nuclear-news

Fukushima World Health Organization report greeted with broad skepticism

Image source : http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/03/29/a-radioactive-legacy/

“…In Bellona’s opinion, the WHO report released yesterday falls well short of the realities that are immediately evident from Fukushima’s sister disasters…..”

Charles Digges, 01/03-2013

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2013/who_fukushima_report

As the second anniversary of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster approaches, people in the area worst affected by the catastrophe have a slightly higher risk of developing certain kinds of cancers, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. 

Many humanitarian groups working in the area have immediately said the WHO is being employed to assist in a whitewash of how dire the health difficulties facing Fukushima residents – as well as workers assisting in the cleanup – actually are, and have refuted the claims of the study, citing at least three thyroid cancer incidents related to the fallout from Fukushima.

A magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, killed nearly 19,000 people and devastated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which spewed radiation, forcing about 160,000 people to flee their homes – the majority of which have not been able to return.

It was the worst nuclear accident since a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine in 1986.

Nils Bøhmer, Bellona’s general manager and nuclear physicist emphasized that the WHO report was only the first in a series of studies that need to be conducted on citizens of Japan’s Fukushima prefecture who were directly impacted by the accident.

He also cited that some 21,000 cleanup workers for Tokyo Electric Power, or TEPCO, have yet to have their own radiation exposure figures submitted to Japanese regulatory officials. These figures are due this month, but TEPCO has blamed its failure to submit the documentation on its current inability to digitize the data.

“These workers have probably received much higher does of radiation that the public that was evacuated,” said Bøhmer. “So it is far too early to reach any conclusions about the actual radiation impacts on humans.”

Bøhmer’s comments point up just one of a number of snafus in the WHO report, which NGOs, aid organizations, other UN bodies, Japanese authorities and a member of the WHO have disputed.  

Summary of the WHO’s reporting

“A breakdown of data, based on age, gender and proximity to the plant, does show a higher cancer risk for those located in the most contaminated parts,” Dr Maria Neira, WHO director for public health and environment, said yesterday upon presenting the organizations report entitled, “Health risk assessment from the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.”

The United Nations agency said for the general population in Japan the predicted health risks of cancer were low. But it was not able to say how many people were exposed in the area where the highest amount of radioactive material was released.

A substantial amount of radiation was released into the environment and a 20-kilometer evacuation zone was set up.

The WHO report says that it has found no data on any cancers among the population in the area, but humanitarian organizations have offered contradictory evidence to those claims, saying at least three cases of thyroid cancer have been linked to the disaster.

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March 4, 2013 Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

ATOM Project presented at the ICAN Civil Society Forum in Oslo

The Atom Project will tell the tragic and hopeful stories of survivors of nuclear testing from the region of Semey, Kazakhstan, the site of more than 450 Soviet-era nuclear tests. The survivors and their children continue to suffer from illness, disease and severe deformities caused by exposure to nuclear radiation during and after the testing, which took place 100 miles outside of the city, then called Semipalatinsk.

semipalatinsk in eastern kazakhstan was the main test facility for nuclear weapons in the soviet union – photo by robert knoth

04 March 2013, 11:37

ASTANA. March 4. KAZINFORM Kazakh delegation with the Honorary ATOM Project Ambassador Karipbek Kuyukov was among  500 campaigners from 70 countries gathered in Oslo, Norway, from 2 to 3 March 2013 for the Civil Society Forum of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), with the aim of ramping up efforts to get negotiations started on a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The two-day forum included presentations by international policy and military experts, the Red Cross and UN representatives.

The ATOM project has been presented during the event.  Deputy Director of “Nazarbayev Center” Roman Vasilenko informed the participants and guests of the efforts of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the international community in the aftermath of nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, and stressed the importance of further work in this area.

The ATOM Project is an international petition campaign designed to unify global public opinion against nuclear weapons testing. The Atom Project went live August 22, 2012 with international television and social media campaigns, a short documentary and video profiles of current survivors of nuclear testing.

The Project is an initiative of The Nazarbayev Center, whose mandate, in part, is to continue and broaden Kazakhstan’s legacy of fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons and weapons testing. The Atom Project hopes to affect real and lasting change by engaging millions of global citizens to stop nuclear weapons testing by joining together to show the world’s leaders that its citizens deserve and demand a world safe from additional nuclear weapons testing.

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March 4, 2013 Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized | 4 Comments

UK ministers have no nuclear ‘plan B’, MPs warn

Ministers have no ‘plan B’ if new nuclear plants are not built and are “crossing their fingers” that private companies deliver on time and on budget, a committee of MPs warned on Monday.

By Emily Gosden

6:00AM GMT 04 Mar 2013

March 4, 2013 Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Fukushima – Strontium 90 is about half the amount of Cesium in the sea water

Sunday, 3 March 2013

Strontium 90 is about half the amount of Cesium in the sea water

 

Strontium90 is one of the four major radio nuclides from the nuclear disaster that we need to be aware of.  According to Prof. Koide, Kyoto University Reactor Research Institute, the amount of strontium90 that was discharged from Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was 1/1000 of Cesium 134/137, that doesn’t sound a lot comparing it with Cesium, but it’s considered to be very harmful to the environment: It is 300 times more radioactively toxic.  While cesium can be out of body in 100 days, much of strontium90 stays in bones of the body, and yet we don’t hear much about it.  The Food Authority checks Iodine and Cesium but not Strontium90 because it’s difficult to measure the exact amount.  It costs ￡300 in Japan to measure one item and takes half a month. Therefore if you measure fish, they rot in this time.  So there has been a tendency to ignore Strontium90.

While Cesium vaporizes easily and moves far away, Strontium90 dissolves in water easily.  Therefore you find it more in rivers, ponds, lakes and in sea water.  This is worrying because once our water source is contaminated, then all living things are affected.  Soon after the accident, milk farmers in the Fukushima prefecture had to throw away all the milk that was produced there.  As a result, one milk farmer committed suicide, feeling there was no hope. Mr. Takashi Hirose, a journalist, and one of the main figures of the anti-nuclear campaign in Japan commented that it was the water that the cows were drinking that had been the cause of the contamination.

According to a survey report by the Marine Information Department Environmental Research Division Pollution survey Room, Strontium90 is about half the amount of Cesium in the sea water.

(Reference) http://www.rui.jp/ruinet.html?i=200&c=400&t=6&k=2&m=272935

When it gets into the food chain it can accumulate further by biological concentration: (a few million times more than Cesium) In Japan fishmeal mixed into fertilizers for soil and into the feed for farm animals such as pigs and chicken.  Because no authorities check for strontium90, there is no control on how much of it is getting into our food and drink.

When it’s taken into the body, most of it accumulates in the bones and stays there for the rest of your life as it has a long half life is (29.1 years).  It continues emitting alpha radiation, damaging nearby cells and leads to the development of leukemia and bone cancer.   Strontium90 can get accumulated in seaweed including Nori, too.

Prof. Koide commented on a radio program that: since the magnitude 7 Earthquake smashed the Daiichi nuclear power plant buildings, lots of concrete buildings now have cracks ; hence lots of radioactive water must have been leaking into the sea all the time. 

Tepco has been pretending they don’t know this, except for occasional reports about finding leakage.  Recently Tepco announced that they are going to discharge radioactive water into the sea this April.  I heard about a report saying all the existing tanks are full.  The tanks at reactor 5 and 6 are actually flooding.  It sounds like there is no end to this situation.  We can’t stop the contamination of the environment once a nuclear disaster has occurred.  All we can do to protect ourselves is to minimize the quantity of contaminated food and drink we take into our bodies.

More detail information on Food safety in Japan:

http://fukushimaappeal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/food-safety-in-japan.html

http://fukushimaappeal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/are-imported-food-safe-after-chernobyl.html

NHK Science & Culture blog  24/7/12 http://www9.nhk.or.jp/kabun-blog/200/127165.html

Strontium90 was detected in Akita, Iwate, Yamagata, Ibaragi, Kanawagawa, Gunma, Saitama, Chiba, Tochigi prefectures and Tokyo.

Highest level of Strontium90 was in Hitachinaka-shi, Ibaragi prefecture: Strontium90 – 6BQ/m2, equal to 1/2850 of Cesium.

Posted by Mia June at 12:46

http://fukushimaappeal.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/strontium90-is-about-half-amount-of.html

65 percent of worlds nuclear laboratories get Strontium 90 measurement wrong –

“The determination of 90Sr proved difficult for 65 % of the participants which submitted results outside the acceptable range (± 20 %). No improvement could be seen compared to 90Sr determination in one of the previous ILC exercises (Wätjen et al., 2008).
The laboratories concerned, i.e. the vast majority of laboratories reporting 90Sr results, are urged to review their analysis procedures.”

European Commission
Joint Research Centre
Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements

https://nuclear-news.net/2012/11/14/65-percent-of-worlds-nuclear-laboratories-get-strontium-90-measurement-wrong/

Radioactive strontium one million times over limit into ocean from Fukushima

“The source of the beta radiation in the water is likely to include strontium 90, which if absorbed in the body through eating tainted seaweed or fish, accumulates in bone and can cause cancer,”

Fukushima floods into Pacific Ocean, Strontium becomes One Million Times over Limit, The Canadian, 07 DECEMBER 2011

https://nuclear-news.net/2011/12/09/radioactive-strontium-one-million-times-over-limit-into-ocean-from-fukushima/

March 4, 2013 Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment