Tag Archives: Radiation

Fukushima residents’ urine now radioactive

June 28, 2011 1:54 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Kyodo: The Japan Times, Monday, June 27, 2011

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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Nuclear plants must not turn into radiological weapons

April 30, 2011 11:54 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

by Fumihiko Yoshida, The Asahi Shimbun, April 28 2011
Source: http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201104270183.html

As a hibakusha survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima,
Keijiro Matsushima, 82, has been speaking publicly about his personal
experience in English for foreign audiences. Soon after the accident at
Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant triggered by the March 11 massive
earthquake and tsunami, he was asked to give an interview with the U.S.
cable TV news channel CNN.

While reports of radioactive leaks were making headlines, he thought
how best to describe what was happening and what went through his
mind.

Atomic bombs release intense heat and blasts in addition to radiation.
Their destructive power is incomparably greater than nuclear power plant
accidents, which do not lead to nuclear explosions. People who
underwent atomic bombings may see the Fukushima accident differently,
depending on their experiences.

After much thought, Matsushima made up his mind to speak frankly without
hesitation about how he felt.

“It’s like the third atomic bomb attack on Japan. But this time, we made it
ourselves,” he told CNN.

It is true the accident was triggered by a mega-earthquake. But even though Japan
experienced atomic bombs, didn’t it underestimate the horror of nuclear energy
once it got out of control? Every time Matsushima heard news about the accident,
he could not help asking himself this.

The accident evoked images of nuclear weapons in Matsushima. But he is not the
only one.

Actually, in the past, a nuclear accident prompted the leader of a major power to
take steps toward nuclear disarmament. It is Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the
Soviet Union leader at the time of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.

Faced with the accident, Gorbachev felt he experienced virtual nuclear warfare. In
terms of levels of radioactivity, an explosion of even the smallest nuclear warhead
is equivalent to three Chernobyl-class accidents, he said in a speech. Even if a very
small part of accumulated nuclear warheads explode, it would lead to a catastrophe,
he said, expressing his determination to put an end to a nuclear arms race. Twenty
months after the accident, the Soviet Union and the United States signed a treaty to
cut down on nuclear warheads in their possessions for the first time ever.

What about the Fukushima accident? How will it influence the nuclear issues?

Many U.S. experts share the view that the accident caused their wariness against
terrorism targeting nuclear power plants to grow stronger. It is a nightmarish scenario
that combines “9.11″ and “3.11.”

For example, Allison Macfarlane, associate professor of environmental science and
policy at George Mason University, has concerns about the vulnerability of spent fuel
pools. The Fukushima accident made it clear in everyone’s eyes that the loss of
cooling water at pools can result in a radioactive leak crisis.

“If pools were damaged by a terrorist attack and water was lost, the scenario would
be the same as what occurred at the Fukushima plant,” said Macfarlane, who is also
a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission, a U.S. government advisory panel on
nuclear waste.

Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists, points out the
risk of cyber terrorism to nuclear power plants. Having served as a consultant with
the National Nuclear Security Administration and National Laboratories, he worries
about a possible cyber attack that could instantly kill a regional grid that provides
electricity to nuclear power plants and on-site backup electrical systems, resulting in
a Fukushima-type disaster. He is planning to form an experts group to study how to
prevent such cyber terrorism.

National defense concerns have also surfaced. Let us presume one country has
numbers of nuclear power plants in operation. If those plants were attacked by
conventional missiles and their huge inventories of radioactive materials were
released into the atmosphere, society in the targeted country would be in turmoil.
Princeton University professor Frank von Hippel believes that the Fukushima
accident impressed on security policymakers the potential threat of attack on
nuclear power plants.

Several days after the crisis began on March 11, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said that the expanding threat of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan had
changed his thinking on the safety of nuclear power.

“It certainly caused me to reconsider the projects of building civil nuclear power
plants” in Israel, he said. Von Hippel’s interpretation of this comment is that c
onsidering the instability in the Middle East today, Netanyahu’s new position reflects,
at least to some extent, security concerns about the potential use of nuclear power
plants as “radioactive bombs” if they are targeted for attack.

Be that as it may, the growing concern about the danger of nuclear power plants
has its upside. Why not make the most of the situation to prevent nuclear
proliferation? Such views were exchanged at an international conference of
experts on the nuclear issues recently held in Washington.

Newly emerging and developing countries are accelerating moves to introduce and
expand nuclear power generation in recent years. Naturally, there is growing interest
toward ensuring safety of nuclear power plants. At the same time, nations share
anxieties about the current situation where more countries are turning to nuclear
energy for power under the existing framework of nuclear nonproliferation, which is
starting to develop rifts.

If so, why not slow down the expansion of nuclear power use by intensifying debate
on safety and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation system in the meantime, a
German researcher suggested.

How many times did I hear the name Fukushima mentioned outside Japan? Japan
has added a negative legacy to its name as Fukushima became as common a word
as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the only nation that underwent atomic bombings and radioactive pollution caused
by a nuclear power plant, how should Japan face nuclear energy? This is a question
it must squarely address itself.

While calling for peace, safety and security, can we coexist with nuclear energy? If we
can, what conditions must be met? Is the goal achievable with the power we now
possess?

Unexpected situations could happen and we must not simply dismiss them as “outside
the scope of assumptions.” This lesson from the Fukushima accident weighs extremely
heavily in this age of nuclear weapons and energy.

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Posted in: Nuclear Energy ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Radiation Readings in Fukushima Reactor Rise to Highest Since Crisis Began

April 30, 2011 11:52 am ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

By Tsuyoshi Inajima and Michio Nakayama, Bloomberg, Apr 27, 2011
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-27/tokyo-water-radiation-falls-to-zero-for-first-time-since-crisis.html

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

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Japan’s Nuclear Catastrophe Leaves Little to Celebrate on Children’s Day

April 30, 2011 11:40 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

PETITION AGAINST THE INCREASE OF “ACCEPTABLE” RADIATION TO 2,000 millirem per year (20 mSv/y) FOR JAPANESE SCHOOL CHILDREN AND PLAY GROUNDS

Follow this link to sign the petition: http://blog.canpan.info/foejapan/daily/201104/24

The Japanese government is celebrating Children’s Day,
a national holiday on May 5th, by dramatically raising
radiation exposure limits in schools.

Robert Alvarez, April 29, 2011

Source: http://www.ips-dc.org/blog/japans_nuclear_catastrophe_leaves_little_to_celebrate_on_childrens_day

May 5 is Children’s Day, a Japanese national holiday that celebrates the
happiness of childhood. This year, it will fall under a dark, radioactive shadow.

Japanese children in the path of radioactive plumes from the crippled nuclear
reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station are likely to suffer health
problems that a recent government action will only exacerbate.

On April 19, the Japanese government sharply ramped up its radiation
exposure limit to 2,000 millirem per year (20 mSv/y) for schools and
playgrounds in Fukushima prefecture. Japanese children are now permitted
to be exposed to an hourly dose rate 165 times above normal background
radiation and 133 times more than levels the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency allows for the American public.

Japanese school children will be allowed to be exposed to same level
recommended by the International Commission on Radiation Protection
for nuclear workers. Unlike workers, however, children won’t have a choice
as to whether they can be so exposed.

This decision callously puts thousands of children in harm’s way.

Experts consider children to be 10 to 20 times more vulnerable to contracting
cancer from exposure to ionizing radiation than adults. This is because as
they grow, their dividing cells are more easily damaged — allowing cancer
cells to form. Routine fetal X-rays have ceased worldwide for this reason.
Cancer remains a leading cause of death by disease for children in the
United States.

On April 12, the Japanese government announced that the nuclear crisis in
Fukushima was as severe as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Within weeks of
the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, the four ruined reactors at the Dai-Ichi power
station released enormous quantities of radiation into the atmosphere.

According to the Daily Youmiri, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
(NISA) announced that between 10 and 17 million curies (270,000- 360,000 TBq)
of radioactive materials were released to the atmosphere before early April,
a great deal more than previous official estimates.

Even though atmospheric releases blew mostly out to sea and appear to have
declined dramatically, NISA reports that Fukushima’s nuclear ruins are
discharging about 4,200 curies of iodine-131 and cesium-137 per day into the
air (154 TBq). This is nearly 320,000 times more radiation then the now
de-commissioned Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant released over a year.

NISA’s estimate is likely to be the low end, given the numerous sources of
unmeasured and unfiltered leaks into the environment amidst the four wrecked
reactors. On April 27, Bloomberg News reported that radiation readings at the
Dai-Ichi nuclear power station have risen to the highest levels since the
earthquake.

With a half-life of 8.5 days, iodine-131 is rapidly absorbed in dairy products
and in the human thyroid, particularly those of children. Cesium-137 has a
half-life of 30 years and gives off potentially dangerous external radiation.
It concentrates in various foods and is absorbed throughout the human body.
Unlike iodine-131, which decays to a level considered safe after about three
months, cesium-137 can pose risks for several hundred years.

Measurements taken at 1,600 nursery schools, kindergartens, and middle
school playgrounds in early April indicate that children are regularly getting
high radiation doses. Radiation levels one meter above the ground indicate
that children at hundreds of schools received exposures 43- 200 times above
background. And this is outside of the “exclusionary zone” around the Dai-Ichi
reactors, where locals have been evacuated. Japan’s Ministry of Education
and Science has limited outdoor activities at 13 schools in the cities of
Fukushima, Date, and Koriyama Cities.

Although the extent of long-term contamination is not yet fully known, disturbing
evidence is emerging. Data collected 40 kilometers from the Fukushima’s
nuclear accident  show cumulative levels as high as 9.5 rems (95 mSv)
– nearly five times the international annual occupational dose. Soil beyond the
30-kilometer evacuation zone shows cesium-137 levels at 2,200 kBq per
square meter — 67 percent greater than that requiring evacuation near
Chernobyl.

Three-fourths of the monitored schools in Fukushima had radioactivity levels
so high that human entry shouldn’t be allowed, even though students began
a new semester on April 5.

PETITION AGAINST THE INCREASE OF “ACCEPTABLE” RADIATION TO 2,000 millirem per year (20 mSv/y) FOR JAPANESE SCHOOL CHILDREN AND PLAY GROUNDS

Follow this link to sign the petition: http://blog.canpan.info/foejapan/daily/201104/24

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Radioactivity level in contaminated seawater approaches record high

April 30, 2011 11:35 am ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

BY TOMOYUKI YAMAMOTO STAFF WRITER (Asahi.com)
Source: http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201104230223.html

The level of radioactivity from contaminated water that leaked into the sea from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is close to the highest levels ever recorded.

The water that leaked from a crack in a concrete wall near the No. 2 reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is estimated to be 4,700 trillion becquerels, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. said April 21.

That figure is about 20,000 times higher than the permissible annual standard stipulated by the government. Officials said 520 tons of the contaminated water leaked into the ocean from the crippled Fukushima plant. The leakage of the highly contaminated water was discovered April 2 and was halted April 6.

The worst case in history took place in Sellafield on the coast of the Irish Sea in Cumbria, England, in the 1960s-70s. Cesium-137 with a radioactivity of 5,230 trillion becquerels a year was discharged into the Irish Sea from a nuclear fuel reprocessing factory at the peak year of 1975.

Although the radioactivity level in the water in the Fukushima disaster is lower than that of the Sellafield case, officials say it is still a serious situation because the radioactive substances were discharged into the sea over a much shorter period of time.

“Even if the sea contamination made through the air is factored in, the figure is still a little bit lower than that in Sellafield,” said Katsumi Hirose, former director of the Meteorological Research Institute’s Geochemical Research Department. “But this time, we have to pay attention to the fact that the radioactive substances were discharged in an extremely short period of time.”

As for the concentration of the contamination, about 200 becquerels per liter of water was recorded in the Irish Sea in 1974.

“In the sea 34 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, 186 becquerels per liter of water was recorded on April 15. The figure is close to the 200 becquerels found in the Irish Sea,” Hirose said.

Radioactive substances discharged into the ocean are diluted by seawater. However, they do not necessarily spread evenly. There is a possibility that a water mass with a high concentration of radioactive material still exists.

Hirose said the observation area should be expanded to sea areas in a radius of 100 kilometers, centering on the coast off Fukushima, and that observation points should be increased drastically.

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