Latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination in Alaskan waters as Tokyo reassure the world all is well with 2020 Olympics

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The latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination off the shores of Alaska, regular readers of The Big Wobble will know Bill Laughing-Bear has been keeping an eye on fish in Alaskan waters and has warned us all of rising radioactive contamination for years now.
Recently other warnings have been published as the slow drip-drip-drop of information is slowly increasing.
In 2017, A study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.
The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.
Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.
The recent findings as you might expect are being played down and the usual sound-bites are telling us "it's nothing to worry about," something the powers that be have been saying for 8 years now.
The latest study by Alaska Sea Grant agent, Gay Sheffield claimed, a slightly elevated level of radioactive contamination connected to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected in the northern Bering Sea.
The level of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, is extremely low and not considered a health concern, according to state epidemiologists.
The sampling, conducted by residents of Saint Lawrence Island, documents the Fukushima plume’s northern edge arriving in the Bering Sea for the first time and shows levels of caesium-137 higher than they were before the 2011 nuclear power plant accident in Japan.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games perfect platform to reassure the world all is well at the Fukushima site despite leaking radioactive isotopes for the next 300 years

Photo aasarchitecture.com

• Tokyo is spending at least $20 billion to organize the Olympics.
• The 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.
• Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.
• When the Olympic torch route and Olympic stadium samples were tested, we found samples of dirt in Fukushima’s Olympic Baseball Stadium that were highly radioactive, registering 6,000 Bq/kg of Cesium, which is 3,000 times more radioactive than dirt in the US.
• Last year, a study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.

Fifty-six years after having organised the Olympic Games, the Japanese capital will be hosting a Summer edition for the second time, from 24 July to 9 August 2020, more than 9 years after the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi.
The 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.
According to Arnie Gundersen of the Fairwinds website, the government of Japan claims that the Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.
Fukushima’s radioactive reactor cores have been in direct contact with groundwater for the last eight years, and then that highly toxic radioactive water enters the Pacific Ocean.
"When the disaster struck TEPCO wanted to build an ice wall to prevent the spread of the contamination, which I knew would fail," claimed Arnie Gundersen.
"The problem with freezing the soil is that as soon as you get an earthquake, (which is a matter of when and not if), you lose power and then your ice turns to mush and you're stuck."
Gundersen, who has visited the Fukushima power plant in the past, said a better solution would be to dig a two-meter wide trench down to bedrock level and fill it with a material called zeolite: a volcanic material that comes from Mother Nature.
TEPCO’s ice wall has not eliminated radiation from spreading via groundwater. How will Fukushima’s owner TEPCO and the government of Japan successfully clean and mitigate the damage caused by the three atomic reactors that each lost their fuel to a meltdown? These problems were never anticipated in Japan where these reactors were built and operated or in the United States where the Fukushima nuclear plants were engineered and designed and the parts were manufactured.
Since the meltdowns in 2011, Fairewinds notified the world that the recovery plans for the proposed cleanup would be almost untenable, calling it a ‘long slog’.
Just this week, A report from Reuters, claimed most of that water - stored in 1,000 tanks around the plant - will need to be reprocessed before it is released into the ocean, the most likely scenario for disposal.
Reprocessing could take nearly two years and divert personnel and energy from dismantling the tsunami-wrecked reactors, a project that will take up to 40 years, (which is only an estimate as Tepco who still haven't invented the technology to fix the problem, they could still be trying to fix the problem in 2060.)
It is unclear how much that would delay decommissioning.
But any delay could be pricey; the government estimated in 2016 that the total cost of plant dismantling, decontamination of affected areas, and compensation, would amount to 21.5 trillion yen ($192.5 billion), an incredible 20 per cent of the country’s annual budget.
Tepco is already running out of space to store treated water.
And should another big quake strike, experts say tanks could crack, unleashing tainted liquid and washing highly radioactive debris into the ocean.
Last year, a study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.
The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.
Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be used as the perfect propaganda tool, as a symbol of hope and recovery, however, when the glitter and glam are peeled away, the reality is 300 tons of radioactive water is leaking daily into the Pacific and there is no known technology to fix it.
To determine whether or not Olympic athletes might be affected by fallout emanating from the disaster site, Dr Marco Kaltofen and Arnie Gundersen were sponsored by Fairewinds Energy Education to look at Olympic venues during the fall of 2017.
We took simple dirt and dust samples along the Olympic torch route as well as inside Fukushima’s Olympic stadium and as far away as Tokyo.
When the Olympic torch route and Olympic stadium samples were tested, we found samples of dirt in Fukushima’s Olympic Baseball Stadium that were highly radioactive, registering 6,000 Bq/kg of Cesium, which is 3,000 times more radioactive than dirt in the US.
We also found that simple parking lot of radiation levels were 50-times higher there than here in the US.
The bottom line is that to reduce cleanup costs while spending enormous funds on the Olympics, the government of Japan treats its 160,000 Fukushima evacuees as if they were radiation Guinea Pigs, forcing them to return to recontaminated areas to try and convince the world everything is ok, meanwhile making it difficult for serious scientists to accurately assess the effects of radiation on these evacuees.
The billions of dollars being spent on the Olympics would be much better used to help those displaced by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
Help these families find permanent homes and employment and new supportive communities far away from the contaminated areas that they are now forcibly being returned to.

Read, Atomic Balm Part 1: Prime Minister Abe Uses The Tokyo Olympics As Snake Oil Cure For The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdowns

Read Gay Grant's full findings here

Man-made-disasters

Front Page

2020 Tokyo Olympic Games to reassure the world all is well at the Fukushima site despite more than a million tons of radioactive water set to be dumped into the Pacific

Photo aasarchitecture.com

More than a million tons of radioactive water has built up at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant which was crippled during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami as operator Tokyo Electric (Tepco) tries to cool the melted fuel cores by pouring water over them. Tepco has said it will run out of tank space by mid-2022.
According to Reuters, The briefing for embassy officials in Tokyo follows a meeting in August of a government panel of experts looking into ways to solve the water problem. The final government decision will be made based on a report by the panel. Asked by one of the participating embassy officials about the timing of the panel decision, Japanese officials said such timing has not been fixed, according to a media briefing held later on the day. The briefing for diplomats was attended by 27 embassy officials from 22 countries and regions, including South Korea and the United States. No protests or demands have been made by the participating diplomats, according to the media briefing.

“With transparency in mind, Japan will continue providing the international community with information (on the Fukushima situation),” Koichiro Matsumoto, the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s director of international cooperation, told diplomats at the start of the meeting, the outset of which was open to media. The meeting comes after South Korea, locked in a trade and territorial rows with Japan, last month summoned a senior official from the Japanese embassy in Seoul, to ask about Japan’s stance on dealing with the Fukushima water. But a Japanese Foreign Ministry official told reporters that briefings for diplomats on the matter have been held more than 100 times since the March 2011 disaster, and the one on Wednesday was held to pass information discussed at the latest government panel meeting in August.

Large amounts of water contaminated with radioactive isotopes were released into the Pacific Ocean during and after the disaster. Michio Aoyama, a professor of radioisotope geoscience at the Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, has estimated that 18,000 terabecquerel (TBq) of radioactive caesium 137 was released into the Pacific during the accident, and in 2013, 30 gigabecquerel (GBq) of caesium 137 was still flowing into the ocean every day, (300 tons of radioactive water is leaking daily into the Pacific.) The plant's operator has since built new walls along the coast and also created a 1.5-kilometre-long "ice wall" of frozen earth to stop the flow of contaminated water, however, earlier this year TEPC announced this procedure had failed too. The worst-case scenario here is, Tepco still hasn't invented the technology to fix the problem and they could still be trying to fix the problem in 2060.

In November 2017, a study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.
While the report declines to claim the Fukushima radioactive plume has necessarily reached the Hawaiian Islands it did reach the established fishing grounds across major migratory paths northeast of the islands…

The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.
Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.

Full details of the report below

 In the Wake of Fukushima: RadiocesiumInventories of Selected North Pacific Fish
By Hannah R. Azouz and Henrietta Dulai*
Abstract

Thirteen commonly consumed types of fish caught in the North Pacific and locally available in Hawaii were analyzed using gamma spectroscopy to measure Fukushima-derived and historic 134Cs and 137Cs isotopes. All fish samples had detectable 137Cs above 95% Confidence Intervals. Three out of the thirteen samples had 134Cs, an isotope indicative of Fukushima releases, detected above 95% Confidence Intervals. The highest 134Cs and 137Cs concentration in the examined species were in ahi tuna carrying 0.10±0.04 Bq/kg and 0.62±0.05 Bq/kg, respectively. Other samples with 134Cs activities found above their 2-sigma uncertainty were albacore tuna and swordfish. Historic and Fukushima-derived contributions were evaluated and in several samples, the Fukushima-derived radiocesium dominated the total radiocesium inventory with up to 61% contribution. All activities were below derived intervention limits of 1200 Bq/kg and the doses to humans from consuming the fish attributable to radiocesium were 0.02-0.2  Sv, in comparison to 6-20  Sv contributed by the natural 40K present in the same fish

In the Wake of Fukushima: Radiocesium Inventories of Selected North Pacific Fish (PDF Download Available). Here

Fifty-six years after having organised the Olympic Games, the Japanese capital will be hosting a Summer edition for the second time, from 24 July to 9 August 2020, more than 9 years after the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi.
The 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.
According to the government of Japan the Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.
Fukushima’s radioactive reactor cores have been in direct contact with groundwater for the last eight years, and then that highly toxic radioactive water enters the Pacific Ocean.

When the Olympic torch route and Olympic stadium samples were tested, we found samples of dirt in Fukushima’s Olympic Baseball Stadium that were highly radioactive, registering 6,000 Bq/kg of Cesium, which is 3,000 times more radioactive than dirt in the US.
We also found that simple parking lot of radiation levels were 50-times higher there than here in the US.
The bottom line is that to reduce cleanup costs while spending enormous funds on the Olympics, the government of Japan treats its 160,000 Fukushima evacuees as if they were radiation Guinea Pigs, forcing them to return to recontaminated areas to try and convince the world everything is ok, meanwhile making it difficult for serious scientists to accurately assess the effects of radiation on these evacuees.
The billions of dollars being spent on the Olympics would be much better used to help those displaced by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
Help these families find permanent homes and employment and new supportive communities far away from the contaminated areas that they are now forcibly being returned to. 

Read, Atomic Balm Part 1: Prime Minister Abe Uses The Tokyo Olympics As Snake Oil Cure For The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdowns

Read Gay Grant's full findings here

Man-made-disasters

Front Page

Japan says it will release more than a million tonnes of water into the sea from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant this year. Fukushima’s reactor cores have been in direct contact with groundwater since 2011 when the accident occurred leaving toxic radioactive waters leaking at an alarming rate into the Pacific.

Bags of radioactive waste are seen piled up at a temporary storage site in Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture| KYODO

Japan says it will release more than a million tonnes of water into the sea from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant this year.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company said the disaster would take around four decades to clean up the site. But after almost 12 years TEPCO, the owners of the stricken plant are still no closer to discovering the technology to finish the job and Ernie Gunderson owner of the Fairwinds website, claimed in 2019, that the Fukushima site will never be safe due to radioactive isotopes spreading across the site and surrounding landscape for the coming 300 to 250,000 years. Fukushima’s reactor cores have been in direct contact with groundwater since 2011 when the accident occurred leaving toxic radioactive waters leaking at an alarming rate into the Pacific. 

After treatment the levels of most radioactive particles meet the national standard, the operator said. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says the proposal is safe, but neighbouring countries have voiced concern.

The 2011 Fukushima disaster was the worst nuclear accident since Chornobyl. Decommissioning has already started but could take four decades."We expect the timing of the release would be sometime during this spring or summer," said chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno on Friday, adding that the government will wait for a "comprehensive report" from IAEA before the release.

Every day, the plant produces 100 cubic metres of contaminated water, which is a mixture of groundwater, seawater and water used to keep the reactors cool. It is then filtered and stored in tanks. With more than 1.3 million cubic metres on site, space is running out. The water is filtered for most radioactive isotopes, but the level of tritium is above the national standard, operator Tepco said. Experts say tritium is very difficult to remove from water and is only harmful to humans in large doses.

However, neighbouring countries and local fishermen oppose the proposal, which was approved by the Japanese government in 2021. The Pacific Islands Forum has criticised Japan for the lack of transparency. Pacific peoples are coastal peoples, and the ocean continues to be an integral part of their subsistence living," Forum Secretary General Henry Puna told the news website Stuff.

"Japan is breaking the commitment that their leaders have arrived at when we held our high-level summit in 2021."It was agreed that we would have access to all independent scientific and verifiable scientific evidence before this discharge takes place. Unfortunately, Japan has not been co-operating."

North-eastern Japan was rocked by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on 11 March 2011, which then triggered a giant tsunami. The waves hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, flooding three reactors and sparking a major disaster. Authorities set up an exclusion zone which grew larger and larger as radiation leaked from the plant, forcing more than 150,000 people to evacuate from the area. The zone remains in place.

Past concerns. . . 

Radioactive caesium five times above permitted levels in Japan had been detected in black rockfish caught in northeastern Fukushima Prefecture, according to a Feb 2021 announcement by a local fishing association. Some 500 becquerels per kilogram of cesium was found in black rockfish caught at a depth of 24 meters about 8.8 kilometres off the town of Shinchi, exceeding the national standard level of 100 becquerels per kilogram. The Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations halted the distribution of the fish until it can confirm their safety.

The voluntary suspension of seafood shipments by the fishing body marked the first time since October 2019, when 53 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium was detected in a white sea perch, exceeding the standard level set by the group at 50 becquerels per kilogram. The fishing association has been conducting test fishing since June 2012 on a limited scale. After shipping restrictions on common skate were lifted in February 2020, the shipment of all fish was permitted. The fishing body resumed full fishing operations in April 2021. (Japanese original by Hideyuki Kakinuma, Fukushima Bureau).

One million ton headache!

A report by Karyn Nishimura for AFP News in October 2019 claimed the grounds of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant sit a million-tonne headache for the plant's operators and Japan's government: tank after tank of water contaminated with radioactive elements. What to do with the enormous amount of water, which grows by around 150 tonnes a day. The water comes from several different sources: some is used for cooling at the plant, groundwater that seeps into the plant daily, along with rainwater, add to the problem. Each can hold 1,200 tonnes but most of them are already full. At the end of 2020, all the tanks will be full and the toxic water will have to be dumped into the Pacific Ocean. Two years later and the tanks still litter the Fukushima plant.

American and Canadian fish contaminated.

In 2017, A study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima. The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident. Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.

Alaska too

The recent findings as you might expect are being played down and the usual sound-bites are telling us "it's nothing to worry about," something the powers that be have been saying for more than 10 years now, with and still they are no nearer to fixing the problem. The latest study by Alaska Sea Grant agent, Gay Sheffield claimed, a slightly elevated level of radioactive contamination connected to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected in the northern Bering Sea. The level of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, is extremely low and not considered a health concern, according to state epidemiologists. The sampling, conducted by residents of Saint Lawrence Island, documents the Fukushima plume’s northern edge arriving in the Bering Sea for the first time and shows levels of caesium-137 higher than they were before the 2011 nuclear power plant accident in Japan.

The latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination off the shores of Alaska, regular readers of The Big Wobble will know Bill Laughing-Bear has been keeping an eye on fish in Alaskan waters and has warned us all of rising radioactive contamination for years now. Recently other warnings have been published as the slow drip-drip-drop of information is slowly increasing.

South Korea has retained a ban on imports of seafood from the Fukushima region that was imposed after the nuclear disaster and summoned a senior Japanese embassy official last year to explain how Tokyo planned to deal with the Fukushima water problem.

In the Wake of Fukushima: Radiocesium Inventories of Selected North Pacific Fish (PDF Download Available). Here

Read, Atomic Balm Part 1: Prime Minister Abe Uses The Tokyo Olympics As Snake Oil Cure For The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdowns

Read Gay Grant's full findings here

Front Page Headlines  

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games perfect platform to reassure the world all is well at the Fukushima site despite leaking radioactive isotopes for the next 300 years

Photo aasarchitecture.com

• Tokyo is spending at least $20 billion to organize the Olympics.
• The 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.
• Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.
• When the Olympic torch route and Olympic stadium samples were tested, we found samples of dirt in Fukushima’s Olympic Baseball Stadium that were highly radioactive, registering 6,000 Bq/kg of Cesium, which is 3,000 times more radioactive than dirt in the US.
• Last year, a study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.

Fifty-six years after having organised the Olympic Games, the Japanese capital will be hosting a Summer edition for the second time, from 24 July to 9 August 2020, more than 9 years after the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi.
The 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.
According to Arnie Gundersen of the Fairwinds website, the government of Japan claims that the Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.
Fukushima’s radioactive reactor cores have been in direct contact with groundwater for the last eight years, and then that highly toxic radioactive water enters the Pacific Ocean.
"When the disaster struck TEPCO wanted to build an ice wall to prevent the spread of the contamination, which I knew would fail," claimed Arnie Gundersen.
"The problem with freezing the soil is that as soon as you get an earthquake, (which is a matter of when and not if), you lose power and then your ice turns to mush and you're stuck."
Gundersen, who has visited the Fukushima power plant in the past, said a better solution would be to dig a two-meter wide trench down to bedrock level and fill it with a material called zeolite: a volcanic material that comes from Mother Nature.
TEPCO’s ice wall has not eliminated radiation from spreading via groundwater. How will Fukushima’s owner TEPCO and the government of Japan successfully clean and mitigate the damage caused by the three atomic reactors that each lost their fuel to a meltdown? These problems were never anticipated in Japan where these reactors were built and operated or in the United States where the Fukushima nuclear plants were engineered and designed and the parts were manufactured.
Since the meltdowns in 2011, Fairewinds notified the world that the recovery plans for the proposed cleanup would be almost untenable, calling it a ‘long slog’.
Just this week, A report from Reuters, claimed most of that water - stored in 1,000 tanks around the plant - will need to be reprocessed before it is released into the ocean, the most likely scenario for disposal.
Reprocessing could take nearly two years and divert personnel and energy from dismantling the tsunami-wrecked reactors, a project that will take up to 40 years, (which is only an estimate as Tepco who still haven't invented the technology to fix the problem, they could still be trying to fix the problem in 2060.)
It is unclear how much that would delay decommissioning.
But any delay could be pricey; the government estimated in 2016 that the total cost of plant dismantling, decontamination of affected areas, and compensation, would amount to 21.5 trillion yen ($192.5 billion), an incredible 20 per cent of the country’s annual budget.
Tepco is already running out of space to store treated water.
And should another big quake strike, experts say tanks could crack, unleashing tainted liquid and washing highly radioactive debris into the ocean.
Last year, a study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.
The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.
Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be used as the perfect propaganda tool, as a symbol of hope and recovery, however, when the glitter and glam are peeled away, the reality is 300 tons of radioactive water is leaking daily into the Pacific and there is no known technology to fix it.
To determine whether or not Olympic athletes might be affected by fallout emanating from the disaster site, Dr Marco Kaltofen and Arnie Gundersen were sponsored by Fairewinds Energy Education to look at Olympic venues during the fall of 2017.
We took simple dirt and dust samples along the Olympic torch route as well as inside Fukushima’s Olympic stadium and as far away as Tokyo.
When the Olympic torch route and Olympic stadium samples were tested, we found samples of dirt in Fukushima’s Olympic Baseball Stadium that were highly radioactive, registering 6,000 Bq/kg of Cesium, which is 3,000 times more radioactive than dirt in the US.
We also found that simple parking lot of radiation levels were 50-times higher there than here in the US.
The bottom line is that to reduce cleanup costs while spending enormous funds on the Olympics, the government of Japan treats its 160,000 Fukushima evacuees as if they were radiation Guinea Pigs, forcing them to return to recontaminated areas to try and convince the world everything is ok, meanwhile making it difficult for serious scientists to accurately assess the effects of radiation on these evacuees.
The billions of dollars being spent on the Olympics would be much better used to help those displaced by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
Help these families find permanent homes and employment and new supportive communities far away from the contaminated areas that they are now forcibly being returned to.

Read, Atomic Balm Part 1: Prime Minister Abe Uses The Tokyo Olympics As Snake Oil Cure For The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdowns

Man-made-disasters

Front Page

What A Jolly Good Idea! TEPCO, the owners of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant to release 1 million tons of radioactive water gradually into the air instead of dumping it into the Pacific

Irradiated tanks of water at Fukushima Daiichi plant.SPENCER LOWELL

Sent in by Jesse.

• Tokyo is spending at least $20 billion to organize the Olympics.
• The 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.
• Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.
• When the Olympic torch route and Olympic stadium samples were tested, samples of dirt in Fukushima’s Olympic Baseball Stadium that were highly radioactive, registering 6,000 Bq/kg of Cesium, which is 3,000 times more radioactive than dirt in the US. According to Arnie Gundersen of the Fairwinds website

In a new twist, the Japanese government have come up with a new proposal which will enable TEPCO, the owners of the stricken nuclear plant to release 1 million tons of radioactive water gradually into the air. The original plan was to dump it into the Pacific, Tepco has always maintained the "treated" water is perfectly safe, even though the water is still radioactive.

Next summer's 2020 Olympic Games is allowing the Japanese government to focus on the games while their unsuccessful attempt to clean-up the ongoing spread of leaking radioactivity from Fukushima approaches its first 10 years since the disaster.

According to Arnie Gundersen of the Fairwinds website, the government of Japan claims that the Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, a date that will definitely slip AFTER the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are held, and one that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.

Nearly nine years after the 2011 meltdowns of three reactor cores at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant, radioactive water continues to accumulate as the water used to keep the cores cool leaks from the damaged reactors and is stored in tanks so it won’t escape into the ocean or elsewhere. For years, a government panel has been discussing ways to handle the crisis and to reassure fishermen and residents who fear possible health effects from releasing the radioactive water as well as harm to the region’s image and fishing industry.

Fukushima fishermen and the National Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations have strongly opposed past suggestions by government officials that the water is released into the sea, warning of an “immeasurable impact on the future of the Japanese fishing industry,” with local fishermen still unable to resume full operations after the nuclear plant accident. The water has been treated, and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., says all 62 radioactive elements it contains can be removed to levels not harmful to humans except for tritium. There is no established method to fully separate tritium from water, but scientists say it is not a problem in small amounts. Most of the water stored at the plant still contains other radioactive elements including cancer-causing caesium and strontium and needs further treatment. In Monday’s proposal, the ministry suggested a controlled release of the water into the Pacific, allowing the water to evaporate, or a combination of the two methods. The ministry said the controlled release to the sea is the best option because it would “stably dilute and disperse” the water from the plant and can be properly monitored.

A release is expected to take years and radiation levels will be kept well below the legal limit, the proposal said. The ministry noted that tritium has been routinely released from nuclear plants around the world, including Fukushima before the accident. Evaporation has been a tested and proven method following the 1979 core meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the United States, where it took two years to get rid of 8,700 tons of tritium-contaminated water. TEPCO says it is currently storing more than 1 million tons of radioactive water and only has space to hold up to 1.37 million tons, or until the summer of 2022, raising speculation that the water may be released after next summer’s Tokyo Olympics. AP

At the other side of the mighty Pacific, the latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination off the shores of Alaska, regular readers of The Big Wobble will know Bill Laughing-Bear has been keeping an eye on fish in Alaskan waters and has warned us all of rising radioactive contamination for years now.

Recently other warnings have been published as the slow drip-feed of information is slowly being released. In 2017, A study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima. The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.

Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster. The recent findings as you might expect are being played down and the usual sound-bites are telling us "it's nothing to worry about," something the powers that be have been saying for 9 years now. Another study by Alaska Sea Grant agent, Gay Sheffield claimed, a slightly elevated level of radioactive contamination connected to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected in the northern Bering Sea. The level of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, is extremely low and not considered a health concern, according to state epidemiologists. The sampling, conducted by residents of Saint Lawrence Island, documents the Fukushima plume’s northern edge arriving in the Bering Sea for the first time and shows levels of caesium-137 higher than they were before the 2011 nuclear power plant accident in Japan. Full story

Read, Atomic Balm Part 1: Prime Minister Abe Uses The Tokyo Olympics As Snake Oil Cure For The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdowns

Read Gay Grant's full findings here

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Radioactive ceasium five times above-permitted levels have been detected in black rockfish caught in northeastern Fukushima Prefecture: As the 10 year anniversary of the Japanese disaster approaches TEPCO still no closer to fixing the problem

Bill Laughing-Bear testing a dead whale for a radiation reading in Alaska.

Radioactive cesium five times above permitted levels in Japan has been detected in black rockfish caught in northeastern Fukushima Prefecture, according to a Feb. 22 announcement by a local fishing association. Some 500 becquerels per kilogram of cesium was found in black rockfish caught at a depth of 24 meters about 8.8 kilometres off the town of Shinchi, exceeding the national standard level of 100 becquerels per kilogram. The Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations has since halted the distribution of the fish until it can confirm their safety.

The voluntary suspension of seafood shipments by the fishing body marks the first time since October 2019, when 53 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium was detected in a white sea perch, exceeding the standard level set by the group at 50 becquerels per kilogram. The fishing association has been conducting test fishing since June 2012 on a limited scale. After shipping restrictions on common skate were lifted in February 2020, the shipment of all fish was permitted. The fishing body aims to resume full fishing operations in April. (Japanese original by Hideyuki Kakinuma, Fukushima Bureau).

Japan and the Olympics

In 2021 the Olympic Games will finally come to Tokyo, the Japanese government will focus on the games to show the world that the stricken site of Fukushima is safe and is on course to be totally clean in forty years. However, Ernie Gunderson of the Fairwinds website claimed in 2019, the site will never be safe due to radioactive isotopes spreading across the site and surrounding landscape for the coming 300 to 250,000 years. Fukushima’s reactor cores have been in direct contact with groundwater since 2011 when the accident occurred leaving toxic radioactive waters leaking at an alarming rate into the Pacific.

One million ton headache!

Meanwhile, a report by Karyn Nishimura for AFP News in October 2019 claimed, on the grounds of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant sits a million-tonne headache for the plant's operators and Japan's government: tank after tank of water contaminated with radioactive elements. What to do with the enormous amount of water, which grows by around 150 tonnes a day. The water comes from several different sources: some is used for cooling at the plant, groundwater that seeps into the plant daily, along with rainwater, add to the problem. Each can hold 1,200 tonnes but most of them are already full. At the end of 2020, all the tanks will be full and the toxic water will have to be dumped into the Pacific Ocean.

Dump it in the Pacific

Last year, nearly a decade after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan’s government decided to release contaminated water from the destroyed plant into the sea, according to a report by CNN. More than a million tons of radioactive water has built up at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant which was crippled during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami as operator Tokyo Electric (Tepco) tries to cool the melted fuel cores by pouring water over them. Tepco has said it will run out of tank space by mid-2022. The decision rankled neighbouring countries like South Korea, which has already stepped up radiation tests of food from Japan and further devastate the fishing industry in Fukushima that has battled against such a move for years. It has long been known marine life in the area has been contaminated by leaking water seeping radiation into the sea.

American and Canadian fish contaminated.

In 2017, A study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima. The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident. Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.

Alaska too

The recent findings as you might expect are being played down and the usual sound-bites are telling us "it's nothing to worry about," something the powers that be have been saying for more than 10 years now, with and still they are no nearer to fixing the problem. The latest study by Alaska Sea Grant agent, Gay Sheffield claimed, a slightly elevated level of radioactive contamination connected to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected in the northern Bering Sea. The level of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, is extremely low and not considered a health concern, according to state epidemiologists. The sampling, conducted by residents of Saint Lawrence Island, documents the Fukushima plume’s northern edge arriving in the Bering Sea for the first time and shows levels of caesium-137 higher than they were before the 2011 nuclear power plant accident in Japan.

The latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination off the shores of Alaska, regular readers of The Big Wobble will know Bill Laughing-Bear has been keeping an eye on fish in Alaskan waters and has warned us all of rising radioactive contamination for years now. Recently other warnings have been published as the slow drip-drip-drop of information is slowly increasing.

The Asahi newspaper reported that any such release is expected to take around two years to prepare, as the site’s irradiated water first needs to pass through a filtration process before it can be further diluted with seawater and finally released into the ocean. In 2018, Tokyo Electric apologised after admitting its filtration systems had not removed all dangerous material from the water, collected from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting when the plant was crippled. It has said it plans to remove all radioactive particles from the water except tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is hard to separate and is considered to be relatively harmless.

South Korea has retained a ban on imports of seafood from the Fukushima region that was imposed after the nuclear disaster and summoned a senior Japanese embassy official last year to explain how Tokyo planned to deal with the Fukushima water problem.

Read, Atomic Balm Part 1: Prime Minister Abe Uses The Tokyo Olympics As Snake Oil Cure For The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdowns

Read Gay Grant's full findings here

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Nearly a decade after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan’s government has decided to release more than a million tons of radioactive water into the sea which has built up at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant despite fish showing positive for radiation as far away as California

Bill Laughing-Bear testing a dead whale for a radiation reading in Alaska

Nearly a decade after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan’s government has decided to release contaminated water from the destroyed plant into the sea, media reports said on Friday, with a formal announcement expected to be made later this month according to a report by Reuters.

More than a million tons of radioactive water has built up at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant which was crippled during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami as operator Tokyo Electric (Tepco) tries to cool the melted fuel cores by pouring water over them. Tepco has said it will run out of tank space by mid-2022.

The decision is expected to rankle neighbouring countries like South Korea, which has already stepped up radiation tests of food from Japan, and further devastate the fishing industry in Fukushima that has battled against such a move for years. It has long been known marine life in the area has been contaminated by leaking water seeping radiation into the sea.

In 2017, A study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.

The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.

Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.

The recent findings as you might expect are being played down and the usual sound-bites are telling us "it's nothing to worry about," something the powers that be have been saying for nearly 10 years now, with and still they are no nearer to fixing the problem.

The latest study by Alaska Sea Grant agent, Gay Sheffield claimed, a slightly elevated level of radioactive contamination connected to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected in the northern Bering Sea.

The level of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, is extremely low and not considered a health concern, according to state epidemiologists.

The sampling, conducted by residents of Saint Lawrence Island, documents the Fukushima plume’s northern edge arriving in the Bering Sea for the first time and shows levels of caesium-137 higher than they were before the 2011 nuclear power plant accident in Japan.

The latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination off the shores of Alaska, regular readers of The Big Wobble will know Bill Laughing-Bear has been keeping an eye on fish in Alaskan waters and has warned us all of rising radioactive contamination for years now. Recently other warnings have been published as the slow drip-drip-drop of information is slowly increasing.

The Asahi newspaper reported that any such release is expected to take at around two years to prepare, as the site’s irradiated water first needs to pass through a filtration process before it can be further diluted with seawater and finally released into the ocean.

In 2018, Tokyo Electric apologised after admitting its filtration systems had not removed all dangerous material from the water, collected from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting when the plant was crippled.

It has said it plans to remove all radioactive particles from the water except tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is hard to separate and is considered to be relatively harmless.

Last week, Japanese fish industry representatives urged the government to not allow the release of contaminated water from the Fukushima plant into the sea, saying it would undo years of work to restore their reputation.

South Korea has retained a ban on imports of seafood from the Fukushima region that was imposed after the nuclear disaster and summoned a senior Japanese embassy official last year to explain how Tokyo planned to deal with the Fukushima water problem.

Read, Atomic Balm Part 1: Prime Minister Abe Uses The Tokyo Olympics As Snake Oil Cure For The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdowns

Read Gay Grant's full findings here

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Revealed! Almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i are contaminated with radiation from Fukushima study claims!

Photo facts-about.info

• The study shows the Fukushima radioactive plume has reached the established fishing grounds across major migratory paths northeast of the islands…
• 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima
• Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.

A study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with caesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima.
While the report declines to claim the Fukushima radioactive plume has necessarily reached the Hawaiian Islands it did reach the established fishing grounds across major migratory paths northeast of the islands…

The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (caesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.
Another study found caesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster.

Full details of the report below

 In the Wake of Fukushima: RadiocesiumInventories of Selected North Pacific Fish
By Hannah R. Azouz and Henrietta Dulai*
Abstract

Thirteen commonly consumed types of fish caught in the North Pacific and locally available in Hawaii were analyzed using gamma spectroscopy to measure Fukushima-derived and historic 134Cs and 137Cs isotopes. All fish samples had detectable 137Cs above 95% Confidence Intervals. Three out of the thirteen samples had 134Cs, an isotope indicative of Fukushima releases, detected above 95% Confidence Intervals. The highest 134Cs and 137Cs concentration in the examined species were in ahi tuna carrying 0.10±0.04 Bq/kg and 0.62±0.05 Bq/kg, respectively. Other samples with 134Cs activities found above their 2-sigma uncertainty were albacore tuna and swordfish. Historic and Fukushima-derived contributions were evaluated and in several samples, the Fukushima-derived radiocesium dominated the total radiocesium inventory with up to 61% contribution. All activities were below derived intervention limits of 1200 Bq/kg and the doses to humans from consuming the fish attributable to radiocesium were 0.02-0.2  Sv, in comparison to 6-20  Sv contributed by the natural 40K present in the same fish

In the Wake of Fukushima: Radiocesium Inventories of Selected North Pacific Fish (PDF Download Available). Here

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Fukushima region hardest hit by typhoon Hagibis as radioactive soil is being pushed from the mountains down into areas where people live and crops are grown

Photo Credit abcnews.go.com
 
News outlets worldwide are reporting the death toll is approaching 100 as 90 residents of Japan have died as a result of Typhoon Hagibis with others still missing. At least 200 people were injured, 30 of them seriously. The full extent of damage from the typhoon is still unknown. Typhoon Hagibis hit Japan on Saturday with historic rainfall that caused rivers to overflow and left thousands of homes flooded, damaged or without power. More than 200 rivers overflowed, and more than 50 of those now have damaged embankments. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation said it is dispatching experts to investigate damaged embankments at seven large rivers including those in Nagano and Fukushima where massive flooding occurred. As of early Wednesday, 12,000 homes lacked electricity and more than 116,000 households lacked freshwater. Below is an email I received yesterday from Maggie Gundersen, Editor of Fairewinds Energy Education.

The news coverage from Reuters caught our attention due to its research that Fukushima Prefecture was apparently the region hardest hit by the typhoon. According to the Reuters story entitled: Rescuers slog through mud as Japan typhoon death toll rises to 66: 

“The highest toll was in Fukushima prefecture north of Tokyo, where levees burst in at least 14 places along the Abukuma River, which meanders through a number of cities in the largely agricultural prefecture. At least 25 people died in Fukushima, including a mother and child who were caught in flood waters, NHK said…. Residents in Koriyama, one of Fukushima's larger cities, said they were taken by surprise by the flooding. Now, due to the heavy rain, subsequent river flooding, and burst levees (dams) radioactive soil is moving and being pushed from the mountains down into more populous areas where people live and crops are grown. 

Once again it appears that government authorities and rescue organizations are ignoring this new, long-term threat, or have not been apprised by the JAEA (Japan Atomic Energy Agency) and nuclear power industry of the monumental health risks involved. The news coverage from Reuters caught our attention due to its research that Fukushima Prefecture was apparently the region hardest hit by the typhoon. "The river has never flooded like this before, and some houses have been completely swept away. I think it might be time to redraw hazard maps or reconsider evacuation plans," said Masaharu Ishizawa, a 26-year-old high school teacher …”Fukushima prefecture is very mountainous and largely remote. 

The radioactive fallout, which spread throughout Japan after the three Fukushima nuclear meltdowns in 2011, is impossible to clean up in these inaccessible mountainous areas that lie throughout Fukushima Prefecture. Even in populous Tokyo, more than one-year after the meltdowns, Fairewinds’ research identified randomly selected Soil Samples Would Be Considered Nuclear Waste in the US, which we discussed in the video on Fairewinds’ website here  

It is our belief from our ongoing research that the ensuing flooding induced by Typhoon Hagibis is moving significant amounts of radiation from high in the mountains down to cities, towns, and farmland in Japan. Now, due to the heavy rain, subsequent river flooding, and burst levees (dams) this radioactive soil is moving and being pushed from the mountains down into more populous areas where people live and crops are grown. Once again it appears that government authorities and rescue organizations are ignoring this new, long-term threat, or have not been apprised by the JAEA (Japan Atomic Energy Agency) and nuclear power industry of the monumental health risks involved.

According to Asahi Shimbun a popular Japanese Daily, the temporary storage facility containing some 2,667 bags stuffed with radioactive contaminants from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was unexpectedly inundated by floodwaters brought by Typhoon Hagibis. Torrential rain flooded the storage facility and released the bags into a stream 100 meters away. Officials from Tamara City in Fukushima Prefecture said that each bag is approximately one cubic meter in size. Authorities were only able to recover six of the bags by 9 p.m. on Oct. 12, and it is uncertain how many remain on the loose while the possible environmental impact is being assessed.

Thanks, Chessie

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A new problem for the stricken Nuclear Plant Fukushima: Radiation readings found near the surface of the lid of reactor No. 2 containment vessel is "dozens of sieverts per hour," lethal to humans as TEPCO clean-up appears to be going backward and still no end in sight!

TEPCO said they would clean up Fukushima by 2051 back in 2011, even though they had no known technology cable of such a task back then or even now! And more than ten years on they appear to be going backward in managing a problem that has no wish to go away and could still be around 25,000 years from now and I'm not kidding...

According to Arnie Gundersen of the Fairwinds website, the government of Japan claims that the Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years and a new problem has arrived.

 

The operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant could be forced to reconsider the plant's decommissioning process after lethal radiation levels equivalent to those of melted nuclear fuel were detected near one of the lids covering a reactor.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said on Sept. 14 that a radiation reading near the surface of the lid of the No. 2 reactor’s containment vessel was 1.2 sieverts per hour, higher than the level previously assumed. The discovery came on Sept. 9 during a study by the NRA and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the plant. TEPCO plans to insert a robotic arm into the No. 2 reactor’s containment vessel from its side in a trial planned for the second half of 2022 to retrieve pieces of melted nuclear fuel.

“We will consider what we can do during the trial on the basis of the detection of the concentration of contamination” in the upper area of the containment vessel, a TEPCO official said. The round concrete lid, called the shield plug, is 12 meters in diameter and about 60 centimeters thick. The shield plug consists of three lids placed on top of each other to block extremely high radiation emanating from the reactor core. Each lid weighs 150 tons.

When operators work on the decommissioning, the shield plug will be removed to allow for entry into the containment vessel. The NRA said a huge amount of radioactive cesium that was released during the meltdown of the No. 2 reactor in March 2011 remained between the uppermost lid and middle lid. In the Sept. 9 study, workers bored two holes measuring 7 cm deep each on the surface of the uppermost lid to measure radiation doses thereby deploying remotely controlled robots.

One radiation reading was 1.2 sieverts per hour at a location 4 cm down from the surface in a hole near the center of the lid. Prior to the study, the NRA estimated that the dose from a contamination source that existed beneath the lid was more than 10 sieverts per hour, a level lethal to humans if exposed to it for about an hour. But the finding suggested that the actual dose would likely be dozens of sieverts per hour, thus far more dangerous. While it is expected to be a huge challenge to dismantle the lids, TEPCO has yet to decide what to do with them during the decades-long cleanup work. Full Story

According to Arnie Gundersen of the Fairwinds website, the government of Japan claims that the Fukushima site will be entirely cleaned and decommissioned in less than forty years, that is scientifically impossible since some radioactive isotopes will be spread across the Fukushima site and surrounding landscape for 300 years and others for 250,000 years.

Nearly 12 years after the 2011 meltdowns of three reactor cores at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant, radioactive water continues to accumulate as the water used to keep the cores cool leaks from the damaged reactors and is stored in tanks so it won’t escape into the ocean or elsewhere. For years, a government panel has been discussing ways to handle the crisis and to reassure fishermen and residents who fear possible health effects from releasing the radioactive water as well as harm to the region’s image and fishing industry.

Fukushima fishermen and the National Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations have strongly opposed past suggestions by government officials that the water is released into the sea, warning of an “immeasurable impact on the future of the Japanese fishing industry,” with local fishermen still unable to resume full operations after the nuclear plant accident.

The water has been treated, and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., says all 62 radioactive elements it contains can be removed to levels not harmful to humans except for tritium. There is no established method to fully separate tritium from water, but scientists say it is not a problem in small amounts. Most of the water stored at the plant still contains other radioactive elements including cancer-causing cesium and strontium and needs further treatment. TEPCO suggested a controlled release of the water into the Pacific, allowing the water to evaporate, or a combination of the two methods. The ministry said the controlled release to the sea is the best option because it would “stably dilute and disperse” the water from the plant and can be properly monitored.

A release is expected to take years and radiation levels will be kept well below the legal limit, the proposal said. The ministry noted that tritium has been routinely released from nuclear plants around the world, including Fukushima before the accident.

Evaporation has been a tested and proven method following the 1979 core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the United States, where it took two years to get rid of 8,700 tons of tritium-contaminated water. TEPCO says it is currently storing more than 1 million tons of radioactive water and only has space to hold up to 1.37 million tons, or until the summer of 2022, raising speculation that the water may be released after next summer’s Tokyo Olympics. AP

On the other side of the mighty Pacific, the latest study shows an increase in levels of Fukushima-related contamination off the shores of Alaska, regular readers of The Big Wobble will know Bill Laughing-Bear has been keeping an eye on fish in Alaskan waters and has warned us all of rising radioactive contamination for years now.

Recently other warnings have been published as the slow drip-feed of information is slowly being released. In 2017, A study by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa revealed almost 50% of fish consumed on the islands of Hawai’i were contaminated with cesium 134 the radioactive finger-print of Fukushima. The report also showed that migrating organisms can transport the Fukushima-signature (cesium 134) over significant distances as they showed detectable 134Cs (6.3±1.5 Bq/kg) in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the California coast only a year after the incident.

Another study found cesium 134 in longfin tuna (Albacore) along the western coast of the US just one year after the Fukushima disaster. The recent findings as you might expect are being played down and the usual sound-bites are telling us "it's nothing to worry about," something the powers that be have been saying for 9 years now. Another study by Alaska Sea Grant agent, Gay Sheffield claimed, a slightly elevated level of radioactive contamination connected to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected in the northern Bering Sea. The level of cesium-137, a radioactive isotope, is extremely low and not considered a health concern, according to state epidemiologists. The sampling, conducted by residents of Saint Lawrence Island, documents the Fukushima plume’s northern edge arriving in the Bering Sea for the first time and shows levels of cesium-137 higher than they were before the 2011 nuclear power plant accident in Japan. Full story

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