[ RadSafe ] 8 Significant facts about Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station

[BRONSON Frazier (CANBERRA)]

Roger:  Like most of the rumors one hears, there is probably a kernel of fact in each one of these, but then gross extrapolations and distortions from those facts.

I have been to Japan many times since the accident [24 I think] so try to follow these things.
1.  I have not heard this one, but the newspapers are full of gross missintpretations of the data by untrained persons using poor quality un-calibrated instruments.  If one finds a small localized area of elevated activity under the probe of a few cm2, and assumes that value is representative of a the full 10,000cm2 area in a square meter, large numbers are easy to create.  For comparison, the top 5 cm of "normal" soil contains 100,000 Bq in 1 m2, when all the Radium and Thorium daughters are included.  No evidence about when this statement was made - but very early on it was quite easy to find localized Fukushima contamination under roof downspouts in areas as far away as Tokyo.  But after a few rainfalls, most of it went away.
2.  Mostly true, but the exaggeration starts with the "continues to melt anything it touched".    Here they state that this information is from 1.5 year ago. 
3.  This is true.  It is "considered" to be a big problem, especially by the newspapers and TV stations.  What they don't state is that the "mixing with the ground water" is actually diluting it, and that "spilling into the outer ocean" is actually a good place for it to go.  And it is not impossible to control, just very expensive.  Many controls have already been implementd and more are in progress.
4.  True [ignoring the irradiated vs. contaminated misstatements].  It is too late to do anything about the water that has already gone to the sea.  But why would one want to do anything about it ??  If you really work hard to measure it, you can indeed find Fukushima Cs in the near-shore sea within a few Km up or down the shore from the 1F site, even now.  But at levels hundreds of times lower than naturally occurring K40.
5.  Mostly irrelevant and not true.  The background difference between the famous Tokyo fish market and the Fukushima fish measuring station is probably true, but totally irrelevant.  The food contamination levels must be <100Bq/kg to be exported from the Fukushima region;  for the soil to be considered radioactive it must be >8000 Bq/kg.  Therefore no idea where the "low-level radioactive waste" statement got into the picture.  
6.  Gross exaggeration of the truth.  There was a very large measurement campaign a few months after the accident where samples were taken at thousands of locations.  These were analyzed for lots of nuclides [Gamma spec, Sr/Y90, Pu, I131/129, ...].  Once the I-131 was gone, then Cs137 and Cs134 were BY FAR the radionuclides of dosimetric significance.  However, I am quite certaint that there is still some measurements going on for Sr and Tritium in the general off-site environment;  I know that they are being measured by TEPCO in the on-site environment.
7.  True, except for the last sentence.  Yes there are many bags - last week the number I heard was 22 million !!.  And yes the do deteriorate from the weather and spill.  They will soon [the end of this year] start construction on the for facilities where they will be taken, including the parts that have spilled out.  
8.    I suspect that this "fact" is true, that the newspaper did report the Governor's opinion.  But so what ??   And this establishes that these "facts" are about 1.5y old.  

Frazier Bronson  CHP
Canberra 
  

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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 02:14:18 -0700
From: Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com>
To: RADSAFE <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Fwd: [New post] 8 Significant facts about
	Fukushima	Daiichi Nuclear Station
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These facts are most likely not even true, let alone fact!
Counterpunch is pretty widely read.  I am going to send this to a local person who has written for them once I get your replies so that the facts can be separated from the fiction.

Roger Helbig

8 Significant facts about Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station

by Christina MacPherson

6. In Japan, the only radiation from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactors that is being measured is the radioactive cesium. However large amounts of strontium 90 and tritium are spreading all over Japan. Strontium and tritium's radiation consists of beta rays, and are very difficult to measure. However both are extremely dangerous:
strontium can cause leukemia, and tritium can cause chromosome disorder.

8. ......Tokyo Governor Naoki Inose said ."It is not under control now."

Some Facts You Must Know About Fukushima Takashi Hirose | CounterPunch, 26 Mar 15 ".........Here are eight things you need to know.
Read more of this post

Christina MacPherson | March 27, 2015 at 5:53 am | Categories:
Fukushima 2015 | URL: http://wp.me/phgse-j8C

http://nuclear-news.net/2015/03/27/8-significant-facts-about-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-station/