Nuclear emergency declared at quake-damaged reactor

[googlegoogle]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...reactors_N.htm

[orange]

Radioactivity in sea up 7.5 million times
Marine life contamination well beyond Japan feared

By KANAKO TAKAHARA
Staff writer
Tuesday, April 5, 2011


Radioactive iodine-131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit, Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Tuesday.

The sample that yielded the high reading was taken Saturday, before Tepco announced Monday it would start releasing radioactive water into the sea, and experts fear the contamination may spread well beyond Japan's shores to affect seafood overseas.

The unstoppable radioactive discharge into the Pacific has prompted experts to sound the alarm, as cesium, which has a much longer half-life than iodine, is expected to concentrate in the upper food chain.

According to Tepco, some 300,000 becquerels per sq. centimeter of radioactive iodine-131 was detected Saturday, while the amount of cesium-134 was 2 million times the maximum amount permitted and cesium-137 was 1.3 million times the amount allowable.

The amount of iodine-131 dropped to 79,000 becquerels per sq. centimeter Sunday but shot up again Monday to 200,000 becquerels, 5 million times the permissible amount.

The level of radioactive iodine in the polluted water inside reactor 2's cracked storage pit had an even higher concentration. A water sample Saturday had 5.2 million becquerels of iodine per sq. centimeter, or 130 million times the maximum amount allowable, and water leaking from the crack had a reading of 5.4 million becquerels, Tepco said.

"It is a considerably high amount," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Masayoshi Yamamoto, a professor of radiology at Kanazawa University, said the high level of cesium is the more worrisome find.

"By the time radioactive iodine is taken in by plankton, which is eaten by smaller fish and then by bigger fish, it will be diluted by the sea and the amount will decrease because of its eight-day half-life," Yamamoto said. "But cesium is a bigger problem."

The half-life of cesium-137 is 30 years, while that for cesium-134 is two years. The longer half-life means it will probably concentrate in the upper food chain.

Yamamoto said such radioactive materials are likely to be detected in fish and other marine products in Japan and other nations in the short and long run, posing a serious threat to the seafood industry in other nations as well.

"All of Japan's sea products will probably be labeled unsafe and other nations will blame Japan if radiation is detected in their marine products," Yamamoto said.

Tepco on Monday began the release into the sea of 11,500 tons of low-level radioactive water to make room to store high-level radiation-polluted water in the No. 2 turbine building. The discharge continued Tuesday.

"It is important to transfer the water in the No. 2 turbine building and store it in a place where there is no leak," Nishiyama of the NISA said. "We want to keep the contamination of the sea to a minimum."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano apologized for the release of radioactive water into the sea but said it was unavoidable to prevent the spread of higher-level radiation.

Fisheries minister Michihiko Kano said the ministry plans to increase its inspections of fish and other marine products for radiation.

On Monday, 4,080 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive iodine was detected in lance fish caught off Ibaraki Prefecture. Fishermen voluntarily suspended its shipment. The health ministry plans to compile radiation criteria for banning marine products.

Three days after Tepco discovered the crack in the reactor 2 storage pit it still hadn't found the source of the high radiation leak seeping into the Pacific.

Tepco initially believed the leak was somewhere in the cable trench that connects the No. 2 turbine building and the pit. But after using milky white bath salt to trace the flow, which appeared to prove that was not the case, the utility began to think it may be seeping through a layer of small stones below the cable trench.

Information from Kyodo added




more: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110405x1.html

[teedubya]

Originally Posted by orange

Radioactivity in sea up 7.5 million times
Marine life contamination well beyond Japan feared

By KANAKO TAKAHARA
Staff writer
Tuesday, April 5, 2011


Radioactive iodine-131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit, Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Tuesday.

The sample that yielded the high reading was taken Saturday, before Tepco announced Monday it would start releasing radioactive water into the sea, and experts fear the contamination may spread well beyond Japan's shores to affect seafood overseas.

The unstoppable radioactive discharge into the Pacific has prompted experts to sound the alarm, as cesium, which has a much longer half-life than iodine, is expected to concentrate in the upper food chain.

According to Tepco, some 300,000 becquerels per sq. centimeter of radioactive iodine-131 was detected Saturday, while the amount of cesium-134 was 2 million times the maximum amount permitted and cesium-137 was 1.3 million times the amount allowable.

The amount of iodine-131 dropped to 79,000 becquerels per sq. centimeter Sunday but shot up again Monday to 200,000 becquerels, 5 million times the permissible amount.

The level of radioactive iodine in the polluted water inside reactor 2's cracked storage pit had an even higher concentration. A water sample Saturday had 5.2 million becquerels of iodine per sq. centimeter, or 130 million times the maximum amount allowable, and water leaking from the crack had a reading of 5.4 million becquerels, Tepco said.

"It is a considerably high amount," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Masayoshi Yamamoto, a professor of radiology at Kanazawa University, said the high level of cesium is the more worrisome find.

"By the time radioactive iodine is taken in by plankton, which is eaten by smaller fish and then by bigger fish, it will be diluted by the sea and the amount will decrease because of its eight-day half-life," Yamamoto said. "But cesium is a bigger problem."

The half-life of cesium-137 is 30 years, while that for cesium-134 is two years. The longer half-life means it will probably concentrate in the upper food chain.

more: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110405x1.html

No no... shut up. Everything is fine. It's perfectly normal to contaminate the ocean. It's a big ocean, man. It's fine... Oh, and the seafood in the Gulf of Mexico is extra delicious now. Corexit is actually a nutrient, now. FDA is making an adjustment to the Food chain to include radiation and corexit as part of the food pyramid. It's the five food groups now. Fruit, Dairy, Meat, Grains & GMO/Radiation/Corexit. You need to get 2 of each for your daily allowance.

It will make you extra strong. The Amurkan govt told me so.

[LiveSteam]

Originally Posted by Bwana

Heh

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1325

Nice find.

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.

[teedubya]

Originally Posted by LiveSteam

Nice find.

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.

Dude, be quiet. You are part of the problem. We want sheep not freethinkers. Quit that reading shit...

Everything is fine. Donger and Dave Lane said so.

[orange]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2....html?ref=asia

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Chiefnj2

Donger: Nothing to see here. Just a little radioactive water.

Reporting from Tokyo—
The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it had found radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials imposed a new health limit for radioactivity in fish.

The reading of iodine-131 was recorded Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Another sample taken Monday found the level to be 5 million times the legal limit. The Monday samples also were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.

The exact source of the radiation was not immediately clear, though Tepco has said that highly contaminated water has been leaking from a pit near the No. 2 reactor. The utility initially believed that the leak was coming from a crack, but several attempts to seal the crack failed.

On Tuesday the company said the leak instead might be coming from a faulty joint where the pit meets a duct, allowing radioactive water to seep into a layer of gravel underneath. The utility said it would inject "liquid glass" into gravel in an effort to stop further leakage.

It seems very likely that water from the RPV of #2 is leaking at this point. You may note that above I was discussing the INTENTIONAL discharge of lower-level (much lower level) radioactive water. They are doing this so that they DON'T have to discharge the really nasty water.

Sorry, I thought that was clear.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by teedubya

Yeah, the radioactive iodine is one thing... the radioactive Xenon 133 and the Caesium 137.... and the plutonium have an entirely different and much longer half-life.

But, you'd have to research and know where to look to find such information.

Luckily, I do that for you.

http://www.woweather.com/weather/new...R=nilujapan131

Caesium 137 Surface
Caesium 137 2500m
Caesium 137 5000m

This shit isn't bad for Earth, AT ALL... no, I'm so glad that instead of doing anything about it, and giving us warnings or updated radiation levels around the globe, what the US Amurkan govt does, is instead RAISE the radiation exposure limits... heh.

Plotunium? I thought the only MOX was in #4?

[Donger]

Originally Posted by teedubya

No no... shut up. Everything is fine. It's perfectly normal to contaminate the ocean. It's a big ocean, man. It's fine... Oh, and the seafood in the Gulf of Mexico is extra delicious now. Corexit is actually a nutrient, now. FDA is making an adjustment to the Food chain to include radiation and corexit as part of the food pyramid. It's the five food groups now. Fruit, Dairy, Meat, Grains & GMO/Radiation/Corexit. You need to get 2 of each for your daily allowance.

It will make you extra strong. The Amurkan govt told me so.

Who said everything was fine?

And, it IS a big ocean. No one outside the plant is going to be killed or probably even get sick from the radiation that has either been deliberately or unintentionally discharged.

The Gulf is fine, BTW, as is the food within it.

But, keep trying. One day, you may actually be accurate and get a nice, big, fat body count.

[Donger]

And, they've stopped the leak of the highly radioactive water in #2 reactor.

[DaKCMan AP]

For you chicken-littles who don't know what you're talking about:

Worried about a radioactive ocean? A reality check

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer

Wed Apr 6, 6:09 am ETNEW YORK – This week, workers at the stricken Japanese nuclear plant dumped radioactive water into the ocean to make room for storing even more highly contaminated water on the site. The water dumping came after earlier leaks of radioactive water that had already raised concerns about its effects in the ocean, raising questions about health and safety. Here are answers to some of those questions.

Q. Can you see radiation?
A. No, you can't see, taste or smell it.

Q. How does radiation travel?
A. In the air, it moves as energy waves. That's how an X-ray machine looks inside you. At the Japanese nuclear plant complex, workers have been exposed to such waves, as well as radioactive particles. Over long distances, tiny radioactive particles on dust are blown by the wind. It can come back down to Earth with rain.
In the water, microscopic radioactive particles are carried along by the currents.

Q. How dangerous is radiation?
A. We live in a world of radiation. It is in the water we drink, the food we eat, the very air we breathe. Most of the radiation we are exposed to comes from outer space, the decaying of uranium in the earth, and medical procedures like X-rays and CT scans.

Q. How is radiation measured?
A. Radiation is often measured as a dose or exposure — the amount of radiation absorbed over a certain time. It's generally measured in millirems in the United States, and millisieverts elsewhere. The average place on Earth exposes people to about 300 millirems, or 3 millisieverts, every year. A chest X-ray exposes a patient to about 10 millirems, or 0.1 millisievert.

Q. How can radiation hurt us?
A. Too much radiation in a short time can cause deadly radiation sickness, with its signature symptoms of nausea, dizziness and hair loss. High doses can also cause cancer decades later. It can lead to congenital defects in future children of exposed adults.

Q. So how much radiation is too much radiation?
A. Natural background radiation in the environment varies greatly at different places on Earth, depending on altitude, geology and other factors. In theory, any increase in radiation can lead to a higher risk of cancer. In practice, though, population studies find no apparent elevated risk of cancer even at the highest levels of background radiation. And the most respected radiation experts say people can tolerate at least 10,000 millirems (100 millisieverts) in a short period with no discernible harm. On the other hand, much larger doses — like 400,000 millirems or 4,000 millisieverts — will cause radiation sickness and cancer in many people. That would be the rough equivalent of 40,000 chest X-rays.

Q. Can the radioactive water leaking from the Japanese nuclear plant eventually reach the U.S. and be hazardous?
A. It's hard to say how that water will move, because it will spread not only on the surface but downward in deep layers of the Pacific Ocean. If it does reach the West Coast, it would probably take at least 18 months to three years, by one estimate. In any case, nobody expects it would pose a radiation hazard upon arrival because of tremendous dilution along the way.
Airborne radioactive particles have already reached the United States, but federal authorities say the measured levels aren't dangerous.

Q. Weren't the workers at the nuclear plant treated for burns after coming into contact with radioactive water? What if someone swam in the ocean off the coast of Japan?
A. The kind of radiation levels the workers experienced cause sunburn-like burns in about a half-hour to an hour. But swimming near the plant is banned, and radiation levels of water dumped in the ocean decline quickly with distance from the complex.

Q. What radioactive elements are leaking and what are the risks?
A. Measurements so far have focused mostly on iodine and cesium, which were responsible for most of the radiation dose to the public at the Chernobyl disaster.
Radiation from iodine-131 dissipates quickly, falling by half every eight days, so that it's virtually gone in 80 days. Its danger is that if inhaled or swallowed, it can concentrate in the thyroid and cause cancer.
Cesium radiation sticks around much longer, taking 30 years to decline by half and 300 years to virtually disappear. Cesium can build up in the body and high levels are thought to be a risk for various other cancers. Still, researchers who studied Chernobyl could not find an increase in cancers that might be linked to cesium.

Q. Will ocean creatures be harmed by the discharges of the radioactive water?
A. Experts say animals very near the plant may face problems like higher rates of genetic mutations, but that this would probably happen within only maybe a half a mile or so.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110406/...JyaWVkYWJvdXQ-

[gblowfish]

All this is just another reason not to eat sushi.

[DaKCMan AP]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

All this is just another reason not to eat sushi.

Nonsense. However, go ahead with that plan to leave more delicious sushi for me.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by DaKCMan AP

For you chicken-littles who don't know what you're talking about:

You're just a sheep that listens to everything the gubment (and scientists) say about it.

[DaKCMan AP]

Originally Posted by DaFace

You're just a sheep that listens to everything the gubment (and scientists) say about it.

[loochy]

Originally Posted by DaKCMan AP

For you chicken-littles who don't know what you're talking about:

Wait so radioactive doesn't mean green glowing goo!?