Posts
Tepco
not to announce the total exposure dose of workers for reactor #4 pool
fuel removing
5
February, 2014
Following
up this article.. NRA “Radiation dose is too high in reactor4 spent
fuel pool area” → Tepco covered lead plate over the crane [URL]
Tepco
announced they won’t publish the total exposure dose of the workers
who were involved in reactor4 pool fuel removing.
Unlike
they expected, the pool water is contaminated to raise the radiation
dose in the pool area. NRA ordered Tepco to take measures to reduce
the atmospheric dose.
The
significant exposure is anticipated, but Tepco is not going to
disclose the data. Additionally, Tepco stated they won’t announce
the reason why they don’t disclose it either.
Fukushima
wash-up to hit US coast this year
Seaborne
radiation from Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant will wash up
on the West Coast of the US this year.
5
Febraury 2014
That’s
raising concerns among some Americans including the residents of the
San Francisco Bay Area city of Fairfax, California, which passed a
resolution on December 6 calling for more testing of coastal seafood.
At
the same time, oceanographers and radiological scientists say such
concerns are unwarranted given existing levels of radiation in the
ocean.
The
runoff from the Japanese plant will mingle with radiation released by
other atomic stations, such as Diablo Canyon in California. Under
normal operations, Diablo Canyon discharges more radiation into the
sea, albeit of a less dangerous isotope, than the Fukushima station,
which suffered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
“There’s
a point to be made that we live in a radioactive world and the ocean
just has radioactive isotopes in it,” said Ken Buesseler, senior
scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts, who forecasts the Fukushima plume will arrive in the
US early this year. “People have a limited knowledge of
radioactivity.”
At
Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi station, where three
reactors melted down after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami,
about 300 metric tons of contaminated groundwater seep into the ocean
each day, according to Japan’s government.
Between
May 2011 and August 2013, as many as 20 trillion becquerels of
cesium-137, 10 trillion becquerels of strontium-90 and 40 trillion
becquerels of tritium entered the ocean via groundwater, according to
Tokyo Electric.
Cesium
isotopes, which emit flesh-penetrating gamma rays, are among the most
dangerous radionuclides emitted by the plant, said Colin Hill, an
associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of
Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.
Strontium-90,
which mimics calcium, increases the exposure risk for humans by
remaining in the bones of fish for extended periods. While tritium is
less radiologically intense than cesium and passes through fish
faster than strontium, it can also contaminate sea creatures that
encounter the isotope in high levels, Hill said.
Water
exposed to radiation from the Fukushima plant would reach the US at
levels at least 100 times lower than the US’s drinking water
threshold, Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Allison Macfarlane
said at a December 6 briefing in Tokyo.
The
assurances haven’t eased concerns for some. “I’m terrified,”
Doreen Jean Dempski, a children’s book author, said by phone from
her home more than 5000 miles (8046 km) across the Pacific from
Fukushima in Carpinteria, California. “My boyfriend is a surfer and
he spends hours a day in the water.”
Sharing
Ms Dempski’s worries are the Fairfax city council, which passed the
coastal testing resolution, and more than 127,000 signatories to an
online petition calling for a United Nations’ takeover of part of
the Fukushima cleanup. South Korea has already banned imports of fish
from Japan’s northern Pacific coast.
Part
of the issue is general concern about radiation, and the startling
amounts that are released into the environment by the 435 nuclear
power plants operating worldwide as of January 3. Measurements that
puzzle the public – becquerels, rems, curies and sieverts – don’t
aid transparency. And, worse, scientists disagree on the health risks
from low-dose radiation exposure.
A
report on the Fukushima disaster by the World Health Organisation in
February last year estimated increased cancer risk for those in the
most contaminated areas around the plant, but not elsewhere in Japan.
However, the report also notes that better understanding of the
effects of low-dose radiation may alter risk expectations from the
Fukushima accident.
Top
Radiation Expert: 'Extremely Dangerous' Situation in Japan (05
February 2014)
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