2015 July 14 « nuclear-news

Cs-134/137 detected from all of the marine soil samples along Eastern Japan coastal area

From the report of NRA (Nuclear Regulation Authority), Cesium-134/137 was detected from 32 of 32 marine soil samples taken this May.

The sampling locations are offshore of Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki and Chiba Prefecture. The report was published on 7/13/2015.

The report says the samples were taken from 30m depth to 660m and collected by Marine Ecology Research Institute (MERI) and analyzed by Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA).

Cs-134 was not detected from only one sample. Cs-134 was measured from all the rest of the samples.

The highest reading was 164 Bq/Kg in total of Cs-134/137. The sampling location was approx. in 40km South East of Fukushima nuclear plant.

Other nuclides such as Sr-90 and U-235 were not even tested. They did not collect samples from Tokyo Bay either.

http://radioactivity.nsr.go.jp/en/contents/11000/10000/24/458_20150713.pdf

Source: Fukushima Daiichi

Cs-134/137 detected from all of the marine soil samples along Eastern Japan coastal area

July 14, 2015 Posted by dunrenard | Japan | Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushima Radiation | 1 Comment

Cesium 137 & Cesium 134 detected in seaweed on the West Coast of British Columbia

We have new clear precise lab results that seaweed on the West Coast of BC has both Cesium 137 and Cesium 134 radiation in it. PLEASE stop eating from the Pacific. Results are from a test sample sent in from my friend Jeff whose use of a Geiger Counter on seaweed showed distinctly elevated readings. He sent the samples to labs and these were the results.

The final result is in for the seaweed sample you sent us on June 16, 2015.

137Cs = 0.5 +/- 0.3 Bq/kg
134Cs = 0.3 +/- 0.3 Bq/kg

The 137Cs is above the limit of detection. The 134Cs is at the detection,limit which is generally considered a nondetect.

While the amount of radio cesium was low it held up after repeated analyses. Although the result is a low detect, it is nevertheless one of the few samples that shows any radioactive cesium in west coast seaweed samples. Time will tell if it is part of a trend.

Source: Mimi German from Radcast.org

July 14, 2015 Posted by dunrenard | Canada, oceans | Fukushima Radiation | 3 Comments

Kyushu Electric expects to restart Sendai nuke reactor Aug. 10

Kyushu Electric Power Co. will have the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture back online as early as Aug. 10, according to sources.

The utility will begin producing electricity several days after the restart and resume commercial operations in mid-September, the sources added July 10.

Kyushu Electric is currently undergoing the final procedures toward the restart of the reactor under the new safety standards of the Nuclear Regulation Authority. The utility began loading nuclear fuel into the No. 1 reactor in the afternoon of July 7, and completed the work before dawn on July 10.

Kyushu Electric will continue to have NRA inspections of equipment related to the reactor. It will also hold a four-day safety drill from July 27 that will replicate conditions of a severe accident at the plant, which is located in the city of Satsuma-Sendai.

Source: Asahi Shimbun

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201507110054

July 14, 2015 Posted by dunrenard | Japan | Nuclear Plant Restart, Sendai | Leave a comment

Fukushima Evening Radiation TV News

It is the evening TV screens in Fukushima Prefecture.

Before the accident at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi power plant, it looked like a scene from science fiction, but unfortunately it is now in real life.

People watch the news on TV, followed by weather forecast, then by the radiation measures of the day.

A scene that shows us what is living with radiation …

This is not to discuss the measures of radioactivity viewed on the screen, because there are many debates about the veracity of the measures communicated by the local channel NHK.

The purpose here is to show the trivialization of radiation.

Special thanks to Kurumi Sugita, Nos Voisins Lointains 3.11
_____

These photos were published July 13, 2015 on Facebook by Mrs. Kazue Morizono resident of the city of Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture

July 14, 2015 Posted by dunrenard | Japan | Fukushima continuing, radiation | Leave a comment

Fukushima 22 000 Olympic swimming pools of contaminated soil

july 2015 Look closely at this picture! This is one of the great land storage sites of the contaminated soil which has been removed after the Fukushima disaster.
It was published by the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun and I saw for the first time a month ago in Seoul, at the biennial meeting of science journalists from around the world (WCSJ) , for which I had organized a roundtable on nuclear : « How to inforrm appropriately and accurately about nuclear? ».
This picture was presented by our fellow Toshihide Ueda in his PowerPoint, he was the scientific and medical news main journalist on Asahi Shimbun, who for ten years covered nuclear issues for the Asahi Shimbun.
An impressive picture when one realizes the size of the truck (center of photo) and of the cranes.
These little black things piled on a blue waterproof tarpaulin, those are thousands of very large bags …

Credit: Asahi Shimbun / getty images. This photo was taken near the town of Tomioka.
In my story in the heart of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which I visited June 12, 2015, where many bags also litter the place, I had asked the question of what would happen to them?
Knowing that there are about twenty sites where they currently are stacked.
They are called ISF, for “interim storage facility”.
It is planned that their content will be transferred “in thirty years” on a permanent site – which can not be located on the territory of Fukushima Prefecture (following an agreement between the government and local authorities).
But can we believe it? What place in Japan will then accept this storage?
Whereas radioactivity, mainly due to cesium will have decreased by only half (the half-life of radioactive cesium 137 is 30 years). And the memory of Fukushima will not yet be erased …

What form this final stockage will take? Will the soil be compacted?
For it is not a small volume that it is today. According to the IRSN (French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety), “the volume of waste related to decontamination is estimated between 28 and 55 million m3 “.
In other words, if we look for a meaningful equivalent between 11 000 and 22 000 Olympic swimming pools …
For comparison, by volume, a center like the one in Aube, France, managed by Andra, reserved for low and medium short-lived radioactive waste (in operation since 1992), has a 1 million m3 capacity and that of very low activity has a 650 000 m3 capacity.

A whole series of other questions we could ask.
The bags that we see in the photo how long will they last without being altered and spill their contents?
Will the Groundwater under those storage areas not be threatened , despite the waterproof tarpaulins (in principle) that are installed tight on the ground?
And that will really happen to the already scrapped decontaminated areas?
Will they not become re-contaminated, thanks to the rainfall which swell the streams, draining the particles coming down from the hills and mountains around …

Credit: Dominique Leglu. Seoul, June 10, 2015, World congress of science journalists (WCSJ). At the lectern, Toshihide Ueda (right) shows the photo of the storage site of the city of Tomioka, during the round table devoted to nuclear energy.
I remembered an interview that Prof. Hiroaki Koide (assistant at research laboratory in the nuclear reactor at the University of Tokyo) had granted nine months after the debut of the Fukushima disaster (Le Monde, paper edition Thursday, 8 December 2011).
To the question of our colleague Philippe Pons “The government wants to turn the page: the motto is” rebuilding “,” decontaminating “…, he replied : “[…] Decontamination is a new source of profit for the government and reconstruction, a windfall for civil engineering companies. If we want to decontaminate, it is the entire Fukushima prefecture that must be decontaminated. But where do we transport the irradiated soil? ”
When Shinzo Kimura, associate professor at the University Dokkyo came to Paris on 18 June 2015 for a conference on the health consequences of the disaster, I asked him the what he thought, four years later, about the soil decontamination operations.
The response of the radiation protection specialist, who fights locally to help people deal with the issue of contamination, illustrates the difficulty of deciding on the situation: “I am both for and against. We must do the maximum. But this removal has little impact. It can not succeed. ”
IRSN cites an example, the decontamination plan of the “special decontamination area ” located in the territory of the Municipality of Tamura.
[…] Completed it reduced notably the radiological environment in residential areas from 28 to 56%. ”

Clearly, it is a vicious circle in which a government after a disaster of the kind Fukushima is caught – that contaminated an area of 13 783 km² (1/10 of New York State) and the life of its 2 millions inhabitants.
If the government does nothing it will be accused of gross negligence (or worse) vis-à-vis of its population. If it does something there is no evidence that the results are convincing.
Especially in the intermediate phase, as currently around Fukushima, where multiple “small storages” are developping, awaiting to be transferred and regrouped in the ISF, until the hypothetical final storage. And not to mention the security issues that these places, of course, do not fail to cause. A real headache.

Credit: Pallava Bagla. June 12, 2015, in Fukushima