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Japan Is Nuclear Energy Free | Japan Shuts Down Last Nuclear Reactor!
CNN...
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Japan shuts down last nuclear reactor
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By Kyung Lah, CNN
updated 1:57 AM EDT, Mon May 7, 2012
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Click link or photo above to play video
Japan is nuclear energy free
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Japan closed down its last operating nuclear reactor on Saturday
Final shutdown follows a swing against nuclear energy after the Fukushima meltdowns last year
Thousands marched through Tokyo Saturday to celebrate the final closure
Government has warned that summer energy demand may prompt rolling blackouts
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Tokyo (CNN) -- As Japan began its workweek Monday morning, the trains ran exactly on time, the elevators in thousands of Tokyo high rises efficiently moved between floors, and the lights turned on across cities with nary a glitch.
What makes this Monday so remarkable is that for the first time in four decades, none of the energy on this working day is derived from a nuclear reactor.
Over the weekend, Japan's last remaining nuclear reactor shut down for regular maintenance. In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, reactors have not been allowed back on. Japan is now the first major economy to see the modern era without nuclear power.
Tomari Nuclear Power Plant's reactor 3 in Hokkaido shut down Saturday evening in a much-watched move by government, industry and environmentalists, who are waged in a public battle over the future of Japan's energy policy.
"I think it is not easy, but this challenge is worth fighting for," said Greenpeace Japan's Junichi Shimizu. "There is an increased chance of earthquakes in Japan, so that has a significant risk to the Japanese people and the Japanese economy. The only way forward is to rapidly shift the energy source from nuclear to other sources of energy."
That's not the call just from environmental activists, but from a public suspicious of nuclear energy and its regulatory bodies since a tsunami and earthquake triggered nuclear meltdowns at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March 2011.
Thousands marched through the streets of Tokyo on Saturday, celebrating the shutdown of the final reactor.
The protesters waved colorful, traditional "koinobori" carp-shaped banners for Children's Day that became a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement.
That movement grew from the grassroots level in the wake of the disaster, as the country watched tens of thousands of residents living within a 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius of the nuclear plant evacuated and the area remaining turn into a contaminated wasteland.
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, Japan relied on nuclear for approximately 30% of its energy. As reactors have come off-line, the country has increased its imports of fossil fuels.
Japan's government predicts it won't be able to keep up that pace, and the void will result in an energy crunch this summer, possibly leading to rolling blackouts.
The national government's ruling party, the Democratic Party of Japan, has been urging local communities to allow reactors to return to operation.
The DPJ's deputy policy chief, Yoshito Sengoku, bluntly said without nuclear energy the world's third largest economy would suffer. "We must think ahead to the impact on Japan's economy and people's lives, if all nuclear reactors are stopped. Japan could, in some sense, be committing mass suicide," said Sengoku.
Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of Japan's biggest business lobby, Keidanren, joined the plea in an April press conference. "We cannot possibly agree to do the kind of energy saving yet again this year, or every year from now on," he said, referring to the country's efforts to turn off air conditioners and shift operation of production lines to weekends. "The government must bring the nuclear power stations back into operation."
Economist Jesper Koll, managing director at JP Morgan, says Japan could avoid the economic fallout by defining a clear energy policy, something it has failed to do so far.
"The issue to the private sector of Japan is the government is taking its time in a very emotional, highly politicized debate. And the end result is very, very slow or no decision making at all. After all, if you don't have an energy policy, you don' really have an economic policy because everything revolves around the energy," he said.
Japan's prime minister has promised a clear energy policy sometime this year, perhaps this summer.
But Yukie Osaki, who used to live in Fukushima, says she won't accept any policy that includes nuclear energy. "Nobody believes the government anymore when it says nuclear plants are safe," she said.
"Japan is an earthquake country. It is already dangerous to have nuclear plants here. If we have another accident, we won't have anywhere to live in Japan anymore."
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.CNN... . . Japan shuts down last nuclear reactor . By Kyung Lah, CNN... more-
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Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant (California) Knocked Offline By Jellyfish-Like Creatures Called Salp
MSNBC...
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Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California knocked offline by jellyfish-like creatures called salp
Diablo Canyon Power Plant / AP
This photo provided by the Diablo Canyon Power Plant on Friday shows salp, a gelatinous sea creature, at a nuclear reactor intake structure.
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By James Eng, msnbc.com
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In Japan, it was a monstrous earthquake and tsunami that brought down the Fukushima nuclear plant. In California, it’s a tiny, jellyfish-like sea creature called salp that’s causing problems at the Diablo Canyon atomic plant.
An invasion of salp has prompted Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to temporarily shut down a nuclear reactor at Diablo Canyon, in Avila Beach, San Luisa Obispo County, on the central California coast.
A giant swarm of the transluscent barrel-shaped organisms this week clogged intake screens that are used to keep marine life out of the seawater that is used as a coolant for the nuclear plant.
On Wednesday, PG&E officials reduced power output at the Unit 2 reactor, then decided to shut it down altogether “until conditions improve at the intake structure.” The plant’s other reactor, Unit 1, had already been shut down earlier in the week for a planned refueling and maintenance outage.
“Safety being the number one priority, there was such an influx of salp and you need ocean water to cool the reactors,” PG&E spokesman Tom Cuddy told msnbc.com on Friday. “At that point we made a conservative decision to safely shut down the unit.”
PG&E owns and operates the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, whose two reactors together produce approximately 2,300 net megawatts of electricity – enough to serve nearly 3 million northern and central California homes.
Cuddy said he wasn’t sure when the Unit 1 reactor would come back online.
“We’ll turn the unit on to full power when it’s safe to do so – when the salps leave,” he said. “The bottom line is we’re taking a methodical and conservative approach.”
Lara Uselding, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees reactor safety and security, said the plant is not in any danger.
“It’s not a normal operation condition, but the plant is safe and all the systems operated as designed,” she said.
Salps are tiny, gelatinous organisms that move by contracting, thus pumping water throughout their bodies. They can reproduce and multiply quickly.
Though salps look a bit like jellyfish, they are actually more closely related to organisms that have backbones. They typically grow to 1 or 2 inches long and usually do not appear at the coast, says Larry Madin, a salp expert and research director at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
“They’re typically more of an offshore living organism," Madin says. He surmises that the swarm at Diablo may have been carried in on currents blown by wind.
Other than clogging the cooling system filters of a nuclear plant, the organisms pose no danger, says Bruce Robison, senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif. They don’t sting, they don’t have teeth and they’re not poisonous.
Salps passively feed off tiny organic particles in the water and can reproduce sexually or asexually. “They can have their population size expand tremendously within a short period of time, which makes them very abundant. In a small space, they can take up all the space,” Robison says.
Madin said the slimy swarm at Diablo would probably go away in a few days, carried off by currents. Or, says Robison, they’ll quickly die off when their food supply runs out.
So the best bet, experts say, is for nuclear officials to just wait it out.
Despite the outage, California is not expected to experience any electricity shortages because it has ample reserves, said Stephanie McCorkle, spokeswoman California ISO, which operates the state's power grid and wholesale markets.
It’s not the first time that sea creatures have interfered with nuclear plant activity.
In 2008, a swarm of jellyfish led to a sharp decrease in power generation at Diablo Canyon, according to the Los Angeles Times. Similar jellyfish problems have cropped up at nuclear plants in the U.S., Japan, Israel and Scotland over the years, the newspaper said.
“It happens. It’s something you would expect along the coast,” Uselding said.
But Madin said this is the first time he’s heard of salps interfering with the operation of a nuclear plant.
.MSNBC... . Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California knocked offline by... more-
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The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Is Far From Over
ENE NEWS...
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HuffPo: Large amounts of radioactive materials could be deposited across 1,000s of miles if water lost at Fukushima fuel pool — Media just beginning to grasp that danger to world is far from over -Nuclear Expert
Published: April 22nd, 2012 at 4:54 pm ET
By ENENews
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Title: Robert Alvarez: The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Is Far From Over
Source: Huffington Post
Author: Robert Alvarez*
Date: Apr 22, 2012
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More than a year after the Fukushima nuclear power disaster began, the news media is just beginning to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world are far from over. After repeated warnings by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S. Senator, it’s sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins pose far greater dangers than the molten cores. This is why:
• Nearly all of the 10,893 spent fuel assemblies sit in pools vulnerable to future earthquakes, with roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl
• Several pools are 100 feet above the ground and are completely open to the atmosphere because the reactor buildings were demolished by explosions. The pools could possibly topple or collapse from structural damage coupled with another powerful earthquake.
• The loss of water exposing the spent fuel will result in overheating and can cause melting and ignite its zirconium metal cladding resulting in a fire that could deposit large amounts of radioactive materials over hundreds, if not thousands of miles. [...]
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*Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999. He is an award winning author whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Nation, Technology Review, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. He has also been featured on”60 Minutes”, Nova and All Things Considered.
Published: April 22nd, 2012 at 4:54 pm ET
By ENENews
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THE REPORT FOLLOWS...
.ENE NEWS... . HuffPo: Large amounts of radioactive materials could be deposited... more-
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U.S. to Burn 100s of Tons of Radioactive Waste from Germany
ENENews...
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US to burn 100s of tons of radioactive waste from Germany
Published: March 18th, 2012 at 5:21 pm ET
By ENENews
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Title: Comment sought on nuclear waste
Source: AP
Date: Feb 12, 2008
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[...] Mike Johnson, president of the [EnergySolutions]‘s Commercial Facilities Group [...] said the Oak Ridge facility has probably recycled about 1.5 million tons of radioactive metals since 1996 from foreign sources including Germany, Belgium and Canada.
Rep. Bart Gordon, chairman of the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee [...] has called it a “terrible idea,” saying the United States has enough problems disposing its own nuclear waste. [...]
“It sets a very bad precedent which could result in a flood of nuclear waste being dumped in the U.S.,” said Tom Clements, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth in Columbia, S.C. [...]ENENews... . US to burn 100s of tons of radioactive waste from Germany... more-
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North Koreans Agree to Freeze Nuclear Work; U.S. to Give Food Aid
The New York Times...
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February 29, 2012
North Koreans Agree to Freeze Nuclear Work; U.S. to Give Aid
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and CHOE SANG-HUN
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PHOTO:
Korean Central News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Kim Jong-un met with soldiers from the Korean People’s Army in southwestern North Korea in February.
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WASHINGTON — North Korea announced on Wednesday that it would suspend its nuclear weapons tests and uranium enrichment and allow international inspectors to monitor activities at its main nuclear complex. The surprise announcement raised the possibility of ending a diplomatic impasse that has allowed the country’s nuclear program to continue for years without international oversight.
The Obama administration called the steps “important, if limited.” But the announcement seemed to signal that North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, is at least willing to consider a return to negotiations and to engage with the United States, which pledged in exchange to ship tons of food aid to the isolated, impoverished nation.
A freeze on nuclear activity, if it holds, could significantly ease anxieties over North Korea’s behavior at a time when the Obama administration, in an election year, is focused on halting Iran’s nuclear program and reducing the possibility that Israel could attack Iran. The last significant effort to negotiate a dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons collapsed in the waning weeks of George W. Bush’s presidency more than three years ago.
The United States and other nations have been watching closely to see whether Mr. Kim’s rise to power late last year after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, would result in a change in North Korean behavior. The signals have been mixed. Only days ago, Mr. Kim delivered a bellicose speech suggesting that he could resort to military actions against South Korea as he consolidated his power.
North Korea also agreed to a moratorium on test launchings of long-range missiles, which have in the past inflamed tensions in the region. But joint statements by the State Department and North Korea’s official news agency gave no indication of when substantive negotiations over the country’s nuclear program — involving the United States and North Korea, along with Russia, China, Japan and South Korea — might begin again.
North Korea must first arrange with the International Atomic Energy Agency to send its nuclear inspectors, a process that officials said could raise new obstacles and take some time. And senior administration officials cautioned that North Korea still had to show its sincerity before broader discussions could resume. “We’ve made clear that we’re not interested in talks just for the sake and the form of talks,” a State Department official said.
North Korea has agreed in the past to halt its nuclear efforts, only to back out and then return to the table before breaking off talks once more with a flurry of accusations against the United States. The North Korean statement appeared to leave wiggle room for doing so again, saying the country would carry out the agreement only “as long as talks proceed fruitfully.”
“The United States, I will be quick to add, still has profound concerns,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said when she announced the agreement at a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday. “But on the occasion of Kim Jong-il’s death, I said that it is our hope that the new leadership will choose to guide their nation onto the path of peace by living up to its obligations. Today’s announcement represents a modest first step in the right direction.”
Officials and analysts offered different theories about why Mr. Kim’s government’s would agree now to allow inspectors to return, but most said it could prove to be a significant concession. After years of negotiations, North Korea expelled inspectors and went on to test nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009. American intelligence officials believe that the country has enough fuel for six to eight weapons, but the progress of its newly disclosed uranium-enrichment program at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, conducted without international scrutiny, remains unclear.
Victor Cha, a senior analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the agreement announced Wednesday differed little from previous ones that had failed to produce breakthroughs, but that it was nonetheless significant because the return of inspectors could shed light on the country’s nuclear progress.
“We haven’t had any eyes on this program for over five years now,” Mr. Cha said in a telephone interview from South Korea’s capital, Seoul. Some analysts and officials said the agreement might signal that the young and inexperienced Mr. Kim had consolidated power and had the backing of his country’s military.
Although administration officials said it was too soon to draw conclusions about Mr. Kim’s intentions, they said there was no doubt that he had directly authorized his negotiators to reach the deal, which the United States first offered in talks last July. An agreement appeared close during a second round of talks, but then the elder Mr. Kim died.
Two days of talks in Beijing last week between American and North Korean negotiators, as well as the Chinese, initially appeared to have produced few concrete results. But after the North Koreans returned home, the country’s leaders unexpectedly and rapidly responded. “This was very much in motion before the leadership transition,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, who called the agreement a welcome step.
Other analysts said the agreement allowed Mr. Kim to demonstrate his command and to use his early months in power to improve people’s lives after years of food shortages and a devastating famine. “It helps him show to his people that he is a leader who can deal with the Americans and bring back some practical benefits, namely the food aid,” said Kim Yong-hyun, an analyst at Dongguk University in Seoul.
As part of the agreement, the United States said it would send 240,000 metric tons (about 265,000 tons) of food, though it limited the aid to nutritional supplements, rather than the rice and grains that, as two administration officials said, has in previous instances been diverted by the government or the military, or even sold abroad.
The aid is expected to be delivered in monthly shipments of 20,000 metric tons over the next year. The United States also insisted on rigorous monitoring to ensure that the aid would be provided to the neediest, especially women and children, many of whom show the stunting effects of chronic malnutrition. In its statement, the State Department said that in exchange, the United States was “prepared to take steps to improve our bilateral relationship in the spirit of mutual respect for sovereignty and equality” and to allow cultural, educational and sports exchanges with North Korea.
The State Department official cautioned that the agreements “merely unlock the door” to a resumption of negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program. “We can’t allow the same patterns of the past to repeat themselves,” the official added. “We can’t allow wasting arguments on topics that are irrelevant to the main challenges we face. And that’s simply going to take a long time to work out.”
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Steven Lee Myers reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea. Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington.
.The New York Times... . February 29, 2012 North Koreans Agree to Freeze... more-
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Japan and Utility at Fault for Response to Nuclear Disaster
Los Angeles Times...
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Report: Japan, utility at fault for response to nuclear disaster
December 26, 2011 | 11:33 pm
Report: Japan, utility at fault for response to nuclear disaster
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REPORTING FROM SEOUL -- Japan’s response to the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was flawed by poor communication and delays in releasing data on dangerous radiation leaks at the facility, which was struck by an earthquake-triggered tsunami on March 11, a government-appointed investigative panel has found.
The report attaches blame to both Japan’s central government as well as the utility that operates the plant -- the Tokyo Electric Power Co. -- depicting a scene of harried officials incapable of making decisions to stem radiation leaks as the situation at the coastal plant worsened in the days and weeks following the disaster.
The 507-page interim report, the product of interviews with hundreds of utility workers and government officials, said poor planning also worsened the disaster response, noting that authorities had grossly underestimated tsunami risks that followed the 9.0-magnitude earthquake.
The 40-foot-high tsunami that struck the plant was twice as tall as the highest wave predicted by officials. The erroneous assumption that the plant’s cooling system continued to function after the tsunami struck worsened the disaster, the report claimed.
The report, whose final version is due to be completed next year, also found that plant workers had no clear instructions on how to respond to such a disaster, causing miscommunications, especially when the disaster destroyed backup generators. Ultimately, the series of failures led to the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl.
Workers failed to immediately seek alternative sources of water to cool the overheating reactors because they assumed the system was working, even though numerous warning signs told them otherwise.
"This accident has taught us an important lesson on how we must be ready for a disaster," concluded the panel, headed by University of Tokyo professor emeritus Yotaro Hatamura.
The government also received its share of criticism after dangerous radioactivity leaked into the atmosphere, causing the evacuation of 80,000 nearby residents, most of whom have still not returned to their homes.
Fearing a national panic, Tokyo government ministries failed to relay critical information to the public, instead using language that attempted to lessen the severity of the evolving crisis, which included meltdowns at three of the plant’s reactors.
Following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his advisors had stationed themselves on the fifth floor of the prime minister's office, where they made key decisions in consultation with top ministers and Tepco officials. But the officials did not share information with other crucial ministries or even with the crisis-management headquarters set up in the basement of the office several floors below, the report said.
The panel also faulted government officials for delaying warnings on the spread of radiation in the region around the plant, unnecessarily exposing communities to exposure when they could have been immediately evacuated.
The panel recommended that the government and the utilities that run nuclear plants employ experts knowledgeable in assessing tsunami risks.
"The nuclear disaster is far from over," the report concluded.
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Photo: The Unit 4 reactor building of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station as seen November 12.
Credit: David Guttenfelder / AP Photo
.Los Angeles Times... . Report: Japan, utility at fault for response to nuclear... more-
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Disposal of Japan's Earthquake Debris Begins | Special Comment from Dr Helen Caldicott
The Japan Times...
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Friday, Nov. 4, 2011
Disposal of quake debris begins
Kyodo
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Work to dispose of debris from the quake-ravaged city of Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, began Thursday in Tokyo with about 30 tons arriving on a train at Tokyo Freight Terminal, the first load from Iwate to be accepted by a local government outside the Tohoku region.
PHOTO: Put to the test: Workers check the radiation levels of tsunami debris from Iwate Prefecture that arrived in Tokyo on Thursday morning. Officials said the results were well below the legal limit of 0.01 microsievert per hour. KYODO PHOTO
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The Tokyo Metropolitan Government plans to accept a total of 11,000 tons of debris from Miyako by next March, as part of plans to dispose of a combined 500,000 tons of debris from both Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, the areas hit hardest by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, by fiscal 2013.
At the terminal in Shinagawa Ward, debris containers were transshipped onto trucks to be carried to a crushing facility in Ota Ward, from where combustibles will be taken to an incinerator in Koto Ward.
Resulting ash and incombustibles are to be used as landfill in Tokyo Bay.
In light of radiation fears among residents, the metropolitan government plans to monitor and release data weekly on radiation levels in the air at the edge of the crushing premises and once a month on crushed waste, ash and exhaust gas, it said.
Its four crushing facilities, incinerator and landfill site are all located in an industrial zone facing Tokyo Bay.
Miyako is located 260 km north of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, while Tokyo is roughly 220 km southwest of the plant.
Tepco denies criticality
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday the detection of radioactive xenon at its stricken Fukushima No. 1 power plant, indicating recent nuclear fission, was not the result of a sustained nuclear chain reaction known as a criticality, as feared, but a case of "spontaneous" fission.
When it revealed Wednesday that it had detected at its crisis-hit No. 2 reactor xenon-133 and xenon-135, which are typically generated by nuclear fission and have relatively short half-lives, it touched on the possibility that melted fuel inside the reactor may have temporarily gone critical.
Tepco has been analyzing the phenomenon, which did not raise the reactor's temperature or pressure, with support from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.
The nuclear crisis at the plant, the world's worst in 25 years, erupted in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and resulted in the meltdown of nuclear fuel in the six-reactor power complex's reactors 1, 2 and 3.
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FROM DR HELEN CALDICOTT (on Facebook)...
Dr Helen Caldicott
The waste arrives for burning from contaminated areas, accompanied by a reassuring photo of a small pile of rubble that is pointedly NOT setting off the radiation monitors. But what of the rest of the 30 tons of contaminated waste to be crushed, burned, and dumped in the Tokyo Bay area. It seems unlikely they would show photos of all the waste that will set off alarms.
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.The Japan Times... . Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 Disposal of quake debris begins... more-
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Tevatron Particle Accelerator Shuts Down for Good
Los Angeles Times...
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CONVERSATIONS IN SCIENCE
Tevatron particle accelerator shuts down
Physicist Giovanni Punzi discusses the 4-mile-long accelerator and its shutdown after 26 years of smashing atoms.
PHOTO:
The massive Tevatron particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., has powered down after 26 years of smashing atoms together.
(Fermilab / October 1, 2011)
By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times
October 1, 2011
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After smashing atoms together for 26 years, the Tevatron particle accelerator powered down on Friday. The 4-mile-long ring-shaped accelerator, located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., was built to hurl tiny bits of matter at each other in the hopes that they would break apart into the basic building blocks of the universe. Though the Tevatron made major discoveries, it became essentially obsolete after the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva began conducting experiments in 2009.
University of Pisa physicist Giovanni Punzi has worked at the Tevatron since it generated its first collisions in 1985. He talked about the Tevatron on Wednesday, two days before it was shut down.
What made the Tevatron special?
The Tevatron was the highest-energy collider in operation for a very long time.
What does the Tevatron do?
It collides protons and antiprotons. We have particle detectors situated where we can analyze the products of these collisions and find what new particles are there.
Why would you want to do this?
When you get the highest possible energy in collisions of particles, you reproduce a level of energy that doesn't exist today. It only existed at a very early stage in the universe, after the big bang. Creating such energies lets you see new phenomena — including particles that are not found in ordinary matter. So you can study the very basic laws that underlie everything we see and are at the basis of the evolution of the universe.
It's a frontier of knowledge. You get to see things that have never been seen.
What did the Tevatron find that had never been seen?
A number of observations and precision measurements that have added to our understanding of high-energy physics. And the top quark was discovered here in 1995. That was a very big discovery.
Why was it important to find the top quark?
The top quark was crucial because without it, all of our theories of how subatomic particles behave wouldn't work. Quarks are the fundamental particles that combine to make protons and neutrons, and physicists knew there had to be a sixth quark. Everybody was puzzled by the fact that we couldn't find it. The reason we couldn't find it is because its mass was so large that scientists could not produce it until the Tevatron came along.
It was a very long search. If we had not found the top quark, understanding all of the rest of the physics would have been a problem.
How did physicists study basic particles before the Tevatron was built?
Before this machine they had proton-antiproton colliders at CERN [the European Organization for Nuclear Research] in Geneva, but they operated at lower energies.
I remember people saying it would be impossible to put together a thousand magnets and make them work at the same time. But the people here did it. People get used to the idea of doing something that yesterday was considered impossible. It pushes everybody to their best.
Now, of course, the record is going back to Geneva because CERN has built an even bigger machine — the Large Hadron Collider. It's 31/2 times more energetic than the Tevatron.
The Tevatron played a big role in the search for the elusive Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle" that gives rise to mass.
Yes — the Tevatron was able to restrict the possible mass of the Higgs boson to quite a small range.
And even though the collider will no longer operate, you'll continue that search?
Yes. We've used just a fraction of the data we have, and we've been improving analysis techniques over time. So now we want to give it our best possible shot and see what we can figure out about the Higgs boson.
The Large Hadron Collider is also looking for the Higgs. But we look for different modes of decay of the Higgs boson: two different faces of the same coin. Even if the Higgs is seen in Geneva, being able to see it here will be very important to confirm and to understand the nature of this particle, which up to now is completely mysterious. We will be certainly adding to the knowledge of this thing.
Who decided to shut down the Tevatron?
The Department of Energy (which operates Fermilab) and the lab directors decided it was time to go into new projects. We proposed last year to keep going and take some more data, but the decision was to begin exploring what's known as the "intensity frontier."
What does that mean?
Rather than going for the highest-possible energy of collisions, we will go for very intense beams with very large numbers of particles. Using these, Fermilab will produce a large number of collisions that will let scientists look for very rare processes. What they cannot make in terms of energy they try to make up in terms of intensity and frequency of the collisions.
There are a whole lot of things that have been developed here, especially on the side of neutrino physics, that require very intense beams.
Last week, physicists at CERN reported that they had measured neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. Scientists around the world are now trying to see if they can replicate that result — including a team at Fermilab, right?
Yes. This raised lots of discussion. Most of us were thinking this is too strange to be true. If it is really true it's a violation of the fundamental laws of physics. It's really beyond anything we've seen in the past.
What will happen during the shutdown on Friday?
We'll simply stop doing what we've been doing. People will turn off the accelerator and turn off our detectors. Then we will concentrate on trying to get the final results from the data we've already collected.
How long will that take?
It depends on how interesting the results are. In principle it can go on for several years without a problem, but I anticipate that most of the things will probably come within a couple of years, no more.
Are people at Fermilab emotional this week?
How can't you be emotional when it's been so long and such a successful program? As I said, we have a group of people who are still willing to do more. People never got bored, for all this time.
How many colliders remain in the world?
Well, we have this very big one in Geneva. Apart from that we have smaller machines for doing specialized kinds of physics.
What will become of the Tevatron itself?
It's my understanding that Fermilab will reuse some pieces for the next accelerator and put others on display in a museum.
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This interview was edited for space and clarity.
.Los Angeles Times... . CONVERSATIONS IN SCIENCE Tevatron particle accelerator... more-
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Radioactive Waste Swamps Japan Sewage Plants
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Radioactive waste swamps Japan sewage plants
Uploaded by AlJazeera English on Aug 30, 2011...
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Environmental experts in Japan are warning of new fallout from the country's nuclear crisis.
Radioactive waste is piling up at several sewerage plants, well away from the crippled Fukushima reactor.
Months after the tsunami and earthquake that triggered the nuclear meltdown, the government still has no policy on what to do with the waste.
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Al Jazeera's Steve Chao reports from Saitama.
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Click on picture to watch video.
.. Radioactive waste swamps Japan sewage plants Uploaded by AlJazeera English on... more-
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Radioactive Isotope (Possibly from Fukushima) Detected in La Jolla, California
Los Angeles Times...
Radioactive element detected in La Jolla, Calif.
Radioactive isotope, maybe from Fukushima, detected, but ...
August 15, 2011 | 3:17 pm
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Very small amounts of a radioactive isotope of sulfur, believed to have traveled across the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, have been detected in La Jolla, Calif., by UC San Diego scientists.
But there's no need to worry: The amounts are nowhere near enough to cause health problems, researchers said.
Senior author Mark Thiemens and his team keep tabs on levels of sulfur-35 as part of their climate research. Readings collected shortly after the March 11 tsunami in Japan indicated that there were 1,500 atoms of sulfur-35 per cubic meter of air in La Jolla, a significant increase over normal levels.
The UCSD team interpreted the bump as the result of a reaction that would have occurred when plant workers used seawater to cool overheating reactors at Fukushima. Neutrons from the reactor core would have reacted with chlorine in ocean water to create radioactive sulfur, Thiemens said.
"The levels we observed are in no way harmful in California," Thiemens said.
The group reported the measurements Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Thiemens and his colleagues use highly sensitive instruments to detect the minuscule amounts of radioactive sulfur that circulate naturally in the atmosphere. That they detected a bump in levels of radioactive sulfur was "not surprising," said Kai Vetter, who teaches radiation detection at UC Berkeley. Vetter's lab has been tracking incoming radiation from Japan and has reported upticks too -- though again, nothing that would pose a danger to people in the U.S.
But Vetter and other nuclear engineers questioned elements of the research, which used the readings taken in La Jolla to extrapolate the amount of neutron leakage from the Fukushima plant. Elmer Lewis of Northwestern University and Michael Golay of MIT were unconvinced that the radiation in question even originated at the nuclear plant.
Edward Morse, of UC Berkeley, said that the traces of radioactive sulfur probably originated at Fukushima, but he took issue with the team's final calculations.
"They're not nuclear engineers," Morse said. "They were a little out of their depth."
.Los Angeles Times... Radioactive element detected in La Jolla, Calif.... more-
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Report: Japan to Nationalize Nuclear Plants
NBC L.A. ...
2 hours ago
Japan To Nationalize Nuke Plants: Report
Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant devastated by the March 11 earthquake/tsunami, may be broken up, according to a newspaper Sunday. According to the plan, the company would sell its power distribution business under state control and be left generating power using thermal and hydraulic power plants. It was drawn up by Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku, who informed TEPCO chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata about the proposal, said the report. Last month, the government helped draft legislation to assist TEPC in compensating those impacted by the nuclear plant.NBC L.A. ... 2 hours ago Japan To Nationalize Nuke Plants: Report Japan’s... more-
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Japan to Open Airlock at Crippled Nuclear Plant
Japan to open airlock at crippled nuclear plant
CNN...
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/19/japan.nuclear/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
New cleanup measure halted at plant
Japan still on high radiation alert
Japan green tea crisis
Japan's radiation twice as bad
TEPCO admits to more possible meltdowns
PHOTO: Workers enter the No. 2 reactor at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclar power plant in Japan in May.
Japan to open airlock at crippled nuclear plant
By the CNN Wire Staff
June 19, 2011 11:12 p.m. EDT
Tokyo (CNN) -- Workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been cleared to open the No. 2 reactor building's airlock to ease sauna-like conditions inside, the plant's owner said Sunday.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it planned to open the heavy double doors slowly overnight, taking about eight hours to complete the process to avoid disturbing contaminated dust inside the containment building. The company has been trying to filter radioactive particles out of the air inside the building for several days, and Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency approved Friday plans to open the airlock, Tokyo Electric announced.
The reactor is one of three at Fukushima Daiichi that suffered meltdowns after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan. The tsunami swamped the plant and knocked out cooling systems that kept the three operating reactors from overheating, leading to the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Japanese authorities used robot probes to peer into the reactor housings in April, finding temperatures up to 41 degrees Celsius (106 F) and humidity ranging from 94% to 99% inside unit 2. Engineers have long suspected that the reactor was leaking a large percentage of the hundreds of
But radiation levels inside were far lower than those recorded at units 1 and 3, holding open the possibility that workers could get inside and try to repair some of the damage if the humidity and temperature could be controlled.
Japan's nuclear safety agency has estimated that tens of thousands of tons of contaminated water has leaked out of the three reactors since the disaster, collecting in the turbine plant and utility tunnels around the reactors since March 11. Decontaminating and storing that water is a key step in Tokyo Electric's plans to wind down the ongoing crisis by January -- but those plans suffered a setback over the weekend, when a newly installed treatment system registered higher-than-expected radiation levels.
The latest developments come as the International Atomic Energy Agency prepares to open a four-day conference on nuclear safety and the Fukushima accident in Vienna, Austria, on Monday. The conference is aimed at drawing lessons from the Fukushima disaster, the agency says.
Though no deaths have been attributed to the accident, the resulting contamination has forced authorities to evacuate more than 100,000 people from towns surrounding the plant. In addition, restrictions on various agricultural and fisheries products have devastated Japanese farmers and fishers since the crisis began.
In a June 7 report to the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, the Japanese government described a chaotic situation in the hours following the quake, as the company and the government struggled to respond to the disaster.Japan to open airlock at crippled nuclear plant CNN...... more-
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Radiation Dosage Chart
Radiation Dosage Chart Please click on link or picture to clearly see entire chart.-
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Seymour Hersh: Despite Intelligence Rejecting Iran as Nuclear Threat, U.S. Could Be Headed for Iraq Redux
Truthout...
Seymour Hersh: Despite Intelligence Rejecting Iran as Nuclear Threat, US Could Be Headed for Iraq Redux
Monday 6 June 2011
by: Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now!
In his latest article for The New Yorker magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says the United States might attack Iran based on distorted estimates of Iran’s nuclear and military threat—just like it did with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Hersh reveals that despite using Iranian informants and cutting-edge surveillance technology, U.S. officials have been unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to an underground weapon-making center.Truthout... Seymour Hersh: Despite Intelligence Rejecting Iran as Nuclear Threat,... more-
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Nuclear Crisis Prompts Japan Energy Rethink
Al Jazeera News...
Nuclear crisis prompts Japan energy rethink
Government pushes for solar panels as many strive to conserve energy.
Last Modified: 06 Jun 2011 10:32
Japan's nuclear crisis has pushed the country to take another look at its energy policy.
The government plans to put solar panels on at least 10 million homes.
In the mean time, many Japanese citizens are trying to do their part to help avoid a further power crisis by conserving as much energy as possible.
Marga Ortigas reports from Tokyo, Japan's capital.
Click on link to watch video.Al Jazeera News... Nuclear crisis prompts Japan energy rethink Government... more-
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The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-Lived Than We Think
ChrisMartenson.com...
PART ONE.....
Exclusive Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-lived Than We Think
Friday, June 3, 2011, 3:54 pm, by Adam
"I have said it's worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind blowing in-land. It could very well have brought the nation of Japan to its knees. I mean, there is so much contamination that luckily wound up in the Pacific Ocean as compared to across the nation of Japan - it could have cut Japan in half. But now the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends that if there is a severe aftershock and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed."
So cautions Arnie Gundersen, widely-regarded to be the best nuclear analyst covering Japan's Fukushima disaster. The situation on the ground at the crippled reactors remains precarious and at a minimum it will be years before it can be hoped to be truly contained. In the near term, the reactors remain particularly vulnerable to sizable aftershocks, which still have decent probability of occuring. On top of this is a growing threat of 'hot particle' contamination risk to more populated areas as weather patterns shift with the typhoon season and groundwater seepage.
In Part 1 of this interview, Chris and Arnie recap the damage wrought to Fukushima's reactors by the tsunami, the steps TEPCO is taking to address it, and the biggest operational risks that remain at this time. In Part 2, they dive into the health risks still posed by the situation there and what individuals should do (including those on the US west coast) if it worsens.
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Chris Martenson: Let’s just briefly review – if we could just synopsize – I know you can do this better than anybody. What happened at Fukushima – what happened and I really would like to take the opportunity to talk about this kind of specifically, like where we are with each one of the reactors. So first of all, this disaster – how did it happen? Was it just bad engineering, was it really bad luck with the tsunami? How did this even initiate – something we were told again and again – something that couldn’t happen seems to have happened?
Arnie Gundersen: Well the little bit of physics here is that even when a reactor shuts down; it continues to churn out heat. Now, only five percent of the original amount of heat, but when you are cranking out millions of horsepower of heat, five percent is still a lot. So you have to keep a nuclear reactor cool after it shuts down. Now, what happened at Fukushima was it went into what is called a “station blackout,” and people plan for that. That means there is no power to anything except for batteries. And batteries can’t turn the massive motors that are required to cool the nuclear reactor. So the plan is in a station blackout is that somehow or another you get power back in four or five hours. That didn’t happen at Fukushima because the tidal wave, the tsunami, was so great that it overwhelmed their diesels and it overwhelmed something called “service water 2” But in any event, they couldn’t get any power to the big pumps.
Now, was it foreseeable? They were prepared for a seven-meter tsunami, about twenty-two feet. The tsunami that hit was something in excess of ten and quite likely fifteen meters, so somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five feet. They were warned that the tsunami that they were designed against was too low. They were warned for at least ten years and I am sure that there were people back before that. So would they have been prepared for one this big? I don’t know, but certainly, they were unprepared for even a tsunami of lesser magnitude.
Chris Martenson: So the tsunami came along and just swamped the systems and I heard that there were some other design elements there too, such as potentially the generators were in an unsafe spot or that some of their electrical substations all happened to be in the basement, so they kind of got taken out all at once. Now, here’s what I heard – the initial reports when they came out said, “Oh, nothing to fear, we all went into SCRAM,” which is some kind of emergency shutdown and they said everything is SCRAMed and I knew that we were in trouble in less than twenty-four hours, they talked about how they were pumping seawater in. Which I assume, by the time you are pumping seawater you have a pretty clear indication from the outside that there is something really quite wrong with this story, is that true?
Arnie Gundersen: Yes. Seawater and as anybody who has ever had a boat on the ocean would know, saltwater and stainless steel do not get along very well. Saltwater and stainless steel at five hundred degrees don’t get along very well at all. You are right, they had some single points of vulnerability – the hole in the armor and the diesels were one of them. But even if the diesels were up high, they would have been in trouble because of those service water pumps I talked about. And they got wiped out and those pumps are the pumps that cool the diesels. So even if the diesels were runnable, cooling water that runs through the diesels would have been taken out by the tsunami anyway. So it's kind of a false argument to blame the diesels.
CONTINUED.....
.ChrisMartenson.com... PART ONE..... Exclusive Arnie Gundersen... more-
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Unfolding CNN Story: Rain Raises Fear of More Fukushima Contamination
Rain raises fear of more contamination at Fukushima
By the CNN International Wire Staff
June 4, 2011 -- Updated 0140 GMT (0940 HKT)
An aerial view of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Officials are installing water decontamination equipment at the plant
It is to be set up by June 15, but could be delayed
Heavy rains between now and then could cause spill of radioactive water
(CNN) -- Radioactive water that has accumulated inside the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could spill to the outside if heavy rains come before new decontamination equipment can be installed, the semi-official Kyodo news agency reported.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. plans to start activating the decontamination equipment on June 15, but there is a possibility it will be delayed, company officials said.
Substantial rainfall that has fallen on the complex has brought the total amount of contaminated water that may be leaking from reactors No. 1 and No. 3 to 105,100 tons, TEPCO said, according to Kyodo.Rain raises fear of more contamination at Fukushima By the CNN International Wire... more-
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Holes Feared in Two Japan Nuclear Reactors
Holes feared in two Japan nuclear reactors
By Kyung Lah, CNN
May 25, 2011 5:16 a.m. EDT
Photo: An aerial view of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The holes may be as big as 7 to 10 centimeters
A hole in the reactor's containment vessel means there is a high probability of leakage
The nuclear plant has suffered cooling problems and radiation leaks since March
Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- Two of the damaged reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan may be riddled with holes, according to the facility's owner.
The holes may be as big as 7 to 10 centimeters ( 2.8- 3.9 inches), Tokyo Electric Power Co. said in a 225-page document submitted to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
In the report, Tokyo Electric says the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 may have developed a hole as big as 3 centimeters in diameter 18 hours after the quake.
Fifty hours after the quake, the hole may have widened to 7 centimeters, the report said.
TEPCO admits to more possible meltdowns
In reactor No. 2, the containment vessel may have developed a hole as wide as 10 centimeters 21 hours after the quake.
The nuclear plant has suffered cooling problems and radiation leaks since a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The hydrogen explosion four days after the crisis began may have led to the formation of a second hole in reactor No. 2, as wide as 10 centimeters in diameter.
"This report is not conclusive. No one has entered these areas and we cannot confirm this as fact," TEPCO said, adding that the report is making preliminary assumptions about what happened inside the reactors.
A hole in the reactor's containment vessel means there is a high probability of the leakage of radioactive material into the reactor building.
The amount of radioactive material in all three of the reactor buildings has hampered TEPCO's ability to build an effective cooling system. TEPCO says a cooling system is a critical step to leading to a cold shutdown, still estimated to be five to eight months away.
Nuclear experts and scientists have long suspected this sort of damage to the containers of the reactors at the crippled plant, as well as a full meltdown of the fuel rods in reactors 1, 2 and 3.
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/25/japan.nuclear.report/t1larg.nuclear.plant.air.photo.service.jpgHoles feared in two Japan nuclear reactors By Kyung Lah, CNN May 25, 2011 5:16 a.m.... more-
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Radioactive strontium detected at Fukushima plant
Tokyo Electric Power Company has detected high levels of radioactive strontium in soil inside the compound of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Strontium can cause cancer and like calcium it tends to collect in bones once humans inhale it.
See Video here:
http://www.politicalfailblog.com/2011/05/radioactive-strontium-detected-at.htmlTokyo Electric Power Company has detected high levels of radioactive strontium in soil... more-
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Japanese MP: It's Time To Tell The Truth
Kuniko Tanioko: Japan must tell world how it dealt with the nuclear runoff into the ocean
Daphne Wysham is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and founder and host of Earthbeat, now airing on 61 public radio stations in the US and Canada.
Kuniko Tanioka is a Japanese politician of the Democratic Party of Japan, a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet (national legislature). A native of Osaka Prefecture, she graduated from the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada and received a Ph.D in design. She was elected to the House of Councillors for the first time in 2007.Kuniko Tanioko: Japan must tell world how it dealt with the nuclear runoff into the... more-
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