"Radio-phobia" rears its ugly head yet again, this time at Fukushima

A particularly cynical and cruel form of "Nukespeak" is downplaying actual radiological injury by trumpeting "radio-phobia" after nuclear catastrophes like Fukushima DaiichiNuclear power boosters have long tried to convince victims of radioactive catastrophes that "it's all in your head." Both at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the nuclear power industry -- and its friends in government regulatory agencies, the PR industry, and even academia -- tried to convince the public that any ill effects were not due to physical impacts of radioactive fallout, but rather to stress and worry caused by "anti-nuclear fear mongering." A short piece in NewScientist gives this Orwellian "psy-ops" ploy "airtime" yet again, this time in the context of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

Plutonium-239 contamination 23,000 times worse than previously admitted?!

The blogger EX-SKF has reported that, if information that the Japanese federal Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) admitted in a press conference is correct, then through straightforward mathematical calculation, plutonium-239 contamination levels resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe may be 23,000 times worse than previously admitted. However, NISA later backpedalled from the statement which led to this conclusion. The fact remains that earlier this month, EX-SKF received word from colleagues that Neptunium-239 was detected 35 to 38 km (22 to 24 miles) from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, portending that plutonium-239 contamination is severe long distances downwind. Np-239 quickly decays into Pu-239, which then has a 24,400 half-life, or, put another way, 240,000 to 480,000 year ultra-hazardous persistence.

Despite detection of "low" levels of radioactive cesium, Fukushima rice cleared for sale and consumption

The Mainichi Daily News has reported that the first early-harvest rice grown since the beginning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe began is being sent to market. The Japanese federal government prohibits rice containing more than 500 becquerels (radioactive disintegrations per second) of radioactive cesium per kilogram of rice from being sold and consumed. Rice contaminated to a level of 22 Bq/kg has been found in Fukushima Prefecture, but this has not impeded the first shipments of rice to market. However, the U.S. National Academy of Science has affirmed again and again, most recently in 2005-2006 in its BEIR VII report (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, 7th iteration) that any exposure to radioactivity carries a health risk, no matter how small, and that the risks are cumulative over a lifetime.

Tepco says Unit 3 blew up Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi

The shattered Unit 4, as it appeared on March 24, 9 days after its "mysterious" explosionIn the earliest days of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, the prevailing storyline on the explosion which destroyed the Unit 4 secondary containment reactor building was that the high-level radioactive waste storage pool had boiled dry, its wastes had caught fire, explosive hydgrogen gas was generated, which then blew up the building. But as posted at Beyond Nuclear's website, at the end of May, a U.S. Dept. of Energy spokesman revealed that the actual culprit may have been the Unit 3 reactor meltdown. The Mainichi Daily News now reports that Tokyo Electric Power Company is asserting just that, that hydrogen gas from the Unit 3 meltdown(s), rather than being vented out the stack shared with Unit 4, flowed instead into the Unit 4 secondary containment reactor building, blowing it up. The likes of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and President Obama's and Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future will likely spin such news into a message of "pools are safe." This is not true. Fukushima Daiichi's pools storing high-level radioactive waste at Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 have had to be repeatedly re-filled with water, through various ad hoc, desperate, and dangerous means (such as failed helicopter water drops, as well as fire trucks, riot control water cannons, concrete pump trucks, etc. firing water from a radiologically safe(r) distance), due to the cooling water continually boiling away for lack of operable circulation systems.

42 incinerators in 7 prefectures of Japan test positive for radioactivity in ash and dust above regulatory limits

The Mainichi Daily News has reported that 42 incineration facilities in the prefectures of Tokyo, Chiba, Iwate and three other prefectures as well as Fukushima have radioactive dust and ash that violates federal regulations for disposal in ordinary landfills, the Japanese Environment Ministry announced on Saturday. The federal standard for disposal of radioactive ash and dust requires that it contain less than 8,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. Yet, readings of 95,300 becquerels/kg have been detected in Fukushima; 70,800 becquerels/kg in Chiba; 30,000 becquerels/kg in Iwate; and 9,740 becquerels/kilogram was found in dust at an incineration plant in Tokyo's Edogawa Ward in June. A becquerel is defined as one radioactive disintegration per second. Thus, 8,000 radioactive distintegrations per second in just one kg (2.2 pounds) of dust or ash is a significant amount of hazardous radioactivity.