evacuation zone could have been better protected if the government had released its early models of the plume. Officials say they withheld the projections because the data on which they were based were sparse.

Hotspots Many questions also remain about the radiation now in the environment. The terrain around Fukushima is hilly, and rainwater has washed the fallout into hotspots, says Timothy Mousseau, an ecologist at the University of South Carolina in Columbia who recently travelled to the Fukushima region to conduct environmental surveys. The plant, located on the Pacific coast, continues to spew radionuclides into the water, adds Ken Buesseler, an oceanographer from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. During a cruise in mid-July, his team picked up low-level radiation more than 600 kilometres away. Ocean currents can concentrate the fallout into hotspots something like those on land, making the effect on marine life difficult to gauge.

Gathering more data is a struggle, say researchers. Tokonami says that overstretched local officials are reluctant to let his team into the region for fear that it will increase their workload. Buesseler and Mousseau add that Japan's famed bureaucracy has made it difficult for outside researchers to carry out studies. Funding has also been a problem. To complete his cruise, Buesseler turned to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for a $3.5-million grant. Mousseau got a biotech company to sponsor his trip and has since found funding through the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust.

STRONTIUM 90, a highly dangerous radioactive isotope, has reportedly been found atop an apartment building in Yokohama, fuelling fears that fallout from the Fukushima disaster has affected the greater Tokyo area. Yokohama, a city of 3.6 million people, effectively adjoins the Japanese capital, and sits about 250km from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. [snip] SOURCE: Radioactive material found 250km from Fukushima, ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) by Mark Willacy, October 12, 2011