Monday, October 31, 2011

Government Official's Ultimate "Performance": Drink Up Fuku-I Water

Yasuhiro Sonoda, 44-year-old official in the Cabinet Office, made good on his promise and drank the treated water from Reactors 5 and 6 basements. Iodine-131 and radioactive cesium were ND (not detected). If TEPCO's analysis of the water the other day is correct, there is no alpha nuclide, but with a good dose of tritium (H-3).

The photo is from Sankei Shinbun (10/31/2011). It was top news at NHK.

The Japanese government is good at proceeding fast with totally meaningless performance, and the Japanese media is good at reporting it.

According to Sankei, the water was taken from the storage tank of treated water on October 22, and it was boiled to remove any bacteria.

Someone asked Sonoda in this press conference, "Is there anything that you do that has made progress?" (as tweeted by Ryuichi Kino, independent journalist)

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is beyond pathetic.

Anonymous said...

Mr Burns eating Blinky....

Anonymous said...

Wonder what dosimeter reading said, and what radioactive particles it could identify? A stunt--- IF he actually drank the real water. Want to make a bet TEPCO found distilled water for him?

Anonymous said...

.. after drinking the water 5-6, I would suggest to drink a great jug kettles from the 1-3-4's water:
sparkling,tonic water with gas spring ..LOL !

Anonymous said...

Stupid circus monkey... I wonder if he had the good sense to not drink tritiated water.

But then, some cretin politician in Russia wanted to take a swim in the crater lake left over from one of their "peaceful" atomic explosions. He was dissuaded at the last moment by physicists who explained to him that while the water was just fine, the rim of the "lake" was not.

Lili said...

I hope they are lying about this. Otherwise this is going to be one unhappy man very shortly. How could he do such a thing to his family?

What Japanese honor is present in such things?

Yosaku said...

In an effort to put this in perspective, let's say that Mr. Sonoda drank 350ml of the tritiated water, which had a tritium content of 2,600 Bq/kg.

The ICRP's committed effective dose coefficient for the ingestion of tritiated water by the adult male is 1.8 x 10(-11) Sv/Bq.

Multiplying the does coefficient by 2,600 Bq/kg, we get 4.68 x 10(-8) Sv/kg. We then multiple this by .35 kg to obtain the effective does in the glass that Sonoda drank, which gives us 1.64 x 10(-8) Sv, or 0.016 μSv, an amount much less than the hourly background radiation in Tokyo both pre and post Fuku.

This isn't to say that one should be drinking this water if you can avoid it, but there is a reason that Canada's drinking water limit on tritium is well in excess of the water that Sonoda drank (i.e., 7,000 bq/kg).

(http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/pubs_catalogue/uploads/info_0766_e.pdf)

Anonymous said...

life would be beautiful if this water only contains tritium, but it also contains plutonium, cesiums, iodine, americinium, cobalt, uranium, etc... All in amount less than authorized limit and therefore not detectable. however when you add them all, you have been drinking more than the limit.

Anonymous said...

he is making a idiot of him self. Because he can only drink one glass. If the water is good, why doesn't he drink it all the time?
You see, no one would ever dare to drink that poison every day.

Anonymous said...

"... Canada's drinking water limit on tritium is well in excess of the water that Sonoda drank (i.e., 7,000 bq/kg)......"

How can you misslead people like that? I know you are working for the Nuclear industry to write such a missleading comment.

Average tritium concentration in Canadian drinking water is about 4 bq/L (from your document! ).

Yosaku said...

Anonymous@7:19,

Please see ex-skf's post on October 27 regarding the analysis of this water.

Anonymous@7:57,

I referred to the drinking water limit, not the average concentration in Canadian drinking water. I fail to see how I misled here; the statement was accurate.

If you want, you could point out how the drinking water limit in other jurisdictions is much lower than the WHO or Canadian limits. That's a fair critique, but my point here was simply to put the amount in perspective, which I think this does. I do not mean to endorse the drinking of this water.

Anonymous said...

Stupid fuck, pathetic stunt... more useless shit form jap politicians as the kids of fukushima are thrown to the lions..

Anonymous said...

Well I think he needs some nice Fukushima produce, beef, and tea to go with that water!

Anonymous said...

They said the water was boiled. Did they capture the steam from the boiled water and have him drink that? This is the process of distillation - it should leave alot of the nasty isotopes behind.

Anonymous said...

"How can you misslead people like that? I know you are working for the Nuclear industry to write such a missleading comment.

Average tritium concentration in Canadian drinking water is about 4 bq/L (from your document! )."

Yosaku said that the limit on tritium in drinking water in Canada is 7,000 Bq/kg, which the document s/he provided the URL for clearly states. You might want to calm down and read people's comments a second time before accusing someone of making a misleading comment, or shilling for any vested interest.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

EU limit: 100 Bq/liter
Canada: 7,000 Bq/liter
Finland: 30,000 Bq/liter
Australia: 76,103 Bq/liter (WTF)
US: 740 Bq/liter

"CANDU reactors produce significantly more tritium than other types of reactor..."

Sonoda's water: 2,600 Bq/liter

Fall Out Man! said...

I remember many years ago a similar stunt was made by the head of the company that distributed 245-T in New Zealand. The CEO drank what he claimed was a glass of 245-T (herbicide containing dioxin) to prove it was safe.

Only a few years ago I read on a web site that in fact the glass had contained only water. It was just one more lie to add to the company's many other lies.

Logically this looks like a similar case. There is no proof he drank water from the Fukushima plant. We just have his word for it and given that word from other public officials has proven to be worthless one should think about whether this stunt is anything but clever acting. The only way to know would be if independent outside auditors collected the water and had him drink it. I am certain he would then refuse.

The Japanese government and nuke industry have told so many other lies about this man made disaster, no one should logically believe them now.

Anonymous said...

windows harakiri

Anonymous said...

Now there, THERE, is a 'sheeple'.
Mr.Yasuhiro Sonoda has obligated the Y fellas to take him out before he falls ill.
Sonoda's courage faces the wrong direction perhaps?

Probably just crammed his gullet w/Fuku peaches just before this clown act, advertising his life of personal dissipation.

You are found 'out', Mr. Sonoda.

lol

Maureen said...

This reminds me of one of our politicians in Vancouver,BC who drank water from the Fraser River to prove how safe it was a few years ago. He thought he was clever by letting the water stand for a while so the sediment would settle to the bottom before he drank it. Needless to say he ended up with kidney failure a few days later. Moron.

Gwil W said...

This photo reminds me of the abject 'performance' of a former British politician John Selwyn Gummer who mad his little girl eat a beef burger to 'prove' that there was no BSE danger. Shortly afterwards millions of cattle had to be destroyed. It's the same old story the whole world over. It always has been. It always will be.

Anonymous said...

i fell sorry for those jap kids that have to live in polluion.

Anonymous said...

I doubt very much if that water came from a Fukushima reactor, a stupid stunt that will get a lot of people killed.
If that water did come from Fukushima reactor then he is a dead man.

tony roma said...

dumb bastard..
the japanese have always had a pointless futile kamikaze style death wish.
it is not honorable it is pathetic weakness.
what a sick rotten child and world killing society.
they say iran has too be stopped from nuclear forget iran.
thanks too a yakuza run japanese government we are all the walking dead.

Anonymous said...

To further help putting things in perspective, ICRP is a private NPO (like Greenpeace) funded by the nuclear industry. ICRP purpose is to define *policies* around things like contamination tolerability levels.
The numbers reported by Yosaku are therefore a nuclear industry policy and do not have any specific scientific standing.
Tritium limits reported by Primavera-san are obviously policies as well: Australia limit is 760 times higher than the EU's! What would you think if the speed limit on a certain road was 1 km/h for EU citizens and 760 km/h for Australians? or are Australians 760 resilient to accidents (and cancer) than Europeans?
My own policy would be a zero limit: why should I drink any tritium at all? to support the bottom line of the nuclear industry?
Beppe

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