Fukushima Blast Was Nuclear Explosion

British scientist Christopher Busby, a researcher on the negative health effects of ionizing radiation, told Russia Today that one of the explosions at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was a nuclear explosion, not a hydrogen explosion as widely reported in the media.



Busby said the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 was also a nuclear explosion. The Chernobyl nuclear accident dispersed large quantities of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere. Busby told RT the crisis at Fukushima is far worse than Chernobyl.

He said the explosion did not originate in the reactor core, but the tanks where spent plutonium MOX fuel rods are stored. MOX fuel contains plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. The explosion vaporized the plutonium rods and ejected a large amount of radiation into the atmosphere.

Takeshi Tokuda, a member of the Lower House of the Japanese Diet, also believes the first explosion at Fukushima was nuclear. Tokuda talked with a doctor Oikawa of the Minami Soma City General Hospital. Oikawa told the government representative that materials ejected from the plant after the explosion registered high radiation levels.

“When the hospital checked the radiation level on the people who escaped from around the nuke plant after the explosion, there were more than 10 people whose radiation level exceeded 100,000 cpm [counts per minute], beyond what could be measured by the geiger counter the hospital had,” Tokuda wrote. “100,000 cpm is the new level that the Japanese government set that requires decontamination. Before the Fukushima accident, the level was 6,000 cpm.”

The EPA has attempted to downplay the fact that plutonium is now bombarding the United States and much of the Northern Hemisphere. According to Lucas Hixton Whitefield, an EPA RADNet report shows increased levels of plutonium in the atmosphere. Whitefield found information on the plutonium in a RADnet dataset.

Fukushima and Chernobyl, similar but different

Early on, Japan’s official Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) didn’t think the damage at Fukushima was serious enough to be considered an “accident.” Ten hours after the plant was struck by an earthquake and battered by a tsunami, NISA called the situation a “serious incident,” a level 3 ranking on the IAEA scale. Even after radiation levels in the Fukushima main control room had spiked to 1,000 times normal levels, radioactive steam had been vented into the environment, and hydrogen explosions had demolished large parts of two reactor buildings, sending radioactive debris a thousand feet into the air, NISA only raised the threat assessment to level 5 — the same as the far less catastrophic accident at Three Mile Island.

Only on April 12, over a month after the crisis began, did NISA upgrade the crisis at Fukushima to level seven.

“In hindsight, their assessment of the situation was faulty,” says professor emeritus of nuclear engineering, Kenji Sumita.

The Soviet police-state clampdown on information about Chernobyl was many times worse. People surrounding the area (in what is now Ukraine) were told that a nuclear power plant had experienced only a minor accident. They weren’t told that plumes of intensely radioactive smoke were blowing across fields where dairy cows grazed. Unsuspecting resident gave their children milk with high levels of radioactive iodine, causing a spike in thyroid cancers starting ten years later.

Although thyroid cancer is treatable if caught early, and rarely results in death, the residents around Chernobyl were never told that they had been exposed to radiation and needed annual thyroid checkups. Many died needlessly.

One of the biggest differences between what happened at Chernobyl and the crisis at Fukushima is the amount of resources the two countries possess to minimize long-term effects. The Soviet Union was, we now know, facing financial collapse. Though it spent billions on Chernobyl, it simply abandoned vast amounts of contaminated land — making them into exclusions zones.

So apparently the difference is Japan isn't lying as much to the world as Russia did during Chernobyl. Of course this wonderfully in depth article doesn't even go into the differences of the nuclear explosions or meltdowns. Thanks Forbes! Oh yeah, that's right you only care about money.

Source: Forbes

The Media Corruption that Protects TEPCO

There is one particularly telling example of the media shielding TEPCO by suppressing information. This concerns “plutonium”. According to Uesugi, after the reactor blew up on March 14, there was concern about the leakage of plutonium. However, astonishingly, until two weeks later when Uesugi asked, not a single media representative had raised the question of plutonium at TEPCO's press conferences.

On March 26, in response to Uesugi’s query, TEPCO stated, “We do not measure the level of plutonium and do not even have a detector to scale it.” Ironically, the next day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano announced that “plutonium was detected”.

When TEPCO finally released data on radioactive plutonium on March 28, it stated that plutonium -238, -239, and -240 were found in the ground, but insisted that it posed no human risk. Since TEPCO provided no clarification of the meaning of the plutonium radiation findings, the mainstream press merely reported the presence of the radiation without assessment (link). Nippon Television on March 29 headlined its interview with Tokyo University Prof. Nakagawa Keiichi, a radiation specialist, “Plutonium from the power plant—No effect on neighbors.”

On March 15, Uesugi criticized TEPCO for its closed attitude toward information on a TBS radio program. For this, he was immediately dismissed from his regular program. The scandal involving TEPCO’s silencing of the media took an interesting turn two weeks later. At the time of the disaster on March 11, TEPCO Chairman Katsumata Tsunehisa was hosting dozens of mainstream media executives on a “study session” in China.When asked about this fact by freelance journalist Tanaka Ryusaku at a TEPCO press conference on March 30, Katsumata defended the practice.

“It is a fact that we traveled together to China,” he said, “[TEPCO] did not pay all the expenses of the trip, but we paid more than they did. Certainly they are executives of the mass media, but they are all members of the study session.”

When Tanaka requested the names of the media executives hosted by TEPCO in China, Katsumata retorted, “I cannot reveal their names since this is private information.” But it is precisely such collusive relations between mainstream media, the government and TEPCO, that results in the censorship of information concerning nuclear problems.

Now the Japanese government has moved to crack down on independent reportage and criticism of the government’s policies in the wake of the disaster by deciding what citizens may or may not talk about in public. A new project team has been created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, the National Police Agency, and METI to combat “rumors” deemed harmful to Japanese security in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

The government charges that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send “letters of request” to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they “take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information. ”The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality.

Makiko Segawa is a staff writer at the Shingetsu News Agency. She prepared this report from Fukushima and Tokyo. She can be reached at shingetsunewsagency@gmail.com

Source: JapanFocus.org

Nuclear apologists play shoot the messenger on radiation

Their first piece of disinformation is to confuse the effects of external and internal radiation. The former is what populations were exposed to when atomic bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Internal radiation, by contrast, emanates from radioactive elements that enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements - called internal emitters - migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer.


Source: theage.com.au

Fukushima Engineer Says He Helped Cover Up Flaw at Dai-Ichi Reactor No. 4

One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit ofHitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.

“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?” Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. “I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.”

Source: Bloomberg

The Nuclear Accident in Japan: Impacts on Fish

Source: Food & Water Watch / Article

Japan eyes possible damage to spent nuclear fuel

Tokyo Electric said Thursday night that the sample was the first time they have taken a reading off one of the spent fuel pools. The water temperature in the No. 4 pool was 90 degrees Celsius, more than twice a normal reading, and more coolant water was poured into the reservoir on Wednesday.

The company said it suspects the fuel rods were damaged due to insufficient coolant at some point since the crisis began, but could not clarify the timing.

Nishiyama told reporters Thursday evening that the fuel rods have not suffered "any particular damage." Officials are still looking at the readings from that water sample before reaching a final conclusion, but said the radiation reading was "most probably due to debris" blown into the badly damaged housing around the No. 4 reactor.

Source: CNN

Fukushima radiation taints US milk supplies at levels 300% higher than EPA maximums

As far as the water supplies are concerned, it is important to note that the EPA isonlytesting for radioactive Iodine-131. There are no readings or data available for cesium, uranium, or plutonium -- all of which are being continuously emitted from Fukushima, as far as we know -- even though these elements are all much more deadly than Iodine-131. Even so, the following water supplies have thus far tested positive for Iodine-131, with the dates they were collected in parenthesis to the right:

Los Angeles, Calif. - 0.39 pCi/l (4/4/11)
Philadelphia (Baxter), Penn. - 0.46 pCi/l (4/4/11)
Philadelphia (Belmont), Penn. - 1.3 pCi/l (4/4/11)
Philadelphia (Queen), Penn. - 2.2 pCi/l (4/4/11)
Muscle Shoals, Al. - 0.16 pCi/l (3/31/11)
Niagara Falls, NY - 0.14 pCi/l (3/31/11)
Denver, Colo. - 0.17 pCi/l (3/31/11)
Detroit, Mich. - 0.28 pCi/l (3/31/11)
East Liverpool, Oh. - 0.42 pCi/l (3/30/11)
Trenton, NJ - 0.38 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Painesville, Oh. - 0.43 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Columbia, Penn. - 0.20 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Oak Ridge (4442), Tenn. - 0.28 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Oak Ridge (772), Tenn. - 0.20 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Oak Ridge (360), Tenn. - 0.18 pCi/l (3/29/11)
Helena, Mont. - 0.18 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Waretown, NJ - 0.38 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Cincinnati, Oh. - 0.13 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Pittsburgh, Penn. - 0.36 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Oak Ridge (371), Tenn. - 0.63 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Chattanooga, Tenn. - 1.6 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Boise, Id. - 0.2 pCi/l (3/28/11)
Richland, Wash. - 0.23 pCi/l (3/28/11)

Source: naturalnews.

Radiation Detected In Drinking Water In 13 More US Cities, Cesium-137 In Vermont Milk

Drinking Water

Radioactive Iodine-131 was found in drinking water samples from 13 cities. Those cities are listed below, with the amount of Iodine-131 in picocuries per liter. The EPA’s maximum contaminant level for Iodine-131 in drinking water is 3 picocuries per liter.

• Oak Ridge, TN collected 3/28: 0.63
• Oak Ridge, TN collected at three sites 3/29: 0.28, 0.20, 0.18
• Chatanooga, TN collected 3/28: 1.6
• Helena, MT collected 3/28: 0.18
• Columbia, PA collected 3/29: 0.20
• Cincinatti, OH collected 3/28: 0.13
• Pittsburgh, PA collected 3/28: 0.36
• East Liverpool, OH collected 3/30: 0.42
• Painesville, OH collected 3/29: 0.43
• Denver, CO collected 3/30: 0.17
• Detroit, MI collected 3/31: 0.28
• Trenton, NJ collected 3/31: 0.38
• Waretown, NJ collected 3/31: 0.38
• Muscle Shoals, AL collected 3/31: 0.16

Precipitation

In the data released Friday, iodine-131 was found in rainwater samples from the following locations:

• Salt Lake City, UT collected 3/17: 8.1
• Boston, MA collected 3/22: 92
• Montgomery, Alabama collected 3/30: 3.7
• Boise, ID collected 3/27: 390

As reported above, the Boise sample also contained 42 pC/m3 of Cesium-134, and 36 of Cesium-137.

Air

In the most recent data, iodine-131 was found in air filters in the following locations. In the case of air samples, the radiation is measured in picoCuries per cubic meter.

• Montgomery, AL collected 3/31: 0.055
• Nome AK collected 3/30: 0.17
• Nome AK collected 3/29: 0.36
• Nome AK collected 3/27: 0.36
• Nome AK collected 3/26: 0.46
• Nome AK collected 3/25: 0.26
• Juneau AKcollected 3/26: 0.43
• Juneau AK collected 3/27: 0.38
• Juneau AK collected 3/30: 0.28
• Dutch Harbor AK collected 3/30: 0.14
• Dutch Harbor AK collected 3/29: 0.11
• Dutch Harbor AK colleccted 3/26: 0.21
• Boise, ID collected 3/27: 0.22
• Boise, ID collected 3/29: 0.27
• Boise, ID collected 3/28: 0.32
• Las Vegas NV collected 3/28: 0.30
• Las Vegas, NV collected 3/30:: 0.088
• Las Vegas, NV collected 3/29: 0.044

UCB Food Chain Sampling Results | The Nuclear Engineering Department At UC Berkeley

Radionuclides, once deposited by rainwater or air onto the ground, will find their way through the ecosystem. We are already tracking its path from rainwater to creek runoff to tap water, but we would also like to monitor how much these isotopes that make their way into our food. For example, how much gets taken up by the grass and eventually winds up in our milk?

We have been collecting produce that is as local as possible to test for the radioactive isotopes. We might expect different kinds of plants to take up different quantities of cesium and iodine, so we are trying to measure as many different plants and fruits as we are able to. So far, we have measuredgrass, wild mushrooms, spinach, strawberries, cilantro, kale, and arugula. We have also measured local topsoil.

The topsoil, grass, and wild mushroom samples collected so far all come from the same place, so comparing grass samples to each other is a fair "apples to apples" comparison. For most of the produce, different samples came from different markets and different farms, so there will be many factors influencing the results. This variety of produce helps provide a picture of the food chain as a whole. But for understanding the time-dependence of the food chain results, the grass and soil is what to look at.

In the tables below, we are providing two numbers for each of the isotopes. The first is a standard concentration unit of Becquerel per kilogram (Bq/kg) which is the number of particles decaying per second in each kilogram of the sample. The number in parentheses after the activity is the number of kilograms that one would need to consume to equal the radiation exposure of a single round trip flight from San Francisco to Washington D.C. (0.05 mSv). For more information on how this equivalent dose is calculated, the details are here: How Effective Dose is Calculated

The experimental setup used for the food testing is the same setup used for the Rainwater Collection Experiment.

Data Tables

Record Levels of Fukushima Japan Nuclear Radiation To Be Carried Toward US

The science ministry says radiation levels in seawater off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture are the highest since it began monitoring them about 3 weeks ago.

The ministry says the level of iodine-131 was 88.5 becquerels per liter in a sample taken on Monday in the sea about 30 kilometers east of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The figure is 2.2 times the government’s upper limit for wastewater from nuclear facilities.

Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?

A fire ignited inside the damaged housing of the Unit 4 reactor, reportedly due to overheating of spent uranium fuel rods in a dry cooling pool. But the size of the fire indicates that this reactor was running hot for some purpose other than electricity generation. Its omission from the list of electricity-generating operations raises the question of whether Unit 4 was being used to enrich uranium, the first step of the process leading to extraction of weapons-grade fissionable material.

The bloom of irradiated seawater across the Pacific comprises another piece of the puzzle, because its underground source is untraceable (or, perhaps, unmentionable). The flooded labyrinth of pipes, where the bodies of two missing nuclear workers—never before disclosed to the press— were found, could well contain the answer to the mystery: a lab that none dare name.

The substance of undisclosed talks between Tokyo and Washington can be surmised from disruptions to my recent phone calls to a Japanese journalist colleague. While inside the radioactive hot zone, his roaming number was disconnected, along with the mobiles of nuclear workers at Fukushima 1 who are denied phone access to the outside world. The service suspension is not due to design flaws. When helping to prepare the Tohoku crisis response plan in 1996, my effort was directed at ensuring that mobile base stations have back-up power with fast recharge.

A subsequent phone call when my colleague returned to Tokyo went dead when I mentioned "GE.” That incident occurred on the day that GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt landed in Tokyo with a pledge to rebuild the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant. Such apparent eavesdropping is only possible if national phone carrier NTT is cooperating with the signals-intercepts program of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

The Siberian high-pressure zone ensures a strong and steady wind flow over northern Japan, but the region's utility companies have not taken advantage of this natural energy resource. The reason is that TEPCO, based in Tokyo and controlling the largest energy market, acts much as a shogun over the nine regional power companies and the national grid. Its deep pockets influence high bureaucrats, publishers and politicians like Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, while nuclear ambitions keep the defense contractors and generals on its side. Yet TEPCO is not quite the top dog. Its senior partner in this mega-enterprise is Kishi's brainchild, METI.

The national test site for offshore wind is unfortunately not located in windswept Hokkaido or Niigata, but farther to the southeast, in Chiba Prefecture. Findings from these tests to decide the fate of wind energy won't be released until 2015. The sponsor of that slow-moving trial project is TEPCO.

Meanwhile in 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a muted warning on Japan's heightened drive for a nuclear bomb— and promptly did nothing. The White House has to turn a blind eye to the radiation streaming through American skies or risk exposure of a blatant double standard on nuclear proliferation by an ally. Besides, Washington's quiet approval for a Japanese bomb doesn't quite sit well with the memory of either Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima.

In and of itself, a nuclear deterrence capability would be neither objectionable nor illegal— in the unlikely event that the majority of Japanese voted in favor of a constitutional amendment to Article 9. Legalized possession would require safety inspections, strict controls and transparency of the sort that could have hastened the Fukushima emergency response. Covert weapons development, in contrast, is rife with problems. In the event of an emergency, like the one happening at this moment, secrecy must be enforced at all cost— even if it means countless more hibakusha, or nuclear victims.

Instead of enabling a regional deterrence system and a return to great-power status, the Manchurian deal planted the time bombs now spewing radiation around the world. The nihilism at the heart of this nuclear threat to humanity lies not inside Fukushima 1, but within the national security mindset. The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers' fight against meltdown.

Yoichi Shimatsu who is Editor-at-large with the 4th Media is a Hong Kong–based environmental writer. He is the former

Source: globalresearch.ca

Testimony from Japan: "A Ship with no Captain". Evolving Coverup of a Nuclear Disaster...

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency “says the damaged facilities have been releasing a massive amount of radioactive substances, which are posing a threat to human health and the environment over a wide area.”

Today the Fukushima plant looks like a war zone due to TEPCO’s negligence. Their record of lying and falsification is well documented at the Citizens for Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo (CNIC) which has a bi-monthly newsletter available in their archives. It is published in both Japanese and English.

On April 1st (and this is no fool’s joke), 16 Japanese experts on nuclear power engineering, nuclear physics and radiology issued a frightening statement, saying that they “do not rule out the possibility that as time goes on, a molten core melts a weak part of a pressure vessel and enters a containment vessel, destroying the reactor's function to contain radioactive substances, or that hydrogen gas forming inside a pressure vessel explodes and destroys a containment vessel, causing serious radioactive contamination over a large expanse of land and sea....the current makeshift efforts to cool the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors will not be able to completely cool down molten nuclear fuel so as it will not burst through the bottom of pressure vessels.”

It has been long been rumored that the Japanese nuke industry uses homeless and other desperate workers to carry out dangerous cleaning operations in their aging reactors. A 1995 British television documentary entitled “Nuclear Ginza” revealed this astonishing practice. Photo journalist Kenji Higuchi presented stunning interviews with workers who had suffered radiation exposure in the plants. Higuchi once told me the film was blocked from being shown on NHK, the government TV news station.

Masayoshi Yamamoto, a professor of radiology at Kanazawa University, finds the cesium-137 to be the most worrisome because of its 30 half life. He stated that if continuous leakage into the ocean is not prevented, "[a]ll of Japan's sea products will probably be labeled unsafe and other nations will blame Japan if radiation is detected in their marine products."

Source: globalresearch.ca

Fire at Fukushima No. 4 Reactor

A fresh fire broke out at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant this morning, while a strong aftershock hit the east of the country.

The Reuters news agency quoted the plant's operators as saying crews had been brought in to fight a fire at Fukushima's No. 4 reactor.

A spokesman for the plant's operators TEPCO said flames and smoke were "no longer visible" but said the company was waiting for further details on whether the fire had been extinguished completely.

Source: abc

Japan may raise nuclear threat to Chernobyl level

Kyodo said the government's Nuclear Safety Commission has estimated the amount of radioactive material released from the reactors in Fukushima, northern Japan, reached a maximum of 10 000 terabequerels per hour at one point for several hours, which would classify the incident as a major accident according to the INES scale.

Source: http://mg.co.za/article/2011-04-11-japan-may-raise-nuclear-threat-to-chernobyl-level/

Radiation Detected In Drinking Water In 13 More US Cities, Cesium-137 In Vermont Milk | Common Dreams

Milk samples from Phoenix and Los Angeles contained iodine-131 at levels roughly equal to the maximum contaminant level permitted by EPA, the data shows. The Phoenix sample contained 3.2 picoCuries per liter of iodine-131. The Los Angeles sample contained 2.9. The EPA maximum contaminant level is 3.0, but this is a conservative standard designed to minimize exposure over a lifetime, so EPA does not consider these levels to pose a health threat.

The cesium-137 found in milk in Vermont is the first cesium detected in milk since the Fukushima-Daichi nuclear accident occurred last month. The sample contained 1.9 picoCuries per liter of cesium-137, which falls under the same 3.0 standard.

Airborne contamination continues to cross the western states, the new data shows, and Boise has seen the highest concentrations of radioactive isotopes in rain so far.

A rainwater sample collected in Boise on March 27 contained 390 picocures per liter of iodine-131, plus 41 of cesium-134 and 36 of cesium-137. EPA released this result for the first time yesterday. Typically several days pass between sample collection and data release because of the time required to collect, transport and analyze the samples.

But the EPA drinking-water data includes one outlier—an unusually, but not dangerously, high reading in a drinking water sample from Chatanooga, Tennessee.

The sample was collected at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Sequoyah nuclear plant. A Tennessee official told the Chatanooga Times last week that radiation from Japan had been detected at Sequoyah but is “1,000 to 10,000 times below any levels of concern.” The 1.6 picocures per liter reported by the EPA on Friday is slightly more than half the maximum contaminant level permitted in drinking water, but more uniquely, it is many times higher than all the other drinking water samples collected in the U.S.

[UPDATE: EPA released new data Saturday revealing higher levels than reported here in Little Rock milk and Philadelphia drinking water]

Drinking Water

Radioactive Iodine-131 was found in drinking water samples from 13 cities. Those cities are listed below, with the amount of Iodine-131 in picocuries per liter. The EPA’s maximum contaminant level for Iodine-131 in drinking water is 3 picocuries per liter.

Oak Ridge, TN collected 3/28: 0.63

Oak Ridge, TN collected at three sites 3/29: 0.28, 0.20, 0.18

Chatanooga, TN collected 3/28: 1.6

Helena, MT collected 3/28: 0.18

Columbia, PA collected 3/29: 0.20

Cincinatti, OH collected 3/28: 0.13

Pittsburgh, PA collected 3/28: 0.36

East Liverpool, OH collected 3/30: 0.42

Painesville, OH collected 3/29: 0.43

Denver, CO collected 3/30: 0.17

Detroit, MI collected 3/31: 0.28

Trenton, NJ collected 3/31: 0.38

Waretown, NJ collected 3/31: 0.38

Muscle Shoals, AL collected 3/31: 0.16

Precipitation

In the data released Friday, iodine-131 was found in rainwater samples from the following locations:

Salt Lake City, UT collected 3/17: 8.1

Boston, MA collected 3/22: 92

Montgomery, Alabama collected 3/30: 3.7

Boise, ID collected 3/27: 390

Air

In the most recent data, iodine-131 was found in air filters in the following locations. In the case of air samples, the radiation is measured in picoCuries per cubic meter.

Montgomery, AL collected 3/31: 0.055

Nome AK collected 3/30: 0.17

Nome AK collected 3/29: 0.36

Nome AK collected 3/27: 0.36

Nome AK collected 3/26: 0.46

Nome AK collected 3/25: 0.26

Juneau AKcollected 3/26: 0.43

Juneau AK collected 3/27: 0.38

Juneau AK collected 3/30: 0.28

Dutch Harbor AK collected 3/30: 0.14

Dutch Harbor AK collected 3/29: 0.11

Dutch Harbor AK colleccted 3/26: 0.21

Boise, ID collected 3/27: 0.22

Boise, ID collected 3/29: 0.27

Boise, ID collected 3/28: 0.32

Las Vegas NV collected 3/28: 0.30

Las Vegas, NV collected 3/30:: 0.088

Las Vegas, NV collected 3/29: 0.044

Source: commondreams

Japan Fails To Stop Radioactive Water From Spilling Into Ocean

The nuclear plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), has been pumping sea water into the reactors to cool the nuclear core, and then discharging the water, after it has become contaminated, back into the Pacific Ocean.

TEPCO had planned to stop the discharge on Saturday, but work was interrupted by a powerful aftershock late on Thursday. The firm then pushed the target back to Sunday, a goal it failed to meet.

"We are making checks on remaining water, and the final check is scheduled for tomorrow," a company spokesman told a press briefing late on Sunday.

TEPCO was forced to start pumping sea water into the power plant after failing to restart the reactors' cooling systems after the quake. It has been pumping in nitrogen to cool the core, but officials say they are unsure of what to do next.

"We cannot say what the outlook is for the next stage," Hidehiko Nishiyama, a deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said on Sunday. "As soon as possible we would like to achieve stable cooling and set a course toward controlling radiation."

Source: huffingtonpost

All Things Nuclear • Internal NRC Documents Reveal Doubts about Safety Measures

Internal NRC Documents Reveal Doubts about Safety Measures

by Ed Lyman

In the weeks following the Fukushima accident, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and nuclear industry officials have been asserting that US nuclear plants are better prepared to withstand a catastrophic event like the March 11 earthquake and tsunami than Japanese plants because they have additional safety measures in place.

According to internal NRC documents, however, there is no consensus within the NRC that US plants are sufficiently protected. The documents indicate that technical staff members doubt the effectiveness of key safety measures adopted after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Therefore, it remains highly uncertain whether the US would be better prepared than the Japanese to manage the aftermath of such severe events. Although the Japanese have engaged in heroic efforts, they have not able to prevent significant damage to reactor cores, spent fuel and containment structures, resulting in huge radioactive releases into the atmosphere and the ocean.

UCS obtained the NRC documents on March 25 from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we made a month before the Japanese disaster.

NRC and industry officials recently testified before Congress that U.S. reactors are fully prepared for the worst. For example, at a hearing hosted by the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee on March 30, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko testified:

As a result of the events of September 11, 2001, we identified important pieces of equipment that regardless of the cause of a significant fire or explosion at a plant, the NRC requires licensees to have available and staged in advance, as well as new procedures and policies to help deal with a severe situation.

Likewise, testifying on behalf of the Nuclear Energy Institute, William Levis, the president and COO of the Public Service Enterprise Group, which owns two nuclear plants in New Jersey, told the subcommittee:

Since the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, U.S. nuclear plant operators identified other beyond-design-basis vulnerabilities. As a result, U.S. nuclear plant designs and operating practices since 9/11 are designed to mitigate severe accident scenarios such as aircraft impact, which include the complete loss of offsite power and all on-site emergency power sources and loss of large areas of the plant. The industry developed additional methods and procedures to provide cooling to the reactor and the spent fuel pool, and staged additional equipment at all U.S. nuclear power plant sites to ensure that the plants are equipped to deal with extreme events and nuclear plant operations staff are trained to manage them.

NRC calls these post-9/11 procedures “B.5.b measures,” referencing the section of the compensatory measures order issued the agency issued in 2002 to all reactor licensees. The agency codified them in its regulations in 2009 in a document titled CFR 50.54(hh)(2), but because their details are security-related, they are not publicly available.

At the March 30 hearing, both Jaczko and Levis sounded confident that B.5.b measures would protect U.S. reactors from a situation such as the ongoing crisis at Fukushima Daiichi, which lost off-site and on-site power for an extended period, eventually leading to the loss of all cooling.

Internal NRC documents obtained by UCS tell a different story.

In February 2011, UCS filed a FOIA request for all information associated with a secretive NRC program known as the “State of the Art Reactor Consequence Analyses,” or SOARCA.

SOARCA, according to the NRC, is “a research effort to realistically estimate the outcomes of postulated severe accident scenarios that might cause a nuclear power plant to release radioactive material into the environment. The SOARCA project applies many years of national and international nuclear safety research, and incorporates the improvements in plant design, operation and accident management to achieve a more realistic evaluation of the consequences associated with such accidents.”

The NRC also stated that SOARCA takes into account enhancements required by NRC after 9/11—the B.5.b measures.

The SOARCA program, which the agency initiated in 2006, focused on two plants: Surry in Virginia and Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania. Coincidentally, Peach Bottom is a Mark I boiling water reactor (BWR) like Fukushima Daiichi reactors 1 through 4.

One of the hypothetical accidents that the SOARCA program analyzed was astation blackout at Peach Bottom where the plant failed to recover power before the backup batteries ran out—the very situation that occurred at Fukushima. That analysis would be extremely useful to understand what happened at Fukushima. However, the NRC has withheld nearly all documents related to SOARCA from the public.

In most Mark I BWRs experiencing a station blackout a cooling system that runs on battery power, known as the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling system, or RCIC, is available. But when the battery runs down—after eight hours or less—the RCIC will stop operating. If plant workers do not restore alternating current power by then, no cooling systems will be available and the fuel in the reactor will overheat and eventually begin to melt. Most experts believe that is what happened at Fukushima Daiichi units 1 through 3.

According to the emails obtained by UCS, NRC’s B.5.b measures contain unspecified strategies to continue operating the RCIC even after battery power is lost. However, the emails make clear that there are disagreements between NRC senior reactor analysts who work in NRC’s regional offices under the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation and the staff conducting the SOARCA project, who are in the agency’s Office of Research.

In particular, one NRC staff email, dated July 28, 2010, described senior analysts’ objections to SOARCA as follows:

One concern has been that SOARCA credits certain B5b mitigating strategies (such as RCIC operation w/o DC power) that have really not been reviewed to ensure that they will work to mitigate severe accidents. Generally, we have not even seen licensees credit these strategies in their own [probabilistic risk assessments] but for some reason the NRC decided we should during SOARCA.

My recollection is that [Region I senior reactor analysts] in particular have been vocal with their concerns on SOARCA for several years, probably because Peach Bottom is one of the SOARCA plants.

In other words, senior reactor analysts who work directly with the Peach Bottom Mark I BWR apparently do not have faith in the effectiveness of the very B.5.b measures that the NRC and nuclear industry officials are touting as a reason why the United States is better prepared to deal with a Fukushima-like event than Japan.

Another (undated) document reinforces this concern:

The application of 10 CFR 50.54(hh) [2009 regulations] mitigation measures still concerns a number of staff in [the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation]. The concern involves the manner in which credit is given to these measures such that success is assumed…. 10 CFR 50.54(hh) mitigation measures are just equipment on-site that can be useful in an emergency when used by knowledgeable operators if post-event conditions allow. If little is known about these post-event conditions, then assuming success is speculative.

If we are going to have any confidence that US plants are safe, the NRC and the industry have to be completely open and honest about what they know and what they don’t know. They are doing Americans a disservice if they are saying publicly that these untested measures are effective when privately they are expressing doubts they will work.

The concerns of NRC senior reactor analysts with regard to the credibility of post-accident mitigative measures need to be taken seriously by the NRC task force established to review regulations and policies in light of the Fukushima crisis.

A third NRC document is an email the briefly discusses the schedule of the SOARCA analysis.

Source: UCS