10/24/2011 Radiation check in Japan October 24 2011 over 11µSv/h

Source: asuperdry YouTube channel
Date: 10/24/2011 upload date


Hello again from Kashiwa, this is a drain pipe check right in my own back yard. It could be any drain pipe in any yard here in Kashiwa. I have checked a few other drain pipes in other peoples yards and the ones that don't have good run-off have high readings as well.

10/18/2011 Over 20 Radioactive Hotspots Found in Tokyo … Despite Government and Media Attempt to Cover Up Spread of Radiation

Source: Washington's Blog
Date: 10/18/2011

More than 20 Radioactive Hotspots Found in Tokyo … All Due to Citizen Measurements

I noted last week that Tokyo and the adjoining city of Yokohama were found to contain “hotspots” with very high levels of radiation, and that all of the hotspots were originally found by citizens using geiger counters, because the government wasn’t really testing.

10/13/2011 Radiation Hotspot in Tokyo Linked to Mystery Bottles

Source: Reuters via Scientific American
Date: October 13, 2011
by: Yoko Kubota

A radiation hotspot has been detected in Tokyo seven months into Japan's nuclear crisis, but local officials said on Thursday high readings appeared to be coming from mystery bottles stored under a house, not the tsunami-crippled Fukushima atomic plant.

TOKYO (Reuters) - A radiation hotspot has been detected in Tokyo seven months into Japan's nuclear crisis, but local officials said on Thursday high readings appeared to be coming from mystery bottles stored under a house, not the tsunami-crippled Fukushima atomic plant.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, struck by a devastating quake and tsunami in March, has released radiation into the atmosphere that has been carried by winds, rain and snow across eastern Japan.
Officials in Setagaya, a major residential area in Tokyo about 235 km (150 miles) southwest of the plant, said this week it found a radioactive hotspot on a sidewalk near schools, prompting concerns in the country's most populated area far from the damaged nuclear plant.

The radiation measured as much as 3.35 microsieverts per hour on Thursday, higher than some areas in the evacuation zone near the Fukushima plant, the center of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

But the local government found several bottles under the floor of a nearby house emitting high levels of radiation.

"A measuring device, when pointed at them, showed very high readings. Radiation levels were even exceeding the upper limit for the device," Setagaya Mayor Nobuto Hosaka told a news conference.
Officials from the Education Ministry are now looking into the matter, including the contents of the bottles.
Public broadcaster NHK said no one had been living in the house in question.
The city of Funabashi, near Tokyo, said that a citizens' group had measured a radiation level of 5.8 microsieverts per hour at a park, but that the city's own survey showed the highest reading at the park was a quarter of that level.

Radiation levels in the 20 km radius evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant ranged from 0.5 to 64.8 microsieverts per hour, government data showed this week.

About 80,000 residents have evacuated this zone. A microsievert quantifies the amount of radiation absorbed by human tissue.

In Yokohama, also near Tokyo, radioactive strontium-90, which can cause bone cancer and leukemia, was detected in soil taken from an apartment rooftop, media reported.

Strontium has been detected within an 80 km zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but this is the first time it has been found in an area so far away, local media added.

Radiation exposure from natural sources in a year is about 2,400 microsieverts on average, the U.N. atomic watchdog says.

Japan's education ministry has set a standard allowing up to 1 microsievert per hour of radiation in schools while aiming to bring it down to about 0.11 microsievert per hour.

(Additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa and Nick Macfie)

9/17/2011 (Video) Japan's Fukushima 'worst in history'

Source: Al Jazeera
Date: 9/17/2011 Upload date
by: Steve Chao


At least one billion becquerels a day of radiation continue to leak from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant after the March earthquake and tsunami. Experts say that the total amount of radiation leaked will exceed amounts released from Chernobyl, making Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in history. Al Jazeera's Steve Chao reports from the Japanese capital of Tokyo.

8/24/2011 Japan Triples Airborne Radiation Checks as ‘Hot Spots’ Spread

Source: Bloomberg
Date: Aug 24, 2011 12:25 AM CT
by: Tsuyoshi Inajima and Yuji Okada

Japan will more than triple the number of regions it checks for airborne radiation as more contaminated “hot spots” are discovered far from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power station.

The government said it will increase radiation monitoring by helicopter to 22 prefectures from the six closest to the plant, which began spewing radiation after an earthquake and tsunami struck the station in March. The plan comes after radioactive waste more than double the regulatory limit was found 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the plant this week.

Authorities have refused to give a cumulative figure for radiation released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant after estimating in June that fallout in the six days following the quake was equal to 15 percent of total radiation released in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The authorities have been too slow to widen airborne radiation testing, said Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute in Osaka.

“The government should have expanded the monitoring area by helicopters much earlier to ease concerns among the public,” Ito said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Officials on Aug. 12 found compost in a kindergarten yard in Tokamachi city, Niigata prefecture containing radioactive cesium measuring 27,000 becquerels per kilogram, Kenichiro Kasuga, an official at the city’s disaster prevention department, said by phone.
...
Read full article here

8/11/2011 Clusterfukushima

Source: Washington's Blog
Date: 8/11/2011

There have been a cluster of earthquakes near Fukushima. Just today, there was another 6.0 earthquake.
There have been a cluster of meltdowns at Fukushima. For example, Asahi reports today:

A second meltdown likely occurred in the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, a scenario that could hinder the current strategy to end the crisis, a scientist said.
In that meltdown, 10 days after the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, the fuel may have leaked to the surrounding containment vessel, according to a report by Fumiya Tanabe, a former senior researcher at what was then the government-affiliated Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute.
***
Under Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s road map to deal with its crippled nuclear plant, reducing temperatures at the bottom of the core pressure vessel is one objective for bringing the accident under control. But if the fuel burned through the pressure vessel surrounding the No. 3 reactor and dropped into the containment vessel, that plan would be affected.
***
Around 11 a.m. on March 14, the reactor building was hit by a large hydrogen explosion that was likely caused by a core meltdown, which led to fuel falling to the bottom of the pressure vessel.
***
Tanabe also estimates that the second meltdown led to the release of large amounts of radioactive materials, and that much of the fuel fell through the pressure vessel to the surrounding containment vessel.
***
Kunihisa Soda, a former commissioner at the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan who is a specialist on severe accidents at nuclear plants, said the possibility of a second meltdown could not be ruled out.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen notes that there are currently lethal radiation levels at Fukushima, that even higher measurements are to still come, and that the nuclear core has leaked out and is on floor like a pancake working its way down.
NHK notes that scientists have found radiation levels in Japan higher than any found in the contaminated zone in Chernobyl called Red Forest:



And nuclear regulators only thought about worst case scenarios involving a single nuclear plant. They totally ignored the fact that power loss to complexes of nuclear reactors - like the cluster of 6 reactors at Fukushima - could lead to multiple simultaneous meltdowns.
And then there's a cluster of cover ups.
As the New York Times reports:

“From the 12th to the 15th we were in a location with one of the highest levels of radiation,” said Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, which is about five miles from the nuclear plant. He and thousands from Namie now live in temporary housing in another town, Nihonmatsu. “We are extremely worried about internal exposure to radiation.”
The withholding of information, he said, was akin to “murder.”
In interviews and public statements, some current and former government officials have admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster — in order, some of them said, to limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry. As the nuclear plant continues to release radiation, some of which has slipped into the nation’s food supply, public anger is growing at what many here see as an official campaign to play down the scope of the accident and the potential health risks.
Seiki Soramoto, a lawmaker and former nuclear engineer to whom Prime Minister Naoto Kan turned for advice during the crisis, blamed the government for withholding forecasts from the computer system, known as the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, or Speedi.
“In the end, it was the prime minister’s office that hid the Speedi data,” he said. “Because they didn’t have the knowledge to know what the data meant, and thus they did not know what to say to the public, they thought only of their own safety, and decided it was easier just not to announce it.”
***
Meltdowns at three of Fukushima Daiichi’s six reactors went officially unacknowledged for months. In one of the most damning admissions, nuclear regulators said in early June that inspectors had found tellurium 132, which experts call telltale evidence of reactor meltdowns, a day after the tsunami — but did not tell the public for nearly three months. For months after the disaster, the government flip-flopped on the level of radiation permissible on school grounds, causing continuing confusion and anguish about the safety of schoolchildren here in Fukushima.
***
The timing of many admissions ... suggested to critics that Japan’s nuclear establishment was coming clean only because it could no longer hide the scope of the accident.

The mayor of Namie also said the government's justifications for withholding information are nonsensical.
And in related news:

• ABC: Japan’s nuclear agency hides children’s radiation results

• Public anger “exploding” as Japanese discover more about government downplaying spread of Fukushima radiation, health dangers

• TEPCO funds chair/professsorship at MIT — Nuclear researcher: “Nuclear researchers have a stake in reassuring the pubic that nothing bad is happening”

• Panel: Nuke plant operator behind fake email campaign also destroyed documents sought by investigators about public support for MOX fuel

It's a clusterfukushima.

7/25/2011 Fukushima mobilizes 3,900 to help decontaminate 'hot spots'

Source: Kyodo News via Japan Today
Date: Jul. 25, 2011 - 04:46PM JST

FUKUSHIMA — Decontamination efforts began at several “hot spots” – areas where especially high radiation levels were detected - in and around Fukushima City on Sunday and continued Monday. Some 400 experts and 3,500 residents are participating in the effort. Residents worked to haul mud and debris from gutters and deweed the area.

Additionally, a specialized cleaning vehicle decontaminated certain roads, especially those used by children to commute to school. After the initial cleanup, residents reported Monday morning that the radiation level had dropped by about half, from 10 to around 5 microsieverts an hour.

The cleanup area is about 90 kilometers away from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, outside of the mandatory evacuation zone. But concerns began to rise when a high reading of 3.83 microsieverts/hr was measured in June. The cleanup was initiated in the hopes of avoiding the need for an evacuation of the area, local officials said.

6/21/2011 | Fukushima Nuclear Plant Remains 'Ticking Time Bomb' After Japan Disaster: Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist

Source: CNN (video), comments are by me
Date: 6/21/2011 video date

Theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku makes a return appearance on CNN.
Dr. Kaku makes many important statements about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident:

1. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant still remains in danger, especially since the estimated (more than) 110 tons of radioactive water on site only has perhaps a week's worth of storage capacity before it is forced to be released (to the sea).
2. The radiation released by Fukushima Daiichi is as much as Chernobyl (many would argue more).
3. This is the worst industrial accident in all history and will take 50-100 years to clean up.
4. 16 miles is not enough of an evacuation area, as radiation hot spots have been found much further out.
5. 34,000 kindergarten students have been given radiation badges (personal dosimeters) to wear to school.
6. TEPCO lied to cover up the severity of the accident and withheld information.
7. Miniscule amounts of radioactive iodine are showing up in milk in New York.

6/17/2011 JST | News navigator: What are radiation 'hot spots'?

Source: The Mainichi Daily News
Date: 6/17/2011

The Mainichi answers common questions readers may have about radiation "hot spots." Question: The term "hot spot" has been appearing in the news lately with regards to radiation, but what does it mean? Answer: The term refers to areas where radiation levels are comparatively higher than the areas around them, regardless of distance from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. The village of Iitate, Fukushima, where residents were asked to evacuate after it was predicted radiation exposure levels could reach 20 millisieverts a year, is one such "hot spot." Similar concentrations of radiation have also been measured at other, smaller hot spots. Residents have expressed anxiety over these comparatively high measurements. ... Read full article here

In this photo from a footage of a live camera released by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), black smoke billows from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant in Okumamachi, northeastern Japan, on March 22, 2011. (AP Photo)