*** Fukushima *** and other nuclear-----updates and links

Osaka residents voice radiation concerns over Fukushima-made bridge girders

A photo, taken on Oct. 6, shows a bridge construction project in Kawachinagano, Osaka Prefecture, which has been suspended due to radiation concerns over Fukushima-made bridge girders. (Mainichi)OSAKA -- Residents of Kawachinagano in Osaka Prefecture have expressed concerns over radiation from girders made in Fukushima Prefecture, which will be used for a bridge construction project as part of National Route 371's bypass linking here with Wakayama Prefecture.

[link to mdn.mainichi.jp]

-oc

Bringing the Plight of Fukushima Children to the UN, Washington and the World

Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Kyoto speaks with Mark Selden in New York about recent developments in Fukushima and the US tour by anti-nuclear activists from Fukushima and other parts of Japan.

“75% of Fukushima’s 300,000 children are going to schools that are so contaminated they would be radiation control areas in nuclear plants where individuals under 18 are not legally allowed. The Japanese government won’t evacuate people unless radiation levels are four times what triggered evacuation in Chernobyl,” Aileen Mioko Smith pointed out.

[link to japanfocus.org]



- tragic and enraging.

I will verify the "hot" picture for Waterbug. This was seen consistently.

Kashiwa locals to check food radiation levels
[link to www.yomiuri.co.jp]

Nagano Police to Send Juvenile Delinquents to Disaster-Affected Tohoku as "Volunteers"

so that they get to know the meaning of "life", the police says. (At least they are not sending them to Fukushima.)

The police clearly coerced them, but is calling it a "volunteer" job. (How much more Orwellian can it get?)

The police in Nagano Prefecture is sending 7 youths to the disaster-affected (radioactive on top of it) area in Miyagi Prefecture to "volunteer" cleanup jobs as part of their "rehabilitation" program.
[link to ex-skf.blogspot.com]

Must be running low on 'older men with nothing to lose'...

Soon enough they'll be running out of citizens :/

A foreboding truth.

The NRC Knew Possibility of Elevated Thyroid Dose in Midway Island and Alaska By March 22nd




Caused by this:

100% release of Unit No. 4 Spent Fuel Pool assumed in NRC analysis — 50% at Unit No. 3 pool

The NRC’s analysis from March 22 assumes there were two spent fuel pools (SFP) at Fukushima that released radioactivity, specifically:

50% of Unit No. 3 SFP
100% of Unit No. 4 SFP

[link to enenews.com]



confirmed by this.....





While Tepco did this.....







And the MSM, the gooberment and the NRC did this.......

Japanese health workers have begun checking more than 300,000 children living near the Fukushima nuclear plant for thyroid abnormalities.

The tests began after an unofficial survey which found that 10 out of 130 children evacuated from Fukushima had hormonal and other irregularities in the thyroid glands, according to AFP news agency.

But those who conducted the survey said they could not establish a link between the irregularities and Japan's nuclear crisis.

Their results will not be made public, but [if]edit they will receive treatment for any abnormalities.

More than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been detected in people who were children or adolescents when exposed to the radioactive fallout after Chernobyl

[link to www.bbc.co.uk]


-

Somebody, anybody... give me a rational reason for these results not to be released.

Some new photos
[link to cryptome.org]

.

Isn't it obvious?... more bad news for the nuclear business when you're trying to sell new plants... GE/Hitachi, Toshiba/Westinghouse and AREVA don't appreciate that kind of news...

.

Bingo. And the chickens will come home to roost.

Breaking News: Tokyo on the edge

Strontium 90 was measured in Yokohama, Kouhokuku. (5 mins by car from my apartment.)

The amount was 195 Bq/kg.
Detected by a university staff teaching engineering, so the measurement is trustworthy.

It has nothing to do with the historical world-wide nuclear test, because it was measured on the roof of and apartment, which was built only 5 years ago.

Now the test result was sent to Yokohama city government.
It means strontium 90 is already all around in Tokyo area.

Yokohama is 245km away from Fukushima.
Tokyo is closer to Fukushima actually
[link to fukushima-diary.com]

13 million people in Tokyo.

U.K. Nuclear Inspector to Release Final Post-Fukushima Report

You don’t want to be told you have to invest in additional safety measures as that will increase operating costs and you don’t want your new-build plans to have additional capital requirements,” MF Global analyst Ashley Thomas said in a telephone interview. The companies most affected by the report’s findings include Centrica Plc and Electricite de France SA, he said.

EDF owns 15 of Britain’s 19 operating nuclear reactors, accounting for 18 percent of total power generation, and is planning to build four more. The Paris-based utility acquired all of the U.K.’s atomic plants in 2008 before selling a 20 percent stake to Centrica, along with the option to be a minority investor in new plants.

[link to www.businessweek.com]

-oc

Nuke plants' generator failures draw scrutiny

Four generators that power emergency systems at nuclear plants have failed when needed since April, an unusual cluster that has attracted the attention of federal inspectors and could prompt the industry to re-examine its maintenance plans.

None of these failures has threatened the public. But the diesel generators serve the crucial function of supplying electricity to cooling systems that prevent a nuclear plant's hot, radioactive fuel from overheating, melting and potentially releasing radiation into the environment. That worst-case scenario happened this year when the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan lost all backup power for its cooling systems after an earthquake and tsunami.

[link to www.cbsnews.com]

-cbs is paying attention to this.

Post-Fukushima, France breaks silence on nuclear safety

On September 30, Socatri, a subsidiary of Areva, was found guilty of contaminating underground water tables in a 2008 leak of toxic liquid uranium at the Tricastin nuclear facility in southern France. The appeals court in the French city of Nimes, which handed down the sentence, fined the company €300,000 for pollution and gross negligence. It was also asked to pay damages to anti-nuclear associations and local residents. More seriously, the company was reprimanded for delays in communicating the leaks to the Nuclear Safety Authority.

The appellate court said Socatri/Areva was guilty of “introducing toxic substances into underground water, bringing about a significant modification of normal underground water flows.” Significantly, Socatri/Areva had been let off with a €40,000 fine in a trial held in October 2010. The Fukushima events have evidently led the country to take the risks involved in nuclear power more seriously.

“The trial in Nimes once again placed the spotlight on the degree of negligence which caused the accident in 2008. The judge rightly summed up the totality of acts of omission such as abandoning ageing facilities until they become decrepit to the point of rusting and, of course, the actions that followed the accident. They waited over 24 hours before signalling the leak,” said Etienne Ambroselli, spokesperson of the association Sortir du Nucleaire (Quit Nuclear).

[link to www.thehindu.com]

- seems the French will be having second thoughts.

Tokyo under illusion that things are normal while Fukushima remains a war zone

We are well into autumn. And despite the growing sense in the Tokyo metropolitan area that things are now all right -- with train services back to pre-disaster schedules and the regret we once felt over our wasteful consumption of electricity dissipating -- Fukushima remains a war zone.

Watari first took the spotlight when 24 times the radiation level permitted in school playgrounds by the central government was found in a daycare playground there in May. Just last week, reports emerged of there being 300,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram of soil in the district. This figure, too, far exceeds the maximum permissible amount set by the government.

The persimmons growing in front of the Tanjis' cafe, Fu to boku (wind and trees), have turned orange. There's been an unusual abundance of the fruit this year, but they've been found to have 176 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. The light purple flowers that adorn a tabletop inside the cafe were picked by the couple in the Yamagata Prefecture city of Yonezawa.

Of utmost urgency now are the evacuation of children, decontamination, and the installation of becquerel monitors to measure radiation levels in food. But meanwhile, in Tokyo, we're talking about economic growth and the export of nuclear technology, as if what's going on in Fukushima is somehow irrelevant to us. That, I believe, is simply wrong. (By Takao Yamada, Expert Senior Writer)

[link to mdn.mainichi.jp]

- oc

Farmers frustrated on removing tainted straw

MORIOKA, Japan -- Livestock farmers in three disaster-hit prefectures in the Tohoku region of Japan are having difficulty disposing of rice straw contaminated with radioactive cesium from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Cattle farmers are complaining that the central and local governments have not decided how to get rid of the contaminated straw.



Read more: [link to www.macon.com]

Large-scale thyroid testing for children begins

Dr. Shinichi Suzuki of the university medical school explained that it would take a few years before any thyroid abnormalities could manifest as cancer.

Parents of Fukushima children positively welcomed the said examinations while feeling anxious about the results.

Kyodo News earlier reported the test conducted by the Japan Chernobyl Foundation and Shinshu University Hospital among 130 children near the Fukushima nuke plan and found 10 of them with hormonal and other thyroid irregularities.

[link to www.tokyotimes.jp]

- I see they are not reporting that the results will not be released to the public.

Water Level Drop in Steam Generator Causes Shutdown at Seabrook Nuclear Plant

[link to nuclearstreet.com]

US hopeful wants preemptive Iran strike

US Republican presidential contender Jon Huntsman says “American force” should be used to preemptively attack Iran and stop Tehran from developing its nuclear program.


“I cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran. If you want an example of when I would use American force, it would be that,” AFP quoted Huntsman as saying on Monday, while outlining his foreign policy in an address at a university in New Hampshire.

The hawkish remarks echoed an earlier statement by Huntsman while being interviewed by New Hampshire's WMUR radio station.

[link to www.presstv.ir]

Evidence Shows Progress Energy Missteps Led to Cracks at Nuclear Plant


Two companies bid on the Crystal River job. They were the only two companies that had any experience managing similar upgrades, and between them they had completed 34, all successfully.

The low bid: $81 million.

Terry, Progress' major projects manager, thought he had a better idea.

"It seemed, in my mind, that there was an opportunity . . . to lower the cost up to the point . . . that we would exclude the contractor and self-manage," Terry would later testify.

Top Progress Energy officials adopted his do-it-yourself plan.

In eschewing the expertise of the two companies that had managed every other similar steam generator replacement project in the United States, Progress became the first utility to manage the cutting of a nuclear plant containment wall on its own.

The utility did the job differently from the way it had been done in similar jobs elsewhere. And after workers used this different procedure at Crystal River, the building that shields the nuclear reactor cracked.

There was no radiation leak. But the nuclear plant has been out of service for two years. It won't generate a kilowatt of power for at least two more years. There's a chance it will never be repaired.

"It was crazy for a utility to be so arrogant to think they could take on this project," said author and physicist Kenneth Bergeron of the Sandia National Laboratories, who spent 25 years managing research on nuclear reactor safety.

"You've got executives of a utility overreaching with other people's money."

[link to southeast.construction.com]


- a real brainiac, that one.

IAEA - detail on Iran atom bomb soon

Vienna - The UN atomic watchdog is expected to spell out in more detail soon the reasons for its growing concern that Iran may be working covertly to develop a nuclear missile, diplomats say.

Such a move by the International Atomic Energy Agency, possibly in a new quarterly report on Iran due early next month, could raise pressure on Tehran and offer more arguments for Western powers to tighten sanctions on the major oil producer.

[link to www.news24.com]

-oc

Pipe leaking radioactive water at Georgia nuclear plant sealed

[link to www.ajc.com]

hi waterbug could you tell me what we are actually seeing in the picture you posted taken at night through tepcos pointscope, what is that blue? is it neutrons?, like what were seen at chernobyl "the rainbow of colours" when the top came off the reactor?. or is it heat?.

That is insane! How do you get glowing blobs of Corium that are fifty feet down in the ground to stop having nuclear fissions. We know the nuclear fissioning is going on because of all of the radioactive Iodine that is being released.

How do you get 50 ton melted blobs to shut down????

Cherenkov effect.

[link to www.google.com]

The shape of the cherenkov and it's relative position led us to believe there were continuing criticalities in fuel pools. Turns out it was three reactors and ?fuel pools. We couldn't tell from the view.

The cooling stopped. The water turned to steam. The meltdowns happened. Covering that mess back up with seawater caused the cherenkov.

Tepco and the associated agencies and gov'ts said nil about this for three months.

It was reactor 3 and SFP3 that we were seeing I believe.



:diagram1:

Last Edited by Waterbug on 10/11/2011 10:23 PM