Cesium Rise in Fukushima?

[MattAlt]

http://takedanet.com/2012/01/4_360f.html

Takeda Kunihiko is reporting a dramatic rise in cesium levels in
Fukushima as of right now (January 6th 2012). He seems to be the only
source reporting this. Has anyone taken any readings that would
support his claims? It is really making the rounds on Japanese Twitter
but I am reluctant to trust any single source about stuff like this.

Matt Alt

[Antonio Portela]

The source is not Professor Takeda, but Fukushima Prefecture:

http://www.pref.fukushima.jp/j/koukabutsu9.pdf

The dramatic increase was detected between January 2 and 3.

[Dirk]

Takeda states that levels on that date are the same as March and
April. If true that's a big deal. He also says that water and leafy
vegetable levels will rise as a result in the next 1-2 weeks.

Is the Safecast network picking this up somehow?

[Antonio Portela]

The levels of fallout were very different between March and April, and
varied a lot each day.

If the levels had continued at the levels detected on Jan 2 (180 Bq/m2
Cs-134 + 252 Bq/m2 Cs-137) during a whole month, the total would have
been around 13,000 Bq/m2, which is the same concentration of Cs-137
alone detected in Ibaraki during the worst day in March:
http://radioactivity.mext.go.jp/ja/monitoring_by_prefecture_fallout/2011/03/1303977_032119_1.pdf

It is, however, higher than what was detected on March 29, for
example:
http://radioactivity.mext.go.jp/ja/monitoring_by_prefecture_fallout/2011/03/1303977_29_30.pdf

In any case, based on the data for the following days, it doesn't seem
like fallout has continued at the same level. I agree with Prof Takeda
that the cause should be investigated, though. I checked the Japan
Meteorological Agency's website and it seems there were strong winds
from the NWW on Jan 2 in Fukushima City. However, this was also the
case during Jan 4 and the fallout detected was much lower, so there
doesn't seem to be a direct correlation like redistribution of
previous deposition by wind, for example.

[Michael Goldberg]

@ Antonio Pertelo

I checked the Japan Meteorological Agency's website and it seems there were strong winds from the NWW on Jan 2 in Fukushima City. However, this was also the case during Jan 4 and the fallout detected was much lower, so there doesn't seem to be a direct correlation like redistribution of previous deposition by wind, for example.

The "gossip" (FWIW) is there could have been an incident at Dai-Ichi that was not disclosed to the public.  It would be ideal if there were any independent monitoring source(s) along the path from Dai-Ichi, or any other places, which spiked on the same day.

[Hendrik Warntjes]

Supposedly due to the earthquake on 01 Jan

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[Antonio Portela]

Yes, supposedly related to the water level on the surge tank connected
to the spent fuel at reactor No. 4, but that was reported by Tepco and
it appeared on at least Kyodo and Mainichi shimbun, so it was
disclosed to the public:

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2012/01/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-reactor-4s.html
[1st Tepco report translated by EX-SKF, there are more posts about it
on the blog]
http://www.47news.jp/CN/201201/CN2012010101000398.html
http://mainichi.jp/select/wadai/news/20120103k0000m040050000c.html

I don't see how lower water levels at the surge tank would increase
radioactive releases and I don't know how those potential releases
would reach Fukushima city against the wind. I don't know much about
Fukushima Prefecture, so maybe it's possible that the "plume" went
north and then reached Fukushima city from the north west, but I think
there are mountains there.

In any case, as always with anything related to the plant, the source
is Tepco, so there's always the possibility that the whole perimeter
exploded and they are waiting for a better moment to tell us about it.

By the way, Michael, it's Portela (not Pertelo).

On 1月6日, 午後10:51, Hendrik Warntjes <hendrik.warnt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Supposedly due to the earthquake on 01 Jan

[Jam]

I am just on my way home from repairing bGeigie 016. It will be
taking fresh measurments in the 20km zone tomorrow. As soon as I get
home, I will check to see if anything new has fallen in Chiba. We
have several areas that are well documented so we will know right
away if there has been tecent fallout. Expect an update in an hour or
so.

- jam


On Jan 6, 10:51 pm, Hendrik Warntjes <hendrik.warnt...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Supposedly due to the earthquake on 01 Jan

[Kalin KOZHUHAROV]

I checked a few relatively reliable sources on pachube from Fukushima
and none shows increase in the last month, actually decrease.

https://pachube.com/feeds/38381
https://pachube.com/feeds/25972

There has been increased fallout, according to MEXT:
http://radioactivity.mext.go.jp/ja/1285/2012/01/1285_010618.pdf
between 2012-01-02 09:00 and 2012-01-03 09:00 there was (180+252)
kBq/m^2 of Cs-(134+137) which is about 6 times increase

Kalin.

[Pieter Franken]

I just looked at the amounts reported. Peak at around 400Mbq/km2, which is 400 Bq/m2 -- In many areas in Fukushima surface measures from 50kBq/m2 upto 2MBq/m2 so it is going to be hard to detect this with ordinary equipment.

Pieter

[Michael Goldberg]

Sent: Friday, January 6, 2012 10:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Safecast Jpn] Re: Cesium Rise in Fukushima?

From: Hendrik Warntjes <hendrik....@gmail.com>

     Supposedly due to the earthquake on 01 Jan

@ Antonio, wherever you are,

sorry I got your name wrong. 

I'm soooo bad with names.  Mea culpa!

@ Hendrik

That makes sense, linking it to a known event.

The earthquake shook the earth (e.g. trees), or the plant?

(I mean, of course, Dai-Ichi)

[Dirk]

Looks like Cs numbers tripled at intakes of R3:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20120106/k10015107561000.html

Personally I think the 1/1 quake and surge tank are a red herring. For
all we know there are 100 "events" at the site on a daily basis, some
with measurable consequences, some without. There is probably
something that is yet to be understood or disclosed.

[Kalin KOZHUHAROV (SafeCast)]

http://fukushima-radioactivity.jp/

also shows nothing worrying.

[Dirk]

So what is Takeda on about? Too bad he doesn't provide any links. His
post is from today. As Pieter says, 400Bq/m^2 is a very small number,
although of course you could get into the issue of "hot particles".

[Jam]

So, I just finished taking a couple spot checks and a timed count
in the open space used for calibrating the Safecast car & bGeigie.

The "calibrated zone" shows no change within the uncertainty of
our instruments. A ten minute total should be about 700 counts.
It was 690.

Little bit different story on other outdoor surfaces. Last April,
concrete on the walkway showed about 1200cpm with an Inspector
sitting directly on it. By August it was down to about 1100cpm.
Tonight it is down to 660cpm. Same for the curb featured in the
video posted on our blog at the end of May.

As autumn approached, I predicted (or more like guessed) that
the most significant mitigation to surface contamination in Japan
would be "winter". The thermal cycling and freezing temperatures
disturb the top layer of soil and cause miniscule erosion of
silicate substrates. Exactly where the cesium fallout bonded.
The cesium is still around, as indicated by the lack of change in
the gamma field at 1 meter height. But some of it has apparently
moved off of hard, exposed surfaces into adjacent soil. And that
soil has had its top few centimeters upturned by frost, diffusing
the contamination slightly.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I didn't find any evidence tonight
of fresh fallout in northwest Chiba prefecture. Sunday we should
have a report from close to the Dai-ichi plant. If there have been
new emissions, that's where they'll be easist to spot.

- jam

[the_STIG]

The Fukushima Prefecture table http://www.pref.fukushima.jp/j/koukabutsu9.pdf
actually show an average daily increase of 560% if you compare the 6
days prior to January 2 with the 3 days starting from January 2. This
is a quite significant percentage increase, although the total amount
may be less threatening.

On January 5 and 6 the Japanese portion of Twitter is was buzzing with
traffic on this subject. A Gunderson video video telling people to
flee in case Dai-ichi Reactor 4 collapses was circulated via the
internet, and some people were saying that they were so worried that
they did not feel like going to work. The information that Iwaki
residents recently received new iodine tablets because the shelf dates
of earlier distributed tablets had expired, was also taken out of
context to mean that some new nuclear event was possibly unfolding.

Cesium fallout was also recorded in Chiba: http://www.jcac.or.jp/lib/senryo_lib/taiki_kouka.pdf
Even in Tokyo a minute amount of cesium was detected by a monitoring
post in Koto Ward on January 5: http://www.sangyo-rodo.metro.tokyo.jp/whats-new/keisoku-0103.pdf

At Tepco's press conference on January 6 spokesperson Matsumoto said
he has not been informed of the monitoring data in question, and that
there was nothing unusual happening at Fukushima Dai-ichi. He said it
was probably strong wind blowing up radioactive materials.

Professor Nojiri also thinks it could be the wind stirring up the
cesium, however Professor Makino says the amounts are larger than than
the wind would be able to stir up, although the wind velocity reached
max. 17.7m/s on Jan. 2~3.

The following data was compiled by Professor Okumura of Mie University
from the monitoring posts around the Fukushima Dai-ichi and Dai-ni.
The radiation levels were higher at several posts on January 2, they
but do not indicate any emergency.
http://oku.edu.mie-u.ac.jp/rad/
The map showing where each monitoring post:
http://www.atom-moc.pref.fukushima.jp/dynamic/C0008-PC.html

Professor Hayakawa of Gunma University commented that he thinks there
is an element of panic in this particular instance.

[Michael Goldberg]

Good summary report Stig.  This kind of analysis helps those who don't or cannot follow streams of data.  Much thanks.

---

From: the_STIG <stig.ing...@gmail.com>
To: Safecast Discussion Group <safecas...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 7, 2012 1:47 AM
Subject: [Safecast Jpn] Re: Cesium Rise in Fukushima?

[Sean Bonner]

Stig! Blog it!

-s

--
Sean Bonner

homebase | twitter | G+ | SAFECAST

[Pieter Franken]

One thing that is interesting is that the Iodine level is reported as ND. So it could indeed be possible that strong winds carried dust/send from hot spot areas within the 20km zone. If it was a new release we should at least see some Iodine in the report. Not sure though

Pieter

[Pieter Franken]

Joe, we also should be seeing a gradual drop off happening because of Cs134. I will measure a reference spot her in Tokyo as well and see if there's any change.

Pieter

[MattAlt]

Prof. Hayano just posted this MEXT chart demonstrating what he claims
is a relationship between windspeed and the spike in Cs on that day.

http://twitpic.com/843z4d

[Michael Goldberg]

---

From: Sean Bonner <se...@seanbonner.com>
To: safecas...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, January 7, 2012 3:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Safecast Jpn] Re: Cesium Rise in Fukushima?

Stig! Blog it!

-s

I would add Pieter's comment about Iodine.
mg

[Future Design]

Thanks, everyone. This is really helpful. I'll be cross-posting this
thread to some other sites.

Azby

[the_STIG]

NEW INFORMATION REGARDING FUKUSHIMA FALLOUT DATA:

It has come to my attention that on September 26, 2011 Fukushima
Prefecture revised their official fallout data in the period from June
6, 2011 to July 30, 2011. The originally published fallout data was
extremely low, while the revised fallout data shows a much higher
level with large daily fluctuations.

The leftmost column of the following table shows the dates and
timespan of the collection of fallout data. The middle column shows
the published fallout data prior to revision, and the rightmost column
shows the fallout data after revision:
http://radioactivity.mext.go.jp/ja/monitoring_by_prefecture_fallout/2011/09/1060_110926.pdf

What I am implying here is that the recent furore of a "fallout spike"
around January 2 may to some extent have been caused by the fact that
many people had only watched the Fukushima fallout data published
prior to September 26.

The revised data shows wide fluctuations from less than 20MBq/km2 to
1340MBq/km2. When seen in this context the "fallout spike" on January
2, 2012 was not extraordinarily large.

Nevertheless, I feel that the recent situation should still be watched
and monitored to see if there could be an underlying longer-term cause.

[Kevin Meyerson]

Why is there such a large variation in the data? Was the original data
incorrect?

On Jan 7, 9:15 pm, the_STIG <stig.inge.bjo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> NEW INFORMATION REGARDING FUKUSHIMA FALLOUT DATA:
>
> It has come to my attention that on September 26, 2011 Fukushima
> Prefecture revised their official fallout data in the period from June
> 6, 2011 to July 30, 2011. The originally published fallout data was
> extremely low, while the revised fallout data shows a much higher
> level with large daily fluctuations.
>
> The leftmost column of the following table shows the dates and
> timespan of the collection of fallout data. The middle column shows
> the published fallout data prior to revision, and the rightmost column

> shows the fallout data after revision:http://radioactivity.mext.go.jp/ja/monitoring_by_prefecture_fallout/2...

[lano...@hotmail.com]

I am not saying Takeda speaks gospel, but in his latest update on his
blog, he believes wind is not a factor in the recent uptick of
cesium. Hope it is okay to post Japanese here: 福島の土地に落ちたものが再び舞い上がるには、
「乾燥した日で風の強い日」に定時降下物が増えるはずですが、これまで数回にわたって高い値が観測されたものを調べてみますと、風との関係がほとんど見
られません。このグラフはネットからいただいたもの（いつものように多くの人の健康に関するので、お断りして使わせていただいています）ですが、雨の日
は少ないのですが、風との関係が見られないのです。