More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday.

Both are about 30 to 40 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which has been releasing radioactive material into the environment since the week of March 11, when the quake and tsunami caused core meltdowns.

“This won’t be a problem if they don’t eat vegetables or other products that are contaminated,” said Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University. “But it will be difficult for people to continue living in these areas.”

Kamada teamed up with doctors including Osamu Saito of Watari Hospital in the city of Fukushima to conduct two rounds of tests on each resident in early and late May, taking urine samples from 15 people between 4 and 77.

Radioactive cesium was found both times in each resident.

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Fukushima nuclear plant operator TEPCO admitted on May 15 that nuclear fuel at reactor 1 started melting soon after the on March 11 earthquake. “Because there is similar damage to the fuel rods at the No. 2 and 3 reactors, the bottoms of their pressure vessels could also have been damaged,” as the TEPCO senior official Junichiro Matsumoto said.

3,000 tons of radioactively contaminated water has been discovered at Fukushima nuclear power plant. The contaminated water could reach the sea through the holes that the melted rods burnt through the vessel. The engineers are now saying that they can no longer flood the reactors in order to cool them, so what will be the next plan to cool down the melting material within the reactors? As Greenpeace is strongly saying these days, “the fact that TEPCO has used more than two months to confirm the complete meltdown, shows the apparent inability of the nuclear industry to face such disasters.”

Source: www.greenpeace.org

Radiation readings at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi station rose to the highest since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, impeding efforts to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

Two robots sent into the reactor No. 1 building at the plant yesterday took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts of radiation per hour, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tokyo Electric Power Co., said today.

That’s more than four times the annual dose permitted to nuclear workers at the stricken plant.

[Note: these are measurements of the penetrating gamma radiation only; they do not include the less-penetrating beta and alpha radiation. (GE)]

Radiation from the station, where four of six reactors have been damaged by explosions, has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people and contaminated farmland and drinking water.

A plan to flood the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 with more water to speed up emergency cooling efforts announced yesterday by the utility known as Tepco may not be possible now.

“Tepco must figure out the source of high radiation,” said Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University. “If it’s from contaminated water leaking from inside the reactor, Tepco’s so-called ‘water tomb’ may be jeopardized because flooding the containment vessel will result in more radiation in the building.”

[Note: This is not clearly stated.  If the containment vessel is flooded while it is leaking, there will be more radioactive material "flushed out" from the damaged core, leading to an increase in penetrating gamma radiation  levels outside the vessel but still inside the containment building. (GE)]

Decontaminating Robots

Tepco plans to decontaminate the two iRobot Corp. Packbot robots before sending them into a building tomorrow or later to further investigate the damage, spokesman Takeo Iwamoto said. High radiation in the reactor buildings prevents engineers from working inside them, Iwamoto said.

The cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3 and the spent fuels rods in reactor 4 have been damaged. Tepco has been using fire trucks, concrete pumps and other emergency measures for nearly seven weeks to pour millions of liters of water to cool the units after the accident.

Tepco started moving the radioactive water, which leaked to the basements and trenches, to a waste storage facility on April 19. Tepco transferred 1.89 million liters of the water from the trenches near reactor No. 2 as of 7 a.m. today, Iwamoto said. The utility plans to install a second pump after transferring 2.5 million liters.

Tepco shares fell 3.3 percent to 412 yen today in Tokyo. The shares are down about 80 percent since the quake and tsunami struck on March 11, leaving almost 26,000 people dead or missing.

Less Damage

Reactors 1 and 2 are less damaged than estimated, Tepco said in a statement today.

As much as 55 percent of the No. 1 reactor core at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station was damaged, compared with its earlier estimate of 70 percent.

“We revised the core damage data because some readings on the containment vessel monitors were wrong,” Matsumoto said. “There was also a recording mistake. We are investigating why this happened.”

The assessment for the No. 2 reactor was cut to 25 percent from 35 percent, while that for the No. 3 unit was raised to 30 percent from 25 percent.

“It seems a reasonable estimate that three reactor cores may be damaged to a similar extent,” said Unesaki. The new estimate “doesn’t indicate lower or higher risks at the plant.”

Radiation in Tokyo’s water supply fell to undetectable levels for the first time since March 18, the capital’s public health institute said today.

The level of iodine-131 in tap water fell to zero yesterday, and cesium-134 and cesium-137 also weren’t detected, the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health said today.

[Iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137 are man-made radioactive poisons that can only come from irradiated nuclear fuel.  Iodine-131 has a  half-life of about 8 days, so it will be completely gone from the environment in a few months.  Cesium-134 has a half-life of about 2 years, so it will be completely  gone from the environment after a few decades.  Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years, so it will not be completely gone from the environment until several centuries have elapsed. (GE)]

Tokyo residents were told on March 23 that the city’s water was unsafe for  infants after iodine and cesium levels exceeded guidelines.

To contact the reporters on this story:

Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at
tinajima@bloomberg.net;

Michio Nakayama in Tokyo at
mnakayama4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Amit Prakash at
aprakash1@bloomberg.net

Jennifer Nordstrom, co-ordinator of the Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free project has noted “Telling states to build new nuclear plants to combat global warming is like telling a patient to smoke to lose weight.”

A recent study sponsored by the German government (the KiKK study – Kaatsch P, Spix C, Schultze-Rath R, et al.Leukemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants. Int J Cancer. 2008; 1220:721-726,) examined children who lived near 16 of the country’s commercial nuclear power plants. The results revealed a strongly increased risk of all childhood cancers, particularly leukaemia, the closer the proximity of the children’s residence to the reactor. In particular, the study found that children less than the age five years, living within a 5km radius of the power plant exhaust stacks were more than twice as likely to develop leukaemia compared with those children residing more that 5km away. The KiKK team studied other carcinogenic factors which may be responsible for the cancer clusters but none were found.

Another large study (Baker PJ, Hoel DG. Meta-analysis of standardized incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukemia in proximity to nuclear facilities. Eur J Cancer Care. 2007:16:355-363) – a meta-analysis of the incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukaemia in children living near 138 nuclear facilities in Britain, Canada, Spain, Germany, the US and Japan also demonstrated a statistically significant rate of leukaemia in children less than nine years of age.

A further large review (Laurier D, Jacob S, Bernier MO, et al. Epidemiological studies of leukemia in children and young adults around nuclear facilities: A critical review. Rad Prot Dosim. 2008; 132:182- 190) of children and young adults living near 198 nuclear sites in 10 countries was found to be compatible with the study described above.

It is important to note that the sensitivity to the damaging effects of radiation in early embryonic and fetal life is much higher than in adults, and young children are also particularly vulnerable.

The radioactive elements “routinely” emitted from nuclear power plant stacks into the air can be inhaled, or ingested when they concentrate in the food chain – in vegetables and fruit, -and then further concentrated in various internal organs in humans. Similarly, the millions of gallons of cooling water flushed daily from a nuclear reactor into the always adjoining water source (lake, river or sea) contaminate it with radioactive materials which bio-concentrate hundreds of times in the aquatic food chain. The fish of course, who may ingest these materials in the surrounding water, routinely travel for tens and even hundreds of miles before they are caught by commercial or recreational purposes. And when caught their physical appearance does not provide any clues about such ingestion.

Unfortunately, radioactive elements are invisible to the human senses – taste, smell, and sight. Also unfortunately, the incubation time for radiation-induced cancer is five to 60 years, a long, silent latent period. No cancer ever denotes its specific cause.

Among these biologically active elements that are routinely released from nuclear power plants are tritium which lasts for more than 100 years (there is no limit to the amount of tritium that escapes); xenon, krypton. and argon which decay to cesium and strontium; carbon 14 which remains radioactive for thousands of years; cesium 137 – radioactive for hundreds of years; and iodine 129, which has a half life of 15.7 million years.

Tritium combines directly in the DNA molecule of the gene and can induce fetal deformities and various cancers in both animals and humans; cesium causes muscle sarcomas and brain cancers; and strontium – a calcium analogue – migrates to bone where it can induce bone cancer or leukaemia. Finally radioactive iodine causes thyroid cancer.

This situation is made worse by the fact that we are all – including populations living within the vicinity of nuclear reactors – routinely exposed to carcinogenic chemicals in our daily lives, many of which enhance the carcinogenic effects of radioactivity. There are now 80,000 chemicals in common use.

Turning from the human health costs to the monetary, another relevant study related to the nuclear power debate examined the economic feasibility of a “nuclear renaissance” at this time. The World Nuclear Industry Status Report published in August 2009 states that the nuclear industry continues to face steadily increasing construction costs and future cost estimates. The AREVA French-designed reactor project in Olkiluoto Finland is three years behind schedule and 55 per cent over budget (US$7 billion). There are now 435 commercial reactors operating globally, nine fewer than 2002. In 2008, nuclear electricity provided only 5.5 per cent of the international commercial primary energy production.

The average age of operating reactors globally is 25 years, while the average age of 123 reactors already closed is 22 years only. In addition to the 52 reactors currently under construction, another 43 reactors would have to be planned, built and started by 2015 – one every six weeks, and another 192 units over the following 10 years – one every 19 days – in order to maintain the same number that are operating today. With extremely long lead times of 10 to 15 years, this will be an impossible task, let alone actually increasing the number of reactors.

None of the new countries wanting nuclear power have the appropriate nuclear regulations, independent regulators, the domestic maintenance capacity and the skilled workforce to run a nuclear reactor. Nor do they have an adequate grid system to absorb the output of a nuclear power plant.

Furthermore some of these countries either have a government hostile to the concept of nuclear power (Norway, Malaysia, Thailand), hostile public opinion (Italy and Turkey), major economic problems (Poland), earthquake or volcanic risks (Indonesia) or some have an absolute lack of all necessary infrastructure (Venezuela).

France with its large nuclear infrastructure is currently threatened with a severe shortage of skilled workers. The Word Nuclear Industry Status Report reveals that currently only 300 nuclear science graduates are available in France for 1,200 to 1,500 open positions, and in the US only one quarter of such graduates plan to work in the nuclear industry. Most of the current operators, baby boomers, are close to retirement.

And there is one other major bottleneck for new reactors – only one corporation in the world, Japan Steel Works, can manufacture large steel forgings for many reactor pressure vessels.

These problems, together with the global financial crisis mean that the prospects of funding for the nuclear industry – most of which is government sourced – looks grim. New reactors are too risky and expensive to attract private investor funding, and the nuclear industry will not proceed with its “new build” unless they can transfer the risk to the tax payers or ratepayers.

In the US, efforts to forge the nuclear industry renaissance has been thwarted in eight states from Kentucky to Minnesota to Hawaii, Illinois, West Virginia, California, Missouri and Wisconsin. When the Yucca Mountain repository for high level waste was vetoed by President Obama, Dave Kraft, Director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service in Chicago said “Authorising construction of nuclear reactors without first constructing a radioactive waste disposal is like authorising the construction of a new Sears tower without the bathrooms. Neither makes sense; both threaten public health and safety.”