Tokyo Starts Burning Radioactive Waste from Other Areas …
Tokyo Governor Tells Residents to “Shut Up” and Stop Complaining.
The FALLOUT from this radioactivity ends up not only in neighboring prefectures, but in all of Japan's neighbor nations as well as Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California.
RISING INTO OUR ATMOSPHERE, THAT RADIATION WILL BE WITH US FOR A LONG, LONG TIME, FALLING BACK TO EARTH IN PRECIPITATION.
JAPAN GENERATES MUCH MORE NUCLEAR WASTE AND RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL THAN IT CAN EVER SAFELY DISPOSE OF.
THE ONLY RATIONAL ANSWER TO THIS PROBLEM IS TO STOP USING NUCLEAR ENERGY.
ACCORDING TO THE MAP ABOVE, THE ABE REGIME WOULD MAKE ALL OF JAPAN A SMOLDERING DUMPING GROUND.
THEY KNOW IT'S EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS TO HEALTH SO THEY JUST RAISED THE "ACCEPTABLE LIMIT".
ABOVE: PROTESTS GROW ACROSS JAPAN.
WHY ISN'T THE ENTIRE GLOBAL COMMUNITY PROTESTING?
Residents in Osaki, Miyagi Prefecture, filed a lawsuit Thursday (OCTOBER 11, 2018) seeking to prevent a local public association from burning radiation-tainted waste generated by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Osaki, located about 120 kilometers north of the city of Fukushima, has been keeping some 6,000 tons of tainted grass and rice straw containing radioactive substances in excess of state standards, and the association in charge of waste disposal is scheduled to start burning it from Monday.
The residents filed the suit with the Sendai District Court in the hope of suspending the ¥21.6 million budget for the incineration, claiming the association failed to keep an agreement that it would alleviate residents’ concerns.
“The agreement was a strong message that we would protect the environment for future generations,” said 79-year-old Tadaetsu Abe, who is leading the plaintiffs. “The public administration has ignored the residents’ wishes.”
The waste stored in Osaki contains radioactive substances of up to 8,000 becquerels per kilogram. Each municipality is responsible for radioactive waste disposal.
Some 170 residents opposed to the incineration requested an audit of the city’s budget on the waste disposal, but it was rejected as of Sept. 13.
BACK IN JULY OF 2017, THE ABE REGIME RELEASED A COLOR-CODED MAP [PICTURED ABOVE] OF POTENTIAL STORAGE AREAS FOR THEIR EVER-INCREASING NUCLEAR WASTE.
RESIDENTS ALL ACROSS JAPAN ROSE UP IN PROTEST.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO MAKE THE ABE REGIME LISTEN TO ITS OWN PEOPLE AND START PUTTING THEIR HEALTH BEFORE PROFITS AND THE 2020 OLYMPIC GAMES?
On July 28, the central government released what it called a scientific, specialized map of the country highlighting areas where highly radioactive nuclear waste from the nation’s power plants might, or might not, be safely buried underground for as long as 100,000 years.
The general response from Hokkaido to Okinawa was: “Not in my backyard.”
MAKING AN ENTIRE NATION A NUCLEAR WASTE DUMPING SITE
Close to 900 municipalities, nearly 70 percent of the country, were judged to be favorable.
The map has four colors. Dark green indicates favorable conditions, mostly concentrated within 20 km along the coast, and easily accessible in terms of transportation. Light green areas are generally favorable, but more than 20 km from the coast. Orange marks locations that would pose geological problems and silver highlights the potential existence of mineral resources.
In 2015, the Science Council of Japan, a national body that represents scientists and operates independently of the government, released a series of recommendations that called for storing the waste in provisional, above-ground facilities for a half century.
According to the plan, during the first 30 years of temporary storage, locations for a final disposal site would be identified and selected, and during the last 20 years, those facilities would be built.
That still requires a local government to accept a midterm facility, and none has yet. Also, such a course of action would only postpone the final site issue, putting it on the next generation to solve the predicament.
Now that the map has been published, what happens next?
The central government will begin to narrow the list of possible host sites. Much will depend on the strength of local opposition, and how much time, money and effort those who favor a particular locale becoming a final waste disposal site wish to spend on overcoming the local opposition.
"HOW MUCH TO SPEND OVERCOMING THE OPPOSITION"?
WHY NOT SPEND NOTHING AND FIND A BETTER WAY, LIKE MAYBE ENDING ALL NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN JAPAN?
AFTER ALL THE MAJORITY OF JAPANESE DON'T WANT 'NUCLEAR ENERGY' AND PREFER OTHER SANER MEANS FOR POWER.
Fuji TV news also says that 3,000 complaints have been sent to the Tokyo Metropolitan government, over 90% of them protesting against the debris from disaster-affected areas to be transported, processed, crushed and burned and buried in Tokyo Bay.
Steven Starr – Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who has advised numerous countries on issues of nuclear non-proliferation – wrote a comment to the post agreeing [that burning releases toxic poisons]:
Burning radioactive debris will only serve to further randomly spread radiation across Japan, as well as the rest of the world. Not only will this lead to more morbidity and mortality within Japan, but it will further complicate epidemiological studies of the Fukushima disaster. Raising “acceptable” levels of radioactive fallout is a false solution to a serious problem. It is possible for the government authorities to do this because radiation is invisible to us, and at lower doses, the consequences of exposure do not manifest themselves for some time . . . thus it is a poison that is easy to hide and ignore. Sadly, the children of Japan will be those most seriously affected by this man-made environmental catastrophe.
All independent nuclear health experts would agree with Starr.
Japan is a very homogenous society where peer pressure to conform can be intense. For example, last month it was reported that mothers who expressed concern about their kids playing outside in potentially radioactive conditions are called “monster parents” by their peers.
ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE FUKUSHIMA DISASTER LAST YEAR, THE NEW YORK TIMES WROTE:
Six years after the largest nuclear disaster in a quarter-century, Japanese officials have still not solved a basic problem: what to do with an ever-growing pile of radioactive waste. Each form of waste at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where three reactors melted down after an earthquake and a tsunami on March 11, 2011, presents its own challenges.
About 400 tons of water passes through the reactors every day, including groundwater that seeps in. The water picks up radiation in the reactors and then is diverted into a decontamination facility.But the decontamination filters cannot remove all the radioactive material.
“We cannot continue to build tanks forever,” said Shigenori Hata, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
THEN STOP USING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS?
PROBLEM CLOSER TO BEING SOLVED IF THEY STOP NOW.
ALMOST 4,000 CONTAINERS OF RADIOACTIVE SLUDGE.
The process of decontaminating the water leaves radioactive sludge trapped in filters, which are being held in thousands of containers of different sizes.Tokyo Electric says it cannot quantify the amount of radioactive sludge being generated.
CONTAMINATED PROTECTIVE CLOTHING ALONE GENERATES WASTE THAT MUST BE INCINERATED, ACCORDING TO THE ABE REGIME AND TEPCO.
The estimated 6,000 cleanup workers at the site put on new protective gear every day. These hazmat suits, face masks, rubber gloves and shoe coverings are thrown out at the end of each shift. The clothing is compressed and stored in 1,000 steel boxes stacked around the site.
To date, more than 64,700 cubic meters of gear has been discarded, the equivalent of 17 million one-gallon containers. Tokyo Electric says it will eventually incinerate all this contaminated clothing to reduce the space needed to store it.
RADIOACTIVE BRUSH, TREES, SOIL AND GRASSESPiles of branches and tree trunks are stacked all over the site. Officials say there are about 80,000 cubic meters of this waste, and all of it will have to be incinerated and stored someday.
Thousands of plastic garbage bags sit in neat rows in the fields and abandoned towns surrounding the Fukushima plant. They contain soil that was scraped from land that was exposed to radiation in the days after the accident.
Japan’s Ministry of the Environment estimates that it has bagged 3.5 billion gallons of soil, and plans to collect much more. It will eventually incinerate some of the soil, but that will only reduce the volume of the radioactive waste, not eliminate it.
The ministry has already begun building a massive, interim storage facility in Fukushima prefecture and negotiating with 2,360 landowners for the thousands of acres needed to complete it. And that is not even a long-term solution: The government says that after 30 years it will need another site — or sites — to store radioactive waste.
THERE IS MUCH MORE THAN THIS ALL ACROSS THE AREAS HIT BY THE INITIAL FALLOUT. MOST IS BEING STORED IN DECOMPOSING PLASTIC BAGS, SOME OF WHICH ARE STACKED IN SCHOOL YARDS, ALONG ROADWAYS, IN CITY PARKS AND WHAT USED TO BE APARTMENT PARKING LOTS.
Japan's Latest Nuclear Crisis: Getting Rid of the Radioactive Debris
FROM 'THE ATLANTIC', Jun 4, 2012
Disposing of the more than 20 million tons of rubble caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami is proving to be a difficult problem for Japan, not least because much of the rubble has been irradiated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The government's plan -- to destroy 4 million tons of potentially radioactive earthquake debris in garbage incinerators around the country -- is dividing the nation.
Last week, trucks carrying earthquake debris from northeastern Japan arrived in the south-western island of Kyushu, as part of the national government's plan to disperse and destroy debris. Protestors blocked the road for 8 hours over fears that incinerating the debris would spread radiation to areas that have not yet been contaminated by the nuclear disaster.
The debris that was burned in Kita Kyushu on Thursday had been trucked over 620 miles from Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, which lies about 70 miles from the stricken nuclear reactors in Fukushima.
While debris from Fukushima will not be incinerated in the program [TEPCO WAS BUSTED BURNING THE FUKUSHIMA WASTE ON BARGES OFFSHORE, REMEMBER?], due to high radiation levels, municipalities and citizen groups are worried that even debris from neighboring Miyagi and Iwate prefectures could be contaminated enough to be too hazardous to process. Many fear that doing so will not only release radiation into the local atmosphere, but also concentrate it into highly irradiated ash that would be difficult for local municipalities and garbage companies to dispose of safely.
THEY KNOW IT'S EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS TO HEALTH SO THEY JUST RAISED THE "ACCEPTABLE LIMIT"!
Previously, Japanese regulations required nuclear waste with 100 or more bq/kg of Cesium to be monitored and disposed of in specialized containers.
But the new limit for debris in the "wide area incineration" program is 240 to 480 bq/kg. Because radioactive particles accumulate and concentrate in the ash of burned rubble, the material headed for local landfills could be significantly more radioactive.
The new government limit for material headed for landfills is 8000 bq/kg, 80 times the pre-Fukushima limit.
YES, 80 TIMES THE PREVIOUS LEVEL!
BUT SOME BURN SITES HAVE EXCEEDED EVEN THE NEW ALLOWABLE LIMITS.
The limit of 8000 bq/kg has been surpassed even in facilities processing local garbage in Tokyo, according to the Ministry of the Environment.
Such stories have exacerbated fears that incinerating debris from areas even closer to Fukushima could produce potentially hazardous irradiated ash.
It's still not clear why the Japanese government has decided against a policy of containing, rather than dispersing, the radioactive debris.
CONTAINMENT?
HOW DOES ONE "CONTAIN" SOMETHING THAT KEEPS SENDING OUT RADIATION?
Lethal levels of radiation was detected spiking in one of the reactors in January, 2017.
TEPCO AND THE ABE BOYS HAVE CONTAINED NOTHING, NOT EVEN THEIR GREED FOR PROFITS AND STILL HOLDING ONTO THOSE 2020 OLYMPIC GAMES DESPITE KNOWING ALL WHO VISIT JAPAN WILL GO AWAY AS CONTAMINATED AS THOSE STILL LIVING THERE.
Containment would also mean solidifying the already-worrisome invisible border between "contaminated" and "un-contaminated" areas, with the former unfairly stigmatized. This subjective differentiation, called "rumor damage" in Japanese, currently affects everything from land prices to the value of local produce, and has already dealt a crippling blow to the Tohoku economy. Maybe that's part of the "wide area incineration" motivation: rather than dooming an entire region to long-term "contaminated" status, it makes every region in Japan share the burden of the radiation taboo.
If everyone is "contaminated," then, in a relative sense, no one is.
IF EVERYONE IS CONTAMINATED?
WE ALREADY ARE!
//WW
ABOVE PHOTO, March 10, 2016, Some of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant storage tanks at Okuma town.
Photo: AP
ABOVE: Fukushima prefecture water system. Blue is the inland water system: Aga river basin is west area of Fukushima, Abkuma river basin is center of Fukushima. Green is a mountain chain or highland where height is more than 1,000 m. Yellow is highly contaminated area by nuclear accidents.
A safety threshold of 100 Bq kg −1 of radioactive Cs was introduced in April 2012 in Japan, but concentrations greater than this have been detected in fish hundreds of kilometers away from the F1NPP.
( Mizuno and Kubo 2013;Arai 2014a, b;Yoshimura and Yokoduka 2014).
From "Overview of active cesium contamination of freshwater fish in Fukushima and Eastern Japan". [Map created using the GIS software which is 'MANDARA for windows 2000/XP/VISTA/7 Version 9.35' (the software copyright: 1992-2011 Tani Kenji)]
From the South China Morning Post, 19 August, 2018:
"Radioactive substances have NOT been removed from treated (but still tritium-containing) water at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
According to Tepco, a maximum 62.2 becquerels per litre of lodine 129, far higher than the 9 becquerel legal limit, was found in the water filtered by the Advanced Liquid Processing System used to remove various types of radioactive materials.
Lodine 129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years.
"A MAXIMUM OF 62.2 BECQUERELS PER LITER"?
HOW MANY LITERS DID THEY TEST, ONE, THREE, A DOZEN?
GIVEN TEPCO'S HISTORY OF LYING, WHY WOULD ANYONE BELIEVE THIS "MAXIMUM"?
Tepco, which gathered data in fiscal 2017 through March, also detected a maximum 92.5 becquerels of Ruthenium 106 – more than the 100 becquerel legal limit – and 59 becquerels of technetium 99 against the limit of 1,000 becquerels.
WHAT TYPE OF DATA? HOW MANY EXECS WANTED A FISH SANDWICH AND HOW MANY WANTED PIZZA FOR LUNCH?
In August, there were around 920,000 tonnes of tritium-containing water stored in some 680 tanks at the plant. But Tepco said it has not checked the concentration of radioactive materials in each tank.
680 TANKS?
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC REPORTED THERE WERE 1,000 SUCH TANKS IN 2013.
THERE WERE 900 TANKS IN DECEMBER 2017 ACCORDING TO VOICE OF AMERICA'S ARTICLE.
"Currently, the water is being stored in 900 large tanks near the nuclear center."
HOW DID THEY LOSE 200 TO 300 TANKS? WHERE DID THEY GO?
The government has examined several ways to dispose of tritium-containing water, including the release of it into the sea or atmosphere.
Toyoshi Fuketa, who heads the Nuclear Regulation Authority, said pumping the water into the sea is the only solution."
THERE IS ANOTHER SOLUTION WHICH THE TEA ROOM WOULD LIKE TO SUGGEST... THAT SHINZO ABE AND ALL MEMBERS OF THE ABE REGIME AND ALL MEMBERS OF MANAGEMENT AT TEPCO BE REQUIRED TO USE THIS WATER FOR BATHING, COOKING, WATERING ALL OF THE VEGETABLES THEY CONSUME AND FOR DRINKING UNTIL IT IS ALL USED UP.
REMEMBER THIS?
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and the government said that treatment of the water had removed ALL radioactive elements except tritium, which experts say is safe in small amounts.
They called it “tritium water,” but it actually wasn’t.
HATS OFF TO 'JAPAN TIMES' FOR PRINTING AT LEAST A PARTIAL TRUTH.
BOTTOM LINE?
TEPCO AND THE ABE REGIME AFTER 7-PLUS YEARS OF LIES, LIED YET AGAIN.
THEY CANNOT AND HAVE NOT REMOVED EVERYTHING BUT TRITIUM FROM THEIR STORED WATER.
THIS MEANS THAT ALL THAT THEY RELEASED PRIOR TO THIS WAS FAR MORE CONTAMINATED THAN THEY ADMITTED.
Sep 29, 2018
"Tepco said Friday that studies found the water still contains other elements, including radioactive iodine, cesium and strontium. It said more than 80 percent of the 900,000 tons of water stored in large, densely packed tanks contains radioactivity exceeding limits for release into the environment.
Tepco general manager Junichi Matsumoto said radioactive elements remained, especially earlier in the crisis when plant workers had to deal with large amounts of contaminated water leaking from the wrecked reactors and could not afford time to stop the treatment machines to change filters frequently.
“We had to prioritize processing large amounts of water as quickly as possible to reduce the overall risk,” Matsumoto said.
About 161,000 tons of the treated water has 10 to 100 times the limit for release into the environment, and another 65,200 tons has up to nearly 20,000 times the limit, Tepco said.
More than 7½ years since a massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed three reactors at the plant, Japan has yet to reach a consensus on what to do with the radioactive water. Fishermen and residents oppose its release into the ocean. Nuclear experts have recommended the controlled release of the water into the Pacific as the only realistic option.
The release option faced harsh criticism at meetings in Fukushima and Tokyo in late August, when Tepco and government officials provided little explanation of the water contamination, which had been reported in local media days earlier.
Tepco only says it has the capacity to store up to 1.37 million tons of water through 2020 and that it cannot stay at the plant forever.
Some experts say the water CAN be stored for decades, but others say the tanks take up too much space at the plant and could interfere with ongoing decommissioning work that could take decades.
MOVE THE TANKS TO SHINZO ABE'S BACK YARD?
I LIKE THAT IDEA.
The Associated Press has reported that the amount of radioactive water at Fukushima is growing by 150 tons a day. This is because new water is used to cool the damaged reactors and ground water also enters the reactor area through cracks.
IF GROUNDWATER IS COMING IN THROUGH 'CRACKS', THEN CONTAMINATED WATER IS ALSO FLOWING THROUGH THOSE SAME 'CRACKS' INTO THE AQUIFER BELOW THE PLANT, SOMETHING ABE AND COMPANY HAVE DENIED IN THE PAST.
Local fisherman oppose the release of the water into the sea. They say people will not buy fish from waters near Fukushima if the water is released.
Fumio Haga fishes about 50 kilometers from the power plant.
He said, “People would shun Fukushima fish again as soon the water is released.”
The fisherman lost their livelihoods for a long time after the disaster.
Local fisheries are slowly recovering.
Although there are about 1,000 fishermen in the area today, only half still fish and they go out only two times a week because demand is low.
To be sold, the fish have to meet, what might be, the world’s most demanding requirements. Laboratory workers at Onahama test the fishermen’s catch, recording who caught the fish and where.
BUT IT APPEARS THEY ONLY MEASURE FOR CESIUM LEVELS!
THE FOLLOWING IS A PDF DOCUMENT.
Report on the Monitoring of Radionuclides in Fishery Products"Concentrations of Radioactive Cesium in Fishery Products"
OUR NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH ALSO MENTIONS ONLY CESIUM TESTING OF JAPANESE FISH.
CESIUM IS BY NO MEANS THE ONLY CONCERN!
"Overview of active cesium contamination of freshwater fish in Fukushima and Eastern Japan"
LET US ALSO REMEMBER THAT...
Radioactive Fukushima Water Leak Was Unreported for Months
Radioactivity in the Ocean: Diluted, But Far from Harmless - Yale
Apr 7, 2011 - Thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated water have then been released from the Fukushima complex into the ocean. ... But what impact this radioactive contamination has on marine life and humans is still unclear.
Effects of dumping radioactive waste in ocean need more study ...
Dec 20, 2013 - Some scientists say radioactivity from dumps can make its way into the marine food chain... the issue of the impact of radioactive dumps on both the environment and human health requires more study.
IT DOESN'T NEED MORE STUDY, IT NEEDS OWNING UP TO.
THE ABE REGIME NEEDS TO FINALLY ACCEPT FULL RESPONSIBILITY AND ALLOW INTERNATIONAL TEAMS IN TO HELP.
FROM THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S TRUST FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, RADIOACTIVE WASTE FACT SHEET:
"Since 1952 low levels of radioactive waste have been discharged into the Irish Sea, the English Channel and the Arctic Ocean.
It is recognised that radioactive material needs to be isolated and encased (in glass and concrete) to prevent leakage on the ocean floor and it is now kept on land for some time whilst radioactivity levels decrease.
What long term effects might this have on marine environments?
Certainly radiation can enter the food chain though plankton and kelp and then go on to contaminate fish.
Radioactive caesium and plutonium have already been found in seals and porpoises in the Irish Sea.
On 11th March 2011 the tragic earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan caused major damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This natural disaster caused thousands of tons of radioactive water to be released into the Pacific Ocean.
Radioactivity levels reduce over time, although this can take anything from two weeks to five hundred thousand years or more before reaching a safe level.
Any leakages are much more easily dispersed over a greater area in the sea, than in the air, although they can travel further through water."
PLEASE NOTE THIS STATEMENT FROM THE ABOVE:
"Radioactive caesium and plutonium have already been found in seals and porpoises in the Irish Sea."
HOW MUCH GREATER IS THE OCEAN CONTAMINATION OF THE PACIFIC FROM THE FUKUSHIMA DISASTER THAN THE CONTAMINATION OF THE IRISH SEA?
ONE OF KEN BUESSELER'S MORE LUCID MOMENTS, EARLY IN THE GAME, April, 2011, FROM YALE.EDU:
“Given that the Fukushima nuclear power plant is on the ocean, and with leaks and runoff directly to the ocean, the impacts on the ocean will exceed those of Chernobyl, which was hundreds of miles from any sea,” said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist in marine chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “My biggest concern is the lack of information. We still don’t know the whole range of radioactive compounds that have been released into the ocean, nor do we know their distribution. We have a few data points from the Japanese — all close to the coast — but to understand the full impact, including for fisheries, we need broader surveys and scientific study of the area.”
Buessler and other experts say this much is clear: Both short-lived radioactive elements, such as iodine-131, and longer-lived elements — such as cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years — can be absorbed by phytoplankton, zooplankton, kelp, and other marine life and then be transmitted up the food chain, to fish, marine mammals, and humans.
Other radioactive elements — including plutonium, which has been detected outside the Fukushima plant — also pose a threat to marine life.
A key question is how concentrated will the radioactive contamination be. Japanese officials hope that a temporary fishing ban off the northeastern Japanese coast will be enough to avert any danger to human health until the flow of radioactive water into the sea can be stopped. But that spigot is still running.
Even though the Japanese this week (APRIL 7, 2011) stopped a leak of highly radioactive material from the badly damaged Reactor No. 2, the water used to cool the reactor cores continues to flow into the sea. In addition, atmospheric fallout from the damaged reactors is contaminating the ocean as prevailing winds carry radioactivity out over the Pacific.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has reported that seawater containing radioactive iodine-131 at 5 million times the legal limit has been detected near the plant. According to the Japanese news service, NHK, a recent sample also contained 1.1 million times the legal level of radioactive cesium-137.
Studies from previous releases of nuclear material in the Irish, Kara and Barents Seas, as well as in the Pacific Ocean, show that such radioactive material does travel with ocean currents, is deposited in marine sediment, and does climb the marine food web.
In the Irish Sea — where the British Nuclear Fuels plant at Sellafield in the northwestern United Kingdom released radioactive material over many decades, beginning in the 1950s — studies have found radioactive cesium and plutonium concentrating significantly in seals and porpoises that ate contaminated fish.
Other studies have shown that radioactive material from Sellafield and from the nuclear reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hague in France have been transported to the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.
A study published in 2003 found that a substantial part of the world’s radioactive contamination IS in the marine environment.
How the radioactive materials released from the Fukushima plants will behave in the ocean will depend on their chemical properties and reactivity, explained Ted Poston, a ecotoxicologist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a U.S. government facility in Richland, Washington.
If the radionuclides are in soluble form, they will behave differently than if they are absorbed into particles, said Poston. Soluble iodine, for example, will disperse rather rapidly. But if a radionuclide reacts with other molecules or gets deposited on existing particulates — bits of minerals, for example — they can be suspended in the water or, if larger, may drop to the sea floor.
“If particulates in the water column are very small they will move with the current,” he explained. “If bigger or denser, they can settle in sediment.”
“Cesium behaves like potassium, so would end up in ALL marine life,” said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Maryland. “It certainly WILL have an effect.”
Tom Hei, professor of environmental sciences and vice-chairman of radiation oncology at Columbia University, explained that the mechanisms that determine how an animal takes in radiation are the same for fish as they are for humans. Once in the body — whether inhaled or absorbed through gills or other organs — radiation can make its way into the bloodstream, lungs, and bony structures, potentially causing death, cancer, or genetic damage. Larger animals tend to more sensitive to radiation than smaller ones.
Yet small fish, mollusks and crustaceans, as well as plankton and phytoplankton, can absorb radiation, said Poston.
How the radiation accumulates depends on the degree of exposure — dose and duration — and the half-life of the element, said Hei.
A 1999 study found that seals and porpoises in the Irish Sea concentrated radioactive cesium by a factor of 300 relative to its concentration in seawater, and a factor of 3 to 4 compared to the fish they ate."
FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
August 21, 2013
"While about two-thirds of Fukushima’s storage tanks are welded steel vessels, the leaking tank is one of about 350 improvised temporary tanks that TEPCO has employed to augment its capacity. The temporary tanks are made of steel plates bolted together with plastic packing materials to seal the seams, and apparently are more vulnerable to leaks. A TEPCO official told The Japan Times that there have been four previous leaks in the temporary tanks. Unlike the previous ones, this leak somehow went undetected by plant workers for as long as a month. During that time, it leaked an estimated ten tons (about 2,400 gallons) of highly radioactive water per day.
TEPCO hasn’t yet found the precise leakage spot or spots on the faulty tank, which, according to Reuters, is located just 550 yards from the ocean.
The possibility remains that the contaminated water might be mixing into groundwater that flows through the plant site into the ocean.
In mid-July, levels of radioactive cesium-137 and cesium-134 from monitoring wells inside the plant unexpectedly surged nearly 15-fold, a phenomenon that scientists have been unable to explain."
Bio accumulation of radioactive caesium in marine mammals in the Baltic Sea - Reconstruction of a historical time series.
2018 Aug 1
Radionuclides from the Chernobyl accident in 1986 still circulate in the Baltic marine ecosystem and activity levels in water, sediments and fish species such as herring and perch are monitored annually. However, the activity levels of radionuclides in marine mammals have only been sporadically reported. Tissue samples from a museum collection were analysed in two species of seals.
We found activity concentrations of Cs-137 in Baltic ringed seals and grey seals to be elevated also in the most recent samples.
Accumulation was found to be species specific in the two seal species studied, with 9 times higher activity concentration in grey seals compared to herring, and 3.5 times higher in ringed seals compared to herring.
3. Results
3.1. Elevated activity concentration in seals and fish
5. ConclusionCs-137 activity concentrations in muscle tissues of both ringed seals and grey seals are elevated in the Baltic sea and we document a clear signal of biomagnification.
BIOACCUMULATION, BIOMAGNIFICATION...IT HAPPENS.
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT RADIATION BIOACCUMULATES IN MARINE ORGANISMS.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE OCEANS OF PLANET EARTH BECAUSE OF THE MASSIVE SCALE OF RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION BY THE ONGOING, UNENDING DISASTER OF THE UNCONTROLLED FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR PLANT?
WE CAN BE CERTAIN THAT THE EFFECTS ON MARINE LIFE IN THE OCEANS ARE FAR GREATER THAN THAT FROM CHERNOBYL, SELLAFIELD, OR ANY OTHER NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE.
WHEN WE SEE NEWS OF MASS DIE-OFFS OF SO MANY SPECIES OF OCEAN DWELLERS, HOW CAN WE NOT FOCUS ON THE RADIOACTIVE POISONS EMANATING FROM FUKUSHIMA?
HOW CAN WE IGNORE THE FACT THAT WE HUMANS ARE AT THE TOP OF THAT OCEAN FOOD CHAIN, THAT WE MAY JUST PERISH WITH THE UNFORTUNATE LIFE FORMS THAT ARE OUT THERE WITH NO WAY TO ESCAPE THIS HORROR?
WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO FORCE THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO TAKE THE REINS AWAY FROM TEPCO AND THE ABE REGIME AND END THIS EXTINCTION EVENT?
___________________________
FURTHER READING:
~ FOR MORE ON THE FUKUSHIMA FIASCO FROM A CHINESE PERSPECTIVE,MANY ARTICLES <HERE>.
~ SEVERAL 'PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES' ON THIS SUPPOSED MONITORING AND REPORTING BUT ALL LISTED ARE ABOUT JUST CESIUM LEVELS.
~WW
