May 24, 2013

May 24, 2013 | Fukushima Accident Updates

  • Airborne Cesium radioactivity on the F. Daiichi plant site is non-detectible at all but one monitoring point. Tokyo Electric Company’s posting of site activity for May 22 shows that airborne releases from the damaged reactor buildings for units #1 through #3 may have been curtailed. The four monitoring points at the property boundary, including the main gate, no longer show any detectible radioactive Cesium. The same is true at eleven of twelve access points (openings) to the four damaged structures, the incineration workshop, on-site bunker’s equipment hatch, solid waste reduction treatment building, and the three waste treatment buildings. The only location showing detectible Cesium is the northwest opening to reactor building #4, with a concentration of 7.6 micro-becquerels per cubic centimeter. This reading is right at the minimum level of detectability. Unfortunately, neither Tepco nor the Japanese Press is making any effort to promote this good news with the people of Japan or the world at-large. Tepco has merely posted the statistics, but has had no press release announcing it. The Japanese Press is ignoring the data. It should be noted that Tepco’s analysis of the soil surfaces inside the plant property shows contamination levels of 100 Bq/m2 for Cs-137 outside the main Administrative building, plus 960 Bq/m2 Cs-134 and 1800 Bq/m2 Cs-137 outside the Environmental Management building. Thus, F. Daiichi staff must continue to wear anti-contamination garb. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/index-e.html
  • IAEA will open an emergency response training center in Fukushima next Monday. The facility is the result of a cooperative agreement between IAEA and the prefectural government signed last December. The center’s operation will be kicked-off with a four-day workshop beginning Tuesday. There will be about 40 participants from 18 countries atttending. The agenda will include in a field training program. (Jiji Press)
  • A senior UN official says Japan’s exposure threshold for Fukushima repopulation is too high. Anand Grover, special rapporteur to the UN’s Human Rights Council, makes the call based on his personal research with Japan’s radiation exposure issue. He believes the Tokyo government should limit public radiation exposures to 1 millisievert per year, which is believed to be Japan’s average natural background level. He further urged Japan’s threshold for emergency evacuation be lowered from the current level of 20 mSv/yr to 1 mSv/yr. In addition, he charges that limiting exposed child monitoring to thyroid examinations is inadequate, and calls for regular urine and blood tests to check for leukemia and other possible childhood diseases. Lastly, Grover says evacuees from zones reading above 1 mSv/yr be provided with housing, medical and education continued assistance by the government. His formal report will be submitted to the Human Rights Council in the near future. He gives no concrete evidence for his opinion other than saying these measures should be taken from the standpoint of human rights. (Mainichi Shimbun)
  • On April 11, Tepco announced they will install PARs inside Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s reactor buildings for units #1 and #7. Installation began at the end of April and is expected to be completed in June, in time to meet the Tokyo government’s new regulations due in July. PAR is the acronym for Passive Autocatalytic Recombiner. Hydrogen produced during a nuclear accident would be combined with oxygen in the air and become water. The catalyst in the PAR prompts recombination, requires no power source to function and will keep the buildup of hydrogen below explosive concentration. There will be 50 units installed on unit #1 and 56 on unit #7. (JAIF)
  • Tepco has announced they have taken bids to build three coal-fired power plants before 2021. The planned capacity of the three units is 2,600 MWe. Tepco opened the bidding on their plans to Japanese contractors on February 15, 2013. The company will decide on a final successful bidder by the end of June. Tepco says their bidding process conforms with new rules by the Agency for Natural Resources for new thermal power generation established last September. (Tepco Press Release)
  • Seawater samples far from F. Daiichi taken in 2012 show a wide variety of Cesium concentrations. Two Cesium isotopes were found in seawater taken from ten locations between 500 and 2,100 kilometers south of F. Daiichi. Actually, the Cesium was discovered in the zooplankton in the waters. The highest Cs-134 concentration was 10.5 Becquerels/kg and for Cs-137 it was 14.9 Bq/kg. The finding was released by the Japan Geoscience Union in Chiba Prefecture on Tuesday. Team member Minaru Kitamura said, “Plankton are thought to play a key role in the dispersion of the cesium because they are eaten by bigger fish. We want to study further what is influencing the accumulation of radioactive cesium. We need to study whether the concentration will decline, or stay the same.” The team studied no sea-life larger than zooplankton because they lacked equipment to catch anything else during their sampling sojourn. (Japan Times)