Re: 40% of Europe is still radioactive, what's coming next?

[Taka]

Gov’t study estimates 225,000 cases of cancer from Fukushima disaster -
Physician (VIDEO)

Dr. Bradford Weeks, MD: There’s some government studies, which are
always underestimated, that there would be 225,000 cases of cancer
from this.

Busby looks at the study of low sperm count in isreal due to uranium
based weapons use. explains how fukushima had 2000 tons of uranium and
explains chernobyl only had 50 tons.. there is more than cancer to
worry about…

Pr Chris Busby on infertility risk around Fukushima, Japan, etc
Uploaded by radioactivebsr on Apr 13, 2011

Pr Chris Busby is asked by BSRRW.org secretary Ditta Rietuma to inform
the Austrian radio reporter on the infertility risk in Japan.
Additional to at least 400.000 cancers in next 50 years in the 200 km
radium fr Fukushima, estimated using the more reliable ECRR-model
( http://www.euradcom.org and http://www.bsrrw.org/?page_id=83 )
instead of the official ICRP model. Estimation is based even on the
epidemiology method of Swedish researchers Martin Tondel etc (http://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1732641/pdf/v058p01011.pdf ).
Anyway it is clear underestimation as it is made on the unreliable
IAEA data reports, that might be many times higher in reality. The
risks on fertility and other disease are not estimated in this number.

Busby describes Fukusima catastrophy as a global problem caused by
systemic global encouragement on nuclear industry investments and US
reactor sales.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9lyxgJhc0c

SOURCE: http://enenews.com/govt-study-estimates-225000-cases-cancer-fukushima-disaster-physician-video

[Taka]

Government Changes Rules, and 102.8Bq/kg of Cesium in Rice Becomes
100Bq/kg, Rice Safe and Good to Sell

Rice harvested this year in a district in Iwaki City in southern
Fukushima was found with 102.8 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium.

Not a problem.

Because under the little-noted guideline from the Ministry of Health
and Welfare on March 15 this year before the provisional safety
standard of 500 becquerels/kg of cesium expired, you are supposed to
round down or up the 3rd digit and use only the first 2 digits. (Jiji
article below says the notice was issued on July 5, but the original
notice was on March 15.)

So, 102.8 becomes 100. Exactly the safety limit, and that's fine with
the Fukushima prefectural government. They say it is "sufficiently
safe", meaning the rice will be sold.

From Jiji Tsushin (10/18/2012):

Rice tested at the upper safety limit, "Sufficiently safe", says
Fukushima government

Fukushima prefectural government announced the result of monitoring
tests of rice harvested in 2012, which showed 100 becquerels/kg of
radioactive cesium had been detected from rice grown in Iwaki City in
Fukushima. Since it didn't exceed the safety limit, the prefectural
government says it is "sufficiently safe".

According to the prefectural government, unmilled rice from former
Kawabe-mura in Iwaki City harvested on October 16 was found with 39.6
becquerels/kg of cesium-134, and 63.2 becquerels/kg of cesium-137.
Total would be 102.8 becquerels/kg, exceeding the safety limit.
However, the Ministry of Health and Welfare had sent a notice dated
July 5, 2012 which stated, "Round off the third digit to the nearest
whole number and use the first two digits as significant figure."
According to the notice, [Iwaki's number] is exactly 100 becquerels.

The prefectural government has been conducting the test to detect
radioactive materials (cesium) on all rice (about 12 million bags [of
30 kilograms of rice]) grown in Fukushima, in addition to the
monitoring test with a certain number of samples [per location]. So
far, no rice has been found with radioactive cesium exceeding the
safety standard in either test.

Uh... it has just been found, hasn't it? 102.8 becquerels/kg?

Japanese wiki on rounding numbers says you should be conservative in
rounding the numbers when it comes to safety. In this case, if the
safety standard is 100 becquerels/kg and the rice exceeded that
standard by whatever small margin, it should have been treated as
"exceeding the standard", instead of rounding down and declaring it is
"sufficiently safe". If anything, it should be rounded up to 110 and
ban the sales to be very conservative and safe.

As one of my Japanese Twitter followers suggested, that wiki entry
needs a revision: "You should disregard safety when it involves the
government policy, and round down the numbers to fit the safety
standard to avoid baseless rumors."

By the way, Fukushima Prefecture tested one more sample from the same
village in the monitoring test. That sample was found with 71.8
becquerels/kg, which the Fukushima prefectural government dutifully
rounded up and printed "72 becquerels/kg".

Last year, there were 3 samples tested from this particular village in
Iwaki City. They were all ND.

SOURCE: http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2012/10/radioactive-japan-government-changes.html

[Taka]

Radioactive beef over cesium limit from cow raised far outside
Fukushima… As Fukushima beef shipments to US resume this week

Radioactive cesium levels above the government’s new limit have been
found in beef from Miyagi Prefecture, the prefectural government said.

Meat from a cow shipped by a farmer in Tome was found to contain more
than 150 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram, the Miyagi
Prefectural Government said Wednesday.

The stricter limit of 150 becquerels for beef and rice took effect
Oct. 1. The previous limit was 500 becquerels per kilogram.

[...]

Miyagi Prefecture told the farmer not to ship any more cows until the
investigation is completed, and asked nearby ranchers to suspend
shipments voluntarily.

The Cesium limit for the US is higher than Japan's. The irony…Japan
has the nuclear accident & the US exceeds Japans limits…it indicates
an excessive amount of contamination in the Northern Hemisphere.

The US intervention level is 1000 bq/kg, double the Japanese emergency
levels of 500 bq/kg.

http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=8004

**** I think this only applies to the first year after a nuclear
accident —>

"The Food and Drug Administration's Derived Intervention Levels (DIL)
for food interdiction are 170 Bq/kg for I-131 and 1200 Bq/kg for
Cs-137 + Cs-134."

Source: Enformable
http://www.scribd.com/doc/105124592/Pages-From-ML12188A292-April-9th-2011-Summary-of-Radiological-Hazards-in-Japan

**** Here is the FDA document that lays out the "DIL's"

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationsandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/UCM094513.pdf

SOURCE: http://enenews.com/radioactive-beef-over-cesium-limit-detected-outside-fukushima-from-farm-150-km-north-of-plant

[Taka]

Scientists setting radiation exposure limits took utility money: probe

Influential scientists who help set Japan’s radiation exposure limits
have for years had trips paid for by the country’s nuclear plant
operators to attend overseas meetings of the world’s top academic
group on radiation safety.

The potential conflict of interest is revealed in one sentence buried
in a 600-page parliamentary investigation into last year’s Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster and pointed out to The Associated
Press by a medical doctor on the 10-person investigation panel.

Some of these same scientists have consistently given optimistic
assessments about the health risks of radiation, interviews with the
scientists and government documents show. Their pivotal role in
setting policy after the March 2011 tsunami and ensuing nuclear
meltdowns meant the difference between schoolchildren playing outside
or indoors and families staying or evacuating their homes.

One leading scientist, Ohtsura Niwa, acknowledged that the electricity
industry pays for flights and hotels to go to meetings of the
International Commission on Radiological Protection, and for overseas
members visiting Japan. He denied that the funding influences his
science and stressed that he stands behind his view that continuing
radiation worries about Fukushima are overblown.

“Those who evacuated just want to believe in the dangers of radiation
to justify the action they took,” Niwa told the AP in an interview.

The official stance of the International Commission on Radiological
Protection is that the health risks from radiation become zero only
with zero exposure. But some of the eight Japanese ICRP members do not
subscribe to that view, asserting that low-dose radiation is harmless
or the risks are negligible.

The doctor on the parliamentary panel, Hisako Sakiyama, is outraged
about utility funding for Japan’s ICRP members. She fears that
radiation standards are being set leniently to limit costly
evacuations.

“The assertion of the utilities became the rule. That’s ethically
unacceptable. People’s health is at stake,” she said. “The view was
twisted so it came out as though there is no clear evidence of the
risks, or that we simply don’t know.”

The ICRP, based in Ottawa, Canada, does not take a stand on any
nation’s policy. It is a charity that relies heavily on donations, and
members’ funding varies by nation. The group brings scientists
together to study radiation effects on health and the environment, as
well as the impact of disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. In
Japan, ICRP members sit on key panels at the prime minister’s office
and the education ministry that set radiation safety policy.

The Fukushima meltdowns, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl,
brought a higher level of scrutiny to Japan’s nuclear industry,
revealing close ties between the regulators and the regulated. Last
month, some members of a panel that sets nuclear plant safety
standards acknowledged they received research and other grant money
from utility companies and plant manufacturers. The funding is not
illegal in Japan.

Niwa, the only Japanese member to sit on the main ICRP committee,
defended utility support for travel expenses, which comes from the
Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan through another
radiation organization. Costs add up, he said, and he has spent tens
of thousands of yen (thousands of dollars) of his personal money on
ICRP projects and efforts to decontaminate Fukushima. All ICRP members
fly economy, except for long flights such as between Argentina and
Japan, he said.

The Federation declined comment.

Clouding the debate about radiation risks are the multiple causes of
cancer, including diet, smoking and other habits. That’s why it is
extremely difficult to prove any direct link between an individual’s
cancer and radiation, or pinpoint where one cause begins and another
ends.

The ICRP recommends keeping radiation exposure down to 1 millisievert
per year and up to 20 millisieverts in a short-term emergency, a
standard that takes into account the lessons of Chernobyl.

“Health risks from annual radiation exposure of 20 millisieverts, the
current level for issuance of orders to evacuate an affected area, are
quite small particularly when compared against the risks from other
carcinogenic factors,” the ICRP says.

The risk of getting cancer at 20 millisieverts raises the already
existing 25 percent chance by an estimated 0.1 percent, according to
French ICRP member Jacques Lochard, who visits Japan often to consult
on Fukushima.

While that’s low, he says it’s not zero, so his view is that you
should do all you can to reduce exposure.

Kazuo Sakai, a Japanese ICRP member, said he was interested in
debunking that generally accepted view. Known as the “linear no
threshold” model of radiation risk, the ICRP-backed position considers
radiation harmful even at low doses with no threshold below which
exposure is safe.

Sakai called that model a mere “tool,” and possibly not scientifically
sound.

He said his studies on salamanders and other animal life since the
Fukushima disaster have shown no ill effects, including genetic
damage, and so humans, exposed to far lower levels of radiation, are
safe.

“No serious health effects are expected for regular people,” he said.

The parliamentary investigation found that utilities have repeatedly
tried to push Japanese ICRP members toward a lenient standard on
radiation from as far back as 2007.

Internal records at the Federation of Electric Power Companies
obtained by the investigative committee showed officials rejoicing
over how their views were getting reflected in ICRP Japan statements.

Even earlier, Sakai received utility money for his research into low-
dose radiation during a 1999-2006 tenure at the Central Research
Institute of Electric Power Industry, an organization funded by the
utilities.

But he said that before his hiring he anticipated pressures to come up
with research favorable to the nuclear industry and he made it clear
his science would not be improperly influenced.

Niwa, a professor at Fukushima Medical University, said that residents
need to stay in Fukushima if at all possible, partly because they
would face discrimination in marriage elsewhere in Japan from what he
said were unfounded fears about radiation and genetic defects.

Setting off such fears are medical checks on the thyroids of Fukushima
children that found some nodules or growths that are not cancerous but
not normal.

No one knows for sure what this means, but Yoshiharu Yonekura,
president of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences and an
ICRP member, brushes off the worries and says such abnormalities are
common.

The risk is such a non-concern in his mind that he says with a smile:
“Low-dose radiation may be even good for you.”

SOURCE: http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/scientists-setting-radiation-exposure-limits-took-utility-money-probe

------------------

Money talks and bullshit works ...

[Taka]

US nuclear test condemned by Iran, Japan

Iran has strongly condemned the US for carrying out a nuclear test in
Nevada this week, saying the move threatens world peace and shows a
hypocritical set of double standards set by Washington when it comes
to nuclear research.
­The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the Wednesday detonation proves
that US foreign policy relies heavily on the use of nuclear weapons,
disregarding UN calls for global disarmament, PressTV reports.
The experiment also drew criticism from Japan, with Hiroshima Mayor
Kazumi Matsui wondering why the Obama administration carried out the
test, despite saying he would “seek a nuclear-free world.”
The test proves that the US “could use nuclear weapons anytime,” said
Hirotami Yamada, who heads the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council.
On Friday it was announced that the Nevada National Security Site had
successfully detonated plutonium in a deep shaft Wednesday to test the
safety and effectiveness of US nuclear weapons, National Nuclear
Security Administration officials said.
The Pollux subcritical experiment was carried out by scientists at the
Los Alamos, New Mexico national laboratory and the Sandia National
Laboratories and involved a tiny sample of plutonium bomb material.
Subcritical nuclear experiments have been conducted in the US since
1997 in order to help scientists understand how plutonium ages in the
stockpile.
They use chemical explosives to blow up bits of nuclear materials
designed to stop just short of erupting into a nuclear chain reaction,
also known as a criticality.

The latest test used new diagnostic equipment that enabled researchers
to collect more data then ever before.

“This is a significant diagnostics advancement,” Darwin Morgan,
spokesman for the Nevada National Nuclear Security Site, was quoted as
saying by the Las Vegas Review Journal.
Officials claimed that the test was carried out to provide for the
secure storage of nuclear warheads.
International inspectors were not allowed to witness the experiment,
as Washington has prevented access to its test site since the late
1990s.

SOURCE: http://rt.com/news/us-nuclear-test-nevada-criticism-582/

-----------------------

Looks like Obama celebrates his victory in the same style as Kim Il
Jong ... T

[Taka]

FDA quietly increases allowed radiation doses of meats for human
consumption

FDA increases the amount of ionizing radiation that can be applied to
poultry products such as chicken by 50 percent, bumping the dosage up
to 4.5 kilograys (kGy) of radiation from the previous 3.0 kGy.

SOURCE: http://www.naturalnews.com/038255_radiation_meats_FDA.html

[Taka]

Japan media reported spike in radiation releases at nuclear fuel plant
after recent M7.3 quake

Nikkei, the news service, is reporting that at the fuel processing
plant [in Aomori], which is nowhere near the center of the earthquake,
there was also a spike in radiation releases.

SOURCE: http://enenews.com/japan-media-reported-spike-radiation-releases-nuclear-fuel-plant-after-recent-m73-quake-video

-----------------

Angry shaking plutonium on the Devil's islands ... T

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nied4maps-test

[Taka]

Low Dose Radiation Dangers/Symptoms For Children And Adults
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/p/low-dose-radiation-dangers-for-children.html

Jeffrey Patterson MD on Nuclear Power and Human Health; via A Green
Road http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/05/jeffrey-patterson-md-on-nuclear-power.html

Dr. Ernest Sternglass PhD; Childhood Cancers/Deaths Caused By Nuclear
Power Plants; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-ernest-sternglass-childhood-cancer.html


Dr. Chris Busby; Consequences of Burning Radioactive Waste In Japan;
via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-chris-busby-consequences-of-burning.html


Dr. Gorden Edwards PhD; Nuclear Power, Hope or Hoax Speech; via A
Green Road http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-gorden-edwards-nuclear-power-hope-or.html

Symptoms Of Low Dose Radiation Exposure; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/11/symptoms-of-low-dose-radiation-exposure.html

Hot Particles (Fuel Fleas) From Fukushima Continue To Circulate
Globally; via A Green Road http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/hot-particles-from-fukushima-continue.html

Fukushima Nano Bucky Balls Weaponized With Uranium, Plutonium, And
Cesium; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/10/bucky-balls-and-fukushima-what-is-danger.html

Low dose radiation causing changes in children; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/radiation-causing-unusual-changes-whats.html

On Fukushima Beach Movie Parts 1 - 4; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/10/on-fukushima-beach-movie-parts-1-4.html

Children's Cancer Rate Is Increasing Every Year; WHY?; via A Green
Road http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/10/childrens-cancer-rate-is-increasing.html

Global Infant Mortality Numbers Due To Out Of Control Fukushima
Nuclear Fires; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/09/number-of-global-infant-mortality.html

Summary of Negative Health Effects Of Low Dose Radiation On Children
Around Chernobyl; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/low-dose-chernobyl-and-fukushima.html

The Petkau Effect And Low Dose Radiation Harm Caused To Humans,
Plants, Animals; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-petkau-effect-and-low-dose.html

Tokyo; is it safe to live in or visit? via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/tokyo-is-it-safe-to-visit-or-live-in.html

Depleted Uranium Effects In The Human Body; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/depleted-uranium-effects-in-human-body.html

Radium Girls And Radium Dials; Ottowa Illinois, Death City; via A
Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/radium-girls-radium-dials-ottowa.html

How Dangerous Is 400-600 Pounds Of Plutonium Nano Particle Dust
Liberated By Fukushima? Via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-dangerous-is-400-600-pounds-of.html

Karen Silkwood, An Anti Nuclear Industry Matyr; via A Green Road Blog
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/09/karen-silkwood.html

75% US Nuclear Plants Leaking Toxic Tritium Radiation Into Drinking
Water Supply; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/75-us-nuclear-plants-leaking-toxic.html

Child Leukemia, Breast, Thyroid Cancer Rates Increase RADICALLY Near
Nuclear Power Plants; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/10/child-leukemia-breast-thyroid-cancer.html

How Cesium And Strontium 90 Kills Children (German w English CC) via A
Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/german-how-cesium-and-strontium-90.html

Decontamination: Losing the Sheltering Trees; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/11/decontamination-losing-sheltering-trees.html

Fukushima through the Eyes of Children; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/10/fukushima-through-eyes-of-children.html

Radon Dangers; Hormesis Explored; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/radon-dangers-and-hormesis.html

Food Irradiation; Consequences and Negative Health Effects; via A
Green Road http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/12/food-irradiation-consequences-and.html

The Children Beyond Chernobyl Movie; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/children-beyond-chernobyl.html

Chernobyl and After - The Coverup Exposed; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/06/chernobyl-and-after-coverup-exposed.html

Radiation, Smokers And Tobacco; What Is The Danger? via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/05/radiation-smokers-and-tobacco-what-is.html

Fukushima? Hundreds of Flight Attendents Suffer Hair Loss, Skin
Lesions; via A Green Road http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/05/fukushima-hundreds-of-flight-attendents.html

Cancer – The Forbidden Cures; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/05/cancer-forbidden-cures.html

Lethal Dangers of CT Scans And X-Rays; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/05/lethal-danger-of-ct-scans-and-x-rays.html

A Green Road Beyond Nuclear Library; access all videos and articles by
clicking on the Pages link at; www.agreenroadblog.com

[Taka]

TEPCO shares soar 33% after LDP's win

"The nuclear village, the corrupt, the incompetent and the rich -
these are the true winners in this election. Tepco,s share price is a
good indicator of that. Well done Japan."

"Just wait and see where Japan and Germany are respectively ten years
from now. Japan has learned nothing."

MORE AT: http://www.japantoday.com/category/business/view/tepco-shares-soar-33-after-ldps-win

---------------------------

"Fantastic (literally) results for flag-waving Liberal (joke)
Democratic (joke) Party under the leader whose leadership ability was
supposedly proven by fast-eating the pork cutlet on curry & rice and
grabbing a train seat from a senior citizen"

"But now, the pork-cutlet president of LDP has already declared his
first priority is (drum rolls please...):

Change the Constitution.

Why? Because it is his pet project. What does he want to change?
Article 9, about Japan renouncing wars. And any reference to
"fundamental human rights" Why does he want to do it? Because now he
can, he has "the mandate"! But that's a whole another very disturbing
and depressing topic later.

I'm seriously worried that the Nuclear Regulatory Authority will be
disbanded under the LDP rule, and their scientific, truthful work of
examining and recognizing active faults in the nuclear power plants in
Japan (in Tsuruga and Higashidori so far) will be nullified."

SOURCE: http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2012/12/japanese-election-voter-turnout-at-5932.html

[Taka]

On Dec 18, 5:55 am, None Given <trigonometry1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Article 9, about Japan renouncing wars.
>

> Right on time according to Ibn Khaldun. It has been two generations
> since WW2. The WW2 generation is passing away and so its lessons.
> History will start to cycle towards a repeat of sorts though this
> time China maybe stronger if they don't run out youth and time.
> Then again Japan has same problem doesn't it?

The LDP president who can fast-eat curry and rice with pork cutlet on
top, who can steal a seat from a senior citizen on JR train and
pretend he's asleep after scolding him for scolding him, and a third-
generation politician whose grandfather, having been arrested as
"Class-A war criminal" after the World War II, was somehow escaped
execution and later became the prime minister of Japan, wants to
change the Japanese Constitution.

READ MORE AT: http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2012/12/victorious-abes-priority-amend.html

[Taka]

http://enenews.com/shock-officials-make-mandatory-fukushima-rice-school-lunches

"…What do you call large groups of psychopaths killing their own
children, by the thousands?.."

Democracy?

A Regime of Lunatics….

[Nun Giver]

The USA has it own set of lunatics. The bastards that used the
rockets scientists of Nazi regime. Then there are radioisotopes
sent up the chimneys of Hanford and out the outlets into the
Columbia. I've family members that likely died from these
wonders of the modern age and friends amongst the tribes
that ate the poisons of this history.


Trees planted in a row and 500 year old......Japan
Now radioisotopes doing the count down.

I feel old........................Trig

[Taka]

Australian uranium miners are positive that the reactors in Japan will
be back on shortly under the LDP administration, as they are certain
that US$100 million a day spent on extra coal, oil and gas is simply
unsustainable for Japan. Australia is here to help, they say.

Sydney Morning Herald reports the shares of Paladin soared more than
8% on Monday following the Japanese election results.

Producers bullish on Japanese demand

GLOBAL uranium demand is set to rebound as Japan's nuclear reactors
are gradually switched back on by the new Liberal Democratic Party
government, elected over the weekend.

Greg Hall, managing director of junior Toro Energy, said Japan had
been spending an additional $US100 million a day on extra coal, oil
and gas, which represented a ''very, very high cost''.

After the weekend's election, he said the country now had the
political will to restart its reactors. A new independent safety
authority would be in place by April and Japan's nuclear power
capacity would be restored through 2013-15.

Shares in uranium producers Paladin Energy and Rio Tinto's Energy
Resources Australia surged on Monday - by 8 per cent and 5 per cent
respectively - and the spot price of uranium oxide neared $US44 a
pound.

Paladin Energy chief John Borshoff predicted Germany, too, would
eventually return to the nuclear power fold. ''Germany can't survive
on a no-nuclear basis with all the countries around it pouring
electricity into the country. How could Japan survive as an island
country?''

Mr Borshoff said it was impossible for Japan to do without 27 per cent
of its electricity-generating capacity. ''We've been working on the
basis the nuclear programs will resume in some modified form. Germany
have set an irreversible path but I believe in eight-10 years they'll
be back on the drawing board.''

UBS resources analyst Glyn Lawcock welcomed the Japanese news saying
it had been a ''torrid'' 18 months for uranium markets since the
closure of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor after last year's Japanese
earthquake and tsunami.

Japan shut its fleet of 54 reactors in the wake of the partial
meltdown, causing power shortages and a rise in energy prices as coal,
oil and gas made up the shortfall.

Spot uranium prices fell from their pre-Fukushima level of about $US65/
lb to a low of $US40.80 in November and have recovered somewhat since.

Mr Lawcock said until recently investors had been concerned that
Japan, which had deferred some deliveries of uranium as stockpiles
rose, would turn around and become a net seller into the world market.
Paladin was better placed than ERA to benefit, he said, because three-
quarters of its output would be sold at prices linked to a rising spot
market.

UBS commodities analyst Tom Price said the Fukushima Daiichi reactor
was one of Japan's oldest and slated for closure within two years.
''Fukushima was a genuine tragedy but nuclear is a genuine alternative
for baseload power stations to coal, and relatively cheap, once
built,'' he said.

The indefinite deferral of BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam expansion, and
the re-election of the LDP in Japan, were ''two bull points'' for the
uranium price and UBS was forecasting a recovery to $US50/lb in 2013,
and $US55/lb in 2014 and a long-term price of $US65/lb, he said.

Toro Energy is expecting a decision this week from federal Environment
Minister Tony Burke on its 100 per cent-owned Wiluna uranium mine in
Western Australia. Toro shares were unchanged on Monday at 11.5¢.

"Mr Borshoff said it was impossible for Japan to do without 27 per
cent of its electricity-generating capacity" ??

Mr. Borshoff clearly isn't aware (or chooses not to be aware) that
Japan has been doing without the so-called 27% of electricity-
generating capacity ever since March 11, 2011, and all it has suffered
was a manufactured threat of rolling blackouts thanks to then-Chief
Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano and NISA's Nishimura.

"UBS commodities analyst Tom Price...'Fukushima was a genuine tragedy
but nuclear is a genuine alternative for baseload power stations to
coal, and relatively cheap, once built'"??

Nuclear power plants needs electricity from other power plants to
operate, not at all suitable for baseload power stations. And for him
to say nuclear is cheap once the plant is built, I suppose he is
assuming an accident will never happen.

Mr. Greg Hall, managing director of junior Toro Energy talks about the
"political will to restart the reactors".

LDP won two-thirds of the seats by getting votes of only 25% of
eligible voters (or 42% of votes actually cast). It's hardly a
mandate, but yes political will will be there, which has hardly
anything to do with what the majority of the citizens want.

Mr. Hall says one thing that greatly distresses me: new independent
safety authority will be in place by April. Hmmm. Either he doesn't
know about the Nuclear Regulatory Authority that exists already, or
the current Nuclear Regulatory Authority will be ditched, as I've been
fearing all along.

SOURCE: http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2012/12/australia-is-celebrating-japans-ldp-win.html

[John H. Gohde]

On Dec 17, 8:03 pm, Taka <taka0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://enenews.com/shock-officials-make-mandatory-fukushima-rice-scho...

>
> "…What do you call large groups of psychopaths killing their own
> children, by the thousands?.."
>
> Democracy?
>
> A Regime of Lunatics….

Much like a looney Science Pscho talking to himself on these ngs, No?

[John H. Gohde]

On Dec 8, 8:43 pm, Taka <taka0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Scientists setting radiation exposure limits took utility money: probe

What goes around, comes around ... even for countries!

Fukushima was justice on the cosmic scale of life.

Let the dead bury the dead, is what I say. :(

[Taka]

“A recent study was prepared for Greenpeace Germany by international
nuclear safety expert Dr. Helmut Hirsch. Dr. Hirsch’s assessment,
based on data published by the French government’s radiation
protection agency (IRSN) and the Austrian government’s Central
Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) found that the total
amount of unstable radionuclides Iodine-131 and Caesium-137 released
between March 11 and March 23 has been so high that the Fukushima
crisis already equates to three INES 7 incidents.

Release of radiation from the stricken reactors has reached 10,000
teraBequerels (10,000 trillion Bequerels) per hour, measured for
radioactive Iodine-131.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24292

“The uranium bomb which the United States dropped on Hiroshima at the
end of World War II released 89 tera becquerels. It killed 140,000
people – many instantly, others within weeks of the blast as they
succumbed to severe radiation burns.”

http://voices.yahoo.com/fukushimas-nuclear-disaster-radiation-released-was-9025493.html

So, a rough estimate is that Fukushima is spewing the equivalent of
112 Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs worth of radiation every hour, of
every day.

That’s 981,120 atomic bombs a year going off worth of radiation into
our biosphere.

SOURCE:
http://enenews.com/report-nuclear-pollution-from-fukushima-to-hit-u-s-in-2015-impact-strength-of-cesium-137-on-west-coast-is-as-high-as-4-percent-due-to-strong-currents

[John H. Gohde]

On Jan 25, 9:11 am, Taka <taka0...@gmail.com> wrote:

> That’s 981,120 atomic bombs a year going off worth of radiation into
> our biosphere.

Kindly, clean up YOUR mess!

[Taka]

On Jan 26, 12:38 am, None Given <trigonometry1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So when I we quit eating salmon? I suppose the marine derived fatty acid
> supplements would be safer as this would eliminate the radioactive Cs.
> When does this cause a collapse in the marine environment?

Don't worry, the Govt can raise the "safety" limits as long as it
doesn't obviously kill you within their term in office ... Nobody
cares and can prove in court the long term effects and it's good for
the evolution of human species as a whole! Like Communism, what is
good for the society must be also good for the individual ...

Taka

[Taka]

Smog from China spurs new gov't guidelines on going outside

The Environment Ministry has announced that it will recommend the
public do not venture outside unless necessary on days on which fine
particulate air pollution is high.

Particulate air pollution is believed to be coming from China to
Japan. The smog has been dubbed PM2.5 in Japan. These particles, which
are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in size, tend to penetrate into the
lungs and the circulatory system. A study published in the Journal of
the American Medical Association indicates that PM2.5 leads to high
plaque deposits in arteries, causing vascular inflammation and a
hardening of the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks and other
cardiovascular problems.

Fuji TV reported Tuesday that the Environment Ministry says it is
considering recommending people do not go outside unless necessary
when the airborne density exceeds 35 micrograms per cubic liter. It
will also recommend avoiding the use of ventilation while at home.
Separate recommendations are to be drawn up for those with a history
of heart and lung problems.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that fine particulate
air pollution causes mortality from cardiopulmonary disease, mortality
from cancer of the trachea, bronchus, and lung, and mortality from
acute respiratory infections in children under 5 years of age.
Researchers suggest that even short-term exposure at elevated
concentrations could significantly contribute to heart disease.

The ministry claims that there is insufficient data to determine the
potential health problems that may be caused by an increase in fine
particulate air pollution. However, it has announced plans to call on
130 local governments to set up monitoring stations to aid future
research.

Meanwhile, the ministry said its website has been overloaded as
worried users log on to try to find out what is coming their way.
“Access to our air-pollution monitoring system has been almost
impossible since last week, and the telephone here has been constantly
ringing because worried people keep asking us about the impact on
health,” said an environment ministry official.

Pictures of Beijing and other Chinese cities shrouded in thick,
choking smog played out across television screens in Japan last week.
News programs have broadcast maps showing a swirl of pollution
gathering strength across China and then spreading out over the ocean
toward Japan.

Pinks, reds and oranges that denote the highest concentrations form a
finger of smog heading toward Kyushu.

Toshihiko Takemura, an associate professor of Kyushu University who
runs an air pollution monitoring site, said “the impact of air
pollution originating from China on Japan was scientifically
discovered more than a decade ago. Especially in Kyushu, the level of
air pollution has been detectable in everyday lives since a few years
ago.”

Takemura said that people with respiratory diseases, as well as small
children, should take extra care to avoid the problems.

SOURCE: http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/smog-from-china-spurs-new-govt-guidelines-on-going-outside

------------------

Fortunately, the Chinese NPPs are too young to go boom and affect the
downwinders ... Funny though that no one is talking about the
Fukushima hot particles stuck in people's lungs, it's a taboo and all
cancers will be blamed on the Chinese PM2.5 scrape goat.

Taka

[John H. Gohde]

On Feb 22, 4:08 am, Taka <taka0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Smog from China spurs new gov't guidelines on going outside

Is Fukushima part of a cosmic cleansing process?

Just remember, Taka, to eat plenty of fatty Fukushima pork!

[Taka]

Bluefin Tuna Caught Near California Still Radioactive Years After
Fukushima

[...] researchers have found trace levels of radiation still lingering
in [bluefin tuna] flesh almost two years after the catastrophe at the
nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. And the 50 tuna they studied were
all caught off the coast of California, 6,000 miles east of Japan,
where they were born.

The tuna that registered the highest levels of radioactivity were
those that migrated to California in 2011, soon after the accident,
but those that migrated in 2012 also demonstrated above-normal levels
of radiation. Monte Burke at Forbes writes that the results of the
study suggest “there is still a high level of radiation in the waters
near the Fukushima plant most likely because, as marine chemist, Ken
Buessler, asserts, the plant is still leaking radiation into the ocean
nearly two years later.”

[...] it’s alarming that radioactivity is still popping up. [...]

SOURCE:
http://enenews.com/huffpost-alarming-that-radioactivity-is-still-showing-up-in-bluefin-tuna-near-california-contamination-most-likely-still-leaking-from-fukushima

[Taka]

READ: http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2013/02/foodstuffs-from-tohoku-are-just.html

[Taka]

DNA damage and health effects

DNA is deemed the most important target of radiation leading to
effects on health. Ionizing radiation causes several types of DNA
damage directly or indirectly. While the repair machinery in the cell
processes the damage, some areas could remain unrepaired or be
misrepaired.

When unrepaired/misrepaired damage unduly accumulates in a cell, or
when the damage results in a lethal mutation, the cell deteriorates
and dies. This can manifest as impaired organ function and a
destruction of tissue structure. This kind of effect is called an
adverse tissue reaction or deterministic effect. If the fraction of
deteriorated/dead cells in the tissue remains small, no symptoms will
become clinically evident since the defects are compensated for by the
large majority of normal cells. Hence, adverse tissue reactions appear
at doses above a certain threshold, and follow the dose response
illustrated in Fig. 4A. The threshold value differs among tissues. The
most sensitive organ is the testis with a threshold dose of 100 mGy
for temporary infertility. An embryo is also sensitive, and
malformation could be induced at doses above 100 mGy during the period
of major organogenesis.(8) In the Fukushima accident, no one seems to
have been exposed to doses above any threshold for tissue reactions,
and this type of effect is not an issue.

Misrepaired DNA damage is not always lethal to cells. The resultant
mutation is often compatible with cell viability. Although most viable
mutated cells are thought to have little or no influence on health,
some could contribute to malignant transformation. Germ cells could
also carry critical mutations that result in heritable diseases in
later generations. Given that cancers and heritable effects arise from
a single mutated cell, their incidence is thought to increase with
dose with no threshold as shown in Fig. 4B. The cancerous and
heritable effects of radiation are collectively called stochastic
effects.

While the nature of radiation-induced DNA damage as well as imperfect
repair forms a strong basis for the linear non-threshold (LNT) dose
response for cancer induction, things may change when higher order
protective functions are taken into account. Misrepaired, mutated
cells could be eliminated by apoptosis, cell competition, and
immunological surveillance. If such protective functions work more
efficiently at lower doses, the dose-response would be non-linear, and
there might be a threshold. Furthermore, some phenomena mainly found
in cultured cells could possibly complicate the situation, including
adaptive responses in cells pre-exposed to a low dose of radiation,
bystander effects in cells that are not directly irradiated, and
genomic instability that manifests in the progeny of irradiated cells
many generations after exposure. Currently it is unclear to what
extent these three phenomena are active in vivo, and how they are
inter-related

Delayed effects of low level acute irradiation and chronic
environmental radioactive contamination on DNA lymphocytes of people
living in Dolon, a settlement located in the vicinity of the
Semipalatinsk nuclear test site (Kazakhstan).
[link to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

[snip]

These results suggest that people exposed 50 years ago to relatively
small doses of external irradiation and/or still living in an
environment contaminated by small amounts of long life radionuclides,
still present DNA damage which is in agreement with other
cytogenetical studies performed at the same site, on the same
population.

MORE: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16797057

[Taka]

Nuclear Expert Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Energy Education: One of
the things I’ve discovered when I look at the drawings, the accident
movies, you see the plume going down on the ground, which didn’t
happen at Chernobyl. Chernobyl burned upward […]

At Fukushima the plume goes down, it’s something called ‘Building Wake
Effect’. So I think that the exposures in close, in the 20 and 30 and
40 km range are actually going to be higher than we saw at Chernobyl
and because of the fact all of the stacks and everything that was
designed to get that radioactivity up in the air were destroyed
because they had no electricity to run the fans. [...] you’ll have to
listen to my speech*.

The Unit 3 low lying MOX plume on March 16-17, 2011 that meandered
slowly across the Tokyo Metroplex is of enormous interest to
independent researchers, but well-shunned by Japanese nucleocrats.

SOURCE:
http://enenews.com/gundersen-fukushima-plume-down-ground-chernobyl-due-building-wake-effect-radiation-exposure-going-be-higher-people-nearby-audio

[Taka]

Radioactive Fish Found In California: Contamination From Fukushima
Disaster Still Lingers

[...] A report released earlier this month by researchers at Stanford
University’s Hopkins Marine Station found that bluefin tuna caught
just off the California coast tested positive for radiation stemming
from the incident. [...]

Daniel Madigan, one of the study’s authors, explained that this study
shouldn’t give people pause about eating tuna caught in the Pacific.
“We’re exposed to radiation in almost all of the food we eat,” he
explained.

“Cesium itself isn’t safe, but the size dose that someone would get
from eating this tuna would be,” Madigan added [...]

Interestingly, this radioactive contamination may ultimately prove to
be a boon to the species.

[...] as Forbes notes, the perception that bluefin tuna are
contaminated with radiation may lead more restaurants shying away from
serving the fish, which would likely go a long way tamping down on the
overfishing [...]

SOURCE: http://enenews.com/huffpost-radioactive-fish-found-in-california-is-it-a-good-thing

------------------------

Thanks nuclear industry for protecting the wildlife from the human
predators!

Taka

[Taka]

Brace for impact and NPP meltdowns this summer (at least according to
Paul LaViolette):

http://starburstfound.org/superwaveblog/

[Taka]

Should We Be More Worried About Nuclear Sushi?

If you’re like me, you prefer your sushi slathered with just enough
spicy wasabi to inflict a painfully pleasurable jolt of heat. But even
if you’re not a fan of the bright green, searingly hot sushi-bar
condiment, I’m guessing you’d still probably opt for it over a far
less appetizing source of heat: radiation. Specifically, radioactive
metals that were deposited into the sea near the coastal city of
Fukushima, Japan, after the nuclear accident that took place there two
years ago this week.

In two separate instances in 2011 and 2012, quantities of ionizing
radiation were found in samples of bluefin tuna that had migrated from
waters near the site of the Fukushima disaster, where the large fish
spawn, to the southern California coastline, where they were
eventually caught. In the first of these instances, Daniel Madigan, a
marine biology graduate student at Stanford, bought 15 tuna steaks
from dockside fishermen in San Diego and sent them off to a lab for
testing. Madigan knew the migration patterns of the bluefin; at the
time, which was less than six months after the accident, he was acting
on little more than a hunch.

When the lab results came back, however, he was shocked to learn that
every one of the 15 steaks had tested positive for the presence of two
radioactive metals that had leached into the ocean after the meltdown:
cesium-134 and its far more dangerous cousin, cesium-137. As a more
methodologically formal follow-up, last year Madigan tested 50 more
slabs of SoCal-caught tuna to see if he could still pick up any cesium
signals. He did. (A report based on the study was published last month
in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology,
which is published by the American Chemical Society.)

Stories you’ll read about Madigan and his unsettling findings all have
one thing in common: buried somewhere, usually about halfway down the
page, is a paragaph telling you not to get too freaked out about the
idea of hot tuna, given several facts. According to Madigan's own
report, the cesium levels he found in the tuna gave off less
radioactivity than other, naturally occurring isotopes that could be
found in the fish. The broader implication is that we’re all being
exposed to varying levels of naturally occurring radiation (often
referred to as “background radiation”) as we go about our daily lives.
This “Don’t panic!” narrative is then typically reinforced with a
comforting-sounding comparison between the amount of radiation you’re
likely to ingest by eating Fukushima-irradiated tuna and the amount
you’re likely to ingest by, say, eating a banana (which is rich in
potassium, a radioactive isotope).

But maybe it’s actually worth unpacking that comparison just a bit.

For starters, the potassium in bananas -- levels of which our bodies,
via homeostasis, calibrate and keep at a relative constant -- can't be
compared in good faith to a truly nasty radionuclide like cesium-137,
which is commonly found in the immediate aftermath of nuclear-reactor
accidents and nuclear-weapons tests. (To get severe radiation
poisoning from bananas, you’d have to eat about 20 million of them. In
1987, a small cake of cesium-137 that had been pried out of a
discarded piece of medical equipment ended up killing four people who
came in contact with it, and sickened hundreds more.)

But even more significantly, these comparisons rarely, if ever, cite
in any depth the theory that has become a cornerstone of the modern
science surrounding low-dose radiation exposure and its role in the
eventual development of cancer. In a nutshell, this theory, which was
developed in the late 1950s and is known today as the linear no-
threshold model (LNT), holds that there is no agreed-upon “safety
threshold” for ionizing radiation, and that in terms of cancer risk,
there’s no real difference between one big dose of radiation and a
bunch of little doses. As the National Academy of Sciences concluded
in its 2006 review committee report: “A comprehensive review of the
biology data led the committee to conclude that the risk [from
radiation exposure] would continue in a linear fashion at lower doses
without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to
cause a small increase in risk to humans.”

The LNT model isn’t without its doubters and skeptics. But as of right
now, those skeptics don’t include organizations such as the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, and others considered to be among the more trusted sources
of scientific opinion. Taken together, these official affirmations of
the LNT should be thought of as representing the scientific consensus
-- at least until such time as the voices of dissent begin to
outnumber the voices of agreement. But that day seems unlikely.

So if the LNT is good enough to be accepted by the likes of the EPA,
and low-dose radiation is showing up in bluefin tuna that’s presumably
making it to market, then why aren’t federal agencies like the Food
and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration suddenly making lots of announcements about suspect
sashimi? Two months after the Fukushima disaster -- which, it’s worth
remembering, represented the largest accidental release of
radioactivity into the ocean in human history -- these two agencies,
in a joint announcement, declared that the presence of “longer-lived
radionuclides such as Cs-137” had not been detected by the FDA “in any
fish imported from Japan,” and also that “longer-lived radionuclides
found by Japanese tests have been at levels below the FDA threshold”
considered to be unsafe -- and, even then, not found in any tuna.
Madigan’s research would seem to belie that assertion.

The answer may be, quite simply, that when it comes to things nuclear,
an official policy of non-alarmism tends to trump one that would give
consumers as much information as they’d like -- and deserve -- to
have. In a special 2012 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
dedicated to the single topic of low-dose radiation, Gordon Thompson,
executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies,
wrote about this phenomenon:

Within the policy realm, experts should not support the LNT hypothesis
and then distance themselves from its logical implications. They
should, therefore, recognize the existence of real, but masked, health
effects at low radiation doses, albeit with some quantitative
uncertainty. […] Public fear does not provide a reason to hide the
logical implications of the LNT hypothesis. An attempt by experts to
hide these implications is likely to be counterproductive. The truth
would probably be revealed eventually, leading to diminished public
faith in the relevant experts and in science in general. Ultimately,
public fear could be exacerbated. Also, when experts consider public
fear, they should account for contemporary views on individual agency.
In past years, well-meaning doctors would often withhold a diagnosis
of cancer to avoid alarming a patient. Now, such behavior is generally
regarded as patronizing and obsolete.

In a 2012 ABC News report that ran in the wake of Madigan’s first
bluefin study, Dr. Michael Harbut, director of the Environmental
Cancer Program at Wayne State University’s Karmanos Cancer Institute,
expressed his concern over the same unwillingness of authorities to be
open with the public. “We don’t see people dying left and right all
over the West Coast from radiation poisoning,” Harbut acknowledged.
“But to say this is nothing to worry about is equally irresponsible,
because you have radioactive material ingested by fish, which is in
turn being eaten by people.”

He then added, “I think that the appropriate government agencies have
to appoint appropriately trained people to give the public an honest
assessment. Not something tailor-made for ignorance, like ‘This will
definitely kill you,’ or ‘This poses absolutely no risk to human
health.’ We’ve gone too far in poisoning the world to settle for
simple ‘yesses’ and ‘nos’ like that.”

Understandably, government authorities and scientists don’t want to
unduly alarm citizens and consumers. But their nonchalance regarding
the impacts of low-dose radiation runs counter to the official
scientific consensus. At best it engenders ignorance; at worst it
instills a false sense of security. Both outcomes preclude people from
fully participating in their own health decisions. By glossing over
the accepted science in favor of doling out more smiling assurances,
the reaction these authorities are presumably trying to avoid -- alarm
-- is the one they’ll end up achieving.

SOURCE: http://www.onearth.org/blog/nuclear-sushi

[John H. Gohde]

I prefer no sushi at all.

[Taka]

Radioactive wild boars found in Italy

Turin - Samples taken from 27 wild boars captured in northern Italy
during the hunting season revealed the animals to be radioactive.
Traces of the radioactive isotope cesium-137 exceeded the legal limit
by 10 times.
The Italian Health Ministry carried out routine tests on wild boars in
the Piedmont mountain area and discovered radioactive contamination in
27 boars. According to Sina the Enea Radiation Protection Institute
stated "the cesium-137 is an artificial radionuclide produced by
nuclear fission, and is released from nuclear sites."
To Vima reported Italian Health Minister Renato Balntoutsi said teams
of experts will try to solve the "mystery of cesium" by testing
samples of water and soil in the area. Rabbits, hares and deer will
also be tested for the presence of cesium.
Experts from the regional institution for environmental monitoring
ARPA consider the most likely cause of the radioactive contamination
is from Chernobyl.

SOURCE: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/345364

------------------------

Next watch the gamekeepers! Taka

[John H. Gohde]

On Feb 25, 9:26 pm, Taka <taka0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Radioactive Fish Found In California: Contamination From Fukushima
> Disaster Still Lingers

While Taka glows in the dark, too bad that his posts do NOT. :(

YOU have my condolences.

[Taka]

I had lived in Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture [85km south of
Fukushima Daiichi] at the time of the accident. [...]

After the explosion of the second time, strangeness happened to my
body.

At the time I was attacked by diarrhea and vomiting and nosebleeds.

I was told friend, you’ve been exposed to radioactivity.

And I was measured on the radioactivity instrument on my body.

And then a high number of radiation dose was measured. [...]

TAPWATER in Japan, .43 uSv in just plain tapwater!!! Watch the video.
Scary. TAPWATER means everyone is getting contaminiated. Cesium 137 is
at .35 as I understand from the video. Check it out. For the
gentleman, his count with the device just against his skin, was .63
uSv! He is walking nuclear waste. How will he survive in the future?
This stuff accumulates! PM1704 is the type of geiger counter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uKlLxO7rH8

SOURCE:
http://enenews.com/video-strangeness-happened-to-my-body-after-fukushima-explosion-radioactive-man-still-300-over-background-levels-nosebleeds-vomiting-diarrhea

------------------------------------

No problem with Kimmi exploding some more nukes over the island, if
you can duck and cover to avoid the shockwave ... Far worst would be
his biological or chemical warfare. Take the fatty kid playing with
fire down ASAP! Where is the US Commando, Arnold?

Taka

[John H. Gohde]

On Apr 4, 12:47 pm, Taka <taka0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I had lived in Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture [85km south of
> Fukushima Daiichi] at the time of the accident. [...]
>
> After the explosion of the second time, strangeness happened to my
> body.
>
> At the time I was attacked by diarrhea and vomiting and nosebleeds.
>
> I was told friend, you’ve been exposed to radioactivity.
>
> And I was measured on the radioactivity instrument on my body.
>
> And then a high number of radiation dose was measured. [...]
>
> TAPWATER in Japan, .43 uSv in just plain tapwater!!! Watch the video.
> Scary. TAPWATER means everyone is getting contaminiated. Cesium 137 is
> at .35 as I understand from the video. Check it out. For the
> gentleman, his count with the device just against his skin, was .63
> uSv! He is walking nuclear waste. How will he survive in the future?
> This stuff accumulates! PM1704 is the type of geiger counter.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uKlLxO7rH8
>

> SOURCE:http://enenews.com/video-strangeness-happened-to-my-body-after-fukush...

>
> ------------------------------------
>
> No problem with Kimmi exploding some more nukes over the island, if
> you can duck and cover to avoid the shockwave ...  Far worst would be
> his biological or chemical warfare.  Take the fatty kid playing with
> fire down ASAP!  Where is the US Commando, Arnold?

What is wrong with Japan?

[Taka]

Fukushima fallout sickens U.S. babies

Children born in Pacific coastal states in 2011 may be at greatest
risk.

It's already well known how devastating the March 2011 Fukushima
nuclear reactor meltdown was for Japan -- dramatic spikes in radiation-
related illnesses, an increase in likely cancer deaths over the next
several years, and pollution which may never truly be cleaned up.

A new study suggests what many worldwide have feared -- that the
devastation from the traveling radiation has in fact sickened infants
in other countries, including babies born shortly after the incident
in Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California.

Does this make you feel sick to your stomach? Join the discussion on
Facebook.

The study, conducted by scientists with the Radiation and Public
Health Project, found that babies born shortly after the incident were
28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism than
were children born in those states during the same period one year
earlier. In the rest of the U.S., which received less radioactive
fallout, the risks actually decreased slightly compared with the year
before.

The explosions produced the radioisotope iodine-131, which floated
east over the Pacific Ocean and landed through precipitation on West
Coast states as well as other Pacific countries. The levels of that
isotope were measured in levels hundreds of times greater than
supposedly safe levels. Radioactive iodine accumulates in human
thyroid glands, and, in babies and fetuses, the radiation can stunt
the growth and development of both the body and the brain. That
condition is congenital hypothyroidism (which, luckily, is treatable
when and if detected early).

Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the U.S., and was
especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation,
the study said. Even worse, other conditions affecting babies born in
that time frame may have been caused or worsened by Fukushima, the
researchers said.

"[State and federal] health departments will soon have [data]
available for other 2010 and 2011 indicators of fetal/infant health,
including fetal deaths, premature births, low weight births, neonatal
deaths, infant deaths, and birth defects.”

Scary? You bet. But information is power. If you have a baby born in
March or April 2011 and you live on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. (or
other Pacific countries), ask your pediatrician to test your child for
congenital hypothyroidism -- and anything else he or she believes
could have been caused by radiation.

http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=28599

Elevated airborne beta levels in Pacific/West Coast US States and
trends in hypothyroidism among newborns after the Fukushima nuclear
meltdown

Joseph J. Mangano, Janette D. Sherman

Various reports indicate that the incidence of congenital
hypothyroidism is increasing in developed nations, and that improved
detection and more inclusive criteria for the disease do not explain
this trend entirely. One risk factor documented in numerous studies is
exposure to radioactive iodine found in nuclear weapons test fallout
and nuclear reactor emissions. 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).
Further analysis, in the US and in other nations, is needed to better
understand any association between iodine exposure from Fukushima-Dai-
ichi and congenital hypothyroidism risk.
DOI: 10.4236/ojped.2013.31001

[John H. Gohde]

Who lives in a Pacific coastal states? Certainly NOT moi. :)

YES, Pacific coastal states should sue Japan into oblivion.

[Taka]

On Apr 7, 8:49 pm, "John H. Gohde" <john.h.go...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Who lives in a Pacific coastal states?  Certainly NOT moi.  :)
>
> YES, Pacific coastal states should sue Japan into oblivion.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2013/04/2013482942256998.html

Let's Rock and Roll! All fallout ultimately comes to the US ...

[Taka]

Russia's president says a conflict between the two Koreas could make
the infamous nuclear accident "seem like a fairy tale".

Vladimir Putin said a war in Korea could be more devastating than the
Chernobyl disaster - as Pyongyang was warned against another nuclear
test.

The Russian President said he was "worried about the escalation on the
Korean peninsula, because we are neighbours".

And Mr Putin, who also praised a US decision to postpone a planned
missile test as part of efforts to reduce tensions, said he feared a
situation worse than that in Chernobyl after a nuclear accident that
was later linked to thousands of deaths.

"If, God forbid, something happens, Chernobyl which we all know a lot
about, may seem like a child's fairy tale," he said.

"Is there such a threat or not? I think there is ... I would urge
everyone to calm down ... and start to resolve the problems that have
piled up for many years there at the negotiating table."

His intervention came after United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-
moon urged the North not to carry out a new nuclear test - saying it
would be a "provocative" act.

South Korea raised fears that a fourth test was due amid reports of
increased activity at the main atomic test site Punggye-ri, but later
backtracked.

Its Defence Ministry said: "We found there had been no unusual
movements that indicated it wanted to carry out a nuclear test."

Mr Ban said: "The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea cannot
go on like this, confronting and challenging the authority of the (UN)
Security Council and the international community.

"I am urging them to refrain from taking any further provocative
measures."

China's Foreign Ministry also said it wanted peace on the Korean
peninsula, not war, adding a proper solution to the crisis was the
responsibility of all parties.

The Pentagon has already strengthened its missile defences in response
to the repeated threats made by Pyongyang in recent weeks.

However, the New York Times has reported that a more thorough plan -
setting out a limited but forceful response to any future provocation
- has been drawn up by the US and South Korea.

It said US officials had outlined a "counter-provocation" plan that
would see a "response in kind" that would hit the source of any North
Korean attack with similar weapons.

Meanwhile, North Korea said it was withdrawing all workers and
suspending operations at its joint industrial zone with South Korea,
the only surviving symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

South Korea has appealed for North Korea to allow access to the
Kaesong joint industrial park, six miles inside its borders.

The North has banned South Korean managers and personnel from crossing
the border to enter the complex since last Wednesday.

So far 13 of the 123 South Korean firms operating there have been
forced to halt production due to fuel and raw material shortages.

SOURCE: http://news.sky.com/story/1075136/north-korea-putin-in-chernobyl-warning

North Korea could become the most radioactive place on earth...They
will finally be #1

Chemical Weapons will cause more death than Nukes. NK likely has
enough of those to saturate South Korea. Dumb Artillery shells are
cheap and plentiful.

---------------------------

Perhaps, Fukushima was just an exercise or warning. The real hell
gets loose once the Yanks start bombing the NK's running nuclear
reactors or the fatty pig manages to infiltrate the main land and gets
hands on the cooling systems in the US reactors.

Taka

[John H. Gohde]

Kim Jong-un aspires to be a Dick-Head just like Taka.

[Taka]

http://fukushimaemergencywhatcanwedo.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/fukushima-on-hit-list-for-north-korea.html

Fukushima or better the Nuclear Ginza with Monju may be a sitting duck
for Kim ... He doesn't need to have much nuclear material, there is
plenty of it on the Jap archipelago just "waiting" to be hit.
Remember hell gets loose when the water pumps stop ....

[Taka]

On Apr 9, 4:20 am, "John H. Gohde" <john.h.go...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Kim Jong-un aspires to be a Dick-Head just like Taka.

You might well end up like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQeQWWKKvq4

[Taka]

Tepco Faces Decision to Dump Radioactive Water in Pacific Ocean

[Tepco]’s discovery of leaks in water storage pits at the wrecked
Fukushima atomic station raises the risk the utility will be forced to
dump radioactive water in the Pacific Ocean.

Leaks were found in three of seven pits in the past week, reducing the
options for moving contaminated water from basements of reactor
buildings. [...]

Not Ruled Out

Officials at the utility known as Tepco, including President Naomi
Hirose, have said the company will not “easily” release radiated water
into the ocean, indicating it’s not ruling out the possibility if it
runs out of storage.

“It’s obvious Tepco cannot keep storing water forever as it increases
by 400 tons a day,” said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of the antinuclear
group Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center. That’s why the company
won’t rule out discharge into the sea, Ban said in a telephone
interview. [...]

MORE:
http://enenews.com/bloomberg-tepco-to-dump-radioactive-water-from-fukushima-reactors-into-pacific-its-obvious-they-cant-keep-storing-it-forever

-----------------------------

and they haven't even seen the face of the coriums yet ... 2 years
gone. The Russians are at least not leaking and got the picture of
the Elephant foot ASAP. Japs bullshitting the World, the politicians
cannot money-print out of this radioactive misery ....

[Taka]

Fukushima leaking like a sieve into the Pacific. Where is the old
Japanese craftmanship? It ends like this when they use homeless
people and wageslaves delivered by Yakuza to keep the coriums at
bay ...

http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2013/04/latest-on-fukushima-i-nuke-plant-waste.html

[Taka]

How much radiation will contaminate Japan this time?

http://superofficialnews.com/u-s-stealth-bombers-dropping-leaflets-over-north-korea-warning-of-attack/

[Taka]

‘Consumed in nuclear flames’: N. Korea threatens strike on Tokyo

Pyongyang warned that Tokyo would be its primary target if war broke
out on the Korean Peninsula, if Japan maintains its “hostile posture.”
It also threatened a nuclear strike against the island nation if it
intercepts any North Korean test missiles.

In the comments, carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on
Friday, Pyongyang lambasted Tokyo’s standing orders to shoot down any
North Korean missile heading towards Japan, Seoul-based Yonhap news
agency reports. The agency warned that any “provocative” intervention
on the part of Japan would see Tokyo “consumed in nuclear flames.”

"Japan is always in the cross-hairs of our revolutionary army and if
Japan makes a slightest move, the spark of war will touch Japan
first," KCNA warned.

Speaking in Seoul alongside his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se
on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the rhetoric
emanating from Pyongyang was “unacceptable.”

Kerry, who arrived in South Korea to kick off a four-day diplomatic
tour in East Asia amidst rising tensions in the region, further
insisted the international community "are all united on the fact that
North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power."

"I am here to make it clear today, on behalf of President Obama and
the citizens of the United States and our bilateral security
agreement, that the United States, will, if needed, defend our allies
and defend ourselves."

Kerry continued that any North Korean nuclear missile test would be "a
huge mistake."

"If (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-Un decides to launch a missile,
whether it's across the Sea of Japan or any other direction, he will
be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community."

"It will be a huge mistake for him to do that because it will further
isolate his country," Kerry continued.

His comments mirrored statements made by President Barack Obama, who
met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the Oval Office on
Thursday.

"We both agree that now is the time for North Korea to end the
belligerent approach they have taken and to try to lower
temperatures," Obama told reporters.

"It's important for North Korea, like every other country in the
world, to observe basic rules and norms," he continued.

Mounting Tensions
Kerry's visit coincides with the disclosure of a US Defense
Intelligence Agency report which says North Korea has the
technological know-how to arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear
warhead.

The analysis, disclosed at a congressional hearing in Washington on
Thursday, was rebuffed by Pentagon spokesman George Little.

Little argued "it would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean
regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of
nuclear capabilities referenced" in the DIA report.

The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also concluded
that the report was not in line with America’s other intelligence
agencies.

"Moreover, North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of
capabilities necessary for a nuclear armed missile," Clapper
continued.

On Wednesday, the South Korean military was put on high alert
following intelligence reports from Seoul, Tokyo and Washington that a
North Korean mid-range missile test could occur at any time.

Pyongyang is expected to launch its untested Musudan missile from its
east coast. With a range of 1,800 to 2,180 miles, the missile could
hit the Japanese mainland, as well as the Japanese island of Okinawa
and the US territory of Guam.

On Friday, Japan announced it would permanently deploy Patriot missile
interceptor batteries on Okinawa, where the United States currently
has a total military deployment of some 50,000 personnel.

Japan had initially planned to station the missile batteries in March
2015, but now hopes to place them on the island later this month.
Several other Patriot Advance Capability-3 missile interceptor were
deployed throughout Japan during the past week to defend key military
units and Tokyo.

The US for its part announced last week that it will soon deploy the
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) to Guam in response
to North Korean threats.

The ongoing crisis on the Korean Peninsula was sparked in February,
when North Korea conducted its third nuclear test. The launch was
condemned by the United Nations and much of the international
community, prompting the UN to approve a new round of sanctions in
early March.

Pyongyang reacted to the sanctions by threatening to launch a nuclear
strike against the US.

In late March, Pyongyang declared it had entered a state of war with
its southern neighbor following an earlier decision to withdrawal from
the 60-year armistice that ended the Korean War.

North Korea had previously threatened to pull out of the 1953
armistice if the South did not halt a joint annual military exercise
with the US.

SOURCE: http://rt.com/news/north-korea-tokyo-strike-748/

[Taka]

It will really suck if Japan, of all places, gets hit again with the
worlds 3rd Nuclear attack. How screwed up would that be?

They say things happen in threes.

[John H. Gohde]

Perhaps, if Japan got off its Ass!

[Taka]

Japan is done, after you occupied it and spoiled with the GE nuclear
sh*t! Incapable of anything. Get the US commando to blow the fat head
off ASAP or you will be done too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUP8T7Qar88

[John H. Gohde]

It has finally dawn on moi exactly what Taka is.

Taka is a closet masochist, with Dick-Brain driven desires to self-
mutilate himself.

Don't worry Taka, your secret desires are safe with moi. Just keep
it to Japan, please.

[Taka]

Inhuman Radiation Experiments

[...] Victims included civilians, prison inmates, federal workers,
hospital patients, pregnant women, infants, developmentally disabled
children and military personnel — most of them powerless, poor, sick,
elderly or terminally ill. Eileen Welsome’s 1999 exposé The Plutonium
Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War details
“the unspeakable scientific trials that reduced thousands of men,
women, and even children to nameless specimens.” [...]

In one Vanderbilt U. study, 829 pregnant women were unknowingly fed
radioactive iron. In another, 188 children were given radioactive iron-
laced lemonade. From 1963 to 1971, 67 inmates in Oregon and 64
prisoners in Washington had their testicles targeted with X-rays to
see what doses made them sterile.

At the Fernald State School, mentally retarded boys were fed
radioactive iron and calcium but consent forms sent to parents didn’t
mention radiation. Elsewhere psychiatric patients and infants were
injected with radioactive iodine.

In a rare public condemnation, Clinton Administration Energy Sec.
Hazel O’Leary confessed being aghast at the conduct of the scientists.
She told Newsweek in 1994: “I said, ‘Who were these people and why did
this happen?’ The only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany.” None
of the victims were provided follow-on medical care. [...]

SOURCE:
http://enenews.com/u-s-s-unspeakable-experiments-hundreds-of-pregnant-women-fed-nuclear-material-infants-drink-radioactive-lemonade-only-thing-i-could-think-of-was-nazi-germany-official

[Taka]

On Apr 10, 4:19 pm, Taka <taka0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://fukushimaemergencywhatcanwedo.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/fukushim...

>
> Fukushima or better the Nuclear Ginza with Monju may be a sitting duck
> for Kim ...  He doesn't need to have much nuclear material, there is
> plenty of it on the Jap archipelago just "waiting" to be hit.
> Remember hell gets loose when the water pumps stop ....

Court Turns Down Suit Seeking Suspension Of Oi Nuclear Plant Reactors

OSAKA (Kyodo)--The Osaka District Court on Tuesday turned down a suit
seeking to suspend the operation of two reactors at the Oi power plant
run by Kansai Electric Power Co. in Fukui Prefecture on the Sea of
Japan coast.

-----------------------

Oi is quite hot at this time, hot target for Kim's attack
submarines .....

[Taka]

La Salle Nuclear Plant Nearly Took Out Chicago!

Chicago almost became a glowing radioactive sister city to Fukushima.

Yesterday we broke the story of the La Salle Nuclear plant having to
perform a Fukushima style direct-to-atmosphere venting of the primary
nuclear containment due to a lightening strike. As we indicated at the
time, the amount of radioactivity released is unknown because the
radiation monitors were not on a backup power supply.

Today in a follow on NRC event report, we find out that failures in
the emergency cooling system resulted in the last ditch cooling
attempt of directly venting the radioactive drywell to the atmosphere.
The severity of those failures are underreported in the NRC event
report, because it reads no different than if it the failures had been
discovered during testing instead of being found out in the midst of a
real life emergency resulting in the last ditch cooling effort of
venting.

We explain the situation in more detail in the video, but gist of the
analysis is as follows.

Lightning took out power to both reactors.
Backup generators kicked on, but powering everything would overload
them
The systems which measure how much radiation is being vented from the
plant did not have power.
The reactors lost cooling capability.
Automatic emergency cooling kicked in.
The automated emergency cooling on Unit 2 was failing.
As a last ditch effort, Unit 2 primary containment was vented to the
atmosphere.
The venting cooled and dropped the pressure in Unit 2 enough to
compensate for the failing cooling.
The camel was down to its last failing straw and only fractured its
back; had it broken, Chicago would be aglow.
Radioactive contamination did occur.

MORE: http://pissinontheroses.blogspot.jp/2013/04/alert-la-salle-nuclear-plant-nearly.html

[John H. Gohde]

Taka is a Really Stupid, Lying, Sexist Pig!

Taka thinks that he is brilliant, because he has a science degree.
Actually, Taka is just a culturally insensitive, Penis-Brain moron
from Japan who incorrectly thinks that he can actually communicate in
English without profoundly offending people.

Taka is a Sexist Pig - Original Penis-Brain Post!

http://tinyurl.com/clsxpj6

Taka is a Sexist Pig - Graphic of his original Penis-Brain Post!

http://wp.me/aaWTw-6x

[Taka]

Radioactive Japan: Boy-Wonder Mayor of Osaka City Wants Spent Fuel
Storage in Osaka City, "It's Only Fair"

For the increasingly tired- and petulant-looking boy-wonder mayor aka
Toru Hashimoto, inflicting pain and anguish on Osaka City residents by
burning disaster debris with heavy metals, asbestos, and radioactive
materials in the city he governs is not enough. Now he wants spent
fuel from reactors in Fukui Prefecture's "Nuclear Ginza" to be stored
inside the city, and all he needs is the assurance from the national
government that it is safe to do so.

From Osaka's MBS News (4/27/2013):

Mayor Hashimoto will "consider storing" spent nuclear fuel [in Osaka
City]

In response to Fukui Governor Nishikawa's remark that the areas that
consume electricity should store spent nuclear fuel, Mayor Hashimoto
of Osaka City said he would consider storing it if the safety is
ensured.

Fukui Prefecture is where Ooi Nuclear Power Plant is located, which is
the only one in operation in Japan at this time. Governor Nishikawa
has said about spent nuclear fuel, "Big cities have been consuming
electricity [produced by the nuclear power plants in Fukui
Prefecture]. How about storing the spent fuel temporarily in these
cities?" He has suggested thermal power plants as candidate locations
for spent fuel storage.

Mayor Hashimoto of Osaka City says he would accept spent fuel if the
safety is assured.

"I think it is only fair that the areas that consume electricity
should store spent nuclear fuel. I wonder what the national safety
standard is, but as long as the framework is there, and if that's the
direction, I will explain to the city residents."

Mayor Hashimoto's remark is considered to be about the responsibility
of municipalities that consume electricity, but his abrupt remark is
likely to cause a stir.

Just as burning the disaster debris in the middle of large cities
(often in the middle of residential areas, as is the case in Tokyo)
doesn't make any sense, storing spent fuel "temporarily" in large
cities just because these cities consume more electricity doesn't make
any sense. But this is post-Fukushima Japan where sense has totally
lost its place.

Japan does not have the final disposal site for the spent nuclear
fuel. You know what happens to all these "temporary" storages - they
will become effectively permanent.

As for the boy-wonder's so-called explanation, if it is the same as he
"explained" about the disaster debris burning to worried and incensed
residents, it will be nothing but declaration that he will accept
spent fuel in Osaka City.

SOURCE: http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2013/04/radioactive-japan-boy-wonder-mayor-of.html

[Taka]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vvla33hBWek

Two years after the triple calamities of earthquake, tsunami and
nuclear disaster ravaged Japan's northeastern Pacific coast, forests
that cover 70 percent of the Fukushima Prefecture have been found to
contain high concentrations of radioactive cesium.

With traces revealed not only in the fallen leaves and soil, but in
the trees themselves, the findings suggest that radiation has
permanently found its way into the ecosystem. The government is
already spending billions of dollars decontaminating various towns in
Fukushima, but the forests continue to emit radioactivity, putting the
residents at risk.

Scientists suggest cutting down the trees as soon as possible because
the cesium will gradually be transferred to the earth itself. Many
residents are now suing TEPCO, the nuclear plant's operator, for the
impact the disaster has had on surrounding communities.

Radioactive pollen … radioactivity: the gift that keeps on giving …

Thank you GE, thank you Tepco …

All Tohoku, contaminated …

[John H. Gohde]

Taka is a Sexist Pig!

[John H. Gohde]

Sorry, but Taka is a SLOW learner. Taka is a Sexist Pig!

[Taka]

Mystery bacteria 'cobwebs' found in SRS cooling tank

Spring cleaning is always a good way to get rid of those hard-to-reach
cobwebs that appear around the house. However, when they appear in
cooling tanks for spent nuclear fuel and have never been seen there
before, special attention is warranted.

Sometime in Fiscal Year 2011, “cobwebs” of bacteria were first
discovered in the L Area basin at the Savannah River Site. Since then,
a process of getting to the 70-feet-deep life form, collecting it and
then examining it has been undertaken.

The formations of bacteria are colloquially described as “cobwebs” as
they form strands similar to the household dust collections.

In an April 23 presentation to the SRS's Citizen Advisory Board's
Nuclear Materials subcommittee, Maxcine Maxted with Department of
Energy noted advances that had been made in approaching, recovering
and analyzing the bacterial growth located on the tops of the fuel
bundles underwater.

“The cobweb material was collected by pumping it through bag filters
on a cart located on zero level in the basin,” explained Amy Caver of
DOE Public Affairs.

Maxted said that the bacteria would be killed before being studied. In
previous, somewhat similar cases, such bacteria has been killed with
hydrogen peroxide.

“Without the external nutrients, the bacteria cannot sustain
themselves. Infrared from the measured levels of microbial diversity
measured these requirements are currently being met. Sampling for
organic carbon in multiple basin locations was unable to determine a
definitive source of external carbon for the bacteria,” Caver said.

Not knowing the “food” source for these bacteria adds to the mystery.

For a corrosion precaution and to improve fuel bundle identification,
the cobwebs will be removed from the fuel bundles by underwater
vacuuming.

But, however the strands formed, they are posing no danger to the
storage facilities.

“The cobweb material density has not noticeably increased since the
original mapping in December 2011,” Caver said. “In the locations
where the cobweb material was removed during sampling in January 2012,
there has been little to no cobweb material reformation. Cobweb
material has not spread to other sections of the basin. There has been
no noticeable corrosion of the aluminum materials in the areas with
the cobweb material.”

SOURCE: http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20130504/AIK0101/130509791/mystery-bacteria-found-at-srs

------------------------------------

Chernnobyl fungus feeds on nuclear radiation

You know Chernobyl, right? The place of the biggest nuclear accident
in the world? The place is so radioactive nobody lives in the vicinity
anymore, and nearby plants are suffering major amounts of radiation.
However, not everybody is sad about this event; a type of fungi
(mushrooms) possess an ability beyond imagination: they can take the
lethal radiation and use it as a source of energy to feed and grow.
Researchers have called them radiotrophic fungus.

For some 500 million years, fungi have been inhabiting this planet,
feeding on whatever they could finding, filling every biological niche
they could find. But who could have actually guessed that they could
feed on nuclear radiation? Researchers from the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine (AEC) had a hunch, and they investigated it to
test. They first got the idea after reading that samples brought from
Chernobyl were filled with some black fungi growing on it.

“I found that very interesting and began discussing with colleagues
whether these fungi might be using the radiation emissions as an
energy source,” explained Casadevall.
Casadevall and his co-researchers then set about performing a variety
of tests using several different fungi; two types of mushrooms were
used, one that had naturally contains melanin, and one that was
injected with the substance. They were then exposed to radiation
levels 500 times bigger than the normal ones. The result? Both of them
grew much faster than normally, when exposed to radiation.

“Just as the pigment chlorophyll converts sunlight into chemical
energy that allows green plants to live and grow, our research
suggests that melanin can use a different portion of the
electromagnetic spectrum – ionizing radiation – to benefit the fungi
containing it,” said co-researcher Ekaterina Dadachova.
They took the research one step further, and found some extremely
interesting answers, which raise more questions. The melanin in these
radiotrophic fungi is chemically identical to the melanin in our own
bodies, and this led them to believe that it could be actually
providing energy for skin cells. Perhaps even more interesting, this
find has a special importance for space missions.

“Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts
might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long
missions or for colonizing other planets,” noted Dadachova.

SOURCE: http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/chernobyl-fungus-radiotrophic-08122011/

[John H. Gohde]

On May 7, 8:28 am, Taka <taka0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mystery bacteria 'cobwebs' found in SRS cooling tank
>
> Spring cleaning is always a good way to get rid of those hard-to-reach
> cobwebs that appear around the house. However, when they appear in
> cooling tanks for spent nuclear fuel and have never been seen there
> before, special attention is warranted.

I spy Tara. :)

[Taka]

Sci Rep. 2013 Apr 29;3:1742. doi: 10.1038/srep01742.

Overview of active cesium contamination of freshwater fish in
Fukushima and Eastern Japan.

Mizuno T, Kubo H.
SourceThe Center for Risk Research, Shiga University.

This paper focuses on an overview of radioactive cesium 137 (quasi-
Cs137 included Cs134) contamination of freshwater fish in Fukushima
and eastern Japan based on the data published by the Fisheries Agency
of the Japanese Government in 2011. In the area north and west of the
Fukushima Nuclear plant, freshwater fish have been highly
contaminated. For example, the mean of active cesium (quasi-Cs137)
contamination of Ayu (Plecoglossus altivelis) is 2,657 Bq/kg at Mano
River, 20-40 km north-west from the plant. Bioaccumulation is observed
in the Agano river basin in Aizu sub-region, 70-150 km west from the
plant. The active cesium (quasi-Cs137) contamination of carnivorous
Salmondae is around 2 times higher than herbivorous Ayu. The extent of
active cesium (quasi-Cs137) contamination of Ayu is observed in the
entire eastern Japan. The some level of the contamination is
recognized even in Shizuoka prefecture, 400 km south-west from the
plant.
PMID:23625055

http://enenews.com/study-vast-area-of-60-million-people-contaminated-from-fukushima-disaster-photo

[Taka]

TEPCO to dump groundwater to ease crisis at Fukushima nuclear plant

After a series of blunders, miscalculations and unresolved problems,
Tokyo Electric Power Co. adopted a new strategy to avoid a total
collapse of its system for handling radioactive water at its crippled
nuclear plant.

TEPCO is running out of storage space for water used in the nonstop
process of cooling the melted and spent fuel at the Fukushima No. 1
nuclear plant. Exacerbating the storage problem is the groundwater
that keeps flowing into the plant’s buildings.

The company has dug 12 wells to the west of the reactor buildings,
where it plans to pump up groundwater before it can enter the
facilities and become contaminated.

“We would like to release that water into the ocean if we can gain the
understanding of the relevant officials,” Toshihiko Fukuda, who heads
TEPCO's Nuclear Quality and Safety Management Department, said at a
May 7 news conference.

TEPCO officials will explain the plan at a meeting scheduled for May
13 of representatives of fisheries cooperatives in Fukushima
Prefecture. If approval is obtained, the utility plans to start
dumping the pumped-up water into the ocean the following day.

“We would like to cooperate in settling the situation by giving our
approval once safety has been confirmed,” Tetsu Nozaki, chairman of
the federation of prefectural fisheries cooperatives, said.

It would be the second time for water at the plant site to be released
into the ocean.

Fisheries cooperatives in Fukushima Prefecture were forced to refrain
from sending out their boats after highly radioactive water was dumped
into the ocean in the immediate aftermath of the March 2011 nuclear
accident.

Dealing with the radioactive water has long been an uphill battle for
TEPCO in its overall plan to decommission the crippled reactors, a
process expected to take decades to complete.

The situation deteriorated on April 5, when radioactive water was
found leaking from underground storage tanks at the plant.

Water used to cool the fuel in the No. 1 to No. 4 reactors that were
damaged during the accident has accumulated in the basements of the
reactor buildings. Under TEPCO’s recycling system at the plant, this
water has been pumped out, treated, and used again to cool the fuel.

However, about 400 tons of groundwater flow into the reactor buildings
on a daily basis and mixes with the radioactive water.

According to calculations, 300 tons of groundwater would still flow
into the reactor buildings every day even after TEPCO starts pumping
up the water through the wells.

A general contractor on April 26 proposed building a wall to block the
inflow of the groundwater. However, a similar proposal was dropped
immediately after the nuclear accident over fears the water-shielding
wall would cause contaminated water in the buildings to flow into
groundwater at lower levels.

Currently, surface tanks at the Fukushima No. 1 plant hold about
280,000 tons of radioactive water. An additional 100,000 tons are
believed to be flooding the basements of the No. 1 to No. 4 reactor
buildings as well as the turbine buildings.

After the leaks were discovered in the underground storage tanks,
TEPCO transferred about 8,000 tons of radioactive water from the
faulty tanks to surface tanks by May 6. The remaining 16,000 tons or
so will remain in the underground tanks until new surface tanks are
completed in late May, according to TEPCO’s plan.

An estimated 120 tons of radioactive water leaked into the ground from
the faulty underground tanks. Officials of TEPCO and the Japan Atomic
Energy Agency say the contaminated water could mix with groundwater
and reach the ocean in 10 years at the earliest.

TEPCO officials have yet to determine the cause of the leaks. One
factor may have been the fact that they did not follow Environment
Ministry guidelines for industrial waste.

The underground storage tanks were protected by a double layer of
polyethylene waterproof sheets and a 6.4-millimeter-thick sheet of
bentonite, a clay-like substance.

The ministry’s standards for controlled disposal sites for industrial
waste call for at least 50 centimeters of bentonite to surround the
waterproof sheets.

TEPCO officials apparently felt that a double layer of polyethylene
waterproof sheets would be sufficient.

“It would be theoretically possible to prevent leaks for several
decades to about a century if a layer of packed bentonite measuring at
least 50 centimeters had been laid out outside of the sheets,” said
Hideo Komine, a civil engineering professor at Ibaraki University.
“The company should consider rebuilding the underground tanks.”

Handling radioactive water was often an afterthought for TEPCO
officials. Soon after the accident, the main priority was cooling the
reactors, so water was pumped in from every available source,
including the ocean and nearby dams.

When the utility was criticized for dumping highly radioactive water
into the ocean from the basements of the reactor buildings, officials
decided a new approach was needed.

They stored the water at nearby buildings and started building surface
tanks.

In June 2011, the utility began recycling some of the radioactive
water to cool the reactors, after installing about 4 kilometers of
piping.

TEPCO officials apparently never considered 400 tons of groundwater
would flow into the reactor buildings on a daily basis.

SOURCE: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201305080062

[Taka]

Long Shadow of Chernobyl (3): Dried Mushrooms from Italy Still Found
With 170 Bq/kg of Cesium-137

One of the scientific researchers that I follow who goes by the name
of "Tomynyo" on Twitter has been measuring all sorts of things after
the Fukushima nuclear accident - soil accumulated on top of his
apartment complex in Yokohama City with high levels of radioactive
cesium to bamboo shoots and mushrooms served in the kindergarten
lunch.

His latest tweets is not about the domestic mushrooms but about
mushrooms from Italy:

We measured 6 samples of [dried] Italian porcini mushrooms, and all
samples were found with cesium-137. Maximum was 170.3±18.0Bq/kg, and
minimum was 31.6±6.2Bq/kg. Dried mushroom you buy at a supermarket are
almost all grown in Kyushu, so we think these Italian mushrooms are
more contaminated than the dried Japanese mushrooms you can buy at a
supermarket.

If porcini mushrooms get rehydrated, the density of radioactive cesium
would be one-fourths, we are told. We should recognize that we may
have been eating food with certain levels of contamination even before
March 11, 2011.

Just like the wood pellets from trees in Shikoku, Japan tested by one
of my Twitter followers, cesium-137 is most likely from the
atmospheric testing and the Chernobyl accident.

I happened on this video, supposed to be the raw footage of Chernobyl
soon after the accident. I got scared watching workers with scant
protection dumping loads of what looks like concrete debris:

Other "Long Shadow of Chernobyl" posts:

Long Shadow of Chernobyl: 224 Bq/kg of Cesium-137 in the Ashes from
Burning Wood Pellets Made from Trees in Shikoku

Long Shadow of Chernobyl (2): German and Belarusian Researchers Say
64% of 229 Belarusian Children with High-Risk Thyroid Cancer in
Complete Remission, 30% in Near-Complete Remission

SOURCE: http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2013/05/long-shadow-of-chernobyl-3-dried.html

[Taka]

Osaka City Mayor Toru Hashimoto Urges US Military Commander in Okinawa
to Use More Japanese "Fuzoku" (Adult Entertainment) Establishments

In the context, "adult entertainment" is "sex for a price".

Boy-wonder, who was selected as one of the "Young Global Leaders" at
Davos World Economic Forum, a confab of the rich and the powerful in
the world, was visiting Okinawa.

Commander of the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Colonel James
Flynn, froze, according to Sankei Shinbun article.

Sankei Shinbun (5/13/2013; part):

"Use more adult entertainment establishments", says Hashimoto, Okinawa
Commander froze

Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka City and co-president of Japan
Restoration Party disclosed on May 13 evening that when he visited the
US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma (Ginowan City, Okinawa) and met
with the commander, he urged "more use of Japanese adult
entertainment" by the US military. According to Hashimoto, he told the
commander, "Unless you make good use of the adult entertainment
industry, you can't control sexual energy of tough Marines." The
commander ignored his suggestion, saying "it is prohibited in the US
military".

Mr. Hashimoto visited the Futenma Air Station on May 1. On that
occasion, he told the commander of the Station that "there are places
in Japan that [the Marines] can legally release their sexual energy",
and urged that the commander order the Marines to make use of adult
entertainment establishments. According to Mr. Hashimoto, the
commander froze, and cut off the talk by saying "The US military bans
the use [of such establishments]. Let's not talk about this any more."

Boy-wonder's comment is no surprise, as he's been saying "comfort
women" are absolutely necessary.

It is absolutely no surprise for the country of Japan either. After
all, the country readied what was to become "Recreation and Amusement
Association" in three days after the Emperor declared the end of World
War II on August 15, 1945 - almost the very first thing that the
defeated government did. Heroic girls and women to serve as
"breakwater", and preserve the virginity of the rest of Japanese girls
and women.

What a country... A country of fascists politicians and a population
of ignorant sheep who know nothing of their tainted past... and this
hashimoto guy ..what a mysogynistic wanker..

Toru Hashimoto is a pimp. JP media reported that he and his mistress
enjoy the costume play in which the mistress dresses as a flight
attendant to have sex with the Osaka mayor. The mistress revealed to
the media, and Hashimoto acknowledged it and apologized to his family
in the public.

SOURCE: http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2013/05/osaka-city-mayor-toru-hashimoto-urges.html

http://news.yahoo.com/japanese-mayor-wartime-sex-slaves-were-necessary-042050746.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22519384

---------------------

Now those people like Toru Hashimoto control the NPPs in Japan! No
wonder they are dropping cranes into the plutonium liquid sodium pools
at Monju while wanking to AKB48 ....

[Taka]

‘Absurd’: Intentionally dumping Fukushima nuclear material into ocean
from land “is not considered dumping” — Allowed under international
law?

The Fukushima disaster is without precedent and will have
unprecedented impacts on future policies governing the ocean, both
Japanese and international.

[...] the Fukushima accident has revealed some key shortcomings in
international law, said Kentaro Nishimoto, who teaches law of the sea
at Tohoku University. To illustrate, he used an incident that has
brought sharp criticism from Japan’s neighbors: the intentional
release of radioactive water into the sea.

[...] Nishimoto said, the relevant international laws proved to be
nonbinding. In particular, he noted, the London Convention on marine
pollution, although it expressly prohibits ocean dumping of
radioactive material, limits these restrictions to vessels at sea.
Release of materials from land is not considered dumping.

“When I tell this to people outside the field of international law,
the reaction I get is, ‘This is absurd,’ ” Nishimoto acknowledged.
[...]

SOURCE:
http://enenews.com/absurd-intentionally-dumping-fukushima-nuclear-material-ocean-land-considered-dumping-allowed-international-law

[Taka]

Radioactive black fungus in Japan, blowing to the US.

The Australian Enenews contributor vital1 has analyzed a sample of
black fungus (black substance) that was originated in Minamisoma,
Japan.

I was sent this resin encapsulated sample of black fungus like
material. It has reportedly come from somewhere in the Minamisoma area
Japan. A contact in Japan sent this sample to a friend. This is my
test chart of it. For those of you who have not looked at a
scintillator test chart like this before. The position of the peaks in
a the chart indicate what isotopes are present… This black fungus
started growing on the concrete, and rock surfaces in Japan after the
Fukushima Nuclear disaster. It appears to be bio-accumulating Cesium.

Correcting for the weight of the sample, it appears to be highly
radioactive, perhaps over 500,000 Bq/kg of cesium. The sample contains
cesium-134 and cesium-137 isotopes, and also the sample peak at 795
keV for cesium-134 has shifted to the right. This is likely due to the
presence of cobalt-58, which has a peak at 810.8 keV. Cobalt-58 was
previously detected in the black substance in Japan.

Cobalt-58 is generated by neutron irradiation of nickel. The metal
nickel is used extensively in nuclear power plants, in tubing and
alloys. It is likely that large amounts of nickel are present in the
molten coriums. The neutrons necessary for transmutation of nickel to
Co-58 would have come from either re-criticalities in the coriums, or
the presence of neutron emitters like plutonium, curium and
californium.

It was shown in a previous post here that an astounding amount of
fungi were transported across the Pacific from Japan to the US in
spring 2011. It is springtime again, and this is the season for fungus
transport.

It is likely that fungi are growing on the spent fuel pools and
underground coriums. Tepco announced that they are adding hydrazine to
the pools in order to control the growth of microorganisms. But these
fungi are highly radioresistant, and probably can tolerate toxic
chemicals also. They are almost certainly mutated by radiation.

Vital1 has also detected high amounts of radon isotopes in an
Australian rain swab. Background radiation in Australia and New
Zealand has increased by 20%-40% since Fukushima. Radon is a
radioactive daughter product of uranium. Very small uranium particles
on the surface emit a much larger amount of daugher isotopes by
weight, than large deposits of uranium miles underground.

If Australia is being showered with uranium dust from Fukushima, it
must be much worse in Japan and the USA. Uranium would have been
released in the initial melt-throughs, but continuing releases of
uranium would be coming from the underground coriums turning into
powder, and being released into the atnosphere and sea… or
alternatively by fungus spores growing on these coriums. If this is
true, there must be significant amounts of plutonium present in the
fungi also.

MORE: http://optimalprediction.com/wp/radioactive-black-fungus-in-japan-blowing-to-the-us/

[Taka]

Cleanup From Fukushima Daiichi: Technological Disaster Or Crisis In
Governance?

Crisis In Fukushima

More than 19,000 Japanese drowned, their bodies scattered on Japan’s
eastern shores when a tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011. Kevin
Wang wanted to help, and his Anaheim, Califonia-based company,
PowerPlus, had the cleaning know-how to handle almost anything. Wang
has spent decades developing equipment to clean up almost every sort
of nasty gunk in existence, from massive oil spills, to radiological
contamination, to dead bodies in quantity.

Immediately after the tsunami, Wang visited the Japanese consul
general in Los Angeles to offer his company’s assistance in dealing
the huge threat to public health posed by this mass casualty event.
The response by Japan’s consul-general made Wang’s jaw drop.
“Absolutely not,” the consul replied, continuing on with rejection
language so brusque, Wang had no doubt his offer was taken as an
insult.

Far from being an isolated incident, the encounter that Wang had now
seems to be a harbinger of the systemic denial that has crippled the
Japanese government’s response to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
First-hand witnesses have described a deeply flawed reaction to the
nuclear meltdown that has been marked by an underestimation of the
extent of the contamination, insufficient radiological testing, and a
glacially-slow response making clean-up harder as time passes. Most
damning of all has been a stubborn unwillingess to use desperately
needed clean-up assistance by ignoring technical competence in favor
of political influence.

Undeterred by the consul’s rebuff, Wang was galvanized to action in
the days after the tsunami when the safety systems at Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant subsequently began to fail and massive
amounts of radiation started spewing into the air and sea. Wang
assembled a crew of indepent decontamination experts and shipped
custom radiological decontamination gear to Japan. Wang and his team
arrived in Japan to do decontamination demonstrations in June of 2011.

In an effort to begin the intense cleanup work, Wang and his crews
demostrated their cleanup capabilities to a variety of audiences
during that trip and three more trips to Japan, the second in October
2011, the third in February 2012, and the last in January 2013. His
team was observed by television crews, city, prefecture, and national
government officials, bureacrats from Japan’s Ministries of Defense
and Environment, dozens of businesses, as well as representatives of
the Tokyo Power Company (TEPCO), the owners of the ill-fated Fukushima
plant.

Wang’s crew had notable success decontaminating a car towed out of the
highly radioactive “exclusion zone” surrounding the Fukushima plant,
reducing the radiation contaminating the car by 99 percent. Given the
difficulty in cleaning more porous materials, Wang’s team also
inevitably turned in some less-stellar results, which included
suffering cold-weather equiment failure more than once. Overall,
these trips clearly demonstrated that Wang and his crews could
consistently clean biological materials in their natural condition,
substantially reducing contamination on substances that many others
considered uncleanable, including dirt, grass, and water, even
reducing the radiation on living cherry trees up to 70%. Even on the
days plagued by equipment failure, the team still managed to reduce
the radiation levels in frozen earth by 20-40%.

Sam Engelhard, an industrial hygenist and certified radiation
protection technologist with years of radiological decontamination
work under his belt, was one of the independent consultants who
accompanied Wang on all four trips to Japan. Wayne Schofield, a
radiation health physicist with decades of on-the-job decontamination
experience, including both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, was
present for only the February 2012 trip to Japan..

Shortly after arrival on their first trip to Japan, the group headed
for Shirikawa, a city 45 miles west and a few miles south of the
Daiichi nuclear plant. Industrial hygienist Engelhard was shocked as
soon as he unpacked his radiation sensor gear and turned it on. Here
they were almost 50 miles from the accident site and in the opposite
direction of the prevailing winds, and the crew’s radiation alarms
immediately started going off.

“The radiation levels we were seeing were 1,000 times background,
higher in spots,” Engelhard said. “If we had been working on a site
this contaminated in the US, we would have been fully suited up in
radiation protection suits, gloves, and respirators. Yet people were
walking around and going about their business, with no idea of how
contaminated everything around them was.”

One of the first demonstrations conducted by Wang’s team was at a
Japanese school still in routine use. The contamination was
widespread and included troubling accumulations of radiation in
biological materials. While the asphalt driveway was contaminated,
the grass next to it was four times as radioactive as the asphalt.
The worst were the patches of fungus on the bleachers at the school’s
baseball field, which had sucked-up radionuclides to such a degree
that they were emitting radiation at 70-times the contaminated
asphalt.

Engelhard described the chilling phenomena of the fungus-turned-
radiation-sponge as, “a remarkable example of biological
amplification.”

Wang said it more bluntly, “A boy sitting on that patch to watch a
baseball game could do real damage to his gonads.”

More disturbingly, during the June 2011 trip, the American decon crew
was stunned at how little the government disaster-response “experts”
they encountered understood about radiation. After observing the
radiation officials’ attempts to use their radiation meters,
industrial hygienist Engelhard said, “They didn’t seem to understand
what their radiation sensor equipment did, or how to work it.”

After pointing out to three Japanese disaster-response officials from
various governmental entities that a nearby concrete bench was “hot,”
Wang’s team was amazed to see the officials perched on the bench.

On subsequent trips to Japan, Engelhard found that the expertise of
the Japanese radiation techs he met was much higher.

“I can only presume that during our first trip, Japan’s ‘first string’
radiological experts were actually in the hottest zones around the
Fukushima plant itself, and we were seeing third-string officials,” he
said. “Still, it was pretty disconcerting to consider how little the
first bunch seemed to understand.”

In Fukushima City, more than 40 miles northwest of the nuclear plant,
Engelhard made another disquieting discovery at a lighted sign where
the real-time radiation dose rate was allegedly being posted for local
residents. However, when Engelhard stood next to the sign and turned
on his own detection gear, he found the actual radiation dosage was up
to 50% higher than what the sign was reporting.

“I don’t know if they had a sensor calibration problem or the number
was being deliberately under-reported. But the information being fed
to the citizens of Fukushima City by that sign was wrong,” Engelhard
said.

During the first trip, when Wang asked an official from Fukushima
prefecture what testing methodology to use when recording post-
decontamination sensor readings, he was rebuked.

“Don’t be an idiot. Don’t average your results, report only the
lowest number you get,” the prefecture official informed him. That
technique is a shady practice that had Wang followed it, would have
resulted in under-reporting real radiation levels.

The false readings in Fukushima City and the faulty reporting
methodology incidents were not the only times Engelhard and Wang saw
evidence that radiation readings were being under-reported.

During the January 2013 demo trip, Wang and Engelhard compared the
readings the American crew was obtaining to those from the Japanese
government techs’ instruments. The Japanese instruments were
consistently under-reporting radiation levels by 30-50%. Wang’s US
crew verified their instruments were reading accurately by testing
them with an on-the-spot “check source,” a source that produces a
precisely-known amount of radiation in order to properly calibrate
equipment.

The next day, the Japanese techs returned with instruments correctly
calibrated, and explained that their problem the previous day was due
to “a bad cable.”

Engelhard was skeptical. “In my experience,” he said, “when you get a
bad cable, you either get a zero reading, an infinite reading, or a
greatly inconsistent reading because you have to jiggle the cable.
What you don’t get are low readings off by fixed percentages. A ‘bad
cable’ doesn’t wash.”

According to Engelhard, another problem was that cleanup efforts
seemed to be entirely focused on looking for cesium 134 and 137.

“Cesium is definitely the most abundant of the contaminants, and as a
‘gamma emitter,’ cesium is also the easiest to find with standard
detection gear. But cesium was not the only problematic isotope
released, and so the easy-to-find gamma emitters are not the only
contaminants to worry about”, Engelhard emphasized.

Engelhard was not alone in expressing his concern. Team member and
veteran radiation health physicist Wayne Schofield said, “In the most
contaminated areas, I’d expect to find high levels of cesium, but also
strontium-90, plutonium, cobalt, and other contaminants that can be
dangerous. Strontium-90 has a thirty-year half-life and it is a ‘beta-
emitter.’ Beta radiation is very difficult to find with hand-held
instruments, and easily shielded from detection by a minimal amount of
dirt or leaves. “

Generally speaking, both ’alpha’ and ’beta‘ emitters are of little
concern, if they remain outside the body, but they can become deadly
when ingested.

Engelhard explained, “Your body recognizes strontium as calcium and
puts it into your bones, right next to the bone marrow that is the
heart of the human immune system. That’s bad news.”

Health physicist Wayne Schofield agreed that focusing solely on cesium
to the exclusion of other contaminants is a mistake. “If you aren’t
doing comprehensive surveys when looking for hotspots, that’s sloppy
science.”

Guidelines for allowable levels of radiological contamination in food
released by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare in March
2012 specifically mention strontium-90 as a “regulated radionuclide,”
but ambiguous language in the footnotes of the guidelines calls into
question whether Japan is actually looking for strontium-90,
plutonium, and other contaminants, or simply relying on estimated
levels.

“Effective dose from radionuclides other than cesium are added to
these estimates in reality, because these values are estimated only
from radioactive cesium.” [i]

Engelhard opined, “It sounds like they’ve come up with a ‘fudge
factor,’ to estimate of how much of these other contaminants may be
present. In a nuclear industrial setting, estimating beta radiation
based on a known quantity of gamma radiation is a valid technique,
because the chemistry of what is going on inside a reactor is very
well known. However, once you have an accident, you don’t know how
the contaminants released are interacting in the environment. The
only way you are going to find alpha or beta emitters in the
environment is to test for them, but that kind of testing is much more
material and labor intensive.”

Virgene Mulligan, the Vice President of radiological lab services at
ARS International, confirmed the difficulty and expense of finding
strontium-90, explaining, “Specifically identifying strontium-90 in a
sample takes 14-20 days, because a chemical reaction has to take place
and the resin used in the test is expensive. That doesn’t mean they
shouldn’t be testing for it at all.”

Further complicating testing efforts is that water is an effective
radiation shield for alpha, beta, and gamma emitters: water, or food
with high water content, can be highly contaminated but nevertheless
give off a false low-contamination reading unless measured with
specialized and highly sensitive laboratory detection gear.

Bad as the Fukushima radiation release initially was, health physicist
Wayne Schofield passed along estimates that, at first hearing, sound
highly encouraging, “At a guess, radiation levels across all the
contaminated areas in Japan have dropped considerably, probably by
about 80%, since the Fukushima accident. Over time, rain and wind
naturally reduce radiation levels by washing or blowing contamination
away.”

The single “hottest” spot the American team found in Japan, located
almost a full year after the disaster, was a metal grating below a
rain gutter downspout. It emitted a combined beta and gamma
radiation rate five times the threshold rate used in US nuclear power
plants to determine when to start limiting radiation worker exposure
times.

The “hot” grating rather pointedly illustrates that contaminants
washed off a surface by rain are not gone, but rather linger in the
biosphere. In Germany as recently as 2010, more than 1,000 wild boars
were found to be contaminated past government health limits with
radionuclides that came from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster; even though
the closest point in Germany to the failed Chernobyl plant is 650
miles away.

Engelhard further explained “the 80 percent that has been washed or
blown away is that portion of the contamination that was loose and
would have been relatively easy to clean up, if someone had gotten to
it in time. The 20 percent now left behind is not the same.
Radiological contaminants start to bond to the material they have
settled on over time. Some of the contaminants that could have once
been cleaned away easily are now chemically or molecularly bonded, and
bonded contaminants are harder to remove.”

As with Wang’s run-in with the Japanese consul in Los Angeles,
Engelhard was baffled by the Japanese officials he talked to. “When
we got to Japan the first time, they were really glum. They were much
more upbeat on later visits, but both the initial glumness and the
later improved attitudes were strange.”

“Initially the Fukushima meltdown was seen as a shameful blow to
national pride, and the improved attitudes a year later seemed a
general sense that things were better with the embarrassment of
Fukushima mostly behind them”, he added.

“Shameful situations are something you avoid and minimize, that’s the
exact wrong response to a radiological crisis like Fukushima. A
crisis of this magnitude needs to be dealt with by an “all hands on
deck” mentality, accepting help wherever you can find it, to minimize
long-term health consequences,” Engelhard emphasized.

Wang believes the Fukushima radiological contamination far more
widespread that most Japanese understand. “One thing I heard so often
during my trips to Japan that it became a mantra, was that ‘Fukushima
is a Japanese problem and we have to fix it ourselves.’ So far, I
haven’t seen any evidence that the government is taking the right
steps to fix things. Instead, the wounded pride of government
officials, and a lack of understanding at the urgency of the problem,
prevented Japan from taking the steps they needed to.”

*
*
*

On all four trips, Wang’s team was greeted with enthusiasm and relief
by many in Japan’s business community. Several Japanese companies
offered to partner with the California firm to import the technology
and equipment, and Wang never doubted his Japanese business partners
tried their utmost to break through the governmental logjam.

Despite the enthusiasm from the audiences who saw the demonstrations,
closing in on two years after the Fukushima disaster, no PowerPlus
equipment has been sold, and no decontamination contracts have been
forthcoming. Far from unique, this cold reception by the Japanese
government was identical to experience of dozens of both Japanese and
US firms with decontamination expertise to offer. Health physicist
Wayne Schofield is not surprised at PowerPlus’ lack of headway, noting
that another company he consults for, a leader in the radiation
remediation field in the US, has spent even more money on clean-up
demonstrations than Wang’s company, and had just as poor a reception.
According to Schofield, the US radiation remediation industry
grapevine has it that the bizarre freeze-out by the Japanese
government has happened to nearly every company in the field. The
reasons given by Japanese officials for not making use of foreign
expertise approaches the bizzare, including a statement by Hidehiko
Nishiyama, deputy director of the enviorment ministry, that foreign
techinques won’t work because “the soil in Japan is different…and if
we have foreigners roaming around Fukushima, they might scare the old
grandmas and granddads.”

Japanese cleanup firms firms have fared little better than their
foreign counterparts. Instead, cleanup contracts have gone to Japan’s
major construction firms, companies with political clout, but grossly
lacking in decontamination capability. Disgusted at the shoddy cleanup
work being done by the construction firms, Masafumi Shiga, president
of a refurbishing company in Fukushima, told the New York Times
simply, “What’s happening on the ground is a disgrace.”

Disasters, both man-made and natural, are as inevitable as the tides.
History may well judge that it was not the Fukushima disaster, but the
bungled response to it, that ultimately proves to be the most lasting
source of shame to Japanese officialdom. Plagued by delayed action,
haphazard radiological testing, and the freeze-out of nearly every
company with substantive decontamination expertise to offer, both
inside and outside of Japan, it now appears that somewhere along the
way, Japan’s government put national pride and a ‘we don’t want any
help’ attitude ahead of the lives of Japan’s citizens.

SOURCE: http://fairewinds.org/demystifying/cleanup-from-fukushima-daiichi-technological-disaster-or-crisis-in-governance

[John H. Gohde]

Worth repeating ...

[Mark Thorson]

"John H. Gohde" wrote:
>
> > Taka thinks that he is brilliant, because he has a science degree.

You're brilliant, Taka! Keep up the good work!