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Mainstream media not reporting the full story on Fukushima disaster

Water remains a primary complication; 15 million highly radioactive gallons await proper treatment and storage. That’s equivalent to about thirty highly contaminated Olympic-sized swimming pools. It is unclear how much of this water has already been released into the Pacific Ocean, but it is likely in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of gallons. 

Japan Update, Footprints  Sara Barczak , 10 June 11 Unfortunately, the mainstream media is reporting increasingly less on the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan. Nonetheless, radioactivity continues to be released into the air and water at the severely damaged facility.

Most notably, the Japanese nuclear safety agency announced that actual radiation levels were likely more than double what was initially reported. Clearly the situation is far from under control. In fact, the highest levels yet were recently measured at reactor Unit 1 – 4,000 millisieverts per hour were detected by a robot last Saturday, rendering it unsafe for workers to enter the area.

This means that the radiation is so high now that any worker exposed to it would absorb the maximum permissible dose of 250 millisieverts in only about four minutes. According to recent reports from the Japanese government, fuel has melted through the base of reactor Units 1, 2 and 3, and is “pooling” in the outer containment vessels. The report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, was revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a “melt-through” as being “far worse than a core meltdown” and “the worst possibility in a nuclear accident.”

Water remains a primary complication; 15 million highly radioactive gallons await proper treatment and storage. That’s equivalent to about thirty highly contaminated Olympic-sized swimming pools. It is unclear how much of this water has already been released into the Pacific Ocean, but it is likely in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of gallons. A multi-national government panel including Korea, China, Japan, and 14 neighboring countries has been established to monitor the resulting radiation over the next four years. Current research is showing radiation levels hundreds of times above normal off the coast of Japan.

This will undoubtedly affect seafood safety and potentially human health. Some scientists estimate that the amount of radiation released into the ocean has already surpassed Chernobyl levels. Soil research findings are also showing contamination levels as high as those found after Chernobyl in some parts of the 230 square mile area of affected land.

Determining exactly how much radiation has been or is continuing to be released is a difficult task that also complicates the situation. Add Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (Tepco) lack of transparency, the Japanese government’s apparent dishonesty and the reality that the earthquake and resulting tsunami disabled on-the-ground radiation monitoring, and it becomes nearly impossible to understand how much radioactivity has been released.

Recent charges imply that the Japanese government knowingly withheld radiation readings that indicated a meltdown the day after the earthquake, and intentionally deceived the public by claiming that the nuclear fuel was intact. An interesting interview with environmental scientist and engineer Marco Kaltofen by Fairewinds Associates provides some background on radiation and the releases from the Fukushima nuclear facility……http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2011/06/10/japan-radiation-concerns/

June 11, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - Fukushima 2011