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Greenpeace called on Tokyo to toughen radiation screening and food labelling rules on Thursday after it said low levels of radiation had been detected in seafood sold at Japanese stores.The environmental pressure group said it tested 60 seafood samples bought at stores in eastern Japan operated by five major supermarket chains and found 34 of them with radioactive caesium-134 and caesium-137.The survey discovered readings of up to 88 becquerel per kilogram with the radiation believed to be from the ongoing nuclear accident."While the samples are well below the 500 becquerel per kilogram limit set by the authorities, the contaminated seafood still represents a health risk, especially to pregnant women and children, and it is being distributed over a wide area," said Wakao Hanaoka, Greenpeace Japan oceans campaigner.

The Japanese standard compares with a 150 becquerel per kilogram limit in Ukraine after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the group said."More concerning, however, is that there is no labelling that notifies consumers if the seafood had been screened, making it impossible for them to make informed decisions," Hanaoka said in a statement.The announcement came as Japanese consumers remain frustrated over limited information about the exact level of food contamination, while the government has sought to calm public fears and overcome mistrust of official radiation surveys.Authorities say food is safe but consumers have generally avoided products from the regions near the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which went through meltdowns and explosions after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Greenpeace, which bought the samples in September and October, has requested the government and a retail industry body to improve seafood product screening and to publicise the level of contamination in the labels.The group has sent letters to the Japan Chain Stores Association demanding them to conduct radiation checks on their own and disclose the results to consumers.Comprehensive screening and labelling should help protect consumers and raise their confidence in food they purchase, said Greenpeace's Hanaoka, adding that it should eventually help the fishing industry."Japanese consumers have legitimate concerns about the food they buy," Greenpeace's Hanaoka said.

A lot of people are not pleased with President Obama after he approved a plan for BP to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, the first of its kind since last year's Deepwater Horizon explosion. Among the upset factions is the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, Ed Markey. "Comprehensive safety legislation hasn't passed Congress, and BP hasn't paid the fines they owe for their spill, yet BP is being given back the keys to drill in the Gulf," he said. The New York Times explains the plan: It was another sign that oil exploration in the gulf is coming back to normal, although energy companies continue to complain that the permitting process for drilling new wells remains far slower than before the accident. The federal government’s approval of the BP plan to drill up to four exploratory wells nearly 200 miles from the Louisiana coast was positive news for BP, which has struggled to recover from the April 2010 accident that left 11 workers dead and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.

About those recovery efforts, a study published last week reported that seafood in the Gulf is still not safe for pregnant women and children to eat. All year, a number of environmentalists have been expressing doubts about the Gulf's still struggling ecosystem, despite BP asserting that the recovery effort was finishing up. "It's not OK down there," marine biologist Samantha Joye said in April. "There are a lot of very strange things going on – the turtles washing up on beaches, dolphins washing up on beaches, the crabs. It is just bizarre." The Times wasn't able to get BP to comment on the latest decision but pointed to a brief statement from the company that said, "We are working through the regulatory process."

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.

Japan’s six reactor Fukushima Daichi nuclear complex has inadvertently become the world’s bell-weather poster child for the inherent risks of nuclear power ever since the 11 March Tohoku offshore earthquake, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, triggered a devastating tsunami that effectively destroyed the complex. Ever since, specialists have wrangled about how damaging the consequences of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami actually were, not only for the facility but the rest of the world. The Fukushima Daichi complex was one of the 25 largest nuclear power stations in the world and the Fukushima I reactor was the first GE designed nuclear plant to be constructed and run entirely by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO.

in the aftermath of the disaster, both TEPCO and the Japanese government were at pains to minimize the disaster’s consequences, hardly surprising given the country’s densely populated regions. But now, an independent study has effectively demolished TEPCO and the Japanese government’s carefully constructed minimalist scenario. Mainichi news agency reported that France’s l’Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire (Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, or IRSN) has issued a recent report stating that the amount of radioactive cesium-137 that entered the Pacific after 11 March was probably nearly 30 times the amount stated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. in May.

According to IRSN, the amount of the radioactive isotope cesium-137 that flowed into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant between March 21 and mid-July reached an estimated 27.1 quadrillion becquerels. Why should this matter? Aren’t the Japanese authorities on top of the issue? Cesium-137 can cause burns, acute radiation sickness and even death at sufficient doses. It can contaminate food and water and, if ingested, gets distributed around the body, where it builds up in soft tissues, such as muscles. Over time, it is expelled from the body in urine. And where might tingested cesium-137 come from?

Workers can't work in Buildings 1, 2 and 3 because the radiation is too intense. Steel is corroding from saltwater, threatening pipes and pumps which cool the remains of three destroyed reactors. Radiation is crumbling concrete onto dust. Zirconium cladding is so corroded from seawater that it is doubtful that SFP 1, 2, 3 and 4 can ever be emptied. Corium under Building 4 has cracked the foundation and the building is sinking unevenly. Ground water contacting corium in the mudrock below Buildings1, 2 and 3 becomes highly contaminated, and flows directly into the Pacific Ocean, killing the Pacific Seafood Industry. Hawaii milk is so comtaminated that farmers are feeding boron to their cows. Two US cities on RadiationNetwork.com right now measure over 60cpm of radiation in the air. TEPCO seems to have lost track of the corium from 3 nuclear plants. And then there are the two earthquakes of 6.2 and 7.3 which hit just offshore since midnight...

An unstoppable tide of radioactive trash and chemical waste from Fukushima is pushing ever closer to North America. An estimated 20 million tons of smashed timber, capsized boats and industrial wreckage is more than halfway across the ocean, based on sightings off Midway by a Russian ship's crew. Safe disposal of the solid waste will be monumental task, but the greater threat lies in the invisible chemical stew mixed with sea water.

This new triple disaster floating from northeast Japan is an unprecedented nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) contamination event. Radioactive isotopes cesium and strontium are by now in the marine food chain, moving up the bio-ladder from plankton to invertebrates like squid and then into fish like salmon and halibut. Sea animals are also exposed to the millions of tons of biological waste from pig farms and untreated sludge from tsunami-engulfed coast of Japan, transporting pathogens including the avian influenza virus, which is known to infect fish and turtles. The chemical contamination, either liquid or leached out of plastic and painted metal, will likely have the most immediate effects of harming human health and exterminating marine animals.

Many chemical compounds are volatile and can evaporate with water to form clouds, which will eventually precipitate as rainfall across Canada and the northern United States. The long-term threat extends far inland to the Rockies and beyond, affecting agriculture, rivers, reservoirs and, eventually, aquifers and well water.   Falsifying Oceanography

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.

Japan Scientists Say Sea Radiation Tests May Miss Seafood Threat, Bloomberg, July 26, 2011:

“Depending on the species, fish have been known to accumulate as much as 100 times the amount of pollutants in the environment,” Jota Kanda, a professor at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology specializing in marine environment, said by phone yesterday. [...] The minimum detection limit is defined as 4 becquerels per liter for Iodine-131, 6 bq/l for Cesium-134 and 9 bq/l for Cesium-137, the report said. “Which means that at 5 becquerels per liter the ministry will proclaim the water safe, but concentration in fish may exceed the 500 becquerel limit” per kilogram set by the government, Kanda said. [...]

While readings of radiation in the air have returned to pre-3/11 levels in most areas of Japan — not including areas close to the plant and the so-called hot spots — the contamination of soil, which affects the food chain, could pose a long-term health risk, experts say. Iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137 were released in large quantities by the nuclear plant, and if they are accumulated in the body, they could cause cancer.

Kunikazu Noguchi, lecturer at Nihon University and an often-quoted expert on radiological protection, assures that consumers need not worry too much about any produce on the market, because at present, radiation levels in most vegetables, meat, dairy and other foods, even those from Fukushima Prefecture, are far below the government's safety limits and often undetectable. But for consumers concerned about the few incidents of tainted food slipping through the government checks (such as the beef from cattle that had been fed with tainted straw in Fukushima, which was shipped nationwide in July), or families with small children, Noguchi suggests a simple way to minimize their radiation exposure through food: rinse it.

rinsing the food well before cooking, preferably with hot water, and/or boiling or stewing it, a large portion of radioactive elements can be removed. In his book, published in Japanese in mid-July, "Hoshano Osen kara Kazoku wo Mamoru Tabekata no Anzen Manyuaru" ("The Safety Manual for Protecting Your Family From Radiation Contamination"), Noguchi offers tips on how to prepare food, item by item, so consumers can reduce their radiation intake at home.

Though the government last month lifted the “emergency evacuation preparation zone” designation of some areas greatly affected by the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, radiation decontamination efforts are still taking place in areas with high levels of radiation. The three main decontamination methods that have been highly publicized through media reports are: the stripping away of surface soil from school playgrounds and athletic fields, the removal of mud accumulated in gutters, and the washing of roofs using high-pressure water cleaners. While the first method is considered effective, the remaining two have been found to be effective only to a certain point, and some especially warn against overestimating the effects of high-pressure water cleaners.

“It might make you feel like you’re decontaminating, but there’s a limit to the amount of radioactive cesium that’s caked onto roofs that can be eliminated with high-pressure water cleaners,” says Kunihiro Yamada, a professor of environmental science at Kyoto Seika University. “The water cleaners wash surface dirt off, but then that tainted water goes into sewers and can contaminate rivers, thereby affecting farm goods and seafood. If people in highly populated areas were to begin using water cleaners, we may end up finding people forcing tainted water onto each other.” End Extract http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20111007p2a00m0na018000c.html

Government tests that detected levels of radioactive cesium exceeding the legal limit in tea products made with famous “Sayama tea,” a high-end brand of green tea leaves produced mainly in the southwestern region of Saitama Prefecture, have left a bitter taste in producers’ mouths. The association of green tea producers in the prefecture announced on Sept. 14 that it will voluntarily stop shipments and sales of tea leaves produced this year. But the news about cesium contamination of Sayama tea is all the more shocking to these producers–not just because it threatens the reputation of one of the most highly prized brands of green tea in Japan–but also because earlier sampling inspections by the prefectural government found no problem with locally produced tea leaves.

The results of the surprise radiation tests on food products that the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare started in August stunned the green tea industry in Saitama Prefecture. On Sept. 2 and 5, the ministry announced the results of such tests on 59 food items, including vegetables and seafood. Among them, five tea products were found to contain levels of cesium above the legal limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram. Four of them were products of Saitama Prefecture, and they contained 800 to 1,530 becquerels. The prefecture accounts for only about 1 percent of Japan’s overall tea production, but Sayama tea is one of the most famous varieties of tea in Japan.