Japan and Other Asian Countries

2011-09-20 Will Tokyo Be Evacuated Due to Fukushima Radiation?, Tokyo Radiation Exceeds Chernobyl In Some Places … Japanese Government and Experts Discuss Evacuation, by Washington's Blog.
2011-09-20 Column of the Day: What’s happening in Fukushima? posted by Mochizuki [Rense.com]
"9/20, Japanese government declared Fukushima nuclear plants can be settled (kept under 100C) (“cold shutdown”) by the end of this year.
However, Koide from Kyoto university warns it is too unrealistic.
As he says, we do not know where the fuel rods in the reactors.We do not even know how the vessels are right now.
They managed to fix the water measurement is reactor 1, but the measurements are broken in reactor 2 and 3. We do not even know where the water is which they keep giving in.
9/20, Tepco admitted hundreds of tons of water flow into the basement floor of each reactor on the daily basis.
Tokyo newspaper reported there were 100,000 tons of water. It must be reduced to 51,600 tons after pumping by 9/13. However,there is estimated at least 81,300 tons water still.
Tepco has been explaining it is because of water, but still it’s too much.
Tokyo newspaper reports there is possibility that groundwater is flowing into the basement floor from the cracks.
From the view of a civil engineer (me), another possibility is that water is coming from “the sea”. It sounds more rational that there is a crack / cracks to connect the basement floor and sea,and sea water comes into the basement floor.
If so, no matter how much they pump up the water, water keeps coming in by siphon effect until the surface is as high as sea water level (the same mechanism of toilet)
Koide estimates nuclear fuel rods may be now 12m deep under ground at reactor 1-3. Only God knows about reactor 4.
Melted rods can not be taken out for 1~2 years. One piece of the fuel rods is estimated to sink into the ground at a rate of 17m per year. Therefore, 2 years from now, they may be 34m underground..."
2011-09-21 Japan nuke expert: Melted fuel rods estimated to be 12 meters underground Reactors No. 1-3 — To be 100 feet deep in a year (AUDIO), by ENENEWS
Column of the Day: What’s happening in Fukushima?, Fukushima Diary, September 20, 2011:
"[Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute] estimates nuclear fuel rods may be now 12m deep under ground at reactor 1-3. Only God knows about reactor 4.
Melted rods can not be taken out for 1~2 years. One piece of the fuel rods is estimated to sink into the ground at a rate of 17m per year. Therefore, 2 years from now, they may be 34m underground."
2011-09-23 More Propaganda Sep 23, majiasblog.blogspot.com.
Yesterday the WSJ reports in "Storm Strikes Central Japan" Sep 22 p. A10
"officials at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where engineers are still struggling with small radiation leaks due to the tsunami damage, said the typhoon's driving winds and rain caused no immediate problems there other than a broken security camera..."
Majia Here: Let us examine the outright lies first.
Number 1: Lie 1 is that the plant was damaged only, or primiarly by the tsunami. In actuality, the plant was in trouble before the tsunami hit.
Arnie Gunderson of Fairewinds has reported quite extensively on this fact. His conclusion is that any sustained power loss causes the Mark 1 boiling water reactors to have a meltdown and, furthermore, these reactors are susceptible to melt-throughs because of holes engineered into the reactor containment structures. Visit Fairewinds and listen to his analyses to substantiate my claims made here. http://fairewinds.com/content/fairewinds-introduces-japanese-language-edition-and-identifies-safety-problems-all-reactors-
Number 2: Lie 2 is that the radiation leaks are small. In fact, the radiation leaks are NOT small. I wish they were. See the paragraph of data I paste at the end of this post.
Even NHK is reporting releases of "200-million becquerels per hour in the first half of September" http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20_39.html
And EPA levels for the US continue to remain high and are actually increasing in some areas, like California and Arizona. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/12/realtime-epa-radnet-japan-nuclear-radiation-monitoring-every-us-city-single-page-16511/
Now that we have examined the outright lies, let us examine the other claims.
Number 1: The WSJ reports that Tepco claims the rain caused no additional damage.
However, radiation levels in Japan spiked during the time of the tsunami. http://fukushima-diary.com/ and http://enenews.com/report-radiation-level-spiking-around-tokyo-typhoon-nears-fukushima-plant/comment-page-1#comment-133531
Furthermore, we know from NHK reporting that Tepco was very concerned about additional water flooding the basements and thereby producing yet more highly radioactive water.
I strongly doubt that the terrible storm improved conditions at the plant and the storm most surely increased the radioactive water that Tepco is struggling to de-contaminate.
Number 2: The only damage reported was a broken security camera.
Before going blank, the security camera showed rain and a collapsing crane in the area of reactor #3. There is some debate about whether the crane was collapsed or collapsed unintentionally. Then the camera went black.
Given all the other outright lies in this WSJ report (asserted by Tepco), I see no reason why we should believe that the camera was broken by the storm. A more likely scenario is that the camera was disabled so that any substantial problems at the plant that occurred during the storm (or were feared that might occur) were not recorded.
----
data on releases
Japan Times reported on August 27 that Fukushima’s “Cesium Leak Equal to 168 '45 A-Bombs.”[i] As of September 2011, the situation at Fukushima continues to worsen. Dr. Chris Busby reported on the Russian television network RT on August 17 that air filters from Tokyo are showing levels of Cesium-137 that are 1000 times higher than the levels of that radionuclide found in the air at the peak of atmospheric atomic weapons testing in 1963.[ii] Busby also stated that plant emissions were reported to the Japanese Prime Minister by Tepco to be 10 to the 13 becquerels per hour.[iii] Likewise, during an interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott, broadcasted online in September of 2011, Arnie Gunderson stated that he had been told that Fukushima was currently emitting a gigabecquerel per day (gigabecquerel or GBq 109 Bq), in radiation, which he described as over 2 billion decays per second a day.[iv] This radiation is contaminating Japan and the entire northern hemisphere as it is swept away by the Jet Stream. The latest data from Japan as of September 2011 has found 2,000 square kilometers to have radiation contamination levels at or in excess of 1 microsievert per hour at a measured height of .5 o 1.0 meter,[v] leading an annual external exposure rate of 8.76 millisieverts from soil contamination alone.
[i] “Cesium Leak Equal to 168 '45 A-Bombs: NISA Compares Contamination to Hiroshima Blast,” Japan Times (2011, August 27): http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110827x3.html.
[ii] Dr. Christopher Busby interviewed by Russia Today (RT) and uploaded to YouTube “Christopher Busby: Chernobyl-like radiation found in Tokyo,” [RussiaToday] YouTube (uploaded 2011, August 17): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNzDg4O9dkw.
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Helen Caldicott interviews Arnie Gunderson: “Arnold Gundersen with a Fukushima update,” If You Love This Planet (2011, September): http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=4952.
[v] “Up to 1/7 of Fukushima May Be Contaminated,” Mainichi (2011, September 15): http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110915p2g00m0dm114000c.html.
2011-09-24 Radioactive Food, majiasblog.blogspot.com.
I feel very discouraged reading about rice contamination in Japan
High levels of radiation in rice from Obama district — “Set off alarm in the Japanese media”
http://enenews.com/high-levels-of-radiation-found-in-japanese-rice-set-off-alarm-in-the-japanese-media
The original story and link at Mainichi
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110924p2a00m0na017000c.html
"The Fukushima Prefectural Government said on Sept. 23 that it had detected 500 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram -- the government-set allowable limit -- in a sample of "Hitomebore" rice collected in Nihonmatsu's Obama district...."
Blogger Ex-SKF is also running the story
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/09/first-instance-of-radioactive-rice-with.html
Someone named "Robert" posted an important comment at Ex-SKF's blog post about this isssue:
Robert said...

"These standards of 500 or 200 are arbitrary. Less than 200 becqerels per kg due to radiocesium in rice does not make it safe to consume the rice. If the Government of Japan were honest they would publish a table showing the risk of cancer as odds of getting cancer for every kg of rice consumed for people of every age from 5 to 90 years old. World renouned late physicist and physian John Gofman published such a table of risks of getting cancer from common medical x-ray exams in a book he wrote with a similiar title. The risks were in the form of odds such as 1 in 500,000, or 1 in 87. He tabluated these risks, and they varied widely depending on the type of exam and the age of the person. The youngest people including children had the highest risk, because risk is greater for the people with the satistical greatest continued life span. While obviously double blinded studies are unethical to study cesium, enough data can be obtained from data from previous accidents and other sources to enable an educated estimates. THIS WILL ALLOW PEOPLE TO DETERMINE WHETHER THEY CONSIDER IT DANGEROUS OR NOT BASED ON THEIR OWN VIEWS OF LIFE. Another thing Dr. Gofman discovered is that there is no safe threshold for radiation. He also discovered the fact that, low radiation is more dangerous than the proportional numbers would indicate. That is consuming rice at 50 becquerals per kg is more than 50 percent as dangerous as consuming it at 100 becquelals per kg. So learn the facts and beware and don't depend on arbitrary standards that are moved up and down like a yo yo to accommodate the current economic viewpoint of the big interests."

Majia here: consuming radioactive food is a big problem. Rice is just the tip of the iceberg because beef, vegetables and water have also been contaminated in Japan. Let me provide some examples of reports of contaminated food that occurred earlier in the disaster plus an assessment of the dangers of radioactive food, which supports comments made above by Robert

• Gov't orders 4 prefectures to suspend some food shipments TOKYO, March 22, Kyodo. The government ordered Fukushima and three other prefectures Monday to suspend shipments of spinach and another leaf vegetable following the detection of radioactive substances in the produce at levels beyond legal limits, while trace amounts of radioactive substances were detected in tap water samples collected Sunday and Monday in nine prefectures.
  High levels of radioactive substances were also detected in seawater near a troubled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, according to the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. The company said it is too early to assess the impact on fishery products http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80024.html
• Radioactive iodine and cesium have been found in spinach and ''kakina,'' another leaf vegetable, produced in and around Fukushima Prefecture at levels exceeding legal limits since the radiation leaks at the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80024.htm
• Spinach with radiation 27 times higher than limit found in Japan TOKYO, March 21, Kyodo
  Spinach with radioactive iodine 27 times more than the government-regulated limit was found in the city of Hitachi in Ibaraki Prefecture, more than 100 kilometers south of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, but the radiation levels do not affect human health, local authorities said Sunday. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/79856.html
• The World Health Organization says the detection of radiation in food is a more serious problem than first expected, and food contamination is not a localized problem. It says, however, there is no evidence of contaminated food from Fukushima reaching other countries. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/21/us-japan-quake-snapshot-idUSTRE72J4BM20110321
• Meanwhile, tap water collected Sunday showed both radioactive iodine and cesium in samples from Tochigi and Gunma prefectures, while iodine alone was found in samples from Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Niigata and Yamanashi prefectures, according to a nationwide survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80024.html
• THE LIES 'Eating food with (radioactive levels) exceeding provisional limits isn't going to affect your health,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano added, urging the public not to overreact to the findings. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80024.html
• Barbara Rose Johnston is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Center for Political Ecology. She is the co-author of The Consequential Dangers of Nuclear War: the Rongelap Report. Look for her latest book from Left Coast Press, Life and Death Matters: Human Rights, Environment, and Social Justice, to be released in July 2009 published at counterpunch 3/21/2011 http://www.counterpunch.org/
• [excerpted' "The assertion that low-level exposure to radiation represents no human threat is an artifact of Cold War-era science that was shaped to meet government and industry needs. During the Cold War, scientific findings on health effects to nuclear fallout that contradicted the official narrative were typically censored. Scientists were not only punished for their work, they were also blacklisted -- one example of this was American anthropologist Earle Reynolds whose work for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission was censored in 1953 by the US government. His research showed that Japanese children who were exposed to fallout were not only smaller than their counterparts, but had less resistance to disease in general and were more susceptible to cancer, especially leukemia
• Johnston writes: "Several … sources document radiogenic health outcomes that sharply contrast mainstream reports: Declassified records of US human radiation experiments and similar Soviet records; Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission records; new research conducted by Japanese scientists; long-term research on Chernobyl survivors; and research done for the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal proceedings.
• But what does this mean?...
• For example, fallout and the movement of radionuclides through marine and terrestrial environments ultimately get into the food chain and the human body.
• The toxicity of contaminants and radioactivity in fallout represent significant health risks.
• Acute exposures are further complicated when followed by chronic exposure, as such assaults have a cumulative and synergistic effect on health and well-being.
• Chronic exposure to fallout does more than increase the risk of developing cancers, it threatens the immune system, can exacerbate pre-existing conditions, affects fertility, increases rates of birth defects, and can retard physical and mental development, among other things. And we know the effects of such exposures can last for generations

2011-09-24 Huge Amounts Of Neptunium 239 Detected 60 Km From Fukushima!!!,
- Nikkan SPA Magazine: Researcher Says Large Amount of Neptunium-239 Also in Date City, Fukushima (EX-SKF, Sep. 12, 2011):

It’s the same researcher who said several thousand becquerels/kg of neptunium-239 was found in the soil in Iitate-mura, about 35 km northwest of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. It seems it’s not just Iitate-mura that got doused with neptunium, which decays into plutonium. Date City, about 25 km northwest from Iitate-mura and 60 km from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, also got a large amount of neptunium.
To recap, uranium-239, whose half life is about 24 minutes, decays into neptunium-239 with a half life of about 2.5 days, which then decays into plutonium-239 whose half life is 24,200 years.
Again, the reason for withholding the information is explained in the article below as “the research paper being peer-reviewed by a foreign scientific journal” – a make-or-break event, apparently, for a young researcher at a prestigious university in Japan – and as precaution against the possible Japanese government action to squash the information. The article was written by the same husband & wife comedian couple who first wrote about neptunium in Iitate-mura on their blog magazine in early August.
I’m sure the nuclear experts who have appeared on TV to soothe the populace ever since the March 11 nuclear accident has the good explanation for neptunium-239 in these locations. They’ve kept saying “No way plutonium will be found outside the compound, because it is heavy and it doesn’t fly”. Oh I get it. It’s plutonium they were talking about, not neptunium which decays into plutonium. My bad.
From Nikkan SPA September 13 issue (part on Date City only):

The email began thus:

“I heard it directly from a university researcher whose specialty is radiation measurement. Neptunium, the nuclide that decays into plutonium, flew at least to Iitate-mura and Date City in large quantity. The current survey method focuses only on gamma ray, and all it detects is radioactive cesium. The real danger is alpha-nuclides, which continues to be ignored. Iitate-mura may be being betrayed again…”

The article by the comedian cum independent journalist couple continues and says this person attended a lecture given by this researcher.
It still doesn’t make sense to me that the information already freely given at a public lecture has to be withheld because of the peer-review process, but oh well.
Date City by the way has been selected by the national government to conduct “decontamination” experiments. So is Iitate-mura. They are using high-pressure spray washers to blast roofs, sidings and roads, and digging up the soil. Plutonium? What plutonium?
Unlike Iitate-mura, though, almost all residents in Date City still live within the city. Even those who are ordered to move because of high radiation level in their homes have moved to temporary housing that the city has provided, within the city.

North America

2011-09-19 Radioactive rain .55 mcSvh Sept 19 2011 Barrie Ontario Canada.mpg (video); Uploaded by leeroybrowns, "Radiation reading of rainwater sample: Topped out @ .70mcSv/h"
2011-09-19 Radiation Conversation, by Michael Collins, enviroreporter.com
After 2,429 comments EnviroReporter.com’s Radiation Station was a victim of its own success. The informative and lively comments were so numerous and lengthy that the page slowed loading considerably. So while the page continues with its live radiation readings and expanded in-situ and multi-media radiation sampling and testing, we decided to close the comments there and move the conversation here.
In addition, we’ve conducted a slew of new tests that you will find of interest. Your comments about them and what they could mean are most certainly welcome here as well.
This is Radiation Conversation – Welcome! Here are some new items that you might find interesting…
Recently we’ve obtained a number of Japanese-made food and drink products available in Southern California. Seaweed, dattan soba tea, adlay tea, and green tea all measured considerably higher in radiation than background levels. One beer test as well as another beer radiation detection session also showed heightened radiation. A Swiss roll pastry with green tea, vegetable juice and sake, all made in Japan, were detected with higher than normal radiation.
There are at least 43 Japanese markets in Southern California as well as 885 Japanese restaurants, according to a 2011 Japanese telephone and business directory. The implications of radioactive products possibly impacted by the Fukushima triple meltdowns making their way into the American consumer product stream is troubling and completely undetected, at least publicly, by the governments of either Japan or the United States.
Also discounted by the government here downwind of the Fukushima disaster is the possibility that radiation from Japan’s meltdowns and the widespread Japanese practice of burning radioactive debris and rubble could drift on the Jet Stream over and onto North America. Numerous contributors to this site have shown this to be false. Huge amounts of radiation has rained upon America including Potrblog’s recent reading of over 133 times background in the St. Louis, Missouri area. The Pacific Northwest, Midwest and large areas of both west and central-east Canada have also suffered from high radiation levels in precipitation.
Now EnviroReporter.com has found significantly high radiation readings far south of the Jet Stream in some of America’s most cherished national parks including the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion.
These readings, detected during the same time frame of Potrblog’s 133 times background detection, suggest that the radioactive fallout from Fukushima is dispersing wider and farther away from the Jet Stream than previously known.
Now as winter approaches, the Jet Stream will move south and places like Southern California will possibly see the astronomically-high radiation readings suffered by so many other places across the United States and Canada.
Most disturbing in these detections was the high presence of alpha radiation which is 60 to 1,000 times more dangerous than beta or gamma radiation. Such an alpha presence is also indicative of radiation from the meltdowns and destroyed spent fuel pools.

After 188 days in operation, with over 1,371 radiation tests conducted by Radiation Station seen by over 1,371,264 viewers, we thank you for your continued interest and contributions to the conversation that began March 15, 2011, four days after the worst nuclear accident in history.

2011-09-20 Plutonium 239 Fallout Raining Down on North America; The Smoking Gun (video)
Update 9/21/11 I changed the title so that people may more fully understand the significance of the finding
The original title was- Longer Half Life Fukushima Fallout With a Neptunium 239 Signature Hits Saint Louis
(c)2011 www.POTRBLOG.com
Video Summary:
(1) Longer Half Life Fallout Detected in Saint Louis on 9/14/2011
(2) The Detected Half life is Indicative of Neptunium 239
(3) Under a Long Term Np-239 Fallout scenario, Explosive Dispersal of the Corium Becomes Risk Mitigating
(4) Based on the Jet Stream, the Primary Fallout Areas Were Canada, Midwest, and the Yankee States.
2011-09-23 Dangerous radiation levels in the rain Sept 23 2011 Barrie Onatrio Canada.mpg (video), Uploaded by leeroybrowns, [Editor's Note: Radiation meter flashes dangerous level of radiation from rainwater absorbed in cloth off windshield, it looks like a reading of 1.37 microsieverts/hr.]

Europe

2011-09-22 Fukushima: BBC Debunked (video), Goddard's Journal