Writing History and the Legacy of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident

Official histories are always full of omissions and strategic ambiguities. History is, after all, written by those in power.

Howard Zinn, among many others, taught us (i.e., the governed or the “people”) the importance of documenting alternative histories that reflect the perspectives and empirical realities experienced by everyday people and by marginalized authorities whose unwillingness to parrot official narratives leads to their censure.

The official Fukushima narrative is predicated upon four assumptions, all of which I call false:

1. The plant is officially in cold shutdown and radiation contamination is contained

2. No one died from the disaster and long term deaths are likely to be trivial

3. Fukushima produced less environmental contamination than Chernobyl

4. The indisputable ocean contamination produced by Fukushima is now gone

Assumptions 2 and 4 are evident in this article published by the Japan Times declaring that the Pacific Ocean is back to “normal”:
Pacific Ocean radiation back near normal after Fukushima: study. AFP-JIJI Jul 4, 2016 http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/07/04/national/science-health/pacific-ocean-radiation-back-near-normal-after-fukushima-study/#.V3vWMKKYK5o

SYDNEY – Radiation levels across the Pacific Ocean are rapidly returning to normal five years after the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant spewed gases and liquids into the sea, according to a study released Monday….

…Although no one is recorded as having died as a direct result of the nuclear accident, tens of thousands of people were uprooted, with many still unable to return home because of persistent contamination. Much could be said about this article but in this post I will focus on the assumption that levels of radioactivity in ocean water are returning to normal.

That statement can be both true and not-true simultaneously. The radionuclides may no longer be suspended in tested waters but that doesn’t mean they are gone and that the Pacific ocean eco-system has returned to “normal.”

In fact, it is empirically and logically impossible for most of the radionuclides from Fukushima in the ocean to have disappeared.

Radionuclides have a known decay pattern. Iodine-131 has an approximately 8 day half-life while Cesium-137 has an approximately 30 year half-life. Americium-241 has a 432 year half life.

While the Iodine-131 is probably gone, the Iodine-129 (with a 15.7 million half-life) is still there and contributing to radioactive contamination already present from dumping, atmospheric testing and nuclear accidents. As Wikipedia explains, “Most ¹²⁹I derived radioactivity on Earth is man-made, an unwanted long-lived byproduct of early nuclear tests and nuclear fission accidents.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_iodine

Radionuclides with long half-lives contaminating the ocean are STILL THERE, still in the ocean, but perhaps they are no longer suspended in surface waters but rather have been absorbed by biological life or are suspended at lower levels in the water column.

BIOACCUMULATION

Official authorities can make the claim that the water has returned to “normal” (whatever that is after decades of dumping of waste and the effects of testing and accidents) because they are not examining how radionuclides have been sequestered in biological life.
In 2014, I conducted a historical search for bioaccumulation using the JSTOR index, focusing on the radionuclides known to present the majority sources of radiation derived from nuclear fallout: 241Am, 90Sr, 137Cs, 238Pu, 239Pu, and 240Pu (DOE, 1997, http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp156-c6.pdf).

Search results from the JSTOR index indicate that bioaccumulation was first studied in the late 1950s by scientists looking at the dispersion of radionuclides in the environment. They tended to be funded by government: for example, Oak Ridge National Laboratory funded research on bioaccumulation of radionuclides in “the marine environment.”

The research cited below finds clear evidence of bioaccumulation of a wide range of radionuclides by aquatic life: Marine organisms concentrate cesium 3-30 times over the levels in the surrounding water, although concentration can be much higher, by two or three orders of magnitude (Polikarpov 1966; Wolfe, 1971), especially in animals situated at the top of the food chain, as modeled by Alva and Gobas for killer whales (Hat Tip Enenews poster but forgot source [sorry]):

Alva, Juan & Gobas, Frank (2011, October 4). Modeling the Bioaccumulation Potential of Cesium-137 in a Marine Food Web of the Northwest Pacific, Canada[9080]. Paper presented at SETAC North America 32nd Annual Meeting in Session 498: Environmental Radiation: What Do We Know and What Should We Know for Assessing Risks http://www.researchgate.net/publication/233869698_Modeling_the_Bioaccumulation_Potential_of_Cesium_137_in_a_Marine_Food_Web_of_the_Northwest_Pacific_Canada

Other highly chemically and radiologically genotoxic radionuclides, such as Americium and Plutonium, are highly BIO-AVAILABLE. For example, research conducted by Fisher, Bjerregaard and Fowler (1983) found that Plutonium, Americium, and Californium concentrate readily in marine plankton:

Nicholas S. Fisher, Poul Bjerregaard and Scott W. Fowler (1983). Interactions of Marine Plankton with Transuranic Elements. 1. Biokinetics of Neptunium, Plutonium, Americium, and Californium in Phytoplankton. Limnology and Oceanography, 28(3) (May, 1983), pp. 432-447 Published by: American Society of Limnology and Oceanography. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2835825

“The results suggest that Pu, Cf, and Am would associate with marine particles which could transport them vertically, transfer them into the marine food web, or both”Page 445; Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the reactive transuranic elements (e.g. Pu, Am, Co are likely to reach an equilibrium between surfaces of suspended particles and ambient seawater and that the adsorptive properties of particles scavenging these (and other) metals are governed by organic coatings (Balistrieri et al. 1981).

Phytoplankton particles with associated transuranics may sink slowly, transporting these elements to deeper waters and sediments (Bowen et al. 1980; Santschi et al. 1980), or they may be ingested by herbivores in surface waters. Once ingested, radionuclides may be assimilated into food chains (Lowman et al. 1971; Koide et al. 1981) or defecated in the form of fast-sinking fecal pellets (Higgo et al. 1977).

It is interesting that radionuclides such as Cesium and Americium bioaccumulate in different areas of organisms, and at different concentrations with Americium levels higher than Cesium, as illustrated by this study:

Metian, Marc, Warnau, Michel, Teyssie, Jean-Louis, Bustamante, Paco (2011) Characterization of Am-241 and Cs-134 bioaccumulation in the king scallop Pecten maximus: investigation via three exposure pathways. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 102(6), 543-550 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvrad.2011.02.008

[Abstract] In order to understand the bioaccumulation of Am-241 and Cs-134 in scallops living in sediments, the uptake and depuration kinetics of these two elements were investigated in the king scallop Pecten maximus exposed via seawater, food, or sediment under laboratory conditions. Generally, Am-241 accumulation was higher and its retention was stronger than Cs-134.

This was especially obvious when considering whole animals exposed through seawater with whole-body concentration factors (CF7d) of 62 vs. 1, absorption efficiencies (A(0l)) of 78 vs. 45 for seawater and biological half-lives (T-b1/2l) of 892 d vs. 22 d for Am-241 and Cs-134, respectively. In contrast, following a single feeding with radiolabelled phytoplankton, the assimilation efficiency (AE) and T-b1/2l of Cs-134 were higher than those of Am-241 (AE: 28% vs. 20%; T-b1/2l: 14 d vs. 9 d).

Among scallop tissues, the shells always contained the higher proportion of the total body burden of Am-241 whatever the exposure pathway. In contrast, the whole soft parts presented the major fraction of whole-body burden of Cs-134, which was generally associated with muscular tissues. Our results showed that the two radionuclides have contrasting behaviors in scallops, in relation to their physico-chemical properties.

Through absorption and adsorption radionuclides in the water column are readily assimilated by phytoplankton, whereupon they are either consumed – resulting in biomagnification – or fall towards the bottom of the ocean. A significant percentage (estimated at about a 1/2 of cellular load) of Pu and Am accumulated by plankton fall to intermediate depths, where they remain suspended, resulting in the “enrichment of waters of intermediate depth with Pu or Am lost from sinking algal cells” (Fisher et al, 1983).
In other words, the radioactive and chemically toxic radionuclides are still present but are not suspended in surface waters. They are interred in biological life!

FUKUSHMA IS A CONTAMINATED-WATER PRODUCING MACHINE AND IT AINT’ OVER YET

TEPCO has been dumping radioactive water deliberately for years. I have documented this claim in my 2013 and 2016 monographs (see Nadesan Fukushim and the Privatization of Risk 2013 AND Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy, and Ecological Sustainability 2016).

Moreover, Fukushima is STILL leaking contaminated water into the ocean. That water is highly radioactive, as evidenced by rising ground water contamination at the plant. That is why TEPCO built the ice-wall, which has not been successful according to company officials.

You can see documentation of rising ground water contamination here:
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/ground-water-contamination-rising-at.html
There exists good evidence that part of the reactor fuel from units 1-3 is located in the underground river that empties into the Pacific Ocean:

This scenario will result in endless contamination of the ocean with rising levels of Strontium contamination, according to the German Risk Studies.

The “German Risk Study, Phase B” found that a core meltdown accident could result in complete failures of all structural containment, causing melted fuel to exit the reactor foundation within five days (cited in Bayer, Tromm, & Al-Omari 1989).

Moreover, the study found that even in the event of an intact building foundation, passing groundwater would be in direct contact with fuel, causing leaching of fission products. Strontium leaches slower than cesium. A follow-up German study, “Dispersion of Radionuclides and Radiation Exposure after Leaching by Groundwater of a Solidified Core-Concrete Melt,” predicted that strontium contamination levels would rise exponentially years after a full melt-through located adjacent to a river (Bayer, Tromm, & Al-Omari, 1989).

The study’s experimental conditions are roughly similar to Daiichi’s site conditions, including groundwater emptying into an adjacent river, whereas Daiichi is physically situated above an underground river emptying into the sea.

The study predicted concentrations of Strontium-90 in river water would spike relatively suddenly, but maintain extraordinarily high levels of contamination for years: “The highest radionuclide concentration of approx. 1010 Bq/m3 is reached by Sr-90 after some 5000 days.”

CONCLUSIONS

The alternative narrative I have written here is precisely that, alternative. I am a peon. I have no authority to speak as a “social scientist,” as I have been reminded by trolls and certain polemical scientists over the last 5 years.

However, my lack of official expertise does not mean I am wrong.

The contradictions and elisions marring the official narrative will become more glaring with time, as Pacific life continues its inexorable collapse, offering fodder for those like myself who persist in challenging the genocidal authority of the nuclear-security state with alternative narratives, which lack official legitimacy but are no less true because of that deficiency.

REFERENCES

Bayer, A., Al-Omari, I., & Tromm, W. (1989). Dispersion of radionuclides and radiation exposure after leaching by groundwater of a solidified core-concrete (No. KFK-4512). Available http://www.irpa.net/irpa8/cdrom/VOL.1/M1_97.PDF

Gesellschaft fur Reaktorsicherheit (GRS) Deutsche Risikikostudie Kernkraftwerke, Phase B Report GRS-89 cited in Bayer, A., Al-Omari, I., & Tromm, W. (1989). Dispersion of radionuclides and radiation exposure after leaching by groundwater of a solidified core-concrete (No. KFK-4512). Available http://www.irpa.net/irpa8/cdrom/VOL.1/M1_97.PDF

“TEPCO Announced Record Cesium Level Found in Groundwater Beneath Fukushima Levee” The Asahi Shimbun (February 14, 2014): http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201402140041). The article said that cesium found in groundwater under a coastal levee near unit 1 spiked from 76,000 Becquerels per liter on February 12, 2014 to 130,000 Becquerels per liter on February 13, reaching the highest level of cesium ever detected at that location

Record strontium-90 level in Fukushima groundwater sample last July. (2014, February 7). The Japan Times. Available http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/07/national/record-strontium-90-level-in-fukushima-groundwater-sample-last-july/#.U2XIw17K3yh

Source : Majia’s Blog

https://majiasblog.blogspot.fr/2016/07/writing-history-and-legacy-of-fukushima.html