10/15/2011 How to protect oneself from radiation if evacuation is not possible

Source: drdrwoland YouTube channel
Date: 10/15/2011
by: Professor Christopher Busby

Chris Busby updates Japan on what to do to reduce the risk of radiation damage from the contamination from the Strontium-90, Uranium and Plutonium dispersed widely over northern Japan.First of all, evacuate the children and evacuate yourselves. The contamination of the ground and the food is a serious health hazard. Car air filter analysis shows the material on the ground becomes airborne and can be inhaled.

Get away If you can; but if not not then you can reduce the access of these radionuclides to the DNA. It is basic Physical Chemistry that increasing the Calcium concentration, (Calcium which stabilises the DNA phosphate backbone), will inhibit the equilibrium binding of radionuclides like Strontium, Uranium, Plutonium and other high DNAP affinity elements and complex ions. The Iodine thyroid blocking method is based on the same thermodynamic chemical equilibrium idea.

A number of websites have been selling pills based on his ideas and more are being set up but it is straightforward, he says, to buy Calcium/ Magnesium tablets from health food shops where they are not expensive. The adult dose is about 800mg Calcium and 350mg Magnesium. Reduce the dose for children in proportion to their relative weight, so for a 10-year old, about 400mg Calcium and 175mg Magnesium. This is a critical issue: it will save lives and it is so simple and is absolutely harmless.

http://www.llrc.org
http://www.greenaudit.org
http://www.bsrrw.org
http://www.euradcom.org

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)

10/12/2011 Japanese church seeks help with rebuilding plans in Chicago suburbs

Source: Daily Herald
Date: 10/12/2011 8:55 PM


A Baptist congregation displaced by radiation from the nuclear plant meltdown after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami can’t go home again. But members are determined to rebuild as close as possible.
...
Read full article here

10/14/2011 Tokyo Hit With Fukushima Radiation

Source: Washington's Blog
Date: 10/14/2011

Fukushima Radiation Hits Tokyo

CNN reports today:

An extraordinarily high level of radiation was detected in one spot in a central Tokyo residential district Thursday, prompting the local government to cordon off the small area, local officials said.
Radiation levels were higher in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward than in the evacuation area around the badly damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to ward Mayor Nobuto Hosaka.
“We are shocked to see such high radiation level was detected in our neighborhood. We cannot leave it as is,” Hosaka told reporters.
But the tsunami-struck Fukushima plant may not be the source of the radiation, Hosaka said later on state television.
Officials searching for the cause found “glass bottles in a cardboard box” in the basement of a house in the neighborhood which sent radiation detectors off the charts, he said on NHK.
“We suspect these bottles in basement could be the cause of the high radiation reading and we are hastily working to confirm it,” he said.
Radiation experts are now checking what contaminated the bottles, a Setagaya ward official told CNN, declining to be named in line with policy.

Perhaps it is just some random contaminated bottles.

10/13/2011 Crack discovered in Davis-Besse containment building

Source: WTOL 11 HD
Date: Oct 13, 2011 5:18 PM CDT

OAK HARBOR, OH (WTOL) - Workers replacing the nuclear reactor head at the Davis-Besse plant discovered a crack in a concrete containment building Monday.

10/13/2011 Strong earthquake [Magnitude 5.9] hits off the coast of Oregon, no damage

Source: Lincoln Tribune
Date: October 13, 2011 – 1:38 am 

COOS BAY, OREGON (BNO NEWS) -- A strong earthquake struck off the coast of Oregon on early Wednesday evening, seismologists said, but there were no reports of damage or casualties and no tsunami warning was issued.

The 5.9-magnitude earthquake at 8.13 p.m. local time (0413 GMT Thursday) was centered about 144 miles (233 kilometers) west of Coos Bay, a city located in Coos County on the Pacific coast. It struck about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) deep, making it a shallow earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

The USGS said it did not expect to see damage or casualties due to the earthquake's distance from the coast, and there were no immediate reports of tremors being felt anywhere along the coast.

Wednesday's earthquake was one of the strongest earthquakes to hit off the coast of Oregon in recent years, but no tsunami warning was issued by the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center (WCATWC).
(Copyright 2011 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.)

Editor's Note: This earthquake was downgraded by the USGS to a Magnitude 5.3.

View Live Ustream Radiation Detectors in a larger map

10/12/2011 The major news this week is the Strontium-90 found in Yokohama, which is even further from Fukushima I than Tokyo

There are many corroborating sources regarding deadly radionuclides or high levels of radiation being found far from the 20 km exclusion zone around Fukushima I. Bloggers, CNN, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and Kyodo News (amongst others) have confirmed that Strontium-90 has indeed been found in Yokohama, which is South of Tokyo and even further away than the major city from the melted down Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The apartment rooftop where the Stontium-90 was found is 155 miles (250 km) away from Fukushima I. This indicates that dangerous radioactive contamination is more far reaching than originally thought.  Note that the testing was done by a private testing lab, not the government.

Here is a series of articles from this week concerning this topic:

Date	Source	Headline
10/12/2011	CNN	Radioactive sediment found miles from Japan nuclear crisis zone
10/13/2011	Fukushima Diary	News: This is where strontium is
10/12/2011	Fukushima Diary	News: NHK manipulates again
10/11/2011	EX-SKF Blog	Test Result on Strontium-90 Detection in Yokohama
10/12/2011	Enformable	Japanese Government has “always known” about concentrated radiation hot spots discovered In Tokyo, Yokohama
10/12/2011	ABC	Radioactive material found 250km from Fukushima
10/12/2011	Kyodo News	Radioactive strontium found in Yokohama, 250 km from Fukushima plant
10/13/2011	Kyodo News	High levels of radiation detected in Tokyo
10/13/2011	The Japan Times	Yokohama finds high strontium-90 levels

Keep up to date with nuclear developments with the RadiationNews™ Google gadget

10/10/2011 Nuclear decontamination to begin in Japan

Source: NHK World
Date: 10/10/2011
by: Catherine Kobayashi and Keiko Kitagawa

Part 1: Decontamination plan compiled http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/10_24.html

The Japanese Environment Ministry has come up with a revised plan to clear away radioactive substances from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

It announced details on Monday at a meeting of a panel of experts.

Ministry officials say decontamination will be carried out in areas where radiation levels are higher than 1 millisievert per year.

The ministry revised an earlier plan to only decontaminate places with more than 5 millisieverts per year. Municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture that have areas with less than 5 millisieverts argued they should be included in the cleanup.

The government will be responsible for the decontamination of no-entry zones and government-designated evacuation zones. Local governments will clean up the rest of the affected areas.

Areas with radiation levels higher than 20 millisieverts per year will be reduced stage by stage as soon as possible.

In areas with less than 20 millisieverts per year, radiation levels recorded at the end of August will be cut up to 60 per cent in the next 2 years.

Environment Ministry officials say the government will help prefectures that have a massive amount of radioactive waste.

The ministry's decontamination plan will be further discussed within the government before being adopted by the Cabinet as the basic national plan.

Monday, October 10, 2011 22:04 +0900 (JST)

Part 2: IAEA team continues observing decontamination http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/10_26.html

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency have observed the Japanese government's experimental decontamination of a farm in Iitate Village. The land is in Fukushima Prefecture, inside the government-designated evacuation zone.

The 12 experts on the IAEA team arrived in Fukushima on Sunday to give advice about effective methods to clear away radioactive substances.

They visited a rice paddy on Monday where the experimental decontamination is being carried out.

Government officials explained radiation levels were reduced by 75 percent per kilogram of soil after workers removed 4 centimeters of top soil. They also said the dose of radiation in unpolished rice was about 0.1 percent of that of soil.

IAEA experts say these radiation levels are low and pose no problem.

They also inspected a site that uses 400 degree Celsius heat to process plants containing radioactive substances.

Government officials said they contained radioactive cesium within the plants when they converted them into charcoal. They said this method could help reduce the weight of plants.

An IAEA member said it would be necessary to work out a plan to effectively burn massive amounts of plants.

The IAEA experts are meeting Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato on Tuesday, their last day in the prefecture.

Monday, October 10, 2011 22:18 +0900 (JST)

10/10/2011 Fukushima/earthquake evacuees move from shelters to temporary housing

Source: NHK World
Date: 10/10/2011
by: Catherine Kobayashi

Part 1: Seven months since the disaster: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/11_09.html

It's been seven months since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

In the hardest hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, 2,231 people are still living in 205 shelters, but more and more people are moving into temporary housings.

Police say the death toll as of October 7th stood at 15,761.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011 07:20 +0900 (JST)

Part 2: All shelters closing in hard-hit Ishinomaki: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/10_22.html

Officials in the city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture are closing the last remaining shelters for survivors of the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. Residents and volunteers have renewed their vow to rebuild their community.

About 50 of them gathered on Monday at one of the last remaining evacuation centers. All shelters will be closed on Tuesday because city authorities have finished building temporary housing units.

The survivors presented letters of gratitude and flowers to the volunteers who helped run the shelter. Some of them performed a traditional lion dance.

They also shared memories of the 7 months they spent at the evacuation center.

One man in his 60s said he will be sad to be separated from other survivors because they supported each other. He said he will hold onto the memory of the shelter and move forward. He also vowed to make a fresh start and return to where he used to live.

Ishinomaki is one of the areas in Japan's northeast that was hit hardest by the earthquake and tsunami. About 50,000 people were staying at the city's 250 evacuation centers at one point.

Monday, October 10, 2011 22:04 +0900 (JST)

Part 3: Onagawa residents move into temporary housing: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/11_05.html

Residents in the disaster-hit Onagawa Town in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, began moving into new temporary housing on Monday.

About 220 Onagawa residents are still living in shelters.

Architect Shigeru Ban designed 2- and 3-storey temporary houses made from shipping containers. The town built 189 new residences on a baseball field.

Onagawa is surrounded by mountains and has limited space for construction. Teiji Kobayashi from the Onagawa office in charge of the town's reconstruction said it was difficult to secure land. He also said that the multi-storey housing would attract attention and cheer up those who live there.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011 03:37 +0900 (JST)

4/29/2011 True Stories by An Ex-TEPCO Nuclear Designer "TEPCO Is A Terrible Company"

Source: tokybrowntabby
Date: Video dated 4/29/2011 uploaded 10/6/2011

Please click on "cc" to show English subtitles. Mr. Toshio Kimura is a former nuclear designer at TEPCO. He used to work at Fukushima-1 Nuclear Power Plant. When the earthquake/tsunami hit, he was living 15km west of the plant, operating his own business of solar power generation, surfing on his free time. After the explosion of Unit 1 reactor, he and his family evacuated to Kochi Prefecture, where they live now.

Mr. Kimura has given talks at various anti-nuclear rallies around the country. This video is one of his talks at the rally held in Kochi Prefecture on April 29, 2011.

*********************************************************
The rest of his talk goes like this:
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As to the situation of the plant, 70% of the fuel in Unit 1 have melted. I haven't looked at the most recent data, but the reactor pressure is increasing, the radiation dose inside the containment vessel is increasing, and iodine-131 is not decreasing. It has started to decrease a bit recently, though. All this means is there definitely has been re-criticality until recently. Because, as you know, the half life of iodine-131 is only 8 days. And yet, after more than a month from the accident, we still see an increase in the level of iodine-131. That itself proves there has been re-criticality, because otherwise iodine shouldn't have been produced. A neutron hits the atom of uranium-235, the atom splits, and iodine-131 is produced. That's how the nuclear fission occurs. And through the mechanism that can be explained by Einstein's theory of relativity, heat is produced. The heat boils water to create steam, and the steam spins the turbin. The turbines are connected in series and drive the electrical generator to produce electricity. This is the mechanism of electricity generation.

Iodine-131 is not produced unless neutrons cause nuclear fission. That's why I'm saying there has been re-criticality. Nuclear Safety Commission won't admit it. TEPCO won't admit it. The government won't admit it. But really there has been re-criticality until very recently. This is the fact. Any professional with the knowledge of physics of nuclear reactor can tell. This re-criticality issue is one of the things they are hiding from you.

Another lie is that 0.24 microsievert/h is safe. This is wrong.

These are the things I wanted to tell you today. Here in Kochi, you don't have to worry too much because Kochi is quite far from Fukushima. But please look at the radiation dispersion forecast by the German Weather Service. If you notice the north-east wind is blowing throughout Japan, don't ever let children get wet in the rain. And women who want to have children in the future. Don't let them go outside on such days. We, middle-aged men are okay, including me.

It's because cesium-137 is dangerous. Its half life is 30 years. It's dangerous because it tends to accumulate in muscles. Men have relatively more muscle. Even if cesium-137 gets absorbed inside their bodies, it spreads thinly throughout their muscles. On the other hand, women don't have much muscle, and the absorbed cesium tends to concentrate in the organs like mammary gland and uterus. It may increase the incidence of breast cancer. But this is something you can prevent if you have the knowledge. If you have to go outside on such days, please wet the gauze inside the mask first and put on the mask before you go out.

Also, you have to be careful with iodine, too, while it is still released. Iodine accumulates in seaweed and it is easily absorbed from your hair. So, one way to prevent iodine absorption is to put on a hat so that your hair won't get wet from the rain.

You haven't heard about such things, have you? Nobody tells you that. The government doesn't tell, either. But I wanted to let you know. That's why I came here today.

I don't want to talk too long, but one last thing.

I hear some wise old men protected a very beautiful fountain located within the radius of 30km from Chernobyl plant. How they protected it is mysterious. I studied nuclear energy intensively and I studied physics to some extent. But still I believe in an invisible power. Those wise old men didn't evacuate after the accident. How did they protect the fountain? By prayer. I'm not sure how many of you believe in the power of prayer. But if you can believe in it, even if just a little, then please pray in the morning that the Fukushima-1 nuke plant may rest in peace. And remember, we've benefited from radioactivity because it produces electricity. So, please pray that the radiation will be neutralized and vanished by our sense of gratitude and our love. I hope we'll pull together and pass that prayer over to the next generation.

That's all I had to say. Thank you.

*********************************************************
Translation and captioning by tokyobrowntabby.

10/6/2011 Fukushima nuclear plant worker dies

Source: The Telegraph
Date: 1:23PM BST 06 Oct 2011

A worker at Japan's disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant has died, its operator said, adding that the death was not necessarily related to radioactive leaks.

The Fukushima nuclear site after the tsunami Photo: EPA

1:23PM BST 06 Oct 2011

The male worker, in his 50s, was taken to hospital for treatment on Wednesday after feeling ill during a regular morning assembly at the plant, some 140 miles north of Tokyo, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).
...
Read full article here

Editor's Note: This is the third reported Fukushima worker death.  TEPCO historically is a proven liar, so if they said this guy did not die from radiation, take it with a grain of salt.

Second Fukushima worker death: August 30, 2011 Fukushima worker dies of acute leukemia
First Fukushima worker death: May 14, 2011 10:32 PM Worker dies at damaged Fukushima nuclear plant
 

10/6/2011 IAEA sends decontamination experts to Japan

Source: NHK World 
Date: Friday, October 07, 2011 11:22 +0900 (JST)

The International Atomic Energy Agency has sent a team of experts to Japan to give advice on cleaning up the radioactive contamination from the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

On Thursday, the 12-member IAEA team left Vienna, where the head office of the world's nuclear watchdog is based.

The IAEA sent the mission at the request of Japan's nuclear crisis minister, Goshi Hosono, who attended the IAEA general conference in Vienna in September.

The radiation experts have experience in remediating areas contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in 1986.

The team's leader, Juan Carlos Lentijo, said before their departure that they would like to help Japan find the best way to decontaminate the affected areas.

Lentijo, the head of radiation protection at Spain's nuclear regulatory authority, said the team's important mission is to come up with proposals to share with Japan.

The members will discuss decontamination steps with Japanese officials and advise Fukushima residents.
They will leave Japan on October 15th.