Two Japanese cities outside the current evacuation zone, now have radiation levels above safe limits.
Date and Minamisoma cities show increasing radiation levels, prompting calls for evacuation by the residents. Government officials say they are working quickly on the possible expansion of the evacuation zone.
The nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi has resulted in hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive water being spilled into the Pacific Ocean, and it hasn’t stopped.
Greenpeace says they’ve found ocean species with unsafe levels of radiation, 50 km (31 miles) from the nuke plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced they will begin monitoring the Pacific Ocean for radiation contamination. Australia, South Korea and Indonesia will make up a team that will sample water from the Pacific Ocean, and the East China Sea. They expect the process to take four years.
The contamination of the Pacific Ocean would not have reached this level, if Tokyo Electric Power Company, and the Japanese government, took the nuclear disaster more seriously at the beginning. Chernobyl was handled in a matter of weeks, not ongoing after many months like Fukishima Daiichi.
As proof that the Japanese government, and Tokyo Electric Power Company, were just wild ass guessing about the radiation levels being released from Fukushima Daiichi, a new report says the levels are more than double.
The governmental Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is now saying the initial radiation release from the damaged nuke plant was 770,000 terabecquerels. The independent Nuclear Safety Commission said they put the amount of radiation released, in the first month, at 630,000 terabecquerels.
The level of radiation being spewed from the plant has not let up. On Saturday, 04 June 2011, radiation emitted from Reactor 1 hit 4,000 millisieverts per hour!
The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Ministry maintains ‘off site centers’ near nuclear plants. The centers are government run emergency response units based ‘off site’ of the privately run nuclear plants.
The public news station, NHK, got hold of a NISA report that admitted that almost all of their off site centers were dysfunctional at the beginning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
NISA operates 22 nuclear emergency response centers throughout Japan. On 11 March 2011, seven hours after the 9.0 quake, only three of those centers were staffed. The off site response unit for Fukushima Daiichi had been shut down by the earthquake. NISA claims all power generating capabilities, communications and other critical functions had been lost, making the off site response unit ineffective.
But, surprisingly, after it became clear there was a problem at the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant, NISA decided to move the emergency response unit away from the stricken plant. Hello, what’s the purpose of the ‘off site centers’ emergency response units then? NISA officials said they were afraid their off site center building was not radiation proof! More proof of lack of planning and foresight by government officials.
According to NHK(Nippon Housou Kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation), there has not been any official soil sampling since the nuclear disasters following the 11 March 2011 quake/tsunami. Tokyo Electric Power Company has done periodic samples, but only within the area of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear compound.
The Japanese Science Ministry is now taking actual soil samples outside the nuclear facility. What I mean by ‘actual’ is that up ’till now they’ve been conducting soil samples from the air! NHK didn’t explain how you do soil sampling from the air, but it’s clear the government has realized they need to actually get down on the ground to properly test the soil.
The Science Ministry will join with universities and private laboratories around Japan, to do the soil sampling. Samples will be taken every 4 square km (2.4 miles) in areas within 80 km (49.7 miles) of the nuclear plant and every 100 square km (62 miles) in areas further away.
University students, concerned with the fact that there is no official government soil testing around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant, took some samples of their own.
They found plutonium-239 and 240, making up a total of 0.078 becquerels per kilogram. The samples were taken on 21 April 2011. Immediately after they took the samples the Japanese government declared the area an evacuation zone.
Researchers in Japan have discovered that snow on mountains near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are contaminated with cesium.
Meteorology students from Fukushima University took 31 samples of snow. 14 samples showed high levels of cesium. The average level of contamination exceeds the safe limit of 200 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium. One sample, taken at 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) has 3000 becquerels of cesium.
Fukushima University Vice-President Watanabe Akira says the research shows that large amounts of cesium is spewing into the air.
Reports saying Tokyo Electric Power Company now saying it is likely the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi will not be stabilized by the end of the year, as first hoped.
Problems range from TEPCo’s own faulty assessments, to the Typhoon season now hitting Japan.
This means highly radioactive isotopes will continue to be emitted into the air, and pour into the Pacific Ocean.
The heavy rains from a tropical storm that hit Japan, are flooding the damaged reactor buildings with more water.
That is creating the potential for even more contaminated water getting into the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive water continues to pour from the reactors, TEPCo has failed to stop it..
According to NHK, to date only 40% of workers at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, have been given radiation check ups.
Tokyo Electric Power Company didn’t start testing until 11 days after the 11 March disasters.
Japanese standard safe limits for radiation exposure is 100 millisieverts. So far two workers have been exposed to more than 250 millisieverts. Another 30 have been exposed to more than 100 millisieverts.
TEPCo is trying to shift blame by saying workers are not taking their iodide pills properly. But even that is TEPCo’s fault; radiology experts are questioning whether the timing and level of iodide dosage was appropriate.