Doctors’ prescription for the Tokyo Olympics — IPPNW, Beyond Nuclear International

” Statement of IPPNW Germany regarding participation in the Olympic Games in Japan

In July 2020, the Olympic Games will start in Japan. Young athletes from all over the world have been preparing for these games for years and millions of people are looking forward to this major event.

We at IPPNW Germany are often asked whether it is safe to travel to these Olympic Games in Japan either as a visitor or as an athlete or whether we would advise against such trips from a medical point of view. We would like to address these questions.

To begin with, there are many reasons to be critical of the Olympic Games in general: the increasing commercialization of sports, the lack of sustainability of sports venues, doping scandals, the waste of valuable resources for an event that only takes place for several weeks and corruption in the Olympic organizations to name just a few. However, every four years, the Olympic Games present a unique opportunity for many young people from all over the world to meet other athletes and to celebrate a fair sporting competition – which was the initial vision of the Olympic movement. Also, the idea of Olympic peace and mutual understanding between nations and people is an important aspect for us as a peace organization.

Fukushima…and no end in sight

Regarding the Olympic Games in Japan, another factor comes into play: the Japanese government is using the Olympic Games to deflect from the ongoing nuclear catastrophe in the Northeast of the country.

The government wants people to think that the situation in Fukushima is under control and people in the region are safe from radioactive contamination. The president of the German Olympic Sports Association, Alfons Hörmann, recently went so far as to say that “the regions close to the Olympic Games are safe from environmental disasters”.

Of course, this is an untenable assertion for a region with extremely high seismic activity. Regarding the situation around the destroyed nuclear reactors in Fukushima, the situation is far from “under control” even today. External cooling water has to be continuously circulated through the ruins of the damaged reactors. Inside, life-threatening radiation doses still prevail. Large parts of the contaminated cooling-water is still flowing into the sea or leaches into groundwater despite major efforts by the Japanese authorities to contain it. The rest of the radioactive wastewater is being stored in huge tanks on site. Their contamination with hazardous radioisotopes like Strontium- 90 presents an ongoing threat to the region.

In December of 2018, data regarding thyroid tests were published. The incidence of thyroid cancer among tested children in Fukushima is 15 times higher than the Japanese average for this age bracket.

We are also seeing a distinct geographic distribution, with a significantly higher incidence of thyroid cancer in the most heavily contaminated regions.

With each storm, radioactive particles from the forests and mountains are brought back to the villages and cities – even to those previously decontaminated. International regulations stipulate that the population should not be exposed to more than one millisievert of additional radiation after a nuclear accident. In areas around Fukushima already earmarked for resettlement, the population will be exposed to radiation dosages that can range up to 20 mSv. As an organization of physicians, we have repeatedly pointed out the resulting health risks for the population of the affected regions, which we consider unacceptable.

While the nuclear catastrophe is a daily reality for the people living in the area and will be for many years to come, the situation for visitors is of course different. To answer the question of whether a trip to Japan or participation in the Olympic Games is acceptable from a medical point of view, a variety of aspects must be taken into consideration:

General information regarding radiation risks

Generally, the radiation exposure in the contaminated regions in Japan poses increased health risks. However, especially for short-term visits, these risks can be considered small – as long as individuals are not specifically sensitive to radiation. But it needs to be stressed that there is no threshold in radiation dose, below which it could be considered safe or without negative effects on health.

The individual disposition and the risk for a radiation-induced disease normally remains undetected and individuals themselves are often not aware of their sensitivity. Once a person falls sick, you can draw conclusions by working backward and may find increased radiation sensitivity (e.g. for breast cancer patients with the BRCA-1/2-mutation).

For pregnant women and small children, we generally recommend to refrain from intercontinental flights and to avoid visits to the contaminated areas in Japan to minimize individual radiation doses. Until today, there are still hot-spots, even in the decontaminated regions – places where radioactive particles from the Fukushima meltdowns have accumulated and were overlooked during the decontamination efforts or places that were recontaminated by rain, pollen flight or flooding. These hot-spots pose an ongoing risk for the residents of the region. Even in the greater Tokyo area, hot-spots were detected in the past.

It is important to know that even when radiation exposure limits are met, certain health risks cannot be ruled out. Exposure limits are derived from the politically acceptable risk of disease that the government thinks the population would be willing to accept. The question is not “At which dose can we expect health risks to occur?” but rather “Which health risks are still acceptable for society?”

Radioactivity in any dosage, however small, can trigger a disease – the higher the dose, the higher the risk. As with smoking and other cancer-inducing factors, there is no “safe” dose. Even natural background radioactivity can trigger diseases. While natural background radiation can mostly not be avoided, we recommend trying to avoid additional radiation exposure as best as possible in order to lower the individual risk of contracting radiation-induced diseases such as cancer.

We can only hope that there will be no further recontamination in Japan caused by storms, earthquakes, forest fires, flooding or technical failures at the damaged reactors, which could put the Olympic Games in Japan at risk.

How you travel

For most visitors, the flight to Japan and back will probably present the highest single radiation exposure. Depending on solar activity, length, height, and routing of the flight, the radiation dose for a flight from Europe to Japan is between 45 and 110 microsieverts (μSv) per flight – about the same dose you are exposed to during a normal chest x-ray. The exact radiation dose resulting from a flight can be calculated on the website of Munich Helmholtz-Institute.

Where you travel

While large parts of Japan have remained relatively unaffected by the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, there are still radiation hot-spots in the prefectures of Fukushima, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Miyagi and Chiba. Inhalation or ingestion of radioactive particles with food or water poses a considerable health risk. It is not sufficient to rely on officially published dose measurements, as even previously decontaminated areas can always become recontaminated with radioactive particles from the forests and mountains around Fukushima through pollen, rains, forest fires or storms.

Some areas around Fukushima remain closed to the public due to elevated radiation levels, others have been reopened after decontamination measures were performed. In metropolitan areas, like in Fukushima City, most monitoring posts record radiation levels below 0.2 microsieverts per hour (0.2 μSv/h). This corresponds to common background values registered in other parts of the world. Background radiation is a continuous source of radiation that depends largely on the local geographical soil composition. Background radiation contributes to numerous cancers and cardiovascular diseases worldwide. Unlike background radiation, which can hardly be avoided, manmade radiation stemming from nuclear weapons testing or the nuclear industry can be confronted politically. A regularly updated map of the official monitoring post in the prefecture can be found (in Japanese) on line.

However, these official measurements need to be treated with caution since the authorities have a vested interest in systematically downplaying radiation effects and ambient dose levels. While officially published dose levels can be low, just a few meters away from the monitoring post you can find local hot-spots due to contaminated foliage, dust or pollen.

A discussion regarding the actual radiation levels in Japan is difficult since the Japanese government has forfeited a lot of trust through questionable methods, for example by installing shielding lead batteries in the measuring instruments or positioning the monitoring posts in blind spots and other protected areas. Independent monitoring posts installed by independent citizen groups often register much higher values than the official posts.

Unfortunately, for symbolic as well as political reasons, sport arenas in Fukushima were selected to hold softball and baseball competitions during the Olympic Games 2020. Even the symbolic first competitions of the Olympics are to be held here. At the same time, the competition calendar was arranged in a way to ensure that no western teams would compete here. This may sound cynical, but it seems that the organizers expected problems regarding acceptance of these sensitive venues. Consequently, European visitors and athletes will most likely not have to travel to Fukushima in order to compete or watch their team.

If people do plan to travel to Fukushima, they should avoid trips to the mountains or forests and also avoid close contact with dust, dirt, foliage, or other possibly contaminated substances. In the event of high pollen flight, forest fires or natural disasters such as earthquakes, flooding or storms, they should exercise caution. FFP-breathing masks, as well as staying indoors, can offer relative protection against inhalation of radioactive particles. Visitors should make sure to pay attention to and follow the instructions issued by local authorities.

Japan is a country with high seismic activity and earthquakes are a common occurrence, as are forest fires in the summer and storms at any time of the year. To familiarize foreign visitors with the right behavior during emergencies, the Japanese tourism agency has established a website as well as a mobile app called “Safety Tips” with up-to-date information and safety advice.

What you eat

The official dose limits for radioactivity in food in Japan are currently stricter than those in the European Union. This means that contaminated foodstuff not fit for sale on the Japanese markets could very well be sold in Europe without any special labeling or warnings. The dose limit for general foodstuff Japan is 500 Becquerel (Bq) per kilogram, while in the EU it is 600 Bq/kg. One example of this difference: blueberry jam sold in the EU had to be taken off the shelves in Japan due to excessive cesium levels (originating from the Chernobyl disaster). More information can be found here.

Food controls in Japan are rather meticulous, but naturally, it can never be guaranteed that no contaminated foodstuff reaches the shelf. The individual measurement data can be seen at www.new-fukushima.jp, but it cannot be excluded that conspicuous values were prefiltered and do not show up in the statistics. At best, this website can help understand which foodstuffs are regularly tested in Japan.

We strongly recommend avoiding products bought directly from farmers in the contaminated regions, since they are often not monitored. Also, dubious “solidarity events” specifically offering foodstuffs from the contaminated regions should be avoided. Apart from these exceptions, it can be assumed that foodstuff declared safe for sale in Japan complies with high safety standards.

Summary note

In summary, it can be said that the health risk for visitors and athletes participating in the Olympics for short periods of time is small – as long as there is no specific individual sensitivity to radiation. Pregnant women and small children should avoid long-distance flights and trips to Fukushima to protect themselves against radiation.

At the same time, we should all be aware of the continuing problems facing the population in the radioactively contaminated regions in the Northeast of Japan, who has to live with the ongoing nuclear catastrophe on a daily basis.

The Olympic Games should not be abused to distract from their fate but rather to make sure their needs, worries, and demands are properly addressed. The German affiliate of IPPNW is trying to do just that with its campaign “Tokyo 2020 – The Radioactive Olympics”.

The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), was founded in 1980 and won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. It is a non-partisan federation of national medical groups in 64 countries, representing tens of thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens who share the common goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation.

For more on how the dispersal of “hot” radioactive particles might affect the Olympics, see the Beyond Nuclear article. “

published by Beyond Nuclear International

source

Six years after Fukushima, robots finally find reactors’ melted uranium fuel — The New York Times

” FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, Japan — Four engineers hunched before a bank of monitors, one holding what looked like a game controller. They had spent a month training for what they were about to do: pilot a small robot into the contaminated heart of the ruined Fukushima nuclear plant.

Earlier robots had failed, getting caught on debris or suffering circuit malfunctions from excess radiation. But the newer version, called the Mini-Manbo, or “little sunfish,” was made of radiation-hardened materials with a sensor to help it avoid dangerous hot spots in the plant’s flooded reactor buildings.

The size of a shoe box, the Manbo used tiny propellers to hover and glide through water in a manner similar to an aerial drone.

After three days of carefully navigating through a shattered reactor building, the Manbo finally reached the heavily damaged Unit 3 reactor. There, the robot beamed back video of a gaping hole at the bottom of the reactor and, on the floor beneath it, clumps of what looked like solidified lava: the first images ever taken of the plant’s melted uranium fuel.

The discovery in July at Unit 3, and similar successes this year in locating the fuel of the plant’s other two ruined reactors, mark what Japanese officials hope will prove to be a turning point in the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl.

The fate of the fuel had been one of the most enduring mysteries of the catastrophe, which occurred on March 11, 2011, when an earthquake and 50-foot tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems here at the plant.

Left to overheat, three of the six reactors melted down. Their uranium fuel rods liquefied like candle wax, dripping to the bottom of the reactor vessels in a molten mass hot enough to burn through the steel walls and even penetrate the concrete floors below.

No one knew for sure exactly how far those molten fuel cores had traveled before desperate plant workers — later celebrated as the “Fukushima Fifty” — were able to cool them again by pumping water into the reactor buildings. With radiation levels so high, the fate of the fuel remained unknown.

As officials became more confident about managing the disaster, they began a search for the missing fuel. Scientists and engineers built radiation-resistant robots like the Manbo and a device like a huge X-ray machine that uses exotic space particles called muons to see the reactors’ innards.

Now that engineers say they have found the fuel, officials of the government and the utility that runs the plant hope to sway public opinion. Six and a half years after the accident spewed radiation over northern Japan, and at one point seemed to endanger Tokyo, the officials hope to persuade a skeptical world that the plant has moved out of post-disaster crisis mode and into something much less threatening: cleanup.

“Until now, we didn’t know exactly where the fuel was, or what it looked like,” said Takahiro Kimoto, a general manager in the nuclear power division of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco. “Now that we have seen it, we can make plans to retrieve it.”

Tepco is keen to portray the plant as one big industrial cleanup site. About 7,000 people work here, building new water storage tanks, moving radioactive debris to a new disposal site, and erecting enormous scaffoldings over reactor buildings torn apart by the huge hydrogen explosions that occurred during the accident.

Access to the plant is easier than it was just a year ago, when visitors still had to change into special protective clothing. These days, workers and visitors can move about all but the most dangerous areas in street clothes.

A Tepco guide explained this was because the central plant grounds had been deforested and paved over, sealing in contaminated soil.

During a recent visit, the mood within the plant was noticeably more relaxed, though movements were still tightly controlled and everyone was required to wear radiation-measuring badges. Inside a “resting building,” workers ate in a large cafeteria and bought snacks in a convenience store.

At the plant’s entrance, a sign warned: “Games like Pokemon GO are forbidden within the facility.”

“We have finished the debris cleanup and gotten the plant under control,” said the guide, Daisuke Hirose, a spokesman for Tepco’s subsidiary in charge of decommissioning the plant. “Now, we are finally preparing for decommissioning.”

In September, the prime minister’s office set a target date of 2021 — the 10th anniversary of the disaster — for the next significant stage, when workers begin extracting the melted fuel from at least one of the three destroyed reactors, though they have yet to choose which one.

The government admits that cleaning up the plant will take at least another three to four decades and tens of billions of dollars. A $100 million research center has been built nearby to help scientists and engineers develop a new generation of robots to enter the reactor buildings and scoop up the melted fuel.

At Chernobyl, the Soviets simply entombed the charred reactor in concrete after the deadly 1986 accident. But Japan has pledged to dismantle the Fukushima plant and decontaminate the surrounding countryside, which was home to about 160,000 people who were evacuated after accident.

Many of them have been allowed to return as the rural towns around the plant have been decontaminated. But without at least starting a cleanup of the plant itself, officials admit they will find it difficult to convince the public that the accident is truly over.

They also hope that beginning the cleanup will help them win the public’s consent to restart Japan’s undamaged nuclear plants, most of which remain shut down since the disaster.

Tepco and the government are treading cautiously to avoid further mishaps that could raise doubts that the plant is under control.

“They are being very methodical — too slow, some would say — in making a careful effort to avoid any missteps or nasty surprises,” said David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was a co-author of a book on the disaster.

“They want to regain trust. They have learned that trust can be lost much quicker than it can be recovered.”

To show the course followed by the Manbo, Tepco’s Mr. Hirose guided me inside the building containing the undamaged Unit 5 reactor, which is structurally the same as two of the destroyed reactors.

Mr. Hirose pointed toward the spot on a narrow access ramp where two robots, including one that looked like a scorpion, got tangled in February by debris inside the ruined Unit 2.

Before engineers could free the scorpion, its monitoring screen faded to black as its electronic components were overcome by radiation, which Tepco said reached levels of 70 sieverts per hour. (A dose of one sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness in a human.)

Mr. Hirose then led me underneath the reactor, onto what is called the pedestal.

The bottom of the reactor looked like a collection of huge bolts — the access points for control rods used to speed up and slow down the nuclear reaction inside a healthy reactor. The pedestal was just a metal grating, with the building’s concrete floor visible below.

“The overheated fuel would have dropped from here, and melted through the grating around here,” Mr. Hirose said, as we squatted to avoid banging our heads on the reactor bottom. The entire area around the reactor was dark, and cluttered with pipes and machinery.

To avoid getting entangled, the Manbo took three days to travel some 20 feet to the bottom of Unit 3.

To examine the other two reactors, engineers built a “snake” robot that could thread its way through wreckage, and the imaging device using muons, which can pass through most matter. The muon device has produced crude, ghostly images of the reactors’ interiors.

Extracting the melted fuel will present its own set of technical challenges, and risks.

Engineers are developing the new radiation-resistant robots at the Naraha Remote Technology Development Center. It includes a hangar-sized building to hold full-scale mock-ups of the plant and a virtual-reality room that simulates the interiors of the reactor buildings, including locations of known debris.

“I’ve been a robotic engineer for 30 years, and we’ve never faced anything as hard as this,” said Shinji Kawatsuma, director of research and development at the center. “This is a divine mission for Japan’s robot engineers.” “

by Martin Fackler, The New York Times

source with photos, video and internal links

Fukushima evacuee to tell UN that Japan violated human rights — The Guardian

” A nuclear evacuee from Fukushima will claim Japan’s government has violated the human rights of people who fled their homes after the 2011 nuclear disaster, in testimony before the UN in Geneva this week.

Mitsuko Sonoda, who voluntarily left her village with her husband and their 10-year-old son days after three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant went into meltdown, will tell the UN human rights council that evacuees face financial hardship and are being forced to return to neighbourhoods they believe are still unsafe almost seven years after the disaster.

“We feel abandoned by the Japanese government and society,” Sonoda, who will speak at the council’s pre-session review of Japan on Thursday, told the Guardian.

An estimated 27,000 evacuees who, like Sonoda, were living outside the mandatory evacuation zone when the meltdown occurred, had their housing assistance withdrawn this March, forcing some to consider returning to their former homes despite concerns over radiation levels.

In addition, as the government attempts to rebuild the Fukushima region by reopening decontaminated neighbourhoods that were once no-go areas, tens of thousands of evacuees who were ordered to leave will lose compensation payments and housing assistance in March next year.

The denial of financial aid has left many evacuees facing a near-impossible choice: move back to homes they fear are unsafe, or face more financial hardship as they struggle to build lives elsewhere without state help.

“People should be allowed to choose whether or not to go back to their old homes, and be given the financial means to make that choice,” said Kendra Ulrich, senior global energy campaigner for Greenpeace Japan.

“If they are being put under economic pressure to return, then they are not in a position to make an informed decision. This UN session is about pressuring the Japanese government to do the right thing.”

Evacuees are being encouraged to return to villages and towns near the Fukushima plant despite evidence that some still contain radiation “hot spots”.

In Iitate village, where the evacuation order was lifted this March, much of the surrounding forests remain highly radioactive, although homes, schools and other public buildings have been declared safe as part of an unprecedented decontamination effort.

“You could call places like Iitate an open-air prison,” said Ulrich. “The impact on people’s quality of life will be severe if they move back. Their lives are embedded in forests, yet the environment means they will not be allowed to enter them. Forests are impossible to decontaminate.”

After months of moving around, Sonoda and her family settled in Kyoto for two years, where local authorities provided them with a rent-free apartment. They have been living in her husband’s native England for the past four years.

“We’ve effectively had to evacuate twice,” said Sonoda, who works as a freelance translator and Japanese calligraphy tutor. “My son and I really struggled at first … we didn’t want to leave Japan.”

Concern over food safety and internal radiation exposure convinced her that she could never return to Fukushima, aside from making short visits to see relatives. “It’s really sad, because my village is such a beautiful place,” she said. “We had a house and had planned to retire there.”

The evacuations have forced families to live apart, while parents struggle to earn enough money to fund their new accommodation and keep up mortgage payments on their abandoned homes.

“Stopping housing support earlier this year was an act of cruelty,” Sonoda said. “Some of my friends had to go back to Fukushima even though they didn’t want to.”

Greenpeace Japan, which is assisting Sonoda, hopes her testimony will be the first step in building international pressure on Japan’s government to continue offering financial help to evacuees and to reconsider its resettlement plan.

It has called on the government to declare Fukushima neighbourhoods unsafe until atmospheric radiation is brought to below one millisievert (mSv) a year, the maximum public exposure limit recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

While 1 mSv a year remains the government’s long-term target, it is encouraging people to return to areas where radiation levels are below 20 mSv a year, an annual exposure limit that, internationally, applies to nuclear power plant workers.

“Why should people, especially women and children, have to live in places where the radiation level is 20 times the international limit?” Sonoda said. “The government hasn’t given us an answer.” ”

by The Guardian

source with internal links

30 groups show radioactive soil levels to address Fukushima fears — The Asahi Shimbun

” A coalition of 30 private groups is digging deeper into radiation contamination from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster to address persistent concerns from the public around Japan.

The coalition’s website, titled the East Japan Soil Measurement Project, shows radiation levels in soil samples taken from more than 1,900 sites in Tokyo and 16 prefectures, from northeastern Japan to the Pacific side of the central Japan.

The project was started partly because parents were concerned that local governments were using only airborne radiation levels to determine if outdoor areas were safe for children.

While radioactive contamination in the air decreases as time passes, that is not necessarily the case with radioactive substances in the ground.

The group’s survey of land contamination has found “hot spots,” where levels are significantly higher than in the surrounding neighborhoods, five years after the disaster unfolded at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

The radiation levels in some of those areas are comparable to those at nuclear reactor buildings and medical institutions that provide radiation therapy, where public access is restricted because annual radiation doses can exceed 5 millisieverts.

Three citizens groups, including the nonprofit organization Fukushima 30-Year Project, created the website after forming an extensive network of private entities in October last year.

The groups conduct the measurements in a unified manner. About 1,000 cubic centimeters of soil samples are taken by digging 5 cm deep in the ground in the shape of a 10-cm-by-20-cm block in residential areas and districts that ordinary citizens are allowed to enter.

Extreme anomalies in the radiation measurements are not posted on the site because the purpose of the project is to show average contamination in local communities.

“We want to prevent viewers from misunderstanding the pollution level of a given community just because of isolated cases of high numbers,” said Hidetake Ishimaru, head of the coalition’s secretariat. “Viewers can get tips on how to avoid risks in daily life by comparing figures that were measured in a standardized manner.”

The highest reading so far was 135,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium detected in a forest near a home in the Hiso district of Iitate village, northwest of the embattled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The soil sample showed 111,028 becquerels of cesium-137 and 23,920 becquerels of cesium-134.

Radioactivity readings at many observation spots in Shizuoka Prefecture, which is far from the nuclear plant, were below the lowest detectable level.

But the survey this year still found sites in the Kanto region, south of the Tohoku region where the Fukushima plant is located, with readings exceeding 10,000 becquerels.

Save Child Iwate, a group in Iwate Prefecture, was the first of the 30 collaborating private organizations to take measurements in the soil.

Save Child Iwate started measuring radiation doses in the atmosphere and radioactivity in the soil throughout the prefecture in spring 2012. Many of the sites were at schools and parks. It has measured doses at 316 spots and publicized the results.

Kazuhiro Sugawara, a 39-year-old staff member of Save Child Iwate’s secretariat, said the group began measuring radioactivity in soil after local governments had insisted that it was safe to let children play outdoors.

Local officials cited low radiation doses in the air in their safety assurances.

But the group remained skeptical because the evacuation order for residents from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster was issued in part based on the extent of ground contamination.

Sugawara’s daughter was 10 years old and attending an elementary school in Iwate Prefecture when the disaster started at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Like other parents in the area, Sugawara was most concerned about the safety of the children.

“We cannot feel safe without data on soil contamination because children play with earth, wipe the mouths with their dirty hands and inhale dirt blown up by wind, exposing themselves to the risk of internal radiation exposure,” Sugawara said about why he undertook the project. “If local officials would not bother to measure soil contamination, we decided to do so on our own.”

The highest land contamination figure Save Child Iwate recorded came from samples from private property in Kanegasaki in the prefecture in June 2012.

At that spot, the radiation level in the air was 0.24 microsieverts per hour, while radioactivity in the soil sample exceeded 4,500 becquerels.

The coalition accepts sample soils sent by concerned citizens for free measurements using funds provided by businesses and donations from the public.

It currently lacks sufficient data from Niigata, Tochigi and Gunma prefectures.

“Part of the reason we cannot enlist cooperation from groups in the three prefectures, where agriculture is thriving, is that they fear possible negative publicity,” Ishimaru said.

The coalition plans to hold workshops for citizens around the nation on how to gather samples to broaden support for the endeavor.

Tetsuji Imanaka, a researcher with Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute who has been monitoring land contamination in Fukushima Prefecture and elsewhere, stressed the importance of gaining data from soil.

“Since numbers on land contamination are basic data needed to study the scope of pollution in a given region, detailed surveys are necessary,” he said. “Ideally, local officials should do the task. I am hoping that the coalition will play a significant role.” ”

by Masakazu Honda

source

British robots glimpse inside the Fukushima plant — The Telegraph

” Japan may be obsessed with robots, but it is a British company that has solved the “impossible” problem of visualising the radiation leaks inside the crippled reactor buildings at Fukushima.

State-of-the-art British imaging technology has been deployed at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to overcome problems that Japanese engineers declared to be insurmountable.

Designed by Cumbria-based Createc, N-Visage cameras have been mounted on remote-controlled drones and caterpillar-tracked robots that can navigate the insides of the three reactor buildings that suffered melt-downs after an earthquake and tsunami hit Fukushima in 2011.

Coupled with unique software, the £200,000 system is able to create a real-time, three-dimensional image of the area being surveyed and identify “hot-spots” of radioactivity.

More than four years after the second-worst nuclear accident in history, radiation levels within the structures remain too high for humans to enter.

British nuclear experts help to decommission Fukushima

That has severely hampered efforts to determine the problems that need to be solved to safely decommission the reactors and clean up the site. Experts have already estimated that process will take three decades but progress to date has been slow.

Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the plant, was only able to confirm on Thursday previous suspicions that nearly all the fuel from the No. 1 reactor at the plant has melted and fallen into the containment vessel. Two more reactors appear to have experienced similar fates and Tepco is now conducting further tests to confirm that assumption.

“There was some scepticism from Tepco when we were first introduced to their representatives in the UK in April 2012, but they very quickly saw the possibilities”, said Dr Matt Mellor, director of Createc.

“One of their guys said it was like finding a Picasso in the loft because their experts had told them that what we do was impossible”, he added.

Abandoned towns around Fukushima plant

Working in tandem with nuclear unit of Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, Createc engineers first visited the Fukushima plant in 2013.

“It was a shocking sight”, said Dr Mellor. “Even more than a year after the tsunami, the damage to the reactors was clear. Vehicles were still laying around the site, fences had been crushed, storage tanks had been flattened and radiation levels in the immediate area of the reactors was still very high.

“Nuclear sites are usually tidy and organised because they have to be, so it was clear this was going to be a major challenge from the outset”, he added.

As well as using remote-controlled vehicles to get the N-Visage system into the damaged buildings, engineers drilled holes through the roof and lowered imaging equipment into the interior.

Createc has permitted Japanese nuclear engineers to undertake a “virtual walk” through the plant and has mapped areas with the very highest concentrations of radiation, which will in the future enable engineers to shield and isolate such “hot spots”.

“It has blown the socks off the engineers at Fukushima,” said Pete Woolaghan, a director of Createc. “We have been able to give them an accurate and exact image of the dose environment that they are faced with, which is enabling them to formulate plans with far more certainty and safety.

“Previously, they were working with educated guesses”.

A bus ride through Japan’s nuclear wilderness

The N-Visage system has been deployed at plants that are undergoing decommissioning processes in the UK, including Sellafield, and has attracted interest from the US nuclear industry.

The Japanese government has this month announced plans to decommission five nuclear reactors, the first time that Japanese plants will have been dismantled. With limited experience and capabilities in this specialist area, Createc and other British firms are anticipating an increase in opportunities in Japan. ”

source with video

Radioactive plumes spread cesium a week after Fukushima disaster — Mainichi

” A second wave of radioactive material from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster spread over the Tohoku and Kanto regions around one week after the outbreak of the disaster, analysis of radiation readings has found.

It was already known that clouds of radioactive material, known as “radioactive plumes,” had spread on March 15 and 16, 2011, but new analysis by the secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority and the Ministry of the Environment shows similar radiation readings for March 20 and 21 as well.

Until now, radiation levels after the disaster have been estimated by comparing observed readings, such as those from aircraft, with computer simulations obtained from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI). For the most recent analysis, the Ministry of the Environment used data from constant monitoring devices used to measure vehicle exhaust fumes and other such air pollution. The ministry sought help from institutions including Tokyo Metropolitan University and the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo. It collected filter paper that catches airborne particles from around 90 monitoring stations in nine prefectures. Researchers analyzed radiation levels from March 12 to March 23, 2011.

The analysis showed that at one monitoring station in the city of Fukushima on the night of March 15, the combined activity of cesium-137 and cesium-134 went as high as 45.5 becquerels per cubic meter of air.

Radioactive plumes are believed to have continuously spewed from the plant between March 16 and March 19 as well, but the analysis suggests that due to eastern-blowing winds, they spread out over the Pacific Ocean and did not elevate atmospheric radiation levels over Japan. However, the wind direction later changed, and at 3 p.m. on March 20, the Fukushima city monitoring station registered a reading of 104.1 becquerels per cubic meter of air. Readings around this level continued until the next morning.

It is widely known that a radioactive plume spread around March 15, causing a sharp climb in radiation levels to around 20 microsieverts per hour after rain caused radioactive material to fall on homes and on the ground. Rain did not fall on March 20 and 21, so the already-high radiation levels near homes and on the ground did not climb noticeably. This is thought to be the reason why the second radioactive plume was not noticed until now.

In the Kanto region, two belts of high-concentration radiation were registered — one on March 15 and one on March 21. In particular, on the morning of March 21 there was a spike in radioactive cesium concentrations in southern Ibaraki Prefecture and northeastern Chiba Prefecture. Afterwards, the plumes appear to have moved southwest to the northeastern coast of Tokyo Bay. Rain is thought to have brought the radioactive material down to the area and created radioactive “hot spots” that were recorded in various areas.

Yuichi Moriguchi, an environmental systems professor at the University of Tokyo who is knowledgeable about environmental pollution from the Fukushima disaster, commented, “This is important data that shows when and where high concentrations of cesium in the atmosphere spread. This information will help in accurately determining residents’ radiation exposure at the early stages of the nuclear crisis.” ”

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