nuclear-news

Podcast: Tokyo’s highly radioactive soil

Podcast Gundersen: Tokyo soil so hot it should be sent to nuclear waste dump — Really severe releases hit city  http://enenews.com/gundersen-tokyo-soil-hot-be-shipped-radioactive-dump    http://www.fairewinds.com/content/fairewinds-podcast
November 19th, 2012  
Fairewinds Podcast, Nov. 18, 2012:
Nuclear Expert Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Energy Education: : Our readers may remember when I came back from Tokyo back in February, I had 5 samples of dirt that I had taken just randomly around the city. They were all over 7,000 disintegrations per second in a two pound bag (Bq/kg). What that told me was that the releases from the accident were really severe even as far away as Tokyo. And I said then that if this were contaminated ground at a nuclear power plant it would have to be considered as nuclear waste. Well, we took a lot flack for that on the Fairewinds site, but we were right on the mark.

What happened just last week was that in a suburb of Tokyo another sample was taken by citizens and they brought it to the attention of the government that then sampled it. But basically they had a hot spot that was in excess of 10,000 disintegrations per second per kilogram of their sample. So here we are 9 months after I took my samples and citizens are still finding hot spots all over the Tokyo area. I think it speaks to one, the magnitude of the initial release. This was a serious release, not just for Fukushima Prefecture but for Tokyo and its suburbs as well. […]

So if Tokyo could be highly contaminated to the point where its soil should be shipped to a nuclear waste dump […] if Tokyo can have soil so hot that it should be shipped to a radioactive dump, what might happen to our nation’s capitol, the biggest city in the United States, or to L.A. in the event of a nuclear accident? We’re really not prepared. Our policy makers at the NRC have not even envisioned that as a possibility.

November 21, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan, Resources -audiovicual