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D'coda Dcoda

TEPCO doesn't know where melted fuel is at in reactors or actual level of radioactive p... - 0 views

enenews.com/-released-about-start-checking

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 29 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Fukushima Reactors Status of Reactors Reactor No. 1 Reactor No. 2 Reactor No. 3 Spent Fuel Pools Spent Fuel Pool No. 1 Spent Fuel Pool No. 2 Spent Fuel Pool No. 3 Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 Common Spent Fuel Pool Radiation Releases Plutonium Uranium Chernobyl Comparisons Criticality Japan Tokyo Area Outside Tokyo U.S. & Canada West Coast California Los Angeles San Francisco Bay Area Hawaii Seattle Canada Midwest East Coast Florida US Nuclear Facilities Pacific Radiation Facts Internal Emitters Health Children Testing Food Water Air Rain Soil Milk Longterm Strange Coverups? Video Home Terms About Contact     Cooling system for reactors and spent fuel pools stopped working three times over 16-day period at Alabama nuke plant » NHK: TEPCO doesn’t know where melted fuel is at in reactors or actual level of radioactive particles still being released — About to start checking July 29th, 2011 at 06:43 AM POSITION: relative; BORDER-BOTTOM-STYLE: none; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT-STYLE: none; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; WIDTH: 336px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; DISPLAY: inline-table; BORDER-TOP-STYLE: none; HEIGHT: 280px; VISIBILITY: visible; BORDER
  • The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it will extract air from troubled reactors at the plant to measure the amount of radioactive substances. [...] The operation is intended to obtain accurate data on what kind of radioactive substances are being released and in what quantity. The air extraction is expected to begin later on Friday for the No.1 reactor and in early August for the No.2 unit. No plans have been decided for the No.3 reactor due to high radiation levels in part of its building.
  • that TEPCO doesn’t know where the melted fuel is or the actual level of radioactive particles still being released: TEPCO hopes the findings may also help the company grasp the extent of leakage of nuclear fuels into the containment vessels. Up to around one billion becquerels of radioactive substances arebelieved to be released every hour from reactors No.1, 2 and 3. It isnot known how accurate this figure is because it was worked out bytaking readings of the air on the plant’s premises.
D'coda Dcoda

Impacts of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants on Marine Radioactivity - Environmental S... - 0 views

pubs.acs.org/...es202816c

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
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  • We focus on the most complete time-series records from the north and south discharge channels at the Dai-ichi NPPs, and two sites to the south that were not considered sources, namely the north Discharge channels at the Dai-ni NPPs about 10 km to the south and Iwasawa beach which is 16 km south of the Dai-ichi NPPs (Figure 1). The levels at the discharge point are exceedingly high, with a peak 137Cs 68 million Bq m–3 on April 6 (Figure 2). What are significant are not just the elevated concentrations, but the timing of peak release approximately one month after to the earthquake. This delayed release is presumably due to the complicated pattern of discharge of seawater and fresh water used to cool the reactors and spent fuel rods, interactions with groundwater, and intentional and unintentional releases of mixed radioactive material from the reactor facility.
  • the concentrations of Cs in sediments and biota near the NPPs may be quite large, and will continue to remain so for at least 30–100 years due to the longer half-life of 137Cs which is still detected in marine and lake sediments from 1960s fallout sources.
  • If the source at Fukushima had stopped abruptly and ocean mixing processes continued at the same rates, one would have expected that the 137Cs activities would have decreased an additional factor of 1000 from May to June but that was not observed. The break in slope in early May implies that a steady, albeit lower, source of 137Cs continues to discharge to the oceans at least through the end of July at this site. With reports of highly contaminated cooling waters at the NPPs and complete melt through of at least one of the reactors, this is not surprising. As we have no reason to expect a change in mixing rates of the ocean which would also impact this dilution rate, this change in slope of 137Cs in early May is clear evidence that the Dai-ichi NPPs remain a significant source of contamination to the coastal waters off Japan. There is currently no data that allow us to distinguish between several possible sources of continued releases, but these most likely include some combination of direct releases from the reactors or storage tanks, or indirect releases from groundwater beneath the reactors or coastal sediments, both of which are likely contaminated from the period of maximum releases
  • It is prudent to point out though what is meant by “significant” to both ocean waters and marine biota. With respect to prior concentrations in the waters off Japan, all of these values are elevated many orders of magnitude. 137Cs has been tracked quite extensively off Japan since the peak weapons testing fallout years in the early 1960s.(13) Levels in the region east of Japan have decreased from a few 10s of Bq m–3 in 1960 to 1.5 Bq m–3 on average in 2010 (Figure 2; second x-axis). The decrease in 137Cs over this 50 year record reflects both radioactive decay of 137Cs with a 30 year half-life and continued mixing in the global ocean of 137Cs to depth. These data are characteristic of other global water masses.(14) Typical ocean surface 137Cs activities range from <1 Bq m–3 in surface waters in the Southern Hemisphere, which are lower due to lower weapons testing inputs south of the equator, to >10–100 Bq m–3 in the Irish Sea, North Sea, Black Sea, and Baltic Seas, which are elevated due to local sources from the intentional discharges at the nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities at Sellafield in the UK and Cape de la Hague in France, as well as residual 137Cs from Chernobyl in the Baltic and Black Seas. Clearly then on this scale of significance, levels of 137Cs 30 km off Japan were some 3–4 orders of magnitude higher than existed prior to the NPP accidents at Fukushima.
  • Finally though, while the Dai-ichi NPP releases must be considered “significant” relative to prior sources off Japan, we should not assume that dose effects on humans or marine biota are necessarily harmful or even will be measurable. Garnier-Laplace et al.(1) report a dose reconstruction signal for the most impacted areas to wildlife on land and in the ocean. Like this study, they are relying on reported activities to calculate forest biota concentrations,
  • D'coda Dcoda on 09 Dec 11
     
    From Wood's Hole, note that calculations are based on reports from TEPCO & other Japanese agencies. Quite a bit more to read on the site.
D'coda Dcoda

Scientists Radically Raise Estimates of Fukushima Fallout [25Oct11] - 0 views

www.nature.com/...478435a.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March released far more radiation than the Japanese government has claimed. So concludes a study1 that combines radioactivity data from across the globe to estimate the scale and fate of emissions from the shattered plant. The study also suggests that, contrary to government claims, pools used to store spent nuclear fuel played a significant part in the release of the long-lived environmental contaminant caesium-137, which could have been prevented by prompt action. The analysis has been posted online for open peer review by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
  • Andreas Stohl, an atmospheric scientist with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in Kjeller, who led the research, believes that the analysis is the most comprehensive effort yet to understand how much radiation was released from Fukushima Daiichi. "It's a very valuable contribution," says Lars-Erik De Geer, an atmospheric modeller with the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Stockholm, who was not involved with the study. The reconstruction relies on data from dozens of radiation monitoring stations in Japan and around the world. Many are part of a global network to watch for tests of nuclear weapons that is run by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna. The scientists added data from independent stations in Canada, Japan and Europe, and then combined those with large European and American caches of global meteorological data.
  • Stohl cautions that the resulting model is far from perfect. Measurements were scarce in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima accident, and some monitoring posts were too contaminated by radioactivity to provide reliable data. More importantly, exactly what happened inside the reactors — a crucial part of understanding what they emitted — remains a mystery that may never be solved. "If you look at the estimates for Chernobyl, you still have a large uncertainty 25 years later," says Stohl. Nevertheless, the study provides a sweeping view of the accident. "They really took a global view and used all the data available," says De Geer.
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  • Challenging numbers Japanese investigators had already developed a detailed timeline of events following the 11 March earthquake that precipitated the disaster. Hours after the quake rocked the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, the tsunami arrived, knocking out crucial diesel back-up generators designed to cool the reactors in an emergency. Within days, the three reactors operating at the time of the accident overheated and released hydrogen gas, leading to massive explosions. Radioactive fuel recently removed from a fourth reactor was being held in a storage pool at the time of the quake, and on 14 March the pool overheated, possibly sparking fires in the building over the next few days.
  • But accounting for the radiation that came from the plants has proved much harder than reconstructing this chain of events. The latest report from the Japanese government, published in June, says that the plant released 1.5 × 1016 bequerels of caesium-137, an isotope with a 30-year half-life that is responsible for most of the long-term contamination from the plant2. A far larger amount of xenon-133, 1.1 × 1019 Bq, was released, according to official government estimates.
  • Stohl believes that the discrepancy between the team's results and those of the Japanese government can be partly explained by the larger data set used. Japanese estimates rely primarily on data from monitoring posts inside Japan3, which never recorded the large quantities of radioactivity that blew out over the Pacific Ocean, and eventually reached North America and Europe. "Taking account of the radiation that has drifted out to the Pacific is essential for getting a real picture of the size and character of the accident," says Tomoya Yamauchi, a radiation physicist at Kobe University who has been measuring radioisotope contamination in soil around Fukushima. Click for full imageStohl adds that he is sympathetic to the Japanese teams responsible for the official estimate. "They wanted to get something out quickly," he says. The differences between the two studies may seem large, notes Yukio Hayakawa, a volcanologist at Gunma University who has also modelled the accident, but uncertainties in the models mean that the estimates are actually quite similar.
  • The new study challenges those numbers. On the basis of its reconstructions, the team claims that the accident released around 1.7 × 1019 Bq of xenon-133, greater than the estimated total radioactive release of 1.4 × 1019 Bq from Chernobyl. The fact that three reactors exploded in the Fukushima accident accounts for the huge xenon tally, says De Geer. Xenon-133 does not pose serious health risks because it is not absorbed by the body or the environment. Caesium-137 fallout, however, is a much greater concern because it will linger in the environment for decades. The new model shows that Fukushima released 3.5 × 1016 Bq caesium-137, roughly twice the official government figure, and half the release from Chernobyl. The higher number is obviously worrying, says De Geer, although ongoing ground surveys are the only way to truly establish the public-health risk.
  • The new analysis also claims that the spent fuel being stored in the unit 4 pool emitted copious quantities of caesium-137. Japanese officials have maintained that virtually no radioactivity leaked from the pool. Yet Stohl's model clearly shows that dousing the pool with water caused the plant's caesium-137 emissions to drop markedly (see 'Radiation crisis'). The finding implies that much of the fallout could have been prevented by flooding the pool earlier. The Japanese authorities continue to maintain that the spent fuel was not a significant source of contamination, because the pool itself did not seem to suffer major damage. "I think the release from unit 4 is not important," says Masamichi Chino, a scientist with the Japanese Atomic Energy Authority in Ibaraki, who helped to develop the Japanese official estimate. But De Geer says the new analysis implicating the fuel pool "looks convincing".

  • The latest analysis also presents evidence that xenon-133 began to vent from Fukushima Daiichi immediately after the quake, and before the tsunami swamped the area. This implies that even without the devastating flood, the earthquake alone was sufficient to cause damage at the plant.

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    The Japanese government's report has already acknowledged that the shaking at Fukushima Daiichi exceeded the plant's design specifications. Anti-nuclear activists have long been concerned that the government has failed to adequately address geological hazards when licensing nuclear plants (see Nature 448, 392–393; 2007), and the whiff of xenon could prompt a major rethink of reactor safety assessments, says Yamauchi.

  • The model also shows that the accident could easily have had a much more devastating impact on the people of Tokyo. In the first days after the accident the wind was blowing out to sea, but on the afternoon of 14 March it turned back towards shore, bringing clouds of radioactive caesium-137 over a huge swathe of the country (see 'Radioisotope reconstruction'). Where precipitation fell, along the country's central mountain ranges and to the northwest of the plant, higher levels of radioactivity were later recorded in the soil; thankfully, the capital and other densely populated areas had dry weather. "There was a period when quite a high concentration went over Tokyo, but it didn't rain," says Stohl. "It could have been much worse." 
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima radiation alarms doctors [18Aug11] - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...201181665921711896.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 19 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
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  • he Fukushima disaster has been rated as a "level seven" on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). This level, the highest, is the same as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and is defined by the scale as: "[A] major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters are the only nuclear accidents to have been rated level seven on the scale, which is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the scale used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times more severe than the previous level.
  • Doctors in Japan are already treating patients suffering health effects they attribute to radiation from the ongoing nuclear disaster."We have begun to see increased nosebleeds, stubborn cases of diarrhoea, and flu-like symptoms in children," Dr Yuko Yanagisawa, a physician at Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, told Al Jazeera.
  • r Helen Caldicott, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is equally concerned about the health effects from Japan's nuclear disaster."Radioactive elements get into the testicles and ovaries, and these cause genetic disease like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation," she told Al Jazeera. "There are 2,600 of these diseases that get into our genes and are passed from generation to generation, forever."
  • Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, reporting from Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, said of the recently detected high radiation readings: "It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami, but no one realised until now."Workers at Fukushima are only allowed to be exposed to 250 mSv of ionising radiation per year.
  • radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit was detected in processed tea made in Tochigi City, about 160km from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to the Tochigi Prefectural Government, who said radioactive cesium was detected in tea processed from leaves harvested in the city in early July. The level is more than 3 times the provisional government limit.
  • anagisawa's hospital is located approximately 200km from Fukushima, so the health problems she is seeing that she attributes to radiation exposure causes her to be concerned by what she believes to be a grossly inadequate response from the government.From her perspective, the only thing the government has done is to, on April 25, raise the acceptable radiation exposure limit for children from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year.
  • This has caused controversy, from the medical point of view," Yanagisawa told Al Jazeera. "This is certainly an issue that involves both personal internal exposures as well as low-dose exposures."Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan Executive Director, said: "It is utterly outrageous to raise the exposure levels for children to twenty times the maximum limit for adults."
  • The Japanese government cannot simply increase safety limits for the sake of political convenience or to give the impression of normality."Authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low-dose ionizing radiation are published in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII (BEIR VII) report from the US National Academy of Sciences.
  • he report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence proving there is no exposure to ionizing radiation that is risk-free. The BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of all forms of cancer other than leukemia of about 1-in-10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1-in-100,000; and a 1-in-17,500 increased risk of cancer death.
  • She attributes the symptoms to radiation exposure, and added: "We are encountering new situations we cannot explain with the body of knowledge we have relied upon up until now.""The situation at the Daiichi Nuclear facility in Fukushima has not yet been fully stabilised, and we can't yet see an end in sight," Yanagisawa said. "Because the nuclear material has not yet been encapsulated, radiation continues to stream into the environment."
  • So far, the only cases of acute radiation exposure have involved TEPCO workers at the stricken plant. Lower doses of radiation, particularly for children, are what many in the medical community are most concerned about, according to Dr Yanagisawa.
  • Humans are not yet capable of accurately measuring the low dose exposure or internal exposure," she explained, "Arguing 'it is safe because it is not yet scientifically proven [to be unsafe]' would be wrong. That fact is that we are not yet collecting enough information to prove the situations scientifically. If that is the case, we can never say it is safe just by increasing the annual 1mSv level twenty fold."
  • Her concern is that the new exposure standards by the Japanese government do not take into account differences between adults and children, since children's sensitivity to radiation exposure is several times higher than that of adults.
  • Al Jazeera contacted Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office for comment on the situation. Speaking on behalf of the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Relations for the Prime Minister's office, Noriyuki Shikata said that the Japanese government "refers to the ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection] recommendation in 2007, which says the reference levels of radiological protection in emergency exposure situations is 20-100 mSv per year. The Government of Japan has set planned evacuation zones and specific spots recommended for evacuation where the radiation levels reach 20 mSv/year, in order to avoid excessive radiation exposure."
  • he prime minister's office explained that approximately 23bn yen ($300mn) is planned for decontamination efforts, and the government plans to have a decontamination policy "by around the end of August", with a secondary budget of about 97bn yen ($1.26bn) for health management and monitoring operations in the affected areas. When questioned about the issue of "acute radiation exposure", Shikata pointed to the Japanese government having received a report from TEPCO about six of their workers having been exposed to more than 250 mSv, but did not mention any reports of civilian exposures.
  • Prime Minister Kan's office told Al Jazeera that, for their ongoing response to the Fukushima crisis, "the government of Japan has conducted all the possible countermeasures such as introduction of automatic dose management by ID codes for all workers and 24 hour allocation of doctors. The government of Japan will continue to tackle the issue of further improving the health management including medium and long term measures". Shikata did not comment about Kodama's findings.
  • Nishio Masamichi, director of Japan's Hakkaido Cancer Centre and a radiation treatment specialist, published an article on July 27 titled: "The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation". In the report, Masamichi said that such a dramatic increase in permitted radiation exposure was akin to "taking the lives of the people lightly". He believes that 20mSv is too high, especially for children who are far more susceptible to radiation.
  • Kodama is an expert in internal exposure to radiation, and is concerned that the government has not implemented a strong response geared towards measuring radioactivity in food. "Although three months have passed since the accident already, why have even such simple things have not been done yet?" he said. "I get very angry and fly into a rage."
  • Radiation has a high risk to embryos in pregnant women, juveniles, and highly proliferative cells of people of growing ages. Even for adults, highly proliferative cells, such as hairs, blood, and intestinal epithelium cells, are sensitive to radiation."
  • Early on in the disaster, Dr Makoto Kondo of the department of radiology of Keio University's School of Medicine warned of "a large difference in radiation effects on adults compared to children".Kondo explained the chances of children developing cancer from radiation exposure was many times higher than adults.
  • Children's bodies are underdeveloped and easily affected by radiation, which could cause cancer or slow body development. It can also affect their brain development," he said.Yanagisawa assumes that the Japanese government's evacuation standards, as well as their raising the permissible exposure limit to 20mSv "can cause hazards to children's health," and therefore "children are at a greater risk".
  • Kodama, who is also a doctor of internal medicine, has been working on decontamination of radioactive materials at radiation facilities in hospitals of the University of Tokyo for the past several decades. "We had rain in Tokyo on March 21 and radiation increased to .2 micosieverts/hour and, since then, the level has been continuously high," said Kodama, who added that his reporting of radiation findings to the government has not been met an adequate reaction. "At that time, the chief cabinet secretary, Mr Edano, told the Japanese people that there would be no immediate harm to their health."
  • n early July, officials with the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission announced that approximately 45 per cent of children in the Fukushima region had experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, according to a survey carried out in late March. The commission has not carried out any surveys since then.
  • Now the Japanese government is underestimating the effects of low dosage and/or internal exposures and not raising the evacuation level even to the same level adopted in Chernobyl," Yanagisawa said. "People's lives are at stake, especially the lives of children, and it is obvious that the government is not placing top priority on the people's lives in their measures."Caldicott feels the lack of a stronger response to safeguard the health of people in areas where radiation is found is "reprehensible".
  • Millions of people need to be evacuated from those high radiation zones, especially the children."
  • Dr Yanagisawa is concerned about what she calls "late onset disorders" from radiation exposure resulting from the Fukushima disaster, as well as increasing cases of infertility and miscarriages."Incidence of cancer will undoubtedly increase," she said. "In the case of children, thyroid cancer and leukemia can start to appear after several years. In the case of adults, the incidence of various types of cancer will increase over the course of several decades."Yanagisawa said it is "without doubt" that cancer rates among the Fukushima nuclear workers will increase, as will cases of lethargy, atherosclerosis, and other chronic diseases among the general population in the effected areas.
  • Radioactive food and water
  • An August 1 press release from Japan's MHLW said no radioactive materials have been detected in the tap water of Fukushima prefecture, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters. The government defines no detection as "no results exceeding the 'Index values for infants (radioactive iodine)'," and says "in case the level of radioactive iodine in tap water exceeds 100 Bq/kg, to refrain from giving infants formula milk dissolved by tap water, having them intake tap water … "
  • Yet, on June 27, results were published from a study that found 15 residents of Fukushima prefecture had tested positive for radiation in their urine. Dr Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University, has been to Fukushima prefecture twice in order to take internal radiation exposure readings and facilitated the study.
  • The risk of internal radiation is more dangerous than external radiation," Dr Kamada told Al Jazeera. "And internal radiation exposure does exist for Fukushima residents."According to the MHLW, distribution of several food products in Fukushima Prefecture remain restricted. This includes raw milk, vegetables including spinach, kakina, and all other leafy vegetables, including cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and beef.
  • he distribution of tealeaves remains restricted in several prefectures, including all of Ibaraki, and parts of Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba, Kanagawa Prefectures.Iwate prefecture suspended all beef exports because of caesium contamination on August 1, making it the fourth prefecture to do so.
  • yunichi Tokuyama, an expert with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, told Al Jazeera he did not know how to deal with the crisis. He was surprised because he did not expect radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, 300km from the Fukushima nuclear plant."The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive," Tokuyama told Al Jazeera.
  • Kamada feels the Japanese government is acting too slowly in response to the Fukushima disaster, and that the government needs to check radiation exposure levels "in each town and village" in Fukushima prefecture."They have to make a general map of radiation doses," he said. "Then they have to be concerned about human health levels, and radiation exposures to humans. They have to make the exposure dose map of Fukushima prefecture. Fukushima is not enough. Probably there are hot spots outside of Fukushima. So they also need to check ground exposure levels."
  • Radiation that continues to be released has global consequences.More than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water has been released into the ocean from the stricken plant.
  • Those radioactive elements bio-concentrate in the algae, then the crustaceans eat that, which are eaten by small then big fish," Caldicott said. "That's why big fish have high concentrations of radioactivity and humans are at the top of the food chain, so we get the most radiation, ultimately."
D'coda Dcoda

Japan's Cesium Leak Equal to 168 '45 A-Bombs [27Aug11] - 0 views

www.commondreams.org/...27-0

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 06 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • The amount of radioactive cesium ejected by the Fukushima reactor meltdowns is about 168 times higher than that emitted in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the government's nuclear watchdog said Friday.
  • The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency provided the estimate at the request of a Diet panel but noted that making a simple comparison between an instantaneous bomb blast and a long-term accidental leak is problematic and could lead to "irrelevant" results.
  • The report said the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant has released 15,000 terabecquerels of cesium-137, which lingers for decades and can cause cancer, compared with the 89 terabecquerels released by the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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  • The report estimated each of the 16 isotopes released by the "Little Boy" bomb and 31 of those detected at the Fukushima plant. NISA has said the radiation released at Fukushima was about one-sixth of that released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. "Little Boy," dropped Aug. 6, 1945, destroyed most of the city and eventually killed as many as 140,000 people. Most of the Hiroshima victims were killed in the initial heat wave, while others died from the neutron rays generated by the midair explosion or the deadly radioactive fallout. No one has died yet from radiation emitted by the Fukushima plant, where explosions caused by unvented hydrogen blew apart the upper halves of the reactor buildings but left the reactor cores in place.
  • he report estimated that iodine-131, another isotope that accumulates in the thyroid gland, and strontium-90, which has a 28-year half-life and can accumulate in bones, leaked from the plant in amounts roughly equal to 2½ higher than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A separate government report released Thursday said that 22 percent of cesium-137 and 13 percent of iodine-131 released from the plant landed on the ground, with the remainder landing either in the ocean or outside its simulation area.
  • The National Institute for Environmental Studies said its simulation of aerial flow, diffusion and deposition of the two isotopes released from the tsunami-hit plant showed their impact reached most of eastern Japan, stretching from Iwate Prefecture in the north and to Tokyo and Shizuoka Prefecture further south. The study also showed that iodine-131 tended to spread radially and cesium-137 tended to create "hot spots.
D'coda Dcoda

Leaked TEPCO report: 120 billion Becquerels of plutonium, 7.6 trillion Becquerels of ne... - 0 views

enenews.com/media-concealed-risk-to-public

contamination cover-up japan

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 16 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Yokohama, Oct. 15 — Mochizuki of the Fukushima Diary website is reporting on a June 2011 document that has been “leaked on the internet” which reveals that Plutonium-238, -239, -240, and -241 were released “to the air” from Fukushima Daiichi during the first 100 hours after the earthquake. The amount of plutonium released is said to be 120 billion Becquerels. It also states there was a release of 7.6 trillion Becquerels of Neptunium-239. Mochizuki says this report was made by Tepco for a press conference on June 6 and the media knew and “kept concealing the risk for 7 months and kept people exposed”. Read More: Media knew 1.2×10^12 Bq of plutonium was released to the air in the first 100 hours
Dan R.D.

New Study: Fukushima Released Twice as Much Radiation as Official Estimate Claimed | 80... - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...n-as-official-estimate-claimed

fukushima study radiation contamination accidents japan

shared by Dan R.D. on 28 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The nuclear disaster at the  Fukushima Daiichi power plant this spring may have released twice as much radiation into the atmosphere as the Japanese government estimated, a new preliminary study says. While the government estimates relied mostly on data from monitoring stations in Japan, the European research team behind the new report looked at radioactivity data from stations scattered across the globe.
  • The nuclear disaster at the  Fukushima Daiichi power plant this spring may have released twice as much radiation into the atmosphere as the Japanese government estimated, a new preliminary study says. While the government estimates relied mostly on data from monitoring stations in Japan, the European research team behind the new report looked at radioactivity data from stations scattered across the globe. This wider approach factored in the large amounts of radioactivity that were carried out over the Pacific Ocean, which the official tallies didn’t.
  • Overall, the team says, the disaster released about 36,000 terabecquerels of  cesium-137, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear fission, more than twice the 15,000 terabecquerels Japanese authorities estimated—and approximately 42% as much radioactivity as  Chernobyl.
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  • The researchers also found that the release of cesium declined sharply when workers started spraying water into the pools holding spent fuel rods at the plant—suggesting that, contrary to the official account, the spent fuel rods had been emitting radiation, and spraying them earlier might have mitigated the fallout.
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima Plant Released Record Amount of Radiation [30Oct11] - 0 views

australiancannonball.com/...sed-record-amount-of-radiation

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 31 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was responsible for the biggest discharge of radioactive material into the ocean in history, a study from a French institute said. The radioactive cesium that flowed into the ocean from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant was 20 times the amount estimated by its owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., according to the study by the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, which is funded by the French government. It’s the second report released in a week calling into question estimates from Japan’s government and the operator of the plant that was damaged in the March earthquake and tsunami. Tokyo Electric’s Fukushima station may have emitted more than double the company’s estimate of atmospheric release at the height of the worst civil atomic crisis since Chernobyl in 1986. End Extract http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-31/fukushima-plant-released-record-amount-of-radiation-into-ocean?category=%2Fnews%2Fmostread%2F
D'coda Dcoda

TEPCO Is Not Providing English Translation of Its Report to NISA on Emergency Cooling S... - 0 views

ex-skf.blogspot.com/...-is-not-providing-english.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 04 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • The Japanese government seems to be "instructing" TEPCO not to release certain information in English.TEPCO submitted the report to its regulatory agency Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) "on the measures to continue water injection into reactors of Units 1 to 3 at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station" on August 3. It's in Japanese only, and it may or may not be translated into English.According to TEPCO:We have provided a Japanese press release version of the instruction document received from NISA. However, at this time we have reserved the right not to provide an English version due to potential misunderstandings that may arise from an inaccurate rendering of the original Japanese text. We may provide the English translation that NISA releases in our press releases. However, in principle we would advise you to visit the NISA website for timely and accurate information.(From TEPCO's English press release on August 3 explaining why they are releasing the information only in Japanese.)The 34-page Japanese report is here.
  • The report talks about the fuel inside the Reactor Pressure Vessels;It talks about the reactors as if they were sound;It states that zirconium will start to interact with water at a certain temperature (1,200 degrees Celsius).
  • Most likely, there is no fuel left inside the RPVs at Fukushima I Nuke Plant. Even if there is, it is not fuel any more but "corium" - fuel, control rods, instruments, whatever inside the RPV, melted together. TEPCO has already admitted that there are holes in the RPV, and holes in the Containment Vessels. There is no zirconium left because there is no cladding left.
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  • nowhere in the report does the company say anything about melted fuel, broken reactors, water in the basements, or extremely high radiation at certain locations in the plant.But the report goes on to describe the elaborate backup pump system and power system as if what they are dealing with is normal (i.e. without cracks or holes at the bottom) reactors with intact fuel rods inside the RPVs with control rods safely deployed in a clean nuclear power plant, and all they need to worry is how they can continue the cooling; or as if the salt-encrusted molten mess of everything that was inside the RPV behaves just the same as normal fuel rods in a normal reactor.
  • Why was TEPCO asked by NISA to submit this report to begin with? So that the national government can begin the discussion with the local municipalities within the 20-kilometer radius evacuation zone for the return of the residents to their towns and villages. The discussion is to begin this month, and TEPCO's report will be used to reassure the residents that Fukushima I Nuke Plant is so stable now with the solid plans (to be approved by NISA, which no doubt will happen very soon) to cool the fuels in the reactors even in case of an emergency.
  • Remember the mayor of Naraha-machi, where Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant is located? He wants TEPCO to restart the plant so that 5,000 jobs will return to the town. He also wanted to invite the government to build the final processing plant of spent nuclear fuels in his town. He would be the first one to highly approve of the report so that his town can continue to prosper with nuclear money.
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima Crisis Is Still Hazy: Scientific American Pt1 [07Sep11] - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 09 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Tatsuhiko Kodama began his 27 July testimony to Japan's parliament with what he knew. In a firm, clear voice, he said that the Radioisotope Center of the University of Tokyo, which he heads, had detected elevated radiation levels in the days following the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. But when it came to what wasn't known, he became angry. "There is no definite report from the Tokyo Electric Power Company or the government as to exactly how much radioactive material has been released from Fukushima!" he shouted.
  • Kodama's impassioned speech was posted on YouTube in late July and has received nearly 600,000 views, transforming him into one of Japan's most visible critics of the government. But he is not alone. Almost six months after an earthquake and tsunami triggered the meltdowns, other researchers say that crucial data for understanding the crisis are still missing, and funding snags and bureaucracy are hampering efforts to collect more. Some researchers warn that, without better coordination, clean-up efforts will be delayed, and the opportunity to measure the effects of the worst nuclear accident in decades could be lost. Kodama and a handful of Japanese scientists have become so frustrated that they are beginning grassroots campaigns to collect information and speed the clean-up.
  • Since the crisis began, the Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japanese government have churned out reams of radiation measurements, but only recently has a full picture of Fukushima's fallout begun to emerge. On 30 August, the science ministry released a map showing contamination over a 100-kilometer radius around the plant. The survey of 2,200 locations shows a roughly 35-kilometer-long strip northwest of the plant where levels of caesium-137 contamination seem to exceed 1,000 kilobecquerels per square metre. (After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, areas with more than 1,480 kilobecquerels per square metre were permanently evacuated by the Soviet authorities. In Japan, the high-radiation strip extends beyond the original forced evacuation zone, but falls within a larger 'planned evacuation zone' that has not yet been completely cleared.)
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  • Exposure estimates Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has also published new estimates of the total radiation released in the accident, based on models that combine measurements with what is known about the damage to the reactors. The latest figures, reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency in June, suggest that the total airborne release of caesium-137 amounts to 17% of the release from Chernobyl (see map). The government estimates that the total radiation released is 7.7 × 1017 becquerels, 5–6% of the total from Chernobyl.
  • Yet "there are still more questions than definite answers", says Gerald Kirchner, a physicist at Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection in Berlin. High radiation levels make it impossible to directly measure damage to the melted reactor cores. Perhaps the greatest uncertainty is exactly how much radiation was released in the first ten days after the accident, when power outages hampered measurements. Those data, combined with meteorological information, would allow scientists to model the plume and make better predictions about human exposure, Kirchner says.
  • Several measurements suggest that some evacuees received an unusually high dose. Five days after the crisis began, Shinji Tokonami, a radiation health expert at Hirosaki University, and his colleagues drove several hundred kilometres from Hirosaki to Fukushima City, taking radiation measurements along the way. The results indicate that evacuees from Namie, a town some 9 kilometres north of the plant, received at least 68 millisieverts of radiation as they fled, more than three times the government's annual limit (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00087).
D'coda Dcoda

ACPD - Abstract - Xenon-133 and caesium-137 releases into the atmosphere from the Fukus... - 0 views

www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/...acpd-11-28319-2011.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • A. Stohl1, P. Seibert2, G. Wotawa3, D. Arnold2,4, J. F. Burkhart1, S. Eckhardt1, C. Tapia5, A. Vargas4, and T. J. Yasunari61NILU – Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, Norway2Institute of Meteorology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria3Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, Vienna, Austria4Institute of Energy Technologies (INTE), Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain5Department of Physics and Nucelar Engineering (FEN),Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain6Universities Space Research Association, Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology and Research, Columbia, MD 21044, USAAbstract. On 11 March 2011, an earthquake occurred about 130 km off the Pacific coast of Japan's main island Honshu, followed by a large tsunami. The resulting loss of electric power at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant (FD-NPP) developed into a disaster causing massive release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. In this study, we determine the emissions of two isotopes, the noble gas xenon-133 (133Xe) and the aerosol-bound caesium-137 (137Cs), which have very different release characteristics as well as behavior in the atmosphere. To determine radionuclide emissions as a function of height and time until 20 April, we made a first guess of release rates based on fuel inventories and documented accident events at the site.
  • This first guess was subsequently improved by inverse modeling, which combined the first guess with the results of an atmospheric transport model, FLEXPART, and measurement data from several dozen stations in Japan, North America and other regions. We used both atmospheric activity concentration measurements as well as, for 137Cs, measurements of bulk deposition. Regarding 133Xe, we find a total release of 16.7 (uncertainty range 13.4–20.0) EBq, which is the largest radioactive noble gas release in history not associated with nuclear bomb testing. There is strong evidence that the first strong 133Xe release started very early, possibly immediately after the earthquake and the emergency shutdown on 11 March at 06:00 UTC. The entire noble gas inventory of reactor units 1–3 was set free into the atmosphere between 11 and 15 March 2011. For 137Cs, the inversion results give a total emission of 35.8 (23.3–50.1) PBq, or about 42% of the estimated Chernobyl emission. Our results indicate that 137Cs emissions peaked on 14–15 March but were generally high from 12 until 19 March, when they suddenly dropped by orders of magnitude exactly when spraying of water on the spent-fuel pool of unit 4 started. 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. We also explore the main dispersion and deposition patterns of the radioactive cloud, both regionally for Japan as well as for the entire Northern Hemisphere. While at first sight it seemed fortunate that westerly winds prevailed most of the time during the accident, a different picture emerges from our detailed analysis
  • Exactly during and following the period of the strongest 137Cs emissions on 14 and 15 March as well as after another period with strong emissions on 19 March, the radioactive plume was advected over Eastern Honshu Island, where precipitation deposited a large fraction of 137Cs on land surfaces. The plume was also dispersed quickly over the entire Northern Hemisphere, first reaching North America on 15 March and Europe on 22 March. In general, simulated and observed concentrations of 133Xe and 137Cs both at Japanese as well as at remote sites were in good quantitative agreement with each other. Altogether, we estimate that 6.4 TBq of 137Cs, or 19% of the total fallout until 20 April, were deposited over Japanese land areas, while most of the rest fell over the North Pacific Ocean. Only 0.7 TBq, or 2% of the total fallout were deposited on land areas other than Japan.Discussion Paper (PDF, 6457 KB)   Supplement (13 KB)   Interactive Discussion (Open, 0 Comments)   Manuscript under review for ACP   
D'coda Dcoda

Watch PBS Frontline: Fukushima radiation 10% of Chernobyl - Risk of getting cancer very... - 0 views

enenews.com/millisievert-very-conservative

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 18 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • http://www.pbs.org/about/contact/ Here’s some to start: "Obviously Worrying": New estimate says Fukushima released "far more" radiation than Japan claims -- Gov't didn't count what went over Pacific Japan gov't now admits 40% of total Chernobyl radiation was released in just one week at Fukushima -- Still a "wide margin of error" Cesium-137 released at Fukushima in first four days could be 50 percent of Chernobyl total: Austria's ZAMG
  • D'coda Dcoda on 18 Jan 12
     
    article includes the PBS video along with other articles that contradict its statements
Jan Wyllie

Full Meltdown: Fukushima Called the 'Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in the History of M... - 0 views

www.alternet.org/..._in_the_history_of_mankind%27_

nuclear capability practice science biodiversity pollution emergence record risks

shared by Jan Wyllie on 18 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • 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?"
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  • The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."
  • "They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."
  • a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.
  • far more radiation has been released than has been reported.
  • "We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl,"
  • the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".
  • "We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."
  • Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April.
  • Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?
  • Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator
  • Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US
  • Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units. "Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."
  • "With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."
    • D'coda Dcoda
      D'coda Dcoda on 18 Jun 11
       
      Actually, this is exactly what I expected given the history of nuclear energy and the history of inadequate safeguards, ignoring safety regulations, etc.
  • Jan Wyllie on 18 Jun 11
     
    A "NEVER ENDING DISASTER" - A new rendition of Hofstadter's Law about how things take longer than expected ... it's always worse than expected, even when you expect the worse.
D'coda Dcoda

Clear spike in radiation measured across Japan on September 21 (CHARTS) [27Sep11] - 0 views

enenews.com/ion-levels-september-21-charts

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 27 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Fukushima & Japan Tokyo Area Outside Tokyo Fukushima Reactors Status of Reactors Reactor No. 1 Reactor No. 2 Reactor No. 3 Spent Fuel Pools Spent Fuel Pool No. 1 Spent Fuel Pool No. 2 Spent Fuel Pool No. 3 Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 Common Spent Fuel Pool Radiation Releases Plutonium Uranium Longterm Chernobyl Comparisons Criticality US & Canada West Coast California Los Angeles San Francisco Bay Area Hawaii Seattle Canada Midwest East Coast Florida US Nuclear Facilities North Anna (VA) Calvert Cliffs (MD) World Europe France UK Germany Chernobyl Rest of Europe South America Russia Asia China South Korea Taiwan Rest of Asia Pacific Rad. Maps & Forecasts Radiation Maps Radiation Forecasts Rad. Facts Internal Emitters Health Testing Food Water Air Rain Soil Milk Strange Coverups? Children Video Home Log In Discussion Forum page_item
  • See all charts here.
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima: Towards the Formation of a Radioactive Graveyard in the Pacific Ocean? [22Oc... - 0 views

fukushimaupdate.com/graveyard-in-the-pacific-ocean

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 22 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • Initially reports had quieted concerns by stating that the materials would be diluted so vastly that the radioactivity would not be able to accumulate, and would not affect the environment.  The experts claimed they would track the deposition and floating radioactive debris field making its way on a trans-Pacific trip to the United States. Apparently, the experts in Japan didn't get the message.  The Japanese regularly tested the seawater only for 'popular' Iodine and Cesium isotopes instead of all known fission-produced radioactive materials, for the first 3 months after the disaster.  By March 31st, radioactive contamination concentration was 4,385 times the legal limit, up from 3,355 times on Tuesday, according to Kyodo. In response, the government had pledged to increase radiation monitoring on land and by sea and to consider increasing the evacuation zone — however time has shown little action would follow these vows.
  • 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.
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  • TEPCO intentionally dumped radioactive materials into the ocean, as they had no additional room for storage, the levels showed no signs of decreasing, and all desalination hopes were falling woefully short.  It would also be found that many leaks around, and inside of the reactors were also finding their way into the Pacific, but the public was told that there would not be any risk to them, or the living creatures in the sea. After 7 months however, impact can be found all over the island nation, and spreading throughout the ocean, despite the expectations it would merely be diluted exponentially. In September, scientists from the government's Meteorological Research Institute and the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry announced their findings at a meeting of the Geochemical Society of Japan, adding that some of the cesium will also flow into the Indian Ocean and, eventually, reach the Atlantic.
  • Floating Radioactive Debris Reaching Hawaii Sooner Than Expected The researchers believed that the cesium had initially dispersed into the Pacific from the coast of Fukushima Prefecture but would be taken to the southwest by the prevailing currents at a depth of around 1,300 feet. Researchers thought it would take years to reach the islands. But now, according to a University of Hawaii researchers, the debris will arrive sooner than expected.  ....Since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, researchers have been predicting it would take about two years for the debris from Japan to hit Hawaii's west-facing beaches. “We have a rough estimate of 5 to 20 million tons of debris coming from Japan,” said UH computer programming researcher Jan Hafner.
  • ..Their path back to Russia crossed exactly across the projected field of the debris.  Soon after passing the Midway Islands on Sept. 22, they hit the edge of the tsunami debris.   “They saw some pieces of furniture, some appliances, anything that can float, and they picked up a fishing boat,” said Hafner.  It was a 20-foot fishing boat with the word "Fukushima" on it.  “That's actually our first confirmed report of tsunami debris,” said Hafner...  Source: kitv.com 
  • The Public Concern Was Never Really An 'Official' concern In the first few days after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, government authorities and the company were criticized for not providing information in a timely fashion. A Kyodo News survey released Sunday found that 58% of respondents did not approve of the government's handling of the crisis at the nuclear plant. More than two weeks later, updates provided via news conferences, press releases, data charts and Twitter feeds have become very frequent and very technical. To a lay person, the onslaught of numbers and unfamiliar terms can feel indecipherable.
  • "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
  • This ruse would only work, if the officials could hold off on monitoring and tracking the deposition as long as possible, until the plume had finally moved away from the coastline. TEPCO had intentionally dumped over 11 tons of water in the first few weeks, all of which contained high concentrations of radioactive materials. There would be further reports that would be difficult to quantify, including unknown amount of contaminated water leaked into the ocean from a damaged reservoir, and a plethora of uncharted and un-monitored leaks from the reactors. After dealing with the spring, the tsunami season arrived and even more contamination entered the sea through fallout from the air, and through precipitation runoff.
  • By March 26th, the news broke that levels near the reactor were 1,250 times the legal limits, as the levels of I-131 reported just a few hundred meters offshore boomed to ten times the already increased levels in a matter of days.  Tepco also reported levels of caesium-137 - which has a longer half life of about 30 years - almost 80 times the legal maximum. Findings throughout the summer challenged experts and officials however, as radiation levels found contamination in some parts had risen over 3,000 times the normal levels. "This is a relatively high level," nuclear safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said in a televised news conference. Drinking 500ml of fresh water with the same concentration would expose a person to their annual safe dose, Mr Nishiyama said, but he ruled out an immediate threat to aquatic life and seafood safety.
  • "Generally speaking, radioactive material released into the sea will spread due to tides, so you need much more for seaweed and sea life to absorb it," Mr Nishiyama said. Pledges to Monitor and Track Contamination Left Unattended Japanese officials said they would check the seawater about 20 miles (30km) off the coast for radiation back in March, yet even though finding contamination, resumed testing withing 20 km, and downplayed the effects by stating they expected it to show there is no need to be concerned about any possible effect to fish.
  • By the time that current reaches the Central Pacific, there are branches heading more towards Alaska and the South—that gets harder to predict,” said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute told Jeff McMahon, a reporter for Forbes. “But that’s one of the things that several people hope to do by measuring these isotopes even at levels when they’re not harmful. We could actually track those ocean currents and better understand the circulation pattern in the Pacific.” Japanese Science and Fisheries Agencies Late Decision to Expand Testing On Marine Products to Weekly Testing 20-30 km Around Fukushima Daiichi
  • The science ministry and the Fisheries Agency will strengthen testing on marine products and widen the survey for seawater for radiation contamination from the damaged Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The tests on marine products will be conducted once a week, in principle, depending on the size of the fish hauls, in Fukushima, Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures. The government eased restrictions on land use outside the 20-kilometer no-entry zone around the plant in September. It will now test waters 20-30 km from the plant for radiation, and eventually survey seawater beyond 280 km from the coast using more accurate instruments, officials said.
  • Sources: ajw.asahi.com, via Nuclear News | What The Physics? Forbes.com SkyNews TEPCO IAEA
D'coda Dcoda

Major Study: Reactor No. 5 releases may explain why so much radioactive xenon... - 0 views

enenews.com/no-5-avoided-major-fuel-damage

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 28 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • “Fortunately, due to the maintenance outage and the survival of one diesel generator, it seems that unit 5 reactor cores as well as spent fuel ponds have not suffered major fuel damage,” says the study. Though, Reactor No. 5 is mentioned again several pages later: “Total a posteriori [experienced levels] 133Xe emissions are 16.7 EBq, one third more than the a priori value [predicted levels] of 12.6 EBq (which is equal to the estimated inventory) and 2.5 times the estimated Chernobyl source term of 6.5 EBq.
  • If there was only 12.6 EBq of xenon-133 inventory that could be emitted from reactors 1-3 and spent fuel pool No. 4 — yet 16.7 EBq was experienced — where did the extra xenon come from, according to the study? “There is the possibility of additional releases from unit 5.” Another possibility is that recriticality has occurred in one of the reactor units. The study says the a priori emissions could have been overestimated, but discounts the notion that the initial 12.6 EBq figure so poorly underestimated the amount of xenon in Reactors 1-3 and SFP 4, “It is unlikely that the 133Xe inventories of the reactor units 1–3 were one third higher than estimated.”
  • ABSTRACT: ACPD – Xenon-133 and caesium-137 releases into the atmosphere from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: determination of the source term, atmospheric dispersion, and deposition SOURCE: Discussion Paper See also: Report: Fukushima Reactors No. 5, 6 now in crisis — Cesium outside release points up 1,000% in recent days — Local says Hitachi engineers coming to help (VIDEO)
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima health concerns [08Nov11] - 0 views

www.japantimes.co.jp/...ed20111108a1.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
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  • But a preliminary report issued in late October, whose chief writer is Mr. Andreas Stohl of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, estimates that the accidents released about 36,000 terabecquerels of radioactive cesium 137 from their start through April 20. It is more than three times the estimate by Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission and 42 percent of the estimated release from Chernobyl. On the basis of measurements by a worldwide network of sensors, the report says that 19 percent of the released cesium 137 fell on land in Japan while most of the rest fell into the Pacific Ocean. It holds the view that a large amount of radioactive substances was released from the spent nuclear fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor, pointing out that the amount of radioactive emissions dropped suddenly when workers started spraying water on the pool.
  • The report reinforces the advice that local residents in Fukushima Prefecture should try to remember and document in detail their actions for the first two weeks of the nuclear disaster. This will be helpful in estimating the level of their exposure to radiation. But it must be remembered that sensitivity to radiation differs from person to person. It may be helpful for individuals to carry radiation dosimeters to measure their exposure to radioactive substances. As for internal radiation exposure from food and drink, the Food Safety Commission on Oct. 27 said that a cumulative dose of 100 millisieverts or more in one's lifetime can cause health risks. But when it had mentioned the limit of 100 millisieverts in July, it explained that the limit covered both external and internal radiation exposure. Its new announcement means that the government has not set the limit for external radiation exposure. It also failed to clarify whether the new dose limit is safe enough for children and pregnant women
  • The day after the commission's announcement, health minister Yoko Komiyama said the government will lower the allowable amount of radiation in food from the current 5 millisieverts per year to 1 millisieverts per year. The new standard will be applied to food products shipped in and after April 2012. The government will set the amount of allowable radioactive substances for each food item. The health ministry estimates that at present, internal radiation exposure among various age groups from food in the wake of the Fukushima No. 1 accidents is about 0.1 millisieverts per year on the average and that if the new standard is enforced, the lifetime radiation dose will not exceed 100 millisieverts. It is important for the central and local governments to establish a system to closely measure both outdoor radiation levels and radiation levels in food products and to take necessary measures. In areas near Fukushima No. 1 power plant, many hospitals' functions have weakened because doctors and nurses have left. Urgent efforts must be made to beef up medical staffing at these hospitals.
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Fukushima's Contamination Produces Some Surprises at Sea [29Sep11] - 0 views

green.blogs.nytimes.com/...produces-some-surprises-at-sea

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 29 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Six months after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, the news flow from the stricken nuclear power plant has slowed, but scientific studies of radioactive material in the ocean are just beginning to bear fruit.The word from the land is bad enough. As my colleague Hiroko Tabuchi reported on Saturday, Japanese officials have detected elevated radiation levels in rice near the crippled reactors. Worrying radiation levels had already been detected in beef, milk, spinach and tea leaves, leading to recalls and bans on shipments.
  • Off the coast, the early results indicate that very large amounts of radioactive materials were released, and may still be leaking, and that rather than being spread through the whole ocean, currents are keeping a lot of the material concentrated. Most of that contamination came from attempts to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools, which flushed material from the plant into the ocean, and from direct leaks from the damaged facilities.
  • Working with a team of scientists from other institutions, including the University of Tokyo and Columbia University, Mr. Buesseler’s Woods Hole group in June spent 15 days in the waters off northeast Japan, studying the levels and dispersion of radioactive substances there and the effect on marine life.The project, financed primarily by the Moore Foundation after governments declined to participate, continued to receive samples from Japanese cruises into July.
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  • The leakage very likely isn’t over, either. The Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the plant, said Sept. 20 that it believed that something on the order of 200 to 500 tons a day of groundwater might still be pouring into the damaged reactor and turbine buildings.Ken Buesseler, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who in 1986 studied the effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the Black Sea, said the Fukushima disaster appeared to be by far the largest accidental release of radioactive material into the sea.
  • Chernobyl-induced radiation in the Black Sea peaked in 1986 at about 1,000 becquerels per cubic meter, he said in an interview at his office in Woods Hole, Mass. By contrast, the radiation level off the coast near the Fukushima Daiichi plant peaked at more than 100,000 becquerels per cubic meter in early April.
  • Japanese government and utility industry scientists estimated this month that 3,500 terabecquerels of cesium 137 was released directly into the sea from March 11, the date of the earthquake and tsunami, to late May. Another 10,000 terabecquerels of cesium 137 made it into the ocean after escaping from the plant as steam.
  • While Mr. Buesseler declined to provide details of the findings before analysis is complete and published, he said the broad results were sobering.“When we saw the numbers — hundreds of millions of becquerels — we knew this was the largest delivery of radiation into the ocean ever seen,’’ he said. ‘‘We still don’t know how much was released.’’Mr. Buesseler took samples of about five gallons, filtered out the naturally occurring materials and the materials from nuclear weapon explosions, and measured what was left.
  • The scientists had expected to find ocean radiation levels falling off sharply after a few months, as radioactive substances were dispersed by the currents, because, he said, “The ocean’s solution to pollution is dilution.’’The good news is that researchers found the entire region 20 to 400 miles offshore had radiation levels too low to be an immediate threat to humans.But there was also an unpleasant surprise. “Rather than leveling off toward zero, it remained elevated in late July,’’ he said, up to about 10,000 becquerel per cubic meter. ‘‘That suggests the release problem has not been solved yet.”
  • The working hypothesis is that contaminated sediments and groundwater near the coast are continuing to contaminate the seas, he said.The international team also collected plankton samples and small fish for study. Mr. Buesseler said there were grounds for concern about bioaccumulation of radioactive isotopes in the food chain, particularly in seaweed and some shellfish close to the plants. A fuller understanding of the effect on fish that are commercially harvested will probably take several years of data following several feeding cycles, he said.
  • ‘We also don’t know concentrations in sediments, so benthic biota may be getting higher doses and if consumed (shellfish), could be of concern,’’ he wrote later in an e-mail, referring to organisms that dwell on the sea floor.The study also found that the highest cesium values were not necessarily from the samples collected closest to Fukushima, he said, because eddies in the ocean currents keep the material from being diluted in some spots farther offshore.The overall results were consistent with those previously found by Japanese scientists, Mr. Buesseler said.He said more research was urgently needed to answer several questions, including why the level of contamination offshore near the plant was so high.“Japan is leading the studies, but more work is needed than any one country, or any one lab, can possibly carry out,” he said.
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Los Alamos lab begins removing radioactive soil from canyons to prevent contamination f... - 0 views

enenews.com/amination-spreading-after-fire

nuclear energy

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 13 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Contaminated soil a concern at Los Alamos lab, Reuters, July 11, 2011: [...] crews at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have begun removing contaminated soil from nearby canyons out of a concern that flash flooding could wash toxins into the Rio Grande [that supplies drinking water for Santa Fe and many other communities] officials said on Monday. [...] The soil in the canyons above Los Alamos National Laboratory, the linchpin of American’s nuclear weapons industry, contains materials with trace amounts of radiation [...] Over the weekend, about 1,200 cubic yards of contaminated soil was removed primarily from two canyons — Los Alamos and Pajarito — that run through lab property, [ Fred deSousa, spokesman for the lab's environmental control division] said.
  • An Assessment of Los Alamos National Laboratory Waste Disposal Inventory, Radioactive Waste Management Associates, November 2009:
  • Since the beginning of its operations LANL has disposed of millions of gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste throughout the laboratory grounds and in the canyons that surround the laboratory. [...]
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  • Hundreds of stacks throughout the laboratory released unfiltered gaseous waste directly from plutonium-processing hoods. The LAHDRA Project Team has developed a system of priority indices and determined that between 1944 and 1966, plutonium was the most significant contaminant released. LAHDRA estimated that the total amount of plutonium released by LANL throughout its history, even with the improved filtering systems in later years, exceeded 170 curies. [...]
  • The waste discharge at LANL began in 1944 during the development of the atomic bomb. Due to time pressures, secrecy of the project, and general lack of knowledge at the time about the dangers of radioactive materials, the laboratory took poor precautions in its disposal of radioactive and other hazardous wastes during its early years of operations. Initially, the waste, in the form of liquids, drums and cardboard boxes, was released into the canyons or deposited into unlined pits completely untreated; poor records were maintained about the volumes and activities of these releases. By the 1960s, the waste disposal practices significantly improved and better records were kept. [...]
  • This report compiles the available information about the waste disposed of at each Material Disposal Area and into the three canyons, including any recent soil and water sampling results. Some of the sites with the highest deposits of radioactive contaminants include MDA’s C, G, and H with respective inventories of up to 49,679 curies, 1,383,700 curies, and 391 curies. Routine sampling of soil and water is regularly performed and radionuclide contamination above background levels is often found at the burial sites (e.g. TA-21). [...]
  • The potential for LANL-origin contaminants to reach the Rio Grande River may vary, depending on the underground formations and the types of waste disposed of at each disposal site. The potential may be quite large, as the 2006 Santa Fe Water Quality Report stated a “qualified detection of plutonium-238”was detected in Santa Fe drinking water supplies4. The US DOE has also reported the detection of LANL radionuclides in Santa Fe drinking water since the late 1990s5. Plutonium is the main ingredient in the core or trigger of the nuclear weapons that were developed and produced at LANL, and approximately 423,776 cubic feet (ft3) (12,000 cubic meters (m3)) of plutonium contaminated waste is buried in unlined disposal pits, trenches, and shafts at the LANL site. This early detection of plutonium in Santa Fe drinking water may be an indicator of an approaching plutonium contamination plume in Santa Fe groundwater. And of course, plutonium is only one of many LANL-origin contaminants. [...]
  • As previously discussed, information pertaining to the wastes disposed of by LANL is not always complete or fully available and so many of the types and quantities of waste disposed of at various LANL technical areas remain unknown.  [...]
  • D'coda Dcoda on 13 Jul 11
     
    Includes report about methods used by Los Alamos to store nuclear waste and risks
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Nuclear Expert Discusses 'Melt-Through' at NRC Meeting: I believe melted nuclear core l... - 0 views

enenews.com/hima-reactors-onto-floor-video

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 22 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Fukushima & Japan Tokyo Area Outside Tokyo Fukushima Reactors Status of Reactors Reactor No. 1 Reactor No. 2 Reactor No. 3 Spent Fuel Pools Spent Fuel Pool No. 1 Spent Fuel Pool No. 2 Spent Fuel Pool No. 3 Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 Common Spent Fuel Pool Radiation Releases Plutonium Uranium Longterm Chernobyl Comparisons Criticality US & Canada West Coast California Los Angeles San Francisco Bay Area Hawaii Seattle Canada Midwest East Coast Florida US Nuclear Facilities North Anna (VA) Calvert Cliffs (MD) World Europe France UK Germany Chernobyl Rest of Europe South America Russia Asia China South Korea Taiwan Rest of Asia Pacific Maps & Forecasts Radiation Maps Radiation Forecasts Rad. Facts Internal Emitters Health Testing Food Water Air Rain Soil Milk Strange Coverups? Children Video Home page_
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