Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[Saurian Tail]

This is either the worst disaster in history or no big deal ...

Most Fukushima radiation doses within norms - WHO
Reuters – Wed, May 23, 2012

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/most-radiation ... 34324.html

GENEVA (Reuters) - Spikes in radiation caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident were below cancer-causing levels in almost all of Japan and neighbouring countries had levels similar to normal background radiation, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

In a preliminary report using conservative assumptions, independent experts said that people in only two locations in Fukushima prefecture may have received a dose of 10-50 millisieverts (mSv) in the year after the accident at the power station operated by TEPCO.

Populations exposed to radiation typically stand a greater chance of contracting cancer after receiving doses above 100 mSv, according to the United Nations health agency. The threshold for acute radiation syndrome is about 1 Sv (1000 mSv).

"A worldwide average annual dose from natural background radiation is about 2.4 mSv, with a typical range of 1-10 mSv in various regions of the world," the report said.

In the rest of Fukushima prefecture, the effective dose was estimated to be within a dose band of 1-10 mSv, while effective doses in most of Japan were put at just 0.1-1 mSv. In the rest of the world, doses were below 0.01 mSv or less.

The massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, triggering meltdowns that caused contamination and forced mass evacuations.

"Doses have not been estimated for the zone within 20 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi site because most people in the area were evacuated rapidly and an accurate estimation of dose to these individuals would require more precise data than were available," the report said.

"Some exposure may have occurred prior to evacuation but the assessment of this requires more precise data than those available to the panel," it added.

The experts did not examine the short- and long-term health risks for the emergency response workers who worked on the site - that will be part of a wider WHO report due from a separate group of experts in July.

That report will also assess the prospect for long-term increases in cancer cases, including cancers of the thyroid, the most exposed organ in the body as radioactive iodine concentrates there.

The experts based their assessment on data available up to last September on the amount of radioactivity in air, soil, water and food supplies after the disaster.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

[Iamwhomiam]

Saurian Tail, the Fukushima disaster is certainly the worst environmental disaster ever to occur within historic times. Unquestionably. And one year later its real damage has barely begun its destructive, life-ending impact, which will endure for eons to come. The WHO 'report' related above is absolute bullshit.

Utility Says It Underestimated Radiation Released in Japan

By REUTERS
Published: May 24, 2012

TOKYO (Reuters) — The amount of radioactive materials released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost two and a half times the initial estimate by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday.

The operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the meltdowns it believes took place at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant released about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air during March 2011. The accident, which followed an earthquake and a tsunami, occurred on March 11.

The latest estimate was based on measurements suggesting the amount of iodine-131 released by the nuclear accident was much larger than previous estimates, the utility said in the report. Iodine-131 is a fast-decaying radioactive substance produced by fission that takes place inside a nuclear reactor. It has a half-life of eight days and can cause thyroid cancer.

It is difficult to judge the health effects of the larger-than-reported release, since even the latest number is an estimate, and it does not clarify how much exposure people received or continue to receive from contaminated soil and food. Experts have been divided on the health impacts since the disaster because the studies of assessing radiation risks are based mainly on a different type of exposure — the large doses delivered quickly by the atomic bombs in Japan in 1945.

Although people who lived closest to the plant were evacuated, many people remain in areas with significantly higher radiation levels than normal.

Tokyo Electric said it had initially been unable to accurately judge the amount of radioactive materials released soon after the accident because radiation sensors closest to the plant were disabled in the disaster.

“If this information had been available at the time, we could have used it in planning evacuations,” a spokesman for Tokyo Electric, Junichi Matsumoto, said at a news conference.

More than 99 percent of the radiation released by the accident came in the first three weeks, the utility company added.

The newly released information is likely to add to concerns among many Japanese that they were never told the extent of the accident or the risks it posed.

A terabecquerel is a trillion becquerels, a commonly used measure of the radiation emitted by a radioactive material.

[StarmanSkye]

Just gotta point out the HUGE hole in this 'report', namely that routine monitoring was severely cut-back or even flat-out stopped or results ignored in many places throughout Japan and in the US/Canada. What 'they' don't know can't be known -- or leaked.

Sure makes the denials and numbers-game easier to control.

The shattered reactors at Fukushima have ALL been releasing plumes of hot particles since at least the third day of the catastrophe, contaminating farmland, cities, the coastal waters, the pacific ocean and blown around the world in the jetstream where they precipitate out as dust or in rain/snow. Amazing to what extent the controlled mass media has become a tool of the PTB to obscure the Fukushima fallout. People in Japan are learning to distrust their authorities as more and more is being revealed about how extensive the BS, lies and denials are.
JUST like how 'safe' the thousands of atmospheric and underground/ocean nuclear-bomb tests thruout the 60s, 70s and 80s were.

[Iamwhomiam]

All nuclear reactors have radiation monitors remotely located. All of these certainly were not destroyed by the tsunami, so there is a record. It should be obvious that truer readings were not reported in order to avoid mass hysteria and rioting, imo.

[seemslikeadream]

Tuna carry Fukushima Japan quake radiation across Pacific to California
Levels of cesium are still within limits considered safe to eat

LOS ANGELES — Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away — the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.
"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.
Previously, smaller fish and plankton were found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters after a magnitude-9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.

But scientists did not expect the nuclear fallout to linger in huge fish that sail the world because such fish can metabolize and shed radioactive substances.
One of the largest and speediest fish, Pacific bluefin tuna can grow to 10 feet and weigh more than 1,000 pounds. They spawn off the Japan coast and swim east at breakneck speed to school in waters off California and the tip of Baja California, Mexico.
Japan: Fukushima nuclear pool not unstable
Five months after the Fukushima disaster, Fisher of Stony Brook University in New York and a team decided to test Pacific bluefin that were caught off the coast of San Diego. To their surprise, tissue samples from all 15 tuna captured contained levels of two radioactive substances — ceisum-134 and cesium-137 — that were higher than in previous catches.

To rule out the possibility that the radiation was carried by ocean currents or deposited in the sea through the atmosphere, the team also analyzed yellowfin tuna, found in the eastern Pacific, and bluefin that migrated to Southern California before the nuclear crisis. They found no trace of cesium-134 and only background levels of cesium-137 left over from nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s.
The results "are unequivocal. Fukushima was the source," said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who had no role in the research.
Bluefin tuna absorbed radioactive cesium from swimming in contaminated waters and feeding on contaminated prey such as krill and squid, the scientists said. As the predators made the journey east, they shed some of the radiation through metabolism and as they grew larger. Even so, they weren't able to completely flush out all the contamination from their system.
"That's a big ocean. To swim across it and still retain these radionuclides is pretty amazing," Fisher said.
Pacific bluefin tuna are prized in Japan where a thin slice of the tender red meat prepared as sushi can fetch $24 per piece at top Tokyo restaurants. Japanese consume 80 percent of the world's Pacific and Atlantic bluefin tuna.
The real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when researchers planned to repeat the study with a larger number of samples. Bluefin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month. The upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period. How this will affect concentrations of contamination remains to be seen.
Now that scientists know that bluefin tuna can transport radiation, they also want to track the movements of other migratory species including sea turtles, sharks and seabirds.

[hanshan]

...

a little background on the WHO (actively engaged in criminal malfeasance)

http://tinyurl.com/bvlaluq

Exposed: World Health Organization beholden to nuclear interests — “Like having Dracula guard the blood bank”

The World Health Organization is in the news today as it ‘weighs in’ on Fukushima.

Here’s some background on the WHO and affiliated organizations:

Former head of WHO admits they answer to IAEA (VIDEO)

2:30 – Agreement between IAEA and WHO – WHO cannot research health effects of radiation or effects of nuclear accidents if IAEA does not agree
7:00 – Former head of WHO admits they answer to IAEA
14:00 – Chernobyl had no effect -UN
15:45 – Scientist refutes UN
27:30 – 200km from Chernobyl, 10,000 becquerels measured inside child
30:20 – According to Professor Yury Bandazhevsky (former director of the Medical Institute in Gomel), Over 50 Bq/kg of body weight lead to irreversible lesions in vital organs
30:50 – *MUST SEE* Refutes internal radiation! -Norman Gentner, Secretary of UN UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation), ~2001 (See Gentner speak at 13:55 — No increase in leukemia, even among liquidators)
34:15 – *MUST SEE* Internal or external it makes no difference


Three years ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s research mission visited the contaminated areas. Dr. Shigematsu [Japanese], chairman of the mission, announced “there are no health damages among the residents.” [...]

Mr. Hirokawa, after looking at your video, I wonder what it was that IAEA announced there were no health damages among the residents. [...]

The local people believed a fair research would be done, because IAEA is an agency of the United Nations and a medical scientist from Hiroshima would lead the research. So, they were astounded that the mission had announced the areas were safe.

But, didn’t the mission actually see the situation there?

Well, according to the local doctors, the mission members didn’t enter the heavily-contaminated areas.

Besides, they brought their food, sourced from far away, and didn’t eat anything local.

Still, they declared it’s safe. No wonder the local people are infuriated.

If the mission found local food too dangerous to eat, they should have said it’s dangerous.

The very credibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency is seriously challenged, isn’t it?

Yes. I hear that when the nuclear industry of the former USSR started to do business with the nuclear industry of the US, they probably agreed that downplaying the damages by the accident would be beneficial for both sides.




UN Atomic Agency Money Goes to Terror Fight, Not Nuclear Safety, Bloomberg, Dec. 10, 2011

http://tinyurl.com/btt9erp

Introduction

The [International Atomic Energy Agency] classifies safety as one of its top three priorities, yet is spending 8.9 percent [of budget...] on making plants secure from accidents
The IAEA was founded in 1957 as the global “Atoms for Peace” organization to promote “safe, secure and peaceful” nuclear technology
2,300 work at the IAEA’s secretariat at its headquarters
Its mission statement encapsulates the same conflict as Japan’s failed nuclear-safety regime: playing the role of both promoter and regulator of atomic power, according to scientists, diplomats and analysts interviewed by Bloomberg News.
Johannis Noeggerath, president of Switzerland’s Society of Nuclear Professionals and safety director for the country’s Leibstadt reactor

[IAEA] “accepted for years the overlap between regulation and industry in Japan”
“They have a safety culture problem”
Wikileaks

The agency’s safety division garnered little respect in U.S. diplomatic cables that described the department as a marketing channel for countries seeking to sell atomic technology

IAEA vs. Convention on Nuclear Safety

The IAEA’s own mission to promote atomic power may also contradict the Convention on Nuclear Safety.

“Each contracting party shall take the appropriate steps to ensure an effective separation between the functions of the regulatory body and those of any other body or organization concerned with the promotion or utilization of nuclear energy,” says article 8.2 of the convention.

Robert Kelley, a former IAEA director who led inspections in Iraq

“IAEA inspectors and field workers are largely on their own when it comes to safely carrying out their jobs”
“They receive little guidance or support and they are very dependent on the facilities they are inspecting to protect their health”
Trevor Findlay, former Australian diplomat

“The IAEA did not seize the opportunity of this dreadful event to advance the agency’s role in nuclear safety”
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano “has been tough on Iran and Syria, but not when it comes to nuclear safety”
The agency’s failure on Fukushima is due to its timid leadership and an over-reliance on Japanese data
Akio Matsumura, a former diplomat and chairman of the World Business Academy

The absence of independent information about the [Fukushima] meltdown compounds those fears, he said
“The IAEA has disseminated reports on updates at Fukushima, but the source of the information is the Japanese government”
“If the Japanese government chooses to remain opaque in its dealings, then the IAEA reports will be useless”
Bloomberg adds this interesting piece of previously unknown information: “One IAEA plant inspector fell into a Czech nuclear-fuel cooling pond in 2007, according to four officials who declined to be identified. The agency won’t make public a full list of incidents involving its own staff.”

h/t Anonymous tip

...

[hanshan]

...

from a couple months ago
it's not clear how this transcript was obtained;
it references a period in the US last year
curious it appears now

http://tinyurl.com/7qa5kn7

Title: NRC worried about US National Labs “chomping at the bit” to help with Fukushima Radiation analysis – Call lab directors and say “Knock it off”

Source: Enformable
Date: Feb 28, 2012
Emphasis Added

JAPAN’S FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI ET AUDIO FILE


Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Saturday, March 12, 2011


MR. SHARON: This is Brian Sharon. Quick question, well, not question, but I’ve gotten a couple of emails here today, from some of the National Labs, and they’re all — there are a couple of them chomping a the bit, you know, saying, “Ghee, can we help? Ghee, can we go calculate this,” with the codes and all that stuff.

I keep telling them, “No, you don’t know the scenario,” but you know, somebody might want to call DOE and tell them to tell their labs to cool it, because the last thing we want is the labs going off, talking to the press, talking about consequences and all sorts of other stuff, because you know, they’re chomping at the bit, to do something, and I’m not sure, Eliot, maybe you’ve got a point of contact up there at DOE?

MR. BRENNER: I’ll send a note to their Press Secretary, asking him, through his chain, to reach out, down to the labs and tell them to back off. If we’ve got other chains, we might as well –

MALE PARTICIPANT: If I could chime in on that? On the Deputy’s call yesterday, I was on with the Chairman, and Pete Lyons was one of the principals at DOE. Lyons may be a good source to contact at DOE.

MR. JOHNSON: This is Mike Johnson. My other thought was, it may be just to cut to the chase, just to pass the same, to call the lab directors and say, “Knock it off,” or whatever messages we want to get to them.

There are a number of ways we can do this.

So, I agree, Brian, we’ve got to do it soon.

MR. McDERMOTT: Okay, we’ll take that action from headquarters.

...

[Forgetting2]

Japan firm unveils radiation-gauging smartphone

Disaster entrepreneurship.

[hanshan]

...

Japan firm unveils radiation-gauging smartphone

Disaster entrepreneurship.

yeah




...

[hanshan]

...



Fairewinds has updated their site adding high quality video

this is their first re: Hot Particles and Measurement of Radioactivity

http://fairewinds.org/content/hot-particles-and-measurement-radioactivity


...

[StarmanSkye]

From the fairewinds video Hanshan cited above, Marie Gunderson asked about the claim of an industry nuclear scientist panelist member who said, "... it is all radiation. Radiation is natural in the background, there is nothing to be worried about. We do not have to worry about any radiation."

THIS is the kind of grossly misleading disinfo that is factually wrong, a bought-and-paid-for professional apologist's worse kind of falsification as sophist cover-up that IMHO is criminal misfeasance -- here is an expert basically saying that all radiation is equal and since it is 'natural' there's no difference between ambient background radiation and manmade radiation leaks -- so basically, there's no such thing as safety threshold levels, ie, radiation in any quantity or quality can't harm you since its all 'natural'.

The oversimplification here is SO outrageous I sincerely hope he was booed, jeered and laughed off the panel he was speaking in.

But I have to hand it to public health engineer Marco Kaltofen -- his unflappable laid-back mellow graciousness in the face of such barbaric deceit is a testament to the resolve he must have to be a level-headed credible public speaker -- I would be cursing and fuming at the notorious example of duplicity & out-and-out fraud by a nuke-industry whore who, again IMHO, would deserve being served a glass of water so full of Cesium 134 & 136 and Cobalt 60 and other Fuku hot particles that its temp would rise 1 degree every minute.

[Saurian Tail]

So in the Fairwinds interview above, Marco Kaltofen said:

And then in Seattle, I call this my stop whining graphic because really there is not much happening in Seattle. West Coast of the United States, lower the stress level, we are fortunately not seeing it there. If anybody is going to see radioactive transport outside of Japan, I would think at this point, we are going to see it in the marine environment, not in the air. We are going to see a lot more of it coming through the ocean, maybe through food coming from the ocean than we are going to see it in these airborne particles.

For what it is worth, I think nuclear power generation is suicidally insane and that Fukushima situation is incredibly precarious. At the same time, learning that Seattle has not and is not currently being blanketed with hot particles is fantastic news and, I think, useful information.

[Saurian Tail]

This is either the worst disaster in history or no big deal ...

To expand on this a bit, it seems to me that presenting information and telling the truth without obfuscation and/or hyperbole appears to be out of the question ... or at least not dramatic enough to be heard above the white noise that surrounds it.

[Project Willow]

For what it is worth, I think nuclear power generation is suicidally insane and that Fukushima situation is incredibly precarious. At the same time, learning that Seattle has not and is not currently being blanketed with hot particles is fantastic news and, I think, useful information.

Fuck that. We all live on the globe. It's the fucking globe that counts, and tuna fish.

.............................

The best news is that Fairewinds got a new website. Yea!

[Nordic]

http://cryptogon.com/?p=29414

Naoto Kan, Japan’s Former Leader, Condemns Nuclear Power

May 29th, 2012
Via: New York Times:
In an unusually stark warning, Japan’s prime minister during last year’s nuclear crisis told a parliamentary inquiry on Monday that the country should discard nuclear power as too dangerous, saying the Fukushima accident had pushed Japan to the brink of “national collapse.”
…
He said he feared additional meltdowns could “release into the air and sea many times, no, many dozens of times, many hundreds of times the radiation released by Chernobyl.”

Those fears led to the most extraordinary moment of the crisis, when Mr. Kan walked into Tepco’s headquarters after being told the company wanted to evacuate its staff from the crippled plant. He demanded that they stay, saying he was prepared to put his own life on the line to prevent the disaster from worsening.

He also defended his visit to the plant on the day after the earthquake, which has been widely criticized for distracting plant personnel at a crucial juncture in their efforts to save the overheating reactors. Mr. Kan told the panel that he wanted to get an assessment directly from the plant manager because he felt Tepco officials in Tokyo were not giving him enough information.

But his strongest comments came at the end of his testimony, when a panel member asked if he had any advice for the current prime minister. Mr. Kan replied that the accident had brought Japan to the brink of evacuating metropolitan Tokyo and its 30 million residents, and that the loss of the capital would have paralyzed the national government, leading to “a collapse of the nation’s ability to function.”

He said the prospect of losing Tokyo made him realize that nuclear power was just too risky, that the consequences of an accident too large for Japan to accept.

“It is impossible to ensure safety sufficiently to prevent the risk of a national collapse,” Mr. Kan said. “Experiencing the accident convinced me that the best way to make nuclear plants safe is not to rely on them, but rather to get rid of them.”