Fukushima Reactor Disaster: Japan to Restart Nuclear Plants, Post #7824

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110809a3.html


Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2011

Unit 3 MOX likely melted through

Kyodo
MOX fuel that was believed to have been kept cool at the bottom of one of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after its core melted is believed to have breached the vessel after melting again, a study said Monday.

The study by Fumiya Tanabe, an expert in nuclear safety, said most of reactor 3's mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel may have dribbled into the containment vessel underneath, and if so, the current method being used to cool the reactor will have to be rethought. This could force Tokyo Electric Power Co. to revise its schedule for containing the five-month-old disaster.

Tepco earlier said that the cores of reactors 1 to 3 are assumed to have suffered meltdowns, although the melted fuel was believed to have been kept at cool enough to solidify at the bottom of each pressure vessel after water was injected.

After analyzing data made public by Tepco, Tanabe argues it became difficult to inject coolant water into the pressure vessel after the pressure rose early March 21. He says the fuel at the bottom overheated and melted again over a four-day period.

[It'sJustMe]

There's that pesky term again...."harmful rumors". Fair use:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110810a3.html

Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011

Tepco posts ¥572 billion loss since April

Tokyo Electric Power Co. posted a group net loss Tuesday of ¥571.7 billion for the three months from April due to costs to stabilize the radiation-emitting Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and increases in fuel expenses for thermal power generation.

The loss dwarfed the ¥5.4 billion shortfall in the same period last year.

Tepco's earnings outlook remains unclear amid the ongoing crisis. The full impact on human health has yet to be determined, along with the breadth of food contamination.

"It's very difficult to come up with the final amount (of compensation) with the damage of harmful rumors and other things unknown," Tepco President Toshio Nishizawa said.

The net loss largely stems from an extraordinary loss of ¥503 billion the utility booked for the quarter. Of the loss, ¥88.2 billion is for the emotional distress of the evacuees and others affected by the nuclear crisis, ¥309.4 billion for workers' lost salaries and damage to business owners such as farmers who had to cull irradiated livestock.

The extraordinary loss also includes ¥105.3 billion for operations to stabilize the tsunami-hit plant, such as installing a curtainlike fence to prevent radiation-contaminated water from spreading far into the sea and conducting physical exams on plant workers.

This is the first time the utility has reported its earnings since it began paying provisional compensation to people affected by the nuclear crisis.

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110810a4.html

Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011

Fukushima fish radiation excessive, Greenpeace says

Radiology and marine experts from Greenpeace said Tuesday that four out of eight samples of various fish obtained last month at five ports in Fukushima Prefecture exceeded the government-set limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram of radiation.

Although fishery cooperatives in Fukushima have halted coastal commercial operations since March 11 and catches from the area are not being sold to retailers, the environmental group urged the government to conduct detailed checks on fish caught off the Fukushima coast to prevent their accidental sale.

A sample of "kuromebaru" rockfish hit 1,053 becquerels per kg, the group said.

"These were eight samples that were donated to Greenpeace, eight randomly taken samples" that were provided by local and amateur fishermen, Jan van de Putte, radiology safety expert of the NGO, said at a news conference in Tokyo.

But Van de Putte stressed that even the least contaminated fish showed traces of radiation.

Greenpeace said the government must work quickly to ensure the safety of consumers, including measures to trace the origin of such products.

"We have requested the Fisheries Agency and the Consumer Affairs Agency to label each fish with its origin as well as the level of radiation contamination," Wakao Hanaoka, the oceans campaigner for Greenpeace Japan, said.

The farm ministry tags every cow with a 10-digit identification number that consumers can use to trace where the beef they purchase came from.

But a similar system for fish hasn't been set up yet. "Under the current circumstances, consumers cannot purchase (fish) with complete knowledge that it is safe," Hanaoka said.

Greenpeace revealed that it has also requested major retailers in Japan to take part in providing safe fish, possibly through establishing their own screening system for radiation and providing accurate data of the product to consumers.

Allowing only safe fish to hit the market will ultimately be the key to reviving Fukushima's fisheries, Hanaoka said.

Samples of fish were obtained between July 22 and 24 and examined at laboratories in France that are certified by the French nuclear authority, Greenpeace said.

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110809a1.html

Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2011

Stop claiming food is safe, ministry told

Kyodo
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.

To handle surging concerns abroad about the food supply, the Foreign Ministry told embassies and other diplomatic offices overseas to brief local authorities, importers and media organizations on measures the government is taking to prevent contaminated food from making it into public distribution channels.

The ministry has also asked its diplomatic offices to repeat its stance of disclosing safety information in a timely manner.

On July 8, Matsumoto said that he wanted to dispel food safety concerns by explaining what the government is doing to prevent tainted food from making it into the food supply.

But several countries have since asked about the beef scare after several cattle suspected of being fed tainted straw were found to have been slaughtered and their beef shipped to market months ago to stores and restaurants.

[Kronos]

Japan government prepares plan to flee Tokyo -ABC News (Australia)
August 10th, 2011 at 01:52 AM

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-0...-tokyo/2830410

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.

Japan is located on the junction of four tectonic plates and experiences one-fifth of the world's strongest earthquakes and geologists have warned Tokyo is particularly vulnerable to powerful earthquakes.

It is feared if a massive earthquake like the March magnitude 9.0 quake struck Tokyo, it could destroy the country's political and economic base.

[It'sJustMe]

Japan government prepares plan to flee Tokyo -ABC News (Australia)
August 10th, 2011 at 01:52 AM

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-0...-tokyo/2830410

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.

Japan is located on the junction of four tectonic plates and experiences one-fifth of the world's strongest earthquakes and geologists have warned Tokyo is particularly vulnerable to powerful earthquakes.

It is feared if a massive earthquake like the March magnitude 9.0 quake struck Tokyo, it could destroy the country's political and economic base.

I think I saw a couple months ago some rumors on this. I think at the time, Okinawa was being mentioned, mainly because of it's distance from Tokyo. Tokyo is definitely an at risk city! Right now the citizens there are nervous about the spread of radiation to their area, rightly so! But they are almost certainly going to be hit with their own giant earthquake someday! Perhaps they will get another city lined up beforehand, but from what we have seen in this disaster, long term planning doesn't seem to be their strong suit, IMHO.

[It'sJustMe]

Exactly five months, today! Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/11_12.html

5 months after March 11th disaster

Thursday marks exactly 5 months since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan.

As of July 28th, more than 87,000 people have lost their homes due to the disasters or have been forced to evacuate by the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Nearly 90 percent of planned temporary housing units have been completed but some remain vacant because they've been built in remote areas.

The government plans to draw up measures next month to address tenants' complaints that there's no place to shop nearby and the homes aren't barrier-free.

More than 140,000 people in Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures have lost their jobs, but there have been only about 86,000 job offers. Over 700 households in these prefectures are on welfare.

The labor ministry plans to step up support for the jobless in the region by asking businesses nationwide to give them priority in hiring, among other tactics.

The Environment Ministry says all debris in residential areas in the 3 prefectures, with the exception of the evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant, is expected to be removed by the end of this month. But the percentage of total debris that has only been moved to temporary dumps stands at 68 percent in Iwate, 43 percent in Miyagi and 39 percent in Fukushima.

Police say 15,689 people have been confirmed dead and 4,744 remain missing as of Wednesday.

Thursday, August 11, 2011 09:23 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/11_05.html

Filtering system not working well at TEPCO plant

The decontamination of radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is failing to reach its target, putting the timetable for bringing its reactors under control in doubt.

Exactly five months have passed since the plant's cooling system was shut down by the earthquake and tsunami disaster on March 11th.

Operator Tokyo Electric Power Company has entered stage two of its timetable to end the nuclear crisis. TEPCO aims to stably cool the reactors by January next year.

Decontaminating thousands of tons of wastewater at the site holds the key.

But failures of the installed filtering system have prevented the utility from achieving its initial operating rate of 90 percent. The figure as of Wednesday stands at 66 percent.

The system has been hit by a string of different malfunctions, though it has been fully operating for more than a month.

The man in charge of nuclear disasters at the Nuclear Safety Commission, Yoshinori Moriyama, said on Wednesday that Tepco must improve the system by pinpointing the common root of problems, rather than addressing them ad hoc.

To complete the second stage, Tepco must reduce the amount of polluted water to prevent radioactive materials from spilling outside. That means it must operate the decontamination system effectively.

Thursday, August 11, 2011 03:18 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

This is the spent fuel pools cooling system, not the reactors themselves. Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/10_24.html

Circulatory cooling begins at No.1 reactor pool

The operator of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has switched from a water-injection system to a circulatory cooling system at the plant's Number 1 reactor's spent fuel pool.

Tokyo Electric Power Company put into operation the new system for cooling water in the pool for spent fuel rods on Wednesday.

For the first time since the March 11th disaster, all four damaged reactors at the plant are now using circulatory cooling systems and are on track to stable cooling.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 21:49 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

They tried all kinds of ways to get public support, for MOX fuel use...including a bogus e-mail campaign. Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/10_22.html

Panel: Kyushu Electric destroyed evidence

A panel investigating attempts by Kyushu Electric Power Company to manipulate public opinion via an e-mail scam says that the utility has destroyed evidence related to the probe.

The panel was set up after workers at Kyushu Electric and its affiliates were found to have sent e-mails in favor of restarting the Genkai nuclear plant in Saga Prefecture during a government meeting with local residents in June.

Panel head Nobuo Gohara told reporters on Tuesday that the utility destroyed documents related to its activities in 2005 to try to win public support for using plutonium-uranium mixed-oxide fuel at the plant.

He said the utility's nuclear energy division removed and destroyed the documents on July 21st.

Gohara added that the company's Saga branch tried to dispose of 15 files his panel had requested last week after beginning the probe.

Gohara claims that Akira Nakamura, the deputy head of the nuclear energy division, ordered the destruction of documents that could cause trouble to individuals.

Nakamura also allegedly played a role in the e-mail scam.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 16:57 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:


http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...na017000c.html

Water treatment system at Fukushima plant stops for 7.5 hours, cause unknown
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said a radioactive water treatment system at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant stopped operating for 7.5 hours shortly after 8 a.m. on Aug. 7, prompting the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) to instruct the utility to come up with preventative measures.

While the water treatment system was out of operation, processed water was used to cool down reactors, TEPCO, the operator of the crippled nuclear power station in Fukushima, said on Aug. 7. According to the utility, the trouble occurred in a water decontamination device developed by France's Areva SA. It said one of the pumps used in two separate water treatment systems to inject chemicals aiding precipitation of radioactive cesium stopped operating. In a similar development, another pump also stopped operating due to a glitch on Aug. 4.
Internal investigations found that the pump stopped operating on Aug. 7 because sticky chemicals injected into it had put too much of a load on it. The pump's operations resumed at around 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 7, after the amount of chemicals in each injection was reduced while the frequency of injections was increased. TEPCO suspects that the other pump may have stopped operating for the same cause on Aug. 4.
Each of the two water treatment systems has one pump for operations under normal conditions and a backup pump for use in times of trouble. The backup pumps in the two systems failed to operate on Aug. 4 and 7, respectively. Engineers are checking the system for the cause of the trouble.
Following a string of problems with the pumps, NISA instructed TEPCO to investigate the causes of the mishaps. The agency urged the utility to work out and submit preventative plans as well as to report a list of troubles other than those with the pumps.
At the same time, TEPCO for the first time started operating newly installed equipment to evaporate and concentrate saltwater within two of its eight water-treatment systems. The equipment is used to reduce the volume of highly concentrated saltwater that comes from a desalination device within the water treatment system. The volume of highly concentrated saltwater coming from the desalination device is about 1.5 times as much as that of desalinated water. The volume of highly concentrated saltwater is said to be reduced to about 30 percent by using the newly installed equipment.

Click here for the original Japanese story
(Mainichi Japan) August 8, 2011

[Be Well]

A big thanks to ItsJustMe and everyone posting on this thread. I"m not spending hours a day on it any more - trying to check every couple of days due to time.. You are all dedicated news hounds and no doubt many besides me appreciate your efforts. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any good news, ever.

[It'sJustMe]

Sorry I have been away a couple days. Didn't know I'd be gone or would have asked for assistance as I have in the past, and you guys have always been there! Well, where did we leave off? The water treatment system was down. I'll see if I can find out if it was ever re-started. Meanwhile, the issue of possibly moving the capitol city in case of future earthquakes in Tokyo, came up a few days ago, and the first story I came across was on this very subject.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...na008000c.html

Fears of major quake in capital rise after Great East Japan Earthquake

Over five months after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11, active faults running though the Tokyo metropolitan area and other districts remain capable of producing another devastating earthquake at any time. Of particular concern to earthquake analysts is the threat of a quake under the capital that could be stronger than the magnitude 7.3 Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.

The government's Central Disaster Prevention Council has identified 18 earthquakes in the magnitude 7 range that could occur around Tokyo. It estimates that one of these, a northern Tokyo Bay earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.3, could kill as many as 11,000 people and flatten 850,000 buildings. Such an earthquake would be smaller in size that the magnitude 7.9 Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, but its direct hit on the capital would cause more damage.

Since the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, officials have been paying attention to the Tachikawa fault running from Hanno, Saitama Prefecture, to Fuchu, Tokyo. By the end of July, the government's Earthquake Research Committee had announced that the chances of earthquakes had risen at four of the nation's 106 main active faults.

The Tachikawa fault is about 33 kilometers long, and the expected magnitude of an earthquake along the fault is 7.4. On the 7-point Japanese intensity scale, that would result in an earthquake measuring an upper 6 or stronger in the Tokyo cities of Kunitachi, Tachikawa and Musashimurayama, and a lower 6 in the westernmost of the capital's 23 wards. The government predicts that 6,300 people would die in such an earthquake -- mainly in Tokyo.

Before the Great East Japan Earthquake, it was estimated that there was a 0.5 to 2 percent chance of such an earthquake occurring within 30 years -- on the high side among Japan's active faults. Officials have not been able to calculate exactly how much that chance has risen with the latest quake, though they are sure that an earthquake is now more likely.

"If we talk about it in steps, then there is no doubt we have risen a step. But just how many steps there are before an earthquake occurs, we don't know," says Katsuyuki Abe, an emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo who heads the Earthquake Research Committee.

Kunihiko Shimazaki, chairman of the Coordination Committee for Earthquake Prediction, comments, "An earthquake could occur at any moment."

The average time between periods of activity of the Tachikawa fault is thought to range between 10,000 and 15,000 years, and it is estimated that the last earthquake occurred between 13,000 and 20,000 years ago.

"We are near 'maturity'," Shimazaki says.

But it is not just active faults that are of concern. The risks are also apparently higher in concealed subterranean areas.

Takeo Ishibe, of the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute, has analyzed the direction of force of major earthquakes on bedrock and changes in their strength, based on earthquakes that have occurred in 30,000 places mainly around the capital between 1979 and 2003. He found that force making an earthquake likelier to occur has been added in 17,000 locations, while in another 7,000 locations, earthquakes are now less likely to occur.

The area under the Japanese capital, where the North American Plate, the Philippine Sea Plate, and Pacific Plate meet, has always been regarded as an earthquake nest. There is said to be a 70 percent chance of a magnitude 7 level temblor -- which the Earthquake Research Commission has warned about even before the March 11 quake -- occurring within the next 30 years. This figure is based on earthquakes that have occurred in the southern Kanto region over the past 120 years, but it does not include the Tachikawa fault.

"If it does happen, we will have something tremendous beneath us," warns Shimazaki. "If we don't take measures now, when will we?"

Click here for the original Japanese story

(Mainichi Japan) August 12, 2011

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...dm011000c.html

Fukushima farmers, fishermen protest over nuclear crisis


TOKYO (Kyodo) -- About 2,500 people including farmers and fishermen who are suffering heavy losses amid the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant marched in Tokyo on Friday, calling for prompt redress from plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the government.

Marching through the streets in front of the main office of the company, known as TEPCO, and the Ginza shopping district in central Tokyo, the participants chanted slogans such as "TEPCO must pay compensation swiftly" and "Farmers of Fukushima will never lose."

It was the largest demonstration since the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the nuclear power complex, said the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives Group of Fukushima, which organized the event with the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations and others.

Demonstrators walked amid intense heat, holding up signs and banners saying "Give Fukushima a future" and "Give us back our lives."

After the demonstration, representatives of the marchers said they had met TEPCO President Toshio Nishizawa and urged him to pay compensation at an early date.

The representatives also met with Prime Minister Naoto Kan, they said, quoting Kan as saying "We'll respond promptly."

At a rally in Hibiya Park prior to the march, Tokuichi Shojo, head of an agricultural cooperatives union in Fukushima Prefecture, said, "The situation has become more serious, although five months have passed since the great earthquake."

Shojo called on the government to assume responsibility for the removal of contaminated soil, investigating whether rice ready for harvest is contaminated with radioactive materials, and testing beef cattle subject to shipment bans for radioactive contamination.

"Our future is uncertain as only a portion of compensation has been paid. The government and TEPCO are not fully aware of our plight," a male farmer from Fukushima Prefecture said.

(Mainichi Japan) August 13, 2011

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311dis...AJ201108115965

Nuclear crisis enters 6th month

Efforts to stabilize reactors at the quake-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are at "Step 2" of a road map designed to end the crisis.

Five full months have passed since disaster flared following the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.

The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), operator of the plant, are aiming to bring the nuclear reactors to a cold shutdown so that residents evacuated from areas close to the facility can return to their homes.

Major challenges include stabilizing the treatment of radioactive water and suppressing the discharge of radioactive material from the containment vessels.

The target completion time for Step 2, which includes bringing the nuclear reactors to a cold shutdown, is between October and January. The evacuated residents will be able to return home only after Step 2 is completed.

Under the process, temperatures in the reactors' pressure vessels must be brought down to below 100 degrees, conditions that define a cold shutdown. This has been accomplished at the No. 1 reactor, but temperatures in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors continue to hover at between 104 and 117 degrees.

The volume of water being pumped into the reactors to cool them is being curtailed to prevent an increase in the amount of radioactive water that remains at the plant.

A succession of glitches at the purification plant for radioactive water, and consequent delays in its treatment, are key factors in the delay to stabilize the reactors.

The water purification plant operated at 66.4 percent of designed capacity during the period through Aug. 9, according to an announcement by TEPCO the following day.

It said 120,240 tons of radioactive water remain at the nuclear facility, including at the reactor buildings. An earlier plan to get rid of most of the radioactive water by the end of December will likely be delayed, TEPCO said.

The cooling system for spent fuel storage pools was restored ahead of schedule at the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 reactors. It also entered full operations at the No. 1 reactor on Aug. 10.

Hydrogen explosions occurred at all four reactors soon after the quake.

(This article was written by Naoya Kon and Takashi Sugimoto.)

[Red Baron]

I don't know where a safe alternate capital location for Japan would be.

The whole darn island is ground zero for an earthquake.

Away from the coast would make sense but then one has to be careful about roads getting cutoff, especially in the mountains.

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311dis...AJ201108126048

Professor's anger at lawmakers creates buzz on Internet

An exasperated University of Tokyo professor who launched an angry tirade at lawmakers over the Fukushima nuclear crisis has become a hero to many on the Internet.

Tatsuhiko Kodama, 58, who heads the Radioisotope Center at Todai, was called to provide expert testimony before the Lower House Health, Labor and Welfare Committee on July 27.

Facing a panel of lawmakers, Kodama said, "At a time when 70,000 people have left their homes and have no idea where to go, what is the Diet doing?"

Video footage of Kodama's testimony was soon posted on YouTube, and within a few days, the video had been viewed more than 200,000 times.

Responses to the footage were generally favorable.

"I was deeply moved that Todai has a professor like him," said one post.

"I understand the scary truth. I understand the inaction of the central government," said another.

Besides being a doctor of internal medicine, Kodama is also an expert on internal radiation exposure. His background made even more shocking the testimony he provided in the Diet.

"(On March 21), Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said, 'There are no immediate problems for people's health.' At that time, I felt something very disastrous was about to occur," Kodama said. "When we look at problems from radiation, we consider the total exposure amount. Neither Tokyo Electric Power Co. nor the central government have made any clear report about total exposure from the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant."

The Radioisotope Center conducted its own calculations on the level of radiation contamination arising from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Kodama explained the horrifying results of those calculations at the committee session.

"The equivalent of 29.6 times of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, or in terms of uranium about 20 atomic bombs, were released by the accident," Kodama said. "While the remaining radiation from atomic bombs decreases to one-thousandth of the original level after a year, radioactive materials from the nuclear power plant only decrease to one-tenth the original level."

After the nuclear accident, Kodama visited Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, on seven separate occasions to help decontaminate the area of radiation.

"What I am doing right now is totally illegal," Kodama said. "Under the present law to prevent problems arising (from radiation), the amount of radiation and the type of nuclide that can be handled by each facility is determined. While I am providing support in Minami-Soma, most of the facilities do not have the authority to handle cesium. Transporting the materials by car is also illegal.

"However, we cannot leave materials with high levels of radiation to the mothers in the community. In the decontamination process, we place all materials into barrels and bring them back to Tokyo," he said.

Kodama also strongly called for a new law that would help reduce radiation exposure among children as soon as possible.

As the most pressing concern, he called for thorough measurements of radiation amounts in the contaminated areas.

"Why does the central government not spend the money needed for comprehensive measures? I want to express an anger from my entire body," Kodama said.

After the huge response from the Internet, Kodama's son posted a message on Twitter that said: "While my father may be an influential scientist, he is also just a 58-year-old man who has to take care of an ill wife. There is no way that he alone can resolve everything. In order for the situation to really improve, I believe there is something that each and every individual can do."

On Aug. 6, Kodama appeared at a news conference with Katsunobu Sakurai, the mayor of Minami-Soma, and called for emergency decontamination measures. His tone was that of a mild-mannered gentleman.

He was slightly embarrassed by the Twitter message written by his son, but he added, "The public should pay attention to see which lawmakers from what party move quickly to draw up legislation."

[It'sJustMe]

Here's a little piece of good news! At least one of their filtering units is working! I have found no evidence that the main treatment unit is back up yet. It did have 3 or more issues this last time it shut down! Fair use:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311dis...AJ201108126052

Temperatures fall in spent fuel pools at Fukushima plant

In a promising development toward ending the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the temperature fell to 40.5 degrees in the spent fuel storage pool at the No. 1 reactor, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Aug. 11.

The temperature is expected to soon dip below 40 degrees if the cyclic cooling system, which started operating at 11:20 a.m. on Aug. 10, continues to run smoothly at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, TEPCO, the plant's operator, said.

At noon on Aug. 10, the temperature was 47 degrees. By 5 p.m. on Aug. 11, it had fallen to 40.5 degrees, TEPCO said.

Cooling systems are now running for all storage pools at the No. 1 through No. 4 reactors. Separate systems to purify radioactive water and recycle it to cool down the No. 1 through No. 3 reactors are also in operation.

The cooling equipment extracts water from the storage pools, cools it down and then pumps it back in.

A hydrogen explosion blew off the roof of the No. 1 reactor building on March 12, the day after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear crisis. Since then, pumps normally used to pour cement and existing pipes had been injecting water continually from the outside into the storage pool, located in an upper part of the building.

The current cooling equipment is expected to keep the water temperature below 40 degrees.

The cooling systems for the storage pools at the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 reactors went into operation on May 31, July 1 and July 31, respectively.

The temperatures have remained stable between 30 and 40 degrees in the storage pools at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.

But the temperature ranges between 40 and 45 degrees in the No. 4 reactor storage pool, which is generating more heat because it contains fuel rods removed from the reactor for regular inspections.

Spent fuel rods continue to generate heat even after they are placed in a storage pool. Continued cooling is necessary to prevent them from melting and releasing radioactive substances.

Achieving a stable, cyclic injection of water to cool down the storage pools at the four reactors was part of Step 2 of the road map of TEPCO and the government toward ending the nuclear crisis. Step 2 goals will be accomplished between October and January, according to the plan.

If the cooling system holds, this goal will have been achieved more than two months ahead of schedule.

[Hansa44]

Quake shakes Japan's Fukushima, no tsunami alert - NHK


TOKYO | Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:15am IST

TOKYO (Reuters) - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0 shook Japan's Fukushima prefecture early on Friday, public broadcaster NHK reported, but it said that no tsunami alert had been issued.

NHK also said that there were no reports of damage.

Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc reported that there had been no damage to nuclear reactors in the region.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Writing by David Stamp)

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...na027000c.html

Mother caught between radiation threat and breaking up family

DATE, Fukushima -- A mother whose home is in an area where high radiation levels have been detected is caught between wanting to evacuate and wanting to stay with her parents and other family members.

"My family will be scattered. Will we ever be able to live together again?" wonders Kaori Sato, 24.

Her home is located in a "hot spot," an area of comparatively high radiation levels, and the government has recommended it be evacuated. On Aug. 7, an apartment in Fukushima city where Sato, her husband Toshiaki, 28, and her baby daughter Rin could live together turned up, but it could not accommodate her whole family.

Currently living under the same roof with Sato is her 84-year-old bedridden grandmother, her 21-year-old younger sister -- who has cerebral palsy and is usually in a care facility but at home on weekends -- her parents and four pets.

The evacuation recommendation came on June 30, on the day of Rin's birth. Worrying about the health of her daughter, Sato replied to a city survey that she wanted to evacuate. To facilitate care for her grandmother and sister, who cannot move about easily, she requested a one-story house or a first-floor apartment. She also wrote that all her family members needed to live close to each other.

However, everywhere the city has so far offered has been small and forbidden pets. Sato's parents have told her that because she has a newborn she should evacuate with her child and husband. In fact, the Fukushima apartment was found by Sato's mother. Sato and her husband and child could move in as soon as September, but Sato is reluctant.

"Is it OK for us alone to go and leave the rest of our family behind?" she questions.

Her parents work during the day, and there is a limit to how much they can look after Sato's grandmother. Although every other day the grandmother is taken to a care facility, Sato's father, a taxi driver, is sometimes on the job until late at night. Sato says that if she and her husband leave, "There will be times when Grandma is alone, and I worry about what could happen in an emergency."

Looking at her daughter in her arms, Sato said, "I wanted to raise my children where they could be with the rest of my family. How much longer will this all go on? Will I find peace of mind by the time my daughter has grown up?"

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/14_03.html

Reactor halts push up thermal plant fuel costs

Japanese power companies are suffering from rising fuel costs for their thermal plants, following shutdowns of nuclear reactors due to the March 11th disaster or regular inspections. Over 70 percent of the country's 54 nuclear reactors are currently out of service.

Costs of oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels for 10 power companies from April to June rose more than 30 percent from the amount a year earlier to over one trillion yen, or about 13 billion dollars.

Tokyo Electric Power Company has increased operations of its thermal plants to cope with power shortages following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March.
The company's fuel costs for the April to June period were over 5.2 billion dollars, marking a 28 percent year-on-year increase.
Tohoku Electric Power Company, covering northeastern Japan, including disaster-hit areas, saw a fuel cost increase of nearly 60 percent. The company has halted all 3 reactors at its Onagawa nuclear plant in Miyagi Prefecture since the disaster.

Fuel costs also rose over 50 percent for Kyushu Electric, covering southwestern Japan. The utility has decided to postpone the restart of 2 reactors after regular inspections at its Genkai nuclear power plant.

Utility companies will have to face further fuel cost increases, as there are no prospects for restarting their halted reactors and fuel prices are still going up.
Sunday, August 14, 2011 02:16 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...na016000c.html

Radiation contamination leaves Fukushima schools unable to drain pool water

Many schools in Fukushima Prefecture are at a loss over what do to with their swimming pools, which can't be used or drained because the water is tainted with radioactive materials from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, it has emerged.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has said schools should obtain consent from farmers when draining pool water into agricultural waterways, but the Fukushima Prefectural Board of Education has not formed any guidelines on the concentration of radiation in water that is drained -- leaving locals to sort out the issue themselves.

According to the education board, about 600 of the 735 pools at public kindergartens, elementary schools, junior high schools and high schools in Fukushima can't be drained. Most of these pools are located in eastern parts of the prefecture near the damaged nuclear plant or in central Fukushima Prefecture. One-third of the pools are designed to drain their water into sewage systems, while the rest have to drain the water directly into agricultural waterways or rivers.

The Education Ministry's School Health Education Division says there are no legal guidelines for draining pool water. The ministry instructed the prefectural education board to obtain consent from farming and other related organizations when draining pool water into rivers and agricultural waterways, and the board passed the information on to schools in May, but farmers have been reluctant to allow schools to drain pool water into waterways. There are also many cases in which schools have the option of draining water into sewage lines, but they have not done so out of consideration for local residents.

At Fukushima Daiichi Elementary School in the city of Fukushima, the bottom of the school pool is darkened with dust contaminated with radioactive materials, and algae has turned the water green.

"We're concerned about health, too, so we want to drain the pools quickly, but we don't know the extent of contamination of the water and the sludge, and we can't cause trouble for people around the school," the school's principal commented.

In the cities of Date and Minamisoma, decontamination work using zeolite and other agents that can absorb radioactive materials has been carried out, but the cost of such work is said to reach several million yen per pool.

Since May, the prefectural board of education has asked the Education Ministry to present standards and methods for draining pool water, but ministry officials have merely responded that they will consult with related government ministries and agencies, and have provided no response.

A representative of the ministry's School Health Education Division commented, "Creating standards is difficult, and there is no option but to have schools and other related parties come to an agreement."

When asked about the radiation, a representative of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said, "We are not considering any particular response for pools alone." Meanwhile, a representative of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which is in charge of sewage, said, "There is no problem with draining water into sewage lines, but when it comes to making arrangements with locals, that's out of our jurisdiction."

Muneyuki Shindo, a former Chiba University professor, said guidelines on decontamination should be provided.

"If jurisdiction over different parts of the work is divided, then officials should measure the concentration in accordance with clear instructions from the Cabinet, and present methods of decontamination," he said. "This is a typical scenario highlighting the government's lack of ability to make decisions and get things done."

Click here for the original Japanese story

(Mainichi Japan) August 13, 2011

[It'sJustMe]

Another little bit of good news. Could the drop, though, be due to the fact that they have been pouring far less water into the reactors, to prevent flooding in the basements? Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/15_01.html

Cesium levels down in seawater near reactors 2, 3

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says the density of radioactive cesium in seawater near the water intakes of the No.2 and 3 reactors was down on Saturday to about one tenth of the levels detected on the previous day.

Tokyo Electric Power Company monitors the concentration of radioactive substances in seawater near the water intakes of the plant and offshore.

Seawater collected near the water intake of the No.2 reactor on Saturday was found to contain 0.058 becquerels of cesium-134, or 0.97 times the government-set safety limit. It also contained 0.056 becquerels of cesium-137, or 0.62 times the limit. Both figures were around one tenth of the level found on the previous day.

In April, the level of cesium-137 in seawater near the water intake of the No.2 reactor was found to be 1.1 million times the safety limit. Since then, the density of the radioactive element has been declining, and recently it has fallen below the limit sometimes.

Seawater sampled near the water intake of the No.3 reactor on Saturday was found to contain 0.087 becquerels of cesium-134, or 1.5 times the safety limit. It also contained 0.09 becquerels of cesium-137, or about the same as the limit. Both figures were less than one tenth of the level found on the previous day.

Seawater taken from 6 spots offshore was found to contain no radioactive materials.

Monday, August 15, 2011 05:47 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...dm003000c.html

Irradiated soil should be stored in Fukushima for a while: Gemba

FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) -- National policy minister Koichiro Gemba said Sunday that irradiated soil and sludge to be eliminated from areas around the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant should be stored temporarily in Fukushima Prefecture before final disposal measures are worked out.

Gemba, who doubles as chief policymaker of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, told reporters, "We should store the soil and sludge somewhere in the prefecture as an interim measure. The national government should be responsible" for the issue.

Gemba made the remarks after visiting temporary housing in the prefecture for evacuees who were affected by the March earthquake and tsunami.

He made the comment as the problem of how to handle enormous amounts of polluted soil and sludge looms as cleanup work is expected to get into full swing when the government soon lifts an evacuation advisory outside the 20-kilometer exclusion zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

The irradiated matter removed from the ground should be first accommodated within local municipalities, after which it should be condensed and put away temporarily at storage facilities to be set up somewhere in Fukushima by the government, he said.

(Mainichi Japan) August 15, 2011

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...dm004000c.html

Cabinet OKs new nuclear agency under Environment Ministry

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Cabinet approved a plan on Monday to set up a new agency in charge of nuclear safety under the Environment Ministry in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The new entity, which is expected to be launched in April next year, will integrate the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission, and the radiation and other environmental monitoring functions from the science ministry.

The government plans to set up a preliminary panel possibly within the month and submit related legislation during the ordinary parliamentary session starting in January.

Eyeing a major overhaul of Japan's nuclear regulatory framework, Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been calling for the separation of the current nuclear safety agency from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which promotes the use of atomic energy.

The current setup of the nuclear safety agency under the industry ministry has been criticized for lax government supervision of nuclear facilities and a slow response to the Fukushima power plant crisis triggered by the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

After deciding on the new agency at a meeting with Kan and relevant Cabinet members last week, Goshi Hosono, minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, indicated that placing the new agency under the Environment Ministry, instead of the Cabinet Office, would be better to ensure independence from the industry ministry, which loans its staff to the office.

Hosono, who was instructed by Kan to draft a set of ideas to improve nuclear safety, had been pushing for the new agency to be placed under the Environment Ministry. However, the idea of placing it under the Cabinet Office was floated by some government officials who argued that doing so would make coordination easier with the prime minister's office during an emergency such as a nuclear accident.

(Mainichi Japan) August 15, 2011

[It'sJustMe]

From SKF, this is the first I have heard of Tritium. Fair use:

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Reference to Tritium in Water

in the summary report that TEPCO updates everyday, but I don't remember seeing the formal press release nor I can find one from their site. I'll keep looking (update: they've been found, see below), but according to their daily "Status of TEPCO's Facilities and its services after the Tohoku-Chihou-Taiheiyou-Oki Earthquake" report, tritium has been found at the water intake canal and in the sub drain water near the turbine buildings.

From the latest "Status" report as of 3PM, August 14:

Page 26:

We detected Tritium in the Tritium analysis contained in the seawater sampled at the water intake on June 13.

Page 29:

(Discussing the nuclide analysis of the sub drain water near the turbine buildings) We detected Tritium at the sumpling [sic] survey on June 13.

The June 13 survey seems to be the one and only survey that they have done on tritium, according to TEPCO's status reports. No further detailed information that I've found.

(UPDATE: TEPCO's announcements on tritium, as follows. H/T anon reader)

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110624e10.pdf

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp...s/110624e7.pdf

I do not know the significance of tritium, but from what little I read from a European Commission paper on tritium in 2007, titled "Emerging Issues on Tritium and Low Energy Beta Emitters", it doesn't seem like a very good thing to have around you, to say the least:

Tritium is an isotope of the element hydrogen which is both naturally occurring and manufactured. Its half-life is 12.26 years, decaying to helium (3He) while emitting a beta particle. The beta particles, while of low energy (18.6 keV maximum, 5.7 keV average), have enough energy to produce ionizations and excitations of molecules in their path. Tritium poses no external hazard since the beta particles released during tritium decay cannot penetrate the outer layer of dead skin cells due to their average range in tissue of less than 1 μm, and maximum range of only 6 μm (ICRP, 1983). Because of the low beta energy, dilution throughout all of the soft tissues, and elimination with an average biological half-life of around ten days in adults, tritium as HTO (tritiated water) has relatively low radiological toxicity when compared to other pure beta emitters, such as 32P or 90Sr, or to common betaemitters, such as 131I or 137Cs (ICRP, 1979-82).

Although tritium is not considered as a particularly toxic radionuclide, it presents a concern since it can become part of the biologically necessary hydrogen pool. If released into the environment, the tritium poses a potential internal radiation hazard since compounds containing tritium undergo various chemical transformations resulting in forms which can enter in the body. The majority of tritium in the environment exists as HTO. Because of its mobility in the environment and its biological importance, water is one of the most important compounds of tritium. As HTO, tritium can enter in the body by inhalation, ingestion, or diffusion through the skin. Once inside the body, the HTO diffuses freely and rapidly across cellular membranes, equilibrating throughout the total body water pool. The uniform concentration of HTO will result in the radiation dose being uniformly distributed throughoutthe body.

On the other hand, the tritium from HTO may exchange with hydrogen atoms and thereby become incorporated into organic molecules. HTO is the primary chemical precursor for other chemical forms of tritium. Essentially any organic molecule can incorporate tritium in this manner. Each will have a specialized metabolism associated with it that may result in inhomogeneous distributions of tritium within the body, within individual organs, and even within individual cells.

In general, the more rapidly a molecule is turned over, the more tritium will be incorporated per unit of time and the more rapidly the tritium will be removed from the same molecule. For longer-lived molecules, such as the structural protein collagen, or the phospholipids of some nerve cells, fewer tritium atoms will be incorporated per unit of time and those that are incorporated will be retained for longer periods of time (NCRP, 1979).

[Kronos]

I apologise in advance for not posting text, but my online time is limited.

These links come from http://radioactive.eu.com/

Aug 15th 2011

Radiating Americans with Fukushima rain, food: Secret Clinton pact

Government agreed to downplay Fukushima radiation Fukushima is far from stabilized according to energy advisor veteran with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, Arnie Gundersen who told Solar IMG Saturday that Americans, not just in the northwest, are unaware they are being rained on with Fukushima nuclear hot particles and eating Fukushima contaminated food because the US government has deliberately minimized the catastrophe, partially due to a pact Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed with Japan. Gundersen, with a team of other scientists, intends to prove government statements about Fukushima are false.

"The United States came up with a decision to downplay Fukushima," said Gundersen who is awakening the public with information such as hot particles in rain will continue falling in the U.S., not just in the Pacific Northwest, for another year, and mentioning high-level fallout in Oklahoma a few days ago
Source: examiner.com

~~~~~

Radiation Bankrupts Japanese Cattle Ranch With $5.6 Billion in Liabilities

Agura Bokujo, operator of a cattle ranch north of Tokyo, became Japan’s biggest corporate failure this year after consumer fears over beef contaminated with radiation damaged sales, Tokyo Shoko Research said.
Source: bloomberg.com

TEXT:
With $5.6 Billion in Liabilities
By Go Onomitsu and Stuart Biggs - Aug 15, 2011 5:11 AM ET .

Agura Bokujo, operator of a cattle ranch north of Tokyo, became Japan’s biggest corporate failure this year after consumer fears over beef contaminated with radiation damaged sales, Tokyo Shoko Research said.

The closely held company in Tochigi prefecture had 433.1 billion yen ($5.6 billion) in liabilities, Tokyo Shoko said on its website today, citing Agura’s application for bankruptcy protection on Aug. 9.

In its earnings report for the year ended March 2011, Agura had liabilities of 62 billion yen, said Kazufumi Masuda, a spokesman for Tokyo Shoko, which tracks corporate bankruptcy data.

Radiation from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has entered Japan’s food chain in recent months, contaminating products from beef to milk and fish. Cattle with unsafe levels of radiation have been found in four Japanese prefectures after they were fed with hay contaminated with as much as 690,000 becquerels a kilogram, compared with a government safety standard of 300 becquerels.

The discovery rattled consumer confidence after the government, which had assured shoppers that food sold in the market was safe, confirmed radiation contaminated beef had been sold in stores. Companies affected included Aeon Co., Japan’s biggest supermarket chain.

Sales at Agura Bokujo were damaged by the discovery, Tokyo Shoko said in a statement last week, and followed a drop in demand since the discovery of foot-and-mouth disease in southern Miyazaki prefecture last year, the statement said.

Food containing radioactive cesium or iodine that exceeded the official standards has been found as far as 360 kilometers (224 miles) from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station, which began leaking radiation after the station was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Japan’s government is still trying to put together a centralized system to check for radiation contamination of food, leaving local authorities and farmers conducting voluntary tests.

To contact the reporters on this story: Go Onomitsu in Tokyo at gonomitsu@bloomberg.net; Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at sbiggs3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kyung Bok Cho at kcho7@bloomberg.net

~~~~~

Japan Prepares for Its First Import of Radioactive Waste Since Earthquake

Japan is preparing to receive its first import of highly radioactive waste since March, when an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The vessel Pacific Grebe set sail Aug. 3 to Japan from Britain with more than 30 metric tons of radioactive waste on board. The cargo, Japanese spent fuel reprocessed in the U.K., is returning sealed in 76 stainless steel canisters packed into 130-ton containers. It will arrive early next month at the Mutsu -Ogawara port in northern Honshu for delivery to Japan Nuclear Fuel’s nearby Rokkasho storage site.
Source: bloomberg.com

~~~~~

Nuclear Expert: Radioactive Rain-Outs Will Continue For a Year

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says in a new interview that the Japanese are burning radioactive materials. The radioactivity originated from Fukushima, but various prefectures are burning radioactive materials in their terroritories. Gundersen says that this radioactivity ends up not only in neighboring prefectures, but in Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California. He notes that radioactive rain-outs were documented recently in British Columbia and Oklahoma with geiger counters.
Source: 12160.info via WRH

~~~

Live Feeds - both TEPCO and JNN

http://radioactive.eu.com/index.php?...d=1&Itemid=184

[It'sJustMe]

Thanks for that article Kronos! It had a link to the new JNN cam, which I haven't had for weeks now! They are burning refuse over there, but trying to keep it quiet I think. Here's a new article on how the government plans to plan.. to dealing with decontaminating the areas.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/16_08.html

Govt to compile decontamination plan
The Japanese government says it will prepare by the end of August a basic plan for decontaminating areas near the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Monday asked the nuclear crisis minister, Goshi Hosono, to begin compiling the steps that must be taken.

The government is planning to lift the designation soon of the zone extending from 20 to 30 kilometers away from the nuclear plant where residents have been told they must evacuate in the event of another emergency.

The measure would allow the return of some people who have left voluntarily, although worries about radiation persist among the affected communities.

The government plans to ease such concerns by adding more manpower to a taskforce in charge of decontamination.

The basic plan could also call for closer analyses of contaminated crops and plants to find out whether the radiation came from the air or soil.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 09:46 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311dis...AJ201108166394

China: Radioactive contamination spreads far beyond Japan's claims in Pacific waters

BEIJING--Radioactive substances that leaked from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have spread over far broader areas of the sea than Japan has acknowledged, according to the State Oceanic Administration of China.

An Aug. 15 article in the electronic version of Science and Technology Daily, a Chinese newspaper, cited an ocean environment survey it conducted off Fukushima Prefecture in the western Pacific Ocean as part of the Oceanic Administration's written reply to an inquiry by the newspaper.

The article said that radioactive substances were detected in a 252,000-square-kilometer area within 800 kilometers to the east of Fukushima Prefecture. It said the level of cesium-137 was up to 300 times higher than corresponding concentrations in waters near China. Strontium-90 was detected at levels up to 10 times higher than those found in Chinese waters.

"One cannot rule out the possibility that radioactive contaminants have entered waters under China's jurisdiction," the Oceanic Administration was reported as saying.

[It'sJustMe]

The rice crops will be coming to market soon. IF they pass radiation inspections. But how can they test all rice? Like the cattle, some contaminated rice is bound to get through to the markets. Fair use:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311dis...AJ201108105865

Aeon to conduct rice radiation checks

Supermarket chain Aeon Co. will conduct its own radiation checks on rice, although the central government will require municipal governments to examine rice to be harvested in 2011.

Aeon officials decided it is vital to promote the safety of the food they sell by taking the initiative to alleviate concerns among consumers.

Rice brands to be examined by Aeon are under the chain's private brand Topvalu, including the Akitakomachi rice grown in the disaster-affected Tohoku region. Under its contract, Aeon can check the Topvalu brand rice for radiation at the time of shipment.

Aeon is already examining rice for cadmium and remaining pesticides, while conducting radiation checks for all cattle used for beef under the Topvalu brand. With the latest moves by the company, Aeon is also expected to check all rice brands it sells in the near future.

A senior official at Aeon said examinations by the government alone may not shake off radiation fears among consumers.

With radiation contamination concerns spreading beyond beef to include rice and other foodstuffs, grocery stores have started to see customers hoarding rice produced in 2010 before the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant crisis began, according to a major supermarket chain. Major supermarkets will likely become increasingly more active in assuring customers that rice cultivated in 2011 is safe.

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311dis...AJ201108136240

Negative publicity overseas pummels agricultural exports

August 13, 2011

Fears abroad about radioactive contamination from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have obliterated the reputation of safety and quality of Japanese agricultural products.

Japanese food exports have plummeted across the board, and government efforts to publicize the safety of the products have been largely ignored or dismissed in markets overseas.

Exports of apples, mainly to Taiwan, had accounted for about 40 percent of the total value of agricultural exports. The value of apple exports between April and June plunged by about 80 percent over the same period last year.

In late July at a supermarket on the outskirts of Taipei, the fruit shelves that normally sold Japanese apples for about 100 yen ($1.30) each were instead offering apples from Chile and New Zealand for about 40 yen each.

Japanese apples usually account for about 30 percent of apple sales at the supermarket, but the store stopped buying apples from Japan after the Fukushima nuclear accident. It said the apples would not sell even at discounts of 60 to 70 percent.

"While the Japanese apples are the most delicious, I will not buy them if there are safe ones from other nations," a 47-year-old female company employee said.

The woman said she often ate Japanese foods, but not anymore.

"For Taiwan, (the Fukushima nuclear accident) is a much more serious and closer issue than Chernobyl," she said.

Another homemaker shopping with a child said, "I stopped buying Japanese fruits after a TV show said they were dangerous."

The government of Aomori Prefecture, which provides about 90 percent of all apple exports, has taken action to quell such fears in Taiwan, the destination of about 90 percent of Japan's apple exports.

In late July, Aomori Governor Shingo Mimura visited Taiwan's health ministry, local television stations and produce companies to publicize the fact that the prefecture was testing for radiation and that the apples were safe.

However, an executive with a Taiwan supermarket said: "While there are many people who do not know that Aomori is more than 300 kilometers away from Fukushima, they do know it is in the same Tohoku region. Consumers are wary."

Aomori Prefecture had increased apple exports, particularly high-end ones, by describing them as the world's best apples that sold for about 1,000 yen each for gift-giving purposes.

However, with the loss of the safety image, apple prices have fallen.

The value of apple exports in May plummeted by 86 percent over last year to 11.31 million yen.

"We cannot export if we cannot make a profit," an Aomori company official said. "If apples that would have gone to exports end up in the domestic market, the prices in Japan would also fall."

According to farm ministry officials, the total value of vegetable and fruit exports in 2010 was 17.3 billion yen; apples accounted for 6.4 billion yen of the total, with exports of 21,074 tons.

Exports of other agricultural products have also been hurt by the negative publicity from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Farm ministry officials said that as of Aug. 12, 17 nations and regions still had bans on imports of Japanese agricultural products. Most of the bans were for produce from three to 10 prefectures, centered on Fukushima Prefecture.

However, the bans have extended to a much wider area of eastern Japan, which has led to a shift in exports from western Japan.

The Nagano prefectural government has been releasing the results of radiation testing on its website in both English and Chinese to prevent the spread of negative publicity. In fiscal 2010, the prefecture exported 242 tons of grapes and peaches.

However, an annual event in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Thailand displaying agricultural products from Nagano Prefecture is still up in the air for this year.

"Foreign importers are afraid of handling Japanese products," a prefectural government official said.

An official at Fukuoka Dydo Seika Co., which exports agricultural products from around Japan, said, "Even if we publicize the fact that there is no radiation contamination, foreign companies will not even look at agricultural products from eastern Japan."

The company has been able to keep its sales decline to only between 10 and 20 percent by handling more produce from western Japan.

Meat and seafood exports are also suffering.

Reports about the detection of radioactive cesium from beef produced in Fukushima Prefecture have been widely transmitted abroad.

An official with Dah Chong Hong (Japan) Ltd., a Tokyo-based company that mainly exports fresh produce to Hong Kong, said, "After the natural disasters, we provided beef for the first time to Hong Kong in late July, but will not likely sell much."

The Hokkaido fisheries cooperative resumed exports of salmon from early July to China.

One official said: "Products processed in China are shipped to Europe. However, there is a higher sense of caution in Europe toward Japanese products, so we have no idea what the response will be."

According to farm ministry officials, the export value of meats was 39.5 billion yen in fiscal 2010 while the export value of seafood was 136.8 billion yen.

The ministry included an item in this fiscal year's supplementary budget of about 130 million yen to cover half of the purchase price of about 20 million yen for equipment that tests for radioactive substances.

So far, 13 prefectures have bought the equipment for use in exports to certify the safety of the food products.

"While the main purchasers of Japanese agricultural products are the more affluent sectors of the population with a high interest in food safety, those products are a luxury item, so they are vulnerable to negative publicity," said Shinichi Shogenji, a professor of agricultural economics at Nagoya University. "The first thing is to have Japanese consumers feel assured. The best message would be to have Japanese, who are very demanding, purchase the products after making calm decisions."

(This article was written by Yuriko Suz

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110817a1.html

Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011

Japan at critical tipping point

By MARK PENDERGRAST
Special to The Japan Times

COLCHESTER, Vermont — Japanese trains run to the minute, and the country's businesses pride themselves on energy-efficiency. The Japanese boast of their eco-services for eco-products in eco-cities. Yet they rely primarily on imported fossil fuel and nuclear power, live in energy-wasteful homes, and import 60 percent of their food. That may be changing in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Maybe.

Japan is at a crucial tipping point. As an island nation, it offers a microcosmic look at the problems facing the rest of the globe, including peak oil and climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions. And as Japan tips, so may the world.

I landed at Narita airport on May 11, 2011, two months after the magnitude 9.0 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami that killed an estimated 20,500 people on the coast of northeastern Japan's Tohoku region and left a swath of destruction up to 10-km inland. That zone included the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, where a loss of electric power led to a full meltdown of three out of six reactors.

In the same way that people in the United States refer to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, simply as "9/11," the Japanese shorthand for March 11, the day of their triple disaster, is "3/11."

Before 3/11, as an American writer I had been awarded an Abe Fellowship for Journalists to visit five out of 13 so-called Eco-Model Cities. I figured that because the Japanese import virtually all of their fossil fuel and are technologically sophisticated, that they must be doing innovative things with renewable energy.

And indeed, during my six-week odyssey, which took me to Tokyo and the Eco-Model Cities of Kitakyushu, Yusuhara, Kyoto, Toyota and Yokohama, I saw solar panels, micro-hydro generators, wind turbines, electric vehicles, hydrogen power, biodiesel, wood-pellet factories, compost made from human excrement, geothermal systems, and model sustainable homes.

But ... I had been naive. The Eco-Model City program was thrown together in a hurry so that then-Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda could announce it at the Group of Eight summit held in Japan in July 2008, and the cities received very little funding. They are doing some interesting piecemeal things, but not enough.

Japan lags far behind Europe, the U.S. and even (in some respects) China in terms of renewable energy efforts. Currently only photovoltaic panels receive a central government subsidy. And Japan is mired in bureaucracy, political infighting, indecision, puffery, public apathy, and cultural attitudes that make rapid change difficult.

Yet Japan is also one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with friendly, resilient people who can, when motivated, pull together to accomplish incredible things. I happened to land there at a crucial time for Japan, when the country has an opportunity to rethink its energy policy and entire future. It could show the way to create an ecologically sustainable world and, in the process, rejuvenate its economy. In a way, Japan is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. As an industrialized island nation, it is facing the same issues as the rest of the globe, only sooner and more urgently.

In 2010, Japan's total energy consumption derived primarily from imported fossil fuels: 45 percent oil, 19 percent coal and 14 percent natural gas. Nuclear power accounted for 15 percent and renewable energy 7 percent. Almost all of that small renewable share came from large hydropower dams built a half century ago. In 2010, the Japanese government announced plans to build 14 more nuclear reactors to boost the country's nuclear share of electrical generation to 50 percent .

Now that plan has been scrapped. In addition to the Fukushima reactors, the Hamaoka nuclear power plant's five reactors, which are located near a fault line 201-km southwest of Tokyo in Omaezaki, Shizuoka, have also been closed. So what will happen next?

Tetsunari Iida, the former nuclear engineer who heads the Tokyo-based Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP), has a plan. Formerly a lone voice crying in the wilderness against nuclear power, he is now a media star and consultant to the country's leaders. Iida sees Japan's nuclear power and fossil fuel use gradually dwindling to nothing by 2050, while renewable energy swells to account for 50 percent of current use. The other 50 percent will be covered by energy savings and efficiencies, he says.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan has apparently been listening to Iida and is now a born-again renewable energy advocate. Yet because of political in-fighting and a looming no-confidence vote, Kan announced that he will resign soon — the sixth Japanese prime minister to do so in six years He says he won't go until the Diet votes for renewable energy subsidies for wind, biomass, geothermal, solar hot water, micro-hydro and so forth.

But the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) really run the country, in league with the electricity monopolies.

Each of the 10 regional utilities jealously guards its borders, so that there is limited cooperation between them, and they don't like the fluctuating levels of renewable energy. Worse still, the northeastern half of Japan uses a 50-hertz frequency, while the southwest operates at 60 hertz, making it impossible to share power between them without huge transformers.

METI has funded a program to dabble in smart-grid technology in four test cities, but Japan needs a drastic overhaul of its electric grid and massive support for renewable energy. Building codes and renovations must support well-insulated homes styled after traditional machiya, with natural ventilation. Home gardens and large-scale greenhouses need to provide more domestic food.

Fallow rice paddies can grow abundant strains for bioethanol. Rural inhabitants could heat with wood. The country could take advantage of its huge untapped potential for geothermal and wind power. And surely its electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids could predominate.

The whole world is watching Japan in its post-3/11 struggles. Let us hope that we see a true eco-model country rising from the nuclear meltdowns and devastation.
Mark Pendergrast is the author of "Inside the Outbreaks" and other books. He is writing a book called "Japan's Tipping Point." Pendergrast can be reached through www.markpendergrast.com.

[Housecarl]

For links in text please see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000...766485092.html

* ASIA NEWS
* AUGUST 16, 2011

Murky Science Clouded Japan Nuclear Response

* Article
* Comments

By YUKA HAYASHI

IITATE, Japan—After a third explosion rocked Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex on March 15, the weather took a worrisome turn. A wind that had been blowing steadily out to sea shifted to the northwest, carrying plumes of radiation up a river known locally as the "corridor of wind." That evening, a late-winter snow began falling on this mountain village. Residents awakened the next day to a blanket of white over their homes, roads, cow pastures and pine forests. They stepped outside and began shoveling.

Back in Tokyo, officials had information suggesting that the snow carried radiation to this community 17 miles from the stricken plant, well outside the government's evacuation zone. Nevertheless, a week passed before government officials gave residents any clear indication that their town of 6,000 had become a nuclear "hot spot," and even then they were hesitant to order residents to get out. "We spent a lot of time debating because we knew we were making a very profound decision," says Toshimitsu Honma, a member of the Nuclear Safety Commission's emergency committee and deputy director general at the Nuclear Safety Research Center, a government agency.

Some young people in the village who were tuned in to Internet chatter about contamination grew frustrated. In late March, Kenta Sato, 29 years old, turned to his new Twitter account, sending hundreds of dispatches from his smartphone. He attracted 5,700 followers, including several members of Parliament. "Since the government won't issue an evacuation order despite constantly high radiation levels, I have to keep working in a place where radiation comes falling down all day long," he wrote on March 26. "Please help!"

A Wall Street Journal examination of what happened in Iitate shows how challenging it can be to assess the dangers of fallout. Deciding to evacuate towns closer to the plant, where fallout was heavier, was a relative no-brainer. But radiation measurements taken at dozens of locations around Iitate differed widely, and science didn't offer a clear answer for whether the measured amounts were too much. In the end, it took government officials more than a month to decide that Iitate was too dangerous to inhabit. And by then, many residents, particularly older ones, didn't take the warnings seriously.

Confusion over what to do about radioactive contamination is playing out in various forms all over Japan. Officials are struggling to figure out where it is safe to live, what is safe to eat and how farmers decontaminate their fields. At present, 116,000 people remain unable to return to their homes due to the radiation threat. Even as the government continues to ask more people to evacuate, it is mulling allowing others to return to towns where contamination is relatively light.

While high levels of radiation are unequivocally dangerous, the science regarding health effects of the kind of lower-level contamination that has spread far from the plant is surprisingly hazy. There is no clear-cut scientific consensus on what level of fallout should trigger mandatory evacuation, or on how long-term exposure to radiation at the levels being measured in places like Iitate affect health. Further muddying the picture, the spread of radiation has been fiendishly unpredictable, skipping some areas and showing up in concentrated hot spots elsewhere.

For the first few days after the March 11 tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant, authorities were confronted with a succession of frightening explosions and fires. The government ordered everyone living within 12.4 miles of the plant to evacuate, and those between 12.4 and 18.6 miles to stay indoors. Residents of Iitate and other towns outside these zones had a sliver of good fortune: a steady wind was carrying the radiation out to sea.

The wind shift on the afternoon of March 15 erased that advantage. Back in Tokyo, a government computer system called Speedi was crunching weather data to predict how radioactive emissions would spread. After the wind shift, it forecast that contamination was heading toward Iitate.

By the next day, the ministry of education and science, which oversees nuclear research, had sent a team to Nagadoro, a hamlet in the southern part of Iitate, to monitor radiation. Soon other teams arrived from elsewhere in Japan. They drove specially equipped vans with radiation sensors mounted to the roofs. Before long, they were monitoring the air in 36 separate spots around Iitate.

The government posted radiation data online, but it provided no interpretation. When Mr. Sato heard about contamination from other young residents, he left town to stay with his mother two towns away. But on March 21, his father decided to reopen a small business he owns that cleans metal molds used to make concrete blocks. He asked all six of his employees, including his son, to report back to work. Feeling trapped, Mr. Sato began pressing for the government, via Twitter, to evacuate the village.

At the Nuclear Safety Commission, the government's nuclear-policy advisory body in Tokyo, Mr. Honma was monitoring data from Iitate and surrounding communities. The prefecture government had reported high levels of radiation in the air in Iitate as early as March 15. Mr. Honma says he became convinced that the area had received sizable doses of radiation.

But whether those doses were sufficient to warrant evacuation was another matter. Very high radiation doses, such as from an atomic bomb, can burn, poison or kill. But the effects of smaller doses aren't nearly as clear. In theory, any exposure to radioactive elements raises the risk of cancer, especially in young children. But the effects of slight increases are difficult to measure, particularly because about 40% of people eventually get some form of cancer under normal circumstances, according to the National Cancer Institute in the U.S.

Human radiation exposure is measured in units called sieverts. A chest x-ray delivers a dose of about 0.04 millisieverts, and traveling from New York to Tokyo by plane, where cosmic rays are higher than on the ground, comes in at 0.07 millisieverts. Such natural and man-made sources add up to around 3 millisieverts per year for the average U.S. resident, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates.

Many experts contend that a dose of 100 millisieverts raises the risk of cancer by 0.5%—no matter how long the time period over which it is absorbed. The International Commission on Radiological Protection, an independent international body, recommends immediate evacuation of people at that level. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says there is no hard evidence linking health problems to doses below 100 millisieverts.

Japanese government guidelines stipulated that residents should be evacuated once doses of accumulated radiation exceed 50 millisieverts. For exposures of 10 to 50 millisieverts, the guidelines said, they should be told to stay indoors.

Radiation levels in Iitate peaked on March 17 and 18, then began falling, Mr. Honma says. But because the radiation wasn't gone, the overall accumulated dosages continued to climb. At one of the town's hot spots, the accumulated dose was 28 millisieverts through March 28, according to the Nuclear Safety Commission, which projected that it would eventually reach 35.

By early April, Mr. Honma says, he was in favor of evacuation, but the government guidelines suggested it wasn't warranted. "The real problem was the 50 millisievert rule," he says.

Toshiso Kosako, a radiation-safety specialist who was then a special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan—he resigned in late April to protest the government's handling of the crisis—urged Mr. Kan's cabinet on March 22 to classify parts of Iitate and surrounding towns as "highly contaminated zones." In a document submitted to senior government officials, he said that radiation monitoring needed to be beefed up, that childhood thyroid cancer was a risk. In another document two days later, he urged the government to consider expanding the evacuation zone to include those communities.

The government says it did beef up monitoring. Noriyuki Shikata, a government spokesman, said Mr. Kosako was just one adviser, and that others held different views.

With no consensus among its experts, the Nuclear Safety Commission didn't prod the government to expand the zone to include Iitate. "We are aware that there are some areas outside [the evacuation zones] that are contaminated, but it is our judgment that there won't be health consequences as a result," Haruki Madarame, the commission's chairman said.

Many villagers, including town officials, believed they were safe. By March 30, only 259 villagers had taken shelter at an evacuation facility outside of Fukushima prefecture.

Mr. Sato's own father, Koichi, continued to drink tap water and eat vegetables grown in local gardens. His father's elderly mother and five dogs stayed put in Iitate, too. One morning, he opened his windows to let in the spring air, triggering a shouting match with his son, who by then was carrying a compact radiation monitoring tool.

"I understand why young people may be worried, but in 20 years or 30 years, I'd be dead anyway, whether I get cancer from radiation or not," says the elder Mr. Sato, who is 57. He says he can't leave his company and moving it isn't an option.

The government sent several radiation experts to Iitate to talk to residents. On March 25, Noboru Takamura, a physican and Nagasaki University professor, told about 600 villagers that they could continue to live safely in Iitate if they took precautions like wearing face masks outdoors and washing hands frequently, according to the village newsletter. Mr. Takamura said recently that radiation readings in the village were below 100 millisieverts—considered the threshold for health risk.

On March 28, a group of independent experts led by Tetsuji Imanaka, an associate professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute and an opponent of nuclear power, visited Iitate to test the air and soil. The group took readings at more than 150 locations. At one spot, radioactivity was high enough that someone who stood there 24 hours a day would be exposed to an accumulated radiation of 160 millisieverts in a year—well above the 100 millisievert danger level. In other spots, readings were much lower.

"We saw grandpas and grandmas going about their lives in an environment that you'd only see in highly controlled areas at a nuclear-power plant," says Mr. Imanaka, who had spent years studying the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

He says his readings differed from the government's because his team tested different locations. "Some of those places had higher radiation levels, some as high as 2½ times the government figures," he says, adding that he doesn't think the government intentionally selected places with low dosages.

A ministry of education and science official said he hadn't seen Mr. Imanaka's data, but "in general, it is natural to get different figures in different places."

Before leaving Iitate, Mr. Imanaka advised Norio Kanno, the village chief, to evacuate children as soon as possible. Masuro Sugai, an economist in Mr. Imanaka's group, said the village chief was more interested in learning how to clean up contaminated soil so farmers could plant again. Mr. Kanno and other village officials declined to comment.

On March 30, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said the radiation level of a soil sample from Iitate exceeded what it considered the threshold for evacuation.

Doctors sent in by the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency tested thyroid glands of several hundred children in Iitate around the same time. They said everyone cleared the government standard. Critics said the results were skewed because the test was done more than two weeks after the accident, when radiation levels were declining.

As the days wore on, village elders grew resistant to any evacuation. In a letter submitted to the central government on April 9, Mr. Kanno, the village chief, complained that the government had released information about Iitate's contamination before consulting village officials, inflicting "immeasurable pain and stress" on residents.

"I have tried everything I can to avoid emptying the village completely," Mr. Kanno said in a recent speech.

Some young residents, including the younger Mr. Sato, criticize village officials for not taking the lead in evacuating people. "People in power—the village chief and assembly members—are all in their sixties and seventies and can't abandon the village," says Mr. Sato. "Because they are staying, children can't leave. These adults have become a burden on the young people."

On April 22, Tokyo finally ordered residents of Iitate and four other municipalities with similar hot spots to evacuate. The government cited a recommendation by the International Commission on Radiological Protection that once the emergency phase of a nuclear accident passes—it didn't specify when that point arrives—the exposure of local residents should not exceed 20 millisieverts per year.

Some in Iitate were in no hurry to get out. When village schools reopened for a new school year in mid-April in rented space in a neighboring town, roughly 400 children were still living in Iitate and had to be bused to the new locations. The village hall stayed open until June 22. Nine businesses have gotten permission to continue operating and let their workers commute in.

"My reaction was 'Why now?'" the elder Mr. Sato, who wasn't allowed to keep his business in Iitate open, said in June. "They had told us time and again levels here were low enough."

By last week, the only people still living in Iitate were 108 residents of a nursing home—the elderly were not required to evacuate—and 10 others who refused to budge, including Mr. Sato and his mother.
—Phred Dvorak contributed
to this article.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

[It'sJustMe]

Good articles, Housecarl! Aas your second article mentions, communication appears to have issues. I am not quite sure yet exactly where the updated information goes in the chain of command of information. Somewhere along the line, someone is not doing their job. Here's an example. Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_28.html

Cooling stoppage unknown to plant chief

Government investigators have found that the chief of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant did not know that a backup cooling system for one of the plant's reactors was manually shut down on March 11th, the day of the quake and tsunami.

The investigators learned that Masao Yoshida was unaware that a worker stopped the system to prevent it from being damaged. The worker told the investigators that the system appeared to be operating at boiling temperature but was not producing steam.

Yoshida reportedly said it was a major error that he and other leaders did not immediately know such important safety information.

The plant's operator, TEPCO, says a fuel meltdown took place at the reactor 5 hours after the quake, generating large amounts of hydrogen that caused an explosion on the following day.

University of Tokyo Professor Koji Okamoto said the reactor lost all cooling functions due to the stoppage, and that the reactor's core should have been cooled by all possible means.

Okamoto said the failure of communication may have worsened the situation by delaying orders for water injections and government evacuations of nearby residents.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 22:20 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

So, now they are worrying that workers might be exposed to radiation? That;s all fine, well and good, but what about the hundreds of workers who have already been exposed, over radiated, and are not unable to ever work at a nuke facility again, due to reaching their lifetime maximum level?? NOW they are going to train workers? Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_16.html


Govt, TEPCO to train radiation experts

The government and the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant plan to secure more experts on radiation management by training existing employees and new recruits.

The government and Tokyo Electric power Company recently reviewed a 2-stage plan to bring the nuclear plant under control.

The first stage of the plan to achieve stable cooling of the reactors was completed on schedule in July. The utility and the government are now tackling the 2nd stage, which aims to implement cold shutdown of the reactors by January.

But concern is growing that an increasing number of workers could be exposed to unsafe levels of radiation during the work.

The government will train 250 workers in radiation measurement and control techniques. A system to hire more workers will also be introduced through relevant industrial bodies.

Keeping workers safe from excessive exposure to radiation will remain a pressing issue as work to decommission the reactors is expected to take years.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 12:13 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

Could the reduction in radioactivity levels around the plant be due to pouring less cooling water into the reactors, to keep the basements from flooding? Less steam spewing out = less radiation? I'm no expert, but it seems reasonable to me. This article also does not go into the "hot spots" discovered, seemingly out of the blue. The last one has the highest radiation yet, that they found last week. Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_30.html

Radioactivity down to one-fifth of July levels

The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company say the amount of radioactive material being emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has dropped to one-fifth that of a month ago.

The government and TEPCO said on Wednesday that maximum radiation levels around the plant during the past 2 weeks were 200 million becquerels per hour.

This is one-fifth the levels detected in July, and one-10 millionth the levels in mid-March, shortly after the troubles began at the plant.

The state minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, Goshi Hosono, said the maximum reading of 200 million becquerels is just an estimate because the exact emission levels cannot be accurately measured.
He pledged to seek methods for making precise measurements and for containing radioactivity inside the plant.

The government and TEPCO said there is no major change in their timetable for bringing the plant under control, and that their goal continues to be to achieve cold shutdown of the reactors while processing contaminated wastewater and reducing radioactive emissions.

The government said it will draw up a plan for decontaminating the current evacuation zone by the end of August, and it will launch a model decontamination project early next month.

Experts say that before the government allows residents to return to the evacuation zone, it will be necessary to prevent new leakage of radioactive material, as well as decontaminate material already leaked and dispose of mud and sludge generated by the decontamination process.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 22:23 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:


http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_10.html

New decontamination plan for nuclear plant

The Japanese government and operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant say they will try to reduce radioactive releases from the plant by directly treating contaminated gas in the reactors.

The government and TEPCO say the gas would be sucked from the reactors' containment vessels through existing pipes, and then filtered to remove cesium and other radioactive substances.

The plan would be added to another project underway to fully cover the Number One reactor building with polyester sheets.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says multiple measures are needed to reduce the radioactive substances being released from the plant.

The amount has decreased substantially since right after the accident, but the plant is still believed to be leaking radiation at a rate of about one billion becquerels per hour.

Some of the radioactivity is likely escaping from gaps created by explosions in the reactors' containment vessels.

The government and TEPCO's timetable aims for steep cuts in the release of radioactive material by January 2012.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 09:52 +0900 (JST)

[It'sJustMe]

Fair use:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_19.html

TEPCO never expected hydrogen explosions: report

A government investigation has found that no one at the utility operating the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had expected hydrogen explosions to occur at the plant.

The committee investigating the accident has been hearing the testimony of officials from government and the utility, the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

It has learned that Tokyo Electric officials discussed the hydrogen explosion that occurred at the No. 1 reactor building on March 12th, one day after the quake and tsunami.

The utility officials said nobody had expected such an explosion, and that attention was focused on the state of the reactors' cores and containment vessels.

They said they discussed ways to prevent similar explosions after the blast. But they were unable to implement them due to high levels of radiation at the site resulting in a 2nd explosion at the No. 3 reactor building on March 14th.

The reactors were deprived of their cooling functions after the quake and tsunami, causing damage to the reactor cores. It is believed this caused a massive buildup of hydrogen in the containment vessels resulting in the explosions.

TEPCO officials say they were aware that a core meltdown could cause a hydrogen explosion, but had never considered the possibility of a blast outside a reactor.

This finding exposes the utility's underestimation of the potential dangers at the plant.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 13:36 +0900 (JST)

[kemosabe]

Report: Workers say ground under Fukushima plant is cracking and radioactive steam is coming up — Melted core may be moving out of building (VIDEO)


Synopsis:
Workers at Japan's Fukushima plant say the ground under the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is escaping through the cracks. The cooling system at the plant failed after the devastating tsunami hit Japan in March, sparking a nuclear crisis. But new evidence suggests that Fukushima reactors were doomed to cripple even before the massive wave reached them. RT's Anissa Naouai talks to Dr. Robert Jacobs, a Professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.


Host: “Workers at Japan’s Fukushima plant say the ground underneath the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is escaping through the cracks” [...]

Dr. Robert Jacobs, Hiroshima Peace Institute: “It’s a very serious and alarming development because this started to happen specifically after two large earthquakes in the last few weeks, there was a 6.4 on the 31 of July 31 and a 6.0 on August 12″ [...]

“It’s an indication that radioactive material is moving under the ground” [...]

“When you have a fragile structure that’s already suffered a great deal of damage and when you have continual aftershocks at the level of six-point, or there’s been some even higher, what we have now is we have the radioactive core that has melted down into the basement, into the bottom of the containment vessel of these reactors, and if the radiation level is going down, where it’s been monitored inside the buildings, and if the water pressure is going down, and the temperature is going down, it’s not that the radiation is just suddenly going away, it means that the radioactive material, the melted core, is simply moving further away from where it’s been measured. And it may have — as a result of these aftershocks — be moving down out of the building itself.”

[notingthetimes]

Just popping in to see if everyone had seen this new youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l947Cw0fsY