Revisiting Fukushima

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Latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination in Alaskan waters as Tokyo reassure the world all is well with 2020 Olympics

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the Big Wobble,

30 April, 2019

The latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination off the shores of Alaska, regular readers of The Big Wobble will know Bill Laughing-Bear has been keeping an eye on fish in Alaskan waters and has warned us all of rising radioactive contamination for years now.
Recently other warnings have been published as the slow drip-drip-drop of information is slowly increasing.

In 2017, A study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.

The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.

Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.

The recent findings as you might expect are being played down and the usual sound-bites are telling us "it's nothing to worry about," something the powers that be have been saying for 8 years now.

The latest study by Alaska Sea Grant agent, Gay Sheffield claimed, a slightly elevated level of radioactive contamination connected to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected in the northern Bering Sea.

The level of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, is extremely low and not considered a health concern, according to state epidemiologists.

The sampling, conducted by residents of Saint Lawrence Island, documents the Fukushima plume’s northern edge arriving in the Bering Sea for the first time and shows levels of caesium-137 higher than they were before the 2011 nuclear power plant accident in Japan.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games perfect platform to reassure the world all is well at the Fukushima site despite leaking radioactive isotopes for the next 300 years

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• Tokyo is spending at least $20 billion to organize the Olympics.
• The 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.
• Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.
• When the Olympic torch route and Olympic stadium samples were tested, we found samples of dirt in Fukushima’s Olympic Baseball Stadium that were highly radioactive, registering 6,000 Bq/kg of Cesium, which is 3,000 times more radioactive than dirt in the US.
• Last year, a study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.

Fifty-six years after having organised the Olympic Games, the Japanese capital will be hosting a Summer edition for the second time, from 24 July to 9 August 2020, more than 9 years after the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi.

The 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.

According to Arnie Gundersen of the Fairwinds website, the government of Japan claims that the Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.

Fukushima’s radioactive reactor cores have been in direct contact with groundwater for the last eight years, and then that highly toxic radioactive water enters the Pacific Ocean.

"When the disaster struck TEPCO wanted to build an ice wall to prevent the spread of the contamination, which I knew would fail," claimed Arnie Gundersen.
"The problem with freezing the soil is that as soon as you get an earthquake, (which is a matter of when and not if), you lose power and then your ice turns to mush and you're stuck."

Gundersen, who has visited the Fukushima power plant in the past, said a better solution would be to dig a two-meter wide trench down to bedrock level and fill it with a material called zeolite: a volcanic material that comes from Mother Nature.

TEPCO’s ice wall has not eliminated radiation from spreading via groundwater. How will Fukushima’s owner TEPCO and the government of Japan successfully clean and mitigate the damage caused by the three atomic reactors that each lost their fuel to a meltdown? These problems were never anticipated in Japan where these reactors were built and operated or in the United States where the Fukushima nuclear plants were engineered and designed and the parts were manufactured.

Since the meltdowns in 2011, Fairewinds notified the world that the recovery plans for the proposed cleanup would be almost untenable, calling it a ‘long slog’.
Just this week, A report from Reuters, claimed most of that water - stored in 1,000 tanks around the plant - will need to be reprocessed before it is released into the ocean, the most likely scenario for disposal.

Reprocessing could take nearly two years and divert personnel and energy from dismantling the tsunami-wrecked reactors, a project that will take up to 40 years, (which is only an estimate as Tepco who still haven't invented the technology to fix the problem, they could still be trying to fix the problem in 2060.)

It is unclear how much that would delay decommissioning.

But any delay could be pricey; the government estimated in 2016 that the total cost of plant dismantling, decontamination of affected areas, and compensation, would amount to 21.5 trillion yen ($192.5 billion), an incredible 20 per cent of the country’s annual budget.

Tepco is already running out of space to store treated water.

And should another big quake strike, experts say tanks could crack, unleashing tainted liquid and washing highly radioactive debris into the ocean.
Last year, a study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.

The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.

Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be used as the perfect propaganda tool, as a symbol of hope and recovery, however, when the glitter and glam are peeled away, the reality is 300 tons of radioactive water is leaking daily into the Pacific and there is no known technology to fix it.

To determine whether or not Olympic athletes might be affected by fallout emanating from the disaster site, Dr Marco Kaltofen and Arnie Gundersen were sponsored by Fairewinds Energy Education to look at Olympic venues during the fall of 2017.

We took simple dirt and dust samples along the Olympic torch route as well as inside Fukushima’s Olympic stadium and as far away as Tokyo.
When the Olympic torch route and Olympic stadium samples were tested, we found samples of dirt in Fukushima’s Olympic Baseball Stadium that were highly radioactive, registering 6,000 Bq/kg of Cesium, which is 3,000 times more radioactive than dirt in the US.

We also found that simple parking lot of radiation levels were 50-times higher there than here in the US.

The bottom line is that to reduce cleanup costs while spending enormous funds on the Olympics, the government of Japan treats its 160,000 Fukushima evacuees as if they were radiation Guinea Pigs, forcing them to return to recontaminated areas to try and convince the world everything is ok, meanwhile making it difficult for serious scientists to accurately assess the effects of radiation on these evacuees.

The billions of dollars being spent on the Olympics would be much better used to help those displaced by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

Help these families find permanent homes and employment and new supportive communities far away from the contaminated areas that they are now forcibly being returned to.

Read, Atomic Balm Part 1: Prime Minister Abe Uses The Tokyo Olympics As Snake Oil Cure For The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdowns