Open Intelligence / Energy

8/3/2011,on the TV show “News Watch 9″ of NHK,they report that people from Minami soma shi had whole body counter check. On the TV show,camera caught one of the result sheets. It reads, Cs-137 129,746 Bq + Cs-134 122,676 Bq = 252,422 Bq/kg The person has had a severe internal exposure. Minami soma shi is south to Fukushima nuclear plant,about 30km area. http://twitpic.com/6475n7

3/12,SPEEDI forecast plumes would fly to there,which was concealed by the government.

Half life of xenon-131m is about 12 days. The measurement of density of radioactive materials in the air inside the Reactor 2 Containment Vessel was delayed because there was water in the temporary sampling instrument that TEPCO installed outside the CV. It looks like they decided to measure the water anyway, as well as the air. According to the measurement, the air is more radioactive than the water inside the Containment Vessel, but less radioactive than the air inside the Reactor 1 CV.

So the melted fuel is probably not even inside the Containment Vessel in Reactor 2 either. But what's with krypton and xenon? I also read a tweet by one of the workers at the plant who said there is still radioactive iodine being released, even though TEPCO's monitoring says iodine-131 is not detected at the plant any more. From TEPCO's handout for the press on August 10:

Creation of the "Special District" system for medical research has been in discussion between the national government and the Fukushima prefectural government, and the outline of the system has been revealed. It includes: loosening the regulations of the Japanese Pharmaceutical Affairs Law only in Fukushima Prefecture and thus encouraging new entrants to the medical equipment manufacturing and sales; setting up data centers for medical cases and research centers for recurrent cancer at hospitals in Fukushima, which will attract pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment companies and medical researchers to Fukushima. The government is expected to allocate 10 billion yen (US$130 million) in the 3rd supplementary budget for the fiscal 2011.

10 billion yen to set up pharmaceutical research and data collection centers so that pharmaceutical and medical equipment industries flock to Fukushima. The government is clearly looking forward to a thriving medical industry in Fukushima with abundant (slightly over 2 million) research subjects of all ages. From the above short description, it doesn't seem to be about treating people who will come down with radiation sickness. It is about collecting data and experimentation.

Since the national government is fiscally broke, the money will eventually come from the Japanese taxpayers, who will be made accomplice to this human experiment in Fukushima. Dr. Shunichi "Damashita (who conned, lied, tricked, duped, take your pick)"

In the post-disaster environment, there is now another disincentive to have children: concerns about radiation. Though long-term health implications of exposure to low doses of radiation is disputed, medical officials deem infants to be more prone to the dangers than adults. “Before the disaster, I wanted to have another child, but now I don’t think I can. I used to work at the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Plant,” says Yuki Sato, referring to the facility a few miles from the stricken Daiichi facility. Ms. Sato and her 6-year-old son are now living at an evacuation center in Koriyama City on the western edge of Fukushima Prefecture. She is concerned about radiation she may have been exposed to following the accident. “I asked the medical staff at the center whether a baby would be affected,” says Sato. “They said it ‘should' be OK.' What kind of answer is that when talking about having a baby?” Although few people were working as close to the Fukushima accident as Sato, women across the northeast of Japan, and as far away as Tokyo, are concerned about having children amid ongoing fears of the effects of radiation.

A Vancouver woman wants Canadian governments held more accountable for protecting public health in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis. In an August 8 interview at the Georgia Straight office, Isabel Budke pointed out that citizens and nongovernmental organizations can exert a great deal more pressure on Health Canada and other regulators to improve monitoring, measuring, and reporting on radiation levels in water, soil, and food.

“I really think we need to have localized and regional testing because, from what I understand, the plumes that have drifted over the Pacific Ocean with this radiation are touching down on different areas in different ways, depending on where the jet stream is going and what weather conditions are,” Budke said. “We can’t rely on testing results from the United States or testing that has been done somewhere else in the country. I think we need to have our own testing in B.C.”

Budke, who has an SFU master’s degree in environmental and resource management, said that if governments won’t do this work, she wants the public to work collaboratively to have food, soil, and water tested. Her group has created a “Canadian Network for Radiation Awareness & Monitoring” website, which will post results from citizen-initiated laboratory tests.

The survey by the Ministry of Education and Science has revealed that 296 schools in 12 prefectures have used beef from cows suspected of radioactive cesium contamination. 2 schools used the beef whose cesium level exceeded the provisional safety limit. It is not considered the level of cesium in the meat will affect health, but the ministry is telling the schools to pay attention to information on shipping restriction on food items [due to radiation].

According to the ministry, as of August 9, the meat from the cows that may have eaten radioactive rice hay was used in school lunches in 278 elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and special education schools, and 18 kindergartens, in 20 cities and towns in Japan. 127 schools in Yokohama City used it, so did 53 schools and kindergartens in Gifu City [in Gifu Prefecture], and 30 schools and kindergartens in 4 cities in Miyagi Prefecture. The schools are mostly located in eastern Japan, but 40 schools in 4 cities in Mie, Shimane, Kagawa Prefectures also used the meat.

30 schools were able to test the remaining meat, and radioactive materials were detected at 8 schools. Of the 8 schools, two schools - a special education school for students with disabilities in Miyagi Prefecture and an elementary school in Chiba, had the meat that exceeded the provisional safety limit (500 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium), testing 1,293 to 649 becquerels/kg. The municipalities say the amount of contaminated beef per person is small, and it won't affect the health.In the meantime, the Food Safety Commission under the Cabinet Office is soliciting public comments (in Japanese alone please, says the Commission) on their detailed justification for their decision to set 100 millisieverts for life-time allowable radiation exposure for the Japanese. If you read their conclusion, you would think there would be no problem with any of the nuclides that have been released from the broken nuclear power plant in Fukushima.

Japan's nuclear watchdog has denied public access to the results of thyroid check-ups for more than 1,000 Fukushima children exposed to radiation.Critics have accused Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission of denying the public accurate information about the crisis.

The commission had earlier uploaded the test results of more than 1,000 children who were checked to see if radioactive substances were accumulating in their thyroids. But it has been revealed that earlier this month the commission removed the data from its website, citing privacy reasons.

But health specialists have slammed the decision, saying the commission fears a negative public reaction to children's exposure to radiation from the crippled Fukushima plant.

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

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

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

Since its formation inside the NRC in 1989, the OIG has fielded thousands of whistleblower complaints and conducted a compelling list of investigations, many exposing abuse and neglect both at the NRC and within the nuclear power industry that led to Congressional investigations and subsequent agency reform. The OIG became legendary for preparing exhaustively detailed, and publicly available, reports of its investigations. Now, Mulley -- along with numerous freelance and non-profit nuclear safety advocates who for years relied on the IG's office as a vital backstop against lax nuclear oversight at the NRC -- all say that the IG's office appears to be broken.

At a time when the safety of the nation's nuclear power industry has come under intense scrutiny -- particularly following what investigators now say was a preventable meltdown at a Japanese nuclear facility hobbled by an earthquake and flood this spring -- the absence of a robust inspector general, say nuclear-safety advocates with organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and the Project on Government Oversight, leaves the public more vulnerable to nuclear accidents

Chief among the omissions from the OIG's final report: that NRC staff had known since at least 1990 that the pipes in question inside the Byron nuclear power plant had been corroding, but had consistently failed to take steps to force the plant operator to correct the issue until the pipes ultimately sprung a leak.

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility achieved a major milestone this week as recirculating cooling was restored to the used fuel storage pools at the last of the four damaged reactors.

marking the first time since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that the pools at all four reactors have used recirculating cooling rather than water injection

TEPCO plans to train approximately 4,000 workers in radiation safety by the end of the year.

Cap: The total carbon emissions are limited (capped) in a simple, no-nonsense way Share: The huge amounts of money involved are shared equally by the population

The primary fossil-fuel suppliers (e.g. oil companies) are required to acquire permits in order to introduce fossil fuels into the economy (by importing them or extracting them from the ground).

Next, the Share. Since the fossil fuel suppliers have to buy the permits, they will pass on this cost by increasing the fuel price. This flows through the economy (like a carbon tax), making carbon-intensive goods cost more.

A shortage of skilled engineers is threatening to hamper efforts by BP to boost production in the North Sea, a senior executive has said. The oil giant is expected to recruit between 150 and 300 jobs a year but admits that one of its biggest problems is finding the right people with the right skills. The comments, reported in the Sunday Telegraph, come a month after BP and its partners announced plans to invest £3 billion in redeveloping two oil fields off the Shetland Islands. The move should create hundreds of new jobs but Trevor Garlick, head of the company's North Sea operations, said BP would struggle to attract enough engineers for the available roles. He said

"Getting hold of the right people is a real issue for us. We are hiring a lot of people, but we are also an exporter of a couple of hundred people to other regions. We are a centre for recruiting elsewhere.

Iran's first nuclear power plant, built by Russia, will be connected to the national grid in late August, atomic chief Fereydoon Abbasi Davani told the Arabic-language network Al-Alam on Sunday. "The test to reach 40 percent of the plant's power capacity has been done successfully... God willing, we will be able to commission the plant by the end of Ramadan with an initial production" of the same amount, Abbasi Davani said. He estimated that the plant would reach its "full capacity of 1,000 megawatts" in late November or early December.

The connection of the Bushehr plant in southern Iran to the national grid, originally scheduled for the end of 2010, has been been delayed several times because of technical problems. The plant was started up in November 2010 but repeated technical problems delayed its operation, leading to the removal of its fuel in March. Russia has blamed the delays on Iran for forcing its engineers to work with outdated parts in the facility, while the latest delay in March was pinned on wear and tear at the plant.

Construction of the plant started in the 1970s with the help of German company Siemens, which quit the project after the 1979 Islamic revolution over concerns about nuclear proliferation. In 1994, Russia agreed to complete the plant and provide fuel for it, with the supply deal committing Iran to returning the spent fuel, amid Western concerns over the Islamic republic's controversial uranium enrichment programme. Abbasi Davani's remarks come on the eve of a scheduled visit by Security Council of Russia's secretary Nikolai Patrushev, who will hold talks with his Iranian counterpart Saeed Jalili and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

The information comes from a strange source - the husband and wife comedian couple cum independent journalists attending and reporting on TEPCO and the government press conferences when they are not on stage. In their blogpost on August 11 (in Japanese), they relate their talk with a researcher at the University of Tokyo who has submitted a scientific paper to a foreign academic society. This researcher, whom they say they cannot name because the paper is being reviewed right now, went to Fukushima and collected soil samples, rice hay samples, and water samples. He even went to the front of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant and collected samples there.

He also went to Iitate-mura. And he tells the couple that he found neptunium-239 in Iitate-mura, about 38 kilometers from the plant, in approximately the same amount as he found at the front gate of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. That is the topic of his paper. The couple says in the very intelligent post that they cannot provide details because the paper is in review (but they also say the researcher has given them permission to talk about it in general terms), but it was in several thousand becquerels. There is no mention of whether it was per kilogram or per square meter or per something else.

There is no mention of when the researcher went to Iitate-mura. I could be wrong but the indication from the post is that it was after the news that chlorine-38 detection at Fukushima I Nuke Plant was false. TEPCO retracted the earlier announcement of chlorine-38 detection, on April 20. Uranium-239, whose half life is about 24 minutes, decays into neptunium-239 through beta decay. Neptunium-239, gamma emitter whose half life is about 2.4 days, decays into plutonium-239 whose half life is 24,200 years.

A survey shows that a small amount of radioactive iodine has been detected in the thyroid glands of hundreds of children in Fukushima Prefecture. The result was reported to a meeting of the Japan Pediatric Society in Tokyo on Saturday. A group of researchers led by Hiroshima University professor Satoshi Tashiro tested 1,149 children in the prefecture for radiation in their thyroid glands in March following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Radioactive iodine was detected in about half of the children. Tashiro says radiation in thyroid glands exceeding 100 millisieverts poses a threat to humans, but that the highest level in the survey was 35 millisieverts. Tashiro says based on the result, it is unlikely that thyroid cancer will increase in the future, but that health checks must continue to prepare for any eventuality.

Scientists in California are reporting raised levels of radioactive chemicals in the atmosphere in the weeks following the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The measurements are the latest evidence that the reactors melted down catastrophically.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), say that radioactive sulfur from the stricken power plant reached California in late March, two weeks after the crisis at Fukushima began. The sulfur is a by-product of emergency procedures taken immediately after the accident. The work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The latest measurements seem to confirm that. For several years, Mark Thiemens, a chemist at UCSD, and his group have been measuring atmospheric levels of a radioactive isotope of sulfur, 35S, which is usually generated by cosmic rays striking argon atoms in the atmosphere. On 28 March, the team detected levels of radioactive sulfur dioxide gas (35SO2) and sulphate aerosols (35SO4-2) that were well above the natural background.

(UPDATE-CORRECTION: the contaminated area according to the Chinese is "252,000 square-kilometer", and not "252,000 square-meter" as in the initial post.) ---------------------------------- China sent a survey ship and taking seawater samples off the coast of Fukushima back in June and July. The State Oceanic Administration now says the contamination of the Pacific Ocean may extend as far as 800 kilometers (497 miles) off the coast of Fukushima, as reported by the Science and Technology Daily (ST Daily) in China, according to Asahi Shinbun.

China's State Oceanic Administration cites the result of the environmental survey it did in the western Pacific Ocean off the coast of Fukushima and says a much wider area of the Pacific Ocean is contaminated with radioactive materials than the Japanese government has announced, and that the possibility cannot be eliminated that radioactive materials have entered the ocean under the Chinese control".

The Chinese paper "Science and Technology Daily (electronic version)" reported on August 15 as the State Oceanic Administration's written response to their inquiry.

From Twitpic of Massahisa Sato, member of the Upper House of the Japan's Diet. Bags of radioactive ashes from the garbage incinerating plant are piled up high right near an apartment building in Fukushima City. He says some of the residents in the apartment building have evacuated for the fear of radiation coming off that pile. (Click the photo to enlarge to see the details.)

On a separate, culturally-correct "rumor", the Japan Buddhist Federation may be planning to organize a nationwide ceremony whereby the debris in the disaster-affected areas in Tohoku will be burned to pray for the spirit of the dead at its member temples throughout Japan.

How does a court seize a nuclear plant? Well, that damn Russian floating nuclear plant is cursed. After a series of early setbacks, the plant, Akademik Lomonosov, is now close to completion. Too bad the shipyard building it is going to go bankrupt. The power plant had been planned to be used in the Arctic Ocean for some years now, but the Court of Arbitration of Saint Petersburg recently seized the floating nuclear power plant due to a request from Rosenergoatom, the state owned company that will operate the plant.

Rosenergoatom wanted the nuclear power plant in state control because United Industrial Corporation, the largest shareholder of Baltiysky Zavod, the shipyard building the plant, has given its stake in the shipyard to a bank as collateral for an unreturned loan. Basically, Rosenergoatom doesn't want another company claiming the shipyard's assets (i.e. the floating power plant) during the inevitable bankruptcy proceedings.

it's a terribly messy situation with a possibly shady cast of characters and a whole lot of money involved. Which means, this can go on forever. Surprisingly, the plant is still being built and is still set to fire up its first atom in 2012 but we're not sure who's going to end up running the thing. I just can't believe that this FLOATING NUCLEAR POWER PLANT has been taken over by guys in suits.