Group items tagged

Egypt’s General Authority for Export and Import Control recently discovered radioactive cargo in two containers shipped from Japan to Ain Sokhna port, the Red Sea Ports Authority said.This is the third radioactive shipment Egypt has discovered over the past month.The radioactive material was found aboard ships carrying electric and mechanical instruments. A letter from Egypt’s atomic energy authorities confirmed the cargo had above-regulation radiation levels.

An official at the seaport said the Ministry of Environment and DP Worlds, which runs the Ain Sokhna port, transferred the ships to a sandy area in order to prevent the radiation from spreading to other shipments and vessels.

The authority said it would review communications between Japan and the companies that imported the shipments. It had said in late July it would immediately withdraw the shipping licenses of any companies responsible for importing radioactive cargo.In June, three other shipments were detected with radiation above permitted levels.

Excessive radioactive cesium found in Fukushima fish: Greenpeace, Kyodo via Mainichi Daily News, August 9, 2011:

Fish caught at a port about 55 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant contained radioactive cesium at levels exceeding an allowable limit, the environmental group Greenpeace said Tuesday. The samples taken at Onahama port in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, in late July, included a species of rockfish that measured 1,053 becquerels per kilogram. [...] The other samples, which were all rock trout, measured between 625 and 749 becquerels per kilogram, again exceeding the provisional limit. [...] A total of 21 samples taken in the study were analyzed [...]

Kawasaki, Kanagawa Pref., Oct. 25 (Jiji Press)--Radiation levels of up to 58.86 microsieverts per hour have been detected in a used vehicle stored in a port facility here for exports, local authorities said Tuesday.    The vehicle was brought to the port facility in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, Monday after being auctioned in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo. The vehicle is now kept by its owner.   The vehicle measured between 6.034 and 58.86 microsieverts in radiation, Kawasaki city government officials said. The amount of radiation in the air around the vehicle was at 0.163 microsievert per hour.   The city government asks freight forwarders to report when 5 microsieverts or more in radiation per hour are detected in vehicles.

South Korea's oldest nuclear reactor -- shut down since March -- will resume operations, the government said. The announcement Monday coincides with a power shortage warning by the government amid a heat wave that has stretched for 10 days. Built in 1977, the Kori-1 reactor, in the southern port city of Busan, had been shut down since March after it briefly lost power in February during a safety check. That blackout was covered up by officials for more than a month.

The International Atomic Energy Agency gave the go-ahead for the 578-megawatt reactor to restart following a safety check in June. While Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission approved the restart on July 4, it has faced strong opposition from activists and residents.

Nature magazine reports Hiromitsu Ino, an emeritus professor of materials science at the University of Tokyo, as saying that Kori-1 isn't safe to operate because the weld material in the pressure vessel has degraded. "Any 50 nuclear power plants in Japan are much better than Kori-1," he said.

MINAMISOMA, Japan - The lugubrious notes of Silent Night wafted from an outdoor sound system on the near-empty main street to the station of this coastal city on the northern edge of the 20-kilometer "exclusion zone" around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

At a factory that salvages old and wrecked cars just outside the barriers on the road down the coast to the plant, a digital display in the office flashed the numbers -0.10 and 0.22 - highs and lows of micro-sieverts. "That’s well within the safety limit," a young woman in the factory's overseas marketing department assured me. "We are safe here." For all such assurances, though, nobody really believes bad stuff <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a53e495a&cb=INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE' target='_blank'> <img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE&n=a53e495a' border='0' alt=''></a>  is no longer floating through the clear cold air or lapping up on the innocent looking shores beyond the concrete breakwater over which 40-foot waves surged that day, wiping out an entire district down the slope from the factory.

Radioactive substances come from the ground, from the river bottom."

Stars and Stripes reporters across Japan and the world are sending disaster dispatches as they gather new facts, updated in real time. All times are local Tokyo time.  Japan is 13 hours ahead of the East Coast. So for example, 8 a.m. EDT is 9 p.m. in Japan.

No increase in Yokota radiation levels   11 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeLatest advisory from Yokota’s Facebook page says base officials there just checked with emergency managers and they have confirmed that the radiation levels at Yokota remain at the same background levels we experience every day (even prior to the quake)."To ensure everyone's safety, we are scanning air samples repeatedly every day, we're checking the water daily and we are inspecting aircraft ... and vehicles as they arrive," the Facebook page says.-- Dave Ornauer

The latest on Navy support to Japan   10:20 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeU.S. 7th Fleet has 12,750 personnel, 20 ships, and 140 aircraft participating in Operation Tomodachi. Seventh Fleet forces have delivered 81 tons of relief supplies to date.USS Tortuga is in the vicinity of Hachinohe where she will serve as an afloat forward service base for helicopter operations. CH-53 Sea Stallion aircraft from attached to Tortuga delivered 13 tons of humanitarian aid cargo on Friday, including 5,000 pounds of water and 5,000 MREs, to Yamada Station, 80 miles south of Misawa.USS Essex, USS Harpers Ferry and USS Germantown with the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived off the coast of Akita prefecture Saturday. Marines of the 31st MEU have established a Forward Control Element in Matsushima to coordinate disaster aid planning with officials. They are scheduled to move to Sendai later Saturday.

There are battles being fought on two fronts in the five months since a massive earthquake and tsunami damaged the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. On one front, there is the fight to repair the plant, operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and to contain the extent of contamination caused by the damage. On the other is the public’s fight to extract information from the Japanese government, TEPCO and nuclear experts worldwide.

The latter battle has yielded serious official humiliation, resulting high-profile resignations, scandals, and promises of reform in Japan’s energy industry whereas the latter has so far resulted in a storm of anger and mistrust. Even most academic nuclear experts, seen by many as the middle ground between the anti-nuclear activists and nuclear lobby itself, were reluctant to say what was happening: That in Fukushima, a community of farms, schools and fishing ports, was experiencing a full-tilt meltdown, and that, as Al Jazeera reported in June, that the accident had most likely caused more radioactive contamination than Chernobyl

As recently as early August, those seeking information on the real extent of the damage at the Daiichi plant and on the extent of radioactive contamination have mostly been reassured by the nuclear community that there’s no need to worry.

radiation is leaking, the analyst says. He also mentions the high-speed train accident, and says there are 259 people dead so far.It was reported by Mamoru Sato on his blog on July 30. I have no idea who he really is, but the bio on his blog says he was a fighter pilot in the Self Defense Air Force of Japan, and was then a high-ranking officer and the commander of the several major air force bases in Japan until he retired from the service in 1997. Checking the biography in Wiki, it looks like he is indeed what he says he is.Mr. Sato's July 30 blogpost:

According to the information I just obtained, a nuclear submarine of the Chinese Navy had an accident in the port of Dalian on July 29, and there is a leak of radiation. The area is strictly closed off by the Chinese military, and the situation is said to be very dangerous.

I doubt that the Chinese government will announce the accident. The neighboring countries should take defensive measures, and the Japanese fishing boats in the area should be careful.

Arusha. Adequate safety measures must be taken before the start of uranium mining in the country, experts observed here yesterday.They said Tanzania was still short of qualified personnel to handle radioactive materials as well as the requisite infrastructure for storage and transportation of uranium and its by products."Measures have to be taken because accidents involving nuclear material are quite lethal," said the director of Nuclear Technology with the Tanzania Atomic Energy Commission (Taec) Mr Firmin Banzi.Speaking to reporters at  the  start of a training course on radiation detection for the police and security officers from public institutions, the official said mishandling of radiation material was equally deadly. He said strict measures on safety would be put in place before any company is licensed to mine uranium found in some parts of the country.He added that an aggressive public sensitisation has been undertaken for communities living around the Mkuju River valley in Ruvuma Region and Bahi District in Dodoma where large deposits of uranium have been found.Mr Banzi explained that if not handled properly the radioactive uranium would expose people to life-threatening hazards and would as well have long-term effects on the environment and water through contamination.

He emphasized that once uranium mining starts, the security organs in the country must be extra vigilant against people who might steal the radiation material for bad motives such as terrorism."We are living in the world of conflicts. Radioactive material could be used as weapons of mass destruction, revenge and/or sabotages to fulfil political gains or individuals," he pointed out.According to him, the consequences of uncontrolled use of radioactive materials, especially during spillage or discharge, are many including water, food, air and environmental contamination.The week-long course at a hotel in Arusha is being attended by security officers drawn from the Intelligence Department, the police, Criminal Investigation Department, major airports, ports as well as some border posts.The official stressed that since nuclear material has to be handled with care, the relevant experts must keep abreast with the technology trends underlined by the nuclear security programme of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the global watchdog on the radiation matter

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will carry oil from tar sands in Canada across the entire midwestern United States to Port Arthur, Texas. It could eventually transport 900,000 barrels of oil a day and without government funding of any kind has the potential to create 20,000 jobs starting early in 2012. The greens want President Obama to kill it of course; the political blindness and the wishful thinking that so frequently vitiates green policy proposals is fully on display.

I will only point to a study by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers: “Oil sands crude is six per cent more GHG intensive than the U.S. crude supply average on a wells-to-wheels basis.” Only 6 percent. Yes, that study comes from the oil industry; the green studies and the oil company studies are both suspect and need outside review.

the Washington Post want to throw the greens under the bus on this one. “Tar sands crude is not appealing; it is low-grade, it is hard to extract, it is difficult to refine and it produces a lot of carbon emissions. But if it is to be burned anyway, there’s little reason for America to reject it, as long as Keystone XL can transport it across the plains safely.”

Part of the Radiological Assistance Program (RAP) team, region five, their normal operating ground covers 10 Midwestern states—but this time their expertise was needed abroad. Trained in radiation detection and monitoring, RAP teams are on call twenty-four hours a day to respond to any release of radiological materials in the U.S. When the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi began to emit radioactive material, the Department of Energy’s national emergency response assets, including several RAP teams, responded to calls from both the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. military. They wanted guidelines on protecting U.S. citizens and military personnel stationed in Japan from radiation hazards; but this raised the enormous task of finding out how much radiation had been dispersed.

In late March, several Argonne members flew to Japan to take over shifts from the initial response team members, who had been working around the clock to take measurements at U.S. military bases, other U.S. interests, and elsewhere in the 50-mile radius around the reactors. On the ground, small teams set out to comb the earthquake-stricken countryside, radiation detectors in tow. They took hundreds of readings and collected soil samples, mostly between the 20-80 kilometer zone from the plant. They ran into challenges right away.

"One of the problems we ran into was accessibility," said Dave Chamberlain, an Argonne chemical engineer with RAP. "When you practice going out to get samples, the classic technique is to divide the area into a grid and take samples say, every 10 meters. But many of the areas we were sampling in Japan were mountainous, forested and damaged by earthquakes, so you can't stick to the grid plan. We were often limited to roadside sampling." "The other difficulty was that we wanted samples from ground that hadn't been disturbed since the accident," explained Chamberlain. "If someone had plowed or watered the ground, it changes the dynamics of the distribution—and that time of year is rice planting season in Japan."

At least, used cars for export get tested for radiation. And those cars rejected for export for high radiation? Where will they go? (Anecdotal evidence suggests they are simply sold inside Japan.)From Sankei Shinbun (10/17/2011):

Kawasaki City announced on October 17 that a used car brought in to a used car exporter in Higashi Ogijima in Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki City tested 20.38 microsieverts/hr radiation. According to the city, "That level of radiation does not have immediate effect on human body."

According to the city, the car was auctioned off in Chiba, and brought to the exporter in Kawasaki City for export. The license plate number was previously that of Iwaki City in Fukushima Prefecture. The car was destined for Kenya, but instead the dealer who had won the car in the auction took it back.