Fukushima updates July 26

FSC shows intake benchmark of 100 millisieverts

A government food safety panel has recommended that safeguard measures be implemented to limit cumulative radiation exposure during a person's lifetime to no more than 100 millisieverts.

The working group at the Food Safety Commission, which was set up at the request of the health ministry, released its report on Tuesday.

The report says more than 100 millisieverts of exposure and radioactive intake during a lifetime could increase the risk of developing cancer and other conditions.

The amount does not include radiation a person receives naturally...

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 19:15 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/26_23.html




Power companies' generation figures called into question amid push for reactor restarts

As Japan strives to conserve power following the closure of nuclear reactors in the wake of the meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, suggestions have arisen that power companies are underestimating their generating capacity.

Recently one opposition lawmaker questioned whether power companies, which want to restart their nuclear reactors, have been giving low estimates of the nation's power supply. Prime Minister Naoto Kan, meanwhile, has shown increasing distrust toward the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), and ordered a review of the nation's power supplies.

According to METI, the generating capacity of thermal power generation and hydroelectric power generation in fiscal 2009 was 192 million kilowatts. In comparison, peak demand during the high-use summer period ranged between 170 million and 180 million kilowatts. In light of these figures, Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima has declared that electricity needs can be covered without nuclear power.

Thermal power generation, however, requires regular inspections, and with hydroelectric power, a drop in water supply in the summer means the facilities can't be used to their full potential, according to the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan...

(Mainichi Japan) July 26, 2011

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110726p2a00m0na004000c.html




Fukushima to provide lifetime thyroid tests in wake of nuclear crisis

The Fukushima Prefectural Government decided on July 24 to provide lifetime thyroid gland tests for some 360,000 prefectural residents aged 18 and under to help detect thyroid cancer triggered by radiation from the crisis-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant.

The free tests will be launched in October. Eligible residents will be tested once every two years until the age of 20, and once every five years thereafter. The prefectural government's move is said to be unprecedented.

After the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986, residents around the plant who consumed milk and other products contaminated with radioactive materials were exposed to radiation internally, and four to five years after the accident, an increase in infant thyroid cancer cases was confirmed. Thyroid cancer can for the most part be treated if it is detected at an early stage, and the Fukushima Prefectural Government decided that continuous testing was necessary.

The tests are available to people born between April 2, 1992, and April 1 this year who were residents of Fukushima Prefecture at the onset of the nuclear crisis, or who evacuated out of the prefecture in the wake of the crisis. For the time being residents will be tested at Fukushima Medical University, and later group testing will be carried out at public halls, schools and other locations with assistance from private medical institutions. The prefectural government hopes to have the first round of testing completed for all eligible residents by March 2014…

(Mainichi Japan) July 25, 2011

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110725p2a00m0na007000c.html






Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Tepco to get the bill for all costs
Meat sector to buy tainted beef, burn it

By MIZUHO AOKI
Staff writer

Meat industry bodies will buy up all radioactive domestic beef that has been shipped to the market in a bid to dispel mounting consumer fears as well as provide financial relief to suffering livestock farmers, agriculture minister Michihiko Kano said Tuesday.


The government will have meat industry organizations buy all beef contaminated with radioactive cesium that exceeds the government limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram, and they will in turn seek to recoup their costs from Tokyo Electric Power Co.

The organizations will also pay the storage fees for beef that doesn't exceed the radiation limit but has been banned from shipment, the agriculture ministry said.

Meat organizations will also give financial support to livestock farmers in Fukushima Prefecture by paying ¥50,000 for each head of beef cattle they raise, the ministry said. It is also considering aiding farmers in other prefectures who fed cesium-tainted hay to their cattle...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110726x1.html




U.S. used Hiroshima to bolster support for nuclear power
BY RYUICHI KANARI STAFF WRITER
2011/07/26

The private notes of the head of a U.S. cultural center in Hiroshima revealed that Washington targeted the city's residents with pro-
nuclear propaganda in the mid-1950s after deciding a swing in their opinions was vital to promoting the use of civil nuclear power in Japan and across the world.

The organizers of a U.S.-backed exhibition that toured 11 major Japanese cities from November 1955 to September 1957 initially considered opening the first exhibition in Hiroshima.

According to the private papers of Abol Fazl Fotouhi, former president of the American Cultural Center in Hiroshima, the idea of choosing the city was proposed at a meeting of officials of the U.S. Information Service in December 1954.

The proposal was dropped because officials were worried that it would link nuclear energy too closely with nuclear bombs. Tokyo was chosen to open the tour and three other cities were visited before the exhibition opened at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which commemorates the 1945 bombing, on May 27, 1956…

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201107250344.html





Nuclear plants urged to brace for biggest tsunami

A senior member of a Japanese government council on disaster preparedness says nuclear plants must prepare for the biggest possible tsunami, no matter how small the likelihood of such an event.

Kansai University Professor Yoshiaki Kawata, who heads the council's survey team, briefed the Nuclear Safety Commission on the council's new tsunami measures on Tuesday.

Kawata said a nuclear plant that Chugoku Electric Power Company plans to build by the Seto Inland Sea could be at risk. He cited new findings that a past massive earthquake in the Pacific off central to southwestern Japan sent tsunami waves into the sea.

Kawata also cited old documents that say a tsunami hit Wakasa Bay in Fukui Prefecture after an earthquake about 400 years ago. Thirteen nuclear reactors are located by the bay in the Sea of Japan…

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 17:03 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/26_24.html

K&R

Check out this video of a meeting in



07.25.11 - 8:47 PM

Fukushima Residents to Officials: Test This Urine!

by Abby Zimet

5:36 minute video here:

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/07/25-3

Incredible video of a meeting in Fukushima last week where desperate residents ask if they have the right to live in a safe, non-radioactive place and stone-faced officials sit in silence - and then literally run away as people plead with them to test their children's urine. Shrieks one woman, "They are awful!"




And further on the meeting and video:




The video above documents what I am told is a meeting between Fukushima residents and government officials from Tokyo, said to have taken place on 19 July 2011. The citizens are demanding their government evacuate people from a broader area around the Fukushima nuclear plant, because of ever-increasing fears about the still-spreading radiation. They are demanding that their government provide financial and logistical support to get out. In the video above, you can see that some participants actually brought samples of their children’s urine to the meeting, and they demanded that the government test it for radioactivity.

When asked by one person at the meeting about citizens’ right to live a healthy and radioactive-free life, Local Nuclear Emergency Response Team Director Akira Satoh replies “I don’t know if they have that right.”

(Boing Boing reader Rob Pongi spotted this online and sent this in to us. I asked him for more info.)

The current evacuation zone in Fukushima is only 20-30 kilometers. The Japanese government has compensated the evacuees from inside that zone and has financially supported them in moving out of it. However, as more and more high levels of radiation are being discovered outside of the evacuation zone, many more Fukushima residents (and many others located nearby Fukushima) want the government to also help them logistically and financially so that they can move out further away from the nuclear plants. Especially since many children are now being exposed. But the government does not want to do this at all and many people are getting very upset.

This video was filmed in Fukushima at the Corasse Fukushima Building on July 19, 2011. The meeting was entitled “Japanese Government Discussion – Demands for Evacuation Authority”. This meeting was attended by residents of Fukushima and some Representatives for the Nuclear Safety Commission Of Japan. It was filmed by some anonymous members of the “Save Child” website. This site includes Japanese news about the Fukushima Nuclear disaster, advice on how to avoid contamination, and many, many related videos. This site is much like enenews.com on steroids! I checked domaintools.com and the name of the registration is private. You can see the original Japanese videos of this meeting on the Save Child website here (English), and on Youtube here. This video was translated by pejorativeglut. And, for sure, the English subtitles are correct. I was not involved in the production of this video.

http://boingboing.net/2011/07/25/japanese-gov-unsure-of-fukushima-citizens-right-to-live-radiation-free-lives-video.html

That sentence alone needs to go viral.

Contaminated water on increase at Fukushima plant

Tokyo Electric Power Company is injecting fresh water from a nearby dam to make up for the shortage of water in its system for cooling the reactors at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The system decontaminates radioactive water that has accumulated in the plant and circulates it.

TEPCO halted the process of removing salt from contaminated water after an alarm went off around noon on Sunday due to a problem with the installation of the desalination equipment. It resumed the operation in the evening after installing another device.

The new device is only able to treat half the amount of water. The amount of contaminated water has been increasing since the problem occurred...

Monday, July 25, 2011 14:12 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/25_22.html