Japan and Other Asian Countries

2011-09-05 ??????2011.9.5 ????????? / Strange flash in Fukushima Nuclear plant (video)
2011-09-05 TEPCO: Unknown amount of ‘radioactive materials’ leaking from Reactor No. 3, enenews.com.
2011-09-05 Cesium-137 found in urine of child near Tokyo, despite mother’s stringent efforts at radiation protection — “Mixture of shock and a feeling that of course this is the case”, enenews.com.
2011-09-06 Almost 500 millisieverts of radiation for some in corridor NW of Fukushima meltdowns — Around 50/50 chance of cancer, says nuclear engineer by ENENEWS Admin
Arnold Gundersen with a Fukushima update, Helen Caldicott MD podcast, September 2, 2011:
At 23:25 in (Transcript Summary)

* There’s a denial of the severity of the accident by the business community and government in Tokyo… they are ignoring and denying severity of problem…
* Some towns in the NW corridor received 50 rem of radiation, people in those towns received 50 rems.. that means there is almost a 50/50 chance of cancer… that information just came out now 6 months after accident…

Download the audio program here.
2011-09-07 Covering the Leaking Reactors At Fukushima With Tents Will Only INCREASE Global Exposure to Radiation, ashingtonsblog.com
2011-09-07 Fukushima Crisis Is Still Hazy: Chaos and bureaucracy hamper assessment of nuclear crisis by David Cyranoski, Geoff Brumfiel and Nature magazine, September 7, 2011
"The survey of 2,200 locations shows a roughly 35-kilometer-long strip northwest of the plant where levels of caesium-137 contamination seem to exceed 1,000 kilobecquerels per square metre. (After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, areas with more than 1,480 kilobecquerels per square metre were permanently evacuated by the Soviet authorities."
2011-09-09 High Levels Of Radiation Showing Up In Sea And Fukushima Residents, simplyinfo.org
Again flying in the face of TEPCO’s claims everything is fine, large levels of radiation are showing up in the region.
Some Fukushima residents based on their location after the melt downs received large radiation doses in the range of three times the national limit. The more shocking part is that they are from the 30km zone, not the 20km evacuation zone.
“The researchers estimated that radiation levels in the area during the two months before the evacuations came to 50 millisieverts.”
Some residents received doses from 57 to 69 mSv. Some parts of Fukushima City read at 3.2 mSv yet the city is trying to go on as business as usual.
Researchers at the JAEA have done their own estimates on sea releases during the early months and found levels at 15,000 terabecquerels. TEPCO estimated 4,720 terabecquerels. The JAEA readings were more complete thus the higher reading. TEPCO has had a pattern of taking certain readings in ways that would show a lower level of radiation as they ignore concentrating sources.
2011-09-10 Prof. Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University: ‘Massive amounts of radioactive materials will be released into the environment again’ – Fukushima Reactor Core May Have Sunk Into The Ground – ‘We are now head to head with a situation that mankind has never faced before’, infiniteunknown.net. (Also archived at: 2011-09-09 "Kyoto U. expert..." by ENENEWS)
- Radiation expert says outcome of nuke crisis hard to predict, warns of further dangers (Mainichi Japan, Sep. 9, 2011):

As a radiation metrology and nuclear safety expert at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, Hiroaki Koide has been critical of how the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) have handled the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Below, he shares what he thinks may happen in the coming weeks, months and years.
The nuclear disaster is ongoing. Immediately after the crisis first began to unfold, I thought that we’d see a definitive outcome within a week. However, with radioactive materials yet to be contained, we’ve remained in the unsettling state of not knowing how things are going to turn out.
Without accurate information about what’s happening inside the reactors, there’s a need to consider various scenarios. At present, I believe that there is a possibility that massive amounts of radioactive materials will be released into the environment again.
At the No. 1 reactor, there’s a chance that melted fuel has burned through the bottom of the pressure vessel, the containment vessel and the floor of the reactor building, and has sunk into the ground. From there, radioactive materials may be seeping into the ocean and groundwater.
The use of water to cool down the reactors immediately after the crisis first began resulted in 110,000 cubic meters of radiation-tainted water. Some of that water is probably leaking through the cracks in the concrete reactor buildings produced by the March 11 quake. Contaminated water was found flowing through cracks near an intake canal, but I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I believe that contaminated water is still leaking underground, where we can’t see it. Because of this, I believe immediate action must be taken to build underground water barriers that would close off the nuclear power plant to the outside world and prevent radioactive materials from spreading. The important thing is to stop any further diffusion of radioactive materials.
The government and plant operator TEPCO are trumpeting the operation of the circulation cooling system, as if it marks a successful resolution to the disaster. However, radiation continues to leak from the reactors. The longer the circulation cooling system keeps running, the more radioactive waste it will accumulate. It isn’t really leading us in the direction we need to go.
It’s doubtful that there’s even a need to keep pouring water into the No.1 reactor, where nuclear fuel is suspected to have burned through the pressure vessel. Meanwhile, it is necessary to keep cooling the No. 2 and 3 reactors, which are believed to still contain some fuel, but the cooling system itself is unstable. If the fuel were to become overheated again and melt, coming into contact with water and trigger a steam explosion, more radioactive materials will be released.
TEPCO says it is aiming to bring the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors to cold shutdown by January 2012. Cold shutdown, however, entails bringing the temperature of sound nuclear fuel in pressure vessels below 100 degrees Celsius. It would be one thing to aim for this in April, when the government had yet to confirm that a meltdown had indeed taken place. But what is the point of “aiming for cold shutdown” now, when we know that fuel is no longer sound?
In the days ahead, the storage of enormous quantities of radiation-contaminated waste, including tainted mud resulting from the decontamination process, will become a major problem. Because the responsibility for spreading nuclear materials into the environment lies with TEPCO, it makes sense to bring all the radioactive waste to TEPCO headquarters in Tokyo.
Since that’s not possible, the waste should be taken to the grounds of the nuclear power plant. If the plant is not large enough to accommodate all the waste, then a location close to the plant will also have to be designated as a nuclear graveyard. However, no one should take advantage of the chaos and force Fukushima to host interim radioactive waste repositories for spent fuel from other nuclear power plants.
Recovering the melted nuclear fuel is another huge challenge. I can’t even imagine how that could be done. When the Three Mile Island accident took place in 1972, the melted nuclear fuel had stayed within the pressure vessel, making defueling possible. With Fukushima, however, there is a possibility that nuclear fuel has fallen into the ground, in which case it will take 10 or 20 years to recover it. We are now head to head with a situation that mankind has never faced before.

North America and Europe


2011-09-08 Report: Manure with 255 CPM bought in Southern California (VIDEO), enenews.com.
2011-09-08 Vegetable Juice – September 8, 2011, by Michael Collins, enviroreporter.com
11:20 am SPOT CHECK JAPANESE VEGETABLE JUICE LIQUID IN TEST DISH bought in Southern California Japanese market = ~58 SUSTAINED CPM WHICH IS 53% HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS BACKGROUND AVERAGE
11:35 am 10-minute INTERIOR average FILTER OF JAPANESE-MADE VEGETABLE JUICE bought in Southern California Japanese market = 44.2 CPM WHICH IS 16.3% HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS BACKGROUND AVERAGE
2011-09-09 Listeria outbreak probe expands to three states by Keith Coffman "DENVER (Reuters) - An investigation into a listeria outbreak that has killed at least one person has expanded to include three states where possibly tainted cantaloupe was consumed, Colorado health officials said on Friday...
... Those mostly likely to be sickened by the bacteria include people over the age of 60, pregnant women and people whose immune systems have been weakened by disease or organ transplants, Urbina said...[Editor's Note: The article fails to mention how the listeria outbreaks coincide with accumulating Fukushima radiation.]
Hat tip to Majia for flagging the possible radiation connection at her blog: She commented on her 1 Oct 2011 post:

Saturday, October 1, 2011
Truth? I Have No Idea
I'm raising questions.
I have no truths about the current listeria outbreak.
Let us see how the outbreak develops. If it is quickly contained, we know that unusual circumstances do not prevail.
If the outbreak spreads and seems to become more diffuse, then we need to start asking hard questions.
Majia has posted a number of articles describing how radiation mades mammals more susceptible to infectious diseases. See, for example, the following post at: http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/one-more-article-same-researcher-on.html:
Saturday, October 1, 2011
One More Article Same Researcher on Susceptibility to Listeria Infection and Ionizing Radiation
Effects of Continuous Irradiation of Mice on the Immune Response to Live Listeriamonocytogenes Author(s): Ronald H. Stewart, F. A. Hodge, Myron S. SilvermanSource: The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol. 117, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 109-115Published by: Oxford University PressStable
"From the U. S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, San Francisco, California 94135 Exposure of mice to chronic gamma radiation delivered at 1 to 1.5 rad per hour resulted in a marked increase in susceptibility to airborne infection with Listeria monocytogenes (Stewart et al, 1965). As the cumulative radiation dose increased the susceptibility to infection increased so that mice receiving a total of 2500 rad over a 2-month period were over 33 times as susceptible to infection as those receiving no radiation...."