Here are a few articles updating us on the situation in Fukushima, Japan. The Prime Minister is confirming in public, what we've already known. That just even the decommissioning process will take several decades. In all likelihood this site will be uninhabitable for hundreds of years. The government seems to prefer to inch up to the truth one step at a time. For comparison, I read that a company in the Ukraine is proposing that as soon as the radioactivity cools enough, they wish to build a concrete shroud over the entire site designed to last several hundred years.
Fukushima nuclear plant cleanup will take decades: Japan
TOKYO: Decommissioning of Fukushima nuclear power plant, crippled by the March 2011 quake and tsunami, will take decades, said Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Saturday.
It was the first government announcement about a long-term timeframe for the cleanup.
A 9.0-magnitude quake struck off Japan's northeast coast March 11, triggering a tsunami and explosions at the Fukushima, which caused the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.
The Japan Atomic Energy Commission and Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company ( TEPCO) have set a goal of starting the removal of melted nuclear fuel at about 2021, public broadcaster NHK said.
The TV channel reported that the authorities, the operator and equipment manufacturers also expect "several decades" to pass before the reactors are ready to be dismantled, citing a long-term roadmap for bringing the plant under control.
In late June the Japanese government announced that the double natural disaster could cost the country up to 16.9 trillion yen (about $210 bln). The estimates do not include the damages from a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the government said.
In late June the Japanese government announced that the double natural disaster could cost the country up to 16.9 trillion yen (about $210 bln). The estimates do not include the damages from a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the government said.
The Yomiuri Shimbun reports
FUKUSHIMA, Japan -- As excessive levels of radioactive cesium have been detected in beef cattle shipped from near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the Fukushima prefectural government is considering asking livestock farmers to voluntarily stop shipping cows, officials said Saturday.
The request would apply to cattle in areas that have been designated as "emergency evacuation preparation zones," which lie mostly between 20 and 30 kilometers (12.42 and 18.64 miles) from the nuclear plant.
Radioactive cesium exceeding government-set limits was detected in 11 cows shipped in May and June from a part of Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, that is located within one of the emergency evacuation preparation zones. All 11 cows were shipped by the same farmer.
According to the prefectural government, a total of 2,924 beef cattle have been shipped from the designated areas since late April.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the metropolitan government are investigating the subsequent distribution routes of the meat.
"However, if beef like that can be distributed on the market, it can damage people's trust in the meat industry as a whole. I think it's necessary (for the government) to test all cattle suspected to have been irradiated," Manabe said.
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/...
Jeff McMahon, of Forbes, writes
Covering the story, I watched the government pursue what appeared to be two strategies to minimize public alarm: It framed the data with reassurances like this oft-repeated sentence from the EPA: “The level detected is far below a level of public health concern.” The question, of course, is whose concern.
The EPA seemed to be timing its data releases to avoid media coverage. It released its most alarming data set late on a Friday—data that showed radioactive fallout in the drinking water of more than a dozen U.S. cities. Friday and Saturday data releases were most frequent when radiation levels were highest.
As a result, bloggers broke the fallout news, while newspapers relegated themselves to local followups, most of which did little more than quote public health officials who were pursuing strategy #1. For example, when radioactive cesium-137 was found in milk in Hilo, Hawaii, Lynn Nakasone, administrator of the Health Department’s Environmental Health Services Division, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser: ”There’s no question the milk is safe.”
Nakasone had little alternative but to say that. She wasn’t about to dump thousands of gallons of milk that represented the livelihood of local dairymen, and she wasn’t authorized to dump the milk as long as the radiation detected remained below FDA’s Derived Intervention Level, a metric I’ll discuss more below.
That kind of statement failed to reassure the public in part because of the issue of informed consent—Americans never consented to swallowing any radiation from Fukushima—and in part because the statement is obviously false.
There is a question whether the milk was safe.
In spite of the relative level of Fukushima radiation, which many minimized through comparison to radiation from x-rays and airplane flights—medical experts agree that any increased exposure to radiation increases risk of cancer, and so, no increase in radiation is unquestionably safe.
Martin Fackler, of the New York Times writes President of Japan Nuclear Operator May Resign Over E-Mails
TOKYO — The president of a nuclear plant operator said on Thursday that he may resign as a result of a scandal over faked e-mails that has added a bizarre new twist to a decision whether to allow Japan’s idled reactors to restart in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
The president of Kyushu Electric Power, Toshio Manabe, told reporters that he must take responsibility for the e-mails, which were sent by employees of subsidiaries who posed as regular citizens supporting the restart of two local reactors. The e-mails were sent on June 26 during a live televised public hearing on whether to restart the reactors at the Genkai Nuclear Power Station, and some may have been read on the air.
The company was apparently trying to sway public opinion in hopes of persuading the governor of southern Saga Prefecture, where Genkai is located, to support the restart.
However, with the radiation-spewing Fukushima plant still far from under control, public opinion polls show a majority of Japanese now support eliminating or phasing out nuclear power.
The revelations on Thursday of the faked e-mails appeared to deal an embarrassing setback to not only Kyushu Electric, but also the powerful Ministry of Trade and Industry, which convened the hearing to win public support for the reactors’ restart.
“This behavior was unspeakable and went completely against the rationale of the program,” the minister of trade and industry, Banri Kaieda, told reporters.
The mayor, Hideo Kishimoto, told reporters he felt like he was “being mocked” by the company.
YNET News
A leading biophysicist has cast a critical light on the government’s reassurances that Americans were never at risk from Fukushima fallout, saying “we really don’t know for sure.”
When radioactive fallout from Japan’s nuclear disaster began appearing in the United States this spring, the Obama Administration’s open-data policy obligated the government to inform the public, in some detail, what was landing here.
http://www.ynetnews.com/...
Our own Boatsie's, last Rov#61 Update is here,http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/01/990579/-Duck-Duck-Goose-Enter-the-Black-Swan-Fukushima-ROV-61?showAll=yes&via=blog_791030">Duck. Duck. Goose. Enter the Black Swan. Fukushima ROV 61
Cheers.