23 July 2014 (09:29 UTC-07 Tango)/25 Ramadan 1435/01 Mordad 1393/27 Xin-Wei 4712
Out of Belarus and Russia, reports that blueberries harvested near former radiation contamination zones of the former Soviet Chernobyl nuke plant are still contaminated with cesium, almost three decades after the nuclear disaster!
The former contamination zones had been declared safe after tests for surface radiation showed radiation levels were down. However, after blueberries were still testing for high levels of cesium-137 (in 2013), a test of of the soil showed contamination was still high underground, at root level.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) admits that ongoing debris removal at Japan‘s GE designed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, is spreading trillions of becquerels (Bq) of radiation! This is after a secret government investigation was revealed by Japanese media last week.
That hidden investigation revealed that rice fields outside radiation no go zones were being contaminated by cesium dust from the demolition of the building housing reactor Unit 3. Today TEPCo is revealing it’s far far worse than that!
TEPCo officials now estimate that the demolition of the damaged reactor Unit 3 building, which started in 2013, has spread 1.1-trillion Bq of radiation, or 280-billion Bq per hour! Now realize that’s from just one of at least four reactor buildings that are scheduled for demolition!
But wait, there’s more! TEPCo admits that even without demolition of Fukushima Daiichi’s reactor Unit 3 building, the nuclear disaster reactors are still spewing 10-million Bq per hour of radiation!
People still living in Fukushima Prefecture are now panicking as TEPCo is about to start demolition of the top of the building housing reactor Unit 1.
If anybody was trying to use the United States RadNet system to monitor radiation, since the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, they discovered the system was down. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced they’ve completed upgrades to the system, and it is supposedly up and running.
By coincidence, 20% of all RadNet monitors were off line when Fukushima Daiichi exploded. One reason is that filters in RadNet had not been changed for months. The EPA relies on unpaid volunteers to change the filters, which must be done twice per week!
The EPA says 92.9% of monitors are now operating, and they’ve added eight new monitors with plans to add eight more. At this point South Carolina is the only state with no RadNet, but they are supposed to be getting one soon. But don’t go cheering the EPA.
Reports say the EPA is also planning on increasing government limits on the amount of radiation exposure considered dangerous to humans! A Forbes report said “…James Conca, senior scientist for the Institute for Energy and the Environment at New Mexico State University, believes the radiation emissions permitted by EPA ‘may increase more than tenfold.'”
In New Mexico, to add insult to injury it’s been revealed that five days after a salt truck fire in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) the Department of Energy gave Nuclear Waste Partnership a $1.9-million USD bonus, for “excellence”!
It turns out no action has been taken against any management official at WIPP: “No federal or contractor official has lost their job, been transferred, been moved off the WIPP contract or otherwise held accountable. No leadership has changed at the federal level. No company has lost a contract.”-Martin Schneider, ExchangeMonitor Publications
Former Atomic Energy Commission employees testified in court that the remains of the radioactive compressor building for the Huntington Pilot Plant was buried without being ‘decontaminated’ in a now secret Piketon, Ohio, landfill!
One employee suffered incurable radiation damage to his hands during the process of burying the ‘hot’ building. The site was leveled in 1978-79. Other employees described the contamination in the compressor building as “green stuff”.
Employees also testified that when they showed up for work, everyday they would have to clear the work site of fresh dead animals. Another employee stated “The entire INCO facility was a DOE facility in that it processed , under contract, nickel scrap from the various atomic facilities, such as Puducah, Fernald, Portsmouth and other places… making each and every employee at INCO subject to the radioactive pollution that occurred . [We also ] confirm that there were releases of poisonous gases daily at nighttime at that facility and they would completely destroy the vegetation…”