Japan Update, August 19, 2011

Fukushima radiation alarms doctors  Al-Jazeera  Found it on Godlike Productions.  Excerpts:

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

"How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

"The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant.

There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation.

And:

Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming.

When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure.

10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays.

It is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv.

TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings.

And:

Jyunichi Tokuyama, an expert with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, told Al Jazeera he did not know how to deal with the crisis. He was surprised because he did not expect radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, 300km from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

"The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive," Tokuyama told Al Jazeera.

Kamada feels the Japanese government is acting too slowly in response to the Fukushima disaster, and that the government needs to check radiation exposure levels "in each town and village" in Fukushima prefecture.

And:

More than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water has been released into the ocean from the stricken plant.

"Those radioactive elements bio-concentrate in the algae, then the crustaceans eat that, which are eaten by small then big fish," Caldicott said. "That's why big fish have high concentrations of radioactivity and humans are at the top of the food chain, so we get the most radiation, ultimately."

Magnitude 6.3 - NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN  USGS.

Twi from Ex-SKF..

Radioactive Beef Conundrum: High Level Cesium Detected from Beef Not Fed with Radioactive Rice Hay

Oops. There goes the lifting of the shipping ban for Fukushima.

So where did the cow get the dose of radioactive cesium? Air? Water? No one knows, because everyone in the government and the producers have been looking only at radioactive rice hay.


From NHK News Japanese

 

According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, radioactive cesium in the amount exceeding the national provisional limit has been detected from the beef from a cow raised in Fukushima Prefecture. This meat has been stored at a meat processing facility, and according to the investigation so far the cow was never fed the radioactive rice hay. The national government was going to lift the shipping ban on meat cows in Fukushima Prefecture today (August 19) but instead has instructed the Fukushima prefectural government to continue to halt shipping for the time being and conduct further investigation.

Now that they can't blame radioactive hay, what will they do?  What will those still in denial cling to?  People are starting to realize this monster is much, much bigger than they wanted to believe..

 

Another "Baseless Rumor": Cicadas in Japan This Summer Have Been Awfully Quiet

 

This is one of those bits of information that people in Japan have been exchanging on the social media since the beginning of summer: "I don't hear cicadas this year".

A typical summer in Japan is hot and humid (except in a few lucky places like Hokkaido), and the air is filled with the "singing" of cicadas.

But this year, people report that cicadas are either extremely quiet or totally silent in large part of Japan. The exception seems to be the Kansai area, but almost everywhere else people say they don't hear cicadas, and it's been a strangely quiet summer.

It is quite possible that it's been like that every year and people have started to pay heightened and nervous attention to the nature around them after the nuclear accident.

But some people have started to post the photos of cicadas they've found this summer. No wonder they don't "sing". Again, it is quite possible that cicadas in Japan have been malformed for a long time and people have just started to notice, and it's nothing to do with radiation.

Maybe, but they're probably related.

Hiroshima to Fukushima, Finishing the Job  Veterans Today via Rense.  Excerpts:

What’s more: the atomic reactors spilled their burning guts into the basements and there is evidence the melted reactor cores are still “reacting” 160 days out. Shutting them down is mostly just plain impossible. The burning, radioactive gates of hell are still open wide. Breathe deep everyone. Breathe your own poisoned Fuku tainted air.

I like articles like this as they make me feel less hyperbolic.  Good morning!

Japan Update, August 18, 2011

Cracked Fukushima: Radioactive steam escapes danger zone  Found it on Godlike Productions.  Video from Russia Today via You Tube.  Scary.

Fukushima I Nuke Plant Worker: No Steam Gushing From Cracks, But There Are Many 10-Plus Sieverts/Hr Locations  Ex-SKF.  Excerpts:

The anonymous Fukushima I Nuke Plant worker whom I featured before several times tweets on the information, yet to be substantiated, related by an independent journalist Kota Kinoshita on his blog on August 15. Mr. Kinoshita related the information only because he had heard the similar information from his government source.

What is that information? That there is steam gushing out of cracks on the ground, and that there are 6 locations that exceed 10 sieverts/hr radiation.

..

About locations that exceed 10 sieverts/hr:

In Mr. Kinoshita's blog:

[The same worker] also told [his contact] that there are 6 locations that exceed 10,000 millisievert/hr [10 sieverts/hr], unlike what TEPCO has announced.

Fukushima worker's tweet:

I think that is true. But those are the locations that have been measured. I think there are many more.

Mr. Kinoshita's blog has this bit of "rumor" from his worker at the plant

There are several cracks on the ground near the Containment Vessel, and the steam is coming out from them, not on a regular basis but sporadically.

Wait, does that mean the floor of the reactor building is cracked? He doesn't say which reactor.

And Fukushima worker has another tweet that says:

 

In the reactor buildings of Reactors 1, 2 and 3, there are many spots that measure even higher [than 10 sieverts/hr] and we can't go near them.

 

Now granted, this is speculation and hasn't been confirmed.  Keeping with TEPCO's previous information dribs and drabs, we should have confirmation when the Southern Hemisphere is thoroughly contaminated three to six months from now, long after the Upcoming Event..

Japan Update, August 12, 2011

Clusterfukushima  Washington's Blog.  Excerpts:

Arnie Gundersen notes that there are currently lethal radiation levels at Fukushima, that even higher measurements are to still come, and that the nuclear core has leaked out and is on floor like a pancake working its way down.

And nuclear regulators only thought about worst case scenarios only involving a single nuclear plant. They totally ignored the fact that power loss to complexes of nuclear reactors - like the cluster of 6 reactors at Fukushima - could lead to multiple simultaneous meltdowns.

And then there's a cluster of cover ups.

As the New York Times reports:

In interviews and public statements, some current and former government officials have admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster — in order, some of them said, to limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry. As the nuclear plant continues to release radiation, some of which has slipped into the nation’s food supply, public anger is growing at what many here see as an official campaign to play down the scope of the accident and the potential health risks.

And:

Meltdowns at three of Fukushima Daiichi’s six reactors went officially unacknowledged for months. In one of the most damning admissions, nuclear regulators said in early June that inspectors had found tellurium 132, which experts call telltale evidence of reactor meltdowns, a day after the tsunami — but did not tell the public for nearly three months. For months after the disaster, the government flip-flopped on the level of radiation permissible on school grounds, causing continuing confusion and anguish about the safety of schoolchildren here in Fukushima.

And:

The timing of many admissions ... suggested to critics that Japan’s nuclear establishment was coming clean only because it could no longer hide the scope of the accident.

Japan government prepares plan to flee Tokyo  ABC News (Australia) via Rense.  Excerpts:

Japan is considering the possibility of creating a back-up capital city in case a major natural disaster, like the March 11 earthquake, strikes Tokyo.

A new panel from Japan's Ministry of Land and Infrastructure will consider the possibility of moving some of Tokyo's capital functions to another big city, like Osaka.

Osaka it is, then.

Radioactive Beef Consumed in School Lunches in 296 Schools in 12 Prefectures in Japan  Ex-SKF.  Excerpts:

According to the ministry, as of August 9, the meat from the cows that may have eaten radioactive rice hay was used in school lunches in 278 elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and special education schools, and 18 kindergartens, in 20 cities and towns in Japan. 127 schools in Yokohama City used it, so did 53 schools and kindergartens in Gifu City [in Gifu Prefecture], and 30 schools and kindergartens in 4 cities in Miyagi Prefecture. The schools are mostly located in eastern Japan, but 40 schools in 4 cities in Mie, Shimane, Kagawa Prefectures also used the meat.

30 schools were able to test the remaining meat, and radioactive materials were detected at 8 schools. Of the 8 schools, two schools - a special education school for students with disabilities in Miyagi Prefecture and an elementary school in Chiba, had the meat that exceeded the provisional safety limit (500 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium), testing 1,293 to 649 becquerels/kg. The municipalities say the amount of contaminated beef per person is small, and it won't affect the health.

Japan's Foreign Minister: Stop Claiming Food is Safe  Japan Times via Before It's News.  Excerpts:

Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto has committed an about-face on policy by telling his ministry to refrain from vouching for the safety of Japanese food.

The ministry stance changed after radiation-tainted beef was found to have been sold to consumers nationwide, sources said.

The contaminated meat is coming from cattle that were fed rice straw contaminated with cesium isotopes ejected by the disaster-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Japanese Utilities Select Nuclear Power As Energy Of Future - Questions About The Integrity Of Japanese Officials - Safety is important but the advancement of nuclear power must not be slowed  Lucas Whitfield Hixson.  Comprehensive. 

Strong 5.9 quake jolts Japan disaster zone  Raw Story.  Excerpts:

A 5.9-magnitude earthquake shook northeast Japan Friday, jolting the area devastated by a quake and tsunami in March, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties and no tsunami warning.

The quake hit at 3:22 am (1822 GMT Thursday) at a depth of 38 kilometres (24 miles), with its epicentre 18 kilometres from Iwaki city in Fukushima prefecture, the United States Geological Survey said.

..

Tokyo Electric Power Company, operator of the crippled plant, said it had noticed no additional problems resulting from the latest quake, which also shook buildings in Tokyo.

Study says nuclear fuel at Fukushima reactor possibly melted twice  Mainichi Daily News.  Excerpts:

Fuel inside one of the reactors at the crippled nuclear complex in Fukushima Prefecture, which was believed to have been kept cool at the bottom of the pressure vessel after its core suffered a meltdown, has possibly breached the vessel after melting again at the bottom of the vessel, an expert's study showed Monday.

The study by Fumiya Tanabe, an expert in nuclear safety, said most of the fuel at the No. 3 reactor may have fallen into the containment vessel underneath, and if so, the current method used to cool the reactor would need reviewing, which could force the plant operator to revise its schedule to contain the five-month-old disaster.  (My how time flies when you're doomed!)

The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. earlier said the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors' cores are assumed to have suffered meltdowns, although the melted fuel is believed to be kept cool and solidified at the bottom of each reactor pressure vessel after water was injected into the vessel as an emergency measure.

Fukushima Radiation Highest Ever, Exceeding Capacity of Measuring Device ... Fuel Likely Leaking Out Of Containment Vessel

Washington's Blog has the full roundup.  A few scary headlines..

Tepco Says Highest Radiation Yet Is Detected at Fukushima Dai-Ichi

Tepco: Ultra-high radiation levels may be from melted fuel that leaked out of containment vessel

Experts: Melt-through scenario means even higher radiation readings to come — Likely many more reports of deadly radiation in future

Japan gov’t: Agency funding project to monitor online info about Fukushima crisis — Around the clock monitoring of “blogs on nuclear power” and “Twitter accounts”

Ticktick glow..  Earth's radioactive monster continues to grow..

Japan Update, August 3, 2011

5+ Sieverts An Hour Found On Reactor 1 Second Floor  From Ex-SKF via Rense.  Excerpts:

TEPCO announced on August 2 that the radiation level in the air conditioning room on the 2nd floor of the reactor building of Reactor 1 was over 5 sieverts/hr (or 5,000 millisieverts/hr). It is the highest indoor radiation ever recorded at the plant, higher than 4 sieverts/hr recorded also in the Reactor 1 reactor building on June 3. TEPCO closed off the room.

The vent duct that releases pressure inside the Containment vessel and the emergency gas processing pipe meet inside the room, which is upstream from the main exhaust stack where over 10 sieverts/hr radiation was measured on August 1. According to TEPCO, it is possible that the high concentration of radioactive materials got stuck inside the pipes when the venting was done on the next day after the March 11 earthquake.

Fatal Radiation Level Found at Japanese Plant  New York Times via Godlike Productions.  Excerpts:

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said that workers on Monday afternoon had found an area near Reactors No. 1 and 2, where radiation levels exceeded their measuring device’s maximum reading of 10 sieverts per hour — a fatal dose for humans.

..

The company said the workers who found the reading were safely protected by antiradiation clothing. Tokyo Electric said it has closed off an area of several yards around where the lethal radiation level was found. The company said this would not hamper efforts to build a new cooling system and remove contaminated water.

The plant has continued to spew radiation since the disaster, though levels have been dropping. The operator is working to install a new makeshift cooling system by early next year that will allow it to finally shut down the plant’s three damaged reactors.

Fukushima Catastrophe - Disaster Beyond Imagining  You Tube via Before It's News. 

Japan Update, July 23, 2011

Fukushima: Still Dire For Japan ... Still Threatening the U.S. and Canada  Washington's Blog does the heavy lifting here.  Excerpts:

Things are not getting better in Japan.

As a nuclear expert said recently, the "reactors are almost in the same situation they were in the early days of the accident":

Click the link, then just scan the selected headlines. It becomes apparent this contamination event continues to spread radioactivity, a growing ominous-ness born of growing awareness, and fear, of a deadly and unsure, yet glowing, near-and-long-term future..

Japan Update, July 14, 2011

The Conspiracy Theorists Were Right!  or:  Validation!  We're Dead..  The End!


Contaminated Water System: Leak Was from the Same Joint  It really seems like they're just flailing and reacting, creating more chaos.  I didn't know that ferric sulfates could corrode cast iron, but I'm not paid to know things like these, either.  Amazing..


"During April, The People In Seattle Could Have Just As Easily Been In Tokyo For The Amount Of Hot Particles That Were There"   Washington's Blog.


Arnie Gundersen: What the Nuclear Industry Doesn't Want You to Know - July 10, 2011  New video.


Radiation in Japan: As It Is Being Spread Almost Willfully, The Country Is Getting Unhinged  Ex-SKF.  Wow..


*4,320 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium found from the beef from Minami Soma City, Fukushima: the cattle farm that shipped cows found with radioactive cesium far exceeding the already loose provisional safety limit of 500 becquerels/kg is located in the "emergency evacuation-ready zone" - not even "the planned evacuation zone" or plain "evacuation zone", both of which do exist in Minami Soma City.


*Fukushima Prefecture has announced it will shut down the official shelters within Fukushima, which will force the evacuees to go back to their own homes.


*Minami-Soma City has issued a notice to all 32,000 city residents who have been living in the shelters, temporary housing outside Fukushima Prefecture that they must return to Minami-Soma, high radiation or not.


*The national government will spend 100 billion yen (US$1.26 billion) to observe the health of 2 million Fukushima residents for 30 years, instead of evacuating them ASAP. About 1600 yen (US$20) per year per resident. Life is cheap. Since the national government is utterly broke, it will be ultimately paid for by the taxpayers of Japan.




Fast and furious. Shock and awe. I think most people in Japan still cannot fathom how their elected officials and government workers with high education from distinguished schools (Tokyo University, Kyoto University, Oxford University...) could do such things to them. Better wake up really, very quickly.


People say that the Japanese are law-abiding citizens. The Japanese say that to themselves. The truth, as has been slowly revealed over the past 4 months, is that they are followers of the arbitrary and capricious orders, as long as the orders are given to them from the government sources. Never mind if those orders are very much counter to the law itself or the natural law or the common sense.


52,547 Bq/Kg Off Cesium Radiation Found In Soil Just Outside Tokyo  Alexander Higgins/Examiner.  Excerpts:


52,547 Bq/Kg of of Cesium radiation measured in soil samples collected just outside of Tokyo over 135 miles south of the Fukushima nuclear power plant.


A reader from Japan has sent me a copy of his official Lab results for nuclear radiation soil samples collected in Kashiwa, Japan, which is on the outskirts of Tokyo and over 135 miles south of the Fukushima nuclear reactor. The lab results show that 52,547 Becquerels Per Kilogram Of Cesium Radiation was found in the sample. 23,663 Bq/Kg of Cesium 134 radiation was found. 28,884 Bq/Kg of Cesium 137 was detected.
And:
During Chernobyl the threshold for declaring an area a permanent dead zone and issuing a mandatory evacuation was 500,000 Bq/kg so this test, which is by far the highest result for soil yet that I am aware of outside of the area already evacuated around Fukushima, comes in about 1/10th of the permanent Chernobyl "dead zone" threshold.  (And we're only four months into this multiple year marathon..)


Nuclear scientists working at the University of Berkeley in California, who are doing their own radiation testing in the United States, have also pointed out radioactive substances accumulate in broad green leafy plants at a factor of 5-6 times above the surrounding soil. That would indicate the grass or other green plants growing in this soil may have radioactive contamination up to 250,000 Bq/Kg which is extremely high and approaching over half of the 500,000 kilogram permanent "dead-zone"threshold.


This soil sample is also over 50 times higher than the 2,000 Bq/Kg threshold for international nuclear waste.
..
This reading is also startling because as shown in the official nuclear fallout readings from the Government of Japan, as shown on the map on this page, show the highest levels of radiation to the northwest of the Fukushima power plant. The reason for that is most of the prevailing winds have blown to the northwest, north and to the northeast out over the pacific. So far that has spared Tokyo and central Japan as the radiation has been blowing away from these locations. This high of a reading so close to Tokyo makes the situation much more dire as we can clearly see radiation levels very close to Tokyo now building up to permanent "dead-zone" levels.


This high of a level of contamination so close to Tokyo also directly contradicts all official government tests done in the area so far. Those tests so far have shown no "levels of concern" in anything except for sewage slag.

Radioactive Beef from Fukushima Update: Already Been Sold in At Least 9 (not 5) Prefectures  Ex-SKF.  Excerpts:

Beef from 6 cows from the same cattle farmer in Minami Soma City in Fukushima Prefecture have already been sold at least in 9 (not 5) prefectures, according to Mainichi Shinbun Japanese latest update (1:28AM, 7/12/2011).

Unlike the 11 cows whose meat all tested cesium exceeding the provisional limit of 500 becquerels/kg, the meat from these 6 cows had never been tested and allowed to circulate in the market.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is in charge of testing live cattle, and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is in charge of testing meat. They do not talk with each other.

No one in power here is learning anything constructive or applicable.  And even if they are, they are not behaving as such..