Landslides sever National Route No. 57 in Minami-Aso, Kumamoto Prefecture, on April 16. Aso-ohashi bridge also collapsed.
The number of earthquakes that could be felt by people reached 410 by 10 a.m. on April 17 following the start of seismic activity in Kumamoto Prefecture on April 14, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
Quakes with magnitudes of 3.5 or larger accounted for 162 of the total by 8:30 a.m. on April 17, the largest among inland and coastal earthquakes since 1995. The previous high was set after the Chuetsu Earthquake in Niigata Prefecture in 2004.
“After the magnitude-7.3 earthquake that struck at 1:25 a.m. on April 16, the number of earthquakes increased sharply,” said Gen Aoki, director of the agency’s earthquake and tsunami monitoring division.
He urged people in the affected areas to remain alert amid the ongoing aftershocks.
“Earthquake movements are actively continuing in areas from Kumamoto Prefecture to Oita Prefecture,” Aoki said. “The soil could have become loose due to the rain that started to fall on April 16, so I want people to exercise caution against strong tremors or rain.”
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201604170042.html
The No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture
The government on April 16 said there is no need to shut down two nuclear reactors in Kagoshima Prefecture, citing relatively low seismic movements around the nuclear plant.
Cabinet ministers met on April 16 to respond to the Kyushu earthquakes and discuss what to do with the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors of the Sendai nuclear power plant located in Satsuma-Sendai, Kagoshima Prefecture.
Environment Minister Tamayo Marukawa, who serves concurrently as state minister for nuclear emergency preparedness, mentioned the stricter safety standards implemented by the Nuclear Regulation Authority on nuclear power plant operations. Under the NRA’s standards, adopted after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, 620 gal is the maximum seismic acceleration allowed for reactors to continue running.
Marukawa said the maximum shaking recorded on the Sendai plant grounds was 12.6 gal.
“The NRA has judged there is no need to stop the Sendai plant,” she said.
The two reactors are the only ones currently operating in Japan.
The series of earthquakes that began in Kumamoto Prefecture on April 14 have spread eastward to Oita Prefecture. Kagoshima Prefecture lies at the southern end of Kyushu.
“Under the current circumstances, there is no need to stop the plant because (the shaking) is sufficiently low,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said after the April 16 meeting.
The Japanese Communist Party on April 16 called on the government to shut down the Sendai plant as a preventive measure because the quake activity was spreading through Kyushu.
The party said major problems would arise in evacuations if a nuclear accident arose at the Sendai plant because quake damage has rendered the Shinkansen bullet train line and expressways unusable.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201604170031.html
The earthquake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture early Saturday had a magnitude of 7.3, the same as the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, in which more than 6,400 people died or remain missing.
The Saturday quake had more than 10 times the energy of the magnitude-6.5 earthquake that occurred Thursday evening, which caused strong shaking in limited areas. On Saturday, violent tremors measuring as high as upper 6 on the Japanese intensity scale of 7 were felt over a wide area.
Experts said the earthquake occurred as multiple faults moved in conjunction with each other, and warned that earthquakes will continue over a wide area.
According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, this is the first magnitude-7 class earthquake with a shallow focus since a magnitude-7 quake in the Hamadori area in Fukushima Prefecture, that is believed to have been an aftershock of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. In the Kyushu region it was the first of that size and type in 11 years, since the magnitude-7 earthquake with its focus in the Genkainada sea in western Fukuoka Prefecture in 2005.
According to the agency’s analysis, Saturday’s quake was a “strike-slip” type, in which the fault involved moved horizontally due to its being pulled to the northwest and southeast. Thursday’s quake and the 1995 Hanshin earthquake involved the same “strike-slip” mechanism.
Yuji Yagi, an associate professor of geodynamics at University of Tsukuba, analyzed the seismic waves from the Saturday quake and said the fault appeared to have moved over an area about 50 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide.
The underground destruction stretched northeast from the quake’s focus and continued for about 20 seconds.
The focus of Saturday’s quake was located on the northern side of the Futagawa fault zone, which cuts east to west across Kumamoto Prefecture and is at least about 64 kilometers long in its entirety.
The government’s Earthquake Research Committee had deemed there to be “an almost zero to 0.9 percent chance” of a magnitude-7 earthquake occurring in the northeast part of the Futagawa fault zone within 30 years.
The Hinagu fault zone lies to the south of the focus of Saturday’s quake, stretching at least about 81 kilometers. Part of the Hinagu fault zone is believed to have moved in the Thursday earthquake.
Yasuhiro Suzuki, a professor of tectonic geomorphology at Nagoya University, said part of the Futagawa fault zone moved in the Saturday morning earthquake. “It’s appropriate to think of the Hinagu and Futagawa fault zones as connected active faults. The earthquake on Saturday occurred in conjunction with the quakes that have happened from Thursday on, so it appears that part of a very large fault moved,” Suzuki said.
According to Takeshi Matsushima, an associate professor at Kyushu University of solid-state geophysics, the ground in the Kyushu region is subject to forces that pull it north-south. This creates the Beppu-Shimabara rift zone, in which the ground is subsided from Oita to Kumamoto. It contains the Hinagu and Futagawa fault zones, as well as the Beppu-Haneyama fault zone.
Seismic activity has intensified from the southwest to the northeast of the rift zone.
Regarding this fact, the Japan Meteorological Agency said at a Saturday press conference that “large earthquakes have occurred in three locations: Kumamoto, Aso and the central areas of Oita Prefecture.”
The government’s Earthquake Research Committee has decided to hold an emergency meeting on Sunday regarding the quakes. It will examine the causes of the seismic activity and prospects for the future.Speech
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002881595
Seismologists fear that the series of earthquakes rattling Kyushu could trigger temblors in other active faults in the southwestern island, which extend eastward into central Japan.
A number of active faults dot the so-called Beppu-Shimabara Rift, which traverses Kyushu island from east to west, extending to the Median Tectonic Line. This is the nation’s longest tectonic line, and it spans about 1,000 kilometers from the Kanto Plain through Gunma, Nagano, Wakayama, and Tokushima prefectures to Kyushu island in southern Japan.
Ichiro Kawasaki, professor emeritus of seismology at Kyoto University, said: “The epicenter (in the latest series of quakes that began April 14) is gradually moving eastward. When a fault moves, it tends to move other faults that run on an extended line.”
He explained that when an earthquake occurs, other faults around it are exerted to different pressure, which could trigger other quakes.
That view was echoed by Kazuro Hirahara, a Kyoto University professor of seismology and head of the Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Prediction.
“The epicenter of the earthquake in Oita Prefecture, (which occurred early on April 16) is about 100 kilometers from that of the Kumamoto quakes, and therefore it is hard to think that the quake was an aftershock,” he said, adding that there was a possibility the Beppu-Haneyama fault zone in the prefecture may have been stimulated.
“Quite frankly, there is no telling what may happen in the days ahead,” he said. “If some part in the Median Tectonic Line moves, there is a chance it could have an impact on the predicted Nankai Trough Earthquake in the long run.”
Shinji Toda, a Tohoku University professor of earthquake geology, pointed out that the seismic activity could also move southward.
Fukushima, Reactors 3 and 4
By Vincent Di Stefano
The meltdown of three nuclear reactors at Fukushima in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami of 11th March 2011 seems to have quietly slipped out of our collective awareness – as quietly as the cauldrons of radioactive elements that were once within the active cores of the reactors invisibly bleed into the groundwaters and seawaters of the region. This event has become yet another minor detail in the distorted mosaic of ruin that mirrors the latter days of a civilisation in free-fall.
Arnie Gundersen is looking a little weathered these days. He has just returned from a five-week long speaking tour of Japan. He spent much of that time in the company of many whose lives have been indelibly seared by the Fukushima catastrophe. What he reports is unlikely to appear in the mainstream media, but such has ever been the case when it comes to the hidden machinations of big government and big business.
What Gundersen has to say is worth closely attending to. As a nuclear engineer, he has been deeply involved in the American nuclear industry for over four decades. He has a special interest in the design and safety of containment structures and holds a patent for a nuclear safety device. He has also managed and coordinated nuclear projects at 70 nuclear power plants in the US and is a former nuclear industry senior vice-president. He knows the industry well, particularly its toxic underbelly.
Arnie Gundersen served as an expert witness in the investigation of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, and found that releases of radioactivity from that particular event were 15 times higher than the figures published subsequently in a government report. He is no stranger to the prevarication and deceit that have too often accompanied statements made by the nuclear industry and its government supporters.
Gundersen has been an active critic of the nuclear industry for over two decades. More recently, he has co-authored a Greenpeace International report on Fukushima. He was among the first North American commentators to speak publicly and forcefully on the implications of Fukushima in the days and weeks after the meltdowns. And since that time, he has been tireless in his efforts to provide an informed narrative of developments at Fukushima and their consequences for both the inhabitants of Japan and on the global community.
Arnie Gunderson reports that the Japanese Government continues to put the interests of Japanese banks and power companies ahead of the safety of its people. Within a short time of the Fukushima meltdowns in 2011, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) who were in power at that time arbitrarily raised the “acceptable” limits of radiation exposure twenty-fold: from 1 millisievert (mSv)/year – the maximum dose recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection – to 20 mSv/year. In 1998, over a decade beforehand, Rosalie Bertell presented the findings of a number of independent studies published in peer-reviewed journals, including the British Medical Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association that showed unequivocally that radiation doses as low as 2.5 mSv/year were associated with significant increases in the incidence of leukaemias and myelomas, and cancers of the pancreas, lungs and female reproductive organs in nuclear industry workers.
As Japanese medical practitioners begin to encounter the effects of radiation exposure in their patients – particularly children – the government now refuses to pay doctors who record a diagnosis of radiation-induced sickness in their patients. This will come as no surprise to those who followed the actions of the Soviet government and later, the Russian, Ukraine and Belarus governments in their concerted suppression of medical reports dealing with the consequences of radiation exposure on the lives of their citizens after the Chernobyl meltdown.
Rearranging the Deck Chairs
Temporary housing for Fukushima evacuees
Over 100,000 people are still not able to return to their homes in Fukushima prefecture since the meltdowns. In a disturbing disclosure, Gundersen reveals that many of the evacuees have received virtually no information regarding the issue of radiation exposure either from the Japanese government or from TEPCO, the operators of the Fukushima power plant. The subsistence stipend that they have received since being evacuated will cease in March 2017. Considerable pressure is being put on former residents by the government that they now return to Fukushima and tough it out regardless of the ongoing contamination. Many have grave concerns regarding the effects of such a move on the future health of their families.
30 Million Bags of Radioactive Debris
Another remarkable aspect of the present situation concerns the manner in which highly contaminated materials – which include radioactive soil, leaves and other debris – have been dealt with. Thirty million tons of such debris has so far been gathered from throughout the Fukushima prefecture. Much of this is now stored in over 9 million large plastic bags scattered throughout the affected areas. Three years after being filled, the bags have started to disintegrate and nobody seems to know what to do next since their contents need to be kept isolated for at least another 30 years. One favoured option is to incinerate them. This would certainly decrease their number, but would inevitably result in the further dispersion of radioactive elements in aerosol form around Japan.
There are clearly some who still hold to the old but ultimately banal adage that, the solution to pollution is dilution.
Contaminated Water Storage Tanks at Fukushima
Dwarfing the problem of solid wastes is the ongoing leaching of radioactive elements from the melted reactor cores into groundwater and seawater. For the past five years, between 200 and 500 tons of groundwater flow through the reactors every day as a result of multiple cracks in the containment structures. Some of this water has recently been diverted away from the reactors, but an estimated 150 tons of groundwater continue to flow through the reactors daily. This irradiated water inexorably flows on, steadily bleeding into the northern Pacific. Furthermore, 700,000 tons of highly radioactive water salvaged from cooling operations since the meltdown is presently stored in massive tanks that now pepper the reactor site. More are being built as contaminated water continues to accumulate.
The Tragic Absurdity
It is common knowledge that engineers will be busy for the next 30 to 40 years in their efforts to put the lid on the cauldron of radioactivity that seethes in the reactor basements at Fukushima. Meanwhile, the Pacific tectonic plate continues its own inexorable movement beneath the continental Okhotsk plate on which Japan sits creating the conditions for future mega-thrust events like that which shook the region on 11th March 2011. The unspoken terror is that it could all turn again in the blink of an eye.
Despite what has happened at Fukushima, the Abe Government is determined to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors that were all shut down after the 2011 earthquake. Widespread anti-nuclear protests throughout Japan have been ignored and three nuclear power plants in Kagoshima and Fukui prefectures have been restarted since August 2015. Over the next year, a further six to twelve reactors are slated to resume operations. Business reigns as usual.
There are many who proudly insist on riding the nuclear beast regardless of the human and environmental consequences. They insist that this is the way of the future and a “necessary” solution to the problems of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and an ever-accelerating movement towards numerous tipping points which include ocean acidification, loss of polar albedo effects due to melting of polar ice, and the bubbling up of vast new wells of methane gas from the melting of northern permafrost and sea-floor deposits. In the immortal words of Edwin Arlington Robinson, what folly is here that has not yet a name?
Arnie Gundersen’s Report
The video clip below presents an interview between Arnie Gundersen and Margaret Harrington recorded soon after he returned from a recent speaking tour of Japan. The first 25 minutes of the interview offers deep insight into how the worst industrial accident in the history of humanity has affected the people of Japan, and how the Japanese government now increasingly serves the interests of power companies and their financial backers rather than those of its own people. Arnie Gundersen is unambiguously clear regarding the nature of what has gone down in Fukushima in this presentation. And the moral abandonment of both the Japanese government and TEPCO in the downplaying of the present and future consequences of the meltdown are not lost on him.
The second half of this clip offers a detailed review by Gundersen of the developments at Fukushima over the past five years. A separate high-definition version of the second segment can be accessed here.
http://www.countercurrents.org/stefano150416.htm
Japan’s Kumamoto rocked by magnitude 7.3 earthquake 24 hours after first shock, SMH April 16, 2016 Tokyo: A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck southern Japan early on Saturday, killing at least 11 people, injuring many more and bringing down buildings, media reported, just over a day after a quake killed nine people in the same region.
Authorities warned of damage over a wide area, as reports came in of scores of people trapped in collapsed buildings, fires and power outages.
Residents living near a dam were told to leave because of fears it might crumble, broadcaster NHK said…….
People still reeling from a magnitude 6.5 quake on Thursday poured onto the streets after the Saturday quake struck at 1.25 am……….
M7.0 earthquake in Japan – same area as yesterday’s foreshocks. https://t.co/eSYh0m7VMI. Hearts out to them pic.twitter.com/41M2BGRmRR……..
Japan is on the seismically active “ring of fire” around the Pacific Ocean and has building codes aimed at helping structures withstand earthquakes.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/japans-kumamoto-rocked-by-magnitude-74-earthquake-just-24-hours-after-first-shock-20160415-go7ucs.html#ixzz45xKID5Fc
Young Athletes, Women, More Susceptible to Radiation Dangers Washington, DC — Apr 14, 2016 / (http://www.myprgenie.com) — On March 11, 2016, the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima triple nuclear meltdowns, the Japanese Olympic Minister Toshiaki Endo stated that preliminary softball, baseball and possibly other games would likely be moved from the host city of Tokyo to Fukushima Prefecture. In fact, organizers are already far into the process of developing J Village, located 19 km (12 mi) from the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, into a training facility for Japan’s soccer team and possibly more uses. J Village was used as a disaster staging and support facility during the early days of the ongoing catastrophic Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
In a stunning development in 2013, Japan’s Olympic bid was won by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when he promised the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that it (Fukushima Daiichi) “has never done, and will never do, any damage in Tokyo”. Now, according to the Olympic Minister’s recent statements and credible news reports in Japan, the IOC and IPC will be required to use venues not only in Tokyo as originally agreed upon, but also in Fukushima Prefecture, not far from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster site. “The Abe administration’s willingness to expose both their own population and the world’s to lethal particles in order to deny the horrendous contamination of their land, is morally reprehensible”, says Mary Beth Brangan, Co-Director of Ecological Options Network.
The person in charge of decommissioning at Fukushima Daiichi has publicly stated that there is no solution in sight to the massive radioactive releases at there and appealed to the international community for assistance. Radiation has been documented well beyond Fukushima to several areas around Japan that have been used for the past 5 years for the open storage and subsequent incineration of toxic and radioactive tsunami rubble, garbage, and more. Cesium 134, 137 and other cancer causing radionuclides from the disaster have been found in tap water and vacuum cleaner bags sampled at different locations around Japan. Hundreds of radioisotopes are released in nuclear accidents, many of which are long-lived and remain hazardous for millions of years. Once inhaled, they pose a significant health risk to everyone in affected environments and to athletes during strenuous competition. Women and children are the most vulnerable as stated in the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR 7) report issued by the National Academy of Sciences.
“Instead of spending money on the Olympics, Japan should spend it ensuring that citizens of its country are not forced to live in contaminated areas in the same prefecture where Japan now wants to host some of these games”, states Cindy Folkers, Radiation and Health Specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “In 2012, the UN Commissioner on Human Rights traveled to Japan and concluded that the government should “reduce the radiation dose to less than 1mSv/year” in accordance with recommended international standards. Instead, Japan is forcing some evacuees to be exposed to up to 20 times this amount, while telling the world, and the Olympic committee, everything is fine.”
Presidential candidate and US Senator Bernie Sanders has called for the immediate closure of the aging and leaking Indian Point nuclear reactors near New York City. Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN) is asking other leaders to also make an informed decision where nuclear hazards are concerned by calling for an immediate halt to the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics games planned in Fukushima Prefecture. Petition recipients include UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon, Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and others.
Contact: Continue reading
the level of recyclable contaminated waste,
80 times more than the current norm.
汚染土壌の再生利用は世界に前例の無い一大ナショナル・プロジェクト（おしどりポータルサイト）http://oshidori-makoken.com/?p=2059
最終処分、９割減量も＝福島の汚染土、技術開発で－環境省（時事通信 2016/03/30-10:09）
http://www.jiji.com/jc/article?k=2016033000226&g=eqa
山本太郎議員の国会質疑（2016.4.13復興特別委員会）
https://www.taro-yamamoto.jp/national-diet/5801
（満田夏花／FoE Japan）
Cattlemen dedicate a monument to livestock that died as result of the 2011 nuclear disaster on April 15, in Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture.
TOMIOKA, Fukushima Prefecture–About 170 cattlemen gathered here on April 15 to dedicate a monument to beef cattle that died from starvation or had to be euthanized as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
According to a local livestock cooperative, cattle farming was thriving in the coastal area of Fukushima Prefecture before the disaster unfolded at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011.
Nobuo Nemoto, head of the cooperative, which is based in Futaba, a town that co-hosts the stricken nuclear plant, said he and other cattle farmers will work hard to revive the industry.
“We are facing enormous difficulties, including the aging of farmers and a dent in morale in resuming the industry,” he said. “Despite that, we are hoping to make a fresh start with the ceremony to unveil the monument.”
Although many cattlemen were forced to evacuate and leave their livestock behind, many returned to their farms on occasion to feed and take care of their animals.
But after the government set up a 20-kilometer no-entry zone around the plant on April 22, 2011, the number of cattle that died of starvation on farms near the plant increased dramatically.
The no-entry zone was established to prohibit evacuees and others from entering the area due to high levels of radioactive substances.
The government then instructed the cattle ranchers to have their starving animals euthanized after gaining their consent. By February 2014, about 1,700 head of beef cattle–primarily cows and their calves–were put out of their misery.
Strong earthquake quake hits southern Japan THE AUSTRALIAN APRIL 15, 2016
At least two people were killed and 45 injured by a magnitude-6.5 earthquake that knocked down houses and buckled roads in southern Japan on Thursday night.
Both victims are from the hardest-hit town of Mashiki, about 15 kilometres (9 miles) east of Kumamoto city on the island of Kyushu, said Kumamoto prefecture disaster management official Takayuki Matsushita.
Earlier, Japanese Red Cross Kumamoto Hospital said it had admitted or treated 45 people, including five with serious injuries.
The quake struck at 9:26pm at a depth of 11 kilometres near Kumamoto city on the island of Kyushu, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. There was no tsunami risk……
Saga said there no abnormalities at nearby nuclear facilities. The epicentre was 120 kilometres (74 miles) northeast of Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Sendai nuclear plant, the only one operating in the country.
Most of Japan’s nuclear reactors remain offline following the meltdowns at the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima plant in 2011 after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered a huge tsunami…….
The U.S. Geological Survey measured the initial quake’s preliminary magnitude at 6.2. It upgraded its damage assessment to red, meaning extensive damage is probable and the disaster likely widespread…….http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/strong-earthquake-quake-hits-southern-japan/news-story/758290acc35b609538c3ff285e89d2a8
Top Official: Over 60 million Japanese irradiated by Fukushima — Nuclear Expert: 50,000 sq. miles of Japan highly contaminated… Many millions need to be evacuated… Gov’t has decided to sacrifice them, it’s a serious crime — TV: More than 70% of country contaminated by radiation (VIDEOS) http://enenews.com/top-official-60-million-japanese-irradiated-fukushima-nuclear-expert-50000-square-miles-country-highly-contaminated-many-millions-be-evacuated-govt-decided-sacrifice-serious-crime-professor-70-l?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
Interview with nuclear engineer Hiroaki Koide (translation by Prof. Robert Stolz, transcription by Akiko Anson), published Mar 8, 2016 (emphasis added): [Radioactive] material has been dispersed, contaminating Tohoku, Kanto [Tokyo area], and western Japan… [The law says] that absolutely nothing may be removed from a radioactive management area in which the levels exceed 40,000 Becquerels per square meter… [H]ow much area has been contaminated beyond 40,000 Bq/m2… that answer is 140,000 km^2 [54,054 square miles]… Indeed, while centered on Fukushima, parts of Chiba and Tokyo have also been contaminated. The number of people living in what must be called a radiation-controlled area is in the millions, and could exceed ten million… I believe the government has the responsibility to evacuate these entire communities… the government decided to leave them exposed to the real danger of radiation. In my view, Fukushima should be declared inhabitable… but if that were to be done, it would likely bankrupt the country… They’ve decided to sacrifice people… In my view, this is a serious crime committed by Japan’s ruling elite… [F]undamentally, people must not be forced to live in contaminated areas… First must come complete evacuation… [W]hen it comes to radiation… “removal of contaminants” is impossible… This stuff contaminates everything.
Naoto Kan, former Prime Minister of Japan, Apr 11, 2016 (at 2:15 in): The molten material broke through the pressure vessel and accumulated low down in the containment. Now what would have happened if this molten material had escaped from the containment?… A radius of 250 kilometers — which includes the city of Tokyo — anyone living in this area, if you count them up it comes to 50 million or 40% of the Japanese population, and they would all have had to be evacuated. As we know from Chernobyl, not just a couple of weeks, but 30 years or 40 years — it would have virtually meant the end of Japan. [Note: Many nuclear experts believe the molten fuel did in fact escape from the containment] Half the population was subject to radiation [Japan Population: 127 million]. That’s something that could just be imagined, for instance the event of losing a major war.
Arirang (Gov’t-funded Korean TV network), ‘Fukushima and Its Aftermath’, Mar 16, 2016 (at 6:45 in) —Prof. Kim Ik-Jung, Medical College at Dongguk Univ.: “When you look at the contamination map, about 70% of Japan is contaminated by radiation. That means that 70% of Japan’s agricultural and marine products are contaminated.”… According to PNAS, one of the five major scientific journals, over 70% of the land in Japan is contaminated by radiation.
Amid rampant waste, Fukushima’s frozen wall up in smoke http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2015/3/24/rampant-waste-fukushima-frozen-wall-up-in-smoke.html
Japan’s Board of Audit reported that TEPCO, the company nominally in charge of the crippled facility, along with other construction and utility giants, had operated an insular and insufficiently transparent process that resulted in a lengthy list of massive expenditures on untested tactics and shoddy equipment.
The biggest ticket failure was apparently a $270 million water decontamination system from French nuclear behemoth Areva. Designed to remove radioactive cesium from water gushing from Fukushima Daiichi’s three destroyed reactors, the machine was never fully operational, functioned only three months and processed only 77,000 tons of liquid — in total — a minute fraction of the 300,000 tons of contaminated water flowing from the site (and into the sea) each day.
An attempt to contain at least some of that water, a series of pipes and trenches filled with coolant that was to form an “ice wall,” turned out to be another of the cleanup’s dramatically costly and utterly ineffective schemes.
As detailed last summer, the freezing technique was borrowed from tunnel excavation, but had never been tried under such circumstances or on such a large scale. After a year of planning and months of construction, authorities couldn’t get even the small first stage of the project to freeze. Even after adding ten tons of ice and a ton of dry ice on top of the piped coolant every day, TEPCO could not get within 10 degrees (F) of the temperature needed to form a barrier.
By late 2014, 400 tons of ice and somewhere between $840,000 (audited waste) and $300 million (projected cost) later, TEPCO conceded failure.
Other attempts to contain the radioactive water have also come at immense cost. TEPCO spent $134 million on rubber-gasketed tanks that quickly began leaking into the surrounding ground and ocean. And $18 million was spent to build large underground pools that failed within weeks.
Another costly boondoggle detailed in the audit is the $150 million blown on desalination equipment that was supposed to purify the seawater poured over the overheating reactor cores. (All of Fukushima’s cooling systems failed during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, resulting in reactor meltdowns, melt-throughs, hydrogen explosions and containment breaches.) One machine worked for just five days; the best of them survived only six weeks.
Fukushima’s disaster mitigation is four years into what is projected, by the very best estimates, to be a 30- to 40-year cleanup — and even then, there will be many long-term logistical, safety and health concerns. No serious models forecast the project can be accomplished with just the $1.6 billion (190 billion yen) currently allocated, but by that math, waste alone will outstrip the budget three- or four-times over before cleanup is “complete.”
A Tokyo Electric Power Co. senior official has admitted to knowing the criteria to assess reactor meltdowns during the onset of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.
However, it took the company two months to make the declaration and another five years to “discover” its operational manual, which would have allowed it to declare a meltdown.
Until February this year, TEPCO had justified the delay in that it did not have the “basis to determine” such an occurrence. It announced Feb. 24 that it discovered a guideline in its operational manual.
TEPCO admitted that meltdowns had occurred in May 2011, two months after the disaster.
Yuichi Okamura, a senior director on nuclear power generation, said in a news conference on April 11 that he knew of the standard, although emphasizing it was only his “personal knowledge.” He did not elaborate on whether he knew the existence of the operational manual, or whether he shared his “personal knowledge” with other staff members.
“I, in fact, knew it (the criteria),” said Okamura. “I learned it while working in the field of nuclear technology with the company for over 20 years.”
According to Okamura, at the time of the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, he was directing the pumping of water into the cooling pool of spent nuclear fuel rods of the No. 4 reactor. He said he was not in a position to make a declaration whether a meltdown had occurred.
He made the admission in response to a question asking his personal understanding of the situation at the onset of the crisis.
Okamura declined to comment on whether he is being questioned by a third-party panel investigating the accident.
In February, TEPCO revealed that it did not realize for the past five years that there was a clear guideline in the operational manual to assess that a meltdown in a reactor had occurred. The standard requires the company to declare a meltdown when damage to a reactor core exceeds 5 percent.
TEPCO took two months to declare the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima plant, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. It had initially maintained that the reactors suffered “core damage” rather than meltdowns.
Last month made five years since the nuclear plant at Fukushima, Japan suffered meltdowns. The release of highly toxic radiation from the reactors was enormous, on the level of the Chernobyl disaster a generation earlier. But Fukushima is arguably worse than Chernobyl. There were four reactors that melted down, vs. just one at Chernobyl. And the Chernobyl reactor was buried in a matter of weeks, while Fukushima is still not controlled, and radioactive contaminants continue to leak into the Pacific. In time, this may prove to be the worst environmental catastrophe ever.
Japan, which had 54 reactors in operation, closed them all to improve safety features. But the nation’s people, who had suffered from the two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are adamantly against nuclear power. As a result, despite strong efforts of government and industry, only three (3) reactors have been brought back on line.
While the people struggle against leaders to determine the nuclear future of Japan, many questions remain. The most crucial question is, without doubt, how many casualties occurred from the 2011 disaster?
Public health leaders have addressed the topic with ignorance and deception. A search of the medical literature shows only two studies in Japan that review actual changes in disease and death rates. One showed that 127 Fukushima-area children have developed thyroid cancer since the meltdown; a typical number of cases for a similar sized population of children would be about 5-10. The other study showed a number of ectopic intrathyroidal problems in local children – a disorder that is extremely rare. No other studies looking at changes in infant deaths, premature births, child cancers, or other radiation-sensitive diseases are available.
But the literature also shows that researchers have been pouring out articles on mental health and psychological impacts on local residents. Journals from Japan and other nations have printed research on stress, behavioral changes, fears, and even changes in average blood pressure (blaming it on concerns about the meltdown). At least 51 of these articles are listed on the National Library of Medicine web site.
The same pattern occurred after prior meltdowns. The 1979 meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania was followed by a total denial that anyone had been harmed. The first journal article on changes in cancer cases didn’t appear until nearly 12 years after the meltdown; it showed a 64% rise in cancer cases within 10 miles of the plant during the first five years after the accident. The authors, from Columbia University, blamed this increase on stress and psychological reactions to the disaster.
After Chernobyl, the same corruption of scientific investigation occurred. The 31 emergency workers who helped bury the red-hot reactor and died from high exposures became almost a mantra (“Chernobyl caused only 31 deaths”) despite the massive amount of fallout it dispersed across the globe. A 2009 compendium of 5,000 articles, published by the New York Academy of Sciences, estimated about 1 million deaths from the meltdown occurred in the following 20 years. Unfortunately, nuclear supporters have made the assumption that nobody died from Fukushima, while churning out study after study on how a meltdown affects mental status – and no other part of the body.
But the truth is that Fukushima radiation, a mix of over 100 chemicals found only in atomic reactors and bombs, has caused considerable harm. University of South Carolina biology professor Timothy Mousseau has made multiple trips to Japan, collecting specimens of plants and animals. He and colleagues have published numerous journal articles showing DNA damage and actual disease near the plant. So if plants and animals are affected, it is logical that humans are as well.
And while the damage is worst in Japan, the harm spread for long distances. Right after the meltdown, prevailing winds drove Fukushima fallout across the Pacific, reaching the U.S. West Coast in 5 days, and moving through the air across the nation. EPA data showed that the West Coast, had the highest levels of fallout in the weeks following the accident, up to 200 times normal. In the years since, the slower-moving radiation in the Pacific has moved steadily eastward, reaching the U.S. West Coast, and contaminating fish and aquatic plant life along the way.
We published three journal articles showing that babies born in the West Coast in the nine months after Fukushima had a 16% jump in defective thyroids, compared to little change in the rest of the country. It’s time that health researchers stop its corrupt approach to Fukushima, and produce some actual statistics on changes in disease and death rates among affected populations – in Japan and in other countries. Not coming to grips with the truth will only raise the chance of another catastrophic meltdown in the future, raising the already-enormous number of casualties from nuclear power.
Fukushima Five Years After: Health Researchers Turn Blind Eye to Casualties
US Think Tank Urging Japan Keep Nuclear Funded By Japanese Govt & Nuclear Industry, Simply Info April 12th, 2016 | A report by The Intercept this week provided a missing piece of the puzzle from 2012 and Japan’s attempted nuclear exit. Back in 2012 then PM Noda established a policy for Japan to phase out nuclear power by 2030. This of course brought protest from Japan’s nuclear industry but more curiously brought protest by various parties claiming to represent the US. One of these was a series of eyebrow raising public statements by John Hamre who showed up in Japan weeks after the new policy was announced.
Hamre is the president of a Washington DC think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). While in Japan he made a series of claims about Japan’s need for nuclear power, the US stance on the issue and readily debunked claims about renewable energy. Hamre does not hold any authority to speak on behalf of the US but gave the impression he was sharing US official views on the issue. News reports described him as “a former deputy US defense secretary”. What was not known in 2012 was who bankrolled Hamre’s Japanese speaking tour or his opinions on the issue.
The Intercept’s new report on foreign government funding of TPP promotion within the US provides that missing piece. Hamre’s Center for Strategic and International Studies is heavily funded by the Japanese government and a long list of US and Japanese nuclear industry companies. The Intercept cites a 2014 investigative report by the New York Times that looked into foreign influence on DC think tanks and how that goes on to skew US policy, laws and spending. The New York Times investigation pressured the CSIS to publish their corporate and government donors list for the first time in 2014. The New York Times also explains that these lobbying activities on behalf of foreign governments masquerading as impartial scholarship are likely illegal in the US. The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires such arrangement to be disclosed to the US government………..http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15416
Japanese economy minister Akira Amari quits over bribery claims, BBC News, 28 January 2016 Japan’s Economy Minister Akira Amari has said he is resigning amid corruption allegations. Mr Amari unexpectedly made the announcement at a press conference in Tokyo on Thursday. But he again denied personally receiving bribes from a construction company, as had been alleged by a Japanese magazine.
The development will be seen as a significant blow for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Mr Amari, who has been minister of state for economic and fiscal policy since late 2012, has been widely described as one of Mr Abe’s most trusted members of parliament.
As Japan’s lead negotiator for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, Mr Amari was expected to travel to New Zealand next week to sign the agreement.
He was also regarded as the architect of Abenomics – Mr Abe’s plan to pull the world’s third largest economy out of deflation.
“This is possibly the biggest scandal the Abe administration has faced,” said the BBC’s Mariko Oi.
“His resignation will probably raise even more questions over Mr Abe’s economic policies – or Abenomics,” our correspondent added. “It may also raise further opposition within Japan to the TPP.” Mr Amari will be replaced by Nobuteru Ishihara, formerly the country’s environment minister……
Mr Amari is the fourth member of Mr Abe’s cabinet to resign amid allegations of bribery, among other issues.
Mr Abe has apologised for the latest resignation. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427563
Nuclear Expert in Fukushima: People’s feet turned black for years because radiation so high — Every time I turned around I saw someone who had radiation damage — Hair falling out, caughing up blood, bodies covered with boils… Officials keeping doctors from telling truth… Public being brainwashed (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-fukushima-peoples-feet-turned-black-years-because-radiation-levels-high-every-time-turned-around-radiation-damage-hair-fell-bloody-noses-bodies-covered-boils-officials-covering-pu?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
CCTV, Apr 5, 2016 (emphasis added) — Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen: [During my recent trip to Japan] I met in one of the resettlement areas… The unofficial mayor of this group – a real dynamo of a woman – she experienced hair loss, bloody nose, speckles on her skin and the doctors told her it was stress and not to worry about it. That’s not stress. It was radiation damage. But again, that’s this inhumanity that I was experiencing… Every time I turned around, I saw people that definitely experienced radiation damage. We had one woman who ran from her house to evacuate carrying her dog. About a day after the accident, they realized that she needed to be evacuated. And so she runs barefoot to her car, gets in her car, drives to the resettlement community. She’s highly radioactive. They make her – especially her feet – they make her take her socks off and take showers, wash her down before they let her in. And her feet were black for three years from radiation damage. And that’s not being spoken about in any of the medical journals… [The government wants] to get these other nuclear plants up and running. And if the population is getting ill from radiation effects, it’s a lot harder. So they have… banded together with the medical community.
We had numerous doctors say that they were going to lose hospital privileges and things like that. And the people that are keeping track of deaths in Fukushima Prefecture aren’t publishing the data. So the entire government infrastructure, from the people in Tokyo to the underlings in the Prefecture, are all singing the same song: that this is stress, there’s no radiation. And it sure isn’t what I found, I’ll tell you… Were it not for the internet, they would have won. And I think the difference between the disaster at Fukushima and the disaster at Chernobyl and TMI is that now we have the internet. It still is an unlevel playing field. There’s still so much money on the other side of it that people are being brainwashed. Oh, that bloody nose you’ve had for the last 3 weeks is stress. So they are being brainwashed.
Fairewinds Japan Speaking Tour Series No. 3, Feb 24, 2016 – Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen: Today I went to a resettlement community… their unofficial mayor, the woman who sort of runs all the groups… she told us that after the disaster at Fukushima, her hair fell out, she got a bloody nose and her body was speckled with hives and boils and the doctor told her it was stress and she believes him. It was absolutely amazing.
Fairewinds Japan Speaking Tour Series No. 4, Mar 3, 2016 — Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen: The Japanese government’s position is when your hair falls out and your nose starts to bleed and you’re hacking up blood, that that’s all stress related… We had a woman back my first week that was there, the radiation levels were so high, her feet turned black for four years. And I was at the Hiroshima Museum and I saw the same thing. I saw pictures of the Hiroshima victims with their feet blackened from radiation. The government has done a very successful job of covering this up.
The Guardian, Apr 11, 2016: At first they thought it was just a fire, then the chickens started to turn black… Soviet authorities neglected to tell the people the extent of the danger they were in [from Chernobyl], for fear of causing mass panic, tell-tale symptoms soon followed. Dark marks appeared on the skin. The wattles of the local chickens turned from crimson to black.
Tritium may not penetrate plastic but goes everywhere H20 goes in the body. It can cross the blood brain barrier, the placental barrier, and is a known carcinogen. Just because they don’t know what to do with it doesn’t mean it’s ok to just release it. Something the nuclear industry is perfectly aware of.
TOKYO — To dump or not to dump a little-discussed substance is the question brewing in Japan as it grapples with the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima five years ago. The substance is tritium.
The radioactive material is nearly impossible to remove from the huge quantities of water used to cool melted-down reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, which was wrecked by the massive tsunami in northeastern Japan in March 2011.
The water is still accumulating since 300 tons are needed every day to keep the reactors chilled. Some is leaking into the ocean.
Huge tanks lined up around the plant, at last count 1,000 of them, each hold hundreds of tons of water that have been cleansed of radioactive cesium and strontium but not of tritium.
Ridding water of tritium has been carried out in laboratories. But it’s an effort that would be extremely costly at the scale required for the Fukushima plant, which sits on the Pacific coast. Many scientists argue it isn’t worth it and say the risks of dumping the tritium-laced water into the sea are minimal.
Their calls to simply release the water into the Pacific Ocean are alarming many in Japan and elsewhere.
Rosa Yang, a nuclear expert at the Electric Power Research Institute, based in Palo Alto, California, who advises Japan on decommissioning reactors, believes the public angst is uncalled for. She says a Japanese government official should simply get up in public and drink water from one of the tanks to convince people it’s safe.
But the line between safe and unsafe radiation is murky, and children are more susceptible to radiation-linked illness. Tritium goes directly into soft tissues and organs of the human body, potentially increasing the risks of cancer and other sicknesses.
“Any exposure to tritium radiation could pose some health risk. This risk increases with prolonged exposure, and health risks include increased occurrence of cancer,” said Robert Daguillard, a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The agency is trying to minimize the tritium from U.S. nuclear facilities that escapes into drinking water.
Right after the March 2011 disaster, many in Japan panicked, some even moving overseas although they lived hundreds of miles (kilometers) away from the Fukushima no-go zone. By now, concern has settled to the extent that some worry the lessons from the disaster are being forgotten.
Tritium may be the least of Japan’s worries. Much hazardous work remains to keep the plant stabilized, and new technology is needed for decommissioning the plant’s reactors and containing massive radioactive contamination.
The ranks of Japan’s anti-nuclear activists have been growing since the March 2011 accident, and many oppose releasing water with tritium into the sea. They argue that even if tritium’s radiation is weaker than strontium or cesium, it should be removed, and that good methods should be devised to do that.
Japan’s fisheries organization has repeatedly expressed concerns over the issue. News of a release of the water could devastate local fisheries just as communities in northeastern Japan struggle to recover from the 2011 disasters.
An isotope of hydrogen, or radioactive hydrogen, tritium exists in water form, and so like water can evaporate, although it is not known how much tritium escaped into the atmosphere from Fukushima as gas from explosions.
The amount of tritium in the contaminated water stored at Fukushima Dai-ichi is estimated at 3.4 peta becquerels, or 34 with a mind-boggling 14 zeros after it.
But theoretically collected in one place, it would amount to just 57 milliliters, or about the amount of liquid in a couple of espresso cups — a minuscule quantity in the overall masses of water.
To illustrate that point, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, showed reporters a small bottle half-filled with blue water that was the equivalent of 57 milliliters.
Public distrust is running so high after the Fukushima accident that Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, the utility that operates the Fukushima plant and oversees its decommissioning, has mostly kept quiet about the tritium, pending a political decision on releasing the water.
Privately, they say it will have to be released, but they can’t say that outright.
What will be released from Fukushima will be well below the global standard allowed for tritium in the water, say Tanaka and others favoring its release, which is likely to come gradually later this year, not all at once.
Proponents of releasing the tritium water argue that tritium already is in the natural environment, coming from the sun and from water containing tritium that is routinely released at nuclear plants around the world.
“Tritium is so weak in its radioactivity it won’t penetrate plastic wrapping,” said Tanaka.
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
