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External radiation exposures noted in 2012

A new study has concluded that while ongoing radiation exposures continue, there’s only a small risk of radiation-induced cancers among people not far from Fukushima. International Business Times reported Feb. 25 that a group of Japanese scientists recruited 483 people living between 12 and 31 miles of the six-reactor Fukushima-Daiichi complex, which was devastated and caused three reactor meltdowns in March 2011. For two months in 2012, survey participants wore dosimeters that measured external radiation exposures from the ground, air, and food.
“The extra lifetime… risk of cancer incidence… is unlikely to be epidemiologically [or statistically] detectable,” the authors concluded in a paper published Feb. 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
However, the authors admit the study’s results are extremely limited. “This assessment was derived from short-term observation with uncertainties,” they said. Women and infants are far more at risk from a given dose of radiation than adult men. Furthermore, the study did not measure exposure to radioactive iodine-131, huge amounts of which were released. Significantly, the researchers could not measure or consider the effects of radiation exposures received during the first year of the accident, when the largest individual doses may have occurred.

FDA asked to test and label US food

Last July, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) admitted that 300 to 400 tons of highly contaminated water are leaking into the Pacific from its destroyed reactors every day—and have been for three years. The American Medical Association—following the revelation of massive ongoing leaks—called on the U.S. government to “monitor and fully report the radioactivity levels of edible species sold in the United States.” Yet at present, U.S. seafood is not regularly tested for cesium contamination, in spite of fish and other foods that have been found contaminated by Fukushima isotopes—including blue fin and albacore tuna caught off the U.S. West Coast, grapefruit from Florida, and prunes, almonds, pistachios and oranges from California, according to the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN).
FFAN, a coalition of public health and environmental groups, has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration demanding a drastic reduction in the amount of radioactive cesium allowed in food by the United States. The petition, launched last summer, declares that the arbitrarily high U.S. limit of 1,200 Becquerels per-kilogram (Bq/kg) of cesium in food is “ridiculous.” The U.S. standard is between 120 times and 24 times weaker than Japan’s, depending on the food type. (A Becquerel is one atomic disintegration per second.)
FFAN’s petition demands that U.S. foods be allowed to have no more than 5 Bq/kg of cesium-137 and cesium-134, and that all food be tested and labeled with its cesium content. FFAN notes that the devastated Fukushima reactors continue to leak more than 10 million Becquerels of cesium-134 and cesium-137 per hour into the environment, “with no sign of stopping.” The network said it was “alarmed” at the lack of testing currently in place. Because cesium-134 has a hazardous life of about 10 to 20 years, and cesium-137 has a hazardous life of about 300 to 600 years, FFAN said, the threat of food contamination “is a long-term issue that deserves immediate attention.”

High cesium contamination of ag’ reservoirs’ sediment

Extremely high levels of radioactive cesium that were spewed by Fukushima’s reactor fires and explosions have been found in the sediments of hundreds of reservoirs used to irrigate farmland. A survey by Japan’s agriculture ministry and Fukushima’s prefectural government found that the contamination exceeds 8,000 Bq/kg in sediments at 576 irrigation reservoirs. In 14 reservoirs, the level of cesium tops 100,000 Bq/kg.
Topsoil contaminated with cesium above 8,000 Bq/kg is supposed to be designated as radioactive waste and removed by the federal government. But Tokyo has said that reservoirs, many of which are located in residential areas, are not covered by its decontamination program.
Some 468 reservoirs are located outside evacuation zones and are still supplying water to rice paddies and farmlands. Those areas are mainly located in the central part of Fukushima Prefecture, including the cities of Fukushima and Date.
Of the 14 reservoirs where cesium contamination exceeds 100,000 Bq/kg, five are situated in populated areas outside the evacuation zones. Of these five, sediment in the Myotoishi reservoir—55 kilometers west of the devastated reactor complex—had the highest contamination at 370,000 Bq/kg.
Trillions of Becquerels of highly radioactive cesium, strontium, and iodine have been spewed to the atmosphere and into the sea since the March 2011 accident. Airborne cesium attached to dust and fell with rain into the reservoirs. In addition, cesium that was deposited on surrounding mountainsides continues to wash down and accumulate in the reservoirs.

“Tepco unable to measure or handle radiation”

On Feb. 8, 2014, Tepco announced an eye-popping revision of its estimate of radiation levels in a test well used to measure groundwater contamination since March 2011. The company said five million Becquerels of strontium-90 per-liter was found in the well—over five times its earlier estimate of 900,000 Becquerels-per-liter. The error indicates that the company’s readings taken at other test wells prior to September 2013 are also likely to be highly inaccurate, the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbum said.
National Public Radio’s Anthony Kuhn reported on Feb. 15 that a “[R]eally harsh judgment came from Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) which says that Tepco just doesn’t know how to measure or handle radiation. And that’s a regulator that’s been accused of being too cozy with Tepco.” Tepco owns the Fukushima complex.
The NRA’s criticism comes after Tepco has repeatedly underestimated the amount of radiation being released from its three destroyed reactors, from a waste fuel cooling pool, and from contaminated groundwater reaching the Pacific.
According to the BBC on Sept. 1, 2013, radiation levels near one leaking storage tank were 18 times higher than Tepco had previously reported. Actual radiation levels near the tank were high enough to kill nearby workers within a few hours.
Tepco originally reported that radiation being emitted was around 100 millisieverts/hour, but its Geiger counters used for the earlier tests maxed out at 100 millisieverts/hour, and the company simply noted “100” rather than getting accurate counters. The actual radiation of 1,800 millisieverts/hour proved Tepco wrong by a factor of 18. “The new reading will have direct implications” for workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak, the BBC noted.
Tepco officials apologized for the errors and said the misinformation resulted from malfunctioning equipment. However, the giant utility has committed a string of disaster response blunders, caused thousands of worker radiation exposures, and has a long record of corporate corruption.

“Hot” water storage system failures ongoing

In August, about a ton of water heavily contaminated with cesium and strontium leaked from one of the tanks hastily built to temporarily store thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated cooling water used to cool melted uranium fuel rods inside the three wrecked reactors. Also in August, another 400 tons of highly radioactive water leaked from one of the same tanks.
On October 3, 430 liters of highly contaminated water leaked from storage tanks, and NBC News reported that at 200,000 Becquerels-per-liter of deadly cesium, it was 6,700 times more radioactive than the legal limit.
Last December 24, an estimated 225 tons of contaminated rainwater leaked from cracks in barriers surrounding storage tanks. The Asahi Shimbun reported last December 25 that Tepco said the amount appeared to be the largest leak of radioactive rainwater in the three years since the radiation disaster began.
On February 20, Tepco admitted that 100 tons of water that leaked from a faulty tank was some of the most severely contaminated ever spewed by the disaster. Tepco—in spite of being scolded by the federal government for its inept and dangerous responses to the disaster—still operates the devastated reactor complex.
Six workers were sprayed with highly radioactive water October 9 after they dislodged a pipe in the makeshift cooling system. About 10 tons of the heavily contaminated water spilled onto the grounds, but Tepco said it was kept from reaching the sea.

Sickened US sailors sue Tepco over contamination

Citing a wide range of ailments from leukemia to blindness to birth defects, 79 U.S. Navy veterans of a short-lived Fukushima relief effort have filed a new $1 billion class-action lawsuit against Tepco, Harvey Wasserman reports.
Wasserman, a senior advisor to Greenpeace USA, investigative journalist, and author, wrote in a recent op-ed that sailors who served on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan as radiation poured over it during the Fukushima melt-downs in March 2011 report a long list of health effects. The suit has been left open for “up to 70,000 U.S. citizens [who were] potentially affected by the radiation and will be able to join the class action.”
The amended action, filed in federal court in San Diego February 6, says Tepco failed to disclose that the $4.3 billion nuclear-powered USS Reagan was being heavily dosed from three melt-downs and four explosions at the Fukushima site. The USS Reagan was as close as a mile offshore as the stricken reactors spewed clouds of deadly radiation into the air and ocean beginning the day after the earthquake and tsunami. USS Reagan crew members drank and bathed in desalinated sea water that was heavily irradiated from Fukushima’s fallout.
As a group, the sailors comprise an especially young, healthy cross-section of people, Wasserman noted, and their ailments parallel those of down-winders irradiated at Hiroshima/Nagasaki (1945), during atmospheric Bomb tests (1946-1963), at Three Mile Island (1979), and at Chernobyl (1986). Among them, the lawsuit alleges, are reproductive problems and “illnesses such as leukemia, ulcers, gall bladder removals, brain cancer, testicular cancer, dysfunctional uterine bleeding, thyroid illnesses, stomach ailments and a host of other complaints unusual in such young adults.”