Posted by majestic starchild
on January 13, 2012, 4:29 am, in reply to "300 tons of tainted water found near No. 3 unit at Fukushima plant"
http://fukusima-sokai.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-post_04.html
Jan 9th 2012
To whom it may concern
The Christopher Busby Foundation for the Children of Fukushima CBFCF.
Mr James Ryan
This is to confirm that I wrote to Mr James Ryan, the CEO and organizer of the CBFCF on 12th December and formally broke any links I had with his CBFCF organization in so far as it exists. This is because the organisation never developed as was originally promised and never carried out the work that had been agreed in a way that had been agreed between me and Mr Ryan. I confirm that I have never agreed to any of the information and details posted on the website of the CBFCF and have never received any money from the CBFCF. My advice has only to be that people exposed to radionuclides from Fukushima in the radioactive areas of north Japan should take Calcium and Magnesium supplements, nothing else which has been marketed by Mr Ryan, and this advice I continue to give.
Chris Busby
--Previous Message--
:
: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120113p2g00m0dm020000c.html
:
: TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Around 300 tons of water
: contaminated with relatively high amounts of
: radioactive substances has been found in an
: underground tunnel near the No. 3 unit at
: the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
: plant, the plant's operator said Thursday.
:
: Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the water in
: the tunnel, used to lay electric cables,
: contained 49 to 69 becquerels of radioactive
: cesium per cubic centimeter, adding that it
: will check how the contaminated water
: accumulated in the area.
:
: Some water with lower concentrations of
: radioactive materials was also found in a
: tunnel near the No. 1 unit.
:
: The utility known as TEPCO is checking for
: accumulated pools of water in underground
: tunnels at the plant after around 220 tons
: of contaminated water was found on Dec. 18
: in a tunnel near a facility on the plant
: premises for storing highly contaminated
: water.
:
: On Wednesday, contaminated water was found
: to have accumulated in two underground
: tunnels.
:
: (Mainichi Japan) January 13, 2012
:
: --Previous Message--
:
:
: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120113p2g00m0dm013000c.html
:
: TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The average radiation
: exposure of some 37,000 residents in
: Fukushima city following the nuclear crisis
: at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant came to
: 0.26 millisieverts during the three-month
: period from September, the municipal
: government said Thursday.
:
: "It is unlikely the radiation dose will
: pose a risk to their health," the
: municipal government said, referring to the
: data collected by dosimeters, which were
: distributed to children of junior high
: school age or under as well as pregnant
: women.
:
: Out of 36,767 residents whose results were
: available, 36,657 were exposed to less than
: 1 millisievert, it said. The city is located
: roughly 70 kilometers northwest of the
: atomic plant.
:
: A total of 10 residents including babies and
: pregnant women were exposed to 1.8 to 2.7
: millisieverts. Of those, eight said they had
: left dosimeters outside or undergone X-ray
: baggage checks at airports, which are
: believed to be the causes of the higher
: readings, the local government said.
:
: The details of higher radiation exposure for
: another two remain unclear as they did not
: say where they went or what they did, it
: said.
:
: (Mainichi Japan) January 13, 2012
:
: --Previous Message--
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: http://www.economist.com/node/21542437
:
: THERE is a breathtaking serenity to the
: valley that winds from the town of Namie, on
: the coast of Fukushima prefecture, into the
: hills above. A narrow road runs by a river
: that passes through steep ravines, studded
: with maples. Lovely it may be, but it is the
: last place where you would want to see an
: exodus of 8,000 people fleeing meltdowns at
: a nearby nuclear-power plant.
:
: Along that switchback road the day after the
: earthquake and tsunami on March 11th 2011,
: it took Namie’s residents more than three
: hours to drive 30km (19 miles) to what they
: thought was the relative safety of Tsushima,
: a secluded hamlet. What they did not know
: was that they were heading into an invisible
: fog of radioactive matter that has made this
: one of the worst radiation hotspots in
: Japan—far worse than the town they
: abandoned, just ten minutes’ drive from the
: gates of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. It
: was not until a New York Times report in
: August that many of the evacuees realised
: they had been exposed to such a danger,
: thanks to government neglect.
:
: Negligence forms the backdrop for the first
: government-commissioned report into the
: Fukushima nuclear disaster, released in late
: December. Although only an interim
: assessment (the complete report is due in
: the summer), it is already 500 pages long
: and the product of hundreds of interviews. A
: casual reader might be put off by the
: technical detail and the dearth of personal
: narrative. Yet by Japanese standards it is
: gripping. It spares neither the government
: nor Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the
: operator of the nuclear plant. It reveals at
: times an almost cartoon-like level of
: incompetence. Whether it is enough to
: reassure an insecure public that lessons
: will be learnt is another matter.
:
: Since the Three Mile Island disaster in
: 1979, it has become axiomatic to assume that
: complex systems fail in complex ways. That
: was broadly true of Fukushima, though often
: the failures appear absurdly elementary. In
: the most quake-prone archipelago on earth,
: TEPCO and its regulators had no
: accident-management plan in the event of
: earthquakes and tsunamis—assuming,
: apparently, that the plant was proofed
: against them and that any hypothetical
: accidents would be generated only from
: within. TEPCO had, in the event of nuclear
: disaster, an off-site emergency headquarters
: just 5km from the plant that was not
: radiation-proof, and so was effectively
: useless. On site, the workers in its number
: one reactor appear not to have been familiar
: with an emergency-cooling system called an
: isolation condenser, which they wrongly
: thought was still working after the tsunami.
: Their supervisors made the same mistake, so
: a vital six hours were lost before other
: methods for cooling the overheating atomic
: fuel rods were deployed. Partly as a result,
: this was the first reactor to explode on
: March 12th.
:
: The government was almost as clueless. Naoto
: Kan, then prime minister, had a crisis
: headquarters on the fifth floor of the
: Kantei, his office building. But emergency
: staff from various ministries were relegated
: to the basement, and there was often
: miscommunication, not least because mobile
: phones did not work underground. Crucial
: data estimating the dispersion of
: radioactive matter were not given to the
: prime minister’s office, so that evacuees
: like those from Namie were not given any
: advice on where to go. That is why they
: drove straight into the radioactive cloud.
: The report faults the government for
: providing information that was often bogus,
: ambiguous or slow. Perhaps the biggest
: failure was that nobody in a position of
: responsibility—neither TEPCO nor its
: regulators—had sought to look beyond the end
: of their noses in disaster planning. No one
: seems ever to have tried to “think the
: unthinkable”.
:
: In America official reports such as those on
: the September 11th attacks or the Deepwater
: Horizon oil spill have become acclaimed
: books. This one is hardly a page-turner. A
: privately funded foundation, headed by
: Yoichi Funabashi, a former editor of the
: Asahi Shimbun newspaper, is doing a separate
: investigation, based partly on the testimony
: of TEPCO whistle-blowers. (One, according to
: Mr Funabashi, says the earthquake damaged
: the reactors before the tsunami, a claim
: that officials have always rejected.) It at
: least promises to have literary merit. Mr
: Funabashi, a prominent author, draws
: parallels between the roots of the disaster
: and Japan’s failures in the second world
: war. They include the use of heroic
: front-line troops with out-of-touch
: superiors; rotating decision-makers too
: often; narrow “stovepipe” thinking; and the
: failure to imagine that everything could go
: wrong at once.
:
: Complex systems, jerry-rigged
:
: For now, the risk is that the interim report
: does not get the attention it deserves. So
: far it seems to have aroused more interest
: on a techie website called Physics Forums,
: beloved of nuclear engineers, than in the
: Japanese press. The government, led by
: Yoshihiko Noda, has not yet used it as a
: rallying call for reform. One of its
: recommendations, an independent new
: regulatory body, will soon be set up.
: Others, such as new safety standards and
: broader evacuation plans, would take months
: to implement.
:
: Such reports are, after all,
: confidence-building exercises. They are
: meant to reassure the public that, by
: exposing failures, they will help to prevent
: them from being repeated. In the case of
: Fukushima Dai-ichi there is still plenty to
: be nervous about. Although the government
: declared on December 16th that the plant had
: reached a state of “cold shutdown”, much of
: the cooling system is jerry-rigged and
: probably still not earthquake-proof. On
: January 1st a quake temporarily caused water
: levels to plunge in a pool containing highly
: radioactive spent-fuel rods.
:
: Meanwhile, across Japan, 48 out of 54
: nuclear reactors remain out of service,
: almost all because of safety fears. Until
: somebody in power seizes on the report as a
: call to action, its findings, especially
: those that reveal sheer ineptitude, suggest
: that the public has every reason to remain
: as scared as hell
:
: --Previous Message--
:
:
:
:
:
: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/fukushimas-impact-on-the-ocean-analyzed
:
: 11 January 2012—One month after the March
: 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident,
: ocean water at the plant’s wastewater
: discharge point had 45 million times the
: concentration of radioactive cesium-137 than
: before the accident, according to
: researchers in Japan and from the Woods Hole
: Oceanographic Institution. The numbers
: plummeted the next month because ocean
: currents moved the contaminants away from
: shore. By July, numbers were down to 10 000
: times as high as normal.
: This latest analysis, reported in the 1
: December 2011 issue of the journal
: Environmental Science & Technology,
: indicates that the concentration in ocean
: water poses no direct threat to humans or
: marine life. However, accumulation in marine
: sediment could be of concern for decades,
: says Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist at
: Woods Hole who was involved in the research.
: What’s also troubling is that cesium-137
: concentrations have stayed at near constant
: levels since July, implying that radioactive
: water is still being released, either
: directly from the reactors or indirectly
: from groundwater. "I’m convinced there
: are ongoing leaks," Buesseler says.
: "Even if you plug all leaks and shut
: down reactors, groundwater keeps leaching
: into the ocean and these waters and
: contaminated sediments can be a long-term
: source of cesium-137 for decades to a
: century."
: As recently as 4 December 2011, the Tokyo
: Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant
: operator, disclosed that 45 tons of water
: laced with radioactive strontium had leaked
: into the ground from a treatment facility.
: Strontium, which has a 30-year half-life
: similar to cesium’s, can accumulate in bones
: and is linked to bone cancer. Small fish
: that are eaten with their bones could be a
: source of exposure.
: During the accident, TEPCO used seawater to
: cool exposed reactor cores and spent fuel.
: The less-contaminated wastewater was
: intentionally dumped into the ocean to make
: space for more highly contaminated water.
: However, leaks from the damaged reactor
: buildings led to the release of some of the
: highly contaminated water into the ocean.
: Since the accident, TEPCO has been regularly
: testing surface ocean water samples near the
: plant for radioactive cesium and iodine
: levels; Buesseler and his colleagues
: compiled and analyzed this data for the ES&T
: report. Cesium-137, with its relatively long
: half-life, poses a long-term concern, unlike
: iodine-131, which has a half-life of just
: eight days. Significant amounts of
: cesium-137 from Soviet nuclear weapons were
: released into the ocean in the 1960s, but
: the concentration in the ocean east of Japan
: had gone down to 1.5 becquerels per cubic
: meter when last measured in 2010. In
: contrast, the biggest release from Fukushima
: this past April was 68 million Bq/m3, making
: it the largest accidental release into ocean
: waters in history.
: Accumulation of radionuclides in marine
: sediment is the main concern, says
: Buesseler. But there isn’t much data on the
: sediment yet. Organisms that live in or on
: sediment, such as worms, shellfish, and
: bottom feeders, could be exposed to high
: radionuclide concentrations. "For a
: population that eats a lot of seafood, this
: is certainly of concern," Buesseler
: says.
: Nicholas Fisher, a professor of marine and
: atmospheric sciences at the State University
: of New York at Stony Brook, says that the
: data Buesseler has presented calls for
: further in-depth evaluation of the marine
: environment around Fukushima. When Fisher,
: Buesseler, and their colleagues were in
: Japan to independently measure radiation in
: marine life this past June, they were not
: allowed to enter the waters within
: 30-kilometers of the coast. It’s possible
: that in the waters a few hundred meters
: around the reactor, organisms have radiation
: levels high enough to possibly pose a risk
: to humans if consumed, Fisher says, but
: "we just don’t know if that’s the case.
: Like any disaster, there’s a lot of stuff
: that needs to be evaluated before you can
: give the ’clear’ signal."
: A few fish exceeding the Japanese
: government’s safe limit of 500 Bq of
: cesium-137 per kilogram of seafood have been
: found in waters off Fukushima, prompting a
: fishing ban in a 20-km radius around the
: plant. But contaminated seafood could easily
: move out of that zone and be caught, Fisher
: points out.
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