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Fukushima disaster: Radiation levels posing cancer risks on fourth anniversary of earthquake
Fukushima disaster: Radiation levels posing cancer risks on fourth anniversary of earthquake
Four years ago today Japan was hit with a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami that caused widespread destruction, leaving almost 22,000 people dead or missing and triggering a crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The triple nuclear meltdown was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
About 120,000 people still cannot return their homes because of high radiation levels, but the issue of long-term health implications like cancer are causing the greatest concern and controversy in Japan.
Before the disaster, there was just one to two cases of thyroid cancers in a million Japanese children but now Fukushima has more than 100 confirmed or suspected cases, having tested about 300,000 children.
Megumi Muto’s daughter Nana has undergone scans to determine if the lumps in her thyroid glands have grown. In a small number of cases, these lumps can develop into cancer.
Ms Muto is convinced the growths were caused by exposure to high radiation levels after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in March 2011.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
TEPCO Admits Delaying Report Of Major Radiation Leak Into The Pacific Ocean For 10 Months
TEPCO Admits Delaying Report Of Major Radiation Leak Into The Pacific Ocean For 10 Months
While faith in Japanese ‘economics’ is starting to falter (borne out by the split in the BoJ and endless macro data disappointments), trust in TEPCO and its governmental operators must be about to hit a new record low. Having promised and given up on the ice-wall strategy to stop radioactive water leaking into the ocean, Bloomberg reports TEPCO officials have admitted that it’s investigating the cause of a spike in radiation levels (23,000 becquerels/liter vs the legal limit of 90) in drainage water that it believes subsequently leaked into the Pacific ocean from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant. The bigger problem, as NBC reports, TEPCO failed to report the leak for 10 months!
The radioactivity increase was ‘reported’ on Sunday, the company said in an e-mail yesterday, and as Bloomberg reports,
No workers were exposed and tests of radiation levels in sea water in the port adjacent to the plant showed no significant increase, the company said.Ocean water tests will be increased to daily sampling from weekly as it investigates the leak, it added.
Rainwater is believed to have become contaminated through contact with radioactive substances and then flowed into drainage ditches, a spokesperson for the Tokyo-based company said today by phone, asking not to be named because of company policy. The company is unable to estimate the size of the radioactive water leak, the person said.
Tepco, as the company is known, detected 23,000 becquerels per liter of cesium 137, from rainwater accumulated on the roof of the No. 2 reactor building, the utility said yesterday in a statement. The legal limit for releasing cesium 137 is 90 becquerels per liter.
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Tepco has had repeated failures in stemming radioactive water leaks at the plant since it had three reactor meltdowns almost four years ago following an earthquake and tsunami.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Fukushima: Playing With Nuclear Fire
Fukushima: Playing With Nuclear Fire
Three years after the Tohoku earthquake in Japan, citizens and the international community are left wondering if Japan really does have the situation in Fukushima under control…“TEPCO’s own engineers are clueless… nobody knows how much [radiation] is washing into the ocean.”
…click on the above link to view the video…
Shape Shifting Robot To Inspect Damaged Fukushima Reactor
Shape Shifting Robot To Inspect Damaged Fukushima Reactor
Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which suffered three reactor meltdowns from an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, can’t be decommissioned until its ruined reactors are inspected. But because of deadly radiation, no human can get close to the facility to survey the damage.
So the Japanese electronics giant Hitachi and an affiliate, Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, have designed a snaky-looking, remotely controlled robot to do the job, perhaps as soon as April, to gather information about the state of the No. 1 reactor building to prepare for the removal of its radioactive rubble.
The utility that operates the power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), intends to repair and seal off all damaged chambers in the facility, then fill them with water as a step toward eventually removing the melted remains. That is expected to take place in about 10 years.
Hitachi and Hitachi-GE demonstrated the shape-shifting robot on Feb. 5 at a plant owned by Hitachi-GE. It showed that the slinky, 2-foot-long robot can morph a bit depending on the space it needs to occupy and the work it needs to do.
In the demonstration, the robot, equipped with a camera and a lamp on its “nose,” snaked its way through a pipe with a diameter of only 4 inches. When it emerged from the other end of the pipe, it expanded to a U shape, then crawled around, taking live images of the immediate area and capturing temperature and radiation levels.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
‘Uncertain Radiological Threat’: US Navy Sailors Search for Justice after Fukushima Mission
‘Uncertain Radiological Threat’: US Navy Sailors Search for Justice after Fukushima Mission
On March 11, 2011, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reaganreceived orders to change course and head for the east coast of Japan, which had just been devastated by a tsunami. The Ronald Reagan had been on its way to South Korea when the order reached it and Captain Thom Burke, who was in charge of the ship along with its crew of 4,500 men and women, duly redirected his vessel. The Americans reached the Japanese coastline on March 12, just north of Sendai and remained in the region for several weeks. The mission was named Tomodachi.
The word tomodachi means “friends.” In hindsight, the choice seems like a delicate one.
Three-and-a-half years later, Master Chief Petty Officer Leticia Morales is sitting in a café in a rundown department store north of Seattle and trying to remember the name of the doctor who removed her thyroid gland 10 months ago. Her partner Tiffany is sitting next to her fishing pills out of a large box and pushing them over to Morales.
“It was something like Erikson,” Morales says. “Or maybe his first name was Eric, or Rick. Oh, I don’t know. Too many doctors.” In the last year-and-a-half, she has seen oncologists, radiologists, cardiologists, blood specialists, kidney specialists, gastrointestinal specialists, lymph node experts and metabolic specialists. “I’m now spending half the month in doctors’ offices,” she says. “This year, I’ve had more than 20 MRTs. I’ve simply lost track.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Fukushima Children Thyroid Cancer Rate Continues To Rise | Zero Hedge
Fukushima Children Thyroid Cancer Rate Continues To Rise | Zero Hedge.
Fukushima prefecture has been conducting regular checkups of over 360,000 people who were in Fukushima in March 2011 and were age 18 or under when the nuclear crisis struck.As WSJ reported in August, a study by researchers in Fukushima prefecture found 57 minors in the prefecture have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer so far and another 46 are showing symptoms that suggest they may also have the disease. Today, as The Japan Times reports, four more children are suspected of suffering from thyroid cancer in the latest survey bringing the total to 107 out of 385,000 now surveyed. This is dramatically higher than the normal “between 5 to 11 cases per million people,” that Okayama University professor Toshihide Tsuda cites for national statistics between 1975 and 2008.
Four more children are suspected of suffering from thyroid cancer in the latest survey on the possible health impact of the 2011 triple meltdown at Tepco’s wrecked Fukushima No. 1 plant, sources said Tuesday.
The four, who were 6 to 17 years old at the time of the disaster, had been diagnosed as not having the cancer in the first survey that was conducted within three years of the meltdowns, they said.
The first survey covered all 370,000 children in the prefecture who were aged 18 or younger at the time of the disaster. The second survey , which began last April, covers some 385,000 children, adding those born a year after the disaster struck.
8 Countries With Nuclear Power Plants Most At Risk Of Tsunamis
8 Countries With Nuclear Power Plants Most At Risk Of Tsunamis.
The tsunami that destroyed a nuclear reactor at Fukushima, Japan, caused a major re-think of nuclear power, which up to the accident in 2011, had been considered a relatively safe, clean form of electricity generation.
The tsunami that followed shortly after a 9.0 mega-quake off the east coast of Japan was shocking in its magnitude – killing close to 16,000. But it was soon apparent that another disaster was in the making, when the surging waves inundated pumps used to cool down the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex.
The resultant fuel meltdown and leakage of radiation led to the immediate evacuation of the site, and a chain of events that eventually had Japan shutting down all of its nuclear reactors. Germany, a major consumer of nuclear power, permanently closed 8 of its 17 nuclear reactors following Fukushima; other European countries shelved their nuclear plans.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
California Could Suffer a Fukushima-Style Meltdown Washington’s Blog
California Could Suffer a Fukushima-Style Meltdown Washington’s Blog.
U.S. Ignoring Earthquake Risks to Nuclear Plants
Scientists warned that an earthquake could take out Fukushima. The Japanese ignored the warning.
(The Fukushima reactors were damaged by the earthquake before the tsunami hit, because the design of the reactors was defective.)
But that couldn’t happen in the U.S. … right?
Well, the engineers who built the Fukushima reactors also built a nuclear reactor at Shoreham, New York … which is highly vulnerable to an earthquake:
The plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earthquake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could“completely and utterly fail” during an earthquake.
Japan Reacts to Worsening Fukushima Disaster By … Reopening Nuclear Plant Next to Active Volcano Which Is About to Blow Washington’s Blog
D’oh!
Scientists warned that an earthquake could take out Fukushima. The Japanese ignored the warning … and even tore down the natural seawall which protected Fukushima from tidal waves.
Fukushima is getting worse. And see this and this.
Have the Japanese learned their lesson? Are they decommissioning nuclear plants which are built in dangerous environments?
Of course not!
Instead, they’re re-starting a nuclear plant near a volcano which is about to blow …
A month ago, there was an eruption at Mt. Ontake:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
