Kevin Kamps at the Darlington, Ontario hearings



Worker monitoring radiation at Fukushima plant says levels immeasurable

This from NHK: "A radiation monitor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers there are exposed to immeasurable levels of radiation.

The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant's No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. He said even levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places.

Pools and streams of water contaminated by high-level radiation are being found throughout the facility.

The monitor said he takes measurements as soon as he finds water, because he can't determine whether it's contaminated just by looking at it. He said he's very worried about the safety of workers there.

Contaminated water and efforts to remove it have been hampering much-needed work to cool the reactors.

The monitor expressed frustration, likening the situation to looking up a mountain that one has to climb, without having taken a step up."

Tuesday, April 05, 2011 19:51 +0900 (JST)

Radiation debate rages inside EPA

Public Employees for Environmental Resposibility (PEER) released a media advisory about a plan at EPA to radically hike post-accident radiation in food & water. "The internal documents show that under the updated PAG a single glass of water could give a lifetime’s permissible exposure. In addition, it would allow long-term cleanup limits thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These new limits would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed." PEER News Release

Radiation leaking into Pacific Ocean now 7.5 million times legal limit

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that radioactive iodine levels in sea water off the coast of the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant have risen to 7.5 million times the legally "permitted" levels. Radioactive cesiuim levels are now recorded at 1.1 million times the so-called "permissible" limit.  It must always be noted that even "permissible" levels are not medically considered safe levels for radiation exposure as there is no "safe" exposure level without an associated increase in risk to health.

NHK Japan news service is further reporting that the much longer lived  radioactive cesium (30 year half-life) in the marine enviroment off the coast of the stricken reactor is bioaccumulating in schools of "sand lance" fish.  As a result, sand lance fishing is now being restricted. The contamination of the marine food web or chain is of increasing concern.  The sand lance are near shore schooling fish that form an important food source for marine life including salmon, whales and sea birds.

NHK quoted a Japanese fisherman to say, "If these contaminated leaks continue, it will gradually ruin the sea. We have only one hope, stop the leaks." 

As barrier after barrier has failed to contain radiation from the multi-unit reactor accident, the containment structures have become sieves for uncontrolled releases of greater and greater amounts of radioactive isotopes leaking into the ocean and the atmosphere. High radiation levels continue to hamper and defeat repair efforts. After failure to inject concrete into one known crack with a flow rate of several tons of radioactive water per hour, TEPCO is now injecting a "liquid glass" to stem the toxic flow. The company is considering putting up offshore "silt fences" in a desparate attempt to dam the radiation closer in offshore water closer to the reactor site.

Brian Ross has also blogged at the Daily Kos about the impact of such large-scale radioactivity releases on the health of the world's oceans the life forms that live there.

Have the high-level radioactive waste pools survived?

The latest available high resolution photographs from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant -- taken by pilotless drones over a week ago -- beg the question, have the storage pools for high-level radioactive waste survived the explosions and fires that have ravaged the facilities in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami? Located immediately adjacent to the tops of the cores of reactor units 1, 2, 3, and 4, the frightful specter has been raised that one or more pools are not only damaged, but even destroyed, judging by the severe damage visibly suffered by the upper reaches of the secondary containment buildings, exactly where the pools are located. Unit 4's pool, at the very least, seems to have boiled dry, and its high-level radioactive waste caught fire, in the earliest days of this still-unfolding catastrophe. Given that the pools are not located in primary containment structures, and that the secondary containment buildings at all four reactor units were damaged or destroyed by huge hydrogen gas explosions, the large-scale radioactivity releases from pool fires and/or leaks are being directly discharged into the environment.

Whereas Fukushima Daiichi's Units 1 to 4 storage pools reportedly contain from 80 to 130 tons of high-level radioactive waste each, U.S. General Electric Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors -- such as Oyster Creek, NJ; Vermont Yankee; and Fermi 2, MI -- contain over 500 tons each. Thus, pool boil downs and high-level radioactive waste fires could happen much more quickly than at Fukushima Daiichi, and the catastrophic radioactivity releases could be several-fold worse. It does not require an earthquake and tsunami. Any pathway to station blackout could cause such a catastrophe in the U.S. -- including power loss due to severe weather such as hurricanes, tornadoes, wind storms, ice storms, lightning strikes, etc. A tree branch touching a power line in northwest Ohio led to the second biggest power outage in world history on August 14, 2003 -- plunging 50 million people into darkness in the Northeast and Midwest U.S. and Ontario. A raccoon knocked electricity out to the Fermi nuclear power plant in the late 1980s. In addition to a pool boil down over the course of a day or two, a terrorist attack on the vulnerable pools (especially GE BWR Mark 1's), or the accidental drop of a heavy load, could drain a pool instantly. Once the cooling water supply is gone, the high-level radioactive waste will catch on fire within hours. A 2001 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission technical study estimated that 25,000 people downwind, out to distances of 500 miles, could die of latent cancer due to the radioactive fallout from a high-level radioactive waste storage pool fire.