Tag Archives: Japan

Japan’s Nuclear Crisis Continues

Posted on by ninjanurse

Immediately after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, pundits were claiming it was a ‘success story’. That talking point vanished in the first days, and later ‘not as bad as Chernobyl’ began to lose ground.

If the accident were one tenth the severity, it would still emerge over time as a strong argument for abandoning nuclear power as an answer to our energy needs. Nuclear pollution doesn’t go away, and it concentrates in soil, water and food. Fukushima is not under control yet, as today’s news shows…

Another leak at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant has been pouring radioactive water filled with high amounts of cesium into the Pacific Ocean for an unknown period of time, but Tokyo Electric Power Co. was able to plug the leak.

Radioactive materials are also apparently penetrating the silt fence installed in the sea near the crippled plant, raising concern that a wider area of the Pacific may be contaminated.

Cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear decay, is one of the bad ones. The talking point that ‘it’s only radioactive iodine, no big deal’ is on its way out.

‘No immediate risk’ may become a bitter joke before this is all over…

“This is an extremely serious problem,” Goshi Hosono, special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, told a news conference Wednesday attended by Tepco and government officials to explain their ongoing efforts to contain the nuclear crisis.

The Telegraph is describing the condition of the No.1 reactor as ‘a meltdown’.

There were six special advisers to Prime Minister Kan. One of them, Toshiso Tosako, resigned last month with tears in his eyes after the government decided to raise the acceptable exposure limit for schoolchildren in Fukushima.

Japan’s problems are the world’s problems. Partly because radioactive pollution doesn’t respect borders, and partly because the energy crisis and global warming are the world’s problems to solve.

Antinuclear activists in Japan will find support from Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel is out front in the clean energy race…

In mid-March, Merkel stunned the German public and other governments by announcing an accelerated phasing out of all 17 German nuclear reactors as an immediate reaction to the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The chancellor now says she wants to slash the use of coal, speed up approvals for renewable energy investments, and reduce CO2 emissions drastically. That means that the 81 million Germans living between the North Sea and the Alps are supposed to cover their huge energy needs from wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass within a few decades. Indeed, by 2030 green electricity could be the dominant source of power for German factories and households.

“We want to end the use of nuclear energy and reach the age of renewable energy as fast as possible,” Merkel said.

Japanese authorities have changed their plans to increase nuclear power, and will build up renewable sources.

Naoto Kan said Japan needs to “start from scratch” on its long-term energy policy after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was heavily damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami and began leaking radiation.

Nuclear plants supplied about 30 percent of Japan’s electricity, and the government had planned to raise that to 50 percent by 2030.

Kan told a news conference that nuclear and fossil fuel used to be the pillars of Japanese energy policy but now the government will add two more pillars: renewable energy such as solar, wind and biomass, and an increased focus on conservation.

This is the challenge for our century. America put a man on the moon. We’ve spent a long time listening to politicians who have nothing to offer but fear. We can turn around and start leading again, and join with other countries in researching and building safe, diverse and renewable energy solutions.

Children and Radiation

Posted on by ninjanurse

The Hindu reports that the special adviser to the Japanese prime minister has resigned over new standards raising the allowable radiation exposure for schoolchildren in Fukushima.

The standard set for schoolchildren’s exposure to nuclear radiation in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture has caused a political furore. In prime focus is an expert’s disapproval of the “high” permissible limit set for annual exposure, at 20 millisieverts, for outdoor activities at school.

Citing this limit and the government’s alleged track record of ad hoc responses to the continuing nuclear radiation crisis, Toshiso Kosako, special adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, resigned on Friday night. However, the Japanese government on Saturday downplayed this development and said Prof. Kosako “misunderstands the situation.”

I think ‘ad hoc’ is Latin for duct tape. The Japanese government has raised the acceptable limit of exposure for workers in an emergency.

The Health Ministry recently raised the legal radiation limit that workers can be exposed to in an emergency from 100 to 250 millisieverts.

This is clearly not based on science, but necessity, and today’s news reports that 2 workers recorded exposures close to the new limit.

It’s very ’70′s and not politically correct to point out the dangers of radiation, especially to children, but this story is not going away. For the sake of the future, we must stop creating new nuclear hazards and safely deal with what we already have.

Common Dreams has the numbers and essentially, the Japanese authorities have declared it acceptable for children to be exposed to levels of radiation that would normally only be allowed for adult nuclear plant workers. This is why the arguments that there’s no danger to the public have to be challenged. The real harm may not be seen for decades, but the time to act is now.

Nuclear Pollution in the Ocean

Posted on by ninjanurse

One nuclear expert said that time was on their side. It doesn’t look that way. Attempts to avert worse disaster at Fukushima have the look of desperate measures. Millions of gallons of radioactive water are being dumped into the sea, with the new rationale that radioactive water is no big deal. They have no better options, because there is worse contamination building up and it has to go somewhere.

Japan sets new standards for acceptable levels of radiation in seafood, and, as always, there is ‘no immediate risk’. I think you can eat lead paint for quite a while with no immediate risk. Makes me wish I smoked.

Also Tuesday, TEPCO announced that samples taken from seawater near one of the reactors contained 7.5 million times the legal limit for radioactive iodine on April 2. Two days later, that figure dropped to 5 million.

The company said in a statement that even those large amounts would have “no immediate impact” on the environment but added that it was working to stop the leak as soon as possible.

The readings released Tuesday were taken closer to the plant than before apparently because new measuring points were added after the crack was discovered and did not necessarily reflect a worsening of the contamination. Other measurements several hundred yards away from the plant have declined to levels about 1,000 times the legal limit — down from more than four times that last week.

Experts agree that radiation dissipates quickly in the vast Pacific, but direct exposure to the most contaminated water measured would lead to “immediate injury,” said Yoichi Enokida, a professor of materials science at Nagoya University’s graduate school of engineering.

He added that seawater may be diluting the iodine, which decays quickly, but the leak also contains long-lasting cesium-137. Both can build up in fish, though iodine’s short half-life means it does not stay there for very long. The long-term effects of cesium, however, will need to be studied, he said.

I’m counting on the uncontrolled news leak to continue.

We have to look at the enormous investment we are about to make in more nuclear plants and see what we could accomplish with conservation, local clean energy and coordinated use of what we have.

Bury It Deep

Posted on by ninjanurse

So, we’re about three hours away from April’s Fools Day, EST, and maybe I’m getting punked, but I got this from two sources..

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Authorities say the world’s largest concrete pump will be flown from Atlanta to Japan on the world’s largest cargo plane as part of a series of emergency steps to help stabilize damaged nuclear reactors.

The Augusta Chronicle reports that the 190,000-pound pump features a 70-meter boom which can be remotely controlled. Officials say that makes it suitable for use in the highly radioactive environment surrounding the nuclear plants.

The pump was manufactured by Germany-based Putzmeister, whose equipment was used at Chernobyl in the 1980s to entomb the melted core of the reactor in concrete.

‘Putzmeister’? I’m a proud English-only speaker who has no German at all, but this sounds funny. Of course, most German sounds funny so that’s neither here nor there.

If the corporate board of TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) is accepting foreign aid and this will bring the crisis under control, then I hope it’s for real.

I hope that the courageous and dedicated workers at Fukushima who are bailing water to try to avert a nationwide crisis will see the cavalry come over the hill, and will see their sacrifice vindicated.

The challenge today is to prevent more disasters. Keeping this poison entombed for 50,000 years is the challenge for future generations.

UPDATE: The Atlanta Business Journal says the pump is one of only three in the world, it will be taken on a Russian transport plane, and it will not be returned to the US because radioactive contamination will make it too ‘hot’ to use.

Prevailing Winds

Posted on by ninjanurse

A reminder from the Boston Herald that spaceship Earth is a closed system and what goes around comes around…

This just in to the City Desk … the state Department of Public Health announced today they have detected low levels of radiation in Massachusetts rainwater, likely from the nuclear fallout from Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

As you can read below, there’s no public health threat, but it does illustrate the severity of the nuclear crisis in Japan. Here’s the release …
The stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okumamachi, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. (AP)

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) today announced that very low concentrations of radioiodine-131 (I-131), likely associated with the Japan nuclear power plant event, have been detected in a precipitation (i.e. rainwater) sample. The sample location is one of more than 100 locations around the country that are part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Radiation Network (RadNet) monitoring system that routinely monitors for radioactivity in environmental media. Air samples at the same location have shown no detectable radiation. There is no health impact to state drinking water supplies as a result of these findings, and state and federal health officials emphasized that there are no anticipated public health concerns.

I’m not personally worried here and now, but this is a warning that what goes into the atmosphere travels on the wind and borders are no obstacle.

Japan– Uncontrolled News Leak

Posted on by ninjanurse

Thanks to Dem from CT on Daily Kos for this fine post about crowdsourcing vital news.

The idea that governments or companies or anyone gets to control information is sooo 20th century. Sure, plenty of things are secret (but ask the Wikileaks folks for how long) while/but plenty of things are out there for anyone enterprising enough to put the data together.

Does this replace health and disaster reporters and journalists? Not at all. It’s data for them to vet, just like it’s data for us to vet. Sometimes, it’ll be vetted by non-journalists with expertise in a particular area (and some of them, like Nate Silver and Glenn Greenwald, will move from blogger to pundit over time.)

Now, is the data on the internet always going to be right? No, but it will get corroborated and corrected. If it raises the right questions, it’s done its job. In fact, traditional journalism also makes errors (and sometimes sources are flat-out wrong), so the correction process is always a dynamic one.

Dem from CT linked to this site– Pachtube real time crowdsourced radiation maps.

Thank you to all the cranky people who have insisted for years that ‘experts’ should, as an ethical requirement, reveal who is paying them. That helps us put in perspective a reassuring analysis of the risks of nuclear power by a consultant to the nuclear industry.

Before the net, that was the only information we’d be able to get, other than the warnings of those folks waving signs outside the gates. I know, because we were hearing the exact same arguments thirty years ago, from experts paid by the nuclear industry.

Here in the US the Environmental Protection Agency says that 20 of 124 radiation monitors nationwide are out of service.

A Geiger Counter is not terribly expensive or hard to obtain, so maybe we’ll do some crowdsourcing here.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports danger, confusion, and some hope in the struggle to contain the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex…

The water problems of the past four days underscore the complexities and uncertainties that continue to surround the repair effort, as workers, engineers and regulators are forced to confront new problems just as they seem to have solved old ones. Perhaps more unnerving than the specifics of the radioactive water is that it shows how unpredictable the repairs have become, and thus how hard it is for anybody to say with certainty how quickly or easily they can be completed.

Experts say the Japanese are moving in a prudent manner given the enormity of the task. As long as workers are able to keep the cores cool, the experts say, the nuclear material will continue to produce less heat naturally.

“Time is their friend,” said Alexander Sich, an associate professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. “The longer they wait, the cooler the cores get, the less stress on the system.”

The picture changes hour by hour. I hope they will soon have success in bringing the radiation under control. After that is a daunting clean-up job.

One leak I want to see continue is news from every source. Even as workers put themselves in harms way and people in Japan struggle to make sense of conflicting warnings, the industry is already minimizing the crisis and dismissing public concern as ignorance.

The big money, now as thirty years ago, is with the nuclear industry and its favored politicians. Unlike thirty years ago, we can do more than wave signs. Freedom of the press, they say, belongs to him who owns the press. For now, that freedom is enjoyed by countless small publishers, in Fukushima, in California, in Russia and Norway and Pennsylvania.

Radiation from Japan’s nuclear disaster has circled the globe several times, as has the news. Truth will win.

Situation Worsens in Japan

Posted on by ninjanurse

It’s a bad sign that it’s taking so long for Japan to get its nuclear reactors under control. From Reuters today…

(Reuters) – Highly radioactive water has been found at a second reactor at a crippled nuclear power station in Japan, the plant’s operator said, as fears of contamination escalated two weeks after a huge earthquake and tsunami battered the complex.

Underscoring growing international concern about nuclear power raised by the accident in northeast Japan, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement it was time to reassess the international nuclear safety regime.

Earlier, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, making his first public statement on the crisis in a week, said the situation at the Fukushima nuclear complex, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, was “nowhere near” being resolved.

Two workers are in a hospital with radiation burns, seventeen exposed. The best hope is that the immediate crisis is resolved soon. Assessing the damage will take time. Nuclear optimists insist there is no real danger from radiation, but the world is watching, and nuclear power will be a hard sell in the future.

Epidemiology Map

Posted on by ninjanurse

Valerie Brown, of Alternet, takes apart the official reassurances that ‘no immediate risk’ of harm from radioactive exposure is the whole story.

On a spring day in 1975, the first words I heard as I rose through the fog of anesthetic were “it was malignant.” I was twenty-four years old. A couple of months earlier during a routine physical my doctor had found a mass on my thyroid gland. X-rays and ultrasound had failed to clarify whether the mass was a fluid-filled cyst or a solid tumor. The only choice was surgery. The tissue analysis during the operation confirmed a diagnosis of thyroid cancer. The surgeon removed one lobe and the isthmus of the barbell-shaped gland at the base of my neck. I was informed that I’d take thyroid hormone for the rest of my life because if my own remnant gland were to start functioning again, it might grow itself another cancer. And so I have taken the little pill every morning for thirty-six years. It took a long time for the screaming red scar around my neck – the kind that was later dubbed the “Chernobyl necklace” – to fade.


The rest of her post is worth reading, especially as this subject is not easily reduced to sound bites and slogans.

The phrase, ‘Chernobyl necklace’ is a reference to the approximately 4,000 children and adolescents diagnosed with thyroid cancer who lived in the path of nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The International Atomic Energy Agency has a somewhat more upbeat take on this consequence than Ms. Brown.

This is not an attempt to speculate about numbers and relative risk. That requires epidemiological research. It’s just to say that today’s news photo of a Japanese woman wearing a mask as she feeds her infant from a bottle is an illustration of one of the deepest and most real concerns about this present crisis and nuclear power in general.

Japan in the Fog of Crisis

Posted on by ninjanurse

This morning from the Houston Chronicle…

FUKUSHIMA, Japan — An unexpected spike in pressure inside a troubled reactor set back efforts to bring Japan’s overheating, leaking nuclear complex under control Sunday as concerns grew that so far minor contamination of food and water is spreading.

The pressure increase raised the possibility that plant operators may need to deliberately release radioactive gas, erasing some progress in a nuclear crisis as the government continued its halting response to a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that savaged northeast Japan on March 11.

A teenage boy’s cries for help led police to rescue an 80-year-old woman from a wrecked house in a rare rescue after so many days.

Beyond the disaster area, an already shaken public grew uneasy with official reports that traces of radiation first detected in spinach and milk from farms near the nuclear plant are turning up farther away in tap water, rain and even dust. In all cases, the government said the radiation levels were too small to pose an immediate risk to health. Still, Taiwan seized a batch of fava beans from Japan found with faint — and legal amounts — of iodine and cesium.

“I’m worried, really worried,” said Mayumi Mizutani, a 58-year-old Tokyo resident shopping for bottled water at a neighborhood supermarket to give her visiting 2-year-old grandchild. “We’re afraid because it’s possible our grandchild could get cancer.” Forecasts for rain, she said, were an added worry.

Reports yesterday on the radio said that power was restored to the cooling system of one of the plants via a mile-long cable. For now, it’s going to be a fog of crisis until the radioactive fuel rods are cooled and secured.

The real truth will come out if we have thoughtful and detailed investigative reporting after the fact.

Assurances that there is ‘no immediate health risk’ don’t address the obvious concern about long-term health risks.

I hope for better news today. The people of Japan have suffered so much at the hands of nature, they don’t deserve to suffer more from human folly.

Why it Matters

Posted on by ninjanurse

Because the same re-assurances from experts, the same doubts that were disregarded as alarmism, the same ‘pragmatism’ that allowed reckless policy in the name of science and profit are behind the push to expand nuclear power today.

Robert Peabody died almost fifty years ago in a nuclear plant that was sold as state of the art and safe. Workers in Russia were martyred in the Chernobyl cleanup. The news today is about a rotation of volunteers in Japan who brave exposure to radiation in a desperate effort to prevent the worst as nuclear safety fails in the wake of disaster.

It matters because not enough has changed, and not enough will unless we stop digging ourselves into dependence on nuclear power, leaving the mess to future generations.