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Japan's minister in charge of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Toshiaki Endo wants qualifiers to be held in Fukushima Japan.
Japans 2020 Olympic Minister Toshiaki Endo
The proposal is for Fukushima to host 5 new Olympic sports including Baseball and Softball.
Toshiaki Endo says "I think disaster hit regions can host a number of qalifiers, these could be based in Fukushima."
"If qualifiers can be held in other regional areas as well, the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics will be an event for all of Japan."
Also in the video
I'm going to bring to light the Monju Fast Breeder Reactor Troubles
before I give you the normal Fukushima update tonight. Today's Headline
News from NHK .
Fukushima Radioactive Headines Sep 30th 2015 Dana Durnford Radioactive Heartless Monster I mean IAEA hates Japanese.
Up
To 100% of No. 2 Reactor Fuel May Have Melted A group of researchers
says it is highly likely that 70 to 100 percent of fuel has melted at
one of the Fukushima Nuclear Reactors.
Bags full of radioactive dirt and debris are still visible 5 years after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.
Ahead of the anniversary on March 11th reporters visited a town 20 kilometers away. The first in the area to fully re-open.
Bags full of Radioactive Dirt and Debris - Fukushima 2016
But for some of the few residence who have returned to Nahara there's little hope for the future of the town. This Buddhist priest says after coming back I knew I would see the end of this region, this town. It became an environment where people could not live safely and comfortably ever again he says.
Buddhist priest Tokuo Hayakawa living in Nahara, Futaba District, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan
It's reported less than six percent of residents have returned. Locals say the future will depend on young people returning and so far there is only a handful amid lingering fares about radioactivity. However authorities maintain the presence of radiation has now dropped to levels below what's considered safe.
The Music Video above might not have anything to do with the following post. But I feel a lot of people, especially in Japan have been made reluctant renegades!
Democracy Now a daily independent global news hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González
Video Transcript from 15:15 minutes in to 17:30 min
Evacuated from Futaba, Japan. Can never return home.
YUKIKO KAMEYA, Former Resident of Futaba, Japan (Evacuated From Town Near Fukushima): [Translated] When I fled from Futaba I could not even talk. I could not even have friends over or anything, but my people encouraged me to be standing here right now. Without any peoples help I could not be here. That's why I appreciate them and want to join them in their cause.
Reporter: What is your message to the Japanese government and the world about nuclear power?
YUKIKO KAMEYA, Former Resident of Futaba, Japan: I don't want anyone in the world to experiece what we have experienced, we have housing in Futaba but there is nothing there. Everything was robbed. All the furniture was brokened, I cant really go back there, we know it. We don't want anyone in the world to be in the situation that we are in. There are 59 children with thyroid problem, and there are hundreds more on the way. The real problem in Fukushima is children can not go out and play. They have to stay inside and this is not the way children should grow up. I don't want anyone in the world or Japan to experience this type of situation for children. So I want to stop Nuclear Facilities right now and I don't want them to be continued.
Reporter: Do you think you will ever be able to return to your home?
YUKIKO KAMEYA, Former Resident of Futaba, Japan: The Futaba where I live is not livable and the government say so. So I know we are never going back in my entire life. But for the Fukushima Prefecture it is still not safe, the radiation level is still very high. So I don't think it is safe and I don't think we will go back there.
Reporter: And what is your assessment of how the government has handled the crisis?
YUKIKO KAMEYA, Former Resident of Futaba, Japan: We expected our government to do a better job when this accident happened. But they don't really do what you want. They ignore all the problems we’re having. There are many young people between 15 and 19 in Fukushima who are in high school who have died suddenly. For example, this morning I saw an online story that a 17-year-old died from Leukemia. In the morning when his mother came to wake him up, he was found dead in bed. Everyone says this was caused by the radiation levels from the nuclear accident. But our government never recognized it, and there are 59 children with thyroid cancer, they’ll never recognize it as being caused by the radiation.
AMY GOODMAN: Music from the film Nuclear Nation: The Fukushima Refugees Story. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. This is the third day of our broadcast from Tokyo, Japan, and the final day. We are talking about moving in on the third anniversary of the Fukushima disaster. Nineteen thousand people died or went missing on that day, March 11th, 2011, and the days afterwards, when the earthquake triggered a tsunami, and three of the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down.
We’re joined right now by Futaba’s former mayor, Katsutaka Idogawa. For years, he embraced nuclear power. Now he has become a vocal critic. He is featured in the film Nuclear Nation.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! And thank you for traveling two hours to join us here at the studios of NHK International for this conversation. Mayor, explain what happened on that day, special thanks to Mary Joyce, who is translating for you today, on that day, March 11, 2011, and the days afterwards, when you decided it was time for the thousands of people who lived in your town, Futaba, to leave.
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] On that day, there was an earthquake of the scale of something we’d never experienced before. It was a huge surprise. And at the time, I was just hoping that nothing had happened to the nuclear power plant. However, unfortunately, there was in fact an accident there. And then I worked with the many residents, and thinking about how I could fully evacuate them from the radiation.
AMY GOODMAN: You made a decision to evacuate your town before the Japanese government told the people in the area to do this, but not before the U.S. government told Americans to leave the area and other governments said the same.
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes, the Japanese government’s information to evacuate became much later than that, and my mistake at the time was initially waiting to hear that. If I had made the decision even three hours earlier, I would have been able to prevent so many people from being so heavily exposed to radiation; however, as a result of that, unfortunately, several hundreds of people were directly affected by this radiation.
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you decide to move the whole town?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I was originally thinking about this at the time of the earthquake on March 11 first. However, at first, I was waiting to rely on the government information to decide the timing for this.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, you moved the town to a school in the outskirts of Tokyo, is that right? The entire town to an abandoned school? Explain how you set up your government, your whole community, in this one building.
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Right at the start, we were unfortunately not able to evacuate all of the residents, and some actually did remain within parts of Fukushima prefecture. And as a result of this, there was actually a gap created between those who were still remaining within the greater Fukushima prefecture area and those who evacuated to Saitama, outside of Tokyo. And the reason for this is we had no access to communication, to information, to mobile phones.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, how long did people stay? How many people were in this school? And what role did the government play? How has the government helped the refugees?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] We were able to evacuate around 1,400 of the residents to Saitama prefecture, outside of Tokyo. So they were saved from the initial first exposure, the most serious exposure to radiation at the time. But many of them, unable to deal with the situation, gradually started to return to different parts of Fukushima prefecture.
AMY GOODMAN: You have not returned back to your town?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes, I am still living in evacuation away from the heavily radiated areas.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the meetings that you have had with the government? You have had a remarkable association of nuclear mayors in Japan, the mayors who live—who preside over towns that have nuclear power plants in them.
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] From before the accident, we had always been strongly calling upon the government, and also TEPCO, to make sure that no accident was ever allowed to happen. And they were always telling us, "Don’t worry, Mayor. No accident could ever happen." However, because this promise was betrayed, this is why I became anti-nuclear.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip from Atsushi Funahashi’s new documentary film about the former residents of Futaba, where the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant is partly located. The film is called Nuclear Nation: The Fukushima Refugees Story. And we’re going to go to a part of the film that shows a part of this remarkable meeting of government officials with the atomic mayors, the nuclear mayors of Japan.
BANRI KAIEDA: [translated] The future of energy production and Japanese energy policy is currently being debated, and this is something we’ve communicated to you. Regarding the details of this review, I believe it’s important to clearly define the terms as soon as possible. Thank you very much.
MARC CARPENTIER, Narrator: The industry minister leaves his seat in the first five minutes.
GOSHI HOSONO: [translated] The central and prefectural governments are working on the annual health check guidelines. Based on what we’ve researched until now, the impact of radiation on children appears negligible. However, we will endeavor to keep you apprised of any developments.
MARC CARPENTIER: The nuclear crisis minister follows suit, citing official duties.
CHAIRPERSON: [translated] And now, we’d like to open the floor for comments. Please raise your hands. OK, go ahead.
MAYOR KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I’m representing Futaba. I want to know why we’re being made to feel this way. It’s frustrating. What does the nuclear power committee think? When you came and explained it to us, you lied, saying it was safe and secure. But we, who trusted and believed you, can no longer live in our own town.
AMY GOODMAN: That last voice was the mayor at the time of Futaba, Katsutaka Idogawa, who is with us today in our Tokyo studio. Futaba is where part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. He was speaking, addressing this meeting of government officials and nuclear mayors from around Japan in August of 2011. You just heard, oh, the voices of Goshi Hosono, who was the nuclear crisis minister of Japan, and Banri Kaieda, a minister of the economy, trade and industry. And after each of them spoke, they politely took their leave of the room before the mayors could address them, so they did not hear the Futaba mayor’s statement about the lies from the government. Talk about that particular meeting.
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] At the time, we were calling for a strong response and attention from the government since the disaster. However, they didn’t even try to listen to what we were calling for. And they continued to not even try to make efforts to fulfill their responsibilities or promise to us. And so, they continued to appear before us, those who were suffering directly from the disaster, but instead of listening to something which would maybe be difficult for their ears to hear, they would just leave the room, not even listen to us at all. And within those who were left in the room were some government officials, including some who were directly the ones who told me that no accident would ever happen. However, no matter what I would try to appeal and say to them, it would not have any effect, so instead I turned around and appealed and spoke to my colleagues, my fellow residents, and I tried to tell them what was really happening, the situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Former Mayor Katsutaka Idogawa, you were a fierce proponent of nuclear power. You were pushing for two more reactors to be built even closer to Futaba than the others. You were proud of getting tens of millions of dollars for your town for hosting these reactors. How did you make your transition to being one of the most vocal government officials against all nuclear power?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I had been supporting the nuclear power plants in our town on the condition that no accident, no disaster, would be allowed to occur. It was not necessarily that I was actually totally in favor of the nuclear power plants; however, the situation that was in places without the nuclear power plants there, our city would be losing the financial benefits and perhaps unable to go forward economically. The city was actually on the brink of bankruptcy beforehand. And so, in order to try and prevent the city from going into this kind of economic breakdown, I saw that building the new two reactors was perhaps the only way.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip, another clip of Nuclear Nation, that gives us a little background on the town of Futaba.
MARC CARPENTIER: Futaba’s farming history goes back over a thousand years. In winter months, people had to leave town for work in the city. Reactors 5 and 6 came online in 1978 and ’79. Money flowed in from the government, and the townspeople found themselves with lots of extra cash. They built roads, a library, a sprawling sports center, and made major upgrades to the infrastructure.
AMY GOODMAN: Nuclear Nation, talking about nuclear refugees, the nuclear refugees of Futaba. And we’re joined by the former mayor, who made the decision, on his own, right after the earthquake, to move his entire town, to evacuate it to Tokyo, being deeply concerned about the levels of radiation and feeling that the government was lying to them about the dangers in the area. This was a mayor, Katsutaka Idogawa, who was fiercely for nuclear power, was proud to be able to get two more reactors in his town to build the economy, to get tens of millions of dollars, and then turned around after the meltdown, after the earthquake, the tsunami and the ultimate meltdown of three of the six existing reactors.
Mayor, right now, you are not the only one who turned around in office. Naoto Kan, the prime minister, also a fierce proponent, is now speaking out all over the world against nuclear power. But just this week, as we flew in to Japan, the government of Prime Minister Abe, the most conservative government since World War II, announced that it wants to build more reactors in Japan. How are you organizing? What are you doing now?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Without being able to even deal with the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the position to promote nuclear power still is something which is just unthinkable to me. And I believe it’s really important for the prime minister to look at what he’s actually been responsible for and have regret and really deal with what they have done, before they can actually go forward and do anything. And the disaster now is bigger than anything we can cope with. It’s a disaster on an international level, and huge consequences, so he needs to really recognize this.
AMY GOODMAN: So who’s driving the push for more nuclear power? The country, already 30 percent dependent for its energy on nuclear power, had plans to make the country more than 50 percent by 2030. But after this catastrophe, who is pushing for these nuclear power plants?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] The nuclear power system is constructed to use huge amounts of public tax. And this is a very tasty, shall we say, position or situation for the large corporations. They were really behind this push. However, much public taxpayers’ money is being used behind this. And I believe it’s so important to prevent our taxes from being used for any of this kind.
AMY GOODMAN: What has happened to the Fukushima refugees today?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] There are so many people who want to evacuate but don’t have the means to be able to actually do that and are still living in this situation, who want to do something, but they have no support. And another huge issue is those who are still forced to be living within the greater Fukushima prefecture area do not have access to full health measurements, health treatments, and the kind of support that they need. And they’re also told that any diseases or sickness that they have is not caused by radiation.
AMY GOODMAN: You are traveling the world. Can you tell us the countries you’ve been to and why you’re speaking there?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I’m working with people all around the world, speaking with people who are working against nuclear power in their own areas.
AMY GOODMAN: You went to Finland?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I went to Finland to speak with people who are working against the construction of nuclear power plants in their areas, because they knew our situation and what happened to us, and we’re trying to work together to prevent this from ever happening to them.
AMY GOODMAN: In the United States, a nuclear power plant has not been built in close to 40 years, very much because of the anti-nuclear movement and the cost of what it means to build a nuclear power plant and what to do with the waste. But President Obama has talked about a nuclear renaissance and is pushing for the building of several new plants for the first time in decades. What message would you share with him?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] The nuclear power disaster is not just of Fukushima. This is a disaster of all humanity, of the entire world. There is a Japanese saying, and its meaning is that, well, any kind of disaster, three times is the limit. And we have had the three large disasters: one in the United States, one at Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. The Earth will not be able to cope with any further nuclear disasters. For the children of the future, the future generations, I hope that we can stop this now.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the alternative?
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Well, I’ve heard in U.S. there is shale gas, for example. But as well as other forms of energy, I believe it’s also very important now to look at how we can have lifestyles that rely less on energy, that use less energy more efficient in our homes and in our offices. And Prime Minister Koizumi is also suggesting this.
AMY GOODMAN: Prime Minister Koizumi, very significant that a conservative former prime minister also came out against nuclear power.
KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Even he looked at the actual situation. And I believe that Prime Minister Koizumi really visited places affected by nuclear power to really see what is happening, and he’s really speaking sincerely now.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for joining us on Democracy Now!, Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of the town of Futaba, where part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. The entire town was rendered uninhabitable by the nuclear meltdown. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Stay with us. After break, crowdsourcing radiation monitoring. We’ll look at how a group called Safecast has helped Japanese civilians turn their smartphones into Geiger counters. Stay with us.
With the Fukushima Disaster spiraling out of control, and with Tepco reporting they have spotted cracks in 8 places on the steel brace that holds a 120-meter vertical pipe standing between the number-1 and number-2 reactor. In an area that is contaminated with high levels of radiation measuring 10 sieverts per hour. TEPCO are now wondering how they would be able to send in workers without them dying on the spot.
Russian Bio-Robots Working in Extreme Radiation 1700 Rads - 17.000.000 Millisieverts/Hr
You might ask why don't the Japanese that are so good with Robots and electronics, just don't send in Robots to do the work instead of humans? Well like the Russians learned early on and also TEPCO. The radio controlled robots malfuntion because of extreme radiation. Extreme levels of radiation will interrupt electronics and microships from functioning properly.
That is why it is high time to revisit the Battle of Chernobyl documentary that video shows us how the Russian workers called Bio-Robots suited with 30 kg of lead clothing and plated vehicles dealt with the +10 Sieverts per hour radiation exposure on top of the Single Reactor in Chernobyl.
All the lies that TEPCO have said these past years that everything is under control, there was no meltdowns, no contamination in the waters, Tokyo is safe and everything will be alright. Smile and radiation wont hurt you.. Everything and everyone is starting to look at them with disgust and screaming for their heads.
This documentary of the Chernobyl disaster is a MUST SEE!The Battle of Chernobyl is the best made movie so far. The Battle of Chernobylcontains rare original footage, pictures and good re-enactments. This along with interviews with political leaders, scientists, soldiers, journalist, photographer and several military personnel and real footage of the damaged nuclear reactor.
There are some very good comments made in this movie from the people involved. And this documentary is something you must watch to better understand the extent of the Fukushima disaster. The things the Russians did to prevent a second explosion is something many can't really grasp. The Battle of Chernobyl tells this story very well.
Movie Player
The Battle of Chernobyl tell us many important things about the situation at Fukushima Daiichi. We get to hear from a worker at reactor unit 4 about the beautiful colors going up into the night sky 1000 metersduring the reactor explosion. The cover-up and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev the former Soviet statesman. Also rare footage from the town Pripyat the day after where we get to see the flashes on the camera during filming caused by radiation.
Russian Bio-Robots working with 30 kg lead suits in 17.000.000 Millisieverts/Hr
We get to hear from the brave workers called Bio-Robots recieving 1700 rads or 17.000.000 Millisieverts/Hr radiation levels when working on top of the reactor. They could only work for 45 sec at time before the radiation would be to much. Working with 30kg makeshift lead suits. Some had nosebleeds coming down afterwards. They felt like they had been sucked dry by a vampire. When their eyes started to hurt and they started to taste a metallic taste of lead in their mouths they knew that they had reacherd their limit. But they did their job even picking up the 15.000.000 Millisieverts/Hr contaminated concrete blocks with their hands trowing it of the reactors roof. In the end they had reduced the radiation levels with some 30%. Got a $100 bonus and a certificate. The Bio-Robots can't work anymore because the high radiation levels they were exposed to. Many not even in their 50s now are unable to make a living because of this.
Russian Radio Controlled Robot malfuntioned because of extreme radiation
The Bio-Robots were used because the radio controlled equipment, looking like something you would send to the moon that should do the job malfunctioned because the extreme radiation affected the electronics. Before this six hundred (600) helicopter pilots were employed to drop lead over the open reactor to help cool it down and put out the fire. All the pilots were exposed to lethal doses of radiation, and “all” six hundred pilots died.
Not only did the pilots die, but as the lead vaporized with the heat, many people, including children in the city, inhaled high doses of lead. Since there was concern that the meltdown would contaminate the water table below, 2,500 miners were dispatched to manually dig below the plant to make way to encase the reactor core. Half of those miners died, and many others became very ill with radiation sickness.
The work done and the cost of 18 Billion Dollars in todays money was important not only to limit the radioactive material from spreading around the world but also to prevent a second nuclear explosion. An explosion with the potential of rendering all of Europe uninhabitable. Some would say that the lead dropped in the reactor to try and cool it down were the wrong thing to do. But with the severity of the disaster it was the only right thing to do.
In all, it was said that 500,000 people (other accounts claim 600,000 people) were dispatched to the Chernobyl plant to contain the reactor, half of whom have died since then as a result of radiation exposure and today about 200,000 are on permanent disability due to sicknesses from their radiation exposure.
Again this is a must watch for anyone. Really well done documentary about the Chernobyl disaster. And I really hope you take what is said to heart. And look at what the Russians did in 1986.
The strong tropical storm Man-yi is expected to approach Japan's northeastern Fukushima Prefecture on Monday but already we are seeing heavy rain and winds at the Fukushima Plant. And we are following this event live here at the chat.
I have added another livecam to the show and if you also turn on the TBS JNN livecam stream you will get the audio of the wind blowing and heavy rain. The new Futaba livecam is showing us the situation outside Fukushima. You can see the powerlines going to the Fukushima plant when the camera is facing away from the intersection.
And already we see how the trees are blowing. There have been cars going by from time to time. I guess this is either workers or personel in the area trying to keep the water out of certain areas. There have been reports of that they have been increasing patrols to make sure contaminated water does not overflow in the heavy rain.
At Sep. 15, 2013 - Updated 20:16 UTC they said
Tokyo Electric Power Company workers have placed weights on large cranes used to move debris around the reactor building to keep them from being toppled by strong winds.
They also attached ropes to outdoor piping and pumps that are used to inject water into the reactors.
The operators are strengthening patrols to prevent rain from entering and overflowing the basement of turbine buildings and the underground tunnel where highly contaminated water has accumulated.
They found water overflowing from a fence around storage tanks near the Number 4 reactor on Sunday afternoon. TEPCO officials are inspecting the leaked water to determine if it's contaminated.
The workers are dismantling a wastewater tank from which highly radioactive water is suspected to have leaked last month.
TEPCO says it plan to continue the work on Monday, but may decide to stop if the weather worsens.
Thanks to David who took Radiation measurements during an domestic flight on a 737 going from Townsville to Brisbane on 8 Aug, 2013 we now have evidence that show that people flying are not only getting the normal dose of atmospheric background radiation when flying.
The extreme levels of radiation detected during the flight show us that the Fukushima disaster have reached way down to Australia now. And anyone flying is getting high doses of airborne radiation in various forms along with hot particles that are constantly released from the nuclear plant.
With the radiation detector showing spikes of up to 945 CPM that are almost 5 times the normal exposure in the cabin during the flight it shows just how much fallout this nuclear disaster really have and still is producing.
Cabin air is normally filtered very well, however even so the high levels of radiation entering the cabin during high altitude flight still poses a grave danger to the health of passengers. There have been numerous reports of flight attendants having radiation sickness like symptoms these past years after Fukushima, but the delusion is so strong that the "regulators" and airlines have dismissed that there could be any connection to Fukushima at all.
Quoted from David
"Published on 8 Aug 2013
same flight town to bris 08.08.2013
inspector EXP highest read out was 945 CPM during mid flight this is a
hazmat situation and all airlines are aware of this and are for all
intent purposes criminal negligent on not informing the public and air
crew of the dangers and at the very lest providing masks to mitigate in
some small way the exposure! YES I'M MAD AS HELL that our government
statutory agencies and departments are doing nothing ! time to get a
lawyer and start the legal process !"
Quoted from David
"Published on 8 Aug 2013
how about this i wonder if all those
frequent flyer politicians are breathing nice and heavy every time
they get a flight at tax payers expense! this reading should be closer
to 200 CPM not 929 CPM and max mid flight CPM was 945 thank god i had a
activated disposable mask!"
The following is a short but informative video about Plutonium. It explains the alchemy behind it and the process in nuclear plants.
And also gives us an understanding about how toxic this element Plutonium PU-242 with it's atomic number 94 is to humans and all living creatures on this planet.
The following is a letter found at https://www.ccnr.org/max_plute_aecb.html (CCNR is a not-for-profit
organization, federally incorporated in 1978. It is dedicated to
education and research on all issues related to nuclear energy, whether
civilian or military -- including non-nuclear alternatives -- especially
those pertaining to Canada.)
How much plutonium does it take to overdose a person? Letter from the Atomic Energy Control Board (followed by comments from CCNR)
re: Maximum Permissible Intake of Plutonium by Inhalation
September 30 1999
Ms. Kristen Ostling
National Coordinator
Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout
1200-1 Nicholas Street
Ottawa Ontario
K1N 7B7
Subject:
Quantity of Plutonium that an Atomic Radiation Worker and the Public may Inhale to Reach their Respective Limits
Dear Ms. Ostling:
The Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) does not set maximum permissible
quantities of radionuclides for workers or the public. Regulatory
protection criteria are expressed in terms of effective dose limits.
In this context, we understand your question to mean: "What is the
quantity of plutonium oxide, if inhaled, would give rise to an effective
dose of 50 mSv [ millisieverts ] to a worker or 5 mSv to a member of
the public?"
As the result of an intake, these doses will be received over 50 years
by a worker and over a period ending at age 70 by a member of the
public. These calculations have been made for insoluble (in lung fluid)
plutonium oxide of 1 micrometer size. These assumptions are very
conservative (restrictive); in other words the worst case scenario has
been assumed.
workers:
1.4 micrograms for 50 mSv committed effective dose (over 50 years after intake)
public:
0.1 microgram for 5 mSv committed effective dose (up to age 70)
If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at (613) 996-5637.
Yours truly,
M. P. Measures, Ph.D.
Director
Radiation and Environmental Protection Division
Comments from CCNR
Foreword
Plutonium is a highly toxic material. Attempts to deny or to obscure this fact are, we feel, irresponsible.
Some spokespersons for AECL and for the Government of Canada have
suggested that there is no danger involved in MOX transport worthy of
anyone's serious consideration.
We feel compelled to point out that, although the probability of a
severe accident that would release plutonium to the atmosphere is
admittedly small, the potential health and environmental consequences of
such an accident can be serious due to the extraordinary toxicity of
plutonium when inhaled.
It is for this reason alone that the United States of America has made
it illegal to transport plutonium by air in US territory. Such a
prohibition does not exist for any other radioactive material.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited has admitted, in documents submitted to
Transport Canada, that in four out of eight categories of serious road
transportation accidents, the MOX containers would be completely
destroyed and a plume of plutonium dust would be spread downwind to a
distance of about 80 kilometers.
Transport Canada has stated -- not once, but several times, in its
response to public commentaries about AECL's plans for MOX transport by
road -- that transporting MOX by air is much more dangerous than doing
it by road because of the health dangers of inhaling plutonium dust
following an accident.
Industry and government spokespersons have insisted that120 grams of
plutonium is too small an amount to raise legitimate health and
environmental concerns. They have made the irrelevant observation that
120 grams of plutonium is about the size of two A-A batteries.
Such remarks are manipulative in nature; they do not help people to
weigh the risk. The important quantity is not the VOLUME or MASS of
plutonium, but its TOXICITY. Based on data supplied by AECB (see letter
above) we can address the toxicity question as follows:
In principle, using AECB's regulatory limits, how many ''civilians'' can be overdosed by 100 grams of plutonium?
0.1 micrograms
can overdose
one civilian
multiply by one million
0.1 grams
can overdose
one million civilians
multiply by ten
1 gram
can overdose
ten million civilians
multiply by one hundred
100 grams
can overdose
one billion civilians
600 grams
can overdose
six billion civilians
If there is a serious accident involving 120 grams of plutonium (in the form of MOX), how many civilian overdoses could, in principle, result?
if NONE of the plute is safely contained
there is a potential for
one billion two hundred million civilian overdoses
if 90 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
one hundred and twenty million civilian overdoses
if 99.9 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
one hundred and twenty thousand civilian overdoses
if 99.999 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
one thousand two hundred civilian overdoses
In principle, using AECB's regulatory limits, how many ''atomic radiation workers'' can be overdosed by 140 grams of plutonium?
1.4 micrograms
can overdose
one atomic worker
1.4 grams
can overdose
one million workers
14 grams
can overdose
ten million workers
140 grams
can overdose
one hundred million workers
560 grams
can overdose
four hundred million workers
If there is a serious accident involving 600 grams of plutonium (in the form of MOX), how many worker overdoses could, in principle, result?
if NONE of the plute is safely contained
there is a potential for
four hundred twenty-five million worker overdoses
if 90 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
forty-two and a half million worker overdoses
if 99.9 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
forty-two and a half thousand worker overdoses
if 99.999 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
four hundred and twenty-five worker overdoses
If there is a serious accident involving 600 grams of plutonium (in the form of MOX), how many civilian overdoses could, in principle, result?
if NONE of the plute is safely contained
there is a potential for
six billion civilian overdoses
if 90 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
six hundred million civilian overdoses
if 99.9 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
six hundred thousand civilian overdoses
if 99.999 percent of it is safely contained
there is a potential for
six thousand civilian overdoses
Afterword
The
probability of a serious accident involving MOX transport is small, but
the consequences can be severe. They can also be very long-lived: since
plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, plutonium contamination
can be permanent. It is a betrayal of public trust to pretend that
these risks do not exist. Unlike most shipments of radioactive materials, plutonium shipments are
attractive targets for criminals or terrorists, because plutonium is the
primary nuclear explosive material from which atomic bombs can be made. Any attempted hijacking can only increase the risks of unintended releases of plutonium to the atmosphere.
This is a very indepth video decribing the effects of Nuclear WW3. Here are some excerpts from the video 35 min long below.
"14 of the 18 warshpis are equipped with 24 trident missiles each. Trident 1's and Trident 2's. The remaining 4 are armed with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles which can be outfitted with Nuclear Warheads"
"The fleet as a whole repersents half of the United States strategic nuclear Capability"
"A single Trident 2 missile, is equipped at up to 8 Nuclear Warheads aboard a multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle or MIRV"
"A single W88 warhead delivers the equvalent of 475 kilotons (kt) of TNT. In the case of a full deployment the United States could unleash over 400 such missiles with between 6 to 8 of such warheads each."
In 1959 a little known Nuclear Disaster only 30 Miles from Downtown Los Angeles began to unfold at an important Cold War facility located in Simi Valley. Simi Valley is an incorporated city located in a valley of the same name in the southeast corner of Ventura County, California, bordering the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the Greater Los Angeles Area.
A 2.800 acres large Nuclear Site was built in the hills of Simi Valley a town of 8000 (back in the 50's. Current population 124,237 in 2010) The complex built there Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) is also an complex of industrial research and development facilities.
Watch 8 min Video about the Simi Valley Nuclear Disaster
Several Experimental Nuclear Reactors have been tested at this facility that the Atomic Energy Commission hoped could become commercially viable. One of the reactors at Simi Valley used Sodium instead of Water as a coolant of the Nuclear Reactor Fuel. It was known as the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE). But the experiment went horrible wrong, triggering an technological nightmare putting Nuclear Disasters like 3-Mile Island to shame. What happened at Simi Valley turned out to become the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history. With amounts of
radiation leaked to the environment and atomosphere more than 240
times that of the accident at 3-Mile Island. But none was told about this.
5 weeks after the Nuclear Disaster the Atomic Energy Commission released an press release claiming that only 1 Nuclear Fuel Rod had been slightly damaged and NO Radiation had been released into the environment. However that is far, far from the truth.. The Atomic Energy Commission was trying to cover up the fact that 13 Fuel Rods had been damaged and High Levels of Radiation had already been released from the failed experimental nuclear reactor. 1/3 of the Nuclear Fuel had experienced melting, it was one of the worst Nuclear Accidents in the history of the U.S and the Atomic Energy Commission lied about it.
All this would have never been disclosed at all if it was not for Daniel Hirsch's
student Michael Rose. The SSFL facility has had some 24 nuclear accidents
over the years. These accidents go by the name "excursions" to hide the seriousness of the situations from the common public. There have
been several non-nuclear accidents at the site as well. A most recent one
(that are known to the public) occurred in 1994 when one scientist was killed an
another was seriously injured while trying to (illegally)dispose of
chemicals by burning them..
Arnie Gundersen came out with a new video talking about the danger of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 and it's Spent Fuel Pool. I am sure that the most of you have already heard that if / when Unit 4 collapses it will bring on the evacuation of Tokyo and probably all of Japan as we know it. The reason why this is so, is that in the Fuel Pool at Unit 4 the combined amount of old and new Fuel Rods stored there are so great that if the rods hit the ground and they will catch fire, they will spew out more Cesium 137 than all the Atomic Bomb test's that have been done in the entire history of mankind. Try and imagine this, only if we were detonate 800 Nuclear Bombs at Fukushima we would achieve the same level of contamination.
Arnie say something very important in the beginning of this video, he talks about that once the rods catch fire they can't be put out anymore. And no amount of water will extinguish the flame, in fact water would make it worse!! And they will continue to burn. This would become an even bigger ongoing contamination of the entire world, but to make matters even worse it would be impossible to stop.
When I see these things happening to Japan and think about their past I can't shake the feeling how all this have changed their culture. After WW2 with the destruction caused by nuclear weapons on the Japanese people, this was the first use of Atomic Bombs and no one had ever seen anything like it. The destruction, the defeat was so great their culture changed. Their way of thinking and looking at the world changed.
Have you ever seen young boys and girls that are from war zones paint? They don't draw happy images, their imagination most of the time goes to something much more darker than other kids.
This can be clearly seen if you watch some Japanese Movies. Godzilla comes to mind, the big creature that comes up from the sea and destroys everything in it's path. It's very different from Hollywood if you start to think about it. But it all works out in the end.. Somehow.. But this time, I'm not so sure..
OK back to the video. For you that can't watch the video below is the transcription for you to read, I included pictures from the video also. And you can also watch this video on the Fairewinds site along with the transcript.
Transcribed - The Truth and the Future -
Maggie Gundersen: Hello Mr. Hirose and hello people of Kansai. I am Maggie Gundersen. I am the President and the founder of Fairewinds Associates and the founding director of Fairewinds Energy Education non-profit.
I am here today with Arnie Gundersen, my husband, and Chief Engineer for Fairewinds Associates. We are here today to talk to you about the triple meltdown at Fukushima-Daiichi. We hope to answer all your questions. I wish we could have joined you in person, but I thank you for watching this video and please send us any follow-up questions. We will be happy to answer them. Now let's bring Arnie into this conversation. Arnie, how dangerous is the situation now at Fukushima-Daiichi Unit 4, particularly in Japan with its continuous danger of earthquakes and seismic activity and chance for an additional tsunami.
Arnie Gundersen: Unit 4 has always been my biggest concern. If you watched our website on the very first week of the accident I was saying that if Unit 4 were to catch fire, you would have to evacuate Tokyo. As a matter of fact the book that we wrote talks about that a lot. It is really important and it remains the biggest concern that I have about the Fukushima site. Unit 4 has more fuel in it than any of the other units in the complex, but more importantly it has the most recently used nuclear fuel. And all of that fuel is outside of the containment. So that would make it dangerous enough. Except that also, of course, Unit 4 has had a series of explosions and is weakened structurally. Before it might have withstood a 7.5 earthquake. I believe that the structural damage to Unit 4 is so great that if there is a 7.5 earthquake, it will not withstand it.
Here is what would happen if Unit 4 were to crack and the water were to drain out of the nuclear fuel pool. The fuel is hot enough that it needs to be water-cooled.If air is all there is cooling the fuel, it will burn. It will burn the zircaloy cladding on the fuel, (and) will react with the oxygen to create a fire. And it is a fire that once it starts, cannot be put out by water. Water would make it worse. So the nuclear fuel would have to burn completely before the fire would ever go out.
In the process, all that radiation would go up into the atmosphere and blow all over Japan and all over the world.
There is as much cesium in the fuel pool at Unit 4 as there was in all of the atomic bombs dropped in all of the tests in the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, and into the 1970's. All of the above ground testing has less cesium in it than is in the reactor pool at Fukushima 4 right now. So it is a grave situation. I don't believe that the Japanese Government is moving fast enough. If there is no earthquake, the plan to remove the fuel slowly is going to be adequate. But we cannot wait on Mother Nature. We have to quickly move that fuel out of that pool and onto the ground. The key here is quickly. The Japanese Government finally just this month came up with a plan to build a building around the fuel pool building and begin removing the fuel in 2013 or 2014.
I said that that is what they needed to do on the Fairewinds site in an interview with Chris Martenson a year ago. These things have been evident, but TEPCO is not moving fast enough and the Japanese Government is not pushing TEPCO to move fast enough either. I think the top priority of TEPCO and the top priority of the Japanese Government should be to move the fuel out of that pool just as quickly as possible. And in the meantime, they need to strengthen that pool to make sure that it can withstand an earthquake. Remember, that pool is not in a containment. You can look down in a satellite and see the nuclear fuel. The roof is blown off. And that is what makes it dangerous.
In America, we had the Brookhaven National Laboratory do a study to examine what would happen in a fuel pool fire. Brookhaven National Labs determined that there would be 187,000 people who would develop cancer from a fuel pool fire. It is a serious concern and I do not believe that Tokyo Electric and I do not believe that the Japanese Government is taking it seriously enough. For the last year I have been working with Akio Matsumora and finally it appears that the world community is listening to Akio Matsumora's concerns about the pool. We need to tackle this as a concerned world community and encourage the Japanese Government and encourage Tokyo Electric to solve it quickly.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie you mentioned cesium in your earlier discussion. Why is it important? What is the health effect of cesium and are there any other radioactive isotopes that would have been released during the triple meltdown?
Arnie Gundersen:Cesium is one of many radioactive isotopes that are created in a nuclear reactor. It has got a 30 year half life which means that it hangs around for 300 years and biologically it mimics potassium. You might remember that if you have a muscle cramp, you eat a banana and it goes to your muscles and relieves the cramp. Well, cesium also goes to your muscles. It is called a muscle seeker. When it goes to your muscles, it can cause cancer, but it can also cause a variety of other illnesses.
The Brookhaven study only looks at cancer. It does not look at all the other things that radioactive cesium can do. In young children with rapidly developing muscles, especially their heart muscle, it can create something called Chernobyl Heart which is damage to the heart muscle, which once it is damaged, never ever recovers for the life of the child. So cesium is just one of many isotopes, but it is relatively easy to measure and also biologically causes almost the most damage of any of the other isotopes that are in that reactor.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, you have said that you believe the explosion at Unit 3 was a prompt criticality. What is a prompt criticality and why do you believe that?
Arnie Gundersen: I developed my concern about a prompt criticality because of the nature of the explosion in Unit 3. Unit 1, when it exploded, blew sideways and with relatively low energy. You can measure the rate at which it moves and it moves less than the speed of sound. And that is called a deflagration. It does not do anywhere near as much damage. When I looked at the explosion on Unit 3, however, it was entirely different. You can see it, it is not hard to see. It is called a detonation. The speed at which Unit 3 exploded was faster than the speed of sound. And the important thing is not how Unit 3 exploded. What is the most important thing is that it exploded with a detonation, not a deflagration. The nuclear industry is not paying attention to this now, but it should be, because a nuclear containment can handle the slow moving deflagration, but it cannot handle the fast moving detonation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the international community are absolutely ignoring the fact that a detonation occurred in Unit 3.
Well how did a detonation occur? That was the question I asked myself. I checked with chemists and atmospheric pressure and hydrogen will not create a detonation. Like on Unit 1 it will only create a deflagration. So I needed to figure out how a detonation could occur. But there are a couple of other clues here. One clue is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission way back in March of last year, wrote a report that is on our website, that talks about nuclear fuel being deposited on the site and nuclear fuel being discovered as far away as two kilometers.
How can nuclear fuel get blown out of a nuclear reactor? The fuel that is inside the reactor is also inside the containment and there is no indication of a massive containment failure and a massive reactor failure that could have thrown the nuclear fuel out. So I had to come up with a reason that the nuclear fuel could have been released in pieces, not little fine atoms, but in pieces which is what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says was discovered.
The only way that could happen is if the explosion occurred in the fuel pool at Unit 3. Now if you look at the video of Unit 3, the very first frames show the explosion occurring on the side of the building and that is the side of the building that has the nuclear fuel pool. It started on the nuclear fuel pool side and then worked it's way up into the massive cloud that you see. So what could have caused that? That is the question. Hydrogen would have been above the nuclear fuel, it would have been a gas above the nuclear fuel and if it had exploded, it would have pushed the nuclear fuel down.
That is not what happened. Remember, we have fuel fragments found off-site. Something had to lift the nuclear fuel up. The only thing I could determine is that it was a criticality in the fuel pool that caused the fuel to lift up. The division I ran built nuclear fuel racks for boiling water reactors exactly like Fukushima. The dense fuel racks that are now in every reactor everywhere are very close to becoming critical anyway. And in the accident situation where there was seismic event and explosions occurring, it is likely that they were very near to becoming critical. And what that means is that they were very near to becoming a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
Way back in college 40 years ago, we watched a movie called the Borax Experiment. You can find it on the web today. The explosion at Borax was a prompt moderated criticality. It looks almost exactly like the explosion in Fukushima unit 3. So an image I had from 40 years ago led me to conclude that the same thing happened in Unit 3. That a criticality occurred in the fuel pool and it pushed some of the nuclear fuel up into pellets and the pellets wound up scattered around the site.
Now, the criticality is called prompt moderated criticality. It is not a bomb. A bomb is a prompt fast criticality. This reaction occurs slower than a bomb, but faster than what occurs inside a nuclear reactor. The Borax experiments were designed to test just how violent that reaction could be. I think if you look at Borax and compare it to Fukushima Unit 3, you will see that there are an awful lot of similarities.
Again this is a theory, but it is the only theory that accounts for the explosion occurring on the side where the fuel pool is, and it is the only theory that creates the uplift force that caused the fuel particles to be thrown about the site and discovered as far as 2 kilometers away.
Well there is one more piece of evidence and that is that the roof over the fuel pool has been totally destroyed whereas the roof over the nuclear reactor and the containment, collapsed downward. We talk about that in a video on the site as well and I think that is another important indication that whatever it was that caused the fuel to lift occurred on the fuel pool side of the building, and not in the middle where the nuclear reactor was.
The videos after the accident and after the explosion show containment leaks as well. You will see in the weeks afterward, steam coming from the center of the building. And I believe that the containment lid lifted on Unit 3 and never went back down straight, so it has lifted and twisted sideways and radioactive gasses are lifting from that containment lid. But there is not enough evidence to say that that is what caused the explosion that we saw during the accident. The jury is still out and will be for 10 years until we get inside the Fukushima reactor to see what the damage is. But right now, I think my theory accounts for the damage, the speed of the shock wave, and also the fact that the contamination has been found as far away as 2 kilometers.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, let's talk about the Unit 4 spent fuel pool. There have been a lot of questions about that and a lot of concerns right now. Was there a hydrogen explosion at the Unit 4 spent fuel pool and if there was, what is a hydrogen explosion and why would it have occurred there?
Arnie Gundersen: One of the biggest mysteries at Fukushima is how did Fukushima Unit 4 explode? There are a couple of very, very grainy videos that clearly show it did explode. It was a different type of explosion and perhaps a fire and an explosion that went on for a period of days. So exactly how it did explode is one of the big questions about the Fukushima accident.
There are 3 competing theories. Tokyo Electric says that the radioactive gasses over in Unit 3 went through a pipe that connected Unit 4 and entered Unit 4 causing Unit 4 to explode. So Tokyo Electric's position is that the radioactive hydrogen that was created in Unit 3 went through a pipe, entered Unit 4, and there it exploded. There is one piece of evidence that supports that. There is some contamination in some filters in Unit 4 that would indicate that gasses did come from Unit 3.
So that is a possibility, but I do not think it is accurate because I believe that the containment was so damaged on Unit 3, that there was no pressure to push those gasses into Unit 4. I can't understand how the gasses, what the mode of force was to push those gasses into Unit 4. I think the hydrogen explosion came from something in side Unit 4 itself. There are two possibilities there.
One is by Dr. Gen Saji and it is an excellent analysis. He believes that the hydrogen in the water in the pool that was dissolved because of the radiation in the pool over months and months and months, was enough to cause the building to explode. As the water got hot in the fuel pool, it liberated the hydrogen that was in the water and that hydrogen was enough to cause the explosion.
The second possibility, and this is my theory, early on in the accident, there is some video that is up on our site, that shows that the top of the fuel racks were exposed to air. I am not suggesting that the entire fuel pool ran dry. But the top of the nuclear fuel I believe was exposed to air and I think the photos show that. So if the top of the fuel was exposed to air, it is possible that a reaction could have occurred at the top of the fuel that would have created enough hydrogen to blow the building up.
Dr. Saji and I agree that the hydrogen came from the Unit 4 fuel pool. He believes it was dissolved in the water. I believe it came from the fuel. Only time will tell when we get in to analyze the reaction. But there is an important lesson here that the nuclear industry is not taking into account. And that is the fuel pool temperature. The fuel pool is a large pool and it can boil locally. And that is something the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the international community is not looking at. You can get local boiling in a pool even though the bulk temperature of the pool may be at 80 degrees Celsius. In portions of the pool, it can be boiling. That supports Dr. Saji's comment that as it boiled it would liberate hydrogen, even though the bulk temperature never ever exceeded boiling.
My theory is that I do believe that the entire pool had drained to the point where there was boiling occurring. But the real issue here is that the nuclear industry is not looking at the fact that localized boiling can occur even though the bulk temperature might be less than 100 degrees centigrade.
That is an important distinction moving forward. We have about 23 of these Mark I reactors in the United States and there are another 10 or so around the world. I think that we need to design these pools so that the hydrogen generated by dissociation can be accommodated without exploding the building. No one ever designed for that because no one ever anticipated it happening. But it did happen at Unit 4 and we need to prevent that in the future. Not just on these Mark I reactors but on the 400 reactors that all have fuel pools that are all susceptible to that identical type of failure.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, I want to follow up with a few more questions. In your discussion of Unit 4, you have talked about its hydrogen explosion. Is there any chance of a prompt criticality or a hydrogen explosion now at Unit 4? Would anything cause it to release more fuel or more radioactivity?
Arnie Gundersen: The fuel in the fuel pool at Unit 4 has now been cooled for about a year after the accident and it had been removed a couple of months before that. So the fuel is becoming cooler. It still needs to be water-cooled for another 2 years, but it is much cooler than it was at the beginning of the accident. So the chances of hydrogen generation are much, much lower now than when the accident occurred. So I do not believe that we are going to see an explosion in the pool now, no matter what happens.
My biggest concern is that if the pool loses water, then it is an entirely different story. So if there is a large seismic event that causes the building to topple, or the pool to crack and the water to drain out, there is not enough cooling in the air of that fuel, and it will start to burn. Now the consequences of that are depending on which way the wind is blowing, it could mean the evacuation of Tokyo as a worst case. It could also mean cutting Japan in half so that the northern part is separated from the southern part by a band of contamination. So this is a very serious accident waiting to happen and we just all have to pray that an earthquake does not happen before that fuel is removed.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, compared to the accident at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, how dangerous are the radioactive releases from the four reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi?
Arnie Gundersen:Three Mile Island was a level 5 accident and Chernobyl and Fukushima are level 7 accidents. That means roughly that Three Mile Island was a 100 times less than the accident at Chernobyl and the accident at Fukushima. People did die as a result of the accident at Three Mile Island. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says no, no one died, on their web page. But the evidence is clear that there was an increase in cancer. I refer you to Dr. Steve Wing's report that is also on our site that talks about it. And in addition some reports coming out of the University of Pittsburgh indicate just now that we are beginning to see leukemia as a result.
So while Three Mile Island was much less than either Chernobyl or Fukushima, people did die as a result of the radiation released. At Fukushima-Daiichi the evidence tells us that at least three times more radiation in the form of noble gasses were released from Units 1, 2 and 3 than from Chernobyl. We have seen radioactive gas clouds, noble gas clouds to the northwest, that are much worse than we ever anticipated to have been released. So we know that the noble gasses were larger than Chernobyl. Now iodine, which is another gas that is released, and also cesium and other gasses, seem to be roughly on the same level as the releases from Chernobyl.
There are 2 issues here. As terrible as it is, it would have been much worse but for 2 things. The first is that most of the time the wind was blowing out to sea. And of course Chernobyl was surrounded by land, so whatever way the plume meandered after Chernobyl, it contaminated the land. So when we compare Fukushima to Chernobyl, the total releases from Fukushima are likely higher than they were at Chernobyl, but because most of it blew out to sea, that is a good thing for the Japanese people.
The second important thing that happened that was lucky, if we can call it luck in such a severe accident, was that it happened on a Friday and not on a weekend. There were a thousand people at the Daini site and at the Daiichi site, because it was a weekday, who could respond to the accident. If it had happened on a weekend, there would have been a small crew of people there and the accidents at both sites would have been much much worse. Now that has an implication worldwide, because on weekends and in the evenings, we have very small crews at these nuclear reactors. And should there be a major accident, there is no way to respond quickly enough with the small crew of people that are working on the shifts, other than the main shift in the middle of the day.
The international community needs to look at that and it is not a matter of well, we can get people there in a half a day. That is too late. The staff on site has to be larger at the beginning of the accident to mitigate the potential for a serious accident. But yet it all boils down to money. The utilities that run these power plants really do not want a large staff because they have to pay for it. But in fact, it was the large staff at Daiichi and the large staff at Daini that likely saved the world. So the important take-away here is that the releases from Fukushima are as serious if not more so than Chernobyl. And that they would have been much worse if the accident had happened on a weekend.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, thank you. How significant is the danger of hot particles and why?
Arnie Gundersen: I am really concerned about the hot particles that were released after the Fukushima accident. Now a hot particle is more than just a single atom. An atom of cesium decays once and it is over, it is no longer radioactive. A hot particle though, contains thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms of cesium or other radioactive material and they, of course, decay for many, many years and decades.
So if a hot particle is lodged inside you, either in your lung or in your liver or in your gastrointestinal tract, it can cause a constant bombardment of radiation over a long period of time to a very small localized part of your tissue. And that is exactly the conditions that can cause a cancer.
So we have seen in Mr Kaltofen's analysis to the American Public Health Association: he shows what an air filter looked like in a car in Fukushima and what an air filter looked like in a car in Tokyo. Those air filters are no different than our lung, our lung acts as an air filter, and that causes that radiation to get trapped in our lungs or in our livers or elsewhere in our bodies, and will constantly, over decades, cause cellular damage. It is particularly a concern in young children because they have a longer life, and because their cells are rapidly developing. So it is important that we monitor the children at Fukushima and throughout Japan over the next 3 or 4 decades to make sure that they do not develop cancers as a result of the hot particles that were released from Fukushima-Daiichi.
Maggie Gundersen: So Arnie, in closing, what do you want people to remember from your review of the accident at Fukushima-Daiichi?
Arnie Gundersen: About a month before the accident, we were walking and we were talking about an accident and where it might occur. And I said I did not know where it would occur, but I thought it would occur in a boiling water reactor of the Fukushima design, I said a Mark I reactor. And it turned out to be true.
But I think the bigger lesson from Fukushima is that this is a technology that can destroy a nation. After Fukushima I was reading Mikolai Gorbachov's memoirs and he says it was the Chernobyl accident, not Perestroika, that destroyed the Soviet Union. So we had that information for 30 years but yet we really did not realize that it could happen elsewhere. So we know that the accident at Chernobyl was a cause in the factor of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And we know that the cost alone from the Fukushima-Daiichi accident will easily go to a half a trillion US dollars over the next 20 years. That is enough to bring Japan to its knees.
Japan is at a tipping point. You have an opportunity here to change the way we use energy. Or Japan can go back and turn on all its nuclear reactors again and continue business as usual and of course risk another accident. So you have a choice, you have the opportunity to change the way you use energy and to change the way you distribute energy. You can create smart grids that share power from the north to the south and from the east to the west, where the frequencies are different. We can distribute our generation, instead of having massive power plants in locations like Fukushima-Daiichi and Fukushima-Danai. We can distribute those power plants throughout Japan, throughout the world, with windmills, with solar power, with conservation and with distributed small sources of generation.
Those are all one way of doing it compared to the other which we are presently using, which is central station power. We needed central station power in the 20th century. Now with computers, we do not need central station power anymore. We can do it another way. And Japan can lead the way if it chooses to. If it leads the way, it will have an export commodity that the rest of the world will want desperately. You have an opportunity here to change your country. And you also have a business opportunity here to sell to the rest of the world a product that we all desperately need.
So the Fukushima-Daiichi accident is the worst industrial accident in history: it is a half a trillion dollars. But it also can be an opportunity for Japan to change the way it does business and to create the economy for the 21st century and beyond with distributed generation and smart grids. I hope you choose that choice. Japan is at a tipping point and it is your choice to make.
When it comes to radiation detection meters you really have a wide field of gadgets to choose from, however radiation detectors are the most common to use.
First of all if you need to know what type of radiation you are looking for. There are Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation detectors. And also there is neutron emission of nuclear radiation. And all these different types of emissions have radiation detectors for a specific type of radiation that you can buy radiation detector for. Some also measure both Alpha and Beta. Others detect Alpha, Beta and Gamma. While others let you measure Beta and Gamma radiation.
What most people have use for though are Dosimeters you can buy a handheld radiation detector pretty cheap that are good addition to a survival kit. There are different kinds that you can use that will detect radiation. There are radiation badges that will tell you when radiation become high. Workers at nuclear power plants use these to inform them of how much radiation they have been exposed to. Now also children in the Fukushima prefecture have each been given a radiation badge so they know if they are exposed to radiation. Some come in the shape of a pen that you can carry in your pocket while other are made more compact so that you can attach them to your keychain. And then you have what is called a personal radiation monitor. These are also called Dosimeters and also normally called Geiger counters. Although not all use the Geiger-Muller Tube for the radiation detection some use a semiconductor instead. These and mostly the older geiger counters seen are pretty big to carry around, so they might not be best suited for a survival situation where you only need to carry the most important things. However if you have land and want to check radiation around the property and drinking water then these are the geiger counters to get because they are very well built units.
These are the once that you normally see people use. They have different units of radiation detection, because when it comes to radiation there are many standards used. some give the measurements in Rads, while other use Sieverts. Some have the maximum radiation value for the measured radioactivity quite low but they will still give you an idea of the amount of radiation in the area. With the units ranging from between background radiation 0.001 mSv/hr all the way up to 10 Sv/h. Normally a dosimeter will measure radiation in micro siverts per hour. If you were to walk into one of the reactor units at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant you probably would get an error reading from your dosimeter because the radiation levels are so high there.
Note that some places outside the exclusion zone in Fukushima that are too radioactive for people to live in have areas where the radiation levels are above 30 Sv/h. So if you are in a area that have high radiation the radiation detectors would also there go off the scale. However Geiger counters or radiation detectors are still favored as general purpose alpha/beta/gamma portable radiation detectors and radiation detection equipment, due to their low cost and robustness. Most come with an LCD Display that show you the radioactivity in the area. Nowdays you will even get alarm sound and the possibility to connect the device to a computer. Either with a Infrared, Bluetooth or USB connection.
So if you look at the radiation detectors for sale that have this, then these radiation detection meters will allow you to make maps of contaminated areas that show where the radiation is high and low. This also will help you to see which areas are becoming more contaminated over time. With several nuclear reactors in the US and around the world located near fault zones that makes it a danger if a big earthquake would hit the area there is always a good choice to have a radiation dosimeter avaliable. I'm sure many in Fukushima would have been grateful to have dosimeters avaliable at the time of the disaster and I am sure you to would be grateful to have a geiger counter handy when you need one.
radmon.org - Global Radiation Monitoring Live Map
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