Thursday, May 10, 2012

Minami Soma Assemblyman: "5.57 Million Bq/kg Cesium from Soil, and People Are Cleaning Out Their Homes"

Part of Minami Soma City in Fukushima was inside the "no-entry zone" but the designation was lifted as of April 16 this year and people are returning. One such area is Odaka District, and as NHK reported, the returning residents are being assisted by volunteers from all over Japan in cleaning up the damage from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Minami Soma Assemblyman Koichi Ooyama says he went and collected soil samples (what he calls "black dust") in locations in Minami Soma, including several in Odaka District after the no-entry zone designation was lifted. He had them tested by the city's laboratory for radioactive cesium, and the result, as posted on his blog (5/10/2012) is shocking.  The maximum is 5,570,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium in soil in Odaka District. In the same district, half a million becquerels/kg of cesium in cow dung was also found.

Mr. Ooyama lists those with high radioactive cesium content, because the numbers are not in sequence. English labels are by me. (Unit is bq/kg, dry weight):

①1,320,000 原町区牛越土壌 Haramachi District, soil
②1,960,000 鹿島区橲原土壌 Kashima District, soil
5,570,000 小高区金谷土壌 Odaka District, soil
⑧  16,200 原町区国見町土壌 Haramachi District, soil
⑪ 793,000 小高区上町土壌 Odaka District, soil
⑫ 430,000 小高区本町土壌 Odaka district, soil
⑬ 583,000 小高区本町土壌 Odaka district, soil
⑭2,970,000 小高区金谷土壌 Odaka district, soil
⑰ 522,000 小高区金谷牛ふん Odaka district, cow dung

Even if these samples are from areas where radioactive cesium is getting highly concentrated, I haven't seen numbers like this anywhere else in Fukushima outside the immediate vicinity of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

NHK News said the volunteers helping the home owners in Odaka District were scooping out the sludges - probably highly contaminated sludge - with hardly any protection other than flimsy masks and gloves. Who is going to be responsible if anything should happen to these volunteers later? Volunteers themselves.

Assemblyman Ooyama screams, "And they're going to do what? Spring athletic meets? Swimming pool opening? I can't take it any more!"

(For the mind-numbing routine in post-Fukushima Japan in spring and summer, see my previous post.)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

''The maximum is 5,570,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium in soil in Odaka District.''

Understand this. The land is unihabitable and the food grown there is inedible.
It's the new paradigm. Not the time to hum Hovis tunes. Get out and stay out. At least get your children out.

Anonymous said...

sample the black dust and some Nuke aktive Dust
and send to the Gov. and the tepco manager
as Present or plant-earth
so the sikness will hit those two !

its a kind of genozid ! on owen People what they do so hit back
i thing the most of the Rich people in Jp evacute there owen Familys


Bleifrei Ger

Anonymous said...

Well the fine Japanophiles at JapanProbe and also Japanobot Daniel Khal think it is the right thing to do! There is no risk of anything in Japan execpt of course losing face if you say "radiation bad".

Anonymous said...

EX-SKF...you might want to translate this article.
東京湾のセシウム、7カ月で1.7倍 流れ込み続く
http://www.asahi.com/special/10005/OSK201205090186.html

Anonymous said...

EX SKF Might be worth posting up this interesting interview with Arnie Gundersen and Marco Kaltofen

http://www.fairewinds.org/content/hot-particles-and-measurement-radioactivity

Hot particles and Radioactivity measurement

Greyhawk said...

It is said that the truth is stranger than fiction. The truth about this situation is so strange that if it were fiction no one would believe it.

Anonymous said...

If someone knows how, could they please get ahold of the councilman and tell him to test for alpha and low energy beta as well as cesium.

I think contained in the black dust anywhere near Fukushima Dai-ichi is U and Pu fine particles that have spontaneously ignited when ejected from the nuke plant.

And the yellow/green dust that fell in March 2011 in Kanto was infected with U and Pu fine particles that hadnt ignited because at the time of their emission it was raining.

yellow/green = unburnt U and Pu

black = burnt U and Pu

and anywhere this dust is there will also be high levels of hundreds of other fission, activation and transuranic products.

Atomfritz said...

Incredible!
These levels are no longer "low level waste" (LLW), but medium level waste (MLW), for which (at least in nuclear installations' work areas) radiation shielding is mandatory as worker protection.

Anonymous said...

hmmmm .. i'm starting to believe that science/physics isn't telling us lay-men the whole picture concerning radiation and atomics (if you haven't sprung for a multi k dollar indebting education -aka-PhD).
reading this, it seems, that radiation can be dealt with if enough living and moving materials are introduced into its vicinity. i get the impression that matter, that is endowed with life, that moves around radiation contamination will "somehow" neutralize its effects?
maybe jumping around decaying atoms and yelling "look at me, look at me!" while wearing a big smile will somehow convince the atoms not to fall apart?
could this be?

Anonymous said...

Just found out that dianuke.org has been suspended. Looks like the Indian govt doesn't like the negative news getting out.

Atomfritz said...

@anon 5:33
Thank you for hinting to dianuke.org.
Site seems to be back (maybe server failure?).
It's really great to see our Indian friends stand up against nuclear madness, too.

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