It was Sumitomo Osaka Cement Company, the 3rd largest cement manufacturer in Japan after Taiheiyo Cement and Ube-Mitsubishi Cement, who unknowingly bought the radioactive sewage sludge from Koriyama City's treatment center.
From Yomiuri Shinbun (11:06PM JST 5/3/2011):
928 tons? So it is almost double of what was initially reported (500 tons).福島県郡山市の県中浄化センターの汚泥から高濃度の放射性物質が検出された問題で、汚泥がセメント材として栃木県内などに出荷されていたことが３日、わかった。
Regarding the high level of radioactive materials detected in the sewage sludge at a sewage treatment center in Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture, tt was revealed on May 3 that the cement made from the sludge had been shipped to Tochigi Prefecture and other places.
住友大阪セメント（東京）によると、汚泥は栃木県佐野市の栃木工場でセメント原料として再利用されていた。同工場でのセメントの生産・出荷を中止した。
According to Sumitomo Osaka Cement (headquartered in Tokyo), the sewage sludge was recycled as cement material at its plant in Sano City in Tochigi Prefecture. The company has stopped production and shipment of the cement from the plant.福島第一原発事故後に使った汚泥は９２８トンに上り、栃木をはじめ群馬、茨城県などに出荷していた。
928 tons of the sewage sludge [from Koriyama facility?] have been used since the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident, and the cement has been shipped to Tochigi, Gunma, and Ibaraki Prefectures and other locations. [The article doesn't say where.]
汚泥から放射性セシウムが１キロ・グラムあたり２万６４００ベクレル検出されている。
Radioactive cesium of 26,400 becquerels per 1 kilogram has been detected from the sewage sludge.
Additional info from the cement company's press release on May 2:
The company received sewage sludge from the treatment center in Koriyama since the Fukushima accident from March 12 to April 30. [So, total of 50 days.]
The total amount of the sewage sludge received: 928 tons. [18.56 tons per day, NOT 10 TONS per day as initially reported.]
Understate everything by half. At this point, nothing surprises anyone, does it?
There are 22 other treatment centers in Fukushima that sell sewage sludge. No news on them yet.
30-Day free trial by following the link.
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4 comments:
Robbie001 sez:
How much do you want to bet the two largest cement manufactures bought all the other 22 sewage plants output? You can be sure stuff like this will keep happening. Littoral drift is going to spread the near shore contaminated ocean sediment for miles up the beach.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longshore_drift
Building with radioactive materials isn't a new concept either.
Radioactive Homes
At Elliot Lake, about a ton of ore is required to extract two pounds of uranium. Huge quantities of pulverized rock (called uranium tailings) are left over from the milling process. The tailings contain 85 per cent of the original radioactivity in the ore: they contain thorium-230, radium-226, and all the other uranium by-products. The tailings also give off at least 10,000 times as much radon gas as the undisturbed ore. (When radon gas is produced inside hard rock, it has little chance to escape; but when the rock is pulverized, radon escapes easily.)
In the Southwest U.S. and in Port Hope, Ontario, many homes and schools were built using the sand-like uranium tailings as construction material. As a result, some of the buildings ended up with levels of radon gas and radon daughters even higher than those permitted in the mines. Similar (though less severe) problems arose in Florida and Newfoundland when phosphate tailings were used for construction, and in Oka and Varennes (just outside of Montreal) when other mine tailings were used in construction. In each case, the original ore was rich in uranium, so the tailings gave off high amounts of radon.
In 1975, St. Mary's School in Port Hope was evacuated because of extraordinarily high radon levels. Radioactive fill had to be removed, at public expense, from hundreds of homes and gardens. Even today, there are over 200,000 tons of radioactive debris lying about the town of Port Hope in open ravines, easily accessible to children and to pets. Eldorado Nuclear Limited, the crown corporation whose radioactive wastes had been generously donated to the eager townsfolk for construction purposes many years earlier, has recently promised -- under the prodding of the Ontario Environment Department -- to finish cleaning up the mess sometime during the next few years.
http://www.ccnr.org/uranium_deadliest.html#home
Robbie001 sez:
"600,000 workers were exposed to radioactive materials in 14 nuclear weapons plants since the beginning of the Manhattan Project. Their radiation exposure was within the official "safety limits." However, increased rates of leukemia, cancers, vision difficulties, chronic fatigue syndrome and other health problems have been observed. The identified 22 types of cancers include cancer of the lung, prostate, bladder, kidney, and Hodgkin's lymphoma. Some scientists believe that radiation damages the human immune system, leaving people vulnerable to a wide range of other diseases.
Until 1999, the U.S. government disputed reports that low-level ionizing radiation is harmful. DOE and DOD waged media campaigns against "fear mongers" and spent tens of millions of dollars on lawyers. Then, after decades of denials, the government finally conceded that the radiation exposure to workers at nuclear weapons plants caused a wide range of cancers. President Clinton apologized to the "heroes of the nuclear age." But by then, many have died. The US Congress agreed to pay out $150.000 to each of the sick survivors, but denied them unlimited healthcare. Although private companies ran many of these plants for profit, the U.S. taxpayers will pick up the tab.
Source: The New York Times, January 29, 2000
(Comments: There is no plan to change the old safety limits - paying out compensation is much more cost-effective than lowering the limits throughout the whole nuclear complex. However, being a homeowner is still riskier - the radiation exposure of an average worker over several years of employment is lower than the cumulative radiation received by an average American from radon at home.)"
http://www.radonseal.com/radon-facts.htm
Many of the Canadian uranium mine tailings were dumped into ravines around the mines by sluices, with the mass of powdered rock held in place by a wooden dam.
I've walked on these tailings, a yellow grit that nothing grows on. It is bad stuff.
That said, the activity of the Fukushima sludge material thus far reported is vastly less, maybe 0.1% of those tailings.
The problem is that this is just an instance where the problem was noted. Most of the time, that does not happen. The lack of transparent and trustworthy information puts everyone at risk, as this incident illustrates. Hopefully the Japanese government will come to appreciate this.
Robbie001 sez:
The concern over the contamination of this sludge and slag should throw a light on the lack of concern over the past effects of tailings. According to the guy over at falloutphilippines the slag was pretty hot.
"334,000 Becquerel/kg throws off 45 microSieverts per hour at a 10cm distance, and that's just the gamma component of the calculation. From just 1 kg of this material, Beta exposure at a 1cm distance is a whopping 67 milliSieverts/hr."
According to his 'About Me' he is a licensed medical dosimetrist from the U.S I mean he could just be some guy or wrong but I doubt it.
http://falloutphilippines.blogspot.com/2011/05/high-levels-of-cesium-found-in-sludge.html
Here is another document covering things the industry would rather forget. Hey, "who could have known" (or wanted to know).
"The rather casual attitude toward exposure to radioactivity in the past has led to
discovery of abandoned tailings piles in downtown Salt Lake City (134) and in Denver
(which also still has some 20 sites contaminated by the radium watch-dial industry).(136)
An even worse problem is that the tailings were used as landfill under building sites. The
city of Grand Junction, Colorado, has hundreds of buildings in which permissible
exposure limits have been exceeded many times. In Soda Springs, Idaho, the population
gets an estimated dose of 2.00 Sv/yr from exposure to gamma radiation due to
tailings.(137) Many other towns in Colorado, Idaho, and near Salt Lake City, Utah, have
similar (but mostly smaller) problems.
Some Navajo Indians in Arizona were exposed to high levels of radiation as a result of
use of rock left over from uranium mining for building homes.(20,138) Background
exposure is 1.1—1.2 mGy/h in the Navajo reservation and inside exposures ranged from
0.99 to 2.95 mGy/h.(20)"
www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/energy/Companion/E20.8.pdf.xpdf
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