Bioaccessibility of Fukushima-Accident-Derived Cs in Soils and the Contribution of Soil Ingestion to Radiation Doses in Children
Abstract
Ingestion of contaminated soil is one potential internal exposure pathway in areas contaminated by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident.
Doses from this pathway can be overestimated if the availability of radioactive nuclides in soils for the gastrointestinal tract is not considered.
The concept of bioaccessibility has been adopted to evaluate this availability based on in vitro tests.
This study evaluated the bioaccessibility of radioactive cesium from soils via the physiologically-based extraction test (PBET) and the extractability of those via an extraction test with 1 mol/L of hydrochloric acid (HCl).
The bioaccessibility obtained in the PBET was 5.3% ± 1%, and the extractability in the tests with HCl was 16% ± 3%. The bioaccessibility was strongly correlated with the extractability. This result indicates the possibility that the extractability in HCl can be used as a good predictor of the bioaccessibility with PBET.
In addition, we assessed the doses to children from the ingestion of soil via hand-to-mouth activity based on our PBET results using a probabilistic approach considering the spatial distribution of radioactive cesium in Date City in Fukushima Prefecture and the interindividual differences in the surveyed amounts of soil ingestion in Japan.
The results of this assessment indicate that even if children were to routinely ingest a large amount of soil with relatively high contamination, the radiation doses from this pathway are negligible compared with doses from external exposure owing to deposited radionuclides in Fukushima Prefecture.
Government likely to retain grip on beleaguered Tepco
The government might stay involved in the management of Tokyo Electric longer than planned, given the ballooning costs of scrapping the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, sources close to the matter said.
The delay in reactivating the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture, the main pillar of the utility’s reconstruction plan, is another factor prompting the government rethink, the sources said Saturday. It had planned to end state control next April.
The government is leading the business operations of struggling Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings, which is facing huge compensation payments and other problems from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, because it has acquired 50.1 percent of the firm’s voting rights via the state-backed Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp.
Some bureaucrats at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry have been dispatched to Tepco.
Tepco said in a business plan in 2014 that it would turn itself from a “temporarily publicly managed” company to a self-managed one starting next April.
The industry ministry will hold the first panel meeting Wednesday to discuss additional government support for the utility.
Tepco faces swelling costs for decommissioning the Fukushima No. 1 plant and compensating those affected beyond the previously estimated ¥11 trillion ($108 billion). Two reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant are under prolonged safety examinations by nuclear regulators.
The prospect of restarting the giant plant is also being complicated by impending changes in the leadership of the Niigata Prefectural Government, which hosts it.
To restart the plant, approval from the Niigata governor is needed.
Hirohiko Izumida, the current governor, was cautious about restarting the reactors because of Tepco’s failure to fully examine the cause of the Fukushima disaster. He withdrew his bid for re-election at the end of August.
Of the four candidates running for the Oct. 16 election, former Nagaoka Mayor Tamio Mori, 67, backed by the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito ruling coalition, and Ryuichi Yoneyama, a 49-year-old doctor, are leading the race. Yoneyama has said he will follow Izumida’s stance and is opposed to any discussion of restarts unless the Fukushima disaster is thoroughly explained.
Tepco’s new business plan, including the revised schedule for ending state control, is expected to be compiled next January.
Utilities may get caps on liability in time of serious nuke accidents
In the event of a serious nuclear accident, the government is considering capping the liability of electric power companies and placing the burden beyond that on the public in the form of taxes or higher electricity rates.
The Cabinet Office plans to submit the plan to an experts’ panel along with the current program, which does not contain such caps, sources said.
The experts’ panel will start to discuss both from Oct. 3 and issue the results of its discussions within this fiscal year, which ends in March 2017. After that, the science ministry will consider revising the related laws, they added.
In the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011, the compensation paid by the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has reached 6 trillion yen (about $60 billion).
The amount is much higher than the 120 billion yen in total that can be currently covered by a private insurance program and governmental expenditures.
Because of that liability, electric power companies are asking the government to place a cap on the compensation they must pay at the time of serious nuclear accidents.
According to the sources, the setting of an upper limit would require utilities to shoulder a considerably higher amount of compensation.
In the event that the actual compensation exceeds that amount, the utility would also have to pay the portion beyond the limit if the nuclear accident is completely attributable to their actions.
If the nuclear accident is mainly caused by natural disasters, however, the portion beyond the upper limit would be chiefly covered by governmental compensation and only a part of that portion would fall on the utilities, depending on the extent of their culpability.
The government’s compensation would be eventually shouldered by taxpayers.
The push to set a cap is apparently being led by the belief of electric power companies that now is a good time to ask the public to share part of the burden with the prevailing mood in the current administration to restart nuclear reactors.
However, some experts say that if an upper limit is adopted, electric power companies will become less concerned about safety.
“There is a possibility that those companies will place less importance on investing in safety measures,” said Tadashi Otsuka, professor of law at Waseda University, an expert on environmental laws and compensation systems.
Tokyo Electric Power : Gov’t planning to stay involved in TEPCO’s management longer
The government is considering staying involved in Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s business management longer than currently planned, given larger-than-expected costs for scrapping the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, sources close to the matter said Saturday.
A delay in the process for reactivating its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture, a main pillar of the utility’s reconstruction plan, is another factor prompting the government to think it would be too soon to end state control next April as initially planned, they said.
The government is leading business operations of the utility facing huge compensation payments and other problems from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster as it has acquired 50.1 percent of the firm’s voting rights through the state-backed Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp.
Some bureaucrats of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry are dispatched to the utility, known as TEPCO.
TEPCO said in a business plan in 2014 it would turn itself from the “temporarily publicly managed” company to a self-managed one starting next April.
The industry ministry will hold the first panel meeting Wednesday to discuss additional government support for the utility.
TEPCO faces swelling costs for decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi plant and compensating those affected beyond the previously estimated 11 trillion yen ($108 billion). Two reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant are under prolonged safety examinations by nuclear regulators.
TEPCO’s new business plan including the revised schedule for ending state control is expected to be compiled next January.
Fukushima rice at Matsuri (Japanese cultural) festival in Trafalgar Square, London
Rice was among a number of products from Fukushima being promoted at the festival today, in order to help the recovery of the region. Young women were making their way through the throng holding up huge peaches and apples from Fukushima.
Members of Kick Nuclear London, Japanese Against Nuclear and friends handed out a few hundred copies of the following leaflet to visitors at the festival this afternoon :
Kick Nuclear has created a web page for those who want to find out more: https://kicknuclear.com/fukushima-rice/
Japan signals end for $10 billion nuclear prototype
“Tokyo believes it would be difficult to gain public support to spend several hundreds of billion yen to upgrade the Monju facility, which has been plagued by accidents, missteps and falsification of documents.”
Japan signalled on Wednesday it would scrap a costly prototype nuclear reactor that has operated for less than a year in more than two decades at a cost of 1 trillion yen (£7.6 billion).
Tokyo believes it would be difficult to gain public support to spend several hundreds of billion yen to upgrade the Monju facility, which has been plagued by accidents, missteps and falsification of documents.
There is also a strong anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan in reaction to the 2011 Fukushima atomic disaster and calls to decommission Monju have been growing in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, with scant results from using around 20 billion yen of pubic money a year for maintenance alone.
Monju was designed to burn plutonium from spent fuel at conventional reactors to create more fuel than it consumes. The process is appealing to a country whose limited resources force it to rely on imports for virtually all its oil and gas needs.
Science Minister Hirokazu Matsuno, Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko and others had decided to shift policy away from developing Monju, a fast-breeder nuclear reactor in the west of the country, the government said.
They had also agreed to keep the nuclear fuel cycle intact and would set up a committee to decide a policy for future fast reactor development by the end of the year.
A formal decision to decommission Monju is likely to be made by the end of the year, government officials said.
The decision would have no impact on Japan’s nuclear recycling policy as Tokyo would continue to co-develop a fast-breeder demonstration reactor that has been proposed in France, while research will continue at another experimental fast-breeder reactor, Joyo, which was a predecessor of Monju.
“The move will not have an impact on nuclear fuel balance or nuclear fuel cycle technology development or Japan’s international cooperation,” Tomoko Murakami, nuclear energy manager at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, said.
Before the Fukushima disaster, Japan had planned to build a commercial fast-breeder before 2050, but that may be delayed given the difficulties at Monju, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-nuclear-idUKKCN11R0LD
October 2 Energy News
Opinion:
¶ “Climate change deniers, listen up: your end is nigh” • Climate change deniers need to be singing from the same hymn sheet. For it is, of course, more urgent than ever now that science is crowding in, now that the climate is changing before the people’s very eyes, and denials are exposed as ever more ludicrous. [The Sydney Morning Herald]
Flooding in New South Wales (Photo: Nick Moir)
World:
¶ Vikram Solar, a solar module manufacturer based in India, has announced plans to expand its manufacturing capacity to 2 GW by 2019. The current manufacturing capacity of the company stands at 500 MW. The company signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the German company Teamtechnik to support its expansion plans. [CleanTechnica]
¶ India plans to have a renewable energy capacity of 175 GW by March 2022. The Central Electricity Authority reports that thermal power…
View original post 551 more words
Climate change presents a strategically-significant risk #Auspol
We the undersigned members of the U.S. national security community conclude that the effects of climate change present a strategically-signficant risk to U.S. national security and international security, and that the U.S. must advance a comprehensive policy for addressing this risk.
Our conclusion is due in part, but not limited to, the following determinations:
Climate change increases stress on water, food and energy security both in the U.S. and globally, resulting in unique and hard-to-predict security risks, based on a combination of rapidly changing physical, environmental, economic, social and political conditions;
Stresses resulting from climate change can increase the likelihood of intra or international conflict, state failure, mass migration, and the creation of additional ungoverned spaces, across a range of strategically-signi cant regions, including but not limited to the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, the Indo-Asia-Pacific, and the Arctic regions;
•
Climate change is causing significant change in…
View original post 349 more words
Mhairi Black MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South on the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent
Nuclear Submarine HMS Vanguard Passes HMS Dragon Returns to HMNB Clyde, Scotland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisley,_Renfrewshire
“House of Commons Hansard: UK’s Nuclear Deterrent
18 July 2016 Volume 613
8.26 pm
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)
Government Members seem to have the idea that we in the Scottish National party are against nuclear weapons for some kind of romanticised reason, but the reality is that we are against nuclear weapons and renewing Trident for logical reasons.
First, we have to remember the fact that, fundamentally, Trident is a weapon.
We have already established that we would not fire first, so the only time that we would ever use this weapon would be if somebody launched a nuclear strike against us.
To be frank, that would mean that we were all dead anyway. If I am dying, I do not care if we send a weapon back; I am more worried about the…
View original post 598 more words
Building to Start on New Nuclear Submarines as UK Government Announces £1.3 billion Investment
“Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Clyde (HMNB Clyde; also HMS Neptune) primarily sited at Faslane is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Devonport and HMNB Portsmouth). It is the service’s headquarters in Scotland and is best known as the home of Britain’s nuclear weapons, in the form of nuclear submarines armed with Trident missiles… HMNB Clyde lies on the eastern shore of Gare Loch in Argyll and Bute, to the north of the Firth of Clyde and 25 mi (40 km) west of Glasgow. The submarine base encompasses a number of separate sites, the primary two being:
* Faslane, 25 miles from Glasgow;
* RNAD Coulport, beside Loch Long, 2 mi (3.2 km) west of Faslane“.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMNB_Clyde
Glasgow is the largest City in Scotland and the third largest in the UK. The population of Glasgow proper is 596,550 (2013)…
View original post 1,194 more words
SELLAFIELD WHODUNNIT?
Sellafield Whodunnit? Answer: “Mystery Virus”
The Department of Health has a delicious sense of irony. While people “Stand Up to Cancer” and cakes are being baked across the UK to raise money for a well-known cancer charity, the Department of Health has released its Review of Childhood Cancer Incidence near Sellafield and Dounreay.
For decades the government has acknowledged a well-documented increase of childhood leukaemia in the area surrounding Sellafield. This includes a 10-fold increase in the village of Seascale. In the 1980s many local families living up to 20 miles away who had been impacted by this terrible disease took the operators of the Sellafield site (then British Nuclear Fuels Ltd) to court. The families lost their case with the judge ruling that radiation dose to the public from the plant was too low to have caused leukaemia. Variations of this judgement have been rammed down the throats of…
View original post 8 more words
October 1 Energy News
Opinion:
¶ “The lights go out in SA and Turnbull flicks the switch to peak stupid” • Malcolm Turnbull has encouraged using the South Australian blackout to slow the shift to clean energy. But the evidence says the state targets are exactly what Australia needs to meet the promises he made at COP21 last year to reduce carbon emissions. [The Guardian]
Australian wind farm (Photo: Angela Harper / AAP)
¶ “Nuclear power in the US: Not what it once was” • Nuclear plants are large and expensive assets facing closures for reasons expected to remain indefinitely: nuclear energy’s high fixed production costs, competitive gas prices, and heightened aims of renewables usage. The future of nuclear energy will remain uncertain. [Energy Voice]
Science and Technology:
¶ Siemens unveiled a new raft of wind turbine designs this week at the WindEnergy Hamburg trade show, including a low-noise wind…
View original post 764 more words
Earth is locked into’ Temperatures Not Seen in 2 Million Years #climatechange #auspol
2015 was the warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880, according to a new analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The record-breaking year continues a long-term warming trend — 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have now occurred since 2001.
Scientific Visualization Studio/Goddard Space Flight Centre
The new research published Monday in Nature was done by Carolyn Snyder, now a climate policy official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as a part of her doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, according to the Associated Press (AP).
Snyder “created a continuous 2 million year temperature record, much longer than a previous 22,000 year record. [Snyder’s reconstruction] doesn’t estimate temperature for a single year, but averages 5,000-year time periods going back a couple million years,”
AP reported.
“We do find this close relationship between temperature and greenhouse gases that is remarkably stable, and what the study is developing is…
View original post 253 more words
This week – Climate and Nuclear News
Again – climate change is the big one. As UN climate chief calls for clear report on ‘feasibility’ of 1.5C climate goal, it’s looking as though this goal is not achievable, and climate change could already be irreversible. In 2016 atmospheric carbon dioxide will pass 400 parts per million – permanently. Speed of Arctic change shocks scientists.
But nuclear disaster could be imminent, too, as we consider the consequences of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with Pakistan upping the ante, with belligerent threats to India.
On the so-called peaceful nuclear scene, the focus is on South Africa. South Africa’s corrupt nuclear politics is like a nasty boil that developed slowly over years, and could now be ready to burst.
Shadow Courts – The Secret Tribunals That Corporations Use to Sue Countries.
EUROPE. The 100 billion pound bill for decommissioning Europe’s old nuclear power stations.
AFRICA. Risk of war in Africa escalates with rising temperatures.
SOUTH AFRICA. South Africa’s nuclear power programme stalled. Handing nuclear project to Eskom will limit South Africa’s Parliament control, and increase corruption. South Africa’s renewable energy success.
RUSSIA. For Russia, Climate Change is Already Producing Fires that are Too Big to Fight
USA.
- Obama’s opportunity to reduce America’s nuclear arsenal, and reduce international tensions.
- Hillary Clinton – less hawkish than Obama. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: policies on climate change. Clinton and Trump both dance to the nuclear lobby’s tune. Hillary Clinton, evasive, contradictory on nuclear power, changed policy 9 times.
- San Onofre’s nuclear wastes a danger to public safety.
- Opposition to South Carolina becoming a nuclear waste dumping ground.
- Community protest has stopped development of deep borehole waste disposal method .
UK. Hinkley Pt. Nuclear Power Contract Signed Days AFTER New Warnings About Areva-Creusot Defects. At the end of the Hinkley nuclear power story – massive radioactive clean-up costs.
CANADA Forest fire risk in Canada much greater due to climate change.
JAPAN. Japan busting to market nuclear reactors to India, and busting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Japan to formally decide to decommission Monju nuclear reprocessing reactor by end of year. Fukushima. Japan mulls legislation requiring local government approval for restarting Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant. Fukushima ice wall failing to deliver on promise.TEPCO Delays Replacing Tainted Water Tanks. High levels of radioactive cesium pooling at dams near Fukushima nuke plant.
UKRAINE. Ukraine joining the renewable energy revolution
GREENLAND. Climate change will expose top-secret US nuclear project in Greenland.
IRAN. Iran complains that international financial sanctions are not being lifted quickly enough.
1.This Month
EVENTS.
-
Archives
- March 2023 (287)
- February 2023 (379)
- January 2023 (388)
- December 2022 (277)
- November 2022 (335)
- October 2022 (363)
- September 2022 (259)
- August 2022 (367)
- July 2022 (368)
- June 2022 (277)
- May 2022 (375)
- April 2022 (377)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 