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TEPCO Admits Fukushima Is Leaking Again – Over 600x ‘Safe’ Radiation Levels
TEPCO Admits Fukushima Is Leaking Again – Over 600x ‘Safe’ Radiation Levels
Having killed a robot by underestimating the level of radiation present in the Fukushima power plant, and after delaying its previous admission of a leak, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has quickly admitted that the nuclear plant has sprung another leak. As EFE reports, a small quantity of radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank with 70 microsieverts per hour of beta-ray-emitting radioactivity detected on the surface where the water had leaked, far exceeding the recommended maximum exposure of 0.11 microsieverts per hour. But apart from that it’s “contained.”
A total of 40 milliliters of water was discovered, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, said on May 1. The company believes that the liquid leaked from the storage tank, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun paper reported Saturday. TEPCO stated that it placed bags of sand around the tank to prevent water from contaminating other areas.The wet patch measuring 20 square centimeters was discovered by one worker at around 9:30am local time on May 1, it added. According to TEPCO, seventy millisieverts per hour of beta ray-emitting radioactivity were detected on the surface where the water had leaked.
The leak was detected on the same day as tests began in preparation for the construction of a 1.5-kilometer-long frozen soil wall around the reactor buildings. A project is aimed at preventing further leaks of radioactive water into the sea from the Fukishima plant.
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In late April, the water transfer pumps at the Fukushima plant were shut down due to a power outage, leading to the leaking of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. It was preceded by a series of toxic leaks in February, which saw around 100 tons of highly radioactive water leaked from one the plant’s tanks.
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Good luck at The Olympics…
50 Reasons We Should Fear the Worst from Fukushima
50 Reasons We Should Fear the Worst from Fukushima
Fukushima’s missing melted cores and radioactive gushers continue to fester in secret.
Japan’s harsh dictatorial censorship has been matched by a global corporate media blackout aimed—successfully—at keeping Fukushima out of the public eye.
But that doesn’t keep the actual radiation out of our ecosystem, our markets … or our bodies.
Speculation on the ultimate impact ranges from the utterly harmless to the intensely apocalyptic.
But the basic reality is simple: for seven decades, government Bomb factories and privately-owned reactors have spewed massive quantities of unmonitored radiation into the biosphere.
The impacts of these emissions on human and ecological health are unknown primarily because the nuclear industry has resolutely refused to study them.
Indeed, the official presumption has always been that showing proof of damage from nuclear Bomb tests and commercial reactors falls to the victims, not the perpetrators.
And that in any case, the industry will be held virtually harmless.
This “see no evil, pay no damages” mindset dates from the Bombing of Hiroshima to Fukushima to the disaster coming next … which could be happening as you read this.
Here are 50 preliminary reasons why this radioactive legacy demands we prepare for the worst for our oceans, our planet, our economy … ourselves.
1. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), the U.S. military initially denied that there was any radioactive fallout, or that it could do any damage. Despite an absence of meaningful data, the victims (including a group of U.S. prisoners of war) and their supporters were officially “discredited” and scorned.
2. Likewise, when Nobel-winners Linus Pauling and Andre Sakharov correctly warned of a massive global death toll from atmospheric Bomb testing, they were dismissed with official contempt … until they won in the court of public opinion.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Fukushima radiation measured on B.C. shore for 1st time
Trace cesium detected, but levels far below limit for safe drinking water
Trace amounts of radiation from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan have been detected on North American shores for the first time, but researchers say the amount of radiation is not a concern.
Radioactive forms of the element cesium that could only have come from Fukushima were detected in samples collected on Feb. 19 in Ucluelet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, with the help of the Ucluelet Aquarium, scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reported today.
The private, independent research organization is based in Cape Cod, Mass. It has been monitoring radiation levels along North American shores over the past 15 months with help from citizen scientists who are collecting samples from 60 sites along the U.S. and Canadian west coast and Hawaii, along with a Canadian-funded organization called inFORM led by University of Victoria oceanographer Jay Cullen.
Levels not alarming, expert says
Ken Buessler, the researcher who leads the Woods Hole monitoring program, said he expects more of the monitoring sites to show detectable levels of cesium-134 in coming months. However, the amounts of cesium-134 and cesium-137 in the B.C. sample were extremely low — just 1.4 and 5.8 becquerels per cubic metre of water respectively. Canada allows up to 10,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per cubic metre in drinking water.
“Today’s report is not alarming at all. It’s kind of to be expected,” he said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
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…
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.
