Update #62: Sept 17 & 18
by Nelle Maxey
Contamination
Excellent interviews in this 3- minute video from Al Jazeera on Sunday.
Experts say Fukushima ‘worse' than Chernobyl
"At least one billion becquerels of radiation continue to leak from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant each day even though it is now more than five months after the March earthquake and tsunami that damaged the facility.
Experts say that the total radiation leaked will eventually exceed the amounts released from the Chernobyl disaster that the Ukraine in April 1986. This amount would make Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in history."
Energy News carries this link under the headline, Experts: Possibility of evacuating parts of Tokyo can no longer be ignored.
In a related story SKF reports new, high levels of contamination in Yokohama City. Yokohama is 250 kilometers south of Fukushima. It lies on Tokyo Bay and is the second largest city in Japan. Wikipedia says It is a major commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area.
#Radiation in Japan: 42,000 Bq/kg of Radioactive Cesium in Dirt Around a Drain in Yokohama City
It's not that the city that clearly does not care much about radiation safety (cesium beef for kids, dumping radioactive ashes in the ocean) did the measurement on its own. A citizen measured the radiation in the area, got the sample and had it tested using his own money, and alerted the city when the result came in.
Then, the city finally went and took the sample to be tested. The result was 42,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium from the dirt that accumulated around the drain grid on the side of the road in Kohoku-ku (Okurayama) in Yokohama City, just inside the 250-kilometer radius from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.
The city also found 35,000 becquerels/kg of cesium in the sediment at a fountain nearby, 27,600 becquerels/kg from the dirt overflow from the plant box on the road, and 11,320 becquerels/kg from the dirt overflow from the plant box on the side walk.
Energy news reports Greenpeace International has released results of sea food testing in Japan. They note radioactive elements in sea weed with the head line, Radioactive manganese-54, silver-110m and cobalt-60 found in seaweed sample 30km south of Fukushima.
The full lab report can be viewed here GreenPeace Fukushima Seafood Results.
Reading through the report, I see the testing was done on fish and seaweed from markets, city harbours and locations further out to sea. Levels of C-137 exceeded 100Bq/kg in a number of samples. I presume the small amounts (less than 1Bq/kg) of radioactive Mg, Ag and Co are of interest for their presence; but I do not know the implications.
And from Ex-SKF we have a couple of contamination stories which speak for themselves.
Potentially Radioactive Lumber to Be Promoted with "Eco-Point" Incentive?
Seiji Maehara […]went to Fukushima, and after visiting with the evacuees from Iitate-mura, he disclosed his party's plan to use the "eco-point" system for residential housing to promote timber from the disaster-affected area.
Aggghhhhh.
What is the "eco-point" for houses? Well, if you build or renovate your house with energy saving features and alternative energy features (eg. solar panels) the government will give you "eco-points". Then you can use the points at participating stores and buy whatever you want to buy with the points.
Maehara is saying the government may entice builders to use the lumber from the disaster-affected area with "eco-points", even if the potentially radioactive lumber has nothing to do with energy saving.
Iitate-mura's major industry is forestry. Iitate-mura's mountains and forests have been contaminated with whatever fell on them – radioactive cesium, plutonium, strontium. No one has tested them (if someone did, he's not saying anything), but the contamination should be an order of magnitude bigger than the radioactive firewood from Rikuzen Takata City in Iwate Prefecture.
If Mr. Maehara has his way, the contaminated trees are to be cut from the contaminated mountains and hauled out of the mountains, disturbing the contaminated soil and dead leaves, and made into lumber in a village with high air radiation level and sold all over Japan with "eco-points", in order for the rest of the Japanese to help the villagers.
This is "socializing the cost" to the extreme.
The Japan Times carries this related story.
Contamination of Fukushima forests being studied
FUKUSHIMA – The Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, is investigating how badly the wooded areas of Fukushima Prefecture have been contaminated with radioactive fallout.
The government has been concentrating on how to decontaminate residential areas, but forests cover 70 percent of the prefecture and nothing has been done to remove fallout from the forests
"It is crucial for us to make clear the state of contamination (of forests) in considering how to decontaminate (the woodland) effectively," said Shinji Kaneko, director of the institute's forestry environment section.
The institute plans to release the results of its analysis of cedar tree samples from the villages of Kawauchi and Otama and the town of Tadami next month.
The findings are likely to help the government devise decontamination methods for the forests.In August, the government acknowledged difficulties in removing soil and ground cover from the forests, due mostly to the volume of radioactive waste that would be generated by the effort.
"Huge volumes of soil and other (contaminated) items would be involved because the forests occupy a huge area."
The government effectively shelved any approach to decontaminating forests when it said that removing both the contaminated soil and compost materials would strip the forests of important ecological functions, including water retention.
Japan Times also carries this story.
Beef shipments resume from Fukushima Pref
TOKYO – Beef shipments resumed from Fukushima Prefecture on Friday two months after restrictions were imposed over fears that cattle had been contaminated in the nuclear accident. The agriculture ministry said that all cattle from the prefecture will undergo tests for radiation before being shipped.
Fukushima is the last prefecture to have the beef shipment ban-which was imposed on Iwate, Fukushima, Tochigi and Miyagi prefectures in mid-July-lifted after safety measures protecting livestock from contamination were put in place. Local governments must now inspect all cattle before allowing the beef to be shipped to food markets, a farm official said. Only farmers whose cattle are confirmed to be safe can resume shipments.
Prior to the ban, almost 3,000 cattle feared to have been tainted with radioactive cesium were shipped nationwide, slaughtered and sold after the animals were fed rice straw exposed to fallout from the tsunami-triggered nuclear crisis. Hay stored outside is thought to have been contaminated by radioactive materials from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Affected animals had been sold since late March, with much of the meat eaten in restaurants and school canteens and at family dinner tables nationwide.
Two stories on rice contamination. First this one from SKF where he discusses public fears and speculations on rice testing.
#Radioactive Rice? ND, Says Fukushima Prefecture
"On September 16, Fukushima Prefecture announced its first result of the main survey of radioactive materials in the harvested rice. No radioactive cesium above the detection limit (between 5 to 10 becquerels/kg) was detected in the rice harvested between September 12 and 14 in 4 locations in Kitakata City, located in northwest Fukushima. Total 52 locations in the city are to be tested, and the results for the remaining locations will be announced later.
The prefectural government will allow the shipment of rice by the municipalities as long the density of radioactive cesium tests below the national provisional limit (500 becquerels/kg) in the designated locations within a city/town/village. [In case of Kitakata City, therefore] the September 16 survey result was not enough to allow the city to ship rice."
Some Japanese consumers believe neither the report nor the Fukushima prefectural government. Their "baseless" suspicions include:
They must be mixing last year's rice.
Jiji Tsushin and Fukushima Prefecture, deadly lying combo. Personally, I think Jiji is better than Kyodo News.
There are eye-witness reports of sighting the last year's rice bags with proof of inspection from other prefectures piled up high at rice distributors and wholesalers in Fukushima.
My suspicion: How many points did they measure? One rice paddy or two per town/village?
Let's see. Kitakata City is located north in "Aizu" region of Fukushima Prefecture, the western one-third of the prefecture with less contamination than the rest of Fukushima. According to Japanese wiki, today's Kitakata City is the result of the mergers of 17 towns and villages over time. Total 52 testing locations for 17 towns and villages within Kitakata City would mean about 3 locations per town/village. (Fukushima Prefecture's site says 2 samples per town/village.)
There should be more than 3 rice farmers in each town/village, and the farmers have more than one rice paddy.
My second suspicion: Why don't they incinerate the samples to really measure below a decimal point, if they do care about safety for the consumers?
Well the answer is obvious, that they don't care. But before the Fukushima accident, the highest density of radioactive cesium from Fukushima rice (white rice though, not brown rice) was 0.629 becquerels/kg back in 1977, from rice grown in Fukushima City. (data: Japan Chemical Analysis Center)
My third suspicion: How did the prefecture test the samples?
Were the samples given to them by the farmers, or did the officials go to the locations and took the samples from the field?
Saitama Prefecture was busted this time for trying to do the former to test the tea, like it always does when testing the safety of food. The prefecture announced the intention to test the tea, and the tea farmers were to submit the samples by a given date.
There seems to be hardly any public organization in Japan that sides with the consumers.