Group items tagged

Since a tsunami and earthquake destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant last March, radioactive cesium has consistently been found in 60 to 80 per cent of Japanese fishing catches each month tested by Japan’s Fisheries Agency.

In November, 65 per cent of the catches tested positive for cesium (a radioactive material created by nuclear reactors), according to a Gazette analysis of data on the fisheries agency’s website

In November, 18 per cent of cod exceeded a new radiation ceiling for food to be implemented in Japan in April – along with 21 per cent of eel, 22 per cent of sole and 33 per cent of seawee

TOKYO (Kyodo) — The government will focus on restoring the fishery industry and decontaminating areas affected by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in a third supplementary budget for fiscal 2011 planned to finance full-fledged reconstruction following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, government sources said Thursday. The government plans to spend 494 billion yen for the reconstruction of ports, processing facilities and other fishery operations damaged by the disaster and appropriate 246 billion yen for decontaminating areas and disposing of waste in connection with the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the sources said.

These cattle were allowed to be sold, as long as they were scrubbed clean of radioactive materials on their skin, thanks to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the same ministry that is pushing to have the Japanese cuisine recognized as UNESCO's "world intangible cultural heritage".According to Asahi Shinbun (link below), the Tokyo Metropolitan government tested the remaining 10 meat cows from Minami-Soma City that were processed on July 8. The highest number was 3200 becquerels/kg of cesium, and even the lowest number was 1530 becquerels/kg, more than 3 times the government's provisional safety limit for cesium in foods.The one that was tested on July 8 had 2300 becquerels/kg radioactive cesium.

Following the instruction from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Metropolitan Shibaura Slaughterhouse doesn't conduct radiation testing at all, whether the cattle come from the 20-30 kilometer radius from Fukushima I Nuke Plant or from other areas. However, there have been 5 instances where the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare instructed them to test for radiation, and in those instances the radioactive materials detected were less than the provisional limit.Yomiuri Shinbun (7/9/2011) says something more disturbing:

According to the investigation by Fukushima Prefecture, 2924 meat cows have been shipped from the same area since the end of April.

An unknown disease is killing or weakening scores of ringed seals along Alaska’s north coast, where the animals have been found with lesions on their hind flippers and inside their mouths. Ringed seals, the main prey of polar bears, and a species that rarely comes ashore, in late July began showing up on the Beaufort Sea coast outside Barrow with the lesions, patchy hair loss and skin irritation around the nose and eyes. The outbreak was reported first in the Alaska Dispatch.

Officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the North Slope Borough said Thursday that 107 animals were found stranded from late July through Sept. 29 and 99 appeared to have lesions. Nearly half died. “Forty-six of the animals were dead when found, or died shortly thereafter,” said Julie Speegle, spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service. Seals still alive were lethargic or showing labored breathing.Necropsies revealed lesions were not limited to skin of seals. Biologists studying the dead animals found lesions in the respiratory system, liver, lymphoid system, heart and brain, she said.

Wildlife authorities in Canada and Russia have reported similar incidents, she said. “We don’t know if they’re related, but they’re similar,” Speegle said.Linda Deger, a spokeswoman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said by email that ringed seals are the only species reported to be affected and the department and other agencies are investigating. “At this point, we don’t know exactly what is causing it,” Speegle said. “Laboratory findings have been inconclusive to date but samples have tested negative for pox virus, herpes virus, papillomavirus, morbillivirus and calicivirus.”

The rainwater data is just one example of failings in how Canada monitored radiation from Fukushima. The accident has exposed a pattern of nonchalance and seeming willful ignorance on the part of Canadian health authorities when it comes to the dangers of nuclear power. Drinking water is another example. In Vancouver, the city did its first test of the drinking-water supply on March 16, a few days after the Fukushima accident on March 11. No radiation was detected in that day’s sample. But this was to be expected because it took until March 18 and 19 for the radioactive plume from Fukushima to first hit the west coast of Canada. Instead of continuing with frequent monitoring, the city didn’t do another radiation test until March 25—nine days after the first test. On March 25, testing detected alpha radiation at 0.11 becquerels per litre in the drinking water at the city’s Seymour-reservoir intake. Alpha radiation comes from isotopes like plutonium-238 and is the most dangerous form of radiation when ingested or inhaled. The level at the Seymour intake was lower than the current Canadian and World Health Organization guideline of 0.5 becquerels per litre in drinking water. On the other hand, the WHO guideline used to be 0.1 Bq per litre before it was adjusted higher in the mid-2000s.

That nine-day hole between March 16 and 25 is exactly when SFU prof Starosta found massive radiation spikes in rainwater in Burnaby. Did the alpha radiation ever surpass the ceiling? We can’t say for sure. Because of the long gap between tests, it’s not clear how high radiation levels may have gotten and for how long. When the city tested its drinking water again on March 28, the alpha radiation was no longer detectable. Food is another big question mark. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency briefly tested Japanese food imports from the area around Fukushima, but it dropped those measures in June. Canada now relies on Japanese authorities to screen contaminated food. But Japan’s food inspections have proven to be highly controversial since Fukushima. The country has no centralized food-inspection system, and poor monitoring after Fukushima allowed food contaminated with radiation to be sold to Japanese consumers.

Meanwhile, it’s becoming clear that the radiation has spread much farther across Japan than government officials have acknowledged. Citizen monitoring groups have found 22 “hot spots” in Tokyo where radiation levels are higher than the level at which zones were considered contaminated near Chernobyl, the New York Times reported on October 14. The CFIA also told the Straight it has no plans to monitor food products from the Pacific Ocean fishery. You’d think this would be a concern, because many fish caught in the Pacific still have large amounts of radiation months after the accident, according to data reported on the website of the Japanese government fisheries agency. In September, 21 Japanese fish catches exceeded the Japanese radiation ceiling—the same number as in August. Two catches in September exceeded the ceiling for radioactive cesium by more than four times.

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.

"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

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.

The Fisheries Agency publishes the result of the survey of radioactive materials (iodine, cesium only) in marine products including seaweeds. In the latest result published on December 21 for the items reported since October, radioactive cesium has been found in dried "nori" in:Kanagawa Prefecture - 1 sample, at 11 becquerels/kgChiba Prefecture - 6 samples, 11, 27, 25, 16.5, 5.6, 17.7 becquerels/kg respectivelyNori grown and harvested in Tokyo Bay, called "Edomae nori", commands super premium. One sheet of Edomae nori usually fetches over 10 yen a sheet at wholesale (US 13 cents), and used mostly in gourmet sushi restaurants.The levels are not supposed to be causing negative effect on health as per the Japanese government; the government's provisional safety limit for radioactive cesium is 500 becquerels/kg.By the way, this level is set to be lowered to 100 becquerels/kg on the April Fool's Day next year which is the first day of fiscal 2012 in Japan. Serious.I've never seen the news of radioactive cesium detection in nori in the mainstream media at all. Without Twitter, I wouldn't have known about it. I'm curious to know how radioactive cesium traveled from Fukushima to Tokyo Bay. The government has claimed that the Kuroshio Current would prevent the spread of radioactive materials south of Ibaraki.Judging by the reaction to my Japanese tweet, there are many others like me who didn't know about the detection.

Fish taken from a lake in northern Vermont had similar levels of strontium-90 and cesium-137 as fish taken from the Connecticut River near Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon. During a Feb. 3 meeting of the House Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources Committee in the Vermont Statehouse, committee members heard from Bill Irwin, chief of radiological health for the Vermont Department of Health. "We got preliminary results from our fish sample analysis from Lake Carmi in northern Franklin County," Irwin told the Reformer on Monday. Irwin said Lake Carmine, in Enosburg Falls, is about as far away from Yankee as you can get and still be in the Green Mountain State. "The results are that cesium-137 and strontium-90 in Lake Carmi fish is in the same range as Connecticut River fish," said Irwin. "We take this as some evidence that all fish in Vermont are likely to have radioactive cesium and strontium at these levels and that, as we've hypothesized, it is from nuclear weapons fallout and the releases of Chernobyl. All of us are glad to have proof and not just conjecture." The fish taken from Lake Carmi were small-mouth bass, he said, and were taken from the lake by Vermont Fish and Wildlife fisheries personnel. Cesium was found in both edible and inedible portions of the bass, he said, while strontium was found only in inedible portions, which include bones, the head, fins and scales. "There's no danger in eating the fish," said Irwin. "Should we ever find that there are reasons to restrict diet from any sampling for any kind of radioactive or toxicological events, we would keep in mind different cultures have different diets."

In the same analyses, the fish had almost 500 times more potassium-40 in them than they do cesium-137, he said. Potassium-40 is a naturally occurring radioactive material that is in nearly everything and was created when the planet was formed billions of years ago, said Irwin. A fish taken from the Connecticut River in 2010 had the highest levels of strontium-90 in bone that his department has seen in any samples. "In that same sample we did find very low but measurable amounts of strontium-90 in the meat of the fish," said Irwin, which could have been a sampling or contamination error. "But we don't know that." The sampling is part of an ongoing multi-state operation to help determine what is the level of the two radioactive isotopes in fish in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York. "We hope to further populate this data with fish taken from waters unaffected by nuclear power plants," said Irwin. The states are also working with the a Food and Drug Administration laboratory in Winchester, Mass., to develop sampling and analysis protocols. When more data has been assembled from around the region, Irwin said they hope to publish it in scientific journals. The results of the sampling from Lake Carmi will be posted soon on DOH's website, he said. When this year's fishing season begins, Fish and Wildlife personnel will be taking more fish for the Department of Health.

From the press release by Akita prefectural government on July 25:A resident in Akita Prefecture alerted the authorities when the bag of leaf compost that he purchased from a local garden/home center measured high in radiation with his portable survey meter. The authorities tested the content of the bag, and it had 11,000 becquerels/kg of cesium.

At the garden/home center (2 locations) the air radiation 1 meter from the pile of the leaf compost bags measured as high as 0.48 microsievert/hr.

The press release is somewhat misleading, as it says the air radiation 1 meter from one bag of the leaf compost is 0.06 microsievert/hr. If you measure in front of the pile of the same bags, the radiation is as high as 0.48 microsievert/hr. Akita's air radiation level (which the prefectural government measures only at 2 locations) is between 0.04 and 0.06 microsievert/hr.According to Yomiuri Shinbun (7/27/2011), these bags were packed in Tochigi Prefecture, and 20,000 bags have already been sold in Akita Prefecture alone.

Eating 1 kg of the meat is roughly equal to a radiation dose of 82.65 microsieverts for a period during which radioactive cesium remains in one's body. If a person eats food with radioactive cesium, half the amount remains in the body for nine days for a baby younger than 1. But the duration gets longer as people age, and it takes 90 days for those aged 50. The 82.65 microsieverts compares with the 100 microsieverts of radiation a person would be exposed to during a one-way air trip from Tokyo to New York.

Where has tainted beef been sold? At various shops and restaurants in all prefectures except for Okinawa. Every cow has a 10-digit identification number and the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry can trace the buyers of beef from contaminated cows.

At what level of radiation does the government ban distribution of contaminated meat? For radioactive cesium in meat, eggs and fish, the maximum limit is 500 becquerels per kg, the same level as in the European Union and Thailand. That compares with 1,000 becquerels in Singapore and Hong Kong, 1,200 in the United States and 370 in South Korea and Taiwan, according to the "Food and Radiation" booklet produced by the Consumer Affairs Agency. There is no provisional maximum level of radioactive iodine for meat and eggs because its half-life is as short as eight days, compared with 30 years for cesium, and it takes longer than eight days from the time they are produced to the time they are eaten, according to the agency's booklet. The level of radioactive iodine found in beef is at most 50 becquerels per kg, according to the agriculture ministry.

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

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

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

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.

Nothing coming out of Japan makes sense any more, so this news is simply adding to that growing list. The national government will lift the ban on sales and shipment of meat cows raised in Fukushima and Miyagi Prefectures because the government is satisfied that the radioactive rice hay is now separated from other feed - either under the tarp or buried - so that it will not be fed to the cows. If I remember right, the worry was not the rice hay but the meat itself, which tested high in radioactive cesium all over Japan as the cows from these two prefectures (and several more in Tohoku) had been sold far and wide because of the suddenly "affordable" price. They were particularly favored by certain cost-conscious municipalities (most notably Yokohama City) that fed the suspected meat to the kindergarteners and school children in school lunches, ignoring protests from the parents. Humans eat beef not rice hay, as far as I know. But now the ban will be lifted because of ... rice hay storage procedure?

From Mainichi Shinbun (8/18/2011):

The Japanese government started to prepare for the total lifting of the shipping ban on meat cows raised in Fukushima and Miyagi Prefectures on August 18. The government will instruct the governors of the two prefectures as early as August 19. As radioactive cesium exceeding the provisional national safety limit (500 becquerels/kg) was found in the meat, the government banned the shipping of the cows in Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate, and Tochigi Prefectures between July 19 and August 2. Fukushima and Miyagi would be the first to have the ban lifted.