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A tea producer blended the tea with radioactive cesium with the tea without radioactive cesium so that he could sell off his radioactive tea. An operator of a sewer sludge plant knowingly sold radioactive sludge to a manufacturer of garden soil because there was no national government standard when he sold it. Their reason: "It's safer that way, as radioactive cesium will be diluted".Many Japanese consumers seem dismayed to find out that there are people among them who would do such a thing, but there are people like that, unfortunately. And as the article cites one government agency, it is clearly none of the government's business to do anything about it anytime soon.From Tokyo Shinbun paper version (not online; 10/3/2011), extremely quick translation subject to revision later if necessary:

Dilute cesium and sell - blend tea, garden soil - so that the cesium level is below the limitAfter the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident spread radioactive materials, the provisional safety limit was set for variety of foods and goods. If an item tests less than the provisional limit it is considered "guaranteed safe". As the result, there are businesses that mix [radioactive goods] with those made in places far away from Fukushima Prefecture to dilute radioactive materials and sell them. Currently it is not against the law to do so, but the consumers who doubt the safety of the products and the producers who fear further "baseless rumor" damages are voicing concern.Mixing

According to our research, we have been able to confirm instances of goods being sold after diluting the radioactive cesium content - garden soil and green teas.In case of garden soil, sludge from water purification plants and sewage treatment plants had been used as an ingredient of the garden soil before the provisional safety limit for sludge was set. Sludge contains vital ingredients like phosphorus and potassium, and it is mixed with the soil at 10 to 20% ratio to make the garden soil.The safety standard for radioactive materials in sludge was established on June 16, but some water purification plants in Kanagawa Prefecture had sold the total of 4,538 tonnes of sludge to the garden soil manufacturers from April up till June 16.

On 5 November an earthquake measuring 5.6 rattled Oklahoma and was felt as far away as Illinois. Until two years ago Oklahoma typically had about 50 earthquakes a year, but in 2010, 1,047 quakes shook the state. Why? In Lincoln County, where most of this past weekend's seismic incidents were centered, there are 181 injection wells, according to Matt Skinner, an official from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency which oversees oil and gas production in the state. Cause and effect? The practice of injecting water into deep rock formations causes earthquakes, both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Geological Survey have concluded.

The U.S. natural gas industry pumps a mixture of water and assorted chemicals deep underground to shatter sediment layers containing natural gas, a process called hydraulic fracturing, known more informally as “fracking.” While environmental groups have primarily focused on fracking’s capacity to pollute underground water, a more ominous byproduct emerges from U.S. government studies – that forcing fluids under high pressure deep underground produces increased regional seismic activity. As the U.S. natural gas industry mounts an unprecedented and expensive advertising campaign to convince the public that such practices are environmentally benign, U.S. government agencies have determined otherwise. According to the U.S. Army’s Rocky Mountain Arsenal website, the RMA drilled a deep well for disposing of the site’s liquid waste after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “concluded that this procedure is effective and protective of the environment.”  According to the RMA, “The Rocky Mountain Arsenal deep injection well was constructed in 1961, and was drilled to a depth of 12,045 feet” and 165 million gallons of Basin F liquid waste, consisting of “very salty water that includes some metals, chlorides, wastewater and toxic organics” was injected into the well during 1962-1966.

Why was the process halted? “The Army discontinued use of the well in February 1966 because of the possibility that the fluid injection was “triggering earthquakes in the area,” according to the RMA. In 1990, the “Earthquake Hazard Associated with Deep Well Injection--A Report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency” study of RMA events by Craig Nicholson, and R.I. Wesson stated simply, “Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established.” Twenty-five years later, “possibility” and ‘established” changed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s July 2001 87 page study, “Technical Program Overview: Underground Injection Control Regulations EPA 816-r-02-025,” which reported, “In 1967, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) determined that a deep, hazardous waste disposal well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was causing significant seismic events in the vicinity of Denver, Colorado.” There is a significant divergence between “possibility,” “established” and “was causing,” and the most recent report was a decade ago. Much hydraulic fracturing to liberate shale oil gas in the Marcellus shale has occurred since.

when the Ministry of the Environment decides on the base plan after it runs the plan with the so-called experts that the ministry relies on (i.e. rubber-stamp).when the Ministry of the Environment decides on the base plan after it runs the plan with the so-called experts that the ministry relies on (i.e. rubber-stamp). Great leap forward in recovery and reconstruction. From Yomiuri Shinbun

From Yomiuri Shinbun

On August 10, the Ministry of the Environment made public the base plan for the ashes from burning the debris and sludge that contain radioactive materials from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident. The plan would technically allow all the ashes to be buried.

On 17 August 2011, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the United States issued a press release announcing that the South African government, through the Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), had returned 6,3kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) spent fuel to the US for safe storage and ultimately for destruction.

NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the US Department of Energy (DOE) responsible among other things for maintaining and enhancing the safety, security, reliability and performance of the US nuclear weapons stockpile. The shipment arrived at Savannah River Site (SRS) on 16 August. The SRS is a key DOE industrial complex dedicated to nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship and nuclear materials destruction in support of the US nuclear non-proliferation efforts. It is situated 20 miles south of Aiken, South Carolina.

Subsequent press reports and releases by mainly US-based academics and NGOs lauded this development as a significant step in 'reducing and securing vulnerable [emphasis added] radioactive materials held at civilian sites around the world' and stated that it represents an important effort to 'strengthen the world's defences against nuclear terrorism'. While at first reading these may seem reasonable assertions, a number of important caveats need to be highlighted.

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

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

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

The manufacture of mixed oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel at Sellafield is to stop "at the earliest practical opportunity" to reduce the financial risks to British taxpayers from events in Japan.  

The closure comes as a result of the Fukushima accident, which dramatically increased uncertainty for the ten Japanese utilities that had placed contracts for supplies of MOX fuel. This is made by combining uranium with plutonium recovered by reprocessing used nuclear fuel. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which owns all the UK state's nuclear assets, said it reviewed the risk profile for operation of Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) and "concluded that in order to ensure that the UK taxpayer does not carry a future financial burden from SMP that the only reasonable course of action is to close SMP at the earliest practical opportunity."

Separately Areva last week announced the cancellation of orders for uranium and nuclear fuel amounting to €191 million ($273 million) as a result of the shutdown of reactors in Japan and Germany.The NDA's move to close SMP will be a grave disappointment for the plant's 600 workers, who had celebrated success in raising performance to commercially acceptable levels. Despite being designed to produce 120 tonnes of fuel per year, it never operated properly and was downrated to just 40 tonnes per year. In its nine years of operation to 2010 it produced only 15 tonnes of fuel.

A parliamentary report on nuclear safety regulation in India has pointed out serious organisational flaws and numerous failings relative to international norms. The report submitted to parliament by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India concerns the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), which reports to the policy-setting Atomic Energy Commission.

The most fundamental issue highlighted by the report was the unsatisfactory legal status and authority of the AERB. Despite India's international commitments, awareness of best practice and internal expert recommendations, the report said, "the legal status of AERB continued to be that of an authority subordinate to the central government, with powers delegated to it by the latter." A basic tenet of nuclear power regulation - as recommended by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and implemented in most countries - is that the safety regulator must be independent of industry and government. It can then make autonomous decisions based purely on ensuring the proper level of care for public safety in a legal policy framework - but absent from either political or commercial interference. 

Scholars who participated in the Ministry of Education's radiation mapping are proposing dumping the contaminated soil removed as the result of utterly useless "decontamination" efforts into the depth of the Pacific Ocean, 2000 meters deep.

The researchers will propose their plan to the government as a practical solution to literally mountains of soil contaminated with cesium, plutonium, tellurium, radioactive silver, strontium...And don't worry, the researchers did propose putting the soil in containers first.

Thyroid cancer cases have more than doubled since 1997 in the United States, while deadly industrial practices that contaminate groundwater with radiation and other carcinogens are also rising. New information released by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 56,460 people will develop thyroid cancer in 2012 and 1,780 will die from it.

From 1980 to 1996, thyroid cancer increased nearly 300%, while the population increased by (again) 18%. Most thyroid cancers don’t develop for 10-30 years after radiation exposure, but the monstrous spike in thyroid cancer from 1980-2012 is only partly the result of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 (TMI). Pennsylvania, with its nine nuclear reactors, does have the highest incidence of thyroid cancer across nearly all demographics among 45* states, reports epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA, of the Radiation and Public Health Project. In 2009, he analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control’s national survey of thyroid cancer incidence for the years 2001-2005 and compared it with proximity to nuclear power stations, finding:

M]ost U.S. counties with the highest thyroid cancer incidence are in a contiguous area of eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and southern New York. Exposure to radioactive iodine emissions from 16 nuclear power reactors within a 90 mile radius in this area … are likely a cause of rising incidence rates.

Organizers of the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World [in Yokohama] claimed 6,000 participants from some 30 countries [...] The conference shows all the signs of turning into a coherent, focused movement. [...] The conference’s call for “full transparency, accountability and responsibility by the Japanese Government and Tokyo Electric Power Company” is just as important. Without complete disclosure, progress toward grasping the causes of the problem and finding solutions cannot gain traction. The conference’s calls for ongoing data collection about the safety of food and materials will also be close to the hearts of all consumers. Already, consumers have been demanding basic information about foodstuffs and potentially contaminated materials. Last week’s discovery that radioactive gravel in concrete used to build a new condominium in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, is one more reminder that problems will continue for a very long time. Nuclear issues have come to home to roost. [...] it is clear that a practical consensus towards a different energy future is well underway. Now that is a weekend well spent!

We have presented many examples of doctored ROV video with adulterated details since the start of our independent investigation on the BP's Macondo blowout and the mega oil spill in the Gulf. Although any form of adulteration is unethical, we have unearthed many forms of doctored documents, videos, survey logs and even seismic data in our QC/QA (quality control / quality assurance) work in the oil industry. Unbelievable but in reality such fraudulent practices are the norm rather than the deception. Smooth Operators work around regulations as the following extract shows

Below is a fictionalized account of the safety frauds that are occurring on a daily basis in the offshore industry.

In a letter to the IAEA from US Ambassador to the IAEA Glyn Davies, a request was made that there be the adoption of a global nuclear liability regime. “In addition, to the extent practical, Member States and the Agency should utilize existing instruments and programs to undertake the actions.  In this regard, we strongly encourage Member States to join and effectively implement the Conventions noted in the Action Plan.  Likewise, we urge Member States to join the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage as a step towards a global nuclear liability regime.  These are steps that can, and should, be taken by any Member State with, or considering, a nuclear power program.”

Of all the lies that came out of the Gulf disaster, the most preposterous has been the 3 leaks on the riser story. Figure 165-0a to 165-0c were the first few schematic illustrations of BP’s blowout incident. They were so embarrassingly stupid and logic defying, most experts believed the schematics were deliberately drawn by cartoonists to confuse the average Joe Public. The patchwork of realities resembled a makeshift car hastily assembled from parts of different size vehicles. Obviously a mini car body does not match the oversize truck tires. It is obvious the 5½ inch drill pipe at leak(3) cannot be the same 21inch diameter riser (actually a well casing) at leak(2). Yet the world's technical experts willfully overlooked this fundamental discrepancy and allowed the criminals to get away with murders. And America, the world's greatest nation shouting human rights abuses all over the world, allowed this hideous crime of mass destruction in its own backyard to go unpunished? In China, the corporate criminals responsible for this environmental carnage would have been executed instead of having their lives back. Can the 11 dead crewmen, their young families and thousands of Gulf victims who suffered numerous medical problems from the toxic contaminated Gulf waters and corexit sprayed on them, ever have their lives back?

Surely the world's most technologically advanced country could not have been so easily fooled by this “3 wells & 3 leaks on a single riser” fairy tale (concocted Beyond Phantasm). Besides the many controversial circumstances surrounding the sinking of the burning rig (DWH) and the sudden breaking of the super-strong riser in calm water, how could a third open-ended leak (3) be even possible beyond the completely severed riser at the second leak (2)? See fig165-0c. Leak(2) has to be the blown crater of well no.#3 as illustrated in many of our previous articles and irrefutably shown in Figure 165-5 with the right coordinates in the few undoctored videos.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” S Homes.

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

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

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

The Australian Government is committed to strengthening occupational health and safety requirements for individuals working at uranium mining and milling sites. The Australian Government is committed to strengthening occupational health and safety requirements for individuals working at uranium mining and milling sites.

The Australian National Radiation Dose Register (ANRDR) was established in 2010 to collect, store, manage and disseminate records of radiation doses received by workers in the course of their employment in a centralised database. The ANRDR has been open to receive dose records from operators since 1 July 2010. The ANRDR was officially launched in June 2011 following full development of the Register, including a system for workers to be able to request their individual dose history record.

The ANRDR is maintained and managed by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

The Forum was created by the European Commission in 2007. It represents a unique platform for a broad discussion within European Union on all nuclear energy issues. It gathers all relevant stakeholders in the nuclear field: Governments, European Institutions (Commission, European Parliament, European Economic and Social Committee), academics, nuclear industry- electricity consumers and vendors- and representatives of the civil society

"Nuclear energy offers the best relative economical performance compared to other sources of energy when used for base load electricity generation. It contributes to the EU’s security of supply, emitting practically no greenhouse gases and thus combating climate change."

These conclusions are drawn by ENEF which annual plenary meeting took place in Bratislava, on June 25 and 26, 2010.

This updated project, worth now some 6 billion euros, will give EDF valuable feedback and a tried and tested approach to organization for future EPR reactors, particularly in the United Kingdom. "We are faced with the demands of a major site, and we have had to put together an appropriate industrial framework for us to succeed with this ambitious project. That is what has led us to introduce a new approach to the organization of the site today" explained Hervé Machenaud, EDF's Group Senior Executive in charge of Production and Engineering, Philippe Bonnave, Deputy CEO of Bouygues Construction.

EDF has decided to introduce a new approach to organization with its partners, including: the definition of a new, more reliable industrial schedule incorporating all of these points. the launch of regular public "site" meetings to assess the progress of the project as well as the key advances made (positioning of the dome in 2012). the establishment of new practices in terms of management and supervision of the site. the coordination of teams and partners with, for example, the creation of the "F10 committee", bringing together the 9 main companies working on the site. the consolidation of requirements in terms of safety and preparation for intervention operations. This updated project, worth now some 6 billion euros, will give EDF valuable feedback and a tried and tested approach to organization for future EPR reactors, particularly in the United Kingdom.

EDF has decided to introduce a new approach to organization at the Flamanville EPR in response to recent events that have slowed down progress on the work site. As a result, the first KWh produced by the EPR will be sold by EDF in 2016.

I was reading this story and wanted to ask the experts in this forum about the claims:http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/08/03/japan-a-nuclear-gypsy%E2%80%99s-tale/In summary, a temporary worker doing a radiation job at Japan's Hamaoka plant received 180 mrem in a single job, and he claims to have felt nausea and other symptoms upon entering the radiation area, as a direct result of the radiation.  In addition to that, he talks about how the community of temp workers (with no education other than training for those jobs they do) shares many similar stories about people feeling immediate health effects directly from exposure to a radiation dose in those jobs.  They dramatize the stories far better than I ever could:

These sorts of stories are circulating widely around Japan due to the obvious public disposition toward nuclear power at the moment.  The past hiring practices of Japanese companies for nuclear plant outages certainly do not help either.  I know a lot of people who are interested in debunking anti-nuclear propaganda, but it's considerably more difficult to tell someone "no, you didn't feel this", although that is my expectation in this case.I'm willing to be proven wrong on that point - that no one can feel the effects of radiation below the levels conventionally accepted to have health effects, but only by people who know what they're talking about.  I'm almost sure that 180 mrem is not a level sufficient for someone to know they've been exposed at all.  I mean, if you put someone in an isolated room and gave them a radiation dose at an unspecified time and asked them to raise their hand at that moment, they would fail at that task.  To me, the obvious explanation is the powerful effects of hypochondria - convincing oneself that they are sick.  The mental connection between entering the scary plenum of a steam generator and feeling a headache is strong, so the mind can easily convince itself that it has those effects.What is the reality?  Can anyone here say what what dose rate is scientifically expected to produce a physical sensation that can be felt?  Obvious this does happen at high enough dose / dose rates, but the real question is the level it happens at.  Can anyone who has worked in the US industry claim to have felt effects from radiation exposure with any sort of veracity?

You're right. 180 would produce no acute results and a very small chance of somatic results. Here's my thoughts. Semi tropical atmosphere, no electricity, worked to the bone, stress,Lets see the effects of heat exhaustion :Symptoms of heat exhaustion include profuse sweating, weakness, nausea, vomiting, headache, lightheadedness, and muscle cramps.Effects of sleep deprivation :aching muscles, confusion, memory lapses or loss, depression, hallucinations, hand tremors, headaches,bloodshot eyesWhy radiation then? Easy answer : its there. Its a good scape goat, and something media fear mongers like that quack Dr. Kookoo (sic) can quickly resort to when asked.

TEPCO has just released "diaries" from early in the accident giving us a better view of the sequence of events from the operators point of view.

The bulk of the materials, distributed on discs with digital files, show reams of raw numerical data. They include photos of broadsheet computer printouts and other formatted charts with thousands of data points for measurements of reactor heat, pressure, water levels, fuel rod positions and the status of cooling pumps, among other functions. Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, also released a smaller batch of more recent documents highlighting its various efforts to restore electric power to each of the reactors, a task that was achieved on April 26. But a series of what Tepco terms reactor "diaries" from the first 48 hours after the quake include the most visually arresting materials. These feature snapshots of whiteboards on which plant employees—11 of whom remained in each of the plant's three control rooms—jotted down status updates on the progress of the reactor shutdowns and steadily increasing radiation levels around the facility.

Using red, black or blue ink markers, the plant operators appear to have scribbled down the notes quickly. Many are smudged or illegible. Others depict complex diagrams and are peppered with technical jargon or acronyms such as SBO for "station blackout." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281504576329011846064194.html