– All Headlines (Kyodo News):
– NEWS ADVISORY: Gov’t assumed worst-case scenario at Fukushima nuclear plant 1 day after quake 3 May
– BREAKING NEWS: Seabed radiation 100-1,000 times normal level off Fukushima plant: TEPCO 3 May
Fukushima
Fairewinds’ Founder Maggie Gundersen Interviews Environmental Scientist Marco Kaltofen: Radiation In Food Is Going To Be A Nationwide Problem In The US!
Fairewinds’ founder Maggie Gundersen interviews environmental scientist and professional engineer Marco Kaltofen about his ongoing analysis of radioactive fallout from Fukushima.
Added: 03.05.2011
There are no safe levels of radiation:
– Dr. Helen Caldicott On The Japan Nuclear Disaster – The Truth MSM Won’t Tell You! (Video)
– Dr. Helen Caldicott: How Nuclear Apologists Mislead The World Over Radiation
– Dr. Brian Moench: There Is No ‘Safe’ Exposure To Radiation
– Are There Safe Levels of Radiation? How Much Radiation Is Safe? (Must-read!!!!!)
Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility):
You’ve bought the propaganda from the nuclear industry. They say it’s low-level radiation. That’s absolute rubbish. If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. It’s imperative … that you understand internal emitters and radiation, and it’s not low level to the cells that are exposed. Radiobiology is imperative to understand these days.”
TEPCO’s ‘Cold Shutdown’ Lie And What They ‘Forgot’ To Tell You About Fukushima
Fukushima’s Radioactive Fuel Can Be Incinerated With A Nuclear Explosion
TEPCO says they are planning a “cold shutdown” of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plants in 6 to 9 months.
“Cold shutdown” means the reactor cores – and the used fuel pools – decrease in temperature through 100 degrees C and continue to go down after a couple of days without additional cooling. If that doesn’t happen within 48 hours, it isn’t going to. E-V-E-R. The reactors are still ‘in service’ – which means the fuel is still reacting. It hasn’t happened at Fukushima and it never will.
Read moreTEPCO’s ‘Cold Shutdown’ Lie And What They ‘Forgot’ To Tell You About Fukushima
Japanese Government Admits Hiding Radiation Forecasts (Video)
Watch the video here.
– Belated release of radiation forecast data (NHK):
The Japanese government is about to begin releasing data projecting the spread of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that it initially withheld for fear of causing panic.
The data in question is in a computer system called SPEEDI that predicts the spread of radioactive substances based on actual radiation measurements at various locations and weather conditions.
A joint task force of the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company says about 5,000 undisclosed bits of data will be released from Tuesday.
The information will be carried on the websites of the science ministry, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, and the Nuclear Safety Commission.
The secretary-general of the joint task force and prime the minister’s advisor, Goshi Hosono, apologized for the delay in releasing the data.Hosono said the task force withheld the information because some data were based on overly rigorous assumptions and feared it may trigger panic.
Read moreJapanese Government Admits Hiding Radiation Forecasts (Video)
Fukushima Parents Furious Over Dramatically Raised Radiation Limits, Fight Back
– Fukushima parents dish the dirt in protest over radiation levels (Guardian):
Furious parents in Fukushima have delivered a bag of radioactive playground earth to education officials in protest at moves to weaken nuclear safety standards in schools.
Children can now be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously permissible. The new regulations have prompted outcry. A senior adviser resigned and the prime minister, Naoto Kan, was criticised by politicians from his own party.
Read moreFukushima Parents Furious Over Dramatically Raised Radiation Limits, Fight Back
Japan PM Naoto Kan To Study Possibility Of Setting Up An ALTERNATIVE CAPITAL, Blames TEPCO And Japanese Government For Fukushima ‘Accident’
Kan: safety measures insufficient
May 01 (NHK) — Prime Minister Naoto Kan says the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company failed to fully address safety issues that had come to light before the March 11 disaster.
An accident last June at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant caused by the loss of outside power and the subsequent drop in the water levels of a reactor was taken up at Sunday’s Upper House Budget Committee meeting.
Seawater Intake Radiation At Reactor No. 2: 3300 Times Over Limit
Watch the video here.
May 02 — The operator of the troubled Fukushima nuclear power plant says it has detected higher levels of radioactive materials in seawater samples from near the water intake at one of the reactors.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it detected 130 becquerels of radioactive iodine-131 per cubic centimeter in samples collected near the water intake for the Number 2 reactor on Saturday. The figure is 3,300 times the national limit and 30 percent higher than the level detected on Friday.
It’s the same site where iodine-131 at a level 7.5 million times the limit was detected on April 2nd. TEPCO says it detected radioactive cesium-134 at 120 times the limit and cesium-137 at 81 times the limit at the same place on Saturday. But the readings taken for these 2 substances were down for the third straight day.
Read moreSeawater Intake Radiation At Reactor No. 2: 3300 Times Over Limit
Japanese Senior Nuclear Adviser Prof. Toshiso Kosako Calls Radiation Exposure Limit 20 Times Too High, Quits
‘I cannot help but to think [the government and other agencies] are only taking stopgap measures.’
– Prof. Toshiso Kosako
A senior nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has resigned, criticizing the government for ignoring his advice on radiation limits and not doing enough to deal with the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the University of Tokyo, was only recently named an aide to Kan on March 16, five days after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan
In a teary news conference on Friday night, Kosako said he could not stay on while the government set, what he deemed, inappropriate radiation limits for elementary schools near the plant.
“I cannot allow this as a scholar,” he said, adding that he also opposed the government raising the limit for radiation exposure for workers at the plant.
The government has set 20-millisievert limit for radiation exposure as safe, but according to Kosako, that is 20 times too high, especially for children, who are considered more vulnerable to radiation than adults.
Plant workers are now allowed to be exposed to 250 millisieverts of radiation over a five-year period, up from 100 millisieverts.
Radioactive Cesium Found In Japan Breast Milk
Don’t miss:
NHK = Japanese government propaganda:
– Minute levels of radiation detected in breast milk (NHK):
Japan’s Health Ministry says it has detected a minute amount of radioactive materials in breast milk in 7 mothers in central and northeastern Japan. The ministry says the amount does not pose a danger to their babies’ health.
The ministry on Saturday released the results of a study conducted in Fukushima, Tokyo and other 3 prefectures in Kanto region from last Sunday through Thursday.
The ministry says breast milk samples from a mother in Iwaki City of Fukushima Prefecture contained 3.5 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram and 2.4 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.
Up to 2.8 becquerels of radioactive materials per kilogram were also detected in 6 mothers in 2 other prefectures.
Japan has no regulatory levels to determine the health risk from radioactive substances in breast milk. But it sets the safety levels for babies’ consumption of milk and drinking water at 100 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram and 200 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.The detected amount in the samples was much lower than the regulatory levels and the ministry says it is too minute to have any impact on babies’ health. It also says mothers who are breast-feeding should not be overly concerned.
Professor Nobuya Unno of Kitasato University says it is necessary to carefully analyze how and for how long radioactive materials will affect breast milk when mothers drink water and eat food that contain such substances.
Sunday, May 01, 2011 09:02 +0900 (JST)
There is no such thing as minute/low level/safe level radiation in breast milk!!!
Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility):
They say it’s low-level radiation. That’s absolute rubbish. If you inhale (or ingest) a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. It’s imperative … that you understand internal emitters and radiation, and it’s not low level to the cells that are exposed. Radiobiology is imperative to understand these days.”
More info:
Japan: Relatively High Levels of Radioactive Cesium Detected In Sludge From Waste Water Treatment Plant
May 01 — Relatively high levels of radioactive cesium have been detected in the sludge from a waste water treatment plant in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture.
The prefectural government is tracking some of the sludge that has been shipped out of the prefecture to be used in making cement.
The prefecture’s investigation found that the sludge contained 26,400 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.
The solidified slag made from it contained 334,000 becquerels per kilogram, which is 1,300 times the level before the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Top Japan Nuclear Technology Institute Senior Advisor: ‘Fuel Rods Completely Melted, May Already Escaped Pressure Vessel’, ‘Water [Inside Pressure Vessel] Is Highly Contaminated With Uranium, Plutonium, Cesium, Cobalt, In The Concentration We’ve Never Seen Before’
More on 77-year-old Michio Ishikawa of the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute on the situation at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, as he appeared on Asahi TV on April 29.
A Todai as-hole though he may be, I started to like this guy as I watched. He didn’t mince his words, and said what they are doing at Fukushima I Nuke Plant is not working. That surprised some, including the host of the show, as Ishikawa is known as a strong proponent for the nuclear power generation and the nuclear industry.
I watched the segment (video No.2 out of 11) where he discussed the situation at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, particularly about the condition of the reactor core.
Here’s what I’d add to the snippets on my previous post. (My summary translation of what Mr. Ishikawa said, not literal; my comment in square bracket):
About TEPCO’s “roadmap:
“I believe what they are trying to achieve after 9 months is to cool the reactor cores and solidify them so that no radioactive materials can escape. But they are just doing peripheral tricks like water entombment and nitrogen gas injection. Nitrogen gas, it’s dangerous, by the way.
“What they must do is to cool the reactor cores, and there’s no way around it. It has to be done somehow.”
About the condition of the reactor cores:
“I believe the fuel rods are completely melted. They may already have escaped the pressure vessel. Yes, they say 55% or 30%, but I believe they are all melted down. When the fuel rods melt, they melt from the middle part on down.
(Showing the diagram) “I think the temperature inside the melted core is 2000 degrees to 2000 and several hundred degrees Celsius. A crust has formed on the surface where the water hits. Decay heat is 2000 to 3000 kilowatts, and through the cracks on the crust the radioactive materials (mostly noble gas and iodine) are escaping into the air.
“Volatile gas has almost all escaped from the reactor by now.
“The water [inside the pressure vessel] is highly contaminated with uranium, plutonium, cesium, cobalt, in the concentration we’ve never seen before.
“My old colleague contacted me and shared his calculation with me. At the decay heat of 2000 kilowatt… There’s a substance called cobalt 60. Highly radioactive, needs 1 to 1.5 meter thick shields. It kills people at 1000 curies. He calculated that there are 10 million curies of cobalt-60 in the reactor core. If 10% of cobalt-60 in the core dissolve into water, it’s 1 million curies.”
[He’s an old-timer so he’s used to curie instead of becquerel as a unit. 1 curie equals 3.7 x 10^10 becquerels (37,000,000,000 becquerels or 37 gigabecquerels).
10 million curies equals 370,000 terabecquerels, and 1 million curies equals 37,000 terabecquerels. I used this conversion table. Tell me I’m wrong! Cobalt-60 alone would make a Level 7 disaster…]
Top Japan Nuclear Technology Institute Senior Advisor: Total Meltdowns In Fukushima Reactors 1, 2, 3 (Video)
‘I think all the fuel rods have been melted down.’
(UPDATED with the video in question at the end. That he looks like a Tokyo University graduate a-shole. But he says not only the fuels have melted down completely but some of them may already be outside the Pressure Vessels.)
(More on his assessment of the reactor core and the situation at Fukushima I Nuke Plant in my latest post.)
Michio Ishikawa, the former head of the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute and the current “most senior” advisor to the Institute, appeared on an Asahi TV program on April 29 and shared his candid assessment of Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident.
He is known as one of the most ardent proponents of nuclear power generation. The Japan Nuclear Technology Institute was set up in 2005 by Ishikawa in order to represent the interest of the nuclear industry in Japan and promote nuclear energy.
People who watched this Asahi TV program were surprised to hear him contradict the official government “narrative” (I hate that word, but in this case it is exactly what it is, a “narrative” as opposed to reality) about the plant accident, even as he continues to insist nuclear power plants are safe and 100 milli-sieverts cumulative radiation is perfectly safe not just for the plant workers but for everyone.
Here are some of the comments he made during the program, jotted down by a viewer as he watched the program, and supplemented later with tweets by others. He weaves his own narratives like “no one anticipated such an accident” (oh yes many people did). Original in Japanese, my English translation, [my comment in italic in square braket]:
Top Japanese Nuclear Adviser (Holding Back Tears) Blasts Government, Quits: They ‘Have Ignored The Laws’, Gov. Approach Will Only Prolong Crisis
And only criminals of the worst kind would consider this:
See this:
– ‘Fukushima: Gross Miscarriage Of Radiation Science’ – Childrens Cancer Risk From Radiation Is 10 To 100 Times Higher For The Same Exposure To Adults
– Physicians For Social Responsibility Press Conference (04/26/2011): Chernobyl, Fukushima And Nuclear Power – Disturbing Facts!
– Dr. Helen Caldicott On The Japan Nuclear Disaster – The Truth MSM Won’t Tell You! (Video)
TOKYO—A special advisor to the Japanese government on radiation safety resigned Friday, saying that he was dissatisfied with the handling of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the prestigious University of Tokyo, said at a news conference that the prime minister’s office and agencies within the government “have ignored the laws and have only dealt with the problem at the moment.” Holding back tears, he said this approach would only prolong the crisis.
Following the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the Daiichi nuclear power plant has become the site of the second-worst nuclear power plant crisis in history. Three of its six reactors still pose a potential threat as officials and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. work to bring the situation under control.
Mr. Kosako was appointed on March 16. In announcing the appointment, chief government spokesman Yukio Edano described him as someone who “possesses outstanding insight and expertise in the field of radiation safety.”
Fukushima City Rainwater Radiation Readings Soar 63 Kilometers From Daiichi Nuclear Plant (24.04.11)
Added: 27.04.2011
This is a home video of measurements taken at multiple locations in Fukushima city for radiation contamination. Fukushima city is roughly 63 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant placing it outside of the exclusion zone. In some locations the measurements reach as high as 97 µSv/h.
China Detects 30 Cases Of Radioactive Contamination In Passengers, Vessels And Containers
BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) — China has detected 30 cases of radioactive contamination in passengers, vessels and containers that have entered the country since March 16, quarantine authorities said on Friday.
The contamination cases were reported after China’s quarantine bureaus started to monitor radiation levels at nine entry ports including Beijing, Liaoning and Zhejiang, said Li Yuanping, a spokesman for the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
Read moreChina Detects 30 Cases Of Radioactive Contamination In Passengers, Vessels And Containers
Japan: The Chief Of The Meteorological Society Wants To Stop Radiation Forecasts!
– Weather chief draws flak over plea not to release radiation forecasts (Kyodo News):
TOKYO, April 29, Kyodo
The chief of the Meteorological Society of Japan has drawn flak from within the academic society over a request for member specialists to refrain from releasing forecasts on the spread of radioactive substances from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Physicians For Social Responsibility Press Conference (04/26/2011): Chernobyl, Fukushima And Nuclear Power – Disturbing Facts!
A MUST-SEE!
Added: Erstellt: 26.04.2011
On Tuesday April 26, 2011, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) held a joint press conference with Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) and the Institute for Policy Studies’ Robert Alvarez on the ongoing impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to public health 25 years after the accident, the continuing nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan, and the lessons from both for U.S. public health and safety.