Tepco Says Highest Radiation Yet Is Detected at Fukushima Dai-Ichi

[PoliticAverse]

Source: Bloomberg.com

Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, said it detected the highest radiation to date at the site.

Geiger counters, used to detect radioactivity, registered more than 10 sieverts an hour, the highest reading the devices are able to record, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility, said today. The measurements were taken at the base of the main ventilation stack for reactors No. 1 and No. 2.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-01/tepco-says-highest-radiation-yet-is-detected-at-fukushima-dai-ichi.html

[AndyTiedye]

1. OVER TEN SIEVERTS PER HOUR ?!!!

:nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::hide::wtf:

[PearliePoo2]

22. Here is what 10 sieverts per hour means:

1 – 3 Sv (1000 – 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.
3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; death if untreated.
6 – 10 Sv (6000 – 10000 mSv): Above symptoms plus central nervous system impairment; death expected.
Above 10 Sv (10000 mSv): Incapacitation and death.

[backscatter712]

27. Ten sieverts per hour is Bad. As in Will Kill You level of Bad. n/t

[pam4water]

2. There was a lot off talk about a big after shock damaging what is left of the containment there. &

There was just at 6.1 aftershock.

[PearliePoo2]

3. This is NOT a ticking time bomb...

This nuclear plant time bomb HAS and CONTINUES to go off.
And the information wildly available in MSM about this global, ecological terrorism?
"crickets"

[Avalux]

4. Nice....it may be highter, but the devices can't record it.

This is an ongoing tragedy; a global environmental disaster that will have no resolution soon. 3 reactors had meltdowns that are continuing; one was a melt-through into the ground.

And do we hear about this? No. We hear about our crazy political machinations and that Clark Gable's grandson was arrested for shining a laser at a helicopter.

[Downwinder]

5. We get radiation pictures of stars and space station pictures of fires.

How about a space station radiation picture of Fukushima?

[leveymg]

6. How much worse can this get? I'm afraid, a lot worse. They'll have to evacuate a bigger area.

This is turning into a full-scale meltdown plume, as I described here back in late March -- http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x284642 -- that contaminates the food supply for many miles around so seriously that the area will have to be abandoned for agriculture for many years.

Cesium is a nasty soft tissue and bone cancer producer that lasts, and lasts, and lasts in the environment and in the body.

[PearliePoo2]

9. Yes, entire areas SHOULD be off limits and abandoned but......

don't expect it.
Contaminated beef has already made it into the food supply and has been consumed.( A lot of it went to school lunchrooms!)
Vegetables, tea and fish have tested sky-high.
There's suspicion that food-stuffs are being relabeled as to their areas of origin.
Wait until their mainstay rice is soon harvested and see if those true radiation numbers are released. (I doubt it...can you say national panic?)
This is an unprecedented catastrophe.
Japan is fucked.

[psychopomp]

33. That's a lot of hyperbole in one post

Yes, some contaminated beef has been sold and that is a travesty. However, there is plenty of uncontaminated beef in Japan yet. Some produce and fish have tested high, but that was from Fukushima and the surrounding prefectures. There is now a ban on foodstuffs from those regions.

Your "suspicion" is, without validation, just another variation on "Some people say that..."

The government is about begin testing rice fields in northern Japan as announced today.

TOKYO —
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said Monday that rice will be checked twice for radioactive cesium before and after harvesting in 19 prefectures.

The latest move follows bans on produce including green vegetables, milk and dairy products, some river fish, mushrooms and green tea, as well as beef shipments from Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures.

Meanwhile, NHK reported that Tochigi Prefecture has already decided to carry out inspections in 79 municipalities. Gov Tomikazu Fukuda said local governments in the prefecture will check to see if rice has been contaminated by cesium by collecting water samples from rice paddies.

The agriculture ministry issued a guideline Monday in which it stated that rice with radioactive cesium exceeding 500 becquerels—which is the provisional national standard—will be banned from shipment.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/govt-to-test-rice-crop-in-19-prefectures-for-possible-contamination

Japan is not fucked. Japan is coping with a catastrophe and it is doing its best to manage the crisis.

[Downwinder]

34. Japan is doing the tracking that the US didn't do after the

open air tests. If that had been done we would have a much better idea of the effects of low level radiation.

[Downwinder]

17. Prussian blue can remove it.

However there is no availability of Prussian blue in Japan.

[Auntie Bush]

18. Prussian blue?

Are they going to paint it? lol

[Downwinder]

19. CDC link

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/prussianblue.asp

[Auntie Bush]

20. I was jesting, but thanks for the link anyway.

I was waiting for someone to take me seriously.

[Downwinder]

21. Might be good to know, if you are downwind.

[Auntie Bush]

23. Yes, good to know.

I wonder if it would do more harm than good to drink some PB paint water in an absolutely emergency?

[Downwinder]

26. The Cesium probably won't bother you for about 30 years.

The effects of the paint water might be more immediate.

[formercia]

32. It's rather easy to manufacture from common chemicals

I made some in a chem lab experiment. It's an Iron Salt.

[SoapBox]

7. Anyone else notice how this story had fallen off the pages in the last few weeks?

...not a word.

But NOW, looks like there is BIG reason for some words.

[Stumbler]

29. Well, yeah, exactly...

Over 1 million people can gather to protest war in Times Square and not a single news camera is available to film it, yet 12 people wearing tea-bags on their hats show up in a Cleveland park and it's front and center news for 3 days. These same corporate interests want to expand nuclear usage in the states.... is there any reason why they might be reluctant to share this info...? Hmmm. Gimme a second to think this over.

[damntexdem]

8. Whoopie, we have another record! But we don't know how big, cause we can't measure it.

We're just glowing with pride. Well, at least we're glowing.

But don't worry about the safety of nukes -- what could go wrong?

And no news is good news, right?

Oh, we're really, really Fukushima'd.

[closeupready]

10. Fukushima was a one-in-trillion- gazillion-brazillian success story.

So ... so there! :sarcasm:

[drokhole]

11. "It comes down in rain."

This is an excerpt from the phenomenal book JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass. Here, Kennedy is moving toward the idea of a ban on above-ground nuclear testing:


One afternoon in his office, he was talking with his science adviser, Jerome Wiesner, about the contamination from the U.S. and Soviet nuclear testing. While rain fell outside the White House windows, Kennedy asked Wiesner how nuclear fallout returned to the earth from the atmosphere.

"It comes down in rain," Wiesner said.

The president turned around. He looked out the windows at the rain falling in the White House's Rose Garden.

"You mean there might be radioactive contamination in that rain out there right now?" he said.

"Possibly," Wiesner said.

Wiesner left the office. Kennedy sat in silence for several minutes, looking at the rain falling in the garden. His appointments secretary Kenny O'Donnell came and went quietly. O'Donnell had never seen Kennedy so depressed.

[MsKandice01]

12. Maybe everyone should read the rest of the article???

"“I suspect the high radiation quantity was an aftermath of venting done,” Matsumoto told reporters in Tokyo. “The plant is not running. I don’t think any gas with high radiation level is flowing in the stack.”

Tepco sent three workers around the ventilation stack today after a gamma camera detected high radioactivity levels in the area yesterday, Matsumoto said. The workers were exposed to as much as 4 millisieverts during the work, he said."

I'm not saying that it's not a bad situation, but those couple paragraphs don't tell the whole story.

[leveymg]

14. How can you vent a containment that's already been breached?

[MsKandice01]

15. He's talking about the venting that was done the day after the quake... n/t

[leveymg]

16. So, why is high gamma radiation just being detected just now? Makes no sense

if this is just residue from March.

Unless, of course, the gamma radiation in the venting stack has been detected all along, which indicates primary containment breach within hours of the earthquake/tsunami, and they're only now trickling out the evidence that would confirm what we all now know.

Delayed, limited hangout.

[Downwinder]

25. More information.

The operator of a crippled Japanese atomic power plant said Monday it had measured the highest radiation level since the start of the nuclear crisis, a news report said, dpa reported.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said more than 10 sieverts per hour of radiation was recorded on the surface of a pipe located outdoors between reactor 1 and reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Jiji Press reported.

http://pda.trend.az/en/1912875.html

[AndyTiedye]

31. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Corium Has Left the Building

:nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::hide:

[caraher]

28. They've been venting pressure vessels periodically since March

The whole problem is that since they can't cool the cores effectively pressure builds up and they have to in effect "burp" them. The hope would be that eventually heat generation will fall to the point at which this is not necessary anymore.

Of course, one would hope that each venting would be progressively LESS contaminated with radioactivity, not more. So this is not what one would like to see as they try to get this under control.

[mcollier]

13. Apparently the people of Japan

are not overly concerned about this neuclear meltdown????!!!!

Ultraman will take care of it...

[sulphurdunn]

24. Why isn't the entire developed world

involved with this. These plants must be entombed. Massive excavations should be dug under the reactors and filled with concrete at the same time the surface detritus is being buried. Oh, shit! The water table is to shallow for excavation. I forgot about the water table. They build these fuckers right on the goddam beach near an earthquake fault becasue that was a perfectly safe thing to do. The engineers said so, and they're the professionals.

[StarsInHerHair]

30. zeolite, with very large aircraft hangars built over all the reactors, just 1

superbig hangar. Been saying this from the beginning. Hot particles in Seattle, see Fairewinds.com