Fukushima radiation fear in Tokyo after danger reading
Radiation level on Tokyo street was 17 times recommended limit, exceeding readings in parts of Fukushima exclusion zone
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 October 2011 09.22 EDT
...The reading in Tokyo was taken a metre above the ground near a hedge, according to the public broadcaster NHK. Other spots along the same street showed lower readings.
The discovery of elevated levels of radiation has added to concerns that fallout from the accident may have spread to the capital, 140 miles from the plant, and beyond...
...Earlier this week officials in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo, said they had found abnormally high levels of strontium-90 in sediment on the roof of a block of flats. The radioactive isotope, which has a half-life of 29 years, can accumulate in the bones and cause bone cancer and leukaemia. The task of identifying how far radiation has spread, and in what quantities, is proving difficult. Wind direction and topology can cause radiation to spread unevenly, and particles are more likely to gather in ditches and other places that accumulate dust and rainwater.
The levels recorded in Tokyo are higher than the 2.17 microsieverts an hour currently found in Iitate, a village 30 miles north-west of the stricken plant, from which almost all of the 6,000 residents have been evacuated. Setagaya ward officials said they had yet to determine the source of the contamination, adding that they would screen more than 250 other locations in the area over the next month.
Radiation levels in the neighbourhood, which has a population of more than 840,000, have not dropped, despite decontamination efforts...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2011/oct/13/fukushima-... Maybe a false alarm that it was from Fukushima, but I for one don't trust the government over there. They have demonstrated, along with TEPCO that they are more concerned with the welfare of the nuke industry than with the welfare of their own population time and time again:
Setagaya hotspot unrelated to Fukushima
High levels of radioactivity observed in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward have been found to have nothing to do with the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.
Experts commissioned by the ward reported a level of 3.35 microsieverts per hour at a 1-by-10-meter area at a sidewalk near a residential fence on Thursday. A maximum of 2.707 microsieverts per hour had been detected in the location a week before.
Later on Thursday, the experts found what seemed to be the source of the radiation -- 3 or 4 old jars in a wooden box left in a storage space under the floor of a vacant house facing the sidewalk.
The jars were reportedly dirty and black, and measured about 8 centimeters long and about 6 centimeters wide...
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_41.html High radiation level affects school routes
Tokyo's Setagaya Ward has changed school routes in order to keep children away from the small area where a relatively high level of radiation has been detected.
On Thursday morning, about 10 teachers and local officials stood at an intersection to redirect children on their way to a nearby elementary school.
Some children were accompanied by their parents. A mother of a first-grader said she is worried that her child may have passed along the radiation contaminated site every day for over 6 months since the Fukushima accident.
The ward had already made the 10-by-one-meter area along a sidewalk off limits after announcing the finding on Wednesday...
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_30.html DPJ nuclear power skeptics finding themselves isolated.
2011/10/13
Members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan opposing nuclear power are finding themselves increasingly isolated and frustrated as the party appears set to return to pushing for nuclear power under the new administration.
"There are now no venues where we can have our voices heard," said one of four DPJ members who attended a study meeting earlier this month on the nuclear accident. "I wonder if the party has the will to grapple with the nuclear accident as a political party."
A project team to address the impact of the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, set up under the previous administration, was abolished after Yoshihiko Noda replaced Naoto Kan as prime minister.
Satoshi Arai, former state minister in charge of national policy, and Upper House member Kuniko Tanioka are among DPJ members opposing nuclear power. Arai headed the project team, which the party formed in April...
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201110120299.html Tokyo's imported food radiation checks suspended since April.
BY YUSUKE FUKUI STAFF WRITER
2011/10/13
The Tokyo metropolitan government has not checked imported foods for radiation since April, citing differences in the safety standards for domestic products after the accident at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant.
But since the suspension, the metropolitan government's four units of radiation check equipment have not been used even for domestic food examinations--and even when the nation was confronted with the pressing issue of locating cesium-contaminated beef this summer.
The Tokyo government started checking imported foods for radiation shortly after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.
However, after the nuclear accident started at the Fukushima plant in March, the central government set provisional safety standards for domestically produced foods, including meats and vegetables, at 500 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. The figure is 130 becquerels higher than the 370-becquerel standards for imported foods.
"We would not know how to deal with this issue if we found an imported food containing radiation levels between the two standards," a Tokyo government official in charge of this matter said...
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201110120297.html Spontaneous debris fires add to Tohoku woes
Kyodo
SENDAI — Smoke and a burning smell filled the air in central Sendai Sept. 16.
It was caused by a fire more than 10 km away at a debris storage site in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture, that burned for more than five days.
Tons of debris from the March 11 disasters are spontaneously catching fire at storage sites in the Tohoku region, adding to the headaches of local authorities.
Miyagi Prefecture says it alone has had 15 such blazes.
In late August, a storage site near a fishing port in Kesennuma caught fire, burning about 25,000 cu. meters of debris. Although most of the sites are far away from residential areas, locals have been voicing strong concerns...
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20111013f3.htm... Final nuclear waste disposal issue needs serious deliberation
Little progress has been made in the debate on the construction of final disposal facilities for nuclear waste, while calls urging that Japan rely less on nuclear power plants have intensified since the ongoing crisis at the tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant emerged in March.
The construction of nuclear waste final disposal facilities is an inescapable issue that Japan as a whole needs to address.
"The national government should consider buying up land around the crippled nuclear power station and build a final disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste," said a former member of the municipal assembly of a town designated as a no-entry zone, in an interview with the Mainichi. He was quoted in a series of articles on local governments tossed about by the national government's nuclear power policy, which were carried in the Mainichi Shimbun's Aug. 19-25 morning editions.
It is harsh to require only residents of Fukushima Prefecture, many of whom have been forced to evacuate from their neighborhoods and take shelter elsewhere, to make a tough decision on the issue...
(Mainichi Japan) October 13, 2011
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20111013p2a00m... Tokyo under illusion that things are normal while Fukushima remains a war zone
We are well into autumn. And despite the growing sense in the Tokyo metropolitan area that things are now all right -- with train services back to pre-disaster schedules and the regret we once felt over our wasteful consumption of electricity dissipating -- Fukushima remains a war zone.
It was reported on Oct. 7 that the Watari district of Fukushima was not designated by the government as a "specific evacuation recommendation spot."
The following day, at an information session held for local residents at Watari Elementary School, participants demanded to know why their district was excluded from the list when it was a dangerous place for children to be, to which a government official responded: "It's not a final decision."
While this battle was taking place, I went to visit Watari residents Chieko Tanji, 64, and her husband, Hiroshi, 63, to hear about their personal battles with radiation and decontamination...
(Mainichi Japan) October 10, 2011
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20111010p2a00m... Older Story, similar news, but we don't seem to see this in US Media:
Japan 'scared' of telling truth to Fukushima evacuees
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.
The history professor and author has given the ABC an insider's account of what happened in the hours and days after March 11, as three of the Fukushima reactors bubbled towards meltdown after a tsunami knocked out backup power to the plant...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-28/fukushima-residen... Hi ho
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