There are two main problems in whatever decontamination techniques used: wash off and scrap up techniques, or phytoremediation:
80% of the Fukushima prefecture land surface is forested mountains, forested mountains which you can neither wash off and scrap up nor phytoremediate.
Forested mountains from which the accumulated contamination ruissels down or flies down with wind and rain to the low land living areas which had been previouly decontaminated, some places have already been decomtaminated up to five times, always the contamination coming back up to the pre-decontamination level.
To decontaminate well and forever you would have to cut down those mountain forests, which is a huge surface to be cut down, a gigantic impossible work, which would as an immediate effect spread a lot of the accumulated various radionuclides and make the radiation level jump high everywhere.
With either of those techniques you quickly end up with a huge quantity of contaminated waste, which accumulates quickly and for which there is no real valid solution for disposal. To reduce its volume by incineration is still re-scattering radionuclides into the environment, as there is no incinerator filter capable of blocking 100% of all radionuclides nanoparticles.
Obviously, the cleanup process is much more involved than this, but you can imagine how difficult it is to keep all that radioactive dust from getting into everything. Phil Broughton is a treasure trove of stories and information. But, if you follow his blog, you’ll learn that he takes the decontamination process very seriously. Something a graduate student learned the hard way when they made a poorly-thought out April Fool’s prank. Phil had this to say about the tremendous task of nuclear cleanup:
…everything exposed to air, everything that rain water might wash over, ALL SURFACE WATER, must be assumed to be contaminated. Want to use that car? Wash it down because it’s got a crust of radioactive crap on it, and if you try to drive it, you just climbed inside your own moving irradiator box.
This is the hard part of fallout decon[tamination] and radioactive waste in general. Nothing makes it stop being radioactive other than time, and human attention spans and lifespans are somewhat incompatible with this. Not living in the higher dose world its very hard to contemplate the “I accept this dose for me, my children, and generations to come” when planning reconstruction.
A while ago, I did a couple of comics about how plants (including tumbleweeds) were being used to help clean up radioactive material. Here’s Phil again:
Fungi, in fact, do amazing work sucking fallout products out of the soils. Instead of having roots, their hyphae draw nutrients out of a very shallow layer and do it quickly. This is also good because fallout actually doesn’t penetrate all that deep below the surface of the soil. One of the ways we monitor how much radioactive material is left in the environment is by sampling the mushrooms that grow and plotting it’s drop off following an event. You may discover that there are new sources contributing to the environment which is to say the event isn’t over yet as there’s clearly a continuing release. You can also do detoxification this way by planting, harvesting, repeat until whatever your crop is isn’t showing any uptake of materials anymore.
Of course other parts of the environment are running on different clocks. It will take quite a while for contamination to get to the ground water and then for the groundwater to be sampled by plants that can tap that deep. Annoyingly, fungi and grasses might detoxify the upper layer of soil within a decade only to have the deep tapping trees pull it up from the groundwater and recontaminate the upper layer a decade after that with their now radioactive falling leaves.
After I drew the phytoremediation comics, the number one question asked by readers was: “So, what happens with the plants after they’ve absorbed the radioactive elements?” Apparently, it’s a very real problem that cleanup crews have to work with. Here’s what Kathryn Higley said when I asked her about the sunflowers being planted at Fukushima:
I’ve looked at the discussions on sunflowers and other phytoremediation techniques. From what I’ve read, they are able to capture the ‘low hanging fruit’, but they lose effectiveness after a couple of croppings/harvesting. This is because the residual material is more strongly attached to soil particles (such as clay minerals). That being said, phytoremediation is a relatively low tech solution. The challenge is then what do you do with the contaminated biomass? When I went to Fukushima you could see large ‘super sacks’ of contaminated vegetation just sitting on the side of the road (see photo below). These large bags have a limited lifespan (~5 years) before they degrade due to UV exposure and all your stored material starts being blown around by wind.
The first account describes Chernobyl as a “wildlife wonderland”:
Karin Brulliard. April 26, 2016. 30 years after Chernobyl disaster, camera study captures a wildlife wonderland. The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/04/26/30-years-after-chernobyl-disaster-camera-study-captures-a-wildlife-wonderland/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_evening
Anecdotal reports of wildlife doing well in the ruins of Chernobyl have been controversial. Some scientists argue that the disaster has taken a deleterious toll on fauna, causing genetic damage and population declines. A study published last fall, however, backed up the idea of the fallout zone-turned-enchanted forest with data from helicopter observation and animal tracks. They pointed to flourishing animal populations.
The big picture of these pictures? According to Beasley, it’s that radiation does not seem to have kept wildlife from self-sustaining and spreading out across the Belarus evacuation zone. He said he expects another camera trap study being carried out in the Ukraine half of the zone will find the same thing.
Timothy Mousseau. April 25, 2016. At Chernobyl and Fukushima, radioactivity has seriously harmed wildlife. The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/at-chernobyl-and-fukushima-radioactivity-has-seriously-harmed-wildlife-57030
…in the past decade population biologists have made considerable progress in documenting how radioactivity affects plants, animals and microbes. My colleagues and I have analyzed these impacts at Chernobyl, Fukushima and naturally radioactive regions of the planet.
Our studies provide new fundamental insights about consequences of chronic, multigenerational exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation. Most importantly, we have found that individual organisms are injured by radiation in a variety of ways. The cumulative effects of these injuries result in lower population sizes and reduced biodiversity in high-radiation areas….
Radiation exposure has caused genetic damage and increased mutation rates in many organisms in the Chernobyl region. So far, we have found little convincing evidence that many organisms there are evolving to become more resistant to radiation. You decide what is true.
Have you seen images from Japan showing mountains of black bags filled with radioactive soil? You probably wondered what they are going to do with them, right? The bags only last for a few years, and in fact, I’ve seen pictures of bags already broken with weeds sticking out from them.
Well, the mystery is solved. The government changed the law in secret meetings so that the radioactive waste is no longer radioactive. They raised the safety level from 100 becquerel per kg to 8000 becquerel per kg.
According to the secret meetings, the formerly radioactive material will be now safely used as construction material across the nation.
Now I wonder what they will do with the radio active water stored in already leaking giant tanks around the nuclear plants. They are right by the Pacific Ocean.
By the way, for those who can not grasp what all this oddity means, the simple way to understand is that instead of coming up with safe ways to take care of dangerous radioactive materials, the Japanese government decided to work with media and industry to make money off of people’s health. It is more profitable to spread radiation across Japan than taking care of people’s lives. And that way, those who take care of people’s health can make money too.
But if they are dead or surrounded by radiation everywhere, how do they appreciate money? I really think this whole capitalism thing is a huge fucking bullshit.
Japan to Recycle Waste Collected during Fukushima Decontamination:
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2408901&CategoryId=12395
一億総被ばくの国家プロジェクト… 8,000ベクレル／kg以下の除染土を 全国の公共事業に！？: https://foejapan.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/8000bq_problem/
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: http://oshidori-makoken.com/?p=2059
The picture is from: http://asama888.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2015/11/post-5f2f.html
The government is planning to lift an evacuation order for part of the Fukushima Prefecture village of Kawauchi on June 14, more than five years after the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster, it has been learned.
The government’s nuclear emergency response headquarters disclosed the plan on April 28. The central government and the Kawauchi Municipal Government will hold a joint briefing session for local residents on May 8 to gather opinions and discuss the matter in order to formally decide the date when the evacuation order will be removed. Once the order is lifted, the entire village of Kawauchi will be free of any nuclear evacuation zones.
The Ogi and Kainosaka districts in the eastern part of the village will be subject to the move. The area — which is home to 52 residents in 19 households — has been designated as a “zone preparing for the lifting of evacuation orders,” where the annual accumulated radiation doses are 20 millisieverts or less.
The evacuation orders that were in place for areas other than the Ogi and Kainosaka districts were lifted in October 2014.
During a meeting of the Kawauchi Municipal Assembly, Osamu Goto — the deputy head of the central government’s nuclear emergency response headquarters — sought understanding from the village with regard to lifting the evacuation order for the remaining districts, citing reasons including the conclusion of decontamination work in those areas. Kawauchi Mayor Yuko Endo is set to accept the request.
Meanwhile, only two local residents from one household have thus far signed up for a program allowing residents to temporarily stay over in evacuation areas to prepare for permanent return. The Kawauchi Municipal Government expects, therefore, that only a few households will return even after the evacuation order has been lifted in the districts.
The central government issued evacuation orders for 11 municipalities around the plant following the March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Among these, the orders were lifted in the Miyakoji district of the city of Tamura in April 2014, followed by those in part of the village of Kawauchi and the town of Naraha.
Evacuation orders for the city of Minamisoma and the village of Katsurao are also expected to be lifted shortly, with the exception of areas designated as “difficult-to-return zones” due to high radiation levels.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160428/p2a/00m/0na/020000c
The food truck parked in front of the Takamori town government building provides hot meals to quake victims in Kumamoto Prefecture.
TAKAMORI, Kumamoto Prefecture–A “meals on wheels” truck that provided hot food to victims of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake is now doing the same for people affected by the recent series of tremors here.
The food truck was brought to Takamori to feed quake victims in the neighboring villages of Minami-Aso and Nishihara, which were particularly hard-hit.
“I understand the food truck played an important role during the Great East Japan Earthquake,” said Takamori Mayor Daisei Kusamura. “Town residents have many relatives and friends living in the two villages with greater damage. The Aso region is unified as one, and during natural disasters, those who can help should do so.”
The idea for the food truck came from Shidax Corp., a company that operates karaoke parlors, as well as providing food services.
In the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the food truck provided meals for about three years and nine months from August 2011 in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture.
The truck was then donated to the Soma city government. It can be used to prepare 400 to 500 meals at a time.
After the first major Kumamoto earthquake struck on April 14, Soma Mayor Hidekiyo Tachiya volunteered to lend out the vehicle.
Kusamura took up the offer, in part because his town was not as heavily damaged as its two neighboring villages.
Three Soma city government workers drove the food truck from Fukushima to Kumamoto and arrived in Takamori on April 22.
Shidax will provide the ingredients and workers to prepare the meals.
The initial plan was to provide meals on April 24 at the evacuation center set up at Minami-Aso Junior High School, the village’s largest. However, some evacuees there were found to be infected with norovirus, so plans were changed at the last minute, and the food truck began operations in front of the Takamori town government building.
A 40-year-old woman and her three children were among those taking advantage of the service. Her home in Minami-Aso was severely damaged, so she pushed up plans and moved to Takamori where a new home was already being constructed for the family.
“I couldn’t handle household chores because I had my hands full just cleaning up the Minami-Aso home,” she said. “I am so happy to be able to eat a hot meal.”
The food truck is scheduled to park by the Yamanishi Elementary School in Nishihara for one week from April 25. It will provide the main dish for lunches, joining the Self-Defense Forces, who are already at the evacuation center providing rice.
The food truck is scheduled to head to Minami-Aso the following week.
Radioactivity warning sign on the hill at the east end of Chernobyl’s Red Forest, so called due to the characteristic hue of the pine trees killed by high levels of radiation after the disaster
Evolutionary biologist Timothy Mousseau and his colleagues have published 90 studies that prove beyond all doubt the deleterious genetic and developmental effects on wildlife of exposure to radiation from both the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters, writes Linda Pentz Gunter. But all that peer-reviewed science has done little to dampen the ‘official’ perception of Chernobyl’s silent forests as a thriving nature reserve.
Dr Timothy Mousseau has published more than 90 peer reviewed articles in scientific journals, related to the effects of radiation in natural populations (and more than 200 publications in total).
He has spent 16 years looking at the effects on wildlife and the ecosystem of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
He and his colleagues have also spent the last five years studying how non-human biota is faring in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdowns in Japan.
But none of this work has received anything like the high profile publicity afforded the ‘findings’ in the 2006 Chernobyl Forum report which claimed the Chernobyl zone “has become a wildlife sanctuary”, and a subsequent article published in Current Biology in 2015 that said wildlife was “thriving” around Chernobyl.
“I suppose everyone loves a Cinderella story”, speculated Mousseau, an evolutionary biologist based at the University of South Carolina. “They want that happy ending.” But Mousseau felt sure the moment he read the Forum report, which, he noted, “contained few scientific citations”, that the findings “could not possibly be true.”
Ninety articles later, Mousseau and his research partners from around the world are able to demonstrate definitively and scientifically that non-human biota in both the Chernobyl zone and around Fukushima, are very far indeed from flourishing.
Far from flourishing around Chernobyl, birds and animals are fading
What Mousseau found was not unexpected given the levels of radiation in these areas and what is already known about the medical effects of such long-term exposures. Birds and rodents had a high frequency of tumors.
“Cancers are the first thing we think about”, Mousseau said. “We looked at birds and mice. In areas of higher radiation, the frequency of tumors is higher.” The research team has found mainly liver and bladder tumors in the voles and tumors on the head, body and wings of the birds studied, he said.
But Mousseau wanted to look beyond cancers, which is what everyone expects to find and what researchers had looked for, but only in humans. There were few wildlife studies, a fact Mousseau found surprising, given nature’s ability to act as a sentinel for likely impending human health impacts.
Mousseau and his fellow researchers found cataracts in birds and rodents. Male birds had a high rate of sterility. And the brains of birds were smaller. All of these are known outcomes from radiation exposure.
“Cataracts in birds is a problem”, Mousseau said. “A death sentence.”
Mental retardation has been found among children exposed to radiation in utero. Mousseau and colleagues discovered the same pattern in the birds they studied. “Birds already have small brains, so a smaller brain size is a definite disadvantage”, he said.
Almost 40% of male birds examined were sterile
There were also just fewer animals in general. “There were many fewer mammals, birds and insects in areas of higher radiation”, Mousseau said. And they had their hunch as to why.
He and his colleagues extracted sperm from the male birds they caught and were shocked to find that “up to 40% of male birds in the radiologically hottest areas were sterile.”
The birds’ sperm were either deformed or dead. None would be able to reproduce. The discovery, he said, was “not at all surprising. These are the levels of radiation known to influence reproduction. At the same time, there is no safe level of radiation below which there aren’t detectable effects.”
Fewer birds have already been observed in the contaminated areas around Fukushima, said Mousseau. “Although it’s too early to assess the long term impact on abundance and diversity around Fukushima, there are very few butterflies and many birds have declined in the more contaminated areas. If abundance is compressed, biodiversity will follow.”
Five years into the still on-going Fukushima disaster, Mousseau’s research continues to uncover “a dramatic reduction in the number of birds and numbers of species in areas of high radiation”, he said.
At least in that region, Japan could be headed toward a Silent Spring.
No doubt that Fukushima and Chernobyl are causing genetic damage
The consequences of radiation exposure, says Mousseau, “will have a tremendous impact on the quality of life of these animals, and the length of quality of life. It need not necessarily be cancers”, that cause these damages he said. “There is no doubt that the levels of radiation in Chernobyl and Fukushima generate genetic damage.”
A study by Mousseau et al. that did get some attention, most notably from the Smithsonian Institution, found disturbing changes in the decomposition of organic matter in the Chernobyl Zone.
Fungi and other microorganisms are decomposing at half the usual rate. Trees fall but rot unusually slowly. Leaf matter piles up without much decay, creating a tinder-box risk in the event of forest fires, several of which have occurred in the Zone.
“There is an accumulation of highly radioactive organic matter” in these areas, Mousseau said. All of this could be lofted into the air during a forest fire and redistributed as radiological contamination elsewhere, he points out.
Indeed, a map in an April 2006 edition of National Geographic Magazine, shows that this has already happened, expanding the Chernobyl Zone from its original 30km radius. “High-altitude winds swept radioactive smoke and ash across a wider area, which scientists traced from soil levels of cesium 137, a long-lived isotope,” read the map’s caption. Major forest fires in the Chernobyl Zone in 2010 and 2015 have likely worsened the situation.
While the radiation spread by Chernobyl fell mostly on land, where it is easier to study the medical effects on humans and animals, the initial Fukushima radioactive plume blew mainly out to sea. And since 2011 when the accident began, further dumping of radioactive water into the Pacific has occurred.
A responsibility to protect the environment and wildlife, not just man
This has led to speculation – and some unscientific and alarmist rumors – that sea life in the Pacific is collapsing due to the Fukushima radiation.
“Catastrophic marine events started 40-50 years ago”, Mousseau points out. “Bird populations in the Pacific were in decline long before Fukushima.”
One important cause, says Mousseau, is “plastics in the environment that are consumed by marine animals which were in downward spirals long before the Fukushima accident.” Marine population decline has likely also been “compounded by climate change”, he says.
Indeed, Mousseau, who grew up on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, remembers the local harbor encrusted with star fish when he was a child. Recently, when he took his son there, he found none.
Fukushima cannot necessarily be blamed, as some would wish, but the compounding and potentially synergistic effect of radiation in the Pacific could still be taking its toll, Mousseau avowed.
“We don’t know how different environmental stresses interact with each other”, he said. “They could be synergistic and related. There is almost no research on this even in the Pacific off Fukushima – virtually nothing on the biological consequences in really contaminated areas.”
With “little real science” to rely on, Mousseau says, “we will never know” just how much marine damage the Fukushima disaster may do.
He finds the continued lack of other independent animal studies in radioactive zones frustrating. “We have a responsibility to protect the environment and wildlife, not just man”, he said. It may be expensive and difficult to conduct these kinds of studies, but, says Mousseau, “that is not an excuse.”
White storks on road near Chernobyl, Ukraine. Many parts of the Chernobyl region have low radioactivity levels and serve as refuges for plants and animals. Tim Mousseau, Author provided
The largest nuclear disaster in history occurred 30 years ago at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what was then the Soviet Union. The meltdown, explosions and nuclear fire that burned for 10 days injected enormous quantities of radioactivity into the atmosphere and contaminated vast areas of Europe and Eurasia. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that Chernobyl released 400 times more radioactivity into the atmosphere than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Radioactive cesium from Chernobyl can still be detected in some food products today. And in parts of central, eastern and northern Europe many animals, plants and mushrooms still contain so much radioactivity that they are unsafe for human consumption.
The first atomic bomb exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico more than 70 years ago. Since then, more than 2,000 atomic bombs have been tested, injecting radioactive materials into the atmosphere. And over 200 small and large accidents have occurred at nuclear facilities. But experts and advocacy groups are still fiercely debating the health and environmental consequences of radioactivity.
However, in the past decade population biologists have made considerable progress in documenting how radioactivity affects plants, animals and microbes. My colleagues and I have analyzed these impacts at Chernobyl, Fukushima and naturally radioactive regions of the planet.
Our studies provide new fundamental insights about consequences of chronic, multigenerational exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation. Most importantly, we have found that individual organisms are injured by radiation in a variety of ways. The cumulative effects of these injuries result in lower population sizes and reduced biodiversity in high-radiation areas.
Radiation exposure has caused genetic damage and increased mutation rates in many organisms in the Chernobyl region. So far, we have found little convincing evidence that many organisms there are evolving to become more resistant to radiation.
Organisms’ evolutionary history may play a large role in determining how vulnerable they are to radiation. In our studies, species that have historically shown high mutation rates, such as the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica), the icterine warbler (Hippolais icterina) and the Eurasian blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla), are among the most likely to show population declines in Chernobyl. Our hypothesis is that species differ in their ability to repair DNA, and this affects both DNA substitution rates and susceptibility to radiation from Chernobyl.
Much like human survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, birds and mammals at Chernobyl have cataracts in their eyes and smaller brains. These are direct consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation in air, water and food. Like some cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy, many of the birds have malformed sperm. In the most radioactive areas, up to 40 percent of male birds are completely sterile, with no sperm or just a few dead sperm in their reproductive tracts during the breeding season.
Tumors, presumably cancerous, are obvious on some birds in high-radiation areas. So are developmental abnormalities in some plants and insects.
Chernobyl reactor No. 4 building, encased in steel and concrete to limit radioactive contamination.
Given overwhelming evidence of genetic damage and injury to individuals, it is not surprising that populations of many organisms in highly contaminated areas have shrunk. In Chernobyl, all major groups of animals that we surveyed were less abundant in more radioactive areas. This includes birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bees, grasshoppers, spiders and large and small mammals.
Not every species shows the same pattern of decline. Many species, including wolves, show no effects of radiation on their population density. A few species of birds appear to be more abundant in more radioactive areas. In both cases, higher numbers may reflect the fact that there are fewer competitors or predators for these species in highly radioactive areas.
Moreover, vast areas of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are not presently heavily contaminated, and appear to provide a refuge for many species. One report published in 2015 described game animals such as wild boar and elk as thriving in the Chernobyl ecosystem. But nearly all documented consequences of radiation in Chernobyl and Fukushima have found that individual organisms exposed to radiation suffer serious harm.
Map of the Chernobyl region of Ukraine. Note the highly heterogeneous deposition patterns of radioactivity in the region. Areas of low radioactivity provide refuges for wildlife in the region.
There may be exceptions. For example, substances called antioxidants can defend against the damage to DNA, proteins and lipids caused by ionizing radiation. The levels of antioxidants that individuals have available in their bodies may play an important role in reducing the damage caused by radiation. There is evidence that some birds may have adapted to radiation by changing the way they use antioxidants in their bodies.
Recently we have tested the validity of our Chernobyl studies by repeating them in Fukushima, Japan. The 2011 power loss and core meltdown at three nuclear reactors there released about one-tenth as much radioactive material as the Chernobyl disaster.
Overall, we have found similar patterns of declines in abundance and diversity of birds, although some species are more sensitive to radiation than others. We have also found declines in some insects, such as butterflies, which may reflect the accumulation of harmful mutations over multiple generations.
Our most recent studies at Fukushima have benefited from more sophisticated analyses of radiation doses received by animals. In our most recent paper, we teamed up with radioecologists to reconstruct the doses received by about 7,000 birds. The parallels we have found between Chernobyl and Fukushima provide strong evidence that radiation is the underlying cause of the effects we have observed in both locations.
Some members of the radiation regulatory community have been slow to acknowledge how nuclear accidents have harmed wildlife. For example, the U.N.-sponsored Chernobyl Forum instigated the notion that the accident has had a positive impact on living organisms in the exclusion zone because of the lack of human activities. A more recent report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation predicts minimal consequences for the biota animal and plant life of the Fukushima region.
Unfortunately these official assessments were largely based on predictions from theoretical models, not on direct empirical observations of the plants and animals living in these regions. Based on our research, and that of others, it is now known that animals living under the full range of stresses in nature are far more sensitive to the effects of radiation than previously believed. Although field studies sometimes lack the controlled settings needed for precise scientific experimentation, they make up for this with a more realistic description of natural processes.
Our emphasis on documenting radiation effects under “natural” conditions using wild organisms has provided many discoveries that will help us to prepare for the next nuclear accident or act of nuclear terrorism. This information is absolutely needed if we are to protect the environment not just for man, but also for the living organisms and ecosystem services that sustain all life on this planet.
There are currently more than 400 nuclear reactors in operation around the world, with 65 new ones under construction and another 165 on order or planned. All operating nuclear power plants are generating large quantities of nuclear waste that will need to be stored for thousands of years to come. Given this, and the probability of future accidents or nuclear terrorism, it is important that scientists learn as much as possible about the effects of these contaminants in the environment, both for remediation of the effects of future incidents and for evidenced-based risk assessment and energy policy development.
QINGDAO, Shandong, April 22 (Xinhua) — Chinese scientists have begun using a ship-borne device that provides immediate analysis of radioactivity in water, using it to check for pollution from the Fukushima nuclear accident in the Yellow Sea.
Previously, they faced the time-consuming task of transferring water into containers and bringing it to labs to check the concentration of cesium, a radionuclide. Cesium has a very low absorption rate into water, so large quantities of water must be analyzed.
The team with the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) that developed the device installed it on a police patrol ship for a 10-day voyage to the Yellow Sea area earlier this month. It took just one person to run the tests.
The development team’s Shi Hongqi explained that the device can filter seven liters of water per minute. It analyzed 22 samples of 800 liters in the Yellow Sea, finding no signs of dangerous radioactivity.
No specific data from the tests was disclosed, but Shi said the statistics will be included in annual SOA monitoring reports at the end of the year.
The SOA now plans to install more of these monitoring devices on police patrol ships, to check waters potentially affected by Fukushima as well as elsewhere.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-04/22/c_135304059.htm
On 4/18/2016, Fukushima city Waterworks Bureau donated 10,000 bottles of their tap water to Kumamoto city.
Kumamoto city is one of the main disaster areas of 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes.
Fukushima tap water is named “Fukushima water” by the city government and obtained “Monde Selection” in 2015 and 2016 for its taste.
https://www.city.fukushima.fukushima.jp/suidou/?p=15191
https://www.city.fukushima.fukushima.jp/suidou/?p=7982
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
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.
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
Here we determined the 90Sr concentrations in the teeth of cattle abandoned in the evacuation area of the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) accident. 90Sr activity concentrations in the teeth varied from 6–831 mBq (g Ca)−1 and exhibited a positive relationship with the degree of radioactive contamination that the cattle experienced. Even within an individual animal, the specific activity of 90Sr (Bq (g Sr)−1) varied depending on the development stage of the teeth during the FNPP accident: teeth that were early in development exhibited high 90Sr specific activities, while teeth that were late in development exhibited low specific activities. These findings demonstrate that 90Sr is incorporated into the teeth during tooth development; thus, tooth 90Sr activity concentrations reflect environmental 90Sr levels during tooth formation. Assessment of 90Sr in teeth could provide useful information about internal exposure to 90Sr radiation and allow for the measurement of time-course changes in the degree of environmental 90Sr pollution.
The Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) accident released a substantial amount of radioactive nuclides into the atmosphere and caused extensive contamination of the environment1,2,3,4,5. The radioactivity of the typical fission products was estimated to be 8.2 PBq for 137Cs, 9.8 PBq for 134Cs, and 0.14 PBq for 90Sr2,6. In June 2011, the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) reported that 0.1−6 kBq m−2 of 90Sr and 0.3−17 kBq m−2 of 89Sr were detected in the soil of areas within a 20-km radius from the FNPP (i.e., the former Fukushima evacuation zone)7. As 89Sr has a relatively short half-life of 50.5 days, its presence suggests that these radionuclides did not originate from global fallout due to nuclear weapons testing, but from the FNPP accident.
The long half-life (28.8 y) and bone-seeking properties of 90Sr make it a concerning artificial radionuclide among the fission products found near FNPP. Although radioiodine and caesium are more noticeable in quantity, 90Sr can persist in bone with a retention half-life of over 10 years, depending on bone type8,9,10,11. Moreover, its daughter nuclide, 90Y, emits β-rays (2.28 MeV) that may have adverse effects on the bone marrow. Thus, some attention has been paid to the determination of 90Sr content in bone and particularly in teeth. Sr is incorporated into the tooth during calcification. Once incorporated, it remains in enamel and dentine until the tooth falls out or is extracted12. Therefore, 90Sr activity concentration in a given tooth is a reflection of environmental 90Sr contamination levels when the tooth was formed.
Several studies have taken advantage of this phenomenon to understand the long-term effects of nuclear activity on humans. For example, 90Sr incorporation into human teeth has been observed after the Techa River region was contaminated by the release of liquid radioactive waste into the river during the early 1950s8,13,14,15. Similarly, the deciduous teeth of Swiss children born between 1952 and 2002 exhibited 90Sr activity concentrations that correlated with atmospheric rises in 90Sr levels, which resulted from nuclear weapons testing during that period11. Increases in tooth 90Sr activity concentrations following the 1986 Chernobyl accident have also been reported11,16,17. These observations indicate that 90Sr activity concentration in teeth is an effective indicator of 90Sr contamination levels in the environment. However, while studies have examined 90Sr contamination in soil, vegetation, the nearby seawater and fish after the FNPP accident18,19,20,21,22,23,24, no studies to date have reported on 90Sr activity concentrations in teeth or bones. We thus have little direct data on how much FNPP-related contamination affected animals, which is essential for fully understanding the extent of environmental pollution in the area.
In the aftermath of the FNPP accident, thousands of cattle were abandoned in the evacuation zone. These cattle subsisted on natural food and water in the contaminated environment. Previously, we investigated the activities of 134Cs, 137Cs, 110mAg, and 129mTe in cattle within a 20-km radius around the FNPP, and demonstrated that radioactive Cs concentrations in organs and plasma were dependent on the feeding conditions and the geographic location of the cattle25. We also separately examined the effect of radioactive Cs on cattle testes after the FNPP accident26. We now expand on these studies by examining 90Sr concentrations in cattle teeth and relating them to other measures of environmental pollution.
Figure 1 details the locations of cattle residence after the FNPP accident. Areas H and L are situated in the government-delineated evacuation zone, and their 90Sr activity concentrations in soil are 94–1500 Bq m−2 (average: 738 Bq m−2) and 39–380 Bq m−2 (average: 195 Bq m−2), respectively7. We chose area C in Iwate Prefecture as the control region because it is approximately 250 km north of the nuclear plant and is considered free from FNPP-related 90Sr pollution. The activity concentration of 90Sr in soil in area C is 95–99 Bq m−2 (average: 96 Bq m−2)27.
FNPP: The Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. H: High-contamination area (10–30 μSv h−1), 5 km west of FNPP. L: Low-contamination area (0.8–1.2 μSv h−1), 16 km south-west of FNPP. Areas H and L were in the evacuation zone. C: Control area in Iwate Prefecture, 250 km north of FNPP. The maps were modified from open-access base maps freely available for public and academic use (source: http://maps.gsi.go.jp, from the Geographic Information Authority of Japan).
Figure 2 summarizes the 90Sr activity concentrations (90Sr activity/amount of Ca) in various teeth (deciduous molars, premolars, and molars (Supplementary Table S1)).
We detected 90Sr in all examined teeth. Activity concentrations varied significantly with area (p = 0.0000, Kruskal-Wallis test): high 90Sr concentrations (61–831 mBq (g Ca)−1) were observed in area H, mid-range concentrations (22–311 mBq (g Ca)−1 were observed in area L, and the lowest concentrations (6–35 mBq (g Ca)−1) were observed in control area C. These 90Sr activity concentrations in teeth were significantly correlated with 90Sr concentrations in the soil of areas H, L, and C (ρ = 0.8441, p < 0.01, Spearman’s rank-order correlation analysis).
Figure 3 shows the specific activities of 90Sr (90Sr radioactivity/amount of stable Sr) in teeth (Supplementary Table S2). 90Sr specific activities were similar to the 90Sr activity concentration trends: higher (214–1351 Bq (g Sr)−1) and lower (60–641 Bq (g Sr)−1) activity were observed for areas H and L, respectively. The lowest specific activity (13–78 Bq (g Sr)−1) was observed in teeth from control area C. The specific activity differed significantly across areas H, L, and C (p = 0.0000, Kruskal-Wallis test). Moreover, specific activity was significantly correlated with 90Sr concentrations in the soil of areas H, L, and C (ρ = 0.8507, p < 0.01, Spearman’s rank-order correlation analysis).
The four young cattle examined in this study (H-young-1, H-young-2, L-young-1, and L-young-2) were 8 months old when the FNPP accident occurred (Table 1) and their molars ranged across developmental stages: development of the deciduous molars (DM1, DM2, and DM3) were either complete or in the late stage, the molars (M1, M2, and M3) were actively developing, and the premolars (P1, P2, and P3) were still early in development28 (Fig. 4a). 90Sr activity concentrations and specific activities were low in deciduous molars, higher in molars, and highest in premolars for each individual (p = 0.0006 and 0.0004 for 90Sr activity concentration and 90Sr specific activity, respectively; Kruskal-Wallis test; Figs 2 and 3).
We also determined the activity concentrations and specific activity of 90Sr in the teeth of two adult cattle (L-adult-1 and L-adult-2) from area L, that were 22 and 51 months old, respectively, during the FNPP accident. Based on their age, we assumed that development of permanent molars and premolars were complete at that point (Fig. 4b). We found low levels of 90Sr activity concentrations (22–91 mBq (g Ca)−1) and specific activities (60–166 Bq (g Sr)−1) in all adult teeth, but in contrast to young cattle (L-young-1 and L-young-2), no significant differences existed across adult molars and premolars in both 90Sr activity concentration and specific activity (p = 0.6310 and 0.3367, respectively; Kruskal-Wallis test).
We compared stable Sr concentrations in teeth formed before and after the accident (Table 2).
We found that Sr concentrations in the teeth of young cattle in area H and L differed across the deciduous molars, molars, and premolars. The deciduous molars, fully developed before the accident, exhibited low Sr concentrations, while the premolars that developed post-accident exhibited high concentrations. Molars undergoing active development when the accident occurred exhibited mid-range values. The variation in Sr concentrations across teeth was statistically significant in young cattle from areas H and L (p = 0.0211, Kruskal-Wallis test). In contrast, the dentition of adult cattle from area L (molars and premolars; most deciduous molars had fallen out by the time of sampling, see Table 2) was already fully developed when the accident occurred and exhibited no differences in stable Sr concentration (p = 1.0000, Kruskal-Wallis test). We also found no differences among the deciduous molars, molars, and premolars of the young control cattle (p = 0.7488, Kruskal-Wallis test).
The results of our study demonstrated that activity concentrations and specific activities of 90Sr in cattle teeth varied in accordance with the degree of 90Sr pollution in the cattle residence areas. After the FNPP accident, the cattle were released to the field and subsisted on grasses, leaves, and river or swamp water in the polluted environment. The contamination of natural food and water consumed by the cattle likely contributed to 90Sr activity differences we observed in the H-area teeth versus L-area teeth.
Patterns corroborating our results have been reported in cow teeth from 16 contaminated areas in the Mayak region of the former Soviet Union29. The study using imaging plates showed that 90Sr activity concentrations in the teeth were 0.09–2.96 kBq (g tissue)−1 on average and were positively correlated with soil contamination levels (<3.7–185 kBq m−2). Although the degree of 90Sr contamination in our study areas was much lower than contamination in the Mayak region, we note the similar relationship between environmental 90Sr and tooth 90Sr activity concentration: 90Sr in the teeth faithfully reflects the degree of 90Sr pollution in the environment when the tooth was formed.
Small amounts of 90Sr were detected in the teeth of control cattle. Similarly, low levels of 90Sr have been found elsewhere in Japan even before the accident occurred. For example, 90Sr activity concentrations in cattle bones from Hokkaido (located on the northern edge of Japan and relatively far from the FNPP) were approximately 72 mBq (g Ca)−1 in 199630 and 26 mBq (g Ca)−1 in 200831. Both concentrations are higher than the 90Sr activity concentrations in the control teeth (14 ± 7 mBq (g Ca)−1) of this study. Possible sources for pre-FNPP radioactivity in Hokkaido are either the Chernobyl accident or nuclear weapons testing. Although 90Sr fallout from Chernobyl had been detected in Japan previously, the amount was far less than fallout from nuclear weapons testing32. Moreover, increases to 90Sr activity concentrations in Hokkaido cattle bones were not observed at the time of the Chernobyl accident30. Therefore, the low levels of 90Sr activity measured in our controls probably stemmed from the atmospheric nuclear weapons testing conducted during the 1950s–1970s.
In this study, we took advantage of cattle tooth development to examine pre- and post-accident levels of 90Sr. Tooth development follows a fixed trajectory that varies across species. In cattle, deciduous molars first form during the prenatal period, followed by molars. Premolars then form during the early postnatal period, with the first premolars (P1) forming in the last stage of dentition, beginning from 12–18 months and completing at 18–24 months28. Therefore, cattle younger than 24 months old possess teeth across all dentition developmental stages. Moreover, teeth at early developmental stages during the accident would primarily form under a polluted environment, incorporating large amounts of 90Sr. In contrast, the formation of teeth at late developmental stages would be mostly complete during the accident, resulting in the incorporation of less 90Sr. Furthermore, 90Sr activities in the teeth of adult cattle were low (Fig. 2c) and nearly constant, although the adults had resided in area L, the same location as two of the young cattle.
DM: Deciduous molars (first, second, and third deciduous molar); M: Molars (first, second, and third molar); P: Premolars (first, second, and third premolar). Along the x-axis, the teeth are arranged according to the chronological order of tooth development (DM, M, P). Error bars represent the standard deviation.
We observed 90Sr activity even in teeth that had fully developed before the accident (i.e., deciduous molars of young cattle in areas H and L, as well as deciduous molars, molars, and premolars of adult cattle in area L). These levels were occasionally higher than levels in control cattle (compare Fig. 2c to Fig. 2d, and Fig. 3c to 3d), although essential incorporation of 90Sr was not expected during tooth development. These higher than expected concentrations may have been due to non-specific 90Sr adsorption on the tooth surface via contaminated food or water. Alternatively, they could have resulted from the deposition of dental calculus on the tooth surface after the FNPP accident. Furthermore, as described by Tolstykh et al.8,14, ion exchange between the dentine tubule and pulp surfaces with the secondary dentine formation in the pulp could proceed even after complete tooth development. These interactions may also contribute to the higher 90Sr activities in adult teeth from area L compared with control teeth.
DM: Deciduous molars (first, second, and third deciduous molar); M: Molars (first, second, and third molar); P: Premolars (first, second, and third premolar). Along the x-axis, the teeth are arranged according to the chronological order of tooth development (DM, M, P). Error bars represent the standard deviation.
Data on the stable Sr concentrations in teeth formed pre- and post-accident (Table 2) accorded with the radioactivity data. Specifically, in young cattle of both areas H and L, teeth formed before the accident contained less stable Sr than teeth formed after the accident. The teeth of adult cattle and control cattle, however, did not exhibit a pre- and post-accident difference in stable Sr. Again, similar to our findings for 90Sr specific activity, these patterns in the experimental young cattle are likely the result of differences between pre-accident farm feed and the post-accident natural resources that the cattle ingested. Although we did not measure Sr contents in the diets of our subject cattle, our data on stable Sr suggest that the natural grasses, leaves, and water ingested by the cattle likely contain more Sr than their former farm feed. These data suggest that stable Sr concentrations could be also used in conjunction with 90Sr specific activity as a metric for environmental Sr levels. We have shown that 90Sr incorporation into teeth is cumulative during tooth development, reflecting the degree of environmental 90Sr contamination in that time. Unlike bone, the tooth has essentially no metabolism. Therefore, the 90Sr in tooth is a potentially useful indicator for estimating the internal radiation exposure of individuals affected by nuclear activity during their tooth formation periods. Furthermore, by measuring 90Sr activities in different teeth, we can take advantage of the various developmental trajectories of animal (including human) dentition and use the known chronologies of individual tooth growth to track time-course changes in the degree of environmental contamination. This study is one of the national projects associated with the Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011. All protocols were approved by the Tohoku University (No.2014KDO037). All methods detailed below were carried out in accordance with these guidelines. On May 12, 2011, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) ordered euthanasia of cattle abandoned in the evacuation zone to prevent radio-contaminated beef from entering consumer products25. Euthanasia was carried out by veterinarians belonging to the Livestock Hygiene Service Center (LHSC) of Fukushima Prefecture, in accordance with the Ethical Regulations for Animal Experiments and Related Activities at MAFF. These regulations are based on the June 2007 euthanasia guidelines issued by the American Veterinary Medical Association. The cattle were anesthetized with an intramuscular injection of xylazine hydrochloride (0.2 mg kg−1). They were then euthanized via an overdose of intravenous sodium pentobarbital (20 mg kg−1), followed by intravenous suxamethonium hydrochloride (2 mg kg−1). Before performing euthanasia, veterinarians obtained informed consent from the livestock owners, who were identified from the cattle ear tags. We collected organs and tissues, including mandibular bones, from euthanized cattle with the help of LHSC veterinarians. We selected six cattle (H-young-1, H-young-2, L-young-1, L-young-2, L-adult-1, and L-adult-2) residing in the two FNPP evacuation areas (H and L; Fig. 1) for the current study. Two other cattle (control-1 and control-2) from the uncontaminated area C (Fig. 1) were chosen as controls. The mandibular bones of control cattle, including teeth, were supplied by the Iwate Chikusan Ryutsu Center Co., Ltd. in Iwate Prefecture. The characteristics of the study subjects are summarized in Table 2. Mandibular bones were dissected from the cattle skulls and radiographs were taken with X-ray equipment (Panoramic Radiograph, Auto-IIIE, Asahi Roentgen Ind. Co., Ltd.) to classify the developmental stages of molar dentition. The deciduous molars, molars, and premolars were then dissected from the mandible and kept in 70% ethanol until needed. We air-dried teeth in a desiccator after removing any surface debris with toothbrushes and dental scalars. The tooth was then crushed with a hammer and powdered using a tissue lyser (TissueLyser II, Qiagen Co., Ltd.). The powdered teeth (1.5 g) were then incinerated in a muffle furnace at 450 °C for 12 h and used for 90Sr, stable Sr, and Ca measurements, as described in the following subsection. In this study, we used the entire tooth for analysis, without separating enamel and dentine. The cattle molar is classified as a hypsodont tooth (drycodont), morphologically characterized by extremely high and long crowns that occupy more than 4/5th of the whole tooth33. The crown elongates parallel to the growing axis and consists of both enamel and dentine. The latter is metabolically inert, like the enamel, and therefore accumulates Sr in the same way. Additionally, Sr concentration in dentine is slightly higher than in enamel, but the difference is small (70–620 in dentine versus 25–600 μg g−1 in enamel34). Because both tissues develop almost simultaneously during crown formation, and because the hypsodont tooth primarily consists of the crown, we thought that the relationship between molar development and 90Sr accumulation could be properly assessed even without separating enamel and dentine. Further, using the whole tooth allows us to track changes in 90Sr deposition over a longer period, because complete tooth formation takes over 2 years, whereas separate parts of the tooth take less time to develop. Many methods have been developed for the separation of Sr from large amounts of Ca, including co-precipitation, liquid-to-liquid extraction, ion-exchange or extraction chromatography, and combinations of these techniques24,35,36. For this study, we chose the fuming nitric acid method. Although newer methods are less demanding and occasionally result in higher yields, the use of fuming nitric acid remains reliable and robust under conditions of large sample amounts and extremely high quantities of co-existing Ca35, which was the case here. We dissolved 1 g of the incinerated sample in 10 mL of 60% HNO3 (analytical grade, Kanto Chemical Co., Inc.), and added 20 mg of Sr2+ carrier to the solution. We then added 10 mL of fuming nitric acid (analytical grade, Kanto Chemical Co., Inc.) to precipitate Sr(NO3)2. We removed the remaining Ca by dissolving the precipitate in 10 mL of distilled water, and again adding 10 mL of fuming nitric acid. The resultant supernatant was discarded. By repeating this procedure two to three times, the Sr within each sample was successfully separated from Ca as Sr (NO3)2. Sr (NO3)2 was dissolved in 10 mL of distilled water to form Solution A, which was subjected to further chemical separation from Ra and Pb. Trace amounts of natural 226Ra (half-life: 1600 y), 228Ra (half-life: 5.75 y) and 210Pb (half-life: 22.3 y) are present in teeth35. These radionuclides interfere with accurate β-ray measurement of 90Sr. Therefore, these radionuclides were removed via co-precipitation with BaCrO4 using the following procedure. First, 2 mL of acetate buffer solution was added to Solution A. Then, 10 mg of Ba2+ was added, followed by dilution with distilled water to a volume of 20 mL. Ra and Pb were scavenged with BaCrO4 precipitate, formed by adding 0.1 mL of 1.5 M Na2CrO4 solution. After centrifugation, the supernatant containing Sr was separated. To the supernatant, 1 mL of concentrated NH4OH and 2 mL of saturated (NH4)2CO3 solution were added to precipitate SrCO3. Lastly, the precipitate was dissolved in 10 mL of 1 M HNO3 (Solution B). To distinguish the growth curve of 90Y from 90Sr during β-ray measurement, 90Y was removed by co-precipitation with Fe (OH)3. Fe3+ (2 mg) was added to 10 mL of Solution B. Concentrated NH4OH was then added until Solution B’s pH was 8–9. This step precipitated Fe(OH)3, which was used to scavenge 90Y. The supernatant was filtered from the precipitate using a glass microfiber filter (Whatman GF/F 25 mm, GE Healthcare Life Science Co.). Finally, Sr in the supernatant was precipitated as SrCO3 by adding 3 mL of saturated (NH4)2CO3 solution. The precipitate was filtrated with a membrane filter (JAWP02500, 25 mm diameter, Merck Millipore Co.), and stored in a stainless-steel sample dish (E0802001, 25 mm, 6 mm height, Chiyoda Technology Co.). The dish was covered with polyimide film (7.5 μm thick) to avoid further contamination and submitted for β-ray measurement. Chemical yields of Sr, or the recovery of Sr carrier added to the sample solution at the beginning of the separation procedure, were 70% on average, with a range of 50–96% for 114 determinations. The β-rays emitted from 90Sr and its daughter 90Y were measured with a low background gas flow counter (LBC-4201B, Hitachi-Aloka Medical, Ltd.) for 3–12 h. Following chemical separation of Sr, we monitored the growth of 90Y from 90Sr in SrCO3 precipitate. We measured β-rays 5 to 6 times within a fortnight of the separation. Using these measurements of radioactivity, we created a time-course plot to check whether the increase in β-ray counts fits the theoretical growth curve of 90Y. 90Y growth typically reached secular equilibrium with 90Sr 2 weeks after Sr separation, upon which we measured total radioactivity from 90Y and 90Sr. To correct for the self-absorption of β-rays by the measured sample, we used an absorption coefficient that was experimentally obtained with β-rays from known amounts of 90Sr and 90Y against the thickness of SrCO3 precipitate. The background level of the gas-flow counter used in this study was 0.155 ± 0.015 cpm (3σ: 0.044 cpm) per 12 hr. Measurement efficiency was 0.339 ± 0.001 when the 90Sr standard sample was 88.4 Bq with a thickness of 24 mg cm−2. Assuming that the recovery of chemical separation of Sr is 70%, the detection limit of 90Sr in 1 g of incinerated sample is 4.94 mBq (g Ca)−1. All values obtained in this study were above this detection limit. 90Sr activity due to decay was corrected to March 11, 2011 (the day of the FNPP accident). We determined Ca and Sr content in teeth using the inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer (ICP-AES; ICPE-9000, Shimadzu Co., Ltd.) at the Research and Analytical Center for Giant Molecules, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University. Incinerated teeth samples were dissolved in 60% HNO3, and a portion of the solution was diluted 10,000 times for the measurements. Sr was determined using a standard addition method with a wavelength of 407.771 nm, and Ca was determined using a calibration-curve correction method with a wavelength of 317.933 nm. Each measurement was performed in triplicate and the resultant values were averaged. (A) H-young-2: Deciduous molars were fully developed. Of the molars, the root of the third molar was under active development. The premolars under the deciduous molars were in the early developmental stage. (A) L-adult-2: Both molars and premolars were fully developed. Permanent dentition was complete. DM1: First deciduous molar; DM2: Second deciduous molar; DM3: Third deciduous molar; M1: First molar; M2: Second molar; M3: Third molar; P1: First premolar; P2: Second premolar; P3: Third premolar.
Materials and Methods
Ethics
Collection of tooth samples
Chemical separation of 90Sr in the teeth
β-ray measurement
Determination of stable Ca and Sr in the teeth
Because the data were non-parametric, we chose Kruskal-Wallis tests for our analyses, with significance set at p < 0.05. Tests were one-tailed. Data on DM1, DM2, and DM3 were grouped together as deciduous molars (N = 16); data on M1, M2 and M3 were grouped as molars (N = 24); and data on P1, P2, and P3 were grouped as premolars (N = 21). Independent variables used in the test were area (H, L, C) and type of tooth (deciduous molars, molars, premolars). Dependent variables were 90Sr activity concentrations, 90Sr specific activity, and stable Sr concentrations. We used Spearman’s rank-order correlation analysis to look for significant correlations between 90Sr radioactivity in the soil and in the teeth. All analyses were performed in STATISTICA (Ver. 06J, StatSoft Co., Ltd.).
Source: Koarai, K. et al.90Sr in teeth of cattle abandoned in evacuation zone: Record of pollution from the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Sci. Rep. 6, 24077; doi: 10.1038/srep24077 (2016).
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24077
Radioactive boars are running wild and breeding uncontrollably in the northern region of Japan contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The animals have been devastating local agriculture and eating toxic, nuclear-contaminated food from around the accident site.
Mass graves and incinerators have been unable to cope with the quantity of boar corpses, shot by local hunters.
A quarantine zone near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant where a 2011 meltdown leaked radioactive material into the surrounding countryside has been uninhabited by humans since the disaster.
However, boars remained in the area, unchecked by humans. Their precise number is unknown, but since 2014, the number of boars hunted has increased from 3,000 to 13,000, The Times reported.
The damage to local farms beyond the quarantine zone caused by the boars has correspondingly increased, amounting to ¥98 million (£620,000) since the accident.
The animals are now being killed faster than they can be buried.
Three mass graves, big enough for 600 boars each, are almost full in the city of Nihonmatsu, 35 miles from the nuclear plant. There is no more public land on which further mass graves can be dug.
Hunters have buried the carcasses – often weighing 100kg – in their gardens, but they are often dug up by wild dogs.
“Sooner or later, we’re going to have to ask local people to give us their land to use,” said Tsuneo Saito, a local hunter. “The city doesn’t own land which isn’t occupied by houses.”
In desperation, the authorities are resorting to using incinerators to get rid of the corpses, although it has been difficult to find the workers to chop up the remains into pieces small enough to feed into the furnaces.
In the city of Soma, a purpose-built incinerator has been developed, complete with filters to absorb any radioactive material released by its cremations. However, even this £1million operation can only dispose of three boars a day.
The animals were considered a local delicacy, but the nuclear contaminated boars are unfit for human consumption. Tests have shown the contaminated area remains dangerous, with levels of radiation 300 times the safe limit for humans.
The radiation levels are expected to remain toxic for at least another 30 years.
Despite evidence of mutations to local plant and insect life, there has been nothing yet to suggest the boars suffer any ill effects from the radiation.
The illness caused to humans by the Fukushima disaster has been relatively limited.
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
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