"Terra Daily" - Nuclear contamination found beyond Japan no-go zone

 Terra Daily
Tokyo (AFP) Oct 5, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Nuclear_contamination_found_beyond_Japan_no-go_zone_999.html

High levels of radioactive contamination have been found in soil in the capital of Japan's Fukushima prefecture, a study showed Wednesday, prompting calls to make the area a voluntary evacuation zone.

Some 307,000 becquerels of caesium per kilogramme (2.2 pounds) of soil was detected in an independent survey conducted on September 14 by a radiological engineering expert and citizens' groups.

The Japanese government's legal limit is 10,000 becquerels per kilogramme.

The contamination is believed to have been caused by radiation that has leaked from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The development comes days after Japan lifted evacuation advisories for five areas between 20-30 kilometres from the nuclear plant and as it looks to convince tens of thousands of people that it is safe to return home.

The groups tested soil samples from several areas near central Fukushima some 60 kilometres (35 miles) away from the plant.

"We are urging the central and local governments to have children and expecting mothers evacuated from the areas," said Takeshi Sakagami, a member of Citizens Against Fukushima Aging Nuclear Power Plants.

Sakagami said his group was calling on authorities to at least designate the area as a non-mandatory evacuation zone due to the level of contamination.

A 9.0-magnitude quake on March 11 triggered a monster tsunami that left 20,000 dead or missing and crippled cooling systems at the Fukushima plant, northeast of Tokyo, causing reactor meltdowns.

Radiation leaks forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from a 20-kilometre radius around the troubled plant, and in some pockets beyond.

On Friday the government said it would lift five "evacuation preparation" zones between 20 and 30 kilometres from the plant, where residents were not forced to evacuate but were told to be ready to do so in the event of further setbacks at the crippled plant.

Public confidence in the safety of Japan's nuclear plants has plummeted in the wake of the disaster, with only 10 of the nation's 54 reactors currently online.

Reactors will be required to undergo stress-testing and need the approval of local authorities before restarting.

On Tuesday a nuclear reactor in southwestern Japan was automatically shut down due to a problem with its cooling system, but operator Kyushu Electric said no abnormalities had been detected.



"Staff Writers" - Traces of Japan nuclear fallout in California rainwater

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Sept 21, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Traces_of_Japan_nuclear_fallout_in_California_rainwater_999.html

Low levels of radioactivity showed up in rainwater in northern California two weeks after the Japan nuclear disaster in March but soon returned to normal, said a US study out Wednesday.

The detected levels of radioactive isotopes cesium, iodine, and tellurium were very small and posed no risk to the public, according to the findings of research funded by the US Departments of Energy and Homeland Security.

Rainwater was collected in the San Francisco Bay area cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and Albany from March 16 to 26, said the report in the online journal PloS (Public Library of Science) ONE.

"The first sample that showed elevated radioactivity was collected on March 18th, and levels peaked on March 24th before returning to normal," said study led by professor Eric Norman in the department of nuclear engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.

The study also noted that "similar gamma ray counting measurements were performed on samples of weeds collected in Oakland and on vegetables and milk sold commercially in the San Francisco Bay area."

Some of the same fission products detected in rainwater were found in the milk and produce samples, also at a level that posed no risk to the public, it said.

On March 11, a record 9.0 earthquake and tsunami killed about 20,000 people along the coast of Japan and sparked nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daichi plant.

The nuclear plant was sent into meltdown after its cooling systems were swamped by the waves, sending radiation into the air, sea and food chain in the world's worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl.



"Paul Zimmerman" - Fukushima and the Battle for Truth

By Paul Zimmerman

Global Research, September 27, 2011

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26798

Fukushima’s nuclear disaster is a nightmare. Ghostly releases of radioactivity haunt the Japanese countryside. Lives, once safe, are now beset by an ineffable scourge promising vile illness and death.

Large sectors of the population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination, setting the stage for a public health tragedy.

A subtle increase in the number of miscarriages and fetal deaths will be the first manifestation that something is amiss. An elevated incidence of birth defects will begin in the Fall and continue into the indefinite future. Thyroid diseases, cardiac diseases and elevated rates of infant and childhood leukemia will follow. Over the next decade and beyond, cancer rates will soar.

Chernobyl was the harbinger of this heartbreaking scenario. It taught mankind the inescapable biological truths that emerge within populations internally contaminated by heightened levels of fission products. And yet, government and industry schemers attack these truths as unfounded scare-mongering. With cold indifference, they deny that Chernobyl was a mass casualty event. They turn a blind eye to a huge body of research and deviously proclaim that no evidence exists that more than a handful of people suffered harm from the Ukrainian disaster. They publish propaganda, draped in the guise of science, that dismisses the hazard of low levels of internal contamination. Believing their subterfuge to have been successful and intoxicated by their hubris, they are already positioning themselves to stage-manage the public’s perception of Fukushima. 

Japan’s government, its Nuclear Safety Commission, and the Tokyo Electric  Power Company have already demonstrated that they will do everything in their power to keep citizens ignorant of what is taking place. The emerging health crisis is scheduled to be erased. Following a time-tested blueprint worked out by prior radiation releases around the world, data relevant to assessing the medical impact of the accident will not be gathered. Radiation doses to the population will be woefully underestimated. The hazards associated with low levels of internal contamination will be obliterated from all discussions of risk. Academic journals that support the nuclear agenda will be flooded with bogus studies demonstrating that no health detriment was suffered by the population. The heightened incidence of childhood leukemia will be attributed to some as yet unidentified virus unleashed by population mixing following the evacuations caused by the tsunami. (This theory is currently in vogue to deny that the heightened incidence of leukemia among children under five years of age living nearby to nuclear reactors is radiation induced.)  The birth defects will be summarily dismissed as impossible because the risk models upheld by the International Commission on Radiological Protection don’t predict them. The possibility that the models are fraudulently constructed escapes consideration. (See a Betrayal of Mankind by the Radiation Protection Agencies, available as a free download at http://www.du-deceptions.com/excerpts.html.)

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"Yoko Kubota" - Japan Sizes Up Task of Fukushima Waste Disposal

TOKYO - Japan faces the prospect of removing and disposing 29 million cubic metres of soil contaminated by the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years from an area nearly the size of Tokyo, the environment ministry said in the first official estimate of the scope and size of the cleanup. Six months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered reactor meltdowns, explosions and radiation leaks at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan's northeast coast, the size of the task of cleaning up is only now becoming clear. Contaminated zones where radiation levels need to be brought down could top 2,400 square km (930 square miles), sprawling over Fukushima and four nearby prefectures, the ministry said in a report released on Tuesday.

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Why the sudden interest in Nuclear Power?

Received this interesting message and video from a friend today. - Gary

"Gary, I always wondered why so many people rediscovered a love for Nuclear Power.  However, after watching a short video of Chuck Schumer from 2008, it all made sense. The relevant material starts at 1:35 and goes to 2:55

Clearly personal politics always trumps humanity."

KNOCKING ON THE DEVIL’S DOOR: OUR DEADLY NUCLEAR LEGACY – A DOCUMENTARY OF THE GREATEST URGENCY

“We must outlaw nuclear reactors.” – Admiral Hyman Rickover, the Father of the Nuclear Navy, to Congress in his farewell speech Gary Null, radio talk show host and author, with Producer Richard Gale, has produced a comprehensive indictment of nuclear power and weapons. The first thing the public needs to know is that it is not merely a debate about which way to go with policy. Rather, the nuclear issue is about life and death now. So a big public service is in exposing the nuclear industry’s lies that are killing people today at increasing rates. Premiered in August, Knocking on the Devil’s Door: Our Deadly Nuclear Legacy has taken on the political, financial, technical and other scientific aspects of a monstrously complicated and scary topic. In 135 minutes the film takes a semi-informed viewer from innocence to mind-blown amazement — and perhaps depression.

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"Harvey Wasserman" - Can We Stop the Next Fukushima Times 10,000?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/13

Published on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Harvey Wasserman

The horrible news from Japan continues to be ignored by the western corporate media.

Students wear masks at an elementary school outside of the 20-km (12 mile) radius zone from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Minami Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, September 8. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Fukushima's radioactive fallout continues to spread throughout the archipelago, deep into the ocean and around the globe---including the US. It will ultimately impact millions, including many here in North America.

The potentially thankful news is that Fukushima's three melting cores may have not have melted deep into the earth, thus barely avoiding an unimaginably worse apocalyptic reality.

But it's a horror that humankind has yet to fully comprehend.

As Fukushima's owners now claim its three melted reactors approach cold shutdown, think of this:

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"Staff Writers"- Japan's ex-PM Kan feared 'uninhabitable Tokyo': report

Tokyo (AFP) Sept 6, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Japans_ex-PM_Kan_feared_uninhabitable_Tokyo_report_999.html

Japan's former premier Naoto Kan feared Tokyo would be rendered uninhabitable by the Fukushima nuclear crisis, he said in an interview published Tuesday in which he recalled the "spine-chilling" thought.

He added it would have been "impossible" to evacuate all of the 30 million people in the event of a mass exclusion zone encompassing Tokyo and the Kanto region, and said that this risk made nuclear power a too dangerous option.

"Deserted scenes of Tokyo without a single man around came across my mind," he told the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, describing his thoughts as the nuclear emergency deepened in the days after the March 11 quake and tsunami.

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"Fukushima Eyewitnesses to Visit New York, Challenge UN to Stop Its Promotion of Nuclear Power"

September 6, 2011

As the nuclear crisis precipitated by the 2011 Great Eastern Earthquake unfolded, spewing radioactive material across northern Japan, Sachiko Sato of Fukushima sent her three children away to safety while she stayed behind. With clear information about fallout and radiation levels in short supply from the government, other families inside and outside the evacuation zones faced similar separation. Businesses continued as usual despite rising radiation levels, so parents, often fathers, were forced to stay at work as the wives and children left for Tokyo or western Japan.

While Sato’s children worried about their classmates who remained in Fukushima, the Japanese government, rather than arrange for wider evacuation, raised the legal radiation limit by 20 times. The new limit: 20 mSv per year, equivalent to some countries’ maximum-allowed dose for nuclear workers.

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"Dina Cappiello & Jeff Donn" - Earthquake Threat to Nuclear Reactors Far Higher Than Realized

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/02

Published on Friday, September 2, 2011 by the Associated Press

"Dina Cappiello & Jeff Donn" - Earthquake Threat to Nuclear Reactors Far Higher Than Realized

by Dina Cappiello, Jeff Donn

WASHINGTON — The risk that an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought, 24 times as high in one case, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data.

A tree farm in North Perry, Ohio, near the two cooling towers of the Perry Nuclear Power Plant looming in the background. The risk of an earthquake causing a severe accident at a nuclear power plant is up to 24 times greater than previously believed, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data. (photo: Amy Sancetta / AP)

The nation's nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America's reactors may need modifications to make them safer.

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