It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
originally posted by: Purplechive
Major Leak...Unit 1 and Unit 2 Subdrain
They hadn't release any data for several days. Something is going on....
www.tepco.co.jp...
- Purple Chive
Now, with the remaining nuclear debris stabilized, emissions are roughly one one-hundredth of what they were when the cover was constructed. It can now be safely removed so that TEPCO can begin removing debris from the operating floor, an essential step toward eventual decontamination and decommissioning.
Removal of the cover is an essential step toward erection of the large overhead crane that will be used to remove the debris, similar to the one currently being used to safely remove fuel from Unit 4. The temporary will be replaced by a structure capable of supporting the crane's weight.
Since October of that year, the Unit 1 building has been shrouded by a temporary cover that was erected to protect the building from the elements and minimize the amount of radioactivity that might escape.
The highest level of contamination was recorded in a sample collected between Aug. 16-20, 2013, reaching 50 to 100 times higher than normal levels. TEPCO conducted large-scale debris-clearing work at the plant on Aug. 19, 2013.
Previous research by the farm ministry and Kyoto University also showed that radioactive dust released during the work reached locations 27 km and 48 km from the plant.
The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says more than one trillion becquerels of radioactive substances were released as a result of debris removal work at one of the plant's reactors.
The plant is believed to be still releasing an average of 10 million becquerels per hour of radioactive material
Although TEPCO's stricken facility is estimated to currently emit about 10 million becquerels per hour, the utility said that cleanup efforts at the plant’s No. 3 reactor on Aug. 19, 2013, resulted in the release of a maximum 1.1 trillion becquerels of radioactive materials over a period of four hours.
The company said its plans to dismantle the cover on the No. 1 reactor building will be the fastest way to remove wreckage from the site. TEPCO will also spray more anti-scattering agents than usual during the operation.
But the company acknowledged that the procedure will still lead to the release of a large amount of radioactive substances, and the spread of the substances will depend on the weather and the wind direction.
A Japanese citizen posted on an internet forum that his pickled cucumber was found glowing in blue on 7/30/2014. The person doesn’t specify the location but states it’s in a prefecture near Fukushima. It looks glowing in the dark as well. The cucumber was purchased 4 days before the posting.
The purpose of this post is to report measurements of radioactivity in fish caught off the west coast of Canada based on the work of InFORM team member Dr. Jing Chen. A collaborative effort between Health Canada, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the University of Victoria was published in May 2014 in the peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry (link). The authors examined the activities of cesium radioisotopes (134-Cs half-life ~2 years and 137-Cs half-life ~30 years) that were released in large quantities due to the triple reactor meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 as well as a naturally occurring polonium isotope (210-Po) that can pose radiological health concerns for human consumers of marine fish. Samples of chum and coho salmon, halibut, sablefish and spiny dogfish were analyzed and none were found to contain detectable levels of Fukushima derived radionuclides. Radiation doses to human consumers were determined by assuming a conservative worst case scenario where Cs isotopes were present at detection limits of the measurement and found to be 18 times lower than doses attributable to the naturally occurring, alpha-emitter 210-Po. The authors conclude that the radiation dose from Fukushima derived isotopes present in fish caught in Canadian waters represent a very small fraction of the annual dose from exposure to natural background radiation. Based on these measurements, at present, Fukushima derived radionuclides in fish do not represent a significant radiological health risk to Canadians.
August 14, 2014
Using the most sensitive methods to measure your water samples, we have detected only cesium-137, the “legacy” cesium that remains from 1960s atmospheric weapons testing. This isotope is still in all ocean basins because of its relatively long 30-year half-life, which means it takes a long time to decay away. Levels of cesium-137 in all 43 samples analyzed thus far average 1.5 Bequerels per cubic meter of water, which is equivalent to one-and-a-half decay events per second per metric ton of water. This is a very small number if we compare it to the 7,400 Bq/m3 used by US EPA as the drinking water limit, and the millions of Bq/m3 of cesium detected in the ocean off Japan in 2011 at the peak of the accident, which at that level are of considerable concern for direct negative impacts on marine biota and human health.
The Fukushima reactors also released cesium-134 into the ocean and because it has a shorter half-life (2 years) any cesium-134 detected in the ocean today must have come from Fukushima. Though we do detect this isotope in abundance off Japan, cesium-134 is not YET present in any of the sample collected by citizen scientists along the North American west coast and Hawaii. Our instruments are capable of detecting as little as 0.2 Bq/m3 so the concentration of cesium-134 is below this level.
We emphasize that cesium-134 has not been detected “YET” as it has been detected offshore of North America by Canadian oceanographers. It’s difficult to predict when these radionuclides will arrive onshore because the mixing of offshore and onshore waters is complicated, and not represented in the simple models that predicted the arrival onshore of Fukushima radionuclides this year. The uncertainty in the predictions by these ocean models only emphasizes the importance of collecting samples from along the shores. Remember too that while those models predict increasing levels of both cesium isotopes for the next 2-3 years, the highest published prediction is for 20-30 Bq/m3, or well below what is thought to be of human health or fisheries concern. But it’s important to continue making observations with real data!