22 July 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Company says external power, needed to support efforts to control the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant, has been cut.
There was a sudden surge of electricity which tripped a breaker controlling power to reactors 3 and 4. They are now using back up generators, and they are trying to find out why external electric power failed.
For months now, Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has been demanding that Tokyo Electric Power Company improve working conditions for their employees, including contractors. Officials have also been demanding to know why TEPCo is taking so long to get all the employees tested for radiation exposure (at least 1,500 are still awaiting tests). Now it turns out that 198 newly hired employees are missing!
The Japanese government has given TEPCo until 29 July 2011 to get all workers tested for radiation. The government is also demanding an explanation for the disappearance of 198 workers who were hired AFTER the 11 March disasters.
Earlier in the week TEPCo admitted that it could not find 132 employees, but after the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency investigated it turns out that 198 are missing.
Government officials are concerned that TEPCo’s lack of accounting for its employees is just par for the course; from day one of the nuclear disaster TEPCo officials have proven they have a lackadaisical attitude towards managing all aspects of running a nuclear plant. (or maybe they’re what are called ‘ghost workers’, they never existed, they were created on paper to ripoff taxpayers)
Japanese officials now say at least 1,400 contaminated cows made it to consumer markets. More and more rice hay is being found contaminated.
Rain and wind are helping to spread radiation, from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, all over Japan.
The Japanese government is considering a beef buy back program, to help the stricken cattle industry. No one in government ever considered the effects of radiation on cows, and now the Japanese cattle industry is crashing.
It’s now clear that no one in government was concerned about the effects that rain and wind would have, on spreading radiation across Japan.
On 20 July 2011, Japan’s Science Ministry released a radiation map of Japan. It showed that radiation levels 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, are just as high as areas just 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the damaged plant.
This means Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is putting out enough radiation to cover the northern half of the main island Honshu. It explains the extensive contamination to cattle feed and cows, among other things.
The radiation map is based on airborne radiation samples taken from 22-23 June 2011.
21 July 2011, Japan’s Health Ministry has discovered that at least 1,200 cesium contaminated cows actually made it to the consumer market. The national government has ordered a stop to all cattle shipments, and says efforts to protect the people from contaminated food must now focus on cows.
On 20 July 2011, test results showed that rice straw in ten prefectures, used for cattle feed, was found to be contaminated with cesium. This proves the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is spreading radiation all over Japan.
A Japanese university professor is blaming the Japanese government for the contaminated beef, because cattle farmers were never told how to protect their cows, and their feed, from radiation contamination.
Add Niigata and Miyagi Prefectures to the growing list of cattle, and hay farms, hit with high levels of cesium. Local officials now believe at least 578 contaminated cows made it to the consumer markets.
In Fukushima Prefecture, officials now say the level of cesium found on cattle feed is 520 times the national limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram of cesium. At least seven Fukushima farms are known to have contaminated cows.
Now cattle on farms in Niigata Prefecture have been found to be internally contaminated as well. The feed for the cows came from Miyagi Prefecture.
The high amounts of cesium contamination proves that the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is worse than officially stated, and continuing.
The amazing thing is that cattle farmers have not been ordered to stop shipping their cows to market, at this point it is just a request to voluntarily stop shipping their cows. Fukushima officials expect the number of contaminated cows, reaching consumer markets, to go up.
While attention has been focused on the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, there is another nuclear plant in trouble. The Ohi plant in Fukui Prefecture.
Kansai Electric Power Company runs the Ohi plant, and Reactor 1 has been on emergency cooling, and now it has failed.
KEPCo says they were able to shut down the reactor. They are trying to find out why the emergency cooling system failed. The local prefectural government says that even if KEPCo finds out the cause, they will not allow them to re-start the reactor.
Japan has 54 reactors, now they are down to only 18 operating reactors. Japan is heavily dependent upon nuclear generated electricity.
14 July 2011, officials from Fukushima Prefecture discovered that a second farm, in Asakawa Town, shipped off as many as 42 internally contaminated cows.
The discovery was made as local officials expanded their testing of locally grown feed for cows.
On top of the discovery that more contaminated cows, from other farms, were shipped off to market, the latest hay samples revealed increasing cesium contamination. The latest tests show 97,000 becquerels per kilogram of cesium! Previously the highest reading was 75,000. The national safe limit is 500.
The contaminated cows from Asakawa Town, were shipped to Yokohama, Tokyo, Sendai and Chiba. They were shipped between 08 April and 06 July.
“Iodine level in the rain in Idaho in the United States were 130 times that standard… we are very concerned that radioactive cesium was many times above the standard as well.”–Gerry Pollet, Heart of America Northwest
When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors exploded in Japan, U.S. officials ensured the public that they would increase radiation monitoring. I’ve reported in earlier postings that most EPA RadNet sites in the western U.S. are shut down, and that other sites can give only limited results.
Now a group based in Washington, Heart of America Northwest, has done their own investigations into contaminated drinking water in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
In a previous posting I suggested that the people of concerned communities need to get together and have their own testing done, on plants, water and soil, even their own urine. This is what the Japanese have been forced to do, no thanks to the incompetence of their national government. It’s been those grass roots citizen groups in Japan that have been revealing the truth about the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Heart of America Northwest also has some warnings about current nuclear waste programs in the Pacific Northwest, like the dumping of nuke waste in unlined pits.
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is ordering Tokyo Electric Power Company to improve working standards for its contracted workers. There are about 3,000 workers struggling to control the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency recently inspected the working conditions at the damaged nuke plant, after continued concerns over protection for workers against radiation exposure.
They found eight main concerns, that TEPCo still hasn’t addressed. The most pressing issue is that TEPCo is still treating contracted workers with a laissez-faire (hands off) attitude. The result is that TEPCo lacks any information on the health and safety conditions of those workers.
The agency discovered that many contracted workers have never been shown how to use protective clothing, and there aren’t enough protective equipment for all workers, like full face masks. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered TEPCo to provide more protective gear, and assign more of its own safety managers to oversee contracted workers.
This issue was reported months ago, and it’s clear that TEPCo has totally ignored the problem proving that it does not care about the safety of workers.
On top of that, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says TEPCo still hasn’t tested 1,500 workers for radiation exposure, something they were supposed to do months ago.