SimplyInfo » Entries tagged with "contamination"
TEPCO Begins Concreting Unit 4 Trench At Fukushima Daiichi
TEPCO has begun concreting in the seawater piping trench for unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi. The work has been on the longer term roadmap but has been moved up as similar work began last week for unit 2′s seawater piping trench. Japan’s NRA recently criticized TEPCO’s efforts, claiming that contaminated water is still leaving the plant and that it may be leaking out below the current blocking efforts. The water displaced by the concrete is … Read entire article »
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New Study Finds Fukushima Food Contamination Underestimates Strontium 90
A new study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology looked at governmental food testing in Japan. The study reviewed foods testing for cesium 137 contamination and also strontium 90 contamination. Official assumptions had been than there was a set ratio of cesium 137 to strontium 90 across all foods. What was found is that over time the ratio of strontium 90 in foods had increased. This makes the standard assumed ratio being used incorrect. … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Daiichi Seafront Well Radiation Skyrockets
Well number 1-12 experienced an over 50 times increase in radiation this week. The well sits between the unit 1 and unit 2 intakes. This reading is the highest to date for this well. It is currently unclear exactly what is causing the increase since no nearby wells increased before or in conjunction with this one. There are three possible reasons for this well to increase: 1. The groundwater plume of contamination from unit 1 is now … Read entire article »
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Greenpeace Survey Finds Unsafe Radiation Levels In Fukushima
A new Greenpeace radiation survey done in Fukushima prefecture, outside the evacuation zone, showed unsafe levels of radiation. Various locations around the prefecture including Fukushima City still show with hot spots that are above the safety limits. Places with unsafe levels included in front of a hospital, on roads and other locations. Levels in less traveled locations such as forests were much worse. The government has avoided dealing with the unsafe levels and hot spots by … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Mushrooms Still As High As 102,900 Bq/Kg
I report from late September showed that mushrooms cultivated for home consumption were still very high in cesium contamination. Mushrooms ranged from 85 bq/kg up to the high reading of 102,900 bq/kg. Most were in the thousands to tens of thousands of becquerels of cesium. Foods like mushrooms, wild berries (including wild strawberry & blueberry) and wild game are still highly contaminated in parts of Europe decades after Chernobyl. So this problem in north east Japan … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Contaminated Food Was Found In US Right After The Meltdowns
A presentation given at a recent American Chemical Society meeting outlined the discovery of Fukushima radioactive contamination in food soon after the disaster. Private sector testing done for food importers in the US did find contamination in some food items sent in for testing. Since this work was done with a private lab by a food company there was no mandate to make this information public. One sample of imported fresh fish from Japan intended for … Read entire article »
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TEPCO Publishes Arrogant Press Release To The US On Fukushima
As news came out about yet another finding of Fukushima radioactive contamination offshore of North America, TEPCO published a rather bizarre press release. The corporate statement insists the contamination “Level raises no concern for human or animal health”. This is a bit like taking healthy food advice from McDonalds. They go on to misrepresent statements made by Woods Hole for their own purposes including one twisted to try to claim cesium doesn’t contaminate fish. This is obviously … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Contamination Found 150km Off Eureka California
Woods Hole’s radiation mapping program has found Fukushima identified cesium 150km off the shore of Eureka California. A press release mentioned that the reading was “below 2 bq per meter” but didn’t give the exact reading. Previous findings of Fukushima identified cesium include 2013 readings north of Hawaii and one earlier this year offshore further north near Canada. This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org © … Read entire article »
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Fukushima; Radiation Spike In Unit 1 Discharge Canal
TEPCO hasn’t released radiation readings for the set of discharge canals for well over a year. This location has been historically quite high when they sampled it before. TEPCO announced that the sampling location in the discharge canal was again quite high while a downstream location was not. They provided no explanation where they assume the highly contaminated water is migrating to. Beta radiation: 120,000 bq/liter Cesium 134: 31,000 bq/liter Cesium 137: 95,000 bq/liter TEPCO closed off the end of the discharge … Read entire article »
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What May Be Causing The New Reactor Building Leak At Fukushima Daiichi
TEPCO admitted last week that some subdrain pit wells at the Fukushima Daiichi plant showed a large increase in contamination. These wells were originally a system used to remove groundwater from the reactor building basements, similar to a sump pump system. After the disaster these wells were largely ignored until this year. TEPCO began sampling them and later came up with this idea to pump water out of the subdrain pits, decontaminate it and dump … Read entire article »
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Radioactive Spike In Norwegian Reindeer & Sheep
Annual testing of sheep and reindeer for cesium 137 contamination found an abrupt spike this year. Ongoing testing still finds considerable amounts of radioactive contamination throughout Europe in mushrooms, wild berries, game and field grazing livestock. Earlier this year we reported on the wide variety of commercial jam products still contaminated with cesium 137, thought to be mostly from Chernobyl. Researchers are assuming the spike in contamination in Norway is due to a bumper wild mushroom season. … Read entire article »
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Vongfong Aftermath At Fukushima Daiichi; Leaks & Rising Radiation
Vongfong passed over Fukushima Daiichi as a fairly sedate tropical storm. This didn’t leave the plant completely unscathed. We reported earlier on the spike of cesium, beta radiation and tritium at monitoring well 1-6 on the sea front. An updated TEPCO report now shows significant spikes in manganese 54 and cobolt 60 in the same groundwater well. MN54: 700Bq/L Co60: 3,600Bq/L TEPCO now states that they will sample the sea front monitoring wells daily to track what is going on. These additional readings may help determine where this plume of highly contaminated groundwater may be going. TEPCO also cited a number of rainwater leaks into the reactor and turbine buildings. These are somewhat expected due to the damaged nature of the buildings. Unit 1: First floor south side electric equipment room of the turbine building. Water is … Read entire article »
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New Radiation Spike At Fukushima Daiichi
Cesium levels in well 1-6 near the port jumped on today’s readings. Readings taken at 9:44am JST October 13 (before Vongfong hit in earnest) Cesium 134: 61,000 bq/liter Cesium 137: 190,000 bq/liter Readings a few days before on Oct 9th were previous record highs and were considerably lower than these new readings. Cesium 134: 17,000 bq/liter Cesium 137: 51,000 bq/liter Monitoring well 1-6 is near the unit 2 intake canal and is part of a cluster of monitoring wells that have seen the worst of the sea front contamination. Source http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/2014/images/2tb-east_14101302-j.pdf This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org © 2011-2015 SimplyInfo.org, Fukuleaks.org All Rights Reserved Content cited, quoted etc. from other sources is under the respective rights of that content owner. If you are viewing this page on any website other than www.simplyinfo.org … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Unit 3 Dust Disperal Hints At Accident Events
TEPCO’s report on contaminated dust dispersal that ended up contaminating rice fields north of the damaged nuclear site may indicate more about the accident events. The dates where they were removing the sections of the crane and underlying debris from directly over the reactor well coincide with the contamination dates. TEPCO additionally cited that those days lacked rain that otherwise could have helped keep dust from flying away in the wind. The events combined with … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Daiichi Sea Releases Updated To 157 Billion Bq Per Day
Yesterday we reported on TEPCO’s admission of ongoing daily sea releases of contaminated water to the Pacific. The TEPCO rep in the press conference cited the tritium level as being 1 billion becquerels per day. The graph submitted by TEPCO to METI showed a quite different amount for the tritium readings. The journalists at the conference prodded TEPCO for actual readings due to the graph having wide ranges and exact numbers were not published along side … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Monkeys May Show Radiation Damage
A new study of Japanese snow monkeys shows that they may be suffering from damage from radiation exposure. Researchers found that the blood pathology of the contaminated monkeys showed reductions in white and red blood cells and other parameters. “Fukushima monkeys had significantly low white and red blood cell counts, hemoglobin, and hematocrit, and the white blood cell count in immature monkeys showed a significant negative correlation with muscle cesium concentration” The study also showed that the … Read entire article »
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Minamisoma Never Informed Of New Contamination From Fukushima Daiichi
The rice fields were contaminated in August of 2013, the Agriculture Ministry didn’t inform TEPCO until March 2014 and never informed the farmers or the town of Minamisoma. After the news was finally made public this week, residents and the town’s mayor are outraged. A brief review yesterday of the radiation stations in Minamisoma showed no detectable radiation spike between August 16 and 20th at the central library station. Either the levels had been elevated for … Read entire article »
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TEPCO Contaminated Nearby Town During Unit 3 Demolition
TEPCO has admitted to re-contaminating the area around Minamisoma after being confronted by the agriculture ministry. Rice in Minamisoma was found to be over the government radiation limit of 100 bq/kg. Upon further inspection the ministry found it was the outside of the rice plants that had the most contamination rather than the rice kernel itself. This indicated contamination fell on the plants rather than being taken up from the soil. Now TEPCO is admitting on … Read entire article »
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TEPCO Admits Deep Groundwater Contamination & Leak To Sea
TEPCO has been doing further groundwater investigations at the plant including testing for contamination at various depths to understand what layers are carrying most of the contamination. They now admit that contamination can make it into the deep groundwater layer and could be leaking out to sea. This is something both the NRA and various researchers have speculated since early this year. TEPCO noted that the pressure in the deep layer is less than the water … Read entire article »
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High Radiation Found On Seabed South Of Fukushima Daiichi
Contaminated soil on the sea floor was found a few kilometers south of Fukushima Daiichi. The samples were collected in late 2013 by NRA and found to have 2000 bq/kg of contamination. NRA cites that the currents run from north to south making contamination along the coast south of the plant likely. The same areas showed fairly low levels of contamination when the sea water itself has been tested. This adds to the concern that … Read entire article »
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US Pacific Kelp; Fukushima Radiation Testing Results
Kelp Watch has released their first batch of testing results. The program is a mash up of university, national lab and citizen efforts to test Pacific sea kelp for radiation. The main focus is on cesium contamination but also has been screening for natural sources of radiation. This first batch of test results are considers a “control” set. This establishes the radiation readings considered to be before any Fukushima related radiation would make it to the … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Groundwater Wells Contaminated From Leaking Tanks
This was bound to happen and TEPCO had to have known this at the time they pushed for permission to use the groundwater wells. The big radioactive water leak at the H4 tank farm where highly radioactive sludge leaked out of the tank enclosure, contaminated the surrounding soil and groundwater and eventually made way to the sea is impacting the nearby groundwater bypass. Well #12 of the groundwater bypass has been found to have levels of … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Cesium Found On Vancouver Beach
The Vancouver Sun is reporting that cesium 134, an identifier of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was detected on a local beach. The finding was tested by Simon Fraser University. They were surprised by the finding and confirmed it as evidence of ongoing contamination from Fukushima. The sample was collected by a local citizen who took it to the university. The newspaper report did not cite the exact level found in the sample. Juan Jose Alava from … Read entire article »
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Researchers Confirm “Black Substance” Is Fukushima Reactor Fuel
In a peer reviewed paper released this week by the journal Environmental Science & Technology, a Japanese team of researchers has concluded that portions of the “black substance” found in Japan is nuclear fuel fragments from Fukushima Daiichi. Discoveries of the black residue along roadsides in and near the evacuation zone have been going on since at least 2011. Most were initially found by local citizens doing radiation monitoring. Some of these black substance sightings have … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Is Here! Contamination Found Off Vancouver Coast
Scientists from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography have found levels of cesium in sea water off the Vancouver Canada coast that can be attributed to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The levels are low, but the presence of cesium 134 confirms the contamination to be from Fukushima Daiichi. They cited the levels as such: “less than one becquerel per cubic metre of water ” Recent readings off the US coast did not find traces of cesium 134 in their … Read entire article »
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Living With Radiation In Japan
Local food coops that carefully select and test their food have become a go-to source for people concerned about contamination in the food supply. Food vendors that source from safer regions or direct from farm sales from these safer areas have become popular ways to compensate for the uncertainty in the food supply. This non profit called Project Food is sourcing foods from safer areas, testing them then offering them for sale. They recently sent some … Read entire article »
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Fukushima & The Controversy Of The Pacific
There were big concerns thrown around about the situation in the Pacific related to Fukushima in the last year. Oceanographers raised concerns that the plant was still leaking, something TEPCO denied at the time. Newer testing had shown that contamination levels in sea life had not decreased as it should have indicating that the plant was continuing to leak over two years after the initial meltdowns. TEPCO later admitted this to be true. Testing further out … Read entire article »
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23 Tbq Water Leak At Fukushima Caused By Multiple Human Errors
100 tons of water leaked from a contaminated water tank at Fukushima Daiichi after workers incorrectly aligned valves. They then ignored the alarm that alerted them to a tank that was not supposed to be filling, had overfilled. After the tank spilled out over the top flange the water then leaked out through a failure in the water weir that is supposed to catch any leaks. This water is highly radioactive water left over from … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Brings New Awareness Of Contaminated Food Worldwide
The concerns about food contamination from Fukushima has also increased awareness of the lingering problems of world wide food contamination from various sources. Fukushima was not the first major radiation release to the environment. Atomic testing in the Pacific contributed to considerable amounts of radioactive contamination of the sea that can still be found in sea life today. Chernobyl contaminated a wide swath of Europe and Russia, this contamination is still routinely found in foods … Read entire article »
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New Independent Fukushima Food Contamination Results
People in Japan early on realized they needed to take things into their own hands if they wanted to know the conditions around them and what their risk factors were. Citizen labs have been set up in Japan to allow people to test their own food. These labs were modeled after the labs set up in Europe after Chernobyl. This has provided an independent confirmation against government testing and a more diverse set of readings. … Read entire article »
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More Record High Radiation Readings At Fukushima Daiichi
After the recent admission of record high strontium 90 readings being found at the sea front at Fukushima Daiichi, more record high readings have been admitted this week. At the same time the record high strontium 90 readings were admitted, data for record high cesium readings were quietly included for a nearby well. Now last night even higher cesium readings were found in yet another well. Well 1-3 was previously found to have: 11,000 bq/liter of cesium 134 22,000 … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Fish Tales; US Fish Marketing Deceptive To Consumers
This article is a good example of the motivations and biases in play related to Fukushima food contamination in North America. The article from an Alaska fishing promotion group proclaims “Alaska Fish Factor: Seafood Free of Radiation Following Fukushima“. Since that is simply not true it caught people’s attention. First, fish in the Pacific has been showing up with low levels of radiation even before Fukushima due to the long lived left overs from Pacific atomic testing. … Read entire article »
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5 MILLION bq/liter Strontium 90 Found In Well At Fukushima Daiichi
TEPCO released readings for two seafront wells that have not been published before. Wells 1-2 and 1-3 were not on any older reports from before January.These are the first strontium 90 readings for these wells. The strontium 90 reading for well 1-2 was 5,000,000 bq/liter dated July 5, 2013. The “all beta” reading for the same date was actually lower than the strontium 90 alone at 900,000 bq/liter. TEPCO gives no explanation for how they … Read entire article »
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TEPCO Tries To Sell Failed Bypass System Again
In an unexplained change of plans TEPCO and the Japanese govt. are back to trying to sell the fishing groups and the public on their plan to use a failed water bypass system. In late 2013 IRID directed TEPCO and the Japanese govt to begin work on a wide scale bypass project that would create diversion wells far outside the plant grounds. This would reroute groundwater before it has a chance to flow into the plant … Read entire article »
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Unit 1 Scans Find Highly Contaminated Vent Pipe
Robots with sophisticated gamma scanning cameras were sent in to unit 1 to establish contaminated areas as decontamination efforts take place. One area that has been of particular concern since 2011 is a section on the 1st floor that had unusually high radiation. The same area had steam coming out of the floor in 2011 through the pipe penetration. This area is above the torus room in a section over the #8 downcomer pipe. This … Read entire article »
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Groundwater Well At Fukushima Daiichi Hits 3.1 Million Bq
Groundwater well 1-16 at Fukushima Daiichi has hit 3.1 million bq of beta radiation. This is a new high for this well. TEPCO still has not provided an explanation for this rising problem. The levels began soaring when this section had impermeable wall installed. well 1-16 at 3.1 million bq beta http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/2014/images/2tb-east_14012101-j.pdf This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org © 2011-2015 SimplyInfo.org, Fukuleaks.org All Rights Reserved Content cited, … Read entire article »
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Alaska & Washington Salmon Tested For Radiation
A Seattle fish company had some of their fish privately tested in late 2013. With all the US government agencies refusing to test anything and growing consumer anxiety due to the lack of information, Loki Fish company paid for private testing. This is some of the only North American seafood testing done. While the current findings of these limited samples is somewhat good news, more testing is needed to have a better understanding of the situation … Read entire article »
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NRA Releases New Radiation Zone Maps
The NRA has released new radiation “fly over” maps. The newest scans were done in September of 2013. They showed a slight reduction in the highest level zones. This is likely due to the decrease in shorter lived radiation like cesium 134 and migration of contamination by natural processes. NRA cited the more recent changes in the shape of the highest zones was due to more detailed scanning flights. Read the report here: http://www.nsr.go.jp/english/library/data/special-report_0114.pdf This article would … Read entire article »
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Fukushima Groundwater Well Hits 2.4 Million bq/liter
Well 1-16 at the seafront has again hit a new high. 2.4 million bq/liter was found in the water of the well. The cause has not been confirmed. http://www.jiji.com/jc/eqa?g=eqa&k=2014011400896 This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team Join the conversation at chat.simplyinfo.org © 2011-2015 SimplyInfo.org, Fukuleaks.org All Rights Reserved Content cited, quoted etc. from other sources is under the respective rights of that content owner. If you are viewing this page on any … Read entire article »
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Taiwan Activists Want Lower Food Radiation Levels, Show Loophole In System
Activists in Taiwan are trying to further lower the allowed level of radioactive contamination in food allowed for sale in the country. The current standard is 370 bq/kg, set soon after the Chernobyl disaster. There is a push to lower it to 100 bq/kg the same as Japan’s. The loophole pointed out is that Taiwan may already have a somewhat lower standard compared to other countries but actual testing results are not disclosed. In Hong Kong … Read entire article »
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