Tuesday, June 28, 2011

#Radiation in Japan: Government to Use SPEEDI for Radiation Exposure Survey for Fukushima Residents

The Japanese government, who hid and hid the SPEEDI simulation data that mostly correctly predicted the radioactive material dispersion in the early, crucial days of the accident (March 11 to about March 25, first 2 weeks) and as the result exposed tens of millions to external and now internal radiation that might have been avoided, now says they will use the SPEEDI to figure out the amount of external radiation for the residents in Fukushima Prefecture.

Are the Fukushima residents supposed to be grateful for that?

What about the rest of Tohoku and Kanto, where the high-radiation "hot spots" have been cropping up all over the place?

More than 3 months into the accident and with ever-accumulating radiation in people, many public and private institutions from the national government on down is eager to test the radiation levels. Yes, now let's collect the world-class data! (Sorry for being cynical.)

From Yomiuri Shinbun (11:29PM JST 6/28/2011):

政府の原子力災害対策本部は28日、東京電力福島第一原子力発電所の事故による福島県民の被曝ひばく調査に、放射性物質の拡散予測を行う国のシステム「SPEEDI(スピーディ)」を利用すると発表した。

The Japanese government's headquarters for the nuclear disaster countermeasures announced on June 28 that the SPEEDI system will be used for the survey of the Fukushima residents to determine the radiation exposure after the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident. The SPEEDI system is designed to forecast the dispersion of the radioactive materials.

 事故初期の3月12日から16日までの空間線量率を計算し、外部被曝の調査に役立てる。

The government will use SPEEDI to calculate the air radiation levels from March 12 to March 16 to help determine the external radiation exposure for the residents.

 福島第一原発事故では、東日本大震災の影響で放射性物質の計測機器の多くが作動せず、3月17日に移動式機器などで計測を再開するまで空間線量率が不明だった。

Many radiation monitoring stations did not work after the March 11 earthquake, and the air radiation levels were not known until March 17 when the portable monitoring stations were used to measure radiation.

 スピーディで放射性物質の放出量などを計算して、1時間ごとの放射線量地図を作成し、県民の行動範囲と照合して個人の外部被曝量を計算する。

The government will use SPEEDI to calculate the amount of radioactive materials released and create the hourly radiation contour maps, then calculate the personal external radiation level for each resident by figuring out where he/she was during that period.

 地図の作成・公表に約2週間、被曝量の算定に1か月程度を見込んでいる。

The government thinks it will take about 2 weeks to create and publish the maps, and one month to calculate the individual radiation levels.

The Japanese taxpayers footed the bill for this costly system so that it could predict the radioactive material dispersion in case of a nuclear accident AND warn them in advance. Having failed miserably in that task (thanks to the government who supposedly feared panic and/or couldn't release the simulations because they were just, well, simulations), now it will be used to tell people how much radiation they have been exposed, after the fact.

8 comments:

STeVe the JeW said...

"now it will be used to tell people how much radiation they have been exposed, after the fact."

a perfect summation of the contempt and disdain that the PEOPLE who run nuclear power have for the lives of the PEOPLE they destroy.

Scott said...

If you want to understand the response of the Japanese government and Tepco to the Fukushima disaster, I can't recommend strongly enough reading Amazon.com: Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan (9780809039432): Alex Kerr: Books.

The lack of preparation for emergency, habitual lying and coverup, and government-corporate collusion are have been standard operating procedure in Japan for many years. There was a major incident at the nuclear facility in Tokai, Japan (Tokaimura nuclear accident) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in 1999.

"three workers were preparing a small batch of fuel for the Jōyō experimental fast breeder reactor, using uranium enriched to 18.8% with the fissionable radionuclide known as U‑235 (with the remainder being the non-fissile U‑238). It was JCO's first batch of fuel for that reactor in three years, and no proper qualification and training requirements appear to have been established to prepare those workers for the job. At around 10:35 a.m., a precipitation tank reached critical mass when its fill level, containing about 16 kg of uranium, reached about 40 litres"

A criticality incident..."The cause of the accident was said to be "human error and serious breaches of safety principles", according to the International Atomic Energy Agency."

According to Kerr, "Tokai's nuclear plant had not repaired its safety equipment for more than seventeen years" prior to this incident. Further "The workers used a secret manual prepared by...managers that bypassed safety regulations"

Anonymous said...

Plea to the Self Defense Force:

Arrest the Cabinet of the government and the executives of TEPCO who are responsible for this criminal negligence. This news today proves the both parties had information which, if used, could have reduced or eliminated radiation exposure for untold numbers of Japanese people. They chose to withhold it. Why? To protect the reactors over the lives of innocent people? To protect their own reputations and careers over the lives of innocent people? To prevent 'panic'?

Let's stop talking about what's happening and start talking about what can be done! The people don't trust the government or TEPCO anymore but they still trust the Self Defense Force... for now.

SDF, will you wait for people to start getting sick, to start dying, before acting in their defense? The shame will be on you.

Anonymous said...

"More than 3 months into the accident and with ever-accumulating radiation in people, many public and private institutions from the national government on down is eager to test the radiation levels. Yes, now let's collect the world-class data! (Sorry for being cynical.)"

No need to apologize because you are not being cynical, Areva. True cynicism is in these clowns you are reporting on. One of the things those types enjoy is sullying all who regard their cynicism, a form of laying waste to their environment.

Immature irresponse from 'authorities', a form of 'negative object' intended to pollute all they encounter. There's the cynicism, not you or I, but they.

@ Scott,

Dogs and Demons, exactly the understanding required for these 'authorities'.
Reactor 3 Fukushima also had a criticality event that lasted 7 hours, unreported at the time.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/japan-s-nuclear-disaster-caps-decades-of-faked-safety-reports-accidents.html

"Then in 2007, the utility said it hadn’t come entirely clean five years earlier. It had concealed at least six emergency stoppages at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station and a “critical” reaction at the plant’s No. 3 unit that lasted for seven hours. "

@ Anon 1:53,
"SDF, will you wait for people to start getting sick, to start dying, before acting in their defense?"

As Scott referred to above, the Tokai event resulted in JCO/Sumitomo getting their offices raided by the police.
Has TEPCO had their offices raided?
Has SDF made any noises to that effect?
They take orders, they are subject to political influences, they are silent for a reason, especially if one of the reactors was being used to breed plutonium for 'defense' purposes.

Anonymous said...

Hello and congratulations for your blog !

I'd like to comment about this sentence :
"the air radiation levels were not known until March 17 "

Maybe you do not know the French independent association CRIIRAD, which was born in FRANCE after the CHERNOBYL disaster. But they got the measurements made by Japanese scientists on the levels of CESIUM in TOKYO received before March 17.
After that, the Japanese government banned scientists to continue to disclose these measures.
But on March 15, we know that the rate of CESIUM in the air of TOKYO has increased 100 million times!
Here is the link on their website:

http://www.criirad.org/actualites/dossier2011/japon_bis/pdf/courbes-tokyo15au17-03.pdf

http://www.criirad.org/actualites/dossier2011/japon_bis/pdf/tableau_tokyo_CRIIRAD.pdf

http://www.criirad.org/actualites/dossier2011/japon_bis/pdf/donnees15_03_11.pdf

http://www.criirad.org/actualites/dossier2011/japon_bis/pdf/donnees16_03_11.pdf

The conference held in TOKYO on june 1st :

http://www.frequency.com/video/confrence-de-presse-criirad-project-47/9981549

doitujin said...

all these things must be some cruel nightmare, it steadily gets worse...

some things or details i haven't yet seen posted here but think might be of interest to some people:


-------------------
http://www.japantoday.com/category/commentary/view/fukushimas-cesium-spew-deadly-catch-22s
"There is a common proven purge for cesium 137 called Prussian Blue (PB), but Japan blocks access to it with a tangle of catch-22s. Doctors abroad are counseled to use PB as quickly as possible for any “known or suspected radiocesium contamination” and can use a relatively simple urine(!) test to assess cesium levels. In Japan, however, doctors can’t prescribe PB without a 10 million yen “whole body radiation counter(!),"(...)"

"Finally and most curiously, the only company that Japan licenses to sell PB has no stock for sale in any case and says it probably won’t have any until the end of the year."

"Trying to source the drug for friends and family in Japan, I asked CEO Alexander Heyl about this dearth in early May, shortly after he visited Tokyo for “official talks.” He said supplies are in fact being made available, but he was not at liberty to divulge how much he is shipping or to whom.(!!) He directed me to Kiyoshi Tatsuo, Nihon Medi-Physics’ sales manager, but Tatsuo-san swore he had no stock at all(!!) for hospitals or the public and that anyone wishing to order it would have to wait at least five or six months.(!!)

Since whatever quantities Heyl is shipping seem to be vanishing quietly into government stockpiles, this route was evidently not going to help my friends or answer Japan’s urgent needs."
-----------------------------------------------
http://gendai.ismedia.jp/articles/-/9547
徹底調査 放射線汚染食「食べてはいけない」
マグロ、カツオ、麦、イモ、大豆・・・政府の言う
「暫定基準値」など、なんの指標にもならない
-----------------------------------------
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/28_21.html
Hosono wants to shrink evacuation zone in July
-------------------
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/27/japan.radiation/
(CNN) -- Japanese researchers have found radiation in all 15 people tested last month from the area near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Cesium was found in the participants, ranging from 4 to 77 years old, through two(!) rounds of testing


The people tested lived in the towns of Iitate and Kawamata, located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the nuclear plant.
The participants were also tested for radioactive iodine, which was found in the urine of six(!) Fukushima prefecture residents.
The urine samples from a 77-year-old man in the first round of tests indicated radioactivity as high as 3.2 millisieverts. However, no iodine was found from the urine of the same man in the second(!) round of tests, ruling out the possibility of air contamination.


The data indicated that accumulated external(!) exposure was between 4.9 and 13.5 millisieverts for the two months after the accident -- a number which could exceed the government limit of 20 millisieverts per year if they continue living in the area.
-------------------

these things really make me too sad by far...

doitujin said...

part of a sentence is missing from JT

"In Japan, however, doctors can’t prescribe PB without a 10 million yen “whole body radiation counter,” but according to NHK, there was only one such machine in all of Fukushima as of June 2 and it can only process ten patients a day."

doitujin said...

http://www.truth-out.org/fukushimas-cesium-spew-eludes-prussian-blues-deadly-catch-22s-japan-disaster-relief/1308930096

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