EPA: Expect More Radiation in Rainwater

[Octafish]

7. More old news: Audit Confirms EPA Radiation Monitors Broken During Fukushima Crisis

Other than DU and the Internets, not much info on any of this in my noosepaper and television screen.

Audit Confirms EPA Radiation Monitors Broken During Fukushima Crisis

April 23, 2012
By Douglas P. Guarino
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON – An internal audit has confirmed observers’ concerns that many of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation monitors were out of service at the height of the 2011 Fukushima power plant meltdown in Japan, a finding one critic said raises “serious questions” about the federal government’s ability to respond to nuclear emergencies and to alert the public of their consequences (see GSN, Dec. 21, 2011).

The April 19 report by the EPA Inspector General’s Office also casts further doubt on the agency’s already controversial claims that radiation from Fukushima did not pose any public health threat on U.S. soil, said Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California (Santa Cruz) and president of Committee to Bridge the Gap.

SNIP...

The report details problems with the agency’s “RadNet” monitoring system. The web of detectors is intended “to monitor environmental radioactivity in the United States to provide high-quality data for assessing public exposure and environmental impacts resulting from nuclear emergencies, and to provide baseline data during routine conditions,” the report notes.

RadNet consists of 124 stations scattered throughout U.S. territories and 40 deployable air monitors that can be sent to take readings anywhere, according to the IG report. Monitoring stations collect air, precipitation, drinking water and milk samples for analysis of radioactivity, although the audit focused on the stationary air monitors.

SNIP...

Agency contractors, meanwhile, are responsible for maintaining the monitors and repairing them when they are broken. However, according to the report, EPA has not managed those contracts as high priorities, despite having identified the monitors as “critical infrastructure” under the 2001 Patriot Act. As a result, there have been numerous delays in repairing broken monitors.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/audit-confirms-epa-radiation-monitors-broken-during-fukushima-crisis/

Oh, well. Things must be A-OK if EPA didn't use all their USA PATRIOT Act cash to upgrade the monitoring equipment in 2001. (I'd do the "sarcasm" thingy, but there is nothing funny about any of this.)