armed with 4 different radiation survey meters. One of the reasons he went to Fukushima was apparently to test the survey meters and compare the readings. The entire walk took 7 hours yesterday, says Hayakawa in his tweet, nothing compared to mountain climbing. (He's a volcanologist.)
4.164 microsieverts/hour on the "black dust" - roadside sediment of soil and organic materials. (It is not just in Minami Soma City, where the highest radioactive cesium density in the "black dust" so far is 3.43 million becquerels/kg.)
Over 10 microsieverts/hour (all his survey meters went overscale) at the rain gutter.
2.3 microsieverts/hour on the lawn in front of the City Hall, 1.5 microsievert/hour 1 meter off the lawn.
For detailed locations and measurements, see his blog post (in Japanese).
That's the feeling I get from the two recent events I'm following. It is the feeling of "Let's just forget about it, there's nothing we can do anyway", which has served the country, for good or bad, for centuries.
First, there was a face-to-face interview (1/10/2012 Japan Time) by independent journalist Yasumi Iwakami of the Minami Soma City woman who's been documenting her health problems since the summer of 2011. Emiko Numauchi, aka "Numayu", happened to be a cheerful, forward-looking ex-high school teacher who said she intended to live until the age of 120 and that she was comfortable with "causes unknown" for her health problems. The video of the interview is not yet on the archive at Iwakami's website, but there are many tweets of people who viewed in Japan in real time.
This "Togetter" captures not just her remarks but the comments by Shinzo Kimura, radiation specialist who has appeared in many NHK documentaries on radiation contamination in the aftermath of the Fukushima I Nuclear Plant accident. On Ms. Numauchi's health problems, Kimura says, "stress, stress, stress, and stress":
It is an immune disease caused by stress. Teeth, nails, hair falling off, that's auto-immune disease. So is skin inflammation. Time-lag [?]. It is not caused by radiation, but she is still a victim of the nuclear accident. There's individual difference. There may be some effect of radiation exposure.
Difference in radiation levels. I passed through Minami Soma City back in March. High levels of radiation. If you lived in that area it is possible that the radiation exposure has something to do with [the health problems]. Depending on where you live, if the radiation level is low, it is possible that the problems are caused by stress.
We cannot explain the mechanism of auto-immune diseases. For example, Mr. Iwakami can tolerate a lot of stress. You cannot tell from a person with high tolerance for stress. There's individual difference. A rabbit may die of loneliness. It's possible for humans. To say stress [is causing these health problems] is appropriate.
It is an auto-immune disease. Stress can cause kidney diseases. It is highly possible. If you don't think it is stress, then collect data and determine. Internal radiation exposure [is assessed] by counseling [??]
I won't know the exact details of what Kimura said in the program until I view the video yet to be uploaded. But from other tweets the above seems to summarize what he did say.
Does he make sense? If you live in areas with low radiation levels and you have health problems starting to happen after March 11, 2011, then these problems are caused by stress. If you live in areas with high radiation levels, it is probably still stress causing these problems.
Never mind that Ms. Numauchi kept saying she was far more stress-free after she quit her job as a public high school teacher.
There are so many tweets that outright bash Ms. Numauchi for speaking out. They say she is a disgrace to Minami Soma City, that she only thinks of herself (huh?), that she's a liar.
The second event that I think people in Japan may be resigning to whatever fate they think they will get is the efforts to hold anti-nuke plant referendums in Osaka and Tokyo. Citizens' groups in Osaka collected 50,000 signatures in no time, exceeding the required number of signatures to hold a referendum in Osaka Prefecture. In contrast, only one-third of the required number of signatures have been collected so far in Tokyo.
The latest meme from some of the anti-nuke plant people on the Twitter is this: "If we do hold a referendum on whether to stop all nuke plants and we lose, then the pro-nuke people will be all the more powerful and we won't be able to do anything to stop them. So, let's not do the referendum."
So it is all or nothing. If the anti-nuke plant referendum is defeated, that will be the end of their movement. That's just so Japanese. I personally think there are more pressing issues like radiation contamination being spread by the government, but why not scare the political class and show them that the citizens are not there just to collect taxes from? And if you lose once, so what? Why should it be the end of everything?
But surveying the tweets, message boards, blogs, and comments on the blogs, it does look like it's back in March/April 2011 again. The memes are "It's all due to stress, isn't it?", "We need nuclear power plants after all", and "If we lose the anti-nuke plant referendum, that's worse than doing nothing, so let's do nothing". "Nothing we can do now, the accident happened already." Ah the Noda administration has nothing to fear.
One of my teachers at my college was a French professor specializing in linguistics and in teaching Japanese to foreigners. He said the Japanese language pronunciation is one of the least "viscous" of all languages; as soon as the sound leaves one's lips, it falls off to the ground. It does not have a staying power. In contrast, the French language is very "viscous". The sound projects further forward. He was talking in terms of how to identify and learn the characteristics of a language so that one could learn faster.
But I think this nature of the Japanese language does shape how the Japanese people respond to events like a nuclear accident. No staying power. It is rather amazing that it lasted 10 months.
(UPDATE: The person who tweeted the tweet below says the Katena base has one WC135C, and a WC135W flew in on January 7. He speculates they may be deployed to monitor the Chinese nuclear testing later this month.)
The WC135 Constant Phoenix is "is a special purpose aircraft derived from the Boeing C-135 and used by the United States Air Force. Its mission is to collect samples from the atmosphere for the purpose of detecting and identifying nuclear explosions." (Wiki)
There's a chatter on Twitter in Japan that one of the WC135W Constant Phoenix flew in on January 7, 2012 and landed on the Kadena US Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture.
So, I would take the tweet above to mean that the Constant Phoenixcame back to the base from a mission to collect atmospheric samples for radiation somewhere. It could be Fukushima, where a spike in radioactive cesium fallout was measured on January 2, it could be North Korea which looks precarious under the new "dear leader", or could be Pakistan, or further afield.
The WC135 Constant Phoenix is "is a special purpose aircraft derived from the Boeing C-135 and used by the United States Air Force. Its mission is to collect samples from the atmosphere for the purpose of detecting and identifying nuclear explosions. It is also informally referred to as the "weather bird" or "the sniffer" by workers on the program."
The WC-135W (tail number 61-2667) is a modified C-135B. The WC-135C (tail number 62-3582) is an extensively modified former EC-135CLooking Glass aircraft. The Constant Phoenix’s modifications are primarily related to the aircraft's on-board atmospheric collection suite, which allows the mission crew to detect radioactive debris "clouds" in real time. The aircraft is equipped with external flow-through devices to collect particulates on filter paper and a compressor system for whole air samples collected in high-pressure holding spheres.
The interior seats 33 people, including the cockpit crew, maintenance personnel, and special equipment operators from the Air Force Technical Applications Center. On operational sorties, the crew is minimized to just pilots, navigator, and special equipment operators, to reduce radiation exposure to mission-essential personnel only.
The Constant Phoenix WC-135 aircraft serves as an aerial collection platform for the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) at Patrick AFB, Florida, supporting the detection and identification of debris from nuclear weapons detonations. Two Constant Phoenix aircraft, a WC-135W (AF Serial Number 61-2667) and a WC-135C (AF Serial Number 62-3582) are currently assigned to the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron, 55th Wing at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. This mission was previously conducted by a WC-135W, AF Serial Number 61-2665, which was retired in September 1996. Previously, as many as ten WC-135B weather reconnaissance airplanes flew in support of weather analysis, nuclear detection, and other scientific research.
Inside the train car, the radiation starts to go up once the train enters Fukushima Prefecture from Sendai City in Miyagi Prefecture. The survey meter is at 0.1 microsievert/hour when the video starts, and goes up to about 0.5 microsievert/hour in about 5 minutes right before the train goes in the tunnel.
The person who posted this video on Youtube writes the highest was 0.9 microsievert/hour which is not shown in the video.
Remember JR East's "Must Go Now Or Never" campaign to bring young tourists to Fukushima? Did they say anything about radiation on board Shinkansen?
But don't worry, the nuke accident is "winding down" successfully, according to the Japanese government under the new administration and TEPCO.
First, Reactor 1 coverup (TEPCO handout for the press, 10/14/2011). What was the cover for again? TEPCO has been claiming the air coming out of the wrecked reactor is far below what's allowed for radiation control area in a nuclear power plant. (Oh I forgot. It was to avoid Google Earth.)
2 packbots entered the reactor building of Reactor 1 to measure the radiation on October 13. The location where 4 sieverts/hr steam was observed in June still has very high radiation - maximum 4.7 sieverts/hr - but no more steam, says TEPCO.
(OK, where is the corium? Has it escaped the water-filled basement?).
The apartment building is located in the same Kohoku-ku in Yokohama City where 63,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was found also from the rooftop of another apartment building, and 42,000 becquerels/kg was found from the dirt around the side drain on the road.
It looks like this person had the dirt on the rooftop tested on his own, and posted the test result sheet on his blog.
Meanwhile, this is how the Yokohama City workers (or the contract workers) "cleaned" the highly contaminated (42,000 becquerels/kg cesium) dirt from the side of the road. No protection, no masks, no rubber boots.
Yokohama City Assembly recently voted down the citizens' petition asking the city not to accept radiation-contaminated disaster debris from Tohoku by the majority vote by the DPJ and LDP and Komei Party.
The city temporarily halted the dumping of radioactive sludge ashes into the ocean as the citizens' protests were fast and furious once they knew about the scheme, but the mayor in the press conference took pains to emphasize that only thing that had gone amiss was that the city officials under her clearly didn't "explain" well enough to the Yokohama residents living in the area around the final dumping site in Minami Honmoku Pier in advance. "We should have explained better to soothe the fear and anxiety of the residents", she said.
Something seems to me to be really out of whack in Yokohama City. I've heard Mayor Hayashi speak in the press conference. She speaks well, very dry, businesslike. Maybe that's all she does well - to speak well. Understanding what the issues are or what's at stake is for someone else to do for her.
Germany's Bayerische Staatsoper was scheduled to come to Japan to perform some Wagnerian operas, but 100 members including top singers and orchestra members, or one-quarter of the entire members at the theater who were scheduled to come, have refused to come to Japan for the fear of radiation contamination.
Call it "baseless rumor" all they want, but the opera lovers in Japan should be very disappointed.
It was revealed on September 15 that 100 members of Bayerische Staatsoper refused to come to Japan for the fear of radiation contamination from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident. Bayerische Staatsoper, based in Munich, Germany, is scheduled to perform starting late September. 400 members were scheduled to come to Japan.
It's not clear how many people are not coming in orchestra, chorus, and theater technology. The Japanese organization who invited the opera has announced that several leading singers have canceled the trip. Those who will not come to Japan will take 4-week unpaid vacation.
The leading tenor in "Lohengrin", Jonas Kaufmann, canceled the trip due to a surgery scheduled in early September. He is one of the most sought-after tenors in the world.
Checking the major sponsor's site (Canon), the performances will be in Tokyo, and Kanagawa (Yokohama City).
Well, even if Yokohama loses the Staatsoper, the triathlon world championship is still good to go over the weekend in Yokohama City. The swimming portion is in Tokyo Bay of course. Mayor Hayashi said in the press conference the other day that the world-class triathletes are coming to Yokohama.
Now it's METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry)'s turn to announce its radiation survey of air radiation (at 1 meter and 1 centimeter) of Fukushima evacuation zones, showing the highest air radiation of 139 microsieverts/hour at 1 meter off the ground (in a location in Okuma-machi, 1.5 kilometer southwest of the plant), and 368 microsieverts/hour at 1 centimeter (in a location in Futaba-machi, 4 kilometers west of the plant).
The radiation level at the location in Okuma-machi with 138 microsieverts/hour radiation at 1 meter off the ground is 201 microsieverts/hour at 1 centimeter.
The radiation level at the location in Futaba-machi with 368 microsieverts/hr radiation at 1 centimeter off the ground is only 63.8 microsieverts/hour at 1 meter.
The Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries have already announced their own surveys of soil contamination levels in Fukushima Prefecture, just as the national government is allowing the temporary return of residents whose homes are within the 3-kilometer radius from the plant.
Now, is somebody going to combine all three and create a map that shows air radiation and soil contamination of each location? (Just saying.)
METI's survey was done in July in the no-entry evacuation zone within the 20-kilometer radius and the planned evacuation zone outside the 20-kilometer radius.
The robot "Packbot" went to the opening to the "train room" and the survey meter went overscale. The actual radiation level at the opening could be a lot higher, and I hate to think how high it is INSIDE the room. The radiation could have fried the bot.
Notice how rapidly the radiation level rose, from 18 to 300 to 2000 to over 5000, as the robot went inside the air conditioning room to the entrance of the "train room"
TEPCO's press handout on August 3 (in Japanese; English version is not yet out):
TEPCO also has the video of the operation, here (it's a zip file).
Now that the Ministry of Agriculture has set the provisional safety standard for compost at 400 becquerels/kg, this is the first manure to exceed that limit. It was made in Ibaraki Prefecture, and was being sold in Kyoto.
Low-level contamination spreads to the western half of Japan. Already, radioactive leaf compost have been found in Tottori Prefecture (Chugoku region) and Kagawa Prefecture (Shikoku region).
The Kyoto prefectural government announced on August 2 that 4,990 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected from the manure labeled "made in Ibaraki Prefecture"; the level of radiation is more than 10 times the provisional safety limit of 400 becquerels/kg. The manure was sold at "Royal Home Center Mozume Branch" in Muko City in Kyoto. It is the first time radioactive cesium has been detected from the manure made in Ibaraki. According to the Kyoto prefectural government, the manure is sold by a dealer in Tokyo and labeled "Horse Manure" (5 liters), made from horse manure and rice hay. The prefectural government instructed the store to remove the manure from the store premise and to recall the product voluntarily. There's no information as to how many bags of this manure have already been sold.
Also, the prefectural government announced that 26,600 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected from the leaf compost made in Tochigi Prefecture and sold at "Cainz Home Kizugawa Branch" in Kizugawa City, Kyoto. Radioactive cesium has been detected in the Tochigi-made leaf compost in home/garden centers in Akita and Tottori Prefectures, but Kyoto's number is the largest so far.
The dealer who manufactured and sold the radioactive horse manure is Sowa Recycle Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo. (The name of the dealer was in the press release by the Kyoto government.) On the company's website there is no mention of the manure found radioactive in Kyoto.
One bright spot in this case of radioactive compost and manure that came to light in late July: It all started with a citizen in Saitama Prefecture who went in to the garden center nearby in June to measure the radiation on the surface of a bag of leaf compost. Power of an individual.
She (I think it is she) had heard rumors that the radiation was high near the pile of leaf compost bags in the center, so she went there with a personal survey meter and a camera, and uploaded the video on Youtube. That was in late June. Then, more citizens went to garden centers in other prefectures to measure the radiation, and alerted the municipal governments. And the governments had to act.
TEPCO announced on August 2 that the radiation level in the air conditioning room on the 2nd floor of the reactor building of Reactor 1 was over 5 sieverts/hr (or 5,000 millisieverts/hr). It is the highest indoor radiation ever recorded at the plant, higher than 4 sieverts/hr recorded also in the Reactor 1 reactor building on June 3. TEPCO closed off the room.
The vent duct that releases pressure inside the Containment vessel and the emergency gas processing pipe meet inside the room, which is upstream from the main exhaust stack where over 10 sieverts/hr radiation was measured on August 1. According to TEPCO, it is possible that the high concentration of radioactive materials got stuck inside the pipes when the venting was done on the next day after the March 11 earthquake.
According to Yomiuri, 10 sieverts/hr radiation would be emitted from 2 grams of radioactive cesium.
According to Kyodo News Japanese, the room is called the "train room" by TEPCO.
I sure hope the room is located nowhere near where workers have to pass by, on their way to the upper floors to install the heat exchanger for the Spent Fuel Pool.
(If there is any fuel left in the pool to cool, that is.)
They may not have known the exact number (well, for that matter, no one knows because the survey meter went overscale at 10 sieverts/hr), but they've been running past the area when they have to enter Reactor 1 building to install the external heat exchanger to the Spent Fuel Pool, according to the tweets by a worker currently at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.
So much for TEPCO's word that "there is no work planned near the area, and there will be no effect on the progress of the work at the plant", which is technically correct, at least the first half.
There may not be any work planned in the area there, BECAUSE RADIATION IS TOO HIGH. There may be no work planned there, but the workers have to go near it to enter the Reactor 1 building. The radiation is so high that the workers, with all their full protection gear and equipment and construction materials they carry, have been running past the area in order to minimize radiation exposure.
So it's been known.
More information from his tweets:
(Someone asked if it's true that TEPCO does not have the survey meter that can measure more than 10 sievert/hr radiation.) I think that's correct. We do have the instrument to measure the radiation of the nuclear fuel rods, but I wonder what happened to that. Broke?
(Referring to the area where over 10 sievert/hr radiation has been detected,) the radiation level around the exhaust stacks has been too high to even go near, ever since the accident started. Not just the area around the stack for Reactors 1 and 2, but also the stack for Reactors 3 and 4.
Debris are removed by shielded heavy equipment or remote-controlled equipment. That (10+ sievert/hr) spot was found during such operation.
We have to run when we go by the stack to enter Reactor 1. That's hard work. My legs hurt already from climbing up and down the stairs in the reactor building. Now I appreciate elevators!
All the elevators inside the reactor buildings at Fukushima I Nuke Plant are broken.
As to the worker who measured the radiation with the survey meter attached to a stick, Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University says he must have spent only 1 or 2 seconds near the stack to get 4 millisieverts radiation.
Let's see. 2.78 millisieverts for one second, if the radiation was 10 sieverts/hr.
Koide thinks the radiation level is impossibly high to be coming from inside the duct or stack. He suspects there is a piece or two of the spent fuel blown out of the Spent Fuel Pool when Reactor 1 and Reactor 3 had hydrogen explosions.
He also says the protection suits that workers wear do nothing to protect them from gamma rays, unless they wear lead vests, but even then only marginally.
(For more of his comment, there's a transcript of the radio program that he appeared in, in Japanese.)
The survey meter went overscale, so no one knows how high the actual radiation really is.
TEPCO hasn't updated the "survey map (contamination map)" of the plant for about a month, and I've been wondering why. (They have a new one out now, but it doesn't mention the exhaust duct at all.)
If you are exposed to 10 sieverts radiation in a short time, you will be dead.
Photo is from Kyodo News Japanese, with the original photo by the Ministry of Defense. The exhaust duct is where the black arrow is pointing.
Not clear from the Jiji article below, but the Kyodo article does say the meter went overscale and the accurate measurement is not available.
TEPCO announced on August 1 that the highest radiation of over 10 sieverts/hour (or 10,000 millisieverts/hour) was detected on the surface of the exhaust duct between Reactor 1 and Reactor 2 at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. The workers who measured the radiation were exposed to maximum 4 millisieverts of radiation.
Prior to this reading, the highest radiation measured was 4,000 millisievert/hour [or 4 sieverts/hour] measured inside the reactor building of Reactor 1 in June. If one is exposed to 10 sieverts/hour radiation for 6 minutes without any protection, he would get 1,000 millisieverts [or 1 sievert] radiation, the level which causes nausea and rapid decrease of lymphocytes.
TEPCO will prohibit access to the area within a few meters radius of the duct, and plans to shield the radiation by installing steel panels around the area. However, according to TEPCO, there is no work planned near the area, and there will be no effect on the progress of the work at the plant.
According to TEPCO, the pipe for the emergency gas process system is connected to the exhaust duct, and it was at the joint that the high radiation was measured. On March 12 right after the earthquake/tsunami, they did the venting in Reactor 1, in which the pressure release valve on the Containment Vessel was opened to let the air inside the CV out. TEPCO thinks the radioactive materials in that air somehow got attached inside the duct, causing the high radiation.
Wait a minute. How could the work at the plant not be affected? TEPCO is going to put the gigantic cover over Reactor 1, and this exhaust pipe is right in the way.
Radiation? Who knows. One irony of the radioactive fallout from Fukushima I Nuke Plant is that people in Japan have started to pay much more attention to nature around them. So they may be noticing things that was on-going even before the accident. Or they may not.
These are the pictures taken on the sidewalk on Hakusan Dori in Bunkyo-ku in Tokyo, and uploaded on July 30. The air radiation in Bunkyo-ku has been higher than the official Tokyo number (measured in Shinjuku-ku, western central Tokyo), along with several other eastern "ku" (special wards of Tokyo).
The person who took the pictures says, "About 30% of azaleas on the side walk are completely dead. Ginkgo leaves are browning."
and radiation is leaking, the analyst says. He also mentions the high-speed train accident, and says there are 259 people dead so far.
It was reported by Mamoru Sato on his blog on July 30. I have no idea who he really is, but the bio on his blog says he was a fighter pilot in the Self Defense Air Force of Japan, and was then a high-ranking officer and the commander of the several major air force bases in Japan until he retired from the service in 1997. Checking the biography in Wiki, it looks like he is indeed what he says he is.
According to the information I just obtained, a nuclear submarine of the Chinese Navy had an accident in the port of Dalian on July 29, and there is a leak of radiation. The area is strictly closed off by the Chinese military, and the situation is said to be very dangerous.
I doubt that the Chinese government will announce the accident. The neighboring countries should take defensive measures, and the Japanese fishing boats in the area should be careful.
One more thing. According to a "foreign" insurance company, China's high-speed train accident has 259 people dead, 183 injured, and 154 still missing. The numbers are set to increase, according to this insurance company.
The families of the victims continue to protest, and I've wondering about "missing" people. Now I begin to see why the Chinese government hastily doubled the compensation for the victims.
この国の「事故隠し」は我が国のそれどころではないといえる。
China's "hiding the accident" is well beyond that of Japan.
Anyway, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japanese media should try to obtain more information about China's "nuclear leak accident". It is inevitable that a Chinese-made nuclear power plant will have an accident, and I'm concerned about the next year's "yellow sand" season. Just to let you know the news quickly.
I don't know if China's "hiding" is any worse than that of Japan, but if I see any confirming information I'll update.
After the Fukushima I nuclear accident, it dawned on many Japanese (probably for the first time) that almost entire Japan is DOWNWIND from China, who plans to have 100 nuclear power plants. And thanks to the Fukushima accident, many Japanese now know it's not the distance that matters when it comes to a nuclear power plant accident, but wind and weather.
(Part 1, Part 2; there are also the video in 2 parts with English subtitle, French text translation, and the video in 2 parts with German subtitle. Go to this post for the links.)
Testimony by Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama of Tokyo University continues. He goes back to Minami Soma City where his Radioisotope Center has been helping to decontaminate.
We at the Radioisotope Center of Tokyo University have been helping to decontaminate Minami-Soma City, sending about 4 people at a time and doing decontamination work for the length of 700km per week.
Again, what's happening to Minami-Soma clearly shows that 20 or 30 kilometer radius [from the nuke plant] doesn't make any sense at all. You have to measure in more detail like measuring each nursery school.
Right now, from the 20 to 30 kilometer radius area, 1,700 school children are put on the buses to go to school. Actually in Minami-Soma, the center of the city is located near the ocean, and 70% of the schools have relatively low level of radiation. Yet, children are forced to get on the school buses to go all the way to schools near Iitate-mura [where radiation is higher], spending 1 million yen everyday for the busing.
I strongly demand that this situation be terminated as soon as possible.
What's most problematic is the government's policy that they will compensate the residents for the moving cost only if their areas are designated as official evacuation zones. In a recent committee held at the House of Councilors [Upper House], President Shimizu of TEPCO and Mr. Kaieda, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry answered that way. I ask you to separate the two immediately - compensation criteria issue and children's safety issue.
I strongly ask you to do whatever you can to protect the children.
Another thing is, what I strongly feel when I'm doing the decontamination work in Fukushima is that emergency decontamination and permanent decontamination should be dealt with separately.
We've been doing a lot of emergency decontamination work. For example, if you look at this diagram, you will notice that the bottom of this slide is where small children put their hands on. Every time the rain streams down the slide, more radioactive materials accumulate. There can be a difference in radiation level between the right side and the left side. If such difference occurs and if the average radiation of the slide is 1 microsievert, then one side can measure as high as 10 microsieverts. We should do more emergency decontamination work in such places.
The ground right under the roof gutter is also where children frequently put their hands on. If you use high pressure washer you can reduce the radiation level from 2 microsieverts to 0.5 microsievert.
However, it is extremely difficult to lower the level to less than 0.5microsievert, because everything is contaminated. Buildings, trees, whole areas. You can lower radiation dose of one place, but very difficult to do that for the whole area.
Then, how much will it cost when you seriously do the decontamination work? In case of "Itai-Itai Disease" caused by cadmium poisoning, to decontaminate half of cadmium-contaminated area of roughly 3,000 hectare, the government has spent 800 billion yen so far.
How much money will be needed if we have to decontaminate the area 1,000 times as big?
Finally, Professor Kodama has 4 demands, although probably due to the time constraint he was able to elaborate only three:
So, I'd like to make four urgent requests.
First, I request that the Japanese government, as a national policy, innovate the way to measure radiation of food, soil, and water, through using the Japan's state-of-the-art technology such as semiconductor imaging detectors. This is absolutely within Japan's current technological capability.
Second, I request that the government enact a new law as soon as possible in order to reduce children's radiation exposure. Right now, what I'm doing is all illegal. The current "Radiation Damage Prevention Law" specifies the amount of radiation and the types of radionuclides that each institution can handle. Now Tokyo University is mobilizing its workforce in its twenty-seven Radioisotope Centers to help decontaminate Minami-Soma City, but many of the centers don't have a permission to handle cesium. It's illegal to transport it by cars. However, we cannot leave highly radioactive materials to mothers and teachers there, so we put them all in drums and bring them back to Tokyo. To receive them is illegal. Everything is illegal.
The Diet is to blame for leaving such situations as they are. There are many institutions in Japan, such as Radioisotope Centers at national universities, which have germanium detectors and other state-of-the-art detectors. But how can we, as the nation, protect our children if these institutions' hands are tied? This is the result of the gross negligence by the Diet.
Third, I request that the government as a national policy mobilize technological power of the private sector in order to decontaminate the soil. There are many companies with expertise of radiation decontamination; chemical companies such as Toray and Kurita, decontamination companies such as Chiyoda Technol and Atox, and construction companies such as Takenaka Corporation. Please mobilize their power to create a decontamination research center in Fukushima as soon as possible.
It will take tens of trillions of yen to do the decontamination work. I'm gravely concerned that it might become public works project involving concessions. [In other words, business as usual in Japan where only the businesses and politicians benefit.]
We don't have the luxury to spare a single second considering the financial condition of the Japanese government. We must figure out how we really do the decontamination work.
What on earth is the Diet doing, when 70,000 people are forced out of their homes and wandering?
(Here's Part 1, in case you missed. And Part 3. There are also the video in 2 parts with English subtitle, French text translation, and the video in 2 parts with German subtitle. Go to this post for the links.)
Part 2 of Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama's testimony on July 27 to the Committee on Welfare and Labor in Japan's Lower House in the Diet.
Professor Kodama is the head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo.
Professor Kodama's anger is now directed toward the government's non-action to protect people, especially children and young mothers, from internal radiation exposure. His specialty is internal medicine using radioisotope, so he says he has done the intense research on internal radiation:
I have been in charge of antibody drugs at the Cabinet Office since Mr. Obuchi was the prime minister [1998-]. We put radioisotopes to antibody drugs to treat cancer. In other words, my job is to inject radioisotopes into human bodies, so my utmost concern is the internal radiation exposure and that is what I have been studying intensely.
The biggest problem of internal radiation is cancer. How does cancer happen? Because radiation cuts DNA strands. As you know, DNA is in a double helix. When it is in a double helix it is extremely stable. However, when a cell divides, the double helix becomes single strands, doubles and becomes 4 strands. This stage is the most vulnerable.
Therefore, the fetuses and small children, with cells that rapidly divide, are most susceptible to radiation danger. Even for adults, there are cells that rapidly divide such as hair, blood cells and intestinal epitheria, and they can be damaged by radiation.
Let me give you an example of what we know about internal radiation.
One genetic mutation does not cause cancer. After the initial hit by radiation, it needs a different trigger for a cell to mutate into a cancer cell, which is called "driver mutation" or "passenger mutation". (For details please refer to the attached document about the cases in Chernobyl and cesium.)
Alpha radiation is most famous. I was startled when I learned of a professor at Tokyo University who said it was safe to drink plutonium.
Alpha radiation is the most dangerous radiation. It causes thorotrast liver damage, as we, liver specialists, know very well.
Internal radiation is referred to as such-and-such millisieverts, but it is utterly meaningless. Iodine-131 goes to thyroid gland, and thorotrast goes to liver, and cesium goes to urothelium and urinary bladder. Whole body scan is utterly meaningless unless you look at these parts in the body where radiation accumulates.
Thorotrast was a contrast medium used in Germany since 1890. It was used in Japan since 1930, but it was found that 25 to 30% of people developed liver cancer 20 to 30 years later.
Why does it take so long before cancer develops? Thorotrast is an alpha-radiation nuclide. Alpha radiation injures nearby cells, and the DNA that is harmed most is P53. We now know, thanks to genome science, the entire sequence of human DNA. However, there are 3 million locations on the DNA that are different from person to person. So today, it doesn't make sense at all to proceed as if all humans are the same. The basic principle should be the "personal life medicine" when we look at internal radiation - which DNA is damaged, and what kind of change is taking place.
In case of thorotrast, it is proven that P53 is damaged in the first stage, and it takes 20 to 30 years for the 2nd, 3rd mutations to occur, causing liver cancer and leukemia.
About iodine-131. As you know, iodine accumulates in thyroid gland, and that is most noticeable during the formative phase of thyroid gland, i.e. in small children.
However, when the first researcher in Ukraine was saying in 1991 "There are an increasing number of thyroid cancer", researchers in Japan and the US were publishing articles in Nature magazine saying "There is no causal relationship between the radiation and thyroid cancer." Why did they say that? Because there was no data prior to 1986, there was no statistical significance.
The statistical significance was finally noted 20 years later. Why? Because the peak that started in 1986 disappeared. So even without the data prior to 1986, the occurrence of thyroid cancer and radiation exposure from Chernobyl had the causal relationship. Epidemiological proof is very difficult. It is impossible to prove until all the cases are done.
Therefore, from the viewpoint of "protecting our children" a completely different approach is required.
Dr. Shoji Fukushima from a national institution called Japan Bioassay Research Center, which researches health effects of chemical compounds, has been studying diseases involving urinary tract since the Chernobyl accident.
Dr. Fukushima and doctors in Ukraine studied parts of bladders removed during more than 500 cases of prostatic hypertrophy surgery. They found out that in the highly contaminated area where 6Bq/liter was detected in urine, there was a high frequency of mutation of p53 though 6Bq may sound minuscule.
They also noticed many cases of proliferative precancerous conditions, which we assume was due to the activation of p38 MAP kinase and the signal called "NF-kappa B," leading inevitably to proliferative cystitis, with carcinoma in situ occurring with considerable frequency.
Knowing this, I was astounded to hear the report that 2 to 13Bq/liter [of radioactive cesium] was detected from the breast milk of seven mothers in Fukushima.
(to be continued in Part 3.)
When radioactive materials were detected from the breast milk, what did the government and government researchers say? "No need to worry. No immediate effect on health of the babies."
Professor Kodama is saying that by the time we have proof that there is a causal relationship between internal radiation exposure (however small) and cancer, it may be too late.
Thorotrast is a suspension containing the radioactive particles of thorium dioxide.
Again, here's the video (the same one as in Part 1).
(Part 2,Part 3; there are also the video in 2 parts with English subtitle, French text translation, and the video in 2 parts with German subtitle. Go to this post for the links.)
Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama is the head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo. On July 27, he appeared as a witness to give testimony to the Committee on Welfare and Labor in Japan's Lower House in the Diet.
Remember Professor Kosako, also from the University of Tokyo, who resigned in protest as special advisor to the prime minister over the 20 millisievert/year radiation limit for school children? There are more gutsy researchers at Todai (Tokyo University) - the supreme school for the "establishment" - than I thought. Professor Kodama literally shouted at the politicians in the committee, "What the hell are you doing?"
He was of course referring to the pathetic response by the national government in dealing with the nuclear crisis, particularly when it comes to protecting children.
Even if you don't understand the language, take a look and listen. He sounds sincere, and his voice is literally shaking with anger.
(The original video that was embedded in this post was removed at Youtube. Too many views for TPTB, maybe. It was approaching 300K views. This one is missing the first few minutes, and starts when he talks about 5 microsieverts/hour in Tokai-mura.)
Aside from his anger, he also gave some very interesting and disturbing information, which I try to summarize below:
He starts out with the radiation fallout in Tokyo:
"We detected 5 microsieverts/hour radiation in Tokai-mura in Ibaraki Prefecture about 9AM on March 15, and notified the Ministry of Education and Science as the "Article 10 notification" [as specified in the Nuclear Disaster Countermeasures Law]. Later, the radiation exceeding 0.5 microsievert/hour was detected in Tokyo. Then on March 22 it rained in Tokyo, and with the rain came 0.2 microsievert/hour radiation, and this I believe is the reason for the elevated radiation level to this day.
"Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano said at that time, "There is no immediate effect on health". I actually thought this was going to be a big, big problem."
It was indeed in the news that 5 microsieverts/hour radiation was detected at Tokai-mura in Ibaraki Prefecture on March 15 morning, but hardly anyone, other than nuclear experts like him, connected that news with the elevated radiation level in Tokyo. The residents of Tokyo didn't even know about it. What happened in the morning of March 15? Well, Reactor 4 at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant had a "big noise" which blew out the roof at 6AM, and Reactor 2 had an explosion in the Suppression Pool at 6:14AM. Or it could be from the Reactor 3 explosion in the previous day, at 11:01AM on March 14.
The professor goes on to explain his concern at that time:
"Why was I concerned? Because the current radiation injury prevention method is based on dealing with a small amount of radioactive materials that emit very high radiation. In this case, the total amount of radioactive materials is not much of an issue. What matters is how high the radiation is.
"However, in the case of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, 5 microsieverts within 100-kilometer radius [he is referring to Tokai-mura], 0.5 microsievert within 200-kilometer radius [referring to Tokyo area], and the radiation extended far beyond, even to teas in Ashigara and Shizuoka, as everybody now knows."
So, instead of a small amount of highly radioactive materials in a confined area, what we have is a huge amount of radioactive materials spread wide.
He continues:
"When we research the radiation injury/sickness, we look at the total amount of radioactive materials. But there is no definite report from TEPCO or the Japanese government as to exactly how much radioactive materials have been released from Fukushima.
"So, using our knowledge base at the Radioisotope Center, we calculated. Based on the thermal output, it is 29.6 times the amount released by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In uranium equivalent, it is 20 Hiroshima bombs.
"What is more frightening is that whereas the radiation from a nuclear bomb will decrease to one-thousandth in one year, the radiation from a nuclear power plant will only decrease to one-tenth.
"In other words, we should recognize from the start that just like Chernobyl, Fukushima I Nuke Plant has released radioactive materials equivalent in the amount to tens of nuclear bombs, and the resulting contamination is far worse than the contamination by a nuclear bomb."
So what's the implication of the huge amount of radioactive materials released and dispersed wide? It's much harder to predict the behavior of the particles, as they behave in a non-linear manner:
"When a vast amount of radioactive materials is released, they are in particles. Dispersion of particles is non-linear, and it's one of the most difficult calculations in the fluid dynamics. The nuclear fuel is like sands buried in synthetic resin, but once the fuel melts down, a large amount of super-fine particles is released.
"What happens then? The problem like the contaminated rice hay happens. The pattern of contamination does not follow concentric circles. It depends on the weather. It also depends on where the particles landed - on the material that absorbs water, for example."
His Radioisotope Center has been helping Minami Soma City, and he describes the situation in the city in details concerning the radioactive rice hay:
"We at the Radioisotope Center have been helping Minami Soma City in the decontamination effort. We've done seven decontaminations so far. When we went to Minami Soma for the first time, there was only one geiger counter. On March 19 when the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries supposedly issued the notice [on the cattle feed], food, water, and gasoline were about to be depleted in the city. The mayor of Minami Soma made a plea for help on the Internet, which was widely viewed.
"In that kind of situation, no one would look at a piece of paper from the Ministry, no one would know. Farmers didn't know that rice hay was in danger. Still, they bought the feed from abroad, paying hundreds of thousands of yen, and started to feed the cows with the same groundwater that they drank.
"So, what should we do now? We have to guarantee that the thorough radiation measurement is done in the contaminated area. As I said before, there was only one geiger counter in Minami Soma City when we went there in May. In fact, there were 20 personal survey meters provided by the US military. But no one at the city's Board of Education could understand the English manual until we went there and told them how to use them. That's how it is there.
"As to the food inspection, there are more advanced survey meters than germanium counters, such as semiconductor detectors. Why doesn't the Japanese government spend money in supporting [the development of these advanced detectors?]?
"After 3 months, the government has done no such thing, and I am shaking with anger."
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I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.
"Magno Arms" What Does It Indicate? Nothing Good
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*UPDATE *
As an affiliate of Elliott Wave International I'll be promoting the
following all week:
EWI has given me the OK to share Bob Prechter's April ...
SO WHAT'S NEXT
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Just a list. Not too complicated, but time to think about the next few
months. We're in the "Quickening"......"the Fourth Turning"..... basically
we'r...
DOWN we go.......
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corona virus could be a black swan Hehehe
Information here is not meant as trading advice. Please do your own DD
before any decisions.
Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word. ------------------ This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.
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