13 October 2013 (05:10 UTC-07 Tango)/08 Dhu’l-Hijja 1434/21 Mehr 1392/09 Ren-Xu (9th month) 4711

Recently, Tokyo Electric Power Company reported detecting cesium in the Pacific Ocean, in an area previously free of the isotope!

For the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly, the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation reported that the initial radiation exposure to humans around Fukushima Daiichi, back in 2011, was at least 20% higher than what TEPCo and the Japanese government reported!

The report stated that “…severe core damage to three of the six nuclear reactors…resulted in the release, over a prolonged period, of very large
amounts of radioactive material into the environment.”

The UNSCEAR investigation discovered that TEPCo and the Japanese government was not able to directly measure certain isotopes, such as radioactive iodine and cesium, in their radiation exposure assessments.  The thousands of employees at Fukushima Daiichi suffered the highest radiation contamination, higher than what the official Japanese government reports say.

The major problem with the Japanese reports of exposure levels is that they are purely “estimates”.  The UNSCEAR pointed out that there were no direct radiation measuring available at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, and therefore corporate and government officials based exposure on “various models”.

(as I wrote back in 2011, they were guessing!)

The UNSCEAR added that “…low-level releases into the ocean were still ongoing in May 2013.”