As our first work of our Nationwide Soil Testing Project, we tested soil samples from 150 areas in the Tokyo metropolitan area. This project is the first unified investigation on the diffusion of radioactive particles in the metropolitan area including Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, Kanagawa, and Ibaraki prefectures, whereas the national and local governments are separately performing their investigations.

Local participants of this project collected soil samples from their preferred locations, and sent them to the same laboratory to test radioactive particles (Iodine-131, Cesium-134, and Cesium-137.) As a result, we discovered that the radioactive fallout in the metropolitan area was quite significant. Some of the extremely high numbers show that there are severely contaminated “hotspots” within the city.

We would be continuing our soil testing project on a nationwide level, to then bring actual ideas and actions to prevent the various effects of radiation.

Nationwide Soil Testing Project(PDF)
Nationwide Soil Testing Project Map(PDF)

After reviewing the business outlook for atomic power amid the Fukushima plant disaster, Hitachi Ltd. has decided to keep its nuclear business development plan and aims to land orders for more than 38 reactors from around the world by 2030, a top company executive said.

Tatsuro Ishizuka

“Nuclear plants are globally important electricity sources,” Tatsuro Ishizuka, a vice president and executive officer, said in a recent interview. “We would like to further improve the safety of nuclear plants and promote them as a key business pillar.”

While the government, because of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, is reconsidering its policy of expanding the number of nuclear plants in Japan, Hitachi has decided to retain the nuclear business plans it adopted prior to the March disaster.

Ishizuka indicated that even if Japan freezes construction of new reactors, Hitachi may accelerate its reactor marketing efforts in other countries, including emerging economies where electricity demand is expanding sharply.

Hitachi hopes to get orders for 20 reactors from utilities in Asia and the Middle East, and for 12 reactors from utilities in North America, he said.

“We’ll give priority to negotiations with India, Vietnam, the United States and other countries” featuring growing energy demand, Ishizuka said. “There are many countries that have adopted plans to expand nuclear energy under their national (energy) policies and we will meet their expectations.”

Nuclear plants remain an effective means of cutting carbon dioxide emissions to help prevent climate change over the medium to long term, Ishizuka said.

Hitachi helped construct the Fukushima No. 1 plant crippled by the March natural disasters and left leaking radioactive material for weeks afterward.

Ishizuka said Hitachi will cooperate fully in stabilizing the plant by making proposals for a permanent reactor-cooling system and methods to extract nuclear fuels. “We will consider medium- to long-term measures and make steady contributions to the stabilization.”

A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit predicts a massive worldwide growth in nuclear energy production over the next decade. The impact of the Fukushima disaster, now being described as the worst industrial accident in history, is expected to be minimal.

Germany’s decision to close its nuclear power stations will be more than made up for by an expansion of nuclear production in other countries, according to the report. The Future of Nuclear Energy suggests a 27 percent growth in output by 2020. The reactors that are planned for China, India and Russia will add five times the nuclear capacity that the German decision will remove from world nuclear output.

It takes 15 years to build a nuclear power station, so the projected increase reflects the estimated output of facilities that are already under construction. Sixteen new reactors were started in 2010. Ten of them are in China and the others are in Russia, India and Brazil. Even Japan has resumed construction work at a new nuclear plant, after further anti-earthquake measures were put in place. By 2015 one new nuclear reactor is expected to be coming online every month somewhere in the world.

This massive expansion in the nuclear industry is taking place despite the fact that none of the safety issues inherent in the production of nuclear energy have been addressed.

Only this week there was an explosion at a French nuclear power station. The Tricastin power station was recently criticized by the French national nuclear safety authority, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), which demanded 32 safety measures be put into operation. EDF, which runs the facility, insisted that the explosion had taken place in a non-nuclear part of the plant and posed no danger of a radiation leak. The experience of Fukushima has shown that the failure of non-nuclear functions such as a loss of power supply poses a danger to the nuclear reactor. Nuclear power plants are complex engineering systems and no part of them can be so lightly regarded as non-critical.

All France’s nuclear power plants are supposed to have undergone an inspection following the Fukushima disaster. For one of them to experience an explosion so soon afterwards, and for EDF to dismiss the incident as “only a fire,” suggests that the industry has learned no lessons from Fukushima.

The expansion of nuclear power is an international phenomenon, and the impact of any accident would be international. Yet there are still no internationally agreed and enforceable safety standards for the industry. Instead, as the Fukushima disaster has highlighted, national governments and the nuclear industry collaborate in a secretive manner and connive to cover up safety issues.

The Guardian recently released emails detailing the collusion between the UK government and the nuclear industry in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. Two days after the earthquake, British government officials emailed EDF, Areva, Westinghouse and the industry body, the Nuclear Industry Association, to warn that Fukushima situation could damage public confidence in nuclear power. It was not as bad as the television pictures suggested, the officials stressed:

“Radiation released has been controlled―the reactor has been protected. It is all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation like this.”

They invited the industry to send their comments so that they could be included in government statements: “We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public.”

A concerted propaganda campaign was being planned, with no regard for the truth or public safety. The nuclear industry and the British government were working together to suppress the extent of the disaster that was unfolding in Japan and its potential impact on the rest of the world.

“Anti-nuclear people across Europe have wasted no time blurring this all into Chernobyl and the works. We need to quash any stories trying to compare this to Chernobyl,” one email said.

Within weeks Japanese officials were forced to raise the level of the Fukushima accident from a level 4 to a 7, the same as Chernobyl.

British officials clearly saw themselves as fighting a media battle to defend the nuclear industry, as ministers prepared to announce the government’s plans for new nuclear reactors in the UK.

“This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally,” one of the 80 emails released says, “We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear.”

A former nuclear inspector told the Guardian that the level of collusion revealed by the emails was “truly shocking.”

This collusion is not confined to Britain. In Japan, the extent of the Fukushima disaster has been consistently downplayed from the beginning. According to former Minister for Internal Affairs Haraguchi Kazuhiro, the figures from radiation monitoring stations in Japan are up to three decimal places higher than those that have been made public.

Experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the implications of Fukushima for public health. Nishio Masamichi, a radiation treatment specialist and director of the Hokkaido Cancer Center, expressed his “grave concern” in the business journal Toyo Keizai. In an article entitled,“The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation,” he gave a detailed breakdown of the health risks to workers at the plant and to residents in the surrounding area.

The health official had initially joined in calls for “calm,” but now he has accused the Tokyo Electrical Company (TEPCO) of hiding the truth of the disaster and putting the survival of the company before public health. He condemned the government for raising the legal radiation exposure limit for nuclear workers from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts per year. The workers at the plant are “not even being treated like human beings,” he wrote.

Workers are forced to sleep and eat on the wrecked site, increasing their risk of inhaling or ingesting contaminated material, when only half an hour away there are empty hotels where they would face a reduced risk of exposure. The emphasis of the company, he stated, is on preventing the workers from running away, not on protecting their health.

The company has given workers broken radiation monitors, he claimed. It is not using whole-body monitoring to assess the level of internal radiation exposure. Nor have different types of radiation, such as alpha rays from plutonium and beta rays from strontium, been measured. No special measures have been taken to protect workers from the MOX (Mixed Oxide fuel) at the number 3 reactor. Iodine is being given to the workers, but they should also be taking Radiogardase (Prussian blue insoluble capsules), according to Nishio.

Nishio criticized the measures that the Japanese government has taken to protect the local population. A 30-kilometer radius has been evacuated, but he pointed out that the danger of contamination is not even and depends on topography and weather. Some areas outside this zone have produced high radiation readings.

Some contamination readings were suppressed, he wrote: “It is only conceivable that the high rate of radiation released was not reported because of fears of a panic.”

The legally permitted level of radiation exposure in Japan is 1 millisieverts a year for people who do not work in the nuclear industry. But the Japanese government has raised this to 20 millisieverts following the Fukushima disaster. Nishio stated that this amounts to “taking the lives of the people lightly.” He warned that this is too high for children and called for special measures to monitor strontium levels, which can affect children because their bones are still developing.

Japanese citizens have no means of measuring their personal level of exposure. Nishio particularly stressed the danger of internal exposure to long term high levels of radiation. Comparisons cannot be made with external exposure in a controlled medical environment, he warned. The health effects of internal and long term exposure are unpredictable and largely unknown.

Fukushima city is home to 300,000 people and is outside the evacuation area. Residents are resorting to measures such as digging up their gardens and scrubbing their roofs with soap and water in an effort to remove contamination, after areas of high radiation were detected.

“Everything and everyone here is paralyzed, and we feel left on our own, unsure whether it’s actually safe for us to stay in the city,” one mother told Reuters.

The authorities are removing top soil from school grounds, but there is no general plan to remove contaminated material from parks, open land or private gardens. Nor is there anywhere safe to dump it once it is removed. There is no precedent for the scale of the decontamination effort that will have to be made to make the area affected by the Fukushima disaster safe.

The global implications of the Fukushima disaster are only just becoming apparent and are still not the subject of official comment. In June TEPCO revised its estimate of the amount of radiation that was emitted in the first week of the disaster. They admitted that it was double their previous estimate for amount emitted in the entire accident.

Most of the additional radiation was in the form of “hot particles” ―tiny particles of cesium, plutonium, uranium, cobalt60 and other radioactive materials. Individual hot particles are too small to be detected by a Geiger counter. But they pose a serious risk of cancer because they can become lodged in the lungs or gastrointestinal tract, where they bombard a localized area of tissue over a long period of time.

Independent scientists who have inspected air filters removed from vehicles in Japan suggest that residents of Tokyo were breathing in approximately 10 hot particles per day during April, immediately after the crisis began. In the area around the plant, the levels would have been 30 to 40 times higher and across the Pacific in Seattle levels equivalent to 5 per day have been detected.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jul2011/fuku-j06.shtml

Si rien n’est fait, les habitants de la ville de Fukushima pourraient subir dans les douze mois à venir
une irradiation externe de plusieurs milliSieverts alors que la dose au-delà de laquelle le risque de
cancer mortel est jugé inacceptable par la CIPR (Commission Internationale de Protection
Radiologique) est de 1 milliSievert par an, ce qui correspond à 5 décès pour 100 000 personnes
exposées.
Or les autorités japonaises ont fixé une limite de dose de 20 milliSieverts comme critère pour décider
d’évacuer définitivement ou non les populations. Ceci correspond à un risque de cancer mortel à
terme 20 fois supérieur au risque acceptable. Ceci est d’autant plus grave que les habitants de
Fukushima ont déjà été fortement exposés. Il faut également tenir compte des doses liées à la
contamination interne que ces populations continuent à subir par ingestion de denrées contaminées
et des risques liés à l’inhalation de poussières à partir du sol contaminé.
Dans la ville de Fukushima, la CRIIRAD a mesuré par exemple dans la terre prélevée sous les
balançoires de l’école primaire Moriai, une contamination en césium 137 + 134 de 370 000 Bq/kg. Ce
sol est devenu un déchet radioactif qui devrait être stocké dans les meilleurs délais sur un site
approprié.
Une population déjà très exposée aux radiations
La persistance de la contamination en iode 131 des sols prélevés par la CRIIRAD fin mai 2011 dans la
ville de Fukushima permet d’évaluer les retombées initiales en iode 131 à des millions de Bq/m2.
L’iode 131 a une période physique de 8 jours, sa radioactivité était donc plus de 600 fois supérieure
lors des retombées. Ceci témoigne de la forte contamination de l’air lors de l’arrivée des panaches
contaminés en particulier le 15 mars 2011.
Il y avait également d’autres substances radioactives qui se sont largement désintégrées depuis
comme le césium 136, le tellure 129, le tellure 132, l’iode 132, l’iode 133, etc.. ainsi que des gaz
radioactifs comme le xénon 133 et le krypton 85 qui ne sont pas accumulés dans les sols.
Les habitants de cette ville ont donc déjà été soumis à une contamination interne très importante
d’abord par inhalation d’air contaminé et surtout par ingestion de denrées contaminées du fait des
dépôts de substances radioactives. Les autorités japonaises n’ont en effet édicté des restrictions de
consommation sur la préfecture de Fukushima qu’à partir du 21 et 23 mars (selon les types
d’aliments). Les populations ont donc consommé pendant plus d’une semaine des aliments très
contaminés, sans aucune restriction ni information. Ils ont pu de ce fait recevoir des doses efficaces
de plusieurs dizaines de milliSievert et les doses à la thyroïde dépassant le Sievert.
Pour mémoire, la contamination initiale des épinards par l’iode 131, à 100 km au sud de la centrale
était telle qu’en consommant 200 grammes un jeune enfant pouvait dépasser la dose maximale
annuelle admissible de 1 milliSievert, à 40 kilomètres au nord-ouest, les végétaux étaient tellement
contaminés que cette limite annuelle pouvait être atteinte en consommant 5 grammes de végétaux.
Il est indispensable que les populations touchées obtiennent une évaluation fiable des doses déjà
subies et il est impératif de tout faire pour limiter leur exposition à venir.
2 / Ampleur de la zone touchée par les retombées
Les retombées concernent un territoire très étendu, bien au-delà de la zone interdite de 20 km et bien
au-delà de la préfecture de Fukushima. En fonction des conditions météorologiques, les masses d’air
contaminé se sont déplacées sur des centaines de kilomètres et les précipitations (pluie et neige) ont
entraîné les particules radioactives au sol. Les dépôts de césium 134 et 137 entraînent une
contamination durable.

Ceci est confirmé par les prélèvements de sol et par les mesures de débit de dose réalisées2 par la
CRIIRAD (à 1 mètre du sol), du 24 mai au 3 juin 2011. On mesure en effet :
· 0,47 μSv/h à Marumori (préfecture de Miyagi), à environ 60 km au nord de la centrale. Le niveau
naturel calculé3 est de 0,1 μSv/h et les retombées4 en césium 137 et 134 de plus de 95 000 Bq/m2.
· 0,33 μSv/h près de Hitachi (préfecture d’Ibaraki) environ 88 kilomètres au sud de la centrale. Le
niveau naturel calculé est de 0,07 μSv/h et les retombées en césium de plus de 50 000 Bq/m2.
L’iode 131 est encore détecté dans le prélèvement du 25 mai.
· 0,28 μSv/h à Ishioka (préfecture d’Ibaraki) à environ 160 km au sud sud-ouest de la centrale. Le
niveau naturel calculé est de 0,06 μSv/h et les retombées en césium de plus de 48 000 Bq/m2.
Il existe donc, tant au niveau des préfectures d’Ibaraki que de Miyagi, des secteurs sur lesquels le taux
de radiation artificiel est plus de 4 fois supérieur au niveau naturel. Cela représente donc pour une
personne qui passe 50 % de son temps en extérieur, une dose ajoutée sur les douze prochains mois
susceptible de dépasser la dose maximale annuelle admissible de 1 milliSievert par an, sans tenir
compte, ni de l’irradiation externe induite à l’intérieur des bâtiments, ni de la contamination interne
par ingestion de nourriture contaminée ou par inhalation des particules radioactives remises en
suspension.
Ces résultats contredisent les informations relayées par l’Autorité de Sureté Nucléaire française qui
écrit dans un communiqué du 28 juin 2011 : « A l’extérieur du site, la décroissance des débits de dose
mesurés dans l’environnement continue. A Fukushima, le 7 juin, le débit de dose était 1,6 μSv
(microSievert)/h. Les 45 autres préfectures présentent des débits de dose inférieurs à 0,1 μSv/h ».
· Au niveau de la ville de Tokyo, l’exposition résiduelle par irradiation externe est susceptible de
conduire à une exposition non négligeable. La CRIIRAD a mesuré par exemple 0,14 μSv/h début juin,
dans le parc Wadabori-Koen, à Tokyo (à environ 235 km de la centrale). Dans ce parc, le niveau naturel
calculé est de 0,06 μSv/h et les retombées en césium 134 et 137 de plus de 14 000 Bq/m2. Il faudrait
disposer de données pour toute l’agglomération.
C’est pourquoi la CRIIRAD demande aux citoyens japonais d’exiger la publication de cartes détaillées
des retombées et de la contamination résiduelle, à l’échelle de tout le pays, et avec une précision
suffisante, c’est-à-dire correspondant à des retombées en césium à partir de 1 000 Bq/m2 et non pas
de 300 000 Bq/m2 comme sur les cartes publiées le 6 mai 2011.

Japanese scientists have some good news for farmers (and eaters) near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant: The soil can be made safe for planting.

After the meltdown that followed the devastating magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami on March 11, radioactive isotopes of cesium escaped from the plant. With a half-life of up to 30 years, those particles threatened to turn Japanese cropland into wasteland for several generations.

But as Nature News reported Tuesday, researchers who have been monitoring the soil have found that the Fukushima radiation hasn’t penetrated very far. Most of the fallout is still within the top 2 inches of soil, according to Tomoko Nakanishi, a plant radiophysiologist at the University of Tokyo. The rain hasn’t washed that fallout away, and it hasn’t seeped into the groundwater, Nakanishi tells Nature News. If scooped up soon, the remaining soil is almost certainly safe for agricultural use.

Nakanishi’s research team has also been studying wheat crops near the nuclear plant. The scientists have discovered that for the most part, the radioactive particles have accumulated on the surface of wheat plants. Plants whose leaves were open at the time of the disaster collected up to 1 million becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram – far above the 500 Bq/kg that is considered safe for people to eat. However, plants whose leaves opened after the worst of the radioactive emissions were found to have just 300 to 500 Bq/kg.

Even better, crops of cabbage and potatoes planted in a Tokyo research field measured only 9 Bq/kg despite being planted in soil that had been soaked with radioactive rain, the scientists said.

“It’s harvest time now and farmers are wondering what to do,” Nakanishi told Nature News. “They can throw the current harvest away. But it is OK to plant again.”

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

“The lab had some 10,000 experiments running that were put on hold because of the fire and the evacuations.

The delayed projects include experiments on two supercomputers and studies on extending the life of 1960s-era nuclear bombs.”

New Mexico Nuclear Weapons Lab Reopens As Fire Danger Fades

SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN 07/ 6/11 08:39 PM ET

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Smoke still hung in the air from a northern New Mexico wildfire that came dangerously close to the nation’s premier nuclear weapons laboratory, but life was returning to normal Wednesday as thousands of employees showed up for their first day of work in more than a week.

Although the threat to Los Alamos National Laboratory and the town that surrounds it has passed, the largest fire in New Mexico’s history continued to burn in remote areas. The fire, which began last month, had forced the closure of the lab along with the evacuation of thousands of residents in nearby communities.

Lab officials say they have a “methodical and careful” plan to resume operations suspended by the blaze known as the Las Conchas fire. “There’s going to be a lot of assessing over the next two or three days of where exactly we are on key research projects,” lab spokesman Kevin Roark said.

“But that’s going to take some time,” he added. “It’s going to take a couple of weeks at least.”

The lab had some 10,000 experiments running that were put on hold because of the fire and the evacuations.

The delayed projects include experiments on two supercomputers and studies on extending the life of 1960s-era nuclear bombs.

The lab also works on such topics as renewable energy and particle physics, solar flares, forensics on terrorist attacks, and studying the AIDS virus at the molecular level to help scientists develop strategies for developing vaccines.

At one point, the fire also raised concerns about possible contamination from material stored or buried on lab grounds. As a precaution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a plane equipped with radiation monitors over the lab. Samples from air monitors on the ground also showed nothing abnormal in the smoke.

“Since we didn’t have any fire on lab property other than one small spot fire, we had literally zero impact to all of our key facilities,” Roark said.

TOKYO, July 7 | Thu Jul 7, 2011 6:19am EDT

(Reuters) – The operator of Japan’s Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant, located near the tsunami-crippled Daiichi plant, on Thursday halted the cooling system at one of its reactors after electrical sparks were detected, Kyodo news agency reported.

Tokyo Electric Power , the plant’s operator, expects to be able to restore the cooling system at the Daini plant’s No.1 reactor before the end of Thursday, Kyodo said.

The Daini plant, about 240 km (150 miles) from Tokyo, is located several miles along the Pacific coast from the Daiichi plant, damaged severely by the powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11.

The Daini plant suffered less damage from the disasters and is currently in cold shutdown. (Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

Government officials launched a PR campaign to ensure the accident at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan did not derail plans for new nuclear power stations in the UK. Photograph: AP