Radiation Measured 16μSv/h at Ground Level in Namie-cho, Fukushima
A residential area of namie-Cho, Namie-Cho, radiation measured 1.3μSv/h at 1 meter above ground and 16μSv/h at ground level
As Japan is trying desperately to use any tactics and resources such as “the cult like” ETHOS to incite refugees to return to their radioactive land, just in time to display the reconstruction of Fukushima to dumb tourists who will visit the prefecture during the next Tokyo Olympics, the reality of things with a Geiger counter and willing citizens paints a total different picture.
This is in Namie cho, a residential district in Fukushima.
What tourist won’t see while traveling Fukushima:
– Tons of highly radioactive waste buried hastily under the grounds of school grounds or abandonned at random on forests or radioactive ash poured into rivers.
– Tons of radioactive waste being burned across incinerators in Japan, spraying dangerous isotopes all over – continuously for the past 4 years.
– Children cleaning up roads of radiation so close to Daiichi – most with no real protection.
– Daiichi sinking, leaking, spewing radiation for 5 years into the ground, the air, rivers and the ocean.
– Contaminated food cleverly being distributed, mislabeled, mixed with non contaminated produces to lower the amount of bequerels and served to children in Japan.
– The discrimination within the prefecture between victims over beliefs or aid money (which no one will soon be able to have access to) and non victims.
– The fear of mothers over their children’s health and future.
Enjoy your Olympics !
Special credits to Oz Yo and Nelson Surjon
After years of setbacks, Japanese unfit for nuclear energy projects
No one is fit for nuclear.
Not those who believed that they were nor those who still believe that they are.
Let’s all ban this deadly industry from our planet earth!
According to a well-known joke about the national traits of Europeans, it is heaven if the chefs are French, the engineers are German and the bankers are Swiss and it is hell if the chefs are British, the engineers are French and the bankers are Italian.”
As for the Japanese? They appear not suited to a particular field — nuclear energy. And that is no joke. The development of nuclear technology as part of national policy and by private nuclear businesses has repeatedly experienced failure, causing problems to numerous people and wasting a massive amount of money.
Mutsu, Japan’s first and only nuclear-powered ship which was launched in the early 1970s, suffered a radiation leakage and was decommissioned in 1992 after having only four experimental runs.
The government decided late last year to decommission the prototype fast-breeder reactor Monju in Fukui Prefecture, which has hardly been in operation for more than 20 years following a fire triggered by a sodium leak broke out at the facility in 1995.
Construction work on a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, got underway in 1993, but its completion was postponed 23 times and there are no prospects that it will be put in operation in the foreseeable future.
Roughly 5 trillion yen has so far been spent on nuclear projects in Japan.
In March 2011, a serious accident occurred at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant after the complex was hit by a massive tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake. Over 80,000 residents from areas near the atomic power station are still living outside the affected areas as evacuees. The costs of dealing with the nuclear crisis have already surpassed 20 trillion yen.
Meanwhile, Toshiba Corp. has added a new page to the negative history of Japan’s nuclear development.
In 2006, Toshiba acquired Westinghouse Electric Co., a U.S. nuclear plant company, for over 600 billion yen. The deal was criticized as too costly, but Toshiba wanted to control the world nuclear power market. Toshiba’s president at the time was upbeat about the takeover saying, “We’ll conduct business aggressively.”
Nevertheless, Toshiba will likely suffer nearly 1 trillion yen in losses from the deal because the electronics giant failed to find hidden problems involving its U.S. nuclear power unit. The world nuclear power market has shrunk since the outbreak of the Fukushima nuclear crisis. Following revelations that it had padded its profits through accounting irregularities, Toshiba downsized its workforce by more than 10,000 people, but its rehabilitation efforts are still insufficient. Its financial difficulties have even put the company’s survival in jeopardy.
Physicist and technology commentator Kiyoshi Sakurai, who is well versed in technical problems and accidents involving nuclear plants, warned in a past Mainichi Shimbun interview, “Only a handful of those concerned with a certain project loudly underscore the significance of the project. These people could self-righteously go too far without understanding the project’s objectivity or necessity.”
His remarks remind the public of a past silly war (World War II).
More sadly, it is feared that Japanese people traumatized by the atomic bombing tend to stick to the peaceful use of atomic energy and have lost the capacity for calm and rational judgment.
After reviewing the above, one can see that Japanese people are unfit for nuclear energy development projects. (By Hideaki Nakamura, Editorial Writer)
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170125/p2a/00m/0na/006000c
January 21 Fukushima Radiation Measures
On January 21, 21, those radiation measures were all taken from one meter above the ground.
At the bottom right one is 6.54μSv/h (underlined red on the map)
The highest radiation measure taken is 7.48μSv/h (underlined red on the map)
Special credits to Oz Yo
These measures are not coming from government radiation monitors but from Oz Yo, a citizen himself taking measures with his own device.
http://www.gyoroman.com/product6.html
Adopted model for him and his team monitoring project. https://www.facebook.com/fukuichi.mp/?hc_location=ufi
Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation on Fukushima Wildlife
Relatively little research has been conducted on animal life in Japan and its coastal waters after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster but anomalies have already been identified.
One study found a marked decline in bird abundance in Fukushima.[i]
Spiders, grasshoppers, dragonflies, butterflies, bumblebees and cicadas also suffered population declines since the accident.[ii]
Another study found cesium contamination in Japanese macaques, ranging across time from a high of 25,000 Becquerels per kilogram in 2011 to 2,000 in 2012.[iii]
Yet another study published in 2015 found chromosomal malformations in wild mice caught in Fukushima Prefecture, with young mice more adversely impacted than older mice.[iv]
Research conducted by Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences on fir trees near the Fukushima Daiichi plant found significant increases in morphological defects corresponding to radiation exposure doses.[v]
Taken together, these studies point to increased biological risks for flora and fauna living in radiation contaminated zones.
REFERENCES
[i] A. Moller, A. Hagiwara, S. Matsui, S. Kasahara, K. Kawatsu, I. Nishiumi, H. Suzuki, K. Ueda, T. and A. Mousseau (2012) ‘Abundance of Birds in Fukushima as Judged from Chernobyl’, Environmental Pollution, 164, 36–39.
[ii] A. Moller, I. Nishiumi, H. Suzuki, K. Ueda, T. A. Mousseau (2013) ‘Differences in Effects of Radiation of Animals in Fukushima and Chernobyl’, Ecological Indicators, 24, 75–81.
[iii] S. Kimura and A. Hatano (4 October 2012) ‘Scientists in Groundbreaking Study on Effects of Radiation in Fukushima’, The Asahi Shimbun, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201210040003, date accessed 6 October 2012.
[iv] Yoshihisa Kubota, Hideo Tsuji, Taiki Kawagoshi, Naoko Shiomi, Hiroyuki Takahashi, Yoshito Watanabe, Shoichi Fuma, Kazutaka Doi, Isao Kawaguchi, Masanari Aoki, Masahide Kubota, Yoshiaki Furuhata, Yusaku Shigemura, Masahiko Mizoguchi, Fumio Yamada, Morihiko Tomozawa, Shinsuke H. Sakamoto, and Satoshi Yoshida Chromosomal Aberrations in Wild Mice Captured in Areas Differentially Contaminated by the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident. Environ. Sci. Technol., 2015, 49 (16), pp 10074–10083. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b01554.
[v] Watanabe, Yoshito, San’ei Ichikawa, Masahide Kubota, Junko Hoshino, Yoshihisa Kubota, Kouichi Maruyama, Shoichi Fuma, Isao Kawaguchi, Vasyl Yoschenko, Satoshi Yoshida, “Morphological defects in native Japanese fir trees around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant,” Scientific Reports 5.13232 (2015): doi:10.1038/srep13232.
http://majiasblog.blogspot.fr/2017/01/biological-effects-of-ionizing.html
Farm in ex-evacuation area near Fukushima nuke plant ships milk again
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Kyodo) — A dairy farm near the disaster-struck Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan began shipping raw milk again on Tuesday.
It was the first milk shipped for processing and public sale from an area previously designated for evacuation following the March 2011 nuclear disaster at the seaside plant in Fukushima Prefecture, according to the prefectural government.
Milk produced at the farm in the Naraha district had been checked for radioactive cesium every week from last May to December, with no reading ever surpassing the government-set limit of 50 becquerels per kilogram. In fact, the readings were below the testing equipment detection limit.
Around 400 kg of raw milk from 18 cows was shipped Tuesday.
“We were able to start operating this farm again with the support of so many people,” said farm head Hiroaki Hiruta, 48. “I want to pay a debt of gratitude by making good milk.”
Following the disaster, in which a massive amount of radioactive material was spewed into the air and sea, the central government banned milk shipments from the area in March 2011. Restrictions were lifted last December for the area where Hiruta’s farm is located.
Similar restrictions are still in place for eight other districts, including the towns of Okuma and Futaba where the nuclear power station is located.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170124/p2g/00m/0dm/080000c
Fukushima camera probe hits a snag
Workers attempting to get a better look inside a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have encountered a problem.
On Tuesday they inserted a camera in a pipe leading into the container vessel of the No. 2 reactor, with the aim of capturing footage of molten fuel inside.
But plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company says the camera, which is marginally smaller than the pipe, quickly became stuck.
TEPCO says a simulated trial run went off without a hitch. The utility will investigate what went wrong before deciding whether to try again.
Workers need a clearer picture of the debris to determine how best to remove it, an important step in the decommissioning process for the 3 reactors that suffered meltdowns.
NRA clears Genkai reactors
The R3 and R4 of the Genkai nuclear power plant, Pref. Saga, have met the new safety standards of the NRA. Restart announced at the end of summer.
As of today: Have met the safety standards, 10 reactors in 5 nuclear plant namely also Sendai R1, R2 – Takahama R1 to R4 – Mihama R3 – Ikata R3.
Two reactors have now been restarted: Sendai 1 and Ikata 3 (using MOX).
The Nuclear Regulation Authority formally decided Wednesday on the screening document certifying that the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors at Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture satisfied the country’s safety standards for their restart.
The latest decision made at an NRA regular meeting brings to 10 the number of reactors, at five nuclear power plants, that have satisfied the regulator’s new safety standards, introduced after the nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011. The two Genkai reactors are scheduled to be back online sometime in or after summer this year.
The Kyushu power company applied for a safety screening on those reactors in July 2013. At that time, the company anticipated an earthquake with an acceleration of up to 540 gal at the Genkai plant followed by tsunami of up to 3 meters high. However, the NRA deemed the simulation as “too optimistic” and the figures were raised to an acceleration of 620 gal with 4-meter-high tsunami.
In November last year, the NRA approved a draft document as the two reactors complied with the new standards. The NRA then solicited public opinions and received 4,200 comments, including concerns over possible earthquakes, but concluded that there was no problem with compliance.
With the formal decision being made on the Genkai plant, the focus for the restart has moved to an approval of a construction plan that maps out the specifications of related equipment for safe operation as well as whether it can obtain the consent of local governments for the restart.
So far, nuclear reactors that have passed the NRA’s screenings under the new standards are the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at Kyushu’s Sendai power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, the Nos. 1 to 4 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama plant and KEPCO’s No. 3 reactor at Mihama plant, both in Fukui Prefecture, and the No. 3 reactor at Shikoku Electric Power Co.’s Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture. Currently, two reactors — Sendai plant’s No. 1 and Ikata’s No. 3 — are online.
http://www.the-japan-news.com/news/article/0003466628
Did Fukushima Daiichi Cause Cancer in Children and Plant Workers?
Here is the latest update on news about Fukushima children’s thyroid cancer rate and cancer among workers at the plant:
10 more thyroid cancer cases diagnosed in Fukushima. The Mainichi, December 28, 2016 (Mainichi Japan) http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161228/p2a/00m/0na/008000c
FUKUSHIMA — Ten more people were diagnosed with thyroid cancer as of late September this year in the second round of a health survey of Fukushima Prefecture residents, which began in April 2014, a committee overseeing the survey disclosed on Dec. 27. The number of people confirmed to have cancer during the second round of the survey stands at 44, while the overall figure including cases detected in the first round stands at 145.
… Some have pointed to the danger of “excessive diagnoses” during health checks in which doctors find cases of cancer that do not require surgery, which could place a physical and mental burden on patients. There have accordingly been calls for the Fukushima Prefectural Government to scale down the scope of its health survey.
Plant worker’s thyroid cancer certified as linked to nuclear disaster. The Mainchi, December 17, 2016 (Mainichi Japan) http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161217/p2g/00m/0dm/025000c
TOKYO (Kyodo) — A worker exposed to radiation when disaster struck the Fukushima nuclear plant has been found to have developed thyroid cancer caused by an industrial accident, the labor ministry said Friday.
The employee of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, is the third person determined to be entitled to benefits due to illness caused by exposure to radiation released when three reactors melted down in the days after a massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami in March 2011.
The man is the first to be certified for developing thyroid cancer because of the nuclear disaster. The first two persons suffer from leukemia.
Here is some BACKGROUND ON THE DEBATES ABOUT FUKUSHIMA EFFECTS ON CHILDREN IN JAPAN excerpted from my book, Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability
…Children are likely at greatest risk for health consequences from exposure because they are biologically more vulnerable to radiation since their cells are dividing faster. The thyroid is particularly susceptible to radiation-induced damage because it bioaccumulates radioactive iodine. People with thyroid conditions have an increased risk of dying because of damage that occurs prior to treatment.[i]
Potassium iodide helps block absorption of radioactive iodine but as mentioned earlier in the chapter, distribution was delayed. Consequently, many children in Japan became internally contaminated with radioiodine, in addition to whatever other radionuclides internalized through inhalation and ingestion.
July 6, 2011 the Japanese press Kyodo reported that in a March 2011 survey of 1,080 children aged 0 to 15 in Iwaki, Kawamata, and Iitate 45 percent of kids in Fukushima survey had thyroid exposure to radiation.[ii]
A separate study measuring thyroid exposure to Iodine-131 conducted between April 12, 2011 and April 16, 2011 and published in Research Reports found “extensive measurements of the exposure to I-131 revealing I-131 activity in the thyroid of 46 out of the 62 residents and evacuees measured”[iii]
In August of 2011, NHK reported that Japan’s nuclear commission had erased children’s exposure data derived from a test of 1,000 children aged 15 or younger who had been screened for radiation affecting their thyroid.[iv] By February of 2014, there were 75 confirmed or suspected thyroid cancer cases among 270,000 Fukushima Prefecture individuals screened, who were 18 or under at the time of the disaster.[v]
The screening committee claimed the Fukushima disaster was an unlikely cause.[vi] However, the observed frequency of thyroid cancer and nodules exceeds established incident rates. For example, the prevalence of thyroid nodules in children typically ranges from 0.2-5.0 percent,[vii] while in Fukushima, 42 percent of 133,000 children were found to have thyroid nodules and cysts two years after the disaster.[viii]
In 2015 two research articles were published arguing that the rate of thyroid cancer among Fukushima children was excessive.
The first study noted that the surge of thyroid cancers detected among 370,000 Fukushima residents aged 18 or younger was “unlikely to be explained by a screening surge” given the incident rate was found to be 20 to 50 times the national average at the close of 2014.[ix]
The second study observed that the rate of thyroid cancer being detected in Fukushima’s children exceeded the rate found after Chernobyl.[x] However, Shoichiro Tsugane, Director of the Research Center for Cancer Prevention and Screening, asserted that “Unless radiation exposure data are checked, any specific relationship between a cancer incidence and radiation cannot be identified,” and noted there exists a “global trend of over-diagnosis of thyroid cancer….”[xi]
Fukushima Prefecture residents’ concerns about living in a radiation-contaminated zone are too often trivialized by government officials. In 2015, evacuees from Naraha located in Fukushima Prefecture challenged a government official who described their concerns about drinking water contamination as a “psychological issue” after the Ministry of Education reported up to 18,7000 Becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram of soil taken from the bottom of a reservoir at Kido Dam which serves as the community’s drinking water source.[xii]
Dr. Shunichi Yamashita of Japan’s Atomic Bomb Research Institute produced widespread outrage for claiming that radiation does not harm people who are happy and that there is little risk from annual exposure levels below under 100 millisieverts.[xiii]
[i] Anne Laulund, Mads Nybo, Thomas Brix, Bo Abrahamsen, Henrik Løvendahl Jørgensen, Laszlo Hegedüs, “Duration of Thyroid Dysfunction Correlates with All-Cause Mortality. The OPENTHYRO Register Cohort,” PLOS, 9.10(2014): 1-8, e110437-110 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110437.
[ii] “45% of kids in Fukushima survey had thyroid exposure to radiation,” The Mainichi (July 5, 2011): http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110705p2g00m0dm079000c.html.
[iii] Shinji Tokonami, Masahiro Hosoda, Suminori Akiba, Atsuyuk Sorimachi, Ikuo Kashiwakura, and Mikhail Balonov “Thyroid doses for evacuees from the Fukushima nuclear accident.” Scientific Reports, 2(507)(2012): 1. doi:10.1038/srep00507.
[iv] “Nuclear Commission erases children’s exposure data,” NHK (August 11, 2011). http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/11_14.html.
[v] Nose, T., & Oiwa, Y. (2014, February 8). Thyroid cancer cases increase among young people in Fukushima. The Asahi Shimbun. Available: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201402080047
[vi] “Eight more Fukushima kids found with thyroid cancer; disaster link denied,” The Japan Times (February 7, 2014): http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/07/national/eight-more-fukushima-kids-found-with-thyroid-cancer-disaster-link-denied/#.U2Zvr61dVXo
[vii] Gerber, M. E., Reilly, B. K., Bhayani, M. K., Faust, R. A., Talavera, F., Sadeghi, N. & Meyers, A. D. “Pediatric thyroid cancer,” Emedicine. (2013): http://emedicine.medscape.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/article/853737-overview.
[viii] Haworth, A. (2013, February 23). After Fukushima: Families on edge of meltdown. The Guardian. Available http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/24/divorce-after-fukushima-nuclear-disaster.
[ix] Toshihide Tsuda, Akiko Tokinobu, Eiji Yamamoto and Etsuji Suzuki, “Thyroid Cancer Detection by Ultrasound Among Residents Ages 18 Years and Younger in Fukushima Japan: 2011 to 2014,” Epidemiology (2015), 1-7.
[x] Shigenobu Nagataki and Takamura, Noboru, “A review of the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident: radiation effects on the thyroid and strategies for prevention. Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes & Obesity, 21.5 (October 2014): 384–393. doi: 10.1097/MED.0000000000000098, available http://journals.lww.com/co-endocrinology/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2014&issue=10000&article=00012&type=abstract.
[xi] “New Report Links Thyroid Cancer Rise to Fukushima Nuclear Crisis,” The Japan Times, Oct 7, 2015, accessed October 8, 2015, available http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/10/07/national/science-health/new-report-links-thyroid-cancer-rise-fukushima-nuclear-crisis/#.VhU3aCtBmFt
[xii] “Fukushima town residents protest official’s comment about radiation safety,” The Mainichi (July 7 2015). Date accessed July 8, 2015. Available: http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150707p2a00m0na019000c.htm.
[xiii] ‘Studying the Fukushima Aftermath: “People Are Suffering from Radiophobia”’ (19 August 2011), Der Spiegel, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,780810,00.html, date accessed 4 September 2011.
http://majiasblog.blogspot.fr/2017/01/did-fukushima-daiichi-cause-cancer-in.html
AMS analyses of I-129 from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in the Pacific Ocean waters of the Coast La Jolla – San Diego, USA April 2015
It is very convenient for the nuclear industry to focus only on Cesium 137 and omit talking about all the other radionuclides released in our environment thanks to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Though less detectable and usually not looked for they are nevertheless present and harmful to life. This study from April 2015 about the Iodine-129 release is quite revealing, knowing that if Iodine-129 half life is 15,7 Million years, its full life is multiplied by 10: 157 million years.
Royal Society of Chemistry, National Institute for Physics & Nuclear Engineering, Romania, 2015:
AMS analyses of I-129 from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in the Pacific Ocean waters of the Coast La Jolla, San Diego, USA — This paper presents the results of an experimental study we performed by using the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) method with iodine 129 (Halflife = 15.7 Million years], to determine the increase of the radionuclide content in the USA West Pacific Coast waters, two years after the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident… The results of the experiments showed a significant increase of the radionuclide concentration during the late spring of 2013. Compared to the isotopic ratio 129I/127I, measured at a 40 km distance, offshore of Fukushima and immediately after the accident, our results show an increase on the USA West Coast that was more than a 2.5 factor higher. Also, compared with the pre-Fukushima background values [in San Diego], our results show an isotopic ratio of about two orders of magnitude higher…
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant… released an enormous amount of liquid waste of 129I and other fission isotopes directly into the Pacific Ocean that were subsequently dispersed eastwards. This paper reports on the determination of the nuclear plume impact on the West Coast of the USA that happened during April–July 2013… The determined maximum 129I concentration increase was in an amount of more than 2 times greater than the concentration of the isotope measured offshore of Fukushima at a 40 km distance immediately after the accident…
129I concentrations were measured… from the ocean water of the West Coast of the USA [at] La Jolla, San Diego… This work reports two sudden increases of the 129I/127I isotopic concentration in the ocean water, which were observed at the end of spring 2013…
Our exploratory measurements on the USA West Coast started on samples collected at the beginning of 2013. The lowest 129I concentrations that we measured had values between [6-20 million] atoms per L. Such values correspond to the equilibrium concentration of iodine… offshore of La Jolla, San Diego…
Our results… measured offshore of Cove La Jolla, San Diego, USA, during the spring of 2013, are presented in Fig. 5. Two high and distinct spike maxima are visible. They reveal the maximum concentration values of [1.2 billion] atoms per L measured on May 24, 2013 and [1.7 billion] atoms per L measured on June 18, 2013, with 24 days in between. Both peaks occurred in the measurement spectrum after a slow increase in concentration that started about 15-20 days before the main increase…
Samples collected [by Fukushima Daiichi, Jun 2011] at a distance of about 40 km away from the coast [had] a maximum concentration value of [620 million] atoms per L for 129I in the surface water of the ocean. Taking into account this value as a reference value, the maximum 129-iodine concentration reaching the USA West Coast was 2.5 times stronger than in the contaminated ocean water offshore of Fukushima after the accident. If we compare it to the equilibrium value of 129I concentration in the ocean water [near San Diego], then during the impact its concentration was about 100 times higher…
AMS measurements of 129I were performed on ocean water… offshore of Cove La Jolla, San Diego, USA, and definitely have shown an increase of the radioactivity more than two orders of magnitude over the natural level of the Pacific Ocean before the accident…
Correlation between infectious disease and soil radiation in Japan: an exploratory study using national sentinel surveillance data
Abstract
We investigated the relationship between epidemics and soil radiation through an exploratory study using sentinel surveillance data (individuals aged <20 years) during the last three epidemic seasons of influenza and norovirus in Japan.
We used a spatial analysis method of a geographical information system (GIS). We mapped the epidemic spreading patterns from sentinel incidence rates.
We calculated the average soil radiation [dm (μGy/h)] for each sentinel site using data on uranium, thorium, and potassium oxide in the soil and examined the incidence rate in units of 0·01 μGy/h.
The correlations between the incidence rate and the average soil radiation were assessed. Epidemic clusters of influenza and norovirus infections were observed in areas with relatively high radiation exposure.
A positive correlation was detected between the average incidence rate and radiation dose, at r = 0·61–0·84 (P < 0·01) for influenza infections and r = 0·61–0·72 (P < 0·01) for norovirus infections.
An increase in the incidence rate was found between areas with radiation exposure of 0 < dm < 0·01 and 0·15 ⩽ dm < 0·16, at 1·80 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1·47–2·12] times higher for influenza infection and 2·07 (95% CI 1·53–2·61) times higher for norovirus infection.
Our results suggest a potential association between decreased immunity and irradiation because of soil radiation.
Further studies on immunity in these epidemic-prone areas are desirable.
Another Fukushima evacuee bullied at school: Niigata Pref. education board
NIIGATA — A female junior high school student who evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture to northern Niigata Prefecture in the wake of the 2011 nuclear meltdown has stopped attending classes since mid-December last year due to bullying at school, the Mainichi Shimbun has learned.
According to the Niigata Prefectural Board of Education and other sources, the bullying started at around the end of the first term in the 2016 school year. Several students at the school called her by her name attaching the word “germs” and made her play tag while treating her like a germ.
The student talked to her parents about the matter in mid-December and after being informed from the parents, the school learned about the bullying. The school then imposed guidance on the students who were involved in the case. The bullies and their parents apologized to the parents of the student. The student was also bullied at the elementary school she attended after evacuating from Fukushima Prefecture.
While some of the bullies knew that the student was an evacuee from Fukushima Prefecture, they are reportedly saying that the fact they attached the word “germs” to the student’s name and her being an evacuee are not related.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170121/p2a/00m/0na/004000c
Crane falls on building with spent nuclear fuel at Takahama plant
Large crane collapses at Takahama nuclear plant
A large crane has toppled onto a building storing nuclear fuel at the Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan. Part of the building’s roof was damaged. There were no reported injuries.
Workers at the plant found on Friday night that the crane had half-collapsed onto the building next to the containment vessel of the No.2 reactor.
The crane is about 110 meters long. It buckled where it hit the edge of the roof and is lying across another building.
Officials at Kansai Electric Power Company say no one was injured. They confirmed damage to a facility collecting rainwater on the roof, but say they have detected no change to radiation levels in the surrounding area.
The Secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority says its inspectors have confirmed the falling crane caused wall panels inside the building to move. Workers are checking the building’s functions to prevent radioactive materials from leaking.
Kansai Electric officials say they believe strong winds likely toppled the crane. They are investigating whether there was any problem in its installation.
Weather officials had warned of strong winds in the prefecture at the time.
The Takahama plant’s operational chief, Masakazu Takashima, has apologized for the accident.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority in June last year approved the operation of the plant’s No.1 and No.2 reactors beyond the basic limit of 40 years.
The crane was reportedly being used for construction work on the containment vessel as part of safety measures for the operation extension.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20170121_17/
A crane is seen collapsed over a reactor auxiliary building and another structure at the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, on Jan. 21, 2017. The No. 2 reactor is seen at top.
Crane falls on Takahama nuke plant buildings amid storm warning
TAKAHAMA, Fukui — A large crane fell on a reactor auxiliary building and a fuel handling building at the No. 2 reactor of the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture on the night of Jan. 20, damaging part of their roofs, Kansai Electric Power Co. said.
There were no injuries in the incident, nor were there any leakages of radiation to the outside environment, the power company said. A storm warning had been issued in the prefecture, with strong winds at a speed of about 15 meters per second (54 kilometers per hour) observed near the plant at the time of the incident, which occurred at around 9:50 p.m.
The 112.75-meter mobile crane, as well as three other similar cranes, was installed for work to refurbish plant facilities in accordance with the new safety standards introduced in the wake of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster. The collapsed crane was intended for work to install a new dome above the No. 2 reactor’s containment vessel. After the incident, the framework of the collapsed crane was seen bent along the buildings on which it fell, and the metal rails on the edges of the roofs of the two affected buildings were damaged.
According to Kansai Electric Power Co., a worker at the plant’s central control room heard a loud sound and checked to find one of the four cranes collapsed. When a Kansai Electric employee visually checked the inside of the fuel handling building, where 259 nuclear fuel rods are stored in a pool, there were no objects that had fallen upon them. The utility said there were no effects from the accident on the fuel pool or the fuel rods.
“We are sorry for causing concern,” said Masakazu Takashima, a senior official at the Takahama plant at a press conference, suggesting that work involving large cranes would be suspended at the plant for the time being. With regards to the strong winds in the area at the time, he said, “We thought it would be all right after calculating the effects from the wind. However, we hadn’t taken wind direction into consideration.” Takashima said the cause of the incident had yet to be identified.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) in June last year granted permission to extend the operation of the plant’s No. 1 and No. 2 reactors, making them the country’s first reactors to be allowed to operate beyond 40 years.
According to the NRA, the management methods for protecting nuclear plant facilities are provided for by each plant’s safety code. Nuclear safety inspectors stationed at each plant monitor to see if work is in progress as specified by the safety code and conduct safety inspections four times a year. While no work was underway at the time of the crane collapse as it was during the night time, the NRA will investigate if work and equipment were properly managed in accordance with the rules as a storm warning had been issued in the prefecture at the time.
“We will check if the series of work involving the cranes had been properly managed to the effect that it wouldn’t affect nuclear reactor facilities,” said an NRA official.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170121/p2a/00m/0na/007000c
Workers on Saturday examine a crane that collapsed onto a building that houses spent nuclear fuel at the Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture
Crane falls on building with spent nuclear fuel at Takahama plant
FUKUI – A crane collapsed Friday night at the Takahama nuclear power station in Fukui Prefecture, damaging a building housing spent fuel, the plant operator said Saturday.
No one was injured in the accident at around 9:50 p.m. near the No. 2 reactor building and nothing fell into the spent fuel pool, according to the operator, Kansai Electric Power Co.
The crane also damaged the roof of an adjacent building.
A wind warning was in effect in the area, and strong winds were blowing at the time, according to the utility.
The 112-meter crane had been used to prepare for safety-enhancement work in which a concrete dome will be placed over the No. 2 reactor building. Work was not being undertaken at the time of accident.
An official apologized for the accident at a news conference at the plant, saying the utility would re-examine the risk of crane accidents amid strong winds and investigate the cause of the incident.
There are 59 fuel assemblies in the pool, including spent ones, according to Kansai Electric.
The No. 2 reactor is one of two aging reactors at the plant, in operation for over 40 years. Safety-enhancement work for the facility is expected for completion in 2020.
In June last year, nuclear regulators approved the utility’s plan to extend the operation of the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors beyond the government-mandated 40-year service period. It was the first such approval given under new safety regulation introduced following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.
The plant has two newer reactors. All four reactors are currently offline.
Police arrest anti-nuclear power activists for hiring vehicle, Kasumigaseki arson
Three Japanese anti-nuclear power activists have been arrested for transporting people in a station wagon or minivan-style vehicle to a protest in Fukushima. On January 18th, the trio — aged from their fifties to seventies — were arrested by Saitama Prefecture police on suspicion of violating the Road Transportation Law. Prefectural police also claim the three are members of the far-left group Chūkaku-ha.
The allegations relate to a trip the activists organised on September 5th, 2015, when they drove passengers from Saitama City to Naraha in Fukushima. They collected around ¥4,000 per person to cover transport costs. The trip was timed to protest the lifting of the evacuation order in Naraha that day. However, this kind of “service” would officially count as a commercial “tour” and require a licence. Police say the organisers recruited passengers online and may have run similar “tours” since the Fukushima disaster.
The announcement by…
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Doped carbon could partially treat contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi removing nearly 93 percent of cesium and 92 percent of strontium in a single pass
Nothing new here. There are lots of ways of pulling radionuclides out of water : activated carbon, ion exchange, chemical affinity, sunflowers (phytoremediation). But still can’t deal with tritium. All costs money, and results in just shifting the contamination to a different material. Radionuclides cannot be simply destroyed, they can only be shifted from one location/ source to another.
Doped carbon could treat water from Fukushima
US and Russian scientists have discovered a new way to remove radioactivity from water, which could be used to treat contaminated water at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant.
The researchers, from Rice University and Kazan Federal University, used oxidatively modified carbon (OMC) material to remove caesium and strontium from samples of water. Published in the journal Carbon, their work details how over 90 per cent of the radioactive elements were extracted using OMC column filtration.
“Just passing contaminated water through OMC filters will extract the radioactive elements and permit safe discharge to the ocean,” said Rice chemist James Tour, who led the project with Ayrat Dimiev, a former postdoctoral researcher in his lab and fuknow a research professor at Kazan Federal University. “This could be a major advance for the cleanup effort at Fukushima.”
According to Tour, OMC makes good use of the porous nature of two specific sources of carbon. One is an inexpensive, coke-derived powder known as C-seal F, used by the oil industry as an additive to drilling fluids. The other is a naturally occurring, carbon-heavy mineral called shungite, which is found mainly in Russia.
The team found that the two types of OMC were efficient at extracting cesium, which has been the hardest element to remove from radioactive water stored at Fukushima. The OMC was also much easier and less expensive than previously used filtration materials such as graphene oxide.
“We know we can use graphene oxide to trap the light radioactive elements of relevance to the Fukushima cleanup, namely caesium and strontium,” Tour said. “We learned we can move from graphene oxide, which remains more expensive and harder to make, to really cheap oxidised coke and related carbons to trap these elements.”
As well as being cheaper than other materials, OMC has the added advantage of not having to be stored alongside the radioactive waste it is used to treat.
“Carbon that has captured the elements can be burned in a nuclear incinerator, leaving only a very small amount of radioactive ash that’s much easier to store,” said Tour.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/doped-carbon-could-treat-fukushima-water/
Treated carbon pulls radioactive elements from water
Researchers at Rice, Kazan universities develop unique sorbents, target Fukushima accident site
Researchers at Rice University and Kazan Federal University in Russia have found a way to extract radioactivity from water and said their discovery could help purify the hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated water stored after the Fukushima nuclear plant accident.
They reported that their oxidatively modified carbon (OMC) material is inexpensive and highly efficient at absorbing radioactive metal cations, including cesium and strontium, toxic elements released into the environment when the Fukushima plant melted down after an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
C-seal F, a source used to synthesize oxidatively modified carbon, is seen magnified 20 times by a scanning electron microscope. The material is highly effective at removing radionuclides from water, according to researchers at Rice University and Kazan Federal University. Click on image for a larger version. Courtesy of Kazan Federal University
OMC can easily trap common radioactive elements found in water floods from oil extraction, such as uranium, thorium and radium, said Rice chemist James Tour, who led the project with Ayrat Dimiev, a former postdoctoral researcher in his lab and now a research professor at Kazan Federal University.
The material makes good use of the porous nature of two specific sources of carbon, Tour said. One is an inexpensive, coke-derived powder known as C-seal F, used by the oil industry as an additive to drilling fluids. The other is a naturally occurring, carbon-heavy mineral called shungite found mainly in Russia.
The results appear this month in Carbon.
Tour and researchers at Lomonosov Moscow State University had already demonstrated a method to remove radionuclides from water using graphene oxide as a sorbent, as reported in Solvent Extraction and Ion Exchange late last year, but the new research suggests OMC is easier and far less expensive to process.
Treating the carbon particles with oxidizing chemicals increased their surface areas and “decorated” them with the oxygen molecules needed to adsorb the toxic metals. The particles were between 10 and 80 microns wide.
While graphene oxide excelled at removing strontium, Tour said, the two types of OMC were better at extracting cesium, which he said has been the hardest element to remove from water stored at Fukushima. The OMC was also much easier and less expensive to synthesize and to use in a standard filtration system, he said.
“We know we can use graphene oxide to trap the light radioactive elements of relevance to the Fukushima cleanup, namely cesium and strontium,” Tour said. “But in the second study, we learned we can move from graphene oxide, which remains more expensive and harder to make, to really cheap oxidized coke and related carbons to trap these elements.”
While other materials used for remediation of radioactive waste need to be stored with the waste they capture, carbon presents a distinct advantage, he said. “Carbon that has captured the elements can be burned in a nuclear incinerator, leaving only a very small amount of radioactive ash that’s much easier to store,” Tour said.
C-seal F, a carbon source, magnified 200 times reveals its high surface area of 12.5 square meters per grams. Processing it into oxidatively modified carbon raises its surface area to 16.9 square meters per gram while enhancing its ability to remove radioactive cesium and strontium from water, according to researchers at Rice University and Kazan Federal University. Click on image for a larger version. Courtesy of Kazan Federal University
“Just passing contaminated water through OMC filters will extract the radioactive elements and permit safe discharge to the ocean,” he said. “This could be a major advance for the cleanup effort at Fukushima.”
The two flavors of OMC particles – one from coke-derived carbon and the other from shungite — look like balls of crumpled paper, or roses with highly irregular petals. The researchers tested them by mixing the sorbents with contaminated water as well as through column filtration, a standard process in which fluid is pumped or pulled by gravity through a filter to remove contaminants.
In the mixing test, the labs dispersed nonradioactive isotopes of strontium and cesium in spring water, added OMC and stirred for two hours. After filtering out the sorbent, they measured the particles left in the water.
OMC1 (from coke) proved best at removing both cesium and strontium from contaminated water, getting significantly better as the sorbent was increased. A maximum 800 milligrams of OMC1 removed about 83 percent of cesium and 68 percent of strontium from 100 milliliters of water, they reported.
OMC2 (from shungite) in the same concentrations adsorbed 70 percent of cesium and 47 percent of strontium.
The researchers were surprised to see that plain shungite particles extracted almost as much cesium as its oxidized counterpart. “Interestingly, plain shungite was used by local people for water purification from ancient times,” Dimiev said. “But we have increased its efficiency many times, as well as revealed the factors behind its effectiveness.”
In column filtration tests, which involved flowing 1,400 milliliters of contaminated water through an OMC filter in 100-milliliter amounts, the filter removed nearly 93 percent of cesium and 92 percent of strontium in a single pass. The researchers were able to contain and isolate contaminants trapped in the filter material.
Co-authors of the paper are Artur Khannanov, Vadim Nekljudov, Bulat Gareev and Airat Kiiamov, all of Kazan Federal University. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice. The Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University supported the research.
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster Tests Pacific Ocean’s Ecosystem
By Cole Hambleton
On Friday March 11, 2011, following a major earthquake, a 15-meter tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, causing a nuclear accident. All three reactor cores largely melted in the first three days, but were stabilized in the following weeks with seawater. By July 2011, they were being cooled with recycled water from a new treatment plant. An official “cold shutdown condition” was eventually achieved in mid-December 2011.
In November 2011, the Japanese Science Ministry reported that long-lived radioactive cesium had contaminated 11,580 square miles of the land surface of Japan – of which approximately 4,500 square miles (an area almost the size of Connecticut) was found to have radiation levels that exceeded Japan’s pre-earthquake allowable exposure rate of 1 millisievert (mSV) per year.1,2
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster also produced the largest discharge of radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean in history. Fifteen months after a quantity of radioactive cesium were deposited into the Pacific Ocean, 56% of all fish catches off the coast of Japan were found to be contaminated. 3 Fishing continues to be banned off the coast of Fukushima up to 20 kilometers from the nuclear plant, where 40 percent of bottom-dwelling fish were recently found to have radioactive cesium levels higher than current Japanese regulatory limits for human consumption. Contamination levels are also still unacceptably high in the base levels of the food chain, including algae and plankton. With contamination being found through the whole food chain, scientists believe that the long-term effects on the Japanese human population’s diet will be significant.4
What Has Been Released Into the Pacific Ocean?
Many different radioactive elements are contained in the water leaking from Fukushima. Plutonium 239, which can cause death if inhaled in microgram-sized doses, is found in the released water and can bio-accumulate in the food chain leading to leukemia and bone cancers if ingested by humans. Both short-lived radioactive elements, such as iodine-131, and longer-lived elements such as cesium-137 with a half-life of 30 years, that have been found in the discharged water can be absorbed by phytoplankton, zooplankton, kelp, and other marine life and then can be transmitted up the food chain, to fish, marine mammals, and humans. Other radioactive elements, including plutonium, which has been detected outside the Fukushima plant, also pose a threat to marine life. 5
Capacity of Ocean to Recover?
The Chernobyl accident in 1986 gave scientists a small amount of information on what to expect during a nuclear meltdown on land, but the world has not experienced a meltdown that affects the ocean. 6 Scientists generally agree that oceans have the unparalleled ability to dilute most contaminants to manageable levels and eventually break down those contaminants over time.
Unfortunately, the types of contaminants released due to the Fukushima disaster are substantially different from the more common oil or other chemical spills experienced by the world’s oceans. How the radioactive materials released from the Fukushima plant will behave in the ocean will depend on their chemical properties and reactivity.
If the radionuclides are in soluble form, they will behave differently than if they are absorbed into particles. Soluble iodine will disperse rapidly. But if a radionuclide reacts with other molecules or gets deposited on existing particulates – minerals, for example – they can be suspended in the water or, if larger, may drop to the sea floor where the water is not circulated or blended as often as the water closer to the surface. 7
If the contaminants make it to the ocean floor, they may be able to avoid being broken down by natural processes for a longer period of time. This type of pollution has never been seen before so the long-term consequences are not fully understood. Scientists are currently monitoring the ocean and land contamination. 8
While most scientists believe that the ocean’s powers of dilution will eventually spread the contamination in its suspended and soluble states over time and return the ocean to normal levels of radioactivity, those same scientists do not agree on the amount of time that this dilution will require. As Fukushima continues to dump contaminated water into the ocean, for the sake of the Pacific Ocean food chain, we must hope that the dilution occurs sooner rather than later.
1 About a month after the disaster, on April 19, 2011, Japan chose to drastically increase its “safe” radiation exposure levels from 1 mSV to 20 mSV per year, 20 times higher than the U.S. limit. This allowed the Japanese government to downplay the dangers of the fallout and avoid evacuation of many badly contaminated areas.
2http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-health-policy-institute/responses/costs-and-consequences-of-fukushima.html
3 Roslin, Alex. “Post-Fukushima, Japan’s Irradiated Fish Worry B.C. Experts.” Straight.com 19 Jul. 2012. Web. 6 Nov. 2012 <http://www.straight.com/article-735051/vancouver/japans-irradiated-fish-worry-bc-experts>
4http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-07-24/threat-to-japanese-food-chain-multiplies-as-cesium-contamination-spreads
5http://e360.yale.edu/feature/radioactivity_in_the_ocean_diluted_but_far_from_harmless/2391/
6http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Chernobyl-Accident/
7http://e360.yale.edu/feature/radioactivity_in_the_ocean_diluted_but_far_from_harmless/2391/
8http://e360.yale.edu/feature/radioactivity_in_the_ocean_diluted_but_far_from_harmless/2391/
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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