Open Intelligence / Energy

The government is also considering allowing evacuees from areas within a 3-km radius of the plant to return home temporarily. Cumulative radiation over the one-year period from the start of the disaster is projected to reach between several millisieverts and over 500 millisieverts at the 50 locations within the no-entry zone.

Outside the exclusion zone, cumulative radiation in the town of Namie, 22 km northwest of the plant, was estimated at 115 millisieverts over the five-month period, the highest among locations outside the zone and equivalent to 229 millisieverts over a 12-month period. The cumulative radiation map is based on readings taken at 4,283 locations, with a focus on Fukushima Prefecture

It stands to reason that at some point the Ukrainian government would like to be able to use that land again, but the scientists have calculated that what they call cesium’s “ecological half-life” — the time for half the cesium to disappear from the local environment — is between 180 and 320 years.

“Normally you’d say that every 30 years, it’s half as bad as it was. But it’s not,” said Tim Jannik, nuclear scientist at Savannah River National Laboratory and a collaborator on the work. “It’s going to be longer before they repopulate the area.”

In 1986, after the Chernobyl accident, a series of test sites was established along paths that scientists expected the fallout to take. Soil samples were taken at different depths to gauge how the radioactive isotopes of strontium, cesium and plutonium migrated in the ground. They’ve been taking these measurements for more than 20 years, providing a unique experiment in the long-term environmental repercussions of a near worst-case nuclear accident.

In some ways, Chernobyl is easier to understand than DOE sites like Hanford, which have been contaminated by long-term processes. With Chernobyl, said Boris Faybishenko, a nuclear remediation expert at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, we have a definite date at which the contamination began and a series of measurements carried out from that time to today. “I have been involved in Chernobyl studies for many years and this particular study could be of great importance to many [Department of Energy] researchers,” said Faybishenko.

The results of this study came as a surprise. Scientists expected the ecological half-lives of radioactive isotopes to be shorter than their physical half-life as natural dispersion helped reduce the amount of material in any given soil sample. For strontium, that idea has held up. But for cesium the the opposite appears to be true. The physical properties of cesium haven’t changed, so scientists think there must be an environmental explanation. It could be that new cesium is blowing over the soil sites from closer to the Chernobyl site. Or perhaps cesium is migrating up through the soil from deeper in the ground. Jannik hopes more research will uncover the truth.

“There are a lot of unknowns that are probably causing this phenomenon,” he said. Beyond the societal impacts of the study, the work also emphasizes the uncertainties associated with radioactive contamination. Thankfully, Chernobyl-scale accidents have been rare, but that also means there is a paucity of places to study how radioactive contamination really behaves in the wild.

“The data from Chernobyl can be used for validating models,” said Faybishenko. “This is the most value that we can gain from it.” Update 12/28: The second paragraph of this story was updated after discussion with Tim Jannik to more accurately reflect the idea of ecological half-life.

Citation: “Long-Term Dynamics of Radionuclides Vertical Migration in Soils of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone” by Yu.A. Ivanov, V.A. Kashparov, S.E. Levchuk, Yu.V. Khomutinin, M.D. Bondarkov, A.M. Maximenko, E.B. Farfan, G.T. Jannik, and J.C. Marra. AGU 2009 poster session.

But Hanley said he's confident the test results will prove the food supply is radiation free. "There is really no indication from any of the monitoring that has been going on since the incident in Japan back in March that there's been any significant fallout," he said.

This blindingly obvious question was firmly in my mind when we travelled to Iwaki City – a mid-sized, non-descript sort of place that now finds itself uncomfortably close to the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Many of its residents have now evacuated, fearing the radioactive leaks that continue to spew from the plant. Many of the 3,000 workers now employed in clean-up operations at the plant have taken their place, cramming the local hotels and renting otherwise deserted family homes.

These employment “opportunities” are an unfortunate by-product of Japan’s great earthquake and tsunami. The folks at the “Tokyo Electric Power Company” (TEPCO), built a 5.7m seawall to protect the complex from natural disasters – but the tsunami wave was 13.1 m high.

Employees are under strict instructions not to speak to journalists – and supervisors from their various employers keep an active eye on them when they return to Iwaki in the evening. We were thrown out of one hotel when we had the audacity to approach a group of men employed to clear rubble from the site. Yet there were others who wanted to talk – albeit anonymously. Their working conditions I asked? Terrible, they said: “a burning-hell”, “terrifying” and “very troubling” – phrases I recorded in my notebook. But I wasn’t getting any closer to answering my question – why work there?

Money is certainly the big motivator. Japan has been mired in recession for decades and the country’s 54 nuclear power plants have long provided work to low or non-skilled, itinerant workers. Fukushima is no different – although it is much more dangerous.

A Channel 4 News researcher rang a number on a “jobs-available” poster that we found plastered on a wall in Iwaki. “What sort of experience do you have,” said the man on the phone to our researcher. “Well I’ve done some car maintenance,” said our researcher. “Good enough,” said the man, presumably one of the 600 “subcontractors” engaged by TEPCO. Our researcher asked about the daily rate. “Six-thousand yen (£50),” he said. That quickly went up to 8,500 yen (£67) as our researcher hummed and hawed a bit. But there was something special on offer said the subcontractor. “You can earn 40,000 yen (£315) an hour if you want, but what you have to do is dangerous.” We didn’t find out what that job entailed but it probably involved some sort of increased risk of radiation exposure.

One man told us he had come out of “a sense of duty” and there were others who were simply told by their employers that they had to work at Fukushima. “Could you refuse?” I asked one technician. “Well, that would put you in a very uncomfortable position,” he said before adding, “Japanese workers are very obedient.”

If they don’t challenge their superiors in the workplace, what do these men (and we didn’t meet any women working at the plant) tell their loved ones at home? Well, it turns out some of them don’t actually tell their wives and children what they’re up to. “Wives just get panicked,” said one. “It is better just to say that I’m working on the clean-up (of the coast) in Myagi,” he added.  Another employee described how his mother took the news. “She was totally shocked – but she didn’t stop me. (My family) are very worried about me – about the heat and my health and radiation exposure.”

It’s a long-term form of job security I suppose – the containment and maintenance of highly toxic materials that will take thousands of years to decompose. But is any job worth these sorts of risks? Workers told us they couldn’t afford to be choosey about where they take jobs – but I got the distinct impression the majority wished it was somewhere else.

The Cohen Commission hearings into the collapse of the 2009 Fraser River sockeye salmon run resumed in Vancouver earlier this week.

Morton also wants the CFIA to test farmed salmon, because she says trace amounts of radiation were detected in seaweed on the B.C. coast.

NRC spokesman Roger Hannah says the agency was not immediately aware of any damage at nuclear power plants in the southeast. Hannah said he knew of no other shut reactor but that unusual events were reported at a dozen other plant sites. Louisa County is about 40 miles northwest of Richmond.

Though a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told reporters that "as far as we know, everything is safe", the event revived fears about the safety of US nuclear plants. Most of the region's reactors were reportedly designed to withstand a 5.9 to 6.1 magnitude quake – which means Tuesday's quake was, for many, too close for comfort.

The North Anna plant is located about 15 miles from the epicentre of the quake in Mineral, Virginia. It was designed to withstand a 6.2-magnitude quake, according to its owner, Dominion Resources. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission lists the plant as one of the 10 US plants most at risk of damage in a seismic event. So, it seems like we got lucky in this case.

We're also lucky that this particular plant isn't as close to an urban centre as many others in the US. It's nearly 50 miles from Richmond, and about 100 miles from Washington, DC. But the plant that the NRC deemed most at risk was the Indian Point 3 reactor in Buchanan, New York – just 38 miles from New York City. This is the primary reason why New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for the plant to be shut down. After Fukushima, everyone within 50 miles of the plant had to be evacuated. Right now, our evacuation plans for all our nuclear sites only cover a 10-mile radius. If something really bad were to happen at Indian Point, it could create the need to evacuate 21 million people

don't believe we're going to shut down our existing nuclear energy infrastructure entirely any time soon. But at the very least, the 23 August quake should be a reminder that our worst-case scenarios might not be bad enough. We should perhaps rethink just how ready we are for the worst.

The State Oceanic Administration considers that "the western Pacific Ocean to the east and southeast of Fukushima Prefecture has been clearly affected by the nuclear plant accident" and has ordered the related agencies to strengthen the inspection of the marine products off the coast of Fukushima for radioactive materials. On August 15, China's State Oceanic Administration announced that the evidence their survey ship had collected off the coast of Fukushima indicated a much wider contamination of the Pacific Ocean than the Japanese government had admitted so far. If the firefly squid was caught in this survey, they are talking about the Pacific Ocean 800 kilometers east of the Fukushima coast.

Hokiaido

Akita

Yamagata

Gunma

For all the other cities and prefectures, residents beware. Beware of the mass media too, who is very quick to mislead by branding the residents as "selfish" and "uncaring" for refusing to burn the radioactive debris. Or firewood. Like a heap of abuse dished out to Kyoto City residents. Glancing through the tweets of people in Japan knowledgeable about waste management, I'm beginning to realize that there is a figurative "waste management village" whose residents are made up of experts, industry people, government officials with vested, common interest in promoting waste processing facilities - just like the "nuclear power plant village" that may or may not be unraveling.

Tokyo

Kanagawa

Toyama

Ishikawa

Yamanashi

Shizuoka

Aichi

During their 18-day voyage ending on July 4, the monitoring team collected air, water and biological samples from the target areas. Radioactive cesium-137 and strontium-90 have been detected in all water samples while cesium-134 has been found in 94 percent of the samples, the statement said.

The highest amounts of cesium-137 and strontium-90 in the samples were 300 times and 10 times, respectively, the amount of natural background radiation in China's territorial waters.

Areva is a process, devised by a French firm of the same name, whereby radioactive isotopes are bound together by chemicals that are injected into the contaminated water of a reactor’s cooling system.

These standards are also being applied to humans. According to Gunderson, “Kids are now allowed to get the same dosages as adult nuclear workers would get in the U.S. It’s a complete distortion of radiation physics.” Another recent development that has Gunderson concerned is the buildup of radioactive sewage that poses a catastrophic risk to drinking water. “Before the accident, they used to turn the sewage into building blocks,” says Gunderson. “Now they can’t. So they have these enormous piles of sewage sludge that can’t be disposed of.  It’s not yet in the ground water, but it’s heading that way.”

Gunderson continued, “They’re cooling the reactors by pouring treated water into the top and onto the floor. That has a tendency to build up lots more radioactivity in the filters that are trapping it, but it’s not building up any more water, and that’s a good thing because they’ve run out of space on site.”

Instead of taking steps to raise public awareness about the dangers of exposure to contaminated food products that will contribute to these cancer risks, the Japanese government is doing just the opposite. “They’re raising the radiation standards,” Gunderson reports. “Before, 600 becquerels [measure of radioactivity] were the most you could have in beef. Now they’ve raised the bar to 6,000. They’re telling people it’s safe.”

“What’s happening off site is frightening,” says Gunderson. “Dangerous levels of radioactive contamination are being found in kids’ urine, mothers’ breast milk and animal meat. I’m estimating that over the course of the next 20 years, there’ll be a million cancers. If they’re not caught soon enough, many of those will be fatal.” “The first cancers will affect the thyroids,” Gunderson predicts. “They take about three years. In three to five years it’ll move on to the lungs. In the northern prefectures, I expect a 20 percent increase in lung cancers.”

The Japanese have also initiated a campaign to get people to return to homes as close as 20 miles from the site of the accident. They’re clearing streets and playgrounds, but everything else is still contaminated. “On the sides of the roads where the runoff is, we’re seeing 50,000- 60,000 becquerels in a pound of dirt,” adds Gunderson.

“My biggest concern is that the Japanese are burning rubbish,” he says. “Farmers in rural areas are burning their contaminated crops and those in urban areas are burning their trash. If two pounds of material has less than 8,000 becquerels, the government allows it to be burned.”

Gunderson says the government also allows blending of highly contaminated material with material that isn’t, creating an even more lethal mix that, when burned, revolatilizes the deadly, cancer-inducing cesium. The resulting plumes not only drift into neighboring communities, he said, but are also caught up in wind currents that reach the western coast of the United States and Canada.

To achieve the goals set in the emergency plan, the government will lead decontamination activities to scale down areas where radiation exposure is expected to top 20 millisieverts a year, such as within the 20-km no-entry zone around the plant, it said.

Local governments can request the cleanup of contamination if safety is assured. Reactors spewed less The amount of radioactive substances emitted into the atmosphere from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant is now estimated at 570,000 terabecquerels, down from an earlier estimate of 630,000 terabecquerels, the chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission said.

Given a large margin of error in an estimate of this kind, however, the figure "may change greatly" as more data on the nuclear accident become available, Haruki Madarame said Wednesday. The Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency has made its own estimate that the total amount of radioactive substances released into the air from the plant is 770,000 terabecquerels.

In the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986, an estimated 5.2 million terabecquerels of radioactive substances were discharged into the atmosphere. The earlier estimate was revised based on new data on the release of radioactive substances in the four days from March 12, when the first of a series of explosions occurred at the plant. According to the recalculated estimate by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, 130,000 terabecquerels of iodine-131 and 11,000 terabecquerels of cesium-137 were emitted into the air from March 11 through April 5, Madarame said.