Officials of Fukushima Prefecture (where the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant is) will now carry out their own radiation readings at 2,700 locations.
Residents demanded more information, and more accurate information, than what Tokyo Electric Power Company has provided. The Japanese central government has criticized TEPCo for faulty reports, several times now.
The radiation testing will include soil samples. The testing will be done this week, the results will be publicly announced.
Japan’s public TV station, NHK, produced a special report, to try and explain how bad the Fukushima Daiichi crisis is. Basically it is worse than Chernobyl, and must require international efforts to control. One analyst said the situation is “unprecedented” for nuclear power plants (in other words it is worse than Chernobyl).
The report compared the Three Mile Island accident, in the U.S., the Chernobyl disaster, in Soviet Ukraine, to what has happened at Fukushima Daiichi so far.
‘So far’ is one of the determining factors. NHK pointed out that there is no end in sight to the spewing of highly radioactive isotopes. No true control can be gained over the Japanese nuke plant until Cold Shut Down happens. Because of conditions at the plant, they can’t do that.
French nuke experts suspect that fuel rods in at least three reactors may be slowly melting down (Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, involved one reactor each, as I pointed out in earlier postings). Cooling efforts have not been enough to bring the temperatures down, they are still dangerously high after one month. Recently surface temperatures of one reactor shot up.
Workers are flying blind. The tsunami damaged so much equipment, and they can not get power to the control rooms, which means they don’t really know what is going on inside the reactors. In order to get power back to the control rooms they must clear large radioactive debris, some caused by the tsunami, others caused by the hydrogen gas explosions. Even then, radiation levels are so high that workers can not operate for more than 15 minutes in some cases. Remember, this is just to get to a stage where they can try to initiate Cold Shut Down.
Three Mile Island achieved Cold Shut Down less than one month from the time the cooling accident was discovered. It has been one month for Fukushima Daiichi, and it is still out of control.
Three Mile Island did not emit cesium contamination. Chernobyl is still off limits because it spewed cesium. Fukushima Daiichi is spewing cesium, from three reactors. Even plutonium has been found. Also, analyst interviewed on NHK said many other radioactive isotopes are being spewed, and are not being reported to the public. The level, and types, of radiation being emitted from Fukushima Daiichi make it worse than Chernobyl.
Analyst say they must assume that melt down is occurring. This could be the only explanation for the level, and types, of radiation being emitted. Also, analysts are worried that the highly contaminated water, that is spilling out of Reactor 2, might be from a breached reactor core. Three Mile Island avoided a full melt down, mainly because the cooling accident did not physically damage the building. Chernobyl’s reactor blew up, and full melt down occurred (it literally began melting into the ground) forcing the Soviets to make the final decision to entomb the reactor with concrete, sand, lead and boric acid. It must still be monitored today.
Fukshima Daiichi suffered major damage to the buildings, from the tsunami, then from several hydrogen gas explosions.
Cleaning up Three Mile Island’s Reactor 2, a relatively mild accident compared to Chernobyl, ended up costing $1 billion. Much more than what it cost to build the pant. It also took 14 years to ‘clean up’. Imagine how much the clean up for Fukushima Daiichi will cost. The longer this goes on the more it will cost, and the longer the clean up will take.
Japan probably won’t be able to handle the cost, that might be why organizations that influence international economies (like the G7 and G20, IMF, etc) have said they will work to help Japan. Not being prepared always costs you more money when the disaster happens.
Bill Nye the Science Guy recently said why don’t they “…pave it over?” It’s now clear the Japanese truly believed something like this would never happen. One analyst pointed out that most of the actions of Tokyo Electric Power Company are reactionary, not proactive, to the crisis.
They are now building a thick steel fence in the Pacific Ocean to try and reduce the amount of radioactive water getting into the currents. Several of the worlds largest concrete spray trucks, from Germany, modified in the U.S., are on their way to Japan on Russian transport aircraft. They are the same type of truck that the Soviets used on Chernobyl. Shipments of boric acid have been sent from the U.S. and South Korea. There were some reports, in the Japanese media, that large amounts of concrete are being stockpiled. It sounds like they are getting ready to “pave it over”.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan has told quake-hit Miyagi Prefecture that 70,000 temporary houses will be built ASAP.
The Prime Minister met with Miyagi officials on 10 April 2011. They expressed their concerns for how they were going to rebuild after the 11 March disasters. Kan said he’s putting together a panel to address that, and that the temporary housing was just the beginning.
The Pakistan government announced that they are picking up trace amounts of iodine-131, form Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Iran, a neighbor of Pakistan, says it has started to inspect aircraft coming from Japan, for radiation contamination.
Sharp has announced that production of their Liquid Crystal Display TVs will be halted, due to parts shortages in Japan, due to the ongoing disasters.
Sharp is not too worried as they say they still have a one months supply of parts on hand.
The recent huge aftershock, in Japan, has resulted in one thousand ATMs being shut down.
Japan Post Bank blames it on the power outage caused by a big aftershock on April 7. The power outage caused a computer glitch that shut down the Automated Teller Machines.
On 09 April 2011, fish samples off Japan were found still contaminated with cesium.
On 07 April 2011, one in four fish samples had levels of contamination above set limits.
The fish tested were lance fish, and two kinds of flat fish.
People of Japan have been driving into the 20km evacuation zone, violating their government’s orders. It’s all because so many people being affected feel they are not being told what is really going on with their homes and animals they left behind. I have links to 2 videos people should watch.
In a 12 minute video journalists enter the area, find packs of dogs, and surprisingly, people driving around.
At the 17km point their Geiger counter alarm goes off. They then pass armored semi-trucks with the drivers wearing gas masks. At 15km the radiation levels go up. They are then stopped by massive quake damage to the road. Driving down another road they come across cattle eating radioactive grass. More earthquake damaged road. We’re only four minutes into the video. Driving through seemingly abandoned cities with quake damaged buildings. Another car with people wearing surgical masks. Tsunami damage. Geiger counters still sounding the alarm. Seven and a half minutes into the video Fukushima DaiNi nuclear plant. Someone’s vegetable garden. At 2.5km radiation spike. A lone dog, they feed it. At 1.8km radiation increases. Cattle loose in the town. 11 and a half minutes in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. 112 micro sieverts per hour on their counter, 1.5km from plant. This means radiation sickness will show up after 92 days, if you stay. Could be cesium.
There is a 10 minute video where they go right up to the Fukushima Daiichi gates.
They actually walk around the destruction taking Geiger counter readings. They pass road repair crews wearing full contamination suits, how’d you like to patch pot holes dressed like that. Just like the other guys, the Geiger counter goes up the closer they get to the nuke plant. At 1.5km from Fukushima Daiichi their counter goes into the yellow zone. At the gate they are waved off by people in full nuke suits. They drive around the perimeter of the nuke plant, their Geiger counter staying in the yellow zone. At one point it goes over 100 micro sieverts per hour. This video ends with a trip to Chernobyl, in Ukraine, in which they demonstrate that even 25 years later everything there is still radioactive, and, that people are still dealing with genetic mutations in their children (it begins with the scenes of snow and old Soviet tanks).
And the Japanese government wants the media to stop “sensationalizing”? Video’s speak louder than words, Baka!
The trucks are made by a German company, Putzmeister, for building skyscrapers. The Soviets also used eleven of them to help dump concrete on the failed Chernobyl nuclear plant about 25 years ago.
The 26 wheeled trucks can be operated by remote control. You know the situation at Fukushima Daiichi is bad when so many other countries get directly involved to help control the crisis.
Thanks to the nuclear crisis, rice planting has been banned in Japan.
The problem is that the areas directly affected by the 11 March 2011 quake, actually sunk. Add to that the tsunami destroyed the sea walls. Now high tides have been flooding the land with ocean water contaminated with cesium-137 (as I warned in an earlier posting). There is also airborne cesium being detected, falling onto the ground.
The Japanese government will now test farm soils for cesium contamination. Any farm found to have cesium will be banned from planting. Cesium contamination is why Chernobyl city is still uninhabitable almost 30 years after that nuclear accident in Soviet Ukraine.
Rice planting normally begins by May. Rice is important to Japan: 8.5 million tons of rice were produced in 2010, and almost all of it stayed in Japan. The current situation will now make Japan dependent on foreign sources of rice.
Cesium is still found in soil in Germany, Austria and France 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Chernobyl is 1,160 kilometers (720 miles) from Germany.