Thread: Situation Grim in Japan's Devastated Northeast

Search for radiation leak turns desperate in Japan
Mari Yamaguchi And Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press – Mon Apr 4, 7:32 am ET

TOKYO – Workers used a milky bathwater dye Monday as they frantically tried to trace the path of radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant.

The crack in a maintenance pit discovered over the weekend was the latest confirmation that radioactivity continues to spill into the environment. The leak is a symptom of the primary difficulty at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex: Radioactive water is pooling around the plant and preventing workers from powering up cooling systems needed to stabilize dangerously vulnerable fuel rods.

The plant operators also deliberately dumped 10,000 tons of tainted water — measuring about 500 times above the legal limit for radiactivity — into the ocean Monday to make space at a storage site for water that is even more highly radiactive.

Engineers have turned to a host of improvised and sometimes bizarre methods to tame the nuclear plant after it was crippled in Japan's magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami on March 11.

Efforts over the weekend to clog the leak with a special polymer, sawdust and even shredded newspapers failed to halt the flow at a cracked concrete maintenance pit near the shoreline. The water in that leak contains radioactive iodine at rates 10,000 times the legal limit.

Suspecting they might be targeting the wrong channel to the pit, workers tried to confirm the leak's pathway by dumping several pounds (kilograms) of salts used to give bathwater a milky hue into the system, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday.

"There could be other possible passages that the water may be traveling. We must watch carefully and contain it as quickly as possible," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency.

Radioactive water has pooled throughout the plant because the operator has been forced to rely on makeshift ways of pumping water into the reactors — and allowing it to gush out wherever it can — to bring down temperatures and pressure in the cores.

Government officials conceded Sunday that it will likely be several months before the cooling systems are completely restored. And even after that happens, there will be years of work ahead to clean up the area around the complex and figure out what to do with it.

The makeshift system makes it difficult to contain the radiation leaks, but it is aimed a preventing fuel rods from going into a full meltdown that would release even more radiactivity into the environment.

"We must keep putting water into the reactors to cool to prevent further fuel damage, even though we know that there is a side effect, which is the leakage," Nishiyama said. "We want to get rid of the stagnant water and decontaminate the place so that we can return to our primary task to restore the sustainable cooling capacity as quickly as possible."

To that end, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said it jettisoned the 10,000 tons of water Monday, clearing space in a waste-storage facility. The government decided to allow the step as "an unavoidable emergency measure," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

An additional 1,500 tons will be dumped from a trench under the plant's units 5 and 6. That water is threatening to interfere with the workings at those units, whose reactors are under control.

Radioactivity is quickly diluted in the ocean, and Edano said the dump should not affect the safety of seafood in the area.

The crisis has unfolded as Japan deals with the aftermath of twin natural disasters that decimated large swaths of its northeastern coast. Up to 25,000 people are believed to have died in the disaster, and tens of thousands lost their homes. Thousands more were forced to flee a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius around the plant because of the radiation.

The 8-inch-long (20-centimeter-long) crack was discovered in the maintenance pit over the weekend. It is sending radioactive water into area that is normally blocked off by a seawall, but a crack was also discovered in that outer barrier Monday.

Though it later authorized the dumping of slightly radioactive water, the government said Monday it was growing concerned about the sheer volume of contaminated materials spilling into the Pacific. It is not clear how much water has leaked from the pit so far.

"Even if they say the contamination will be diluted in the ocean, the longer this continues, the more radioactive particles will be released and the greater the impact on the ocean," Edano said. "We are strongly urging TEPCO that they have to take immediate action to deal with this."

The crisis has sparked protests in Japan and raised questions around the world about the safety of nuclear power. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency told delegates at a nuclear safety conference Monday that the industry cannot afford to ignore these concerns.

"We cannot take a 'business as usual' approach," Yukiya Amano said.

The operator said Monday it is ordering fencing that is typically used to contain oil spills. The screens are not designed to trap radioactivity but might curtail the flow of water and thus reduce the spread of contamination, said TEPCO manager Teruaki Kobayashi. It was not clear when they would arrive.

All of the plant's reactors were designed by General Electric, and the company's CEO met Sunday with TEPCO's chairman. Jeffrey Immelt told reporters Monday that more than 1,000 engineers from GE and its partner Hitachi are helping to analyze the problems at the plant.

Immelt also offered assistance in dealing with the electricity shortage brought on by damage to Dai-ichi and other power plants. Japan is expecting a shortfall of at least 10 million kilowatts come summer.

Gas turbines are on their way from the U.S. with both long- and short-term capabilities, Immelt said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110404/...pan_earthquake

U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant
by: James Glanz and William J. Broad -- The New York Times

United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.

In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well
as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.

While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.

The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.

Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilized, but there is growing awareness that the risks of pumping water on the fuel present a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend.

The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown "up to one mile from the units," and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be "bulldozed over," presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.

David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan and now directs the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the welter of problems revealed in the document at three separate reactors made a successful outcome even more uncertain. "I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods," said Mr. Lochbaum, who was not involved in preparing the document. "This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot
worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don't work out for them."

The steps recommended by the nuclear commission include injecting nitrogen, an inert gas, into the containment structures in an attempt to purge them of hydrogen and oxygen, which could combine to produce explosions. On Wednesday, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant, said it was preparing to take such a step and to inject nitrogen into one of the reactor containment vessels.

The document also recommends that engineers continue adding boron to cooling water to help prevent the cores from restarting the nuclear reaction, a process known as criticality. Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing,” said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment. The document was prepared for the commission's Reactor Safety Team, which is assisting the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company. It says it is based on the "most recent available data" from numerous Japanese and American organizations, including the electric power company, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, the United States Department of Energy, General Electric and the
Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, non-profit group.

The document contains detailed assessments of each of the plant's six reactors along with recommendations for action. Nuclear experts familiar with the assessment said that it was regularly updated but that over all, the March 26 version closely reflected current thinking. The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 "is severely restricted and likely blocked." Inside the core itself, "there is likely no water level," the assessment says, adding that as a result, "it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel." Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says.

Some of the salt may have been washed away in the past week with the switch from seawater to fresh water cooling, nuclear experts said.
A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that "when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment."

Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them. Margaret Harding, a former reactor designer for General Electric, warned of aftershocks and said, "If I were in the Japanese's shoes, I'd be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn't been checked since the earthquake."

The N.R.C. document also expressed concern about the potential for a "hazardous atmosphere" in the concrete-and-steel containment structures because of the release of hydrogen and oxygen from the seawater in a highly radioactive environment. Hydrogen explosions in the first few days of the disaster heavily damaged several reactor buildings and in one case may have damaged a containment structure. That hydrogen was produced by a mechanism involving the metal cladding of the nuclear fuel. The document urged that Japanese operators restore the ability to purge the structures of these gases and fill them with stable nitrogen gas, a capability lost after the quake and tsunami.

Nuclear experts say that radiation from the core of a reactor can split water molecules in two, releasing hydrogen. Mr. Wilmshurst said that since the March 26 document, engineers had calculated that the amount of hydrogen produced would be small. But Jay A. LaVerne, a physicist at Notre Dame, said that at least near the fuel rods, some hydrogen would in fact be produced, and could react with oxygen. "If so," Mr. LaVerne said in an interview, "you have an explosive mixture being formed near the fuel rods."

Nuclear engineers have warned in recent days that the pools outside the containment buildings that hold spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger than the melted reactor cores. The pools, which sit atop the reactor buildings and are meant to keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems. The N.R.C. report suggests that the fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor suffered a hydrogen explosion early in the Japanese crisis and could have shed much radioactive material into the environment, what it calls "a major source term release."

Experts worry about the fuel pools because explosions have torn away their roofs and exposed their radioactive contents. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core. "Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air," Mr. Lochbaum said of the multiplicity of problems at the plant. "They've got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse."

Henry Fountain contributed reporting from New York, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.

Another strong quake rattles tsunami-ravaged Japan
Cara Rubinsky, Associated Press – 23 mins ago

TOKYO – A magnitude-7.4 aftershock rattled Japan on Thursday night, knocking out power across a large swath of the northern part of the country nearly a month after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that flattened the northeastern coast.

Japan's meteorological agency issued a tsunami warning but canceled it about 90 minutes later. Officials said power was out in all of three northern prefectures (states) and in parts of two others.

There were no immediate reports of serious injuries or damage. The aftershock was the strongest since the March 11 megaquake and tsunami that killed some 25,000 people, tore apart hundreds of thousands of homes and caused an ongoing crisis at a nuclear power plant.

The operator of the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant said there was no immediate sign of new problems caused by the aftershock, and Japan's nuclear safety agency says workers there retreated to a quake-resistant shelter in the complex. None were injured. The crisis there started when the tsunami knocked out cooling systems. Workers have not been able to restore them.

Thursday's quake knocked out several power lines at the Onagawa nuclear power plant north of Sendai, which has been shut down since the tsunami. One remaining line was supplying power to the plant and radiation monitoring devices detected no abnormalities. The plant's spent fuel pools briefly lost cooling capacity but an emergency diesel generator quickly kicked in.

Officials said the aftershock hit 30 miles (50 kilometers) under the water and off the coast of Miyagi prefecture. The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., later downgraded it to 7.1.

Buildings as far away as Tokyo shook for about a minute.

The quake struck at 11:32 p.m. local time. Moments beforehand, residents in the western Tokyo suburb of Fuchu were warned on a neighborhood public address system of an imminent quake.

In Ichinoseki, inland from Japan's eastern coast, buildings shook violently, knocking items from shelves and toppling furniture, but there was no heavy damage to the buildings themselves. Immediately after the quake, all power was cut. The city went dark, but cars drove around normally and people assembled in the streets despite the late hour.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan huddled with staff members in his office shortly afterward, according to deputy Cabinet spokesman Noriyuki Shikata.

separate government emergency response team met shortly after midnight to monitor any reports of damage and urged firefighters, police and other emergency personnel to aid those in need.

Paul Caruso, a geophysicist at USGS, said the quake struck at about the same location and depth as last month's huge one.

Another USGS geophysicist, Don Blakeman, said it was the strongest aftershock since March 11, although several aftershocks on that day were bigger.

The USGS said the aftershock struck off the eastern coast 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Sendai and 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Fukushima. It was about 205 miles (330 kilometers) from Tokyo.

____

Associated Press writers Jay Alabaster in Ichinoseki, Japan; Malcolm Foster, Ryan Nakashima and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Colleen Slevin in Denver, Colorado, contributed to this report

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110407/...pan_earthquake

Japan equates nuclear crisis severity to Chernobyl
Ryan Nakashima And Shino Yuasa, Associated Press – 51 mins ago

TOKYO – Japan ranked its nuclear crisis at the highest possible severity on an international scale — the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — even as it insisted Tuesday that radiation leaks are declining at its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant.

The higher rating is an open acknowledgement of what was widely understood already: The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is the second-worst in history. It does not signal a worsening of the plant's status in recent days or any new health dangers.

Still, people living nearby who have endured a month of spewing radiation and frequent earthquakes said the change in status added to their unease despite government efforts to play down any notion that the crisis poses immediate health risks.

Miyuki Ichisawa closed her coffee shop this week when the government added her community, Iitate village, and four others to places people should leave to avoid long-term radiation exposure. The additions expanded the 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone where people had already been ordered to evacuate soon after the March 11 tsunami swamped the plant. "And now the government is officially telling us this accident is at the same level of Chernobyl," Ichisawa said. "It's very shocking to me."

Japanese nuclear regulators said the severity rating was raised from 5 to 7 on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency due to new assessments of the overall radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

According to the Vienna-based atomic energy agency, the new ranking signifies a major accident that includes widespread effects on the environment and people's health. The scale, designed by experts convened by the IAEA and other groups in 1989, is meant to help the public, the technical community and the media understand the public safety implications of nuclear events.

The upgraded status did not mean radiation from the plant was worsening, but rather reflected concern about long-term health risks as it continues to spew into the air, soil and seawater. Most radiation exposures around the region haven't been high enough yet to raise significant health concerns. Workers are still trying to restore disabled cooling systems at the plant, and radioactive isotopes have been detected in tap water, fish and vegetables. Iitate's town government decided Tuesday to ban planting of all farm products, including rice and vegetables, expanding the national government's prohibition on growing rice there.

Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, went on national television and urged people not to panic. "Right now, the situation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant has been stabilizing step by step. The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline," he said. "But we are not at the stage yet where we can let our guard down."

Japanese officials said the leaks from the Fukushima plant so far amount to a tenth of the radiation emitted from Chernobyl, but about 10 times the amount needed to reach the level 7 threshold. They acknowledged the emissions could eventually exceed Chernobyl's, but said the chance that will happen is very small. However, regulators have also acknowledged that a more severe nuclear accident is a distinct possibility until regular cooling systems are restored — a process likely to take months. "Although the Fukushima accident is now at the equal level as Chernobyl, we should not consider the two incidents as the same," said Hiroshi Horiike, professor of nuclear engineering at Osaka University. "Fukushima is not a Chernobyl."

In Chernobyl, in what is now the Ukraine, a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing a cloud of radiation over much of the Northern Hemisphere. A zone about 19 miles (30 kilometers) around the plant was declared uninhabitable.

Thirty-one men died mostly from being exposed to very high levels of radiation trying to contain the accident. But there is no agreement on how many people are likely to die of cancers caused by its radiation.

No radiation exposure deaths have been blamed on the leaks at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Two plant workers were treated for burns after walking in heavily contaminated water in a building there.

The tsunami, spawned by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, knocked out cooling systems and backup diesel generators, leading to hydrogen explosions at three reactors and a fire at a fourth that was undergoing regular maintenance and was empty of fuel. Workers have been improvising for weeks with everything from helicopter drops to fire hoses to supply cooling water to the plant.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, noted that unlike in Chernobyl there have been no explosions of reactor cores, which are more serious than hydrogen explosions. "In that sense, this situation is totally different from Chernobyl," he said.

NISA officials said they raised the incident level because of the cumulative amount of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere. Other factors included damage to the plant's buildings and accumulated radiation levels for its workers.

The revision was based on cross-checking and assessments of data on leaks of radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-137. Officials did not say why they skipped level 6 or when exactly the radiation level exceeded the level 7 threshold.

Based on government estimates, the equivalent of 500,000 terabecquerels of radiation from iodine-131 has been released into the atmosphere since the crisis began, well above the several tens of thousands of terabecquerels needed to reach level 7. A terabecquerel equals a trillion becquerels, a measure of radiation emissions. The Chernobyl incident released 5.2 million terabecquerels into the air. "We have refrained from making announcements until we have reliable data," Nishiyama said. He also emphasized that no more major leaks are expected from the reactors, though he acknowledged more work is needed to keep the reactors stable.

Work to stabilize the plant has been impeded by continued aftershocks, the latest a 6.3-magnitude quake Tuesday that prompted plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, to temporarily pull back workers. Work removing highly radioactive water, a necessary step before cooling systems can be restored, finally resumed around 7:30 p.m.

In his televised address, Kan gave the nation a pep talk, telling people to focus on recovering from the disasters that are believed to have killed 25,000 people. "Let's live normally without falling into excessive self-restraint," he said. "We should eat and drink products from the quake-hit areas as a form of support."

Many of the more than 14,500 people still listed as missing from the quake and tsunami are thought to have been swept out to sea. A month after the disaster, more than 145,000 people are still living in shelters.

Among them is Kenichi Yomogita, a plumbing contract worker at Fukushima Dai-ichi who was off work the day of the tsunami and has not returned. His hometown of Tomioka is in the evacuation zone, and he thinks it will be at least three years before he can return. For now he is living at a shelter in Koriyama, and said the upgraded crisis level has not improved his hopes. "At first the reality of this situation didn't sink in," he said, "but this news shows how serious it is."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_earthquake

Greater than expected damage seen at Japan reactor
Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press – 18 mins ago

TOKYO – One of the reactor cores at Japan's crippled nuclear power plant has been damaged more severely than originally thought, officials said Thursday, in a serious setback for efforts to stabilize the radiation-leaking complex.

The new findings followed repairs to monitoring equipment, which also showed that the water level in the core of Unit 1 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is much lower than previously thought, totally exposing remaining fuel rods and pointing to a greater-than-expected leak in the chamber.

However, temperatures there are still far below dangerous levels because the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., continues to inject new water to keep the rods cool. That water is apparently then leaking into and through the larger, beaker-shaped containment vessel and pooling up in other parts of the reactor building.

Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency officials said the new data indicates that it is likely that partially melted fuel had fallen to the bottom of the pressurized core and possibly leached down into the outer containment vessel soon after the March 11 quake and tsunami that struck Japan's northeastern coast.

While officials said there was no danger that the chunks of fuel were still hot or that they could melt through the concrete base of the reactor, they acknowledged that the level of damage could complicate plans detailed in April to bring the plant to a cold shutdown within nine months.

Further examination of the pressure vessel was needed to ascertain the full extent of damage, they said. "The situation (in the core) hasn't changed since (early in the crisis), and the fuel rods are being cooled by water continuously being injected into the core, although we still have to keep cooling them," NISA official Takashi Sakurai said.

The low level of water indicates that the core of Unit 1 had a bigger breach than expected, said TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto. Growing pressure inside Unit 1 led to a hydrogen explosion that damaged the outer building.

TEPCO workers have been struggling for two months to bring the plant under control.

On Wednesday, the plant operator detected a small new leak of radioactive water from an area near the Unit 3 reactor building into the sea. The plant has a total of six reactors, two of which have been totally shut down.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_...JlYXRlcnRoYW5l

Magnitude 5.4 quake hits central Japan, 7 injured
By Shinichi Saoshiro | Reuters – 24 mins ago

TOKYO (Reuters) - A magnitude 5.4 earthquake hit central Japan and injured seven people on Thursday, but there were no immediate reports of major damage. The epicenter of the earthquake, which struck around 8:16 a.m. (2316 GMT on Wednesday) was in Nagano prefecture, about 120 km (75 miles) from Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

No tsunami warning was issued after the quake, the agency said. The magnitude was revised down from a preliminary reading of 5.5.

Seven people were taken to hospital including those hurt from falling objects, but the injuries did not appear serious, an official at the local fire department said.

Japan accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

On March 11, the northeast coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest quake in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami, which triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The disaster left up to 23,000 dead or missing.

http://news.yahoo.com/earthquake-hit...002604954.html

I was just thinking of this the other day and wondering what was happening nuclear wise for them....

Japan Finally Admits The Truth:
“Right Now, We Have An Emergency At Fukushima”
August 06, 2013



Tepco is struggling to contain the highly radioactive water that is seeping into the ocean near Fukushima. The head of Japan’s NRA, Shinji Kinjo exclaimed, “right now, we have an emergency,” as he noted the contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier and is rising toward the surface – exceeding the limits of radioactive discharge. In a rather outspoken comment for the typically stoic Japanese, Kinjo said Tepco’s “sense of crisis was weak,” adding that “this is why you can’t just leave it up to Tepco alone” to grapple with the ongoing disaster. As Reuters notes, Tepco has been accused of covering up shortcomings and has been lambasted for its ineptness in the response and while the company says it is taking actions to contain the leaks, Kinjo fears if the water reaches the surface “it would flow extremely fast,” with some suggesting as little as three weeks until this critical point.

Via Reuters:

Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an “emergency” that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country’s nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co are only a temporary solution, he said.

Tepco’s “sense of crisis is weak,” Kinjo said. “This is why you can’t just leave it up to Tepco alone” to grapple with the ongoing disaster.

“Right now, we have an emergency,” he said.

http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines...y-at-fukushima

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...ency-fukushima

Fukushima this morning, The Sea water is Boiling. This is way worse than they are letting on.

Fukushima Radiation: Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over, Or Worse….
August 26 2013 • by Gary Stamper



The heart-breaking news from Fukushima just keeps getting worse…a LOT worse…it is, quite simply, an out-of-control flow of death and destruction. TEPCO is finally admitting that radiation has been leaking to the Pacific Ocean all along. and it’s NOT over….

I find myself moving between the emotions of sorrow and anger.

It now appears that anywhere from 300 to possibly over 450 tons of contaminated water that contains radioactive iodone, cesium, and strontium-89 and 90, is flooding into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daichi site everyday. To give you an idea of how bad that actually is, Japanese experts estimate Fukushima’s fallout at 20-30 times as high as as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings in 1945

There’s a lot you’re not being told. Oh, the information is out there, but you have to dig pretty deep to find it, and you won’t find it on the corporate-owned evening news.

•An MSNBC article in April of 2012 reported that seals and polar bears were found to have “external maladies” that consisted of fur loss and open sores, obvious signs of radiation burns from the Fukushima meltdown, despite the conclusions of the article.

•Fukushima radiation appears to be causing an epidemic of dead and starving Sea Lions in California and the FDA has refused to test for radiation

•Since the summer of 2011, U.S. scientists have observed several dozen living and dead Pacific Ocean marine mammals with a strangely similar condition of skin sores and hair loss. These animals may be suffering from ‘beta burns,’ which are caused by significant external exposure to ‘beta emitters’ such as radiostrontiums, which were released in copious quantities to the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011

•.Almost a third more US West Coast newborns may face thyroid problems after Fukushima nuclear disaster

•Contaminated water from Fukushima reactors could double radioactivity levels of US coastal waters in 5 years — “We were surprised at how quickly the tracer spread”

IS THE PACIFIC OCEAN FOOD CHAIN DOOMED? – May 2013 – Incredibly worrisome levels of cesium, including short-lived radioactive cesium-134, have been found near Hawaii in the LOWEST part of the marine food chain: plankton. Levels up the food chain, i.e. fish, whales, seals, due to bioaccumulation, MUST be magnitudes higher in contamination now or soon – stop eating Pacific wild seafood now – Researchers find high cesium in some Pacific plankton

SEAFOOD LOVERS ACROSS THE WORLD – The ‘levels’ of radiation in the seafood you are eating now and in the future certainly contain Fukushima radiation but will be considered ‘safe’ by government scientists. Let’s boil it down quickly: Scientists say the only safe level of radiation is zero. YET, governments set ‘limits’ for radiation in food well above zero. These limits actually increase every decade or so. If you love nuclear power and nuclear weapons complexes, then you should accept these limits as well as the fact that a fraction of our cancer epidemic is blamed on nuclear emissions. If you don’t want people (or yourself) to die of cancer to preserve nuclear power and nuclear weapons, then you should heed the scientific consensus conclusion that the safe level of radiation is zero becquerels of anything. Unless you are a nuclear nut, please protect your own health and regulate your genetic stability for the sake of your children, grandchildren, etc…by NOT EATING SEAFOOD OR CONSUMING ANYTHING MADE IN THE SEA. Learn more about food safety. http://www.nuclearcrimes.org/halibut.php

KEYPOINTS ABOUT FISH CONTAMINATION

•Bluefin tuna will grow in radioactivity over years with each migration back to West Pacific; older caught fish will be hotter

•Media is neglecting March (2012) lab study find that North Pacific albacore ‘tuna fish’ has same Fukushima cesium contaminant

•All Pacific migratory fish are probably Fukushima contaminated – why isn’t this all over Twitter?

•Alaska Halibut also found with same Fuku-cesium contaminant – but did not migrate to Japan’s waters. How did cesium-134 get into Alaska halibut?

•Bluefin tuna in 2012 study aren’t all equally radioactive; sample #8 contained 50% higher cesium concentrations than the average of the 15 samples

•Bluefin scientists did a most non-stellar job. They cherrypicked isotopes for dose comparison.

•FDA is telling media and consumers it is ‘testing fish.’ It is testing imports and not testing U.S.-caught wild seafood (billions of pounds caught annually in U.S.) More

•Cesium-134 is marker for strontium-90 – causes bone cancer and immune-disorders; babies are ‘sponges’ for calcium and strontium

•Levels in bluefin tuna are similar to record food concentrations in 1960s

•ECRR (Busby) predicts ’61,600,000 deaths from cancer’ (and 3.5 million baby deaths) ‘from the nuclear project since 1945,’ mostly the 1960s.

•Bulk of 1960s exposure was internal, largely from ingested FOOD made radioactive from hydrogen bomb test fallout.

•FDA saying levels are safe is a lie. FDA says its intervention levels will kill people. Downplays risk as ‘small’ compared to our ~40-50% cancer rate. But much of that rate is prolonged fallout effects from 1960s.

•Baseline levels of manmade-radionuclides in Pacific seafood pre-Fukushima caused some genetic defects and cancers in world population

•FDA uses faulty dose calculations that lowball rate of cancer carnage by several magnitudes. Genetic harm from cesium’s gamma rays ignored in dose models

•Alvarez asks would a 1950′s NPR ‘trivialize’ ‘impacts of open-air hydrogen bomb testing?’ You bet. Our government and media is herding us into rail-cars destined for another radioactive holocaust.

http://hothawaiiradiation.com/at-the...-are-over.html

Radiation readings spike at Fukushima nuclear plant
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. says radiation readings at water tanks in the Fukushima Daiichi power plant are 18 times higher than previously measured.
16 hr ago | Tetsushi Kajimoto of Reuters

TOKYO — Radiation near a tank holding highly contaminated water at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has spiked 18-fold, the plant's operator said on Sunday, highlighting the struggle to bring the crisis under control after more than two years.

Radiation of 1,800 millisieverts per hour — enough to kill an exposed person in four hours — was detected near the bottom of one storage tank on Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co., also known as Tepco, said.

An Aug. 22 readings measured radiation of 100 millisieverts per hour at the same tank. Japanese law has set an annual radiation exposure safety threshold of 50 millisieverts for nuclear plant workers during normal hours.

Last month, Tepco revealed that water from the tank was leaking. Japan's nuclear regulator later raised the severity of the leak from a level 1 "anomaly" to a level 3 "serious incident" on an international scale for radiation releases.

The Fukushima Daiichi power plant north of Tokyo was devastated by a tsunami on March 11, 2011 that resulted in fuel-rod meltdowns at three reactors, radioactive contamination of the air, sea and food and the evacuation of 160,000 people.

It sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.

While there were no new leaks found at the tank, a Tepco spokesman said another leak had been detected from a pipe connecting two other tanks nearby.

"We have not confirmed fresh leakage from the tank and water levels inside the tank has not changed," the Tepco spokesman said. "We are investigating the cause."

Tepco said the radiation measured was beta rays, which would be easier to protect against than gamma rays.

The Tepco spokesman also said the higher level of radiation from the latest reading was partly because investigators had used a measuring instrument capable of registering greater amounts of radiation.

Instruments used previously had only been capable of measuring radiation up to 100 millisieverts, but the new instruments were able to measure up to 10,000 millisieverts.

Radiation of 220 millisieverts was also recorded near an adjacent storage tank, where a reading of 70 had been registered last month.

Radiation of 230 millisieverts was detected from the new leak from the pipe connecting two nearby tanks, a new measurement of 70 was taken from another, separate storage tank.

Related: Japan official wants Fukushima operator Tepco to be liquidated

Those tanks are built of steel plates stuck together by bolts — the same structure as the tank that was found last month to have leaked 300 tons of highly toxic water.

With no one seeming to know how to bring the crisis to an end, Tepco said last week it would invite foreign decommissioning experts to advise it on how to deal with the highly radioactive water leaking from the site.

Japan has also signaled it might dip into a $3.6 billion emergency reserve fund to help pay for the clean-up of a situation the chief cabinet secretary has described as "deplorable".

Its nuclear regulator has also expressed fear that the disaster was beyond Tepco's ability to cope in some respects.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida visited Chernobyl in Ukraine, the site of the 1986 disaster, hoping to apply lessons learned there to Fukushima.

http://news.msn.com/world/radiation-...ocid=ansnews11