June 5, 2013

Jun 5, 2013 | Fukushima Accident Updates

  • The discovery of trace levels of radioactive Cesium in the Fukushima Daiichi groundwater has dominated the Japanese Press. Across the board, the news media claims this reverses Tepco’s statement of two weeks ago which called the level of Cesium “negligible”. The actual concentration is so low that it could not be detected at the F. Daiichi plant site due to the relatively high background radiation levels caused by the March, 2011, accident. The background at Fukushima Daiini, 10 kilometers to the south, is much lower and allowed the staff to detect the tiny levels of Cesium in the samples. The levels detected (0.4 Bq/liter for Cs-137 and 0.22 Bq/liter for Cs-134) are well below Tepco’s self-imposed limit of 1 Bq/liter, the national standard of 10 Bq/liter for drinking, the legal limit of 90 Bq/liter for unrestricted release, not to mention international standards of ~1,000 Bq/liter. The scientific consensus says none of these limits will produce measurable health effects. Tepco says this new information should prove their “negligible” claim, but the Press is saying just the opposite. Regardless, this latest revelation by Tepco will further undermine Tepco’s credibility with the Press and much of the public, as well as diminish the possibility of getting local fisheries to approve pumping the harmless groundwater out to sea. [Mainichi Shimbun; Japan Real Time (WSJ-Japan); Japan Times; Japan Daily Press; NHK World; Tokyo Times; Kyodo News, and etc.]
  • Tepco has found a new leak at F. Daiichi. At noon on Wednesday, a worker noticed some water dripping from a storage tank connection at a rate of one drop every 3 or 4 seconds. Bolts on the dripping joint were tightened and the leak stopped. The tank is one of the new ones installed to hold the water being transferred from their underground reservoirs, two of which have been confirmed to have experienced leakage. There were no changes to the site’s radiation levels and there was no release to the sea. The total amount that leaked is estimated to be about one liter. The stored water has been stripped of its Cesium content, but contains detectible levels of 62 other radioactive isotopes. All of the 62 isotopes emit beta radiation. (NHK World; Kyodo News; Jiji Press)
  • Researchers at Fukushima University say they have confirmed 12 child thyroid cancers in the prefecture. Another 15 are suspected of having the cancer. The results are taken from the 174,000 who have had thyroid screenings since April, 2011. The researchers stressed the increase is not related to the F. Daiichi nuclear accident, but the news media makes it seem otherwise. Analogies to the more than 4,000 child thyroid cancers attributed to the Chernobyl accident in 1986 are literally rampant in the news. The panel said thyroid cancers from Chernobyl took 4-5 years to develop, so it is highly unlikely there would be anything Fukushima-related happening at this point. Hokuto Hoshi, the research leader and member of the Fukushima Medical Association, said these confirmed cases “so far do not say that [these are the] effects of radiation.” None of the Press reports on Wednesday mentioned that similar child thyroid studies are being performed in three prefectures hundreds of Kilometers from F. Daiichi, and preliminary results show the frequency of child thyroid problems in Fukushima is the lowest of the four. No such child thyroid testing was done in Japan prior to 3/11/11. One Environment official said, “Fukushima’s survey examines people who have no symptoms across the board and it is hard to evaluate it because there are [as yet] no comparable data.” Panel member Kazuo Shimizu of Nippon Medical School added, “In a large-scale survey, we would expect to find this many cancer cases. But large-scale surveys are not normally conducted, and we can’t draw comparisons.” (Kyodo News; Japan Daily Press; Japan Times; Mainichi Shimbun)
  • Former PM Naoto Kan is in America, preaching the antinuclear gospel. On Tuesday, he spoke to a an activist in San Diego, California, near the San Onofre nuclear station, a two-unit plant manufactured by Misubishi Heavy Industries. The plant’s steam generators have leaked into the non-radioactive sides of the systems and the company has made major repairs toward restarting. Local activists are trying to stop the restarts. Kan was Japan’s PM at the onset of the F. Daiichi accident. Kan focused on the worst case scenario he had run at the time of the accident which would have required the evacuation of some 50 million people from Tokyo and surrounding areas. He said, “Only a nuclear accident could displace 40 percent the population…I concluded that the only way to contain this risk was to create a society that does not rely on nuclear power.” He added he was ashamed of himself as a government apologist for the exporting of Japanese nuclear technology like that used at San Onofre. Kan also made a plea for a global network of antinuclear activists to share their experiences and ideas for renewable energy advocacy. Kan told NHK World that this was the first time he took part in an anti-nuclear power conference outside Japan. He said will accept offers to lecture on nuclear power and will work to end nuclear energy both at-home and abroad. He shared the San Diego dais with former USNRC Chair Gregory Jaczko and antinuclear luminaries Peter Bradford and Arnie Gundersen. (Mainichi Shimbun; NHK World; Japan Times)
  • Tokyo’s annual report on the environment for 2012 rated the F. Daiichi accident as the No. 1 on-going issue. It says the radioactive substances that remain in the environment, and their removal, is “a most pressing issue”. In addition, the report says government efforts to dispel fears and rumors about radiation exposure have failed. It urges Tokyo to create dialogue with the concerned public instead of making unilateral informational statements. In addition, t report prioritizes reconstruction and economic recovery following the tsunami. Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara said the report also cites efforts to build a rebuild a sustainable society. (NHK World)
  • On the other hand, the government’s 2013 white paper “Annual Report on the Environment” no longer lists nuclear energy as the biggest environmental issue. The 2012 report placed nuclear power safety at the top because “an issue for nuclear safety measures is how to define potential risks, since nuclear accidents can cause serious environmental contamination.” However, the 2013 white paper says progress made in decontamination and measures taken to alleviate public concerns over radiation exposure have lessened the situation. In addition, the white paper cedes the issue of nuclear safety to the Nuclear Regulatory Authority based on new regulations, thus the risks of using nukes for electricity is not included in this year’s edition. “We don’t want to give to the discussions a (one-sided) view (that the utilization of nuclear power contains risks). It is very difficult for us to express our views in the current situation,” a high-ranking Environment Ministry official said. (Asahi Shimbun)
  • The Shika nuclear station, Fukui Prefecture, does not sit on a seismic fault. Hokuriku Electric Company made this announcement on Wednesday. They say they will submit their findings to the NRA later this week. The NRA ordered the investigation last year. The company dug a 40 meter-long tunnel under the station to study the bedrock and obtain sediment samples. It says it found substances indicating that the fault was formed by underground water seeping into cracks. There were no signs that the soil above the fault had slid vertically. Hokuriku Elec. says this proves there is no evidence of a seismic fault. (NHK World)
  • A government panel has ordered a settlement over a suicide-related Fukushima lawsuit. The family of suicide victim Hisashi Tarukawa sought damages from Tepco because the victim’s suicide note said “this is the end for farmers in Fukushima”. He killed himself the day after his produce from Sukagawa City was banned from sale. Tepco says they will accept the terms of the mandated settlement. The terms were not released to the Press as of Wednesday. This is the first-such settlement of its kind. Tarukawa’s son said the family’s is not concerned about the money but only wish to prove that people died due to the accident. Lawyer Izutaro Managi said he hopes this settlement will inspire families of other suicide victims to file claims. (NHK World)
  • The American researchers who discovered Cesium contamination in Pacific tuna say consumption of the fish is safe. Their report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says consumption, even in abnormally large amounts, will produce exposure less than or equal to eating many naturally radioactive foods, routine medical treatments, air travel, and/or a fraction of the world’s average natural background exposure. The report focused on one naturally-occurring isotope, Polonium-210 found in seawater. “For American and Japanese seafood consumers, the doses attributable to Fukushima-derived radiation were typically 600 and 40 times lower [from Cs-137 and Cs-134], respectively, than the dose from polonium,” said Professor Nicholas Fisher who headed the investigation. “In estimating human doses of the Fukushima-derived radioactive cesium in Bluefin tuna, we found that heavy seafood consumers – those who ingest 124 kg/year, or 273 lbs., which is five times the US national average – even if they ate nothing but the Cesium-contaminated Bluefin tuna off California, would receive radiation doses approximately equivalent to that from one dental x-ray and about half that received by the average person over the course of a normal day from a variety of natural and human sources. The resulting increased incidence of cancers would be expected to be essentially undetectable.” (PHYS.ORG)