Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cesium, Fuckushima, Fukushima, radioactive contamination, radioactive water, radioactivity, Tepco, utopia
The biggest scare at the plant in recent days has been the discovery that at least three of seven underground storage pools are seeping thousands of gallons of radioactive water into the soil. On Wednesday, Tepco acknowledged that the lack of adequate storage space for contaminated water had become a “crisis,” and said it would begin emptying the pools. But the company said that the leaks will continue over the several weeks that it will likely take to transfer the water to other containers.
Plant workers dug these underground ponds about six months ago to store the ever-growing amount of contaminated water at the plant. There is about 400 tons daily from two sources: runoff from a makeshift cooling system rigged together after the site’s regular cooling equipment was knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, and a steady stream of groundwater seeping into damaged reactors.
Tepco stores more than a quarter-million tons of radioactive water at the site and says the amount could double within three years.
But as outside experts have discovered with horror, the company had lined the pits for the underground pools with only two layers of plastic each 1.5 millimeters thick, and a third, clay-based layer just 6.5 millimeters thick. And because the pools require many sheets hemmed together, leaks could be springing at the seams, Tepco has said.
“No wonder the water is leaking,” said Hideo Komine, a professor in civil engineering at Ibaraki University, just south of Fukushima. He said that the outer protective lining should have been hundreds of times thicker.
via Fukushima Nuclear Plant Is Still Unstable, Japanese Official Says – NYTimes.com.
Remember when we thought Japan was leading the world into a utopia of capitalist industrial perfection?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Fukushima, Fukushima Dai-ichi, Fukushima Daiichi, Jackz, Jaczk, Japan, Masayuki Ono, meltdown, NRC, nuclear accident, nuclear accidents, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, radioactivity, tank factory, Tank Game, Tanks, Tepco, wastewater, water
Seems pretty clear at this point. In the future all of our time, energy and material resources will go toward making tanks to store an ever-increasing amount of radioactive wastewater that we have dumped in desperation onto melted reactor cores and ‘spent’ nuclear fuel, and which has leaked out of some other tank or tanks. Unfortunately, though we can look forward to full employment, and lots of good times with our colleagues down at the tank factory, the Tank Game is un-winnable.
Did Kafka write this passage:
Tokyo Electric Power Co. previously said two of seven huge underground tanks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had been leaking since Saturday if not earlier.
The latest leak involves a tank that was being used to take water from one of the two that were leaking, TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono said. …
TEPCO has halted the transfer of water to the third tank, diverting it to a fourth tank that remains intact. Two of the seven tanks are currently unused.
Ono said TEPCO has decided to stop using the two most damaged of the three leaking tanks as soon as they are emptied, but will use the other because of a tank shortage.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cesium, congenital hypothyroidism, fallout, Fukushima, hypothyroidism, I-131, infant mortality, iodine, meltdowns, nuclear accident, nuclear weapons tests, pediatrics, thyroid
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=28599
Mangano and Sherman, “Elevated airborne beta levels in Pacific/West Coast US States and trends in hypothyroidism among newborns after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown” Open Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 3, Number 1, March 2013.
1.2. Exposure to Radioactive Iodine as a Factor
in Congenital HypothyroidismAnother potential environmental risk factor is prenatal
exposure to radioactive iodine isotopes, which seek out
the susceptible fetal thyroid gland. For decades radioactive
iodine has been recognized to cause adverse effects
(including hypothyroidism) to the thyroid gland. The
fetal thyroid, the first glandular structure to appear in the
human embryo [14], begins to concentrate iodine and
produce thyroid hormones by the 70th day of gestation
[15]. In the mid-1950s, during the period of atmospheric
nuclear weapons tests, I-131 produced by fission was
first detected in the adult human thyroid [16,17]. I-131
concentrations were calculated to be about 10 times
higher in the human fetal thyroid vs. the human adult or
hog thyroid [18], and maximum elevations in fetal thy-
roids were detected approximately one month after nuclear
explosions [19]. The main path of exposure to shortlived
isotopes such as I-131 is via dairy products due to
radioactive fallout deposition on forage [20].[...]
It gets all over the grass, the cows eat the grass, and the I-131 and Cesium are thus concentrated in cheese and milk.
…Large amounts of fallout disseminated worldwide from the meltdowns in four reactors at the Fukushima-Dai-ichi plant in Japan beginning March 11, 2011 included radioiodine isotopes. Just days after the meltdowns, I-131 concentrations in US precipitation was measured up to 211 times above normal. Highest levels of I-131 and airborne gross beta were documented in the five US States on the Pacific Ocean. The number of congenital hypothyroid cases in these five states from March 17-December 31, 2011 was 16% greater than for the same period in 2010, compared to a 3% decline in 36 other US States (p < 0.03). The greatest divergence in these two groups (+28%) occurred in the period March 17-June 30 (p < 0.04). …
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Fat Man, Fukushima, Hiroshima, Little Boy, Nagasaki, Potsdam, radiation, Stalin, Stimson, Tepco, Truman
WASHINGTON: US service members are suing the Tokyo Electric Power Co. for more than $2 billion on grounds the utility lied about the dangers of helping clean up the nuclear disaster that struck two years ago, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
The case was first filed by nine plaintiffs in December but has now expanded to 26, and another 100 are in the process of joining the suit, said Stars and Stripes newspaper.
[...]
The plaintiffs says the have suffered a number of ailments that they say are linked to their exposure, including headaches, difficulty concentrating, rectal bleeding, thyroid problems, cancer, tumors and gynecological bleeding.
via http://www.brecorder.com/world/southeast-asia/110808.html
So they say, things that go around come around and all that.
Filed under: maps | Tags: bone cancer, cesium, Cesium-137, contamination, Fukushima, HYSPLIT, hysplit model, Iodine-131, meltdown, multiple meltdown, NOAA, radiation, radioactive cesium, thyroid cancer
NOAA’s HYSPLIT model shows clouds of highly radioactive Cesium wafting over the US after Fuku blew sky high. Only one month’s worth shown.
To see animation:
http://www.sos.noaa.gov/Datasets/dataset.php?id=332
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: chimp attack, chimpanzees, Fukushima, journalism, LIBOR, NBC, nightly news, reactor 4, spent fuel pool
UPDATE: SFP cooling restarted 307 PM per TEPCO via http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2012/06/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-reactor-4-spent.html
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Could make these Colorado fires look pretty insignificant.
Note that NBC’s top story tonight was about a college kid who got attacked by chimps in S. Africa. No mention of Fukushima or LIBOR. They’re not even pretending any more.
The cooling system of the spent-fuel pool in reactor 4 at the Fukushima No. 1 plant automatically suspended operations Saturday and the water temperature is starting to rise, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
The utility has been unable to activate a backup cooling system for the pool since operations halted at around 6.25 a.m., and is looking into the causes, Tepco officials said later in the day.
The pool’s water temperature stood at around 31 degrees Celsius when the cooling system ceased functioning and was increasing by 0.26 degree per hour late Saturday afternoon, according to the officials.
If Tepco remains unable to start up the system or its backup, the temperature could reach 65 degrees by Tuesday morning — the maximum limit specified by safety regulations.
Filed under: maps | Tags: five day forecast, Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi, Japan, Typhoon Guchol, typhoon path
click to enlarge
via Typhoon Guchol : 5 Day Forecast Map | Weather Underground.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bluefin tuna, cesium, cesium tuna, Cesium-134, Cesium-137, Fukushima, meltdown, radioactivity
Five months after the Fukushima disaster, Fisher of Stony Brook University in New York and a team decided to test Pacific bluefin that were caught off the coast of San Diego. To their surprise, tissue samples from all 15 tuna captured contained levels of two radioactive substances—ceisum-134 and cesium-137—that were higher than in previous catches.
[...]
The results “are unequivocal. Fukushima was the source,” said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who had no role in the research.
Bluefin tuna absorbed radioactive cesium from swimming in contaminated waters and feeding on contaminated prey such as krill and squid, the scientists said. As the predators made the journey east, they shed some of the radiation through metabolism and as they grew larger. Even so, they weren’t able to completely flush out all the contamination from their system.
“That’s a big ocean. To swim across it and still retain these radionuclides is pretty amazing,” Fisher said.
via Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific to US – The Denver Post.
All well below “safe levels,” of course, according to govt. agencies. That’s fine, I won’t be eating any. More for you!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: energy, Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi, Hiroaki Koide, nuclear accident, nuclear power, radiation, radioactivity, Tepco
Why should little kids have to eat it? An interesting moral dilemma.
クリーンな食べ物はない。
There is no clean food.
残念ながら福島の事故は起きてしまい、全地球に汚染を広げてしまっている。そのため、クリーンとか安全という食べ物というものはありません。
Sadly, the Fukushima accident happened, and has spread contamination throughout the world. So there is no food that is clean or safe.
ただし、猛烈に汚れている食べ物から比較的安全な食べ物まで、連続的に分布している。それをどのように受け入れるかが問題。
But there is a continuous variety of food from extremely contaminated food to relatively safe food. The issue is how to accept [allocate] such food.
猛烈な汚染食品は原子力を進めていた方々に食べてもらう。東電幹部、原子力を進めてきた政治家や、学者に食べてもらう。そういう仕組みを作りたい。
Extremely contaminated food should be eaten by people who have promoted nuclear power. TEPCO top management, and politicians and scholars who have promoted nuclear power. I would like to build such a system.
後は、原子力をここまで許してきてしまった大人たちに、汚染された食べ物を食べてもらって、子どもたちに汚染されていないものを食べさせてあげる。
The rest of the contaminated food should be eaten by adults, who have allowed nuclear power to this extent, so that the non-contaminated food goes to children.
via EX-SKF:
Filed under: maps | Tags: cold shutdown, debris, environment, Fukushima, meltdown, nuclear accident, reactor 4, science, spent fuel pool
Dug out of a report and translated by EX-SKF:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2012/04/debris-map-inside-reactor-4-spent-fuel.html
click to enlarge
Sand-like sediments?
