Feds: Earthquake may have exceeded Virginia nuclear plant's safeguards

By Andrew Restuccia - 08/29/11 03:27 PM ET

The earthquake that prompted the shutdown of a Virginia nuclear power plant last week may have been more severe than the plant’s reactors were designed to withstand, federal regulators said.
The revelation is likely to put increased pressure on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to quickly implement a series of safety recommendations intended in part to protect plants from major natural disasters like earthquakes.

NRC said Monday that its preliminary analysis indicates that the ground motion caused by the magnitude-5.8 earthquake near the North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, Va., exceeded the maximum level the two reactors at the plant were built to handle.
But the commission noted in a statement Monday that “data is still being collected and analyzed to determine the precise level of shaking that was experienced at key locations within the North Anna facility.”
NRC decided to send additional inspectors to the North Anna power plant after conducting the analysis, the commission said Monday.
“The fact that we’re sending an [augmented inspection team] should not be interpreted to mean that Dominion staff responded inappropriately or that the station is less safe as a result of the quake,” NRC Region II Administrator Victor McCree said in a statement. “An AIT provides us with the resources needed to completely understand all the effects at North Anna and gather important information for the NRC’s continuing evaluation of earthquake risk at all U.S. nuclear plants.”
Analysis conducted by plant operator Dominion echoes NRC’s findings.
"We have informed the NRC that preliminary reports from instruments show the earthquake potentially exceeded the design basis," Dominion spokesman Ryan Frazier said. "All reports are not final, and probably will not be until the end of the week."
Frazier stressed that inspections have found no major damage to the plant.
"All safety systems operated as designed and built," he said.
Dominion told The Hill last week that the North Anna reactors were designed to withstand the equivalent of a 5.9 to 6.1 magnitude earthquake. The company said the reactors have additional safety measures in the event of a larger seismic event.
But these numbers are just estimates because the NRC and the nuclear industry use ground motion, not earthquake magnitude, to determine the threat to nuclear power plants from seismic activity.
The two reactors at the North Anna nuclear plant shut down Tuesday after the earthquake. The plantlost offsite power and ran on diesel generators through much of the day.
Dominion restored power to the plant late Tuesday night and lifted an emergency alert the following day.
While there have been no reports of major damage at the plant, nuclear critics have pounced on the incident, arguing that it highlights the vulnerability of the U.S. nuclear fleet to major natural disasters.
A federal task force said in a report released last month that the NRC should make wide-ranging improvements to the “existing patchwork of regulatory requirements and other safety initiatives.” The task force was mandated by President Obama in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
But the report also said current NRC regulations pose no “imminent threat” to safety and stressed that a disaster on the scale of the one that occurred in Japan following a massive earthquake and tsunami is unlikely in the United States.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko has called on his fellow commissioners to review the report’s recommendations within 90 days and implement any regulatory changes within five years.
But Jaczko has faced some resistance from the NRC commissioners on that timeline, which represents a breakneck pace for an agency known for its deliberate and lengthy regulatory process.
Earlier this month, the commissioners agreed to a compromise timeline for analyzing the recommendations. The NRC gave staff 45 days to review most of the recommendations. But the commissioners gave staff 18 months to analyze the report’s most sweeping recommendation — that the NRC broadly rethink its regulatory framework.
Nuclear power critics say last week’s earthquake shows it's time to quickly implement the recommendations.

“This event affirms that reactors located outside active earthquake zones are also at risk and that increased steps to protect against earthquakes must be implemented at all sites. It is time to push aside industry and NRC foot-dragging and strengthen nuclear reactor safety regulations,” Tom Clements, southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator at Friends of the Earth, told The Hill last week.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) wrote to Jaczko on Monday to urge the NRC to quickly implement regulations to protect nuclear plants from extreme weather, pointing to Hurricane Irene and last week’s earthquake.
“In light of the widespread challenges to nuclear power plants caused by Hurricane Irene, as well as the potential that global warming could increase both the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, I urge you to quickly incorporate hurricanes and other strong storms into the safety and emergency response upgrades the Commission is currently undertaking,” Markey said in the letter.
But the nuclear industry insists that the nuclear plants are designed to withstand major natural occurrences including earthquakes and hurricanes.
“Nuclear power plants are designed to withstand natural occurrences greater than those encountered in the regions where they are located. They are built to withstand floods, earthquakes and high winds, and have numerous safety systems that will operate and safely shut the reactor down in the event of a loss of off-site power,” the Nuclear Energy Institute said in a statement Sunday after Hurricane Ireneprompted the shutdown of nuclear reactors in Maryland and New Jersey.
“These plant designs are routinely reviewed and modifications are made to assure their integrity and safety.”

Source: 
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/178627-earthquake-was-more-severe-than-virginia-nuke-plant-was-designed-to-withstand

'Fracking': Rock Fracturing's Relation to Quakes

Published on Monday, August 29, 2011 by The San Francisco Chronicle

'Fracking': Rock Fracturing's Relation to Quakes

by David R. Baker

The earthquakes that rattled Blackpool, England, in April and May wouldn't have attracted much notice in California. The strongest rated a mere 2.3 in magnitude.

But their possible connection to "fracking" raised eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic.

The epicenter of one of the quakes lay less than 500 meters from a well used for hydro-fracturing, the process of pumping pressurized water and chemicals deep underground to crack rocks and release oil or natural gas. The company fracking the well halted operations and started studying the possible link.

As fracking has spread, most complaints have focused on the threat of groundwater contamination. But some opponents have also asked whether the process - which, after all, involves breaking subterranean rocks - could cause earthquakes as well.

The question is particularly pertinent in seismically active California, where the use of fracking appears to be growing. Fracking projects have been reported in Santa Barbara County and the Sacramento Valley.

Last week's 5.8 temblor in Virginia even prompted a round of speculation in the blogosphere that fracking could be to blame. There are, however, no fracking wells near the quake's epicenter or in any of the surrounding counties, according to the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.

Mild tremors

Scientists say fracking does cause tiny earthquakes, but they're too small to be felt on the Earth's surface. The process can also cause quakes large enough to be noticed on the surface, but only if done near a fault line. And even then, the resulting tremors are likely to be mild.

"You're not going to get a really big earthquake," said Mark Zoback, a Stanford University geophysics professor who has studied the issue. "To get a big earthquake, you'd need a really big fault. When these oil fields are being developed, the companies are very aware of where the faults are. They don't want to do something stupid."

Some of the quakes that critics have blamed on fracking may have been caused by a related process - the disposal of the water used in fracking.

Similarity to air hockey

Many, but not all, fracking operations inject the wastewater deep underground. As the quantity of water builds up over time, it can change the pressure along a fault line, making the fault more likely to move.

"It's a little bit like an air hockey table," said Cliff Frohlich, associate director of the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas, Austin. "You pump air into an air hockey table so that when you push something, it will slip."

Frohlich was part of a team of researchers who studied a series of small quakes that struck near Dallas in 2008 and 2009, in an area where natural gas companies had used fracking. The epicenter turned out to be within a kilometer of a water disposal well, under the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The largest quake measured 3.3.

"These earthquakes were not cases where frack jobs got out of hand," he said. "In a way, it was good news for the companies. If it's disposal that causes the quakes, you've got lots of options."

Those options include treating the water on the surface or shipping the water to a disposal well that isn't near a fault.

In July, Arkansas officials placed a moratorium on new disposal wells in a portion of the state shaken by hundreds of quakes, the largest of which reached magnitude 4.7. Four wells that had been used to dispose of water from fracking operations were shut down.

As fracking becomes more common in California, environmentalists want state officials to keep a close eye on any link to tremors.

Locating faults

A state bill that would force companies to disclose the chemicals they use in fracking originally contained a clause that would have required the companies to report whether the wells they planned to frack were near known fault lines. The clause, however, was taken out as a compromise with the oil and gas industry, said Renee Sharp, California director for the Environmental Working Group. She'd still like to see the state adopt that requirement.

"At least we'd know what was going on, so there'd be the possibility of really studying this issue," Sharp said.

Zoback says seismicity related to fracking and disposal wells is a manageable problem, one that shouldn't derail the growing production of gas from shale rock formations. Oil and gas companies need to identify faults near potential well sites, stay away from the faults, monitor for quakes during operations and stop work if quakes occur.

"I think we can replace coal with natural gas - I'm kind of militant about this," said Zoback, who recently served on a U.S. Department of Energy committee that recommended ways to protect the environment during fracking operations. "We've got to develop shale gas in an environmentally responsible way, and that means air and water quality, and it means not causing earthquakes."

© 2011 San Francisco Chronicle

Top NASA Climatologist Protests Transnational Oil Pipeline

Top NASA Climatologist Protests Transnational Oil Pipeline

Monday, August 29, 2011 At 12:03PM | Elianna Mintz

As President Obama’s deadline to approve or disapprove licensing of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline draws closer, NASA’s lead climatologist, Dr. James Hansen, addressed reporters at the National Press Club to explain the grave consequences of approving such a project. 

“We have a planetary emergency,” Hansen, an adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, told reporters Monday. 

The Keystone XL Pipeline is a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline system that would be utilized to transport crude oil from Canada to oil refineries in the midwestern region of the US. Environmentalists, including some in Congress, oppose it on the grounds that it could disrupt and taint domestic clean water supplies, and could jeopardize efforts to shift to clean energy sources.

Hansen argued that if humans continue to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, 20-40 percent of species on the planet will become extinct by the end of the century. The hydraulic cycle, he said, has become more extreme, resulting in extreme floods and drought intensification. Coral reefs are being destroyed, sea levels are lowering and glaciers are receding, causing rivers to run dry, he added.

Hansen warned that if the next phase of the Keystone pipeline is approved, America will continue to feed its “oil addiction” and will continue to burn fossil fuels, further destroying the environment. 

“Fossil fuels are finite,” Hansen stated. “We’ll have to move to clean energy at some point so we may as well do it before we burn all the fossil fuels and ruin the future of our children.”

Hansen was among the first group of scientists to spread such warnings of global warming 30 years ago. Frustrated that his cries over the threat of climate change was going unheard, Hansen turned to civil disobedience in 2009. He has been arrested twice for protesting mountaintop removal coal mining, once in West Virginia and once outside the White House.

Following his remarks at the NPC, Hansen joined more than 60 religious leaders outside the White House to spread awareness of the environmental dangers of the Keystone XL pipeline as part of a civil disobedience act that has been going on for weeks. 

Social Media Targeted by Pentagon for “Strategic Communication”

Social Media Targeted by Pentagon for “Strategic Communication”

Old-Thinker News | July 17, 2011

By Daniel Taylor

Related: Pentagon perception manager knows how to manipulate search engine algorithm

Earlier this week Old-Thinker News reported on statements made by Pentagon contractor and “perception manager” John Rendon regarding the manipulation of internet content algorithms with the intent to “shape belief sets.” In further revelations, the Pentagon has unveiled on Thursday a project developed by DARPA that will utilize social media as an information warfare tool.

As Wired Magazine reports, “The Pentagon is looking to build a tool to sniff out social media propaganda campaigns and spit some counter-spin right back at it.” The report issued by DARPA titled “Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)”is available online here.

Among other things, the project will“Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation.” In response, the Pentagon will engage in “Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.”

What will the Pentagon consider “…deceptive messaging and misinformation”?

The military-industrial-complex can initiate any meme of its liking. The Arab Spring revolution that began in Egypt was largely supported by social media and Twitter. Iran is currently being targeted by an “internet in a suitcase” campaign launched by the United States in an attempt to spark revolution.

In his newly released book The Filter Bubble: What the internet is hiding from you, Eli Pariser of Moveon.org interviews Pentagon contractor John Rendon, where he candidly spoke of perception management in the digital world. Specifically, Rendon hints that he knows how to game the system of search engine algorithms – the system by which pages are ranked and internet searches are displayed – and in turn shift the mindset of the masses.

The Pentagon, which developed the internet to begin with, is engaging in full scale memetic enginnering in the digital world. The Department of Defense’sSentient World Simulation (SWS) has undoubtedly been integrated with the social media networks. The SWS is a model of the real world translated to a virtual model that can be used to test propaganda and its anticipated effect on a target populace in real time.

What the leaves say: A Shizuoka prefectural official checks a sample of Shizuoka-grown tea leaves for radioactive materials at a factory in the city of Shizuoka on June 10. KYODO

Citizens' radiation fears beyond crisis zone mount

By MIZUHO AOKI and TAKAHIRO FUKADA

Staff writers

Reiko Nakamura, a 37-year-old mother of three children, said she has been checking radiation levels outside her house in Meguro Ward, Tokyo, every day since she bought a dosimeter in May.

Based on her readings, she decides whether to open the windows or leave them shut tight.

Trying to protect her children from radioactive materials spewing from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Nakamura has been buying produce grown in west Japan since mid-March.

"I'm buying produce on the Internet. Also we've been drinking water delivered from Yakushima (in Kagoshima Prefecture)," said Nakamura, who was at a gathering organized by Setagaya Kodomo Mamoru Kai (The Group to Protect Children in Setagaya) in late June. Nearly 30 mothers discussed ways to prevent radiation exposure.

"I'm not bothered about us adults. But thinking of my children's future health, I've been taking protective measures based on experts' opinion that I thought was the most conservative," Nakamura said.

Living in central Tokyo, more than 200 km southwest of the stricken plant in Fukushima Prefecture, does little to mitigate the anxiety people feel about exposure, as radiation-tainted produce and radioactive hot spots have been found far beyond the boundaries of Fukushima Prefecture.

Experts say it is desirable to reduce unnecessary exposure as much as possible — as Nakamura and many mothers are trying to do for their children — given the uncertainty over whether the radiation could cause cancer years later.

But they also say that given the official figures about radiation-contaminated air, water, vegetables, tea and other food products, the current exposure level in Tokyo is not something residents should get stressed over.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government recently took air samples at 100 different locations around the capital. The highest hourly reading was detected in Katsushika Ward at 0.2 microsievert, while the level measured in Shinjuku has been steady at around 0.06 microsievert per hour for weeks.

Kunikazu Noguchi, a specialist on radiation protection at Nihon University, said the figures are not problematic.

"Even newborn babies are exposed to natural radiation of about 1.5 millisieverts a year (in Japan).

"Even if the dose doubles, it's not at a level to be frightened of," he said.

Since March 17, 23 prefectural governments have tested 6,371 samples of vegetables, fruit, milk, eggs, meat, fish and tea, and as of June 30, 404 of those products were found to be contaminated above the government limit.

But no food items have been found to be contaminated above the government-set safety limit since June 1, apart from those from Fukushima Prefecture and tea produced in Shizuoka, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Kanagawa and Chiba prefectures.

Domestic rules set the limit for radioactive cesium — now the main radioactive threat in food — for a person with average eating habits at up to 5 millisieverts per year. When someone is exposed to a cumulative dose of 100 millisieverts, the risk of dying from cancer goes up by 0.5 percent, according to a widely accepted consensus by scientists. Below that level, radiation risks are too small to distinguish from the effects of other major cancer risks, including smoking, an unbalanced diet or lack of exercise.

Meanwhile, experts are split over whether exposure below 100 millisieverts increases the risk of cancer. Some experts say exposure below that level will not increase the risk, as data from long-term surveys on hibakusha have suggested.

Other experts, however, argue that it should be assumed that proportional cancer risks should exist even below the 100 millisievert level.

For example, Hiroaki Koide, a polemic antinuclear scholar at Kyoto University, claims exposure of 1 millisievert per year increases the risk of dying from cancer by one for every 10,000 people exposed to radiation at that level.

The assumed risk might appear rather small for individuals, given that now about one-third of all Japanese die from cancer. But it could be a big issue for the government and nuclear regulators, and the perception of that hypothetical risk under the 100-millisievert level might differ from person to person.

Ikuro Anzai, professor emeritus at Ritsumeikan University and a specialist in radiation, said it is better not to ingest any unnecessary radioactive materials if possible.

But he said people should make rational judgements and should not overly fear ingesting food with contamination levels below the limits set by the state.

"As long as food you eat is contaminated, you will be exposed to some extent. But the important thing is to what extent the exposure is," he said.

Tea leaf contamination is another hot topic.

The Shizuoka Prefectural Government earlier this month detected 581 to 981 becquerels per kilogram in seven tea factories, above the central government's limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram.

But Tadashi Tsukamoto, a prefectural official, said that even if one keeps drinking contaminated green tea currently excluded from the food distribution chain, it will not pose any health risks to consumers.

The 500 becquerel per 1 kg limit, now applied to tea leaves, was originally set by the government for vegetables on the assumption that a consumer eats vegetables regularly.

But when brewing tea, the radioactive material in the leaves is diluted with water by around one-eightyfifth, far below the government's radiation limit for drinking water of 200 becquerels per kilogram.

Thus, drinking tea made from Shizuoka-grown leaves will not pose a health risk to consumers, Tsukamoto said.

Still, Shizuoka has asked factories to voluntarily recall shipped products and refrain from shipping current stocks in the plants "since we value the prefecture's standard," he added.

Shizuoka Prefecture, 300 km from Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima facility, has around 2,300 tea factories and accounts for 45 percent of the nation's overall output.

The Japan Times: Saturday, July 9, 2011

(C) All rights reserved

Stoner alert: McDonald’s gets you legally high

Stoner alert: McDonald’s gets you legally high

July 5, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica

Do you want marijuana chemicals with that? (Credit: McDonald's)

Fats in foods like potato chips and french fries make them nearly irresistible because they trigger natural marijuana-like chemicals in the body calledendocannabinoids, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have found.

The researchers discovered that when rats tasted something fatty, cells in their upper gut started producing endocannabinoids, while sugars and proteins did not have this effect.

How fats create, like, a buzz

It starts on the tongue, where fats in food generate a signal that travels first to your brain, and then through a nerve bundle called the vagus to your intestines. There, the signal stimulates the production of endocannabinoids, which initiates a surge in cell signaling that prompts you to totally pig out — probably by initiating the release of digestive chemicals linked to hunger and satiety that compel us to eat more. And that leads to obesity, diabetes and cancer, the researchers said.

But they suggest it might be possible to curb this process by obstructing endocannabinoid activity: for example, by using drugs that “clog” cannabinoid receptors. The trick: bypassing the brain to avoid creating anxiety and depression (which happens when endocannabinoid signaling is blocked in the brain). I’m guessing McDonald’s won’t be adding that drug to their fries.

Ref.: Daniele Piomelli, et al., An endocannabinoid signal in the gut controls dietary fat intake, PNAS, 2011; in press

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Biotech | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

Fukushima radiation alarms doctors

Fukushima radiation alarms doctors Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation. Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 18 Aug 2011 14:09 Residents of Ohkuma-cho attend a memorial service for the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami on 24 July 2011 in Ohkuma-cho, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, 20 km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant [EPA] Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant. "How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives. "The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant. There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation. Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming. According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs. Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas. Distrust of the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster is now common among people living in the effected prefectures, and people are concerned about their health. Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming. When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure. 10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays. It is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami. The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv. TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings. The Fukushima disaster has been rated as a "level seven" on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). This level, the highest, is the same as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and is defined by the scale as: "[A] major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures." The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters are the only nuclear accidents to have been rated level seven on the scale, which is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the scale used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times more severe than the previous level. Doctors in Japan are already treating patients suffering health effects they attribute to radiation from the ongoing nuclear disaster. "We have begun to see increased nosebleeds, stubborn cases of diarrhoea, and flu-like symptoms in children," Dr Yuko Yanagisawa, a physician at Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, told Al Jazeera. She attributes the symptoms to radiation exposure, and added: "We are encountering new situations we cannot explain with the body of knowledge we have relied upon up until now." "The situation at the Daiichi Nuclear facility in Fukushima has not yet been fully stabilised, and we can't yet see an end in sight," Yanagisawa said. "Because the nuclear material has not yet been encapsulated, radiation continues to stream into the environment." Health concerns Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, reporting from Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, said of the recently detected high radiation readings: "It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami, but no one realised until now." Workers at Fukushima are only allowed to be exposed to 250 mSv of ionising radiation per year. Junichi Matsumoto, a TEPCO spokesman, said the high dose was discovered in an area that does not hamper recovery efforts at the stricken plant. Yet radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit was detected in processed tea made in Tochigi City, about 160km from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to the Tochigi Prefectural Government, who said radioactive cesium was detected in tea processed from leaves harvested in the city in early July. The level is more than 3 times the provisional government limit. Yanagisawa's hospital is located approximately 200km from Fukushima, so the health problems she is seeing that she attributes to radiation exposure causes her to be concerned by what she believes to be a grossly inadequate response from the government. From her perspective, the only thing the government has done is to, on April 25, raise the acceptable radiation exposure limit for children from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year. "This has caused controversy, from the medical point of view," Yanagisawa told Al Jazeera. "This is certainly an issue that involves both personal internal exposures as well as low-dose exposures." Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan Executive Director, said: "It is utterly outrageous to raise the exposure levels for children to twenty times the maximum limit for adults." "The Japanese government cannot simply increase safety limits for the sake of political convenience or to give the impression of normality." Authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low-dose ionizing radiation are published in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII (BEIR VII) report from the US National Academy of Sciences. The report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence proving there is no exposure to ionizing radiation that is risk-free. The BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of all forms of cancer other than leukemia of about 1-in-10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1-in-100,000; and a 1-in-17,500 increased risk of cancer death. Dr Helen Caldicott, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is equally concerned about the health effects from Japan's nuclear disaster. "Radioactive elements get into the testicles and ovaries, and these cause genetic disease like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation," she told Al Jazeera. "There are 2,600 of these diseases that get into our genes and are passed from generation to generation, forever." So far, the only cases of acute radiation exposure have involved TEPCO workers at the stricken plant. Lower doses of radiation, particularly for children, are what many in the medical community are most concerned about, according to Dr Yanagisawa. "Humans are not yet capable of accurately measuring the low dose exposure or internal exposure," she explained, "Arguing 'it is safe because it is not yet scientifically proven [to be unsafe]' would be wrong. That fact is that we are not yet collecting enough information to prove the situations scientifically. If that is the case, we can never say it is safe just by increasing the annual 1mSv level twenty fold." Her concern is that the new exposure standards by the Japanese government do not take into account differences between adults and children, since children's sensitivity to radiation exposure is several times higher than that of adults. Al Jazeera contacted Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office for comment on the situation. Speaking on behalf of the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Relations for the Prime Minister's office, Noriyuki Shikata said that the Japanese government "refers to the ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection] recommendation in 2007, which says the reference levels of radiological protection in emergency exposure situations is 20-100 mSv per year. The Government of Japan has set planned evacuation zones and specific spots recommended for evacuation where the radiation levels reach 20 mSv/year, in order to avoid excessive radiation exposure." The prime minister's office explained that approximately 23bn yen ($300mn) is planned for decontamination efforts, and the government plans to have a decontamination policy "by around the end of August", with a secondary budget of about 97bn yen ($1.26bn) for health management and monitoring operations in the affected areas. When questioned about the issue of "acute radiation exposure", Shikata pointed to the Japanese government having received a report from TEPCO about six of their workers having been exposed to more than 250 mSv, but did not mention any reports of civilian exposures. Prime Minister Kan's office told Al Jazeera that, for their ongoing response to the Fukushima crisis, "the government of Japan has conducted all the possible countermeasures such as introduction of automatic dose management by ID codes for all workers and 24 hour allocation of doctors. The government of Japan will continue to tackle the issue of further improving the health management including medium and long term measures". Shikata did not comment about Kodama's findings. Kodama, who is also a doctor of internal medicine, has been working on decontamination of radioactive materials at radiation facilities in hospitals of the University of Tokyo for the past several decades. "We had rain in Tokyo on March 21 and radiation increased to .2 micosieverts/hour and, since then, the level has been continuously high," said Kodama, who added that his reporting of radiation findings to the government has not been met an adequate reaction. "At that time, the chief cabinet secretary, Mr Edano, told the Japanese people that there would be no immediate harm to their health." Kodama is an expert in internal exposure to radiation, and is concerned that the government has not implemented a strong response geared towards measuring radioactivity in food. "Although three months have passed since the accident already, why have even such simple things have not been done yet?" he said. "I get very angry and fly into a rage." According to Kodama, the major problem caused by internal radiation exposure is the generation of cancer cells as  the radiation causes unnatural cellular mutation. "Radiation has a high risk to embryos in pregnant women, juveniles, and highly proliferative cells of people of growing ages. Even for adults, highly proliferative cells, such as hairs, blood, and intestinal epithelium cells, are sensitive to radiation." 'Children are at greater risk' Early on in the disaster, Dr Makoto Kondo of the department of radiology of Keio University's School of Medicine warned of "a large difference in radiation effects on adults compared to children". Kondo explained the chances of children developing cancer from radiation exposure was many times higher than adults. "Children's bodies are underdeveloped and easily affected by radiation, which could cause cancer or slow body development. It can also affect their brain development," he said. Yanagisawa assumes that the Japanese government's evacuation standards, as well as their raising the permissible exposure limit to 20mSv "can cause hazards to children's health," and therefore "children are at a greater risk". Nishio Masamichi, director of Japan's Hakkaido Cancer Centre and a radiation treatment specialist, published an article on July 27 titled: "The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation". In the report, Masamichi said that such a dramatic increase in permitted radiation exposure was akin to "taking the lives of the people lightly". He believes that 20mSv is too high, especially for children who are far more susceptible to radiation. "No level of radiation is acceptable, for children or anyone else," Caldicott told Al Jazeera. "Children are ten to 20 times more sensitive than adults. They must not be exposed to radiation of any level. At all." In early July, officials with the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission announced that approximately 45 per cent of children in the Fukushima region had experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, according to a survey carried out in late March. The commission has not carried out any surveys since then. "Now the Japanese government is underestimating the effects of low dosage and/or internal exposures and not raising the evacuation level even to the same level adopted in Chernobyl," Yanagisawa said. "People's lives are at stake, especially the lives of children, and it is obvious that the government is not placing top priority on the people's lives in their measures." Caldicott feels the lack of a stronger response to safeguard the health of people in areas where radiation is found is "reprehensible". "Millions of people need to be evacuated from those high radiation zones, especially the children." Dr Yanagisawa is concerned about what she calls "late onset disorders" from radiation exposure resulting from the Fukushima disaster, as well as increasing cases of infertility and miscarriages. "Incidence of cancer will undoubtedly increase," she said. "In the case of children, thyroid cancer and leukemia can start to appear after several years. In the case of adults, the incidence of various types of cancer will increase over the course of several decades." Yanagisawa said it is "without doubt" that cancer rates among the Fukushima nuclear workers will increase, as will cases of lethargy, atherosclerosis, and other chronic diseases among the general population in the effected areas. Yanagisawa believes it is time to listen to survivors of the atomic bombings. "To be exposed to radiation, to be told there is no immediate effect, and afterwards to be stricken with cancer - what it is like to suffer this way over a long period of time, only the survivors of the atomic bombings can truly understand," she told Al Jazeera. Radioactive food and water An August 1 press release from Japan's MHLW said no radioactive materials have been detected in the tap water of Fukushima prefecture, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters. The government defines no detection as "no results exceeding the 'Index values for infants (radioactive iodine)'," and says "in case the level of radioactive iodine in tap water exceeds 100 Bq/kg, to refrain from giving infants formula milk dissolved by tap water, having them intake tap water … " Yet, on June 27, results were published from a study that found 15 residents of Fukushima prefecture had tested positive for radiation in their urine. Dr Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University, has been to Fukushima prefecture twice in order to take internal radiation exposure readings and facilitated the study. "The risk of internal radiation is more dangerous than external radiation," Dr Kamada told Al Jazeera. "And internal radiation exposure does exist for Fukushima residents." According to the MHLW, distribution of several food products in Fukushima Prefecture remain restricted. This includes raw milk, vegetables including spinach, kakina, and all other leafy vegetables, including cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and beef. The distribution of tealeaves remains restricted in several prefectures, including all of Ibaraki, and parts of Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba, Kanagawa Prefectures. Iwate prefecture suspended all beef exports because of caesium contamination on August 1, making it the fourth prefecture to do so. Due to caesium contaminated straw, beef exports have been banned in four Japanese prefectures [EPA] Jyunichi Tokuyama, an expert with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, told Al Jazeera he did not know how to deal with the crisis. He was surprised because he did not expect radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, 300km from the Fukushima nuclear plant. "The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive," Tokuyama told Al Jazeera. Kamada feels the Japanese government is acting too slowly in response to the Fukushima disaster, and that the government needs to check radiation exposure levels "in each town and village" in Fukushima prefecture. "They have to make a general map of radiation doses," he said. "Then they have to be concerned about human health levels, and radiation exposures to humans. They have to make the exposure dose map of Fukushima prefecture. Fukushima is not enough. Probably there are hot spots outside of Fukushima. So they also need to check ground exposure levels." Caldicott said people around the world should be concerned about the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Radiation that continues to be released has global consequences. More than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water has been released into the ocean from the stricken plant. Scientists warn that tuna caught off the Pacific coastal prefecture in northern Japan are now at risk of being radioactive [EPA] "Those radioactive elements bio-concentrate in the algae, then the crustaceans eat that, which are eaten by small then big fish," Caldicott said. "That's why big fish have high concentrations of radioactivity and humans are at the top of the food chain, so we get the most radiation, ultimately." On August 6, the 66th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said: "Regarding nuclear energy, we will deeply reflect over the myth that nuclear energy is safe. We will thoroughly look into the cause of the [Fukushima] accident, and to secure safety, we'll implement fundamental measures while also decreasing the degree of dependence on nuclear power generation, to aim for a society that does not rely on nuclear power." But doctors, scientists, agricultural experts, and much of the general public in Japan feel that a much more aggressive response to the nuclear disaster is needed. Kodama believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas. He cited Japan's itai itai disease, when cadmium poisoning from mining resulted in the government eventually having to spend 800 billion yen to decontaminate an area of 1,500 hectares. "How much cost will be needed if the area is 1,000 times larger?" Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

The explosive truth behind Fukushima's meltdown

Independent.co.uk

The explosive truth behind Fukushima's meltdown

Japan insists its nuclear crisis was caused by an unforeseeable combination of tsunami and earthquake. But new evidence suggests its reactors were doomed to fail

By David McNeill in Tokyo and Jake Adelstein
Wednesday, 17 August 2011

It is one of the mysteries of Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the 11 March earthquake inflict on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit?

The stakes are high: if the earthquake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every similar reactor in Japan may have to be shut down. With almost all of Japan's 54 reactors either offline (in the case of 35) or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety looms over any discussion about restarting them.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) and Japan's government are hardly reliable adjudicators in this controversy. "There has been no meltdown," government spokesman Yukio Edano repeated in the days after 11 March. "It was an unforeseeable disaster," Tepco's then president Masataka Shimizu famously and improbably said later. Five months since the disaster, we now know that meltdown was already occurring as Mr Edano spoke. And far from being unforeseeable, the disaster had been repeatedly forewarned by industry critics.

Throughout the months of lies and misinformation, one story has stuck: it was the earthquake that knocked out the plant's electric power, halting cooling to its six reactors. The tsunami then washed out the plant's back-up generators 40 minutes later, shutting down all cooling and starting the chain of events that would cause the world's first triple meltdown.

But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes burst after the earthquake – before the tidal wave reached the facilities; before the electricity went out? This would surprise few people familiar with the 40-year-old reactor one, the grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan.

Problems with the fractured, deteriorating, poorly repaired pipes and the cooling system had been pointed out for years. In September 2002, Tepco admitted covering up data about cracks in critical circulation pipes. In their analysis of the cover-up, The Citizen's Nuclear Information Centre writes: "The records that were covered up had to do with cracks in parts of the reactor known as recirculation pipes. These pipes are there to siphon off heat from the reactor. If these pipes were to fracture, it would result in a serious accident in which coolant leaks out."

On 2 March, nine days before the meltdown, government watchdog the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) warned Tepco on its failure to inspect critical pieces of equipment at the plant, including recirculation pumps. Tepco was ordered to make the inspections, perform repairs if needed and report to NISA on 2 June. It does not appear, as of now, that the report has been filed.

The Independent has spoken to several workers at the plant who recite the same story: serious damage, to piping and at least one of the reactors, occurred before the tsunami hit. All have requested anonymity because they are still working at or connected with the stricken plant. Worker A, a maintenance engineer who was at the Fukushima complex on the day of the disaster, recalls hissing, leaking pipes.

"I personally saw pipes that had come apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There's no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant... I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for reactor one had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor."

The reactor walls are quite fragile, he notes: "If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside... it can damage the equipment inside so it needs to be allowed to escape. It's designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it's common sense." Worker B, a technician in his late 30s who was also on site at the time of the earthquake, recalls: "It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall...

"Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn't get to the reactor core. If you can't sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don't have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out." As he was heading to his car, he could see that the walls of the reactor one building had started to collapse. "There were holes in them. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival."

The suspicion that the earthquake caused severe damage to the reactors is strengthened by reports that radiation leaked from the plant minutes later. The Bloomberg news agency has reported that a radiation alarm went off about a mile from the plant at 3.29pm, before the tsunami hit.

The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious. Katsunobu Onda, author of Tepco: The Dark Empire, explains it this way: A government or industry admission "raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systematic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping." Earthquakes, of course, are commonplace in Japan.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a former nuclear plant designer, describes what occurred on 11 March as a loss-of-coolant accident. "The data that Tepco has made public shows a huge loss of coolant within the first few hours of the earthquake. It can't be accounted for by the loss of electrical power. There was already so much damage to the cooling system that a meltdown was inevitable long before the tsunami came."

He says the released data shows that at 2.52pm, just after the quake, the emergency circulation equipment of both the A and B systems automatically started up. "This only happens when there is a loss of coolant." Between 3.04 and 3.11pm, the water sprayer inside the containment vessel was turned on. Mr Tanaka says that it is an emergency measure only done when other cooling systems have failed. By the time the tsunami arrived and knocked out all the electrical systems, at about 3.37pm, the plant was already on its way to melting down.

Kei Sugaoka, who conducted on-site inspections at the plant and was the first to blow the whistle on Tepco's data tampering, says he was not surprised by what happened. In a letter to the Japanese government, dated 28 June 2000, he warned that Tepco continued to operate a severely damaged steam dryer in the plant 10 years after he pointed out the problem. The government sat on the warning for two years.

"I always thought it was just a matter of time," he says of the disaster. "This is one of those times in my life when I'm not happy I was right."

During his research, Mr Onda spoke with several engineers who worked at the Tepco plants. One told him that often piping would not match up to the blueprints. In that case, the only solution was to use heavy machinery to pull the pipes close enough together to weld them shut. Inspection of piping was often cursory and the backs of the pipes, which were hard to reach, were often ignored. Repair jobs were rushed; no one wanted to be exposed to nuclear radiation longer than necessary.

Mr Onda adds: "When I first visited the Fukushima Power Plant it was a web of pipes. Pipes on the wall, on the ceiling, on the ground. You'd have to walk over them, duck under them – sometimes you'd bump your head on them. The pipes, which regulate the heat of the reactor and carry coolant are the veins and arteries of a nuclear power plant; the core is the heart. If the pipes burst, vital components don't reach the heart and thus you have a heart attack, in nuclear terms: meltdown. In simpler terms, you can't cool a reactor core if the pipes carrying the coolant and regulating the heat rupture – it doesn't get to the core."

Tooru Hasuike, a Tepco employee from 1977 until 2009 and former general safety manager of the Fukushima plant, says: "The emergency plans for a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant had no mention of using seawater to cool the core. To pump seawater into the core is to destroy the reactor. The only reason you'd do that is no other water or coolant was available."

Before dawn on 12 March, the water levels at the reactor began to plummet and the radiation began rising. The Tepco press release published just past 4am that day states: "The pressure within the containment vessel is high but stable." There was one note buried in the release that many people missed: "The emergency water circulation system was cooling the steam within the core; it has ceased to function."

At 9.51pm, under the chief executive's orders, the inside of the reactor building was declared a no-entry zone. At around 11pm, radiation levels for the inside of the turbine building, which was next door to reactor reached levels of 0.5 to 1.2 mSv per hour. In other words, the meltdown was already underway. At those levels, if you spent 20 minutes exposed to those radiation levels you would exceed the five-year limit for a nuclear reactor worker in Japan.

Sometime between 4 and 6am, on 12 March, Masao Yoshida, the plant manager decided it was time to pump seawater into the reactor core and notified Tepco. Seawater was not pumped in until hours after a hydrogen explosion occurred, at roughly 8pm. By then, it was probably already too late.

Later that month, Tepco went some way toward admitting at least some of these claims in a report called "Reactor Core Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit One". The report said there was pre-tsunami damage to key facilities, including pipes.

"This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart," said Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear waste consultant who works with Greenpeace. "It raises fundamental questions on all reactors in high seismic risk areas."

As Mr Burnie points out, Tepco also admitted massive fuel melt 16 hours after loss of coolant, andseven or eight hours before the explosion in Unit One. "Since they must have known all this, their decision to flood with massive water volumes would guarantee massive additional contamination – including leaks to the ocean."

No one knows how much damage was done to the plant by the earthquake, or if this damage alone would account for the meltdown. But certainly Tepco's data and eyewitness testimony indicates that the damage was significant.

As Mr Hasuike says: "Tepco and the government of Japan have provided many explanations. They don't make sense. The one thing they haven't provided is the truth. It's time they did."