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Japan Sizes Up Task of Fukushima Waste Disposal
TOKYO - Japan faces the prospect of removing and disposing 29 million cubic metres of soil contaminated by the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years from an area nearly the size of Tokyo, the environment ministry said in the first official estimate of the scope and size of the cleanup.
Protesters hold placards during the anti-nuclear march in Tokyo, Japan, Monday, Sept. 19, 2011. Six months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered reactor meltdowns, explosions and radiation leaks at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan's northeast coast, the size of the task of cleaning up is only now becoming clear. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara) Six months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered reactor meltdowns, explosions and radiation leaks at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan's northeast coast, the size of the task of cleaning up is only now becoming clear.
Contaminated zones where radiation levels need to be brought down could top 2,400 square km (930 square miles), sprawling over Fukushima and four nearby prefectures, the ministry said in a report released on Tuesday.
Tokyo Metropolitan prefecture has a total area of 2,170 square kilometers (840 square miles).
The environment ministry has requested an additional 450 billion yen in a third extra budget for the year to next March that the government aims to submit to parliament in October, Kyodo news agency reported.
The government has so far raised 220 billion yen ($2.9 billion) to be used for decontamination work, but some experts say the cleanup bill cost reach trillions of yen .
If a 5 cm (2-inch) layer of surface soil, likely to contain cesium, is scraped off affected areas, grass and fallen leaves are removed from forests, and dirt and leaves are removed from gutters, it would amount to nearly 29 million cubic metres of radioactive waste, the document showed.
This would be is enough to fill 23 baseball stadiums with a capacity of 55,000 spectators, and the government must decide where to temporarily store such waste and how to dispose of it permanently.
Japan has banned people from entering within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant, located about 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo and owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co . Some 80,000 people were forced to evacuate.
The government aims to halve radiation over two years in places contaminated by the crisis, relying on both the natural drop in radiation as time passes and by human efforts.
The ministry's estimate assumes that cleanup efforts should be mainly in areas where people could be exposed to radiation of 5 millisieverts (mSv) or more annually, excluding exposure from natural sources.
The unit sievert quantifies the amount of radiation absorbed by human tissues and a mSv is one-thousandth of a sievert. Radiation exposure from natural sources in a year is about 2.4 mSv on average, the U.N. atomic watchdog said. ($1 = 76.655 Japanese yen)
(Editing by Ed Lane)
81 Comments so far
Show AllThe worst nuclear disaster in 25 years?
The worst ever and still going. This isn't like some record snow storm, one of those natural events that just come around every so often.
I'm betting it'll go into the Pacific along with the millions of tons of radioactive waste from this fiasco that have already gone there.
The story implies everything's been fixed and all that's left to do is some clean up.
Yes sir, it's a small world and getting smaller everyday — the inhabitable world, that is.
Lockheed Patent 5573738 - "The present invention provides a method for removing uranium from particulate matter, such as soil, by forming an aqueous slurry of the contaminated soil and utilizing a two-stage leaching process to remove uranium. The contaminated soil is first subjected to a series of pretreatment steps in which the soil is sized, scrubbed, and verified for levels of radioactivity."
The same unnamed Lockheed source reassured Americans by stating that, 'No American workers will be exposed to the removal process.' (that was a joke also)
If I were Japanese, I'd move as far as possible from Fukushima.
The rich who move there will be eating penguin pate' on ice cubes,,, or each other.
GW bought a huge property in Uruguay a few years back. It sits on top of the largest fresh water aquifer coming out of the Amazon basin. If WW3 broke out, he and his family would have a place to hide out. Good for a pandemic also. Fresh water, organic everything, prime beef and no fracking. He could develop the property and sell condos to his billionaire buddies. They could all sit around at night and sing drinking songs. 'It's a long way to Fukushima, It's a long way to go.....' (to the tune of Long Way to Tipperary)
unfortunately, following on the heels of the Deepwater Horizon gut-gauntlet, this disaster is even worse in scope...
as I said in another post, this whole nuclear thing would be very different if hot particles were visible in the air, as oil is in the water...
black humor might point toward the fact that at least they don't need to add some additional poisonous crap like Corexit to the problem just to hide it...
anyway, good post...I couldn't agree more...the tendency to discuss this, or any similar issue, as a past, and concluded, event, when it is ongoing, is so insidious...
the media makes it so easy to lie...they just spew whatever...
Of course the Japanese government may have to raise their already false "safe" limits of radiation even higher, because the only place left for the Japanese to run to is Okinawa... Unless they decide to invade China, Burma, Korea, the Phillipines, Thailand, etc, once again.
The Fukushima disaster gives new meaning to the phase, "Land Of The Rising Sun".
ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy
Updated September 29, 2011 06:10:24
full article and video here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-28/fukushima-residents-unable-to-retu...
excerpt:
A former adviser to the Japanese cabinet has revealed the government has known for months that thousands of evacuees from around the Fukushima nuclear plant will not be able to return to their homes.
Nearly seven months after the meltdowns at Fukushima, about 80,000 people are still living in shelters or temporary housing.
Former special adviser to Japan's prime minister and cabinet Kenichi Matsumoto has told the ABC that the government has known for months that many who live close to the Fukushima plant will not be able to return to their homes for 10 to 20 years because of contamination.
and
Professor Matsumoto has also revealed details about the stricken plant's operator, TEPCO.
He says TEPCO wanted to abandon the plant at the height of the crisis, but its request was rejected.
"First TEPCO did not convey accurate information about the accident to the prime minister. It tried to make the disaster look small," he said.
"Then TEPCO's headquarters wanted to evacuate the nuclear plant, but the chief of the facility vowed not to leave. So prime minister Kan was outraged because he wasn't getting proper information or the truth."
Anyone who states (any level) of cesium137 which is eaten or inhaled is "safe", gets my 'paranoid' attention... What level is "safe", how many eaten or inhaled isotopes of cesium 137 is "safe"?
How many isotopes of eaten or inhaled cesium 137 is (unsafe) or harmful to health? Please state a number, be it one, two, three, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, or more. Thank you and please do not ignore that fair and reasonable question for this "paranoid" old duffer.
Let's ask this:__ if there is a numbver of isotopes of cesium 137 that is harmful to eat or inhale, which one, or two, or three, or a hundred or more of the eaten or inhaled isotopes of cesim 137 does the body damage; number one, or number 100?
You see ~~mkb29~~ it is my understanding that every single microscopic sized isotope of radioactive cesium 137 has the exact same ability to radiate body cells and cause cancer as any other one... Since that makes perfect sense, how does one claim there is any safe level of cesium 137? __ Inhale one and it will end up causing body damage, from radiating nearby body cells werever it lodges in the body, until the nearby cells become cancerous.
So I don't trust any literature that says there is a "safe" level... I certainly will acknowledge that the more isotopes of radioactive poisons eaten or inhaled, the more cancers will develop and the sooner the person dies from radiation poisoning.
Btw, ~~mkb29~~ I for one welcome you here at the "paranoia" forum... I love humor and jokes and to read the nonsense which some ignorant people will write here and do it with such seriousness and pretense of having any common sense or the intelligence displayed by a dead Dodo bird. .
In other words, according to you, there is no danger from the cesium 137 being released from the Fukushima melted down reactor cores... If that is so and true,,, Finston, why are the Japanese bothering to scrape up millions of tons of dirt?
You failed to answer the question once again ~Finston~ , as you have refused to do on other threads here on this subject... As you have stated many times, inhaling or eating cesium 137 is a health hazard,,, but you claim it depends upon the amount eaten or inhaled that matters.
So once again, ~Finston~, answer this fair and reasonable question... How_ many_ isotopes_ of _ cesium 137_ eaten _ or _ inhaled-_are_ a _ health_ hazard? ,,, Which can easily cause cancer to develop anywhere in the body. You will side step that question again if you bother to reply,,, so just don't bother... Live Dodo birds weren't very intellignet RF.
You should advise the Japanese government that they don't need to scrape up all of their contaminated dirt and to stop worring about the melted down reactor cores at the nucear power plant and let everyone who was evacated return to their homes. .
Apparently Dr Jaworowski is also a nuker advocate or doesn't understand that injesting or inhaling (any) cesium 137 isotopes can cause cancer... And then if a person is in an area where inhaling cesium 137 is likely, they wil likely inhale many more than just one.
Answer to your question to me... Inhaling ONE isotope of cesium 137 is inhaling one too many.... Bye Finston,,, throw ya later. .
That throw ya shill? __ If you don't wish to be classified as a nuker shill, don't act like one.
'You see ~~mkb29~~ it is my understanding that every single microscopic sized isotope of radioactive cesium 137 has the exact same ability to radiate body cells and cause cancer as any other one... Since that makes perfect sense, how does one claim there is any safe level of cesium 137? __ Inhale one and it will end up causing body damage, from radiating nearby body cells werever it lodges in the body, until the nearby cells become cancerous.'
If a cesium-137 atom is inhaled, it will likely then be exhaled. If it somehow does stay in the body (with a half-life of about 70 days), it MAY emit a burst of ionizing radiation exactly ONE time as it decays to barium-137 (a stable isotope). The cesium does NOT become lodged in the body. The radiation emitted MAY be partly responsible for causing cancer. Every one of us has radioisotopes in his body, including alpha-ray emitters. (Cesium-137 emits beta rays, which are much less hazardous.)
John
Your outright lie of a half life of (70 days) of an isotope of cesium 137 in the body is an unproven, pro nuker, dreampt up theory.
If you wish to play semantics with word usage and use th word (atom) in leau of isotope, that's fine with me Johnny.
'~Wrong ~~John Lanetta~~.....When (inhaled), an ISOTOPE of cesium 137 enters a lung and (unlike much larger sized pollen which are normally coughed up), will enter the blood stream the same as isotopes of oxygen do,,, then travel to the bone marrow, liver, brain, or some other body organ and set up a cancer factory..'
That's not how the body works. Since you use the phrase "isotopes of oxygen", I assume that you're using "isotopes" and "molecules" synonymously. The alveoli that line the lungs are quite selective. There is four times as much nitrogen as oxygen in the air, but essentially no nitrogen in the lungs enters the bloodstream.
'Your outright lie of a half life of (70 days) of an isotope of cesium 137 in the body is an unproven, pro nuker, dreampt up theory.'
www.evs.anl.gov/pub/doc/Cesium.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137
www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/3165
John
From wikipedia article...("The committed effective dose equivalent or CEDE is an estimate of the radiation dose to a person resulting from inhalation or ingestion of a given amount of radioactive substance. The CEDE is expressed in rem or sieverts (Sv). It takes into account the radiation sensitivities of different organs and the time a particular substance stays in the body, which can be up to a "whole lifetime".)... A WHOLE LIFETIME ~~johnny~~..
Inhaling cesium 137 is not inhaling nitrogen Johnny.. It is well documented in Medical Jouirnal thar inhaling radioactive (*isotopes*) is very common at nuclear accident sites such as Chernobyl or Fukushima and the (isotopes) enter the blood stream just as oxygen does... That is why the workers at nuclear accidents wear maks Johnny.
Inhaling gasoline which has (lead) added is a good example too... The lead enters the blood stream very quickly from the lungs and lodges in body organs, brain, liver, etc, just like cesium 137 does... Lead is not (nitrogen) either Johnny... The body does not work with lead, or paint fumes, or radioactive isotopes as it does with nitrogen. ... And btw, some countries still add lead to gasoline to up the octane level.
And Johnny, (internal) gamma or beta radiation is very harmful to body cells... You don't like the use of the word (*isotopes*)... Why not?__ Nuclear scientists, medical doctors use it all of the time to decribe (isotopes) of cesium 137... Don't play word games in an attempt to discredit others.
You just posted this following comment today Finston... (" Based on that cancer risk we all face and the estimated additional risk of Cesium, I would say that 1 microcurie is not a "hazard"). Don't you know what you write from one minute to the next?
And your comments' and your sidekick ~~Jonh Lanetta's~~, that cesium 137, which has a lalf life of 30 years, (suddenly reverts) to only 70 or 100 days once it enters someones body, is sheer lying nonsense.
All you are doing is supporting the nuclear agenda, "shilling" for them.. Whether you are paid to do so or are just not intelligent and don't have anything better to occupy your time and keyboard. If you and Lanetta are not paid shills for the nuclear industy, you need help. .
The poisons settle on roof tops and whenever the wind blows them, they are in the air again and may be inhaled by the unwary, who cannot detect (microscopic sized) isotopes of cesium 137, any more than one can detect pollen from an olive tree, or individual isotopes of oxygen.
Valuable topsoil can be scraped up and stored away someplace, like dumping it into the Pacific Ocean, but that won't help to clean up the trillion upon trillions of deadly isotopes that haven't landed on that scraped up soil... Then after scraping up the soil, what happens next year and the year after, until when?__ The poisons are still spewing out from the melted down nuclear power plant.
Are the Japanese going to dig up paved roads, parking lots, stone walls, houses, office buildings, hospitals, schools, and cut down all of their trees an shrubery, etc? They have found very high levels of radioactive poisons on fields of rice... What happens to the water that rice grows in, the irreplacable soil in all of those so very important crop fields? __ And the cry, "No More Fukushia's"? __ In our dreams.
No,,, they won't do that,, and so they are screwed... So are all of us.