Tag Archives: radiation

Fukushima, Idaho

East Idaho Gamma Ray detector update: Conflicting readings on 16 June 2012, as high as 26 μR/h! More proof of Fukushima?

On 25 May 2012, I posted how the public display on the Big Lost River IEMP station, in eastern Idaho, was not working.  Now it is, and it’s showing 10 more micro Roentgens per hour than what is being posted on the www.idahoop.org website.

Big Lost River IEMP Gamma display, 16 June 2012

On 16 June 2012, the display was showing between 24 and 27 μR/h!  I watched for ten minutes and it never went lower than 24 μR/h.  I checked the website and discovered that it was reporting gamma levels of 15.2 μR/h.

Why the big difference?

For perspective, 9.8 μR/h is considered “less than typical”.  The ghost city of Pripyat, which was contaminated by Chernobyl in the 1980s, is still showing gamma levels as high as 66 μR/h!

The Big Lost River IEMP is located in an area of eastern Idaho that has been used for nuclear experiments ever since World War 2.  Are these high(?) gamma levels the result of decades of experiments (still ongoing right now), or is it because of the ongoing disaster at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan?

Fukushima

One Year Later: Unexplained extreme radiation levels above Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 2!

14 June 2012, NHK (nippon housou kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reporting that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) has discovered that on the 5th floor of the building housing Reactor 2 there is extreme levels of radiation.

The discovery was made by a robot used in the ongoing search to find where leaks are coming from.  More than one year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster began, TEPCo officials still can not find the origin of the many radiation leaks they believe must exist in the GE designed reactors.

The 5th floor of the building housing Reactor 2 shows no sign of major physical damage, yet is flooded with 880 millisieverts (880,000 microsieverts) per hour of radiation!  It is 4.5 meters (14.7 feet) above the reactor.

To put it in perspective; many countries consider a yearly exposure of 2.7 millisieverts to be normal.   That’s spread out over the entire year, not all at once!  It also depends on the type of radiation, gamma radiation from a reactor that went critical is definitely bad.

TEPCo admits that Reactor 2 has spewed the greatest amount of radiation of all the damaged reactors, so far.

Finding leaks is of primary concern, because they must stop any radiation leaks in order to bring down lethal radiation levels, so that humans can remove the melted fuel rods and begin decommissioning the reactors.

Until TEPCo can find the leaks, and since no one in charge in Japan wants to dump sand, lead and concrete on the reactors, there is no chance of stopping the nuclear disaster reactors.

Fukushima

One Year Later: More proof of government evil; Japanese leaders knew how bad Fukushima Daiichi was from day one!

11 June 2012, NHK (nippon housou kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reporting that a new government report reveals that the federal leaders knew how bad the radiation levels were at the very beginning of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

The government refused to release the report, but NHK claims they got hold of a copy from the Science Ministry!

The Science Ministry sent staff to Namie Town, in Fukushima Prefecture, on 15 March 2011.  They discovered that radiation levels were already at 330 microsieverts per hour (7,920 microsieverts per day, or 7.92 millisieverts per day)!  Namie Town is only 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the nuke plant.

Japanese news media had demanded the government give radiation data immediately following the 11 March disasters.  The government took until 25 April to do so, however, they used data from a useless SPEEDI system.

The SPEEDI system was only designed to give predictions, not actual real time data!

 

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Japan to force re-start of nuclear power plants, for the sake of the economic “survival of society.” New studies suggest that power use in Japan can not be reduced much further, even if utility rates are raised!

“To protect the [economic] livelihoods of the Japanese people, it is my judgment that Reactors 3 and 4 at Ohi nuclear power station should be restarted.”-Yoshihiko Noda, Prime Minister of Japan

Despite that fact that local governments in Japan have the final say on the start up of a nuclear power plant, and they’ve said no, the federal government has decided to do it anyway!

Noda gave this dire warning: “Cheap and stable electricity is vital. If all the reactors that previously provided 30% of Japan’s electricity supply are halted, or kept idle, Japanese society can not survive!”

This comes as some studies on utility usage, and increased prices for power, show that most Japanese families/individuals can not reduce power usage any further, no matter how expensive the electric rates get.   Electricity rates in Japan are already among the most expensive rates in the world!

Fukushima

One Year Later: Japanese government incompetence; still no official nuclear disaster emergency regulations!

8 June 2012, NHK (nippon housou kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reporting that more than one year after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi began, the federal government of Japan still has no new official policy regarding nuclear disasters!

Last year most local governments, and individuals, learned of government evacuation instructions through media, not federal government channels.  Also, it’s now known that some people actually evacuated the wrong way, into radiation plumes, and many of the emergency centers did not perform as expected.

The federal government scrapped their old policies, as they proved totally useless, and were supposed to come up with new ones by now!

About the only thing the federal government of Japan has agreed on is to expand danger zones around nuclear plants from 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to 30 km (18.6 miles).

More than 130 municipal governments are supposed to create their own nuke disaster regulations, but, they’re supposed to be based on the, so far, non-existent federal regulations.

A new federal nuclear regulatory body was supposed to be up and running in April 2012, but it never happened.

Fukushima

One Year Later: GE designed Fukushima Daiichi Reactors still leaking cooling water! No decommissioning until it stops!

8 June 2012, Tokyo Electric (TEPCo) said that employees inspected the basements of Reactors 2 & 3, for the first time since the March 2011 nuclear disaster began!

Now, more than a year later, TEPCo officials say it is clear that the reactor vessels are damaged and still leaking! Really, after all this time?

The basement of Reactor 2 has 5.33 meters (17.3 feet) of contaminated water, and Reactor 3 has 5.43 meters (17.7 feet)!

Rather than dump sand, lead, boric acid and concrete on the thing (as the Soviets did with Chernobyl), the Japanese government, and TEPCo, have decided to shut down the GE designed disaster reactors, as if they were functioning normally!

The problem is that it requires the cooling down of the reactors, and the removal of melted fuel rods.  And that can only be accomplished by stopping any leaks and removing all contaminated water.  Here’s the thing, more than one year later, TEPCo still does not know where the water is leaking from!!!

Fukushima

One Year Later: Incompetence continues at Fukushima Daiichi, cooling pumps fail, again!

6 June 2012, Tokyo Electric revealed that a cooling pump for the spent fuel pool, above Reactor 4, failed on Monday, 4 June.  Japanese media says the pump was burnt.

A back up pump was used the next day, but it failed as well.  TEPCo finally got it working today, however, temps in the spent fuel pool have hit 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit)!

TEPCo says it will take 12 to 24 hours to cool down the spent fuel pool.

International, Technology

Extraterestrial radiation found in 1,900 year old Japanese Cedar tree!

4 June 2012, Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory of Nagoya University has been studying amounts of radioactive carbon contained in rings of a 1,900 years old cedar tree.  The tree is on Yakushima Island.

When they got to the rings which represent the year 775 AD, they discovered 20 times the normal level of radioactive carbon!

Associate Professor Kimiaki Masuda, believes the radiation came from an extraterrestrial event, such as a super nova, or massive solar flare from our own star.   The study was published by Nature.com.

Fukushima

One Year Later: Thermometers failing at Fukushima Daiichi, again!

Late on 1 June 2012, Tokyo Electric Power Company officials announced that more than half the thermometers on Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 2 have failed, or are failing!

TEPCo says 23 of the 41 thermometers are not working.  The thermometers are critical to maintaining safe temps inside the disable GE designed reactor.

Back in February 2012, failing temp gauges on Reactor 2 caused temps to rise above official cold shut down standards.  TEPCo later claimed it was simply a faulty gauge.

By March 2012, TEPCo actually stopped taking readings off several gauges on Reactor 1 as well as Reactor 2.

TEPCo says they will try to install new gauges…in July!!!

 

 

Fukushima

Cesium contamination of soil in Japan, from study published in October 2011

The following quotes are from a cesium-137 soil contamination study reviewed in July, and published in October 2011, just months after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster began.

“The soils around Fukushima NPP [nuclear power plant] and neighboring prefectures have been extensively contaminated with depositions of more than 100,000 and 10,000 MBq km-2…”

“…around 90% of the total deposition of 137Cs occurs with precipitation.”

“…most of the eastern parts of Japan were effected by a total 137Cs deposition of more than 1,000 MBq km-2.”

“Airborne and ground-based survey measurements jointly carried out by MEXT and the US Department of Energy (DOE) (21) show high 137Cs deposition amounts were observed northwestward and up to a distance of 80 km from Fukushima NPP. It was estimated from the first measurement that by April 29, more than 600,000 MBq km-2 had been deposited in the area, which is greater than our estimate of less than 500,000 MBq km-2…”

“Overall, however, the highest potential deposition occurred over the Pacific Ocean…”

The study used soil samples taken by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), U.S. DOE and independent sources. Again, this was during the first few months of the ongoing the nuclear disaster.

The study is titled Cesium-137 deposition and contamination of Japanese soils due to the Fukushima nuclear accident.