Published: December 5th, 2012 at 8:28 am ET
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Title: More than 80% of homes remain contaminated
Source: NHK
Date: Dec. 4, 2012
More than 80% of homes remain contaminated
Radioactive decontamination following last year’s nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has not been completed at more than 80 percent of homes.
Japan’s environment ministry studied the progress of government-funded removal of radioactive substances being undertaken by 58 cities, towns and villages in 7 prefectures around Fukushima as of the end of August.
[...] among nearly 100,000 homes slated for removal of radioactive substances, the process was finished at only about 17,000 or 18 percent of them. [...]
Published: December 5th, 2012 at 8:28 am ET
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What the article omits is as disturbing.
Which cities, towns, villages in the 7 prefectures were deemed NOT to need decontamination? On what basis and by who's determination?
What about hotspots all over Japan?
What about ongoing RE-contamination?
What about new contamination from debris transport, burning, disposal?
While some process has been carried out, how EFFECTIVE has it been?
Does a pile of hot dirt covered by a tarp in the corner of a daycare yard count as having decontaminated that place?
The article's superficial data is presented uncritically.
It really says the smoke and mirrors process continues and when we can report 100% of all officially designated areas have been decontaminated according to what the Gov't says is decontamination
then successful decontamination will be declared.
The whole contamination issue is slowly being shrunk and
back-paged, mellowed with age, so as to concerns assuage –
NHK, J-Govs' mouthpiece Sage.
Maybe I'm over-reacting.
How's decontaminating the forests, mountains, ocean and atmosphere coming along?
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[assuage concerns]
Well put – we had the same thought.
Great minds, etc. ….
Not to worry, Nibiru should be here soon. We can all jump aboard and zoom off to another place.
[chuckling allowed]
The decontamination, I dare say, has to start within, but that's another topic perhaps.
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Pu239 says "The decontamination…has to start within…"
As dosdos says "I don't give it much odds at getting any better with the coming election."
Can any people decontaminate their own nations outpost of the global nuclear village, with its' "nuclear headman", "nuclear witchdoctors", "nuclear shamans" etc.
Will that be Nuke-Dukes, Barons or Counts
who will upon you, bent-over, mount,
or to be more blunt,
exercise droit du seigneur using all your rumps
or will neo-feudalism democracy trump?
OK, to be politically correct, no offence meant to the traditions of ancient healing or spirit intercession
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Why All Nuclear Power Plants Must Be Shut Down
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/p/why-all-nuclear-plants-must-be-shut-down.html
Radiation dangers in food and water; via A Green Road http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/radiation-contamination-standards-for.html
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Amen.
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I don't give it much odds at getting any better with the coming election. There is no given political party with a chance of winning a majority in the Diet which is intent on doing away with nuclear immediately. From what I see, decontamination will be dropped as a cost saving measure for the sake of the industry and special interests once the election takes place.
Nowhere is there is real talk of predicted upcoming major earthquakes and the damage they will do to the existing and future reactors. It's all being soft sold to the public, to make them seem that they care about honoring the will of the majority. But in reality, all they want is to grip the power and run things the way they see fit for their own bank accounts.
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Reminds me of the classic chocolate conveyor belt scene in I Love Lucy. Technology out of control.
They have to stop the source of the pollution.
Then after the plant is ACTUALLY UNDER CONTROL they need a burial site for decontamination and decommission work.
Note to Tepco: Devote resources to evacuating people from clearly dangerous areas and STOP the coriums at Fukushima Daiichi. Try something besides ludicrous ideas like nets in a polluted lagoon.
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I agree with you too. I think that scene is the absolutely FUNNIEST TV gem I've ever seen! Classic.
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Nice to think about that scene in between all of this horrible news. (thanks for the smile).
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It would be a more accurate headline to replace the word "still" with "continuously." This would be because of wind, rain, snow, sea spray and the unending origination of the components.
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The number of transport vectors and pathways that the radioactive contamination will use goes far beyond any realistic attempt for decontamination at this point. (my opinion)
Birds, fish and insects move and migrate. They eat, they poop, they die elsewhere. Their offspring, those that are born, may have DNA damage.
The spewing and accumulation of radiation into all environments from the Fukushima Daiichi facility must 'somehow' be stopped FIRST!
Until then…?
The 'experts' seem quiet now.
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Transport Vectors & Pathways
by Merrill Peterson Biology Dept. at WWU
The link:
http://www.biol.wwu.edu/peterson/vectors&pathways.pdf
Apply the radiation contamination factor and you'll get the picture.
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Transport vectors brings to mind the tsunami debris, but that's another topic.
Agree, stop the spew, evacuate, stop spreading…
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Forgot that one – tsunami debris – another bonafide transport vector.
Also used cars, dental x-rays, hospital apparatus and so on, but I was really trying to focus on Fukushima-borne transports.
Now my cat is looking at me funny – (she's another transport vector).
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Just what is the radiation contamination factor?
I am not a 'matha-magician', but I would express the 'theoretical' equation something like this.
x1 = The total number of combined radioactive isotopes
(not just cesium if you know what I mean)
x2 = The 'actual' amounts being emitted.
(air and sea)
x3 = The number of continuous days accumulating.
(now months and soon years)
x4 = The Transport Vectors
x5 = The Transport Pathways
Multiply:
(x1)(x2)(x3)(x4)(x5)= Radiation Contamination Factor
Add to that the variables of random and unknown.
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Thanks for this ChasAha, I was trying to get an informal list of transport vectors, modes of radiation transport – or all the ways that radiation can possibly get to YOU (and me):
rain
snow
mist
ocean-spray
birds
insects
pollen
humans (dead and alive)
aeroplanes
trains
buses
air
rice
tea
fish
grass
mushrooms
beef
tap water
and so on. Probably a lot more.
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Pu239, I'll add Beliefs, results of reasoning styles, policy…
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Recently, I had a leaflet (promoting a certain religious sect) in my letterbox. On the backside it said: "Printed in Japan" – my latest little contribution to "sharing the pain of Fukushima" and getting my daily dose of man-made isotopes
The possibilities of distribution are infinite. After a long-ish time, all contamination from Chernobyl, Fukushima, and even every gram of nuclear waste the short nuclear age is leaving behind, will be more or less evenly distributed around the globe. Such are nature's laws. If we are lucky (or maybe not so lucky) we will have a few more generations, who will "enjoy" life on a once beautiful planet that will be more and more resembling hell.
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From the list and from some other discussions, I believe FISH are going to be one of the first worst issues.
Reason being is that fish are obviously a world food staple, used in many different products and most importantly it's used in fertilizers to grow food on land.
I can almost see a day when wars are fought over fishing rights.
(That will be wherever the least contaminated fish are.)
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I personally think it's more like The Shroud of Turin we need for this one, but for now we'll have to make do with a cheaper substitute:
Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012
Cesium-cleanup cloth made cheaper
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nb20121129a5.html
So, plastic covers, nets, cloths – all simply smokescreens to hide the never-ending folly of mankind.
And decontamination -a myth.
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Where's the plutonium pads, the strontium swabs, the americium absorbents, the bucky ball bags…
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Tokyo. Check homes in Tokyo. And homes in countries downwind from Japan. Radiation travels far. Wind and rain brings it to your doorstep.
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If someone would just collect your writings, on Fukushima alone, it would be the most profound, well written, factual anti-nuclear body of work.
Seriously.
Thank you.
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Well, we can all relax now:
"Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano who told the world that evening, “Let me repeat that there is no radiation leak, nor will there be a leak.”* "
DECEMBER 05, 2012
Deception Confirmed by UN
Government and Industry Still Denying Science at Fukushima
by JOHN LAFORGE
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/05/government-and-industry-still-denying-science-at-fukushima/
Strange that the UN is sourced as confirming the deception – they're part of it.
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In Japan, the 'quick' are no longer there. Only the 'dead'. By 'dead', I mean those whose bodies are hopelessly comtaminated by their environment and by their food, for whom death is simply a matter of time, and a short time at that. Japan is toast. So sad.
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DE-contamination or RE-contamination? Fukushima is THREE TOTAL MELTDOWNS. The contamination never ends. Look up Rocketdyne at Simi Valley in California. (Enviroreporter.com goes into that.) A "partial meltdown" in 1959! Hundreds of time WORSE than Three Mile Island. What, you never heard of it? OF COURSE you never heard of it! How would they have continued building atom bombs from fission products if you had heard of it? But they "completely de-contaminated" it twice, yet after A HALF CENTURY, it is still sky-high hot! The people in northern Japan just need to be compassionately EVACUATED. This is outright mass murder and no, IT IS NOT GOING AWAY.
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Please Help
This study seems to indicate that Fukushima created significantly greater plutonium contamination than Chernobyl
Can people skilled in technical analysis read the article and confirm my interpretation
Isotopic evidence of plutonium release into the environment from the Fukushima DNPP accident Jian Zheng
http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120308/srep00304/full/srep00304.html#/f2
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majia, using the last line of the article:
"The activity ratios of 241Pu/239+240Pu at t = 0 for Nagasaki atomic bomb, the global fallout and the Fukushima DNPP accident were 1.2127, 12.825 and 107.8 (this study), respectively."
adding these 3 figures together gives 121.81
of this total figure
the Nagasaki figure is 1% of the total.
the global fallout is 10.5% of the total.
and the Fukushima NPP accident accounts for 87.8% of the total.
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The plutonium from their figures from the Fukushima NPP is 88.89 times more than that from the Nagasaki bomb.
The plutonium from their figures from the Fukushima NPP is 8.4 times more than that from global fallout.
And the total is 100.4 times greater that the plutonium from the Nagasaki bomb.
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Adding the 83 from Chernobyl into to the total from the last sentence of the article:
1.2127, 12.825 and 107.8 and 83, the total is 203.838
Plutonium from the Nagasaki bomb is 0.59 of the total
Plutonium from global fallout is 6.0% of the total
Plutonium from Fukushima is 52.89 % of the total
Plutonium from Chernobyl is 43.17% of the total
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Also, there is this caveat:
"To understand the differences of Pu emissions between the Fukushima DNPP accident and the Chernobyl accident, we made a rough estimation on the amount of atmospheric release of Pu and the percentage of core inventory released. The estimation was made based on the average of 137Cs/239+240Pu activity ratios (1.48×107) observed in litter samples at site S2 and S3, relative to the total amount of 137Cs releases, 1.5×1016 Bq and 3.58×1016 Bq, estimated by METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan)20 and Stohl et al.3, respectively, assuming 137Cs and Pu isotopes followed same deposition mechanism, and no significant variation of 137Cs/239+240Pu activity ratio during the release and deposition. It should be noted that there is no attempt to make an accurate estimation on the release of Pu from the Fukushima DNPP accident due to the limited data on the deposition of Pu, but rather a rough estimation to obtain the information on the order of magnitude of Pu release from the accident."
So this article is not stating that they know how much plutonium was actually released. This figure could be many times higher as has been estimated by others.
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Another quotation from this article: "Therefore, it is highly necessary to investigate the distribution and surface activity of 241Pu inside the 20 km zone, where much higher 241Pu could be expected."
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majia, this article says that the activity ratio of Plutonium from Fukushima is higher than from Chernobyl:
"the activity ratio of 241Pu/239+240Pu of the Chernobyl accident (83±5)15, 18 is much lower than that of the Fukushima DNPP accident (107.8, average of S2 and S3 litter,"
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I doubt if anyone is going to ever publish how much plutonium was released from Fukushima or another other meltdowns that may have occurred.
Report: 76 trillion becquerels of Plutonium-239 released from Fukushima — 23,000 times higher than previously announced
http://enenews.com/updated-report-76-trillion-becquerels-plutonium-239-released-fukushima-23000-times-higher-previously-announced
The best value determined based on the available data for the quantity of plutonium (a reactor-grade cocktail of different plutonium nuclides) released at Chernobyl is, as published in the reports of the Chernobyl Forum, 3 PBq (3×10^15 Bq).
http://enochthered.wordpress.com/tag/chernobyl/
76 terabecquerel = 7.6*10^13 becquerel
From these figures there may have been more plutonium released from Chernobyl. (There was a nuclear weapons making plant at the unit which exploded at Chernobyl).
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Japan's plutonium stockpiles to increase
November 28, 2012
“…Less attention, though, is being paid to what may be a more destabilizing development: next year Japan plans to bring its long-delayed Rokkasho reprocessing plant online, which could extract as much as eight tons of weapons-usable plutonium from spent reactor fuel a year, enough for nearly 1,000 warheads. That would add to Japan’s existing stockpile of 44 tons, 9 of which are stored in domestic facilities….”
http://minandalan.blogspot.com/2012/11/japans-plutonium-stockpiles-to-increase.html
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Whoever is left to survive from Fukushima will be the workforce that destroys itself for the Rokkasho plant. Unreal. In my opinion, ALL of Japan will probably all soon be dead and/or sick and drying. It just seems like way too much radiation is already been found in Tokyo anyway…. that small island country has no place to run to and only bad food to eat and bad snow and rain, etc…
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“In October, a U.S. study – co-authored by oceanographer Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the non-profit Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., – reported Fukushima Daichi alone caused history’s biggest-ever release of radiation into the ocean – 10 to 100 times more than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe.” http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/After%2BFukushima%2Bfish%2Btales/5994237/story.html#ixzz1jfk19Yl6
Reported by
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/02/total-fukushima-radiation-released-into.html
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This article also does not seem to take into account that much of the spent fuel in the 7 spent fuel pools at Fukushima may have already vaporized:
"Science Insider noted yesterday:
"'The Daiichi complex in Fukushima, Japan … had a total of 1760 metric tons of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site last year, according to a presentation by its owners, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). The most damaged Daiichi reactor, number 3, contains about 90 tons of fuel, and the storage pool above reactor 4, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Gregory Jaczko reported yesterday had lost its cooling water, contains 135 tons of spent fuel. The amount of fuel lost in the core melt at Three Mile Island in 1979 was about 30 tons; the Chernobyl reactors had about 180 tons when the accident occurred in 1986.
That means that Fukushima has nearly 10 times more nuclear fuel than Chernobyl.
"'It also means that a single spent fuel pool – at reactor 4, which has lost all of its water and thus faces a release of its radioactive material – has 75% as much nuclear fuel as at all of Chernobyl.'"
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/03/amount-of-radioactive-fuel-at-fukushima.html
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Report: 76 trillion becquerels of Plutonium-239 released from Fukushima — 23,000 times higher than previously announced
http://enenews.com/updated-report-76-trillion-becquerels-plutonium-239-released-fukushima-23000-times-higher-previously-announced
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THANK YOU ANNE!
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these data are from last year. Since then, Fukushima has still been emitting particles up in the air and still continues to do so.
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Still more:
The higher activity seems to be attributed to MOX fuel at Fukushima.
And the atmospheric releases of plutonium estimated by the authors of this article may be vastly underestimated as there are indications that much more fuel was vaporized than has been admitted. Also these amounts estimated seem to not have taken into account the vast amounts of plutonium released into the ocean and the vast amounts since vaporized by the extensive incineration of radioactive debris ongoing in Japan.
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From the article:
"However, information on the distribution of plutonium in the marine environment is very limited. It remains unknown if there was a Pu contamination derived from the release of radioactive waste water."
And if radioactive debris was also dumped into the ocean, this is not mentioned.
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The following is one of the graphs from this article:
"Figure 2: Mixing plot of 241Pu/239Pu atom ratio vs. 240Pu/239Pu atom ratio for litter and surface soil samples collected in the 20-30 km zones of Fukushima prefecture, Japan, and a comparison of isotopic composition with those of the Chernobyl accident and the global fallout sources."
http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120308/srep00304/fig_tab/srep00304_F2.html
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If there was a weapons making facility at Fukushima, as has been hypothesized, there may have been even more weapons grade plutonium on site:
Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-weapons-program-inside-fukushima-nuclear-plant/24275
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anne…your last 15 posts…. +311 for each one. *;-)
My highest compliments. Your analytical skills are da bomb!
SP
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What a mess.
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I hope this is deemed On Topic but,
Japan's radionuclides will never be cleaned up, because you can't clean up something up that you can't see to clean up…
It can't be done in Japan.
It can't be done at Chernobyl.
It can't be done at Hanford.
It can't be done at Sellafield.
It can't be done in Nevada
And it can't be done at INL…
Public Asked for Opinion of Nuclear Industry in Idaho
http://magicvalley.com/news/local/public-asked-for-opinion-of-nuclear-industry-in-idaho/article9118b8ff-1293-59c1-8bee-1427e1ce3004.html?commentform=true
Report says Idaho may need to change its 1995 nuclear deal with feds
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/12/report_says_idaho_may_need_to.html
Gov.’s Commission Weighs Idaho Jobs Against Existing Nuclear Waste Disposal Agreement
http://stateimpact.npr.org/idaho/2012/12/04/gov-s-commission-weighs-idaho-jobs-against-existing-nuclear-waste-disposal-agreement/
It just can't be done anywhere.
Once nanoparticles of radionuclides are out into the environment,
they are there for half of forever…
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