Fukushima records highest radiation level in a year

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      You might think that radiation levels would be falling more than two years after Japan's most serious nuclear disaster since the bombing of Nagasaki in the Second World War.

      But on a rooftop in Fukushima, radioactive cesium levels were at the highest levels observed in the past year, according to the Asahi Shumbun newspaper.

      The publication reported that University of Tokyo associate professor Ryoji Enomoto found moss with 1.7 million becquerels just over 50 kilometres from a crippled nuclear-power plant.

      This was confirmed by a nonprofit group, the newspaper noted.

      According to an article by David Chandler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a dose of 500 millisieverts can cause symptoms of radiation poisoning.

      It's not easy converting becquerels, which measures radiation emitted, to millisieverts, which measure biological damage.

      But you would likely want to move if levels of 1.7 million becquerels were ever detected in your neighbourhood.

      Comments

      9 Comments

      Lady bug, Lady bug ...(the indelible movie)

      Jul 5, 2013 at 10:39am

      Scary that JAL serves tourists wine (and probably other foods) from near Fukashima. Scarier that people who weren't already closely exposed to radiation and fallout, the tourists, will knowingly drink it.

      IIt's weird that the "It won't happen to me" idea stays long after the teen years.

      Of course, there's a lot of brain-washing and info-twisting going on now-a-days.

      If there is any Canadian or North American radiation records being taken, or workers left to do it, I highly doubt that the public will be told the true readings we want and need to know. The usual tactic is to check for the wrong thing.

      Stephen

      Jul 5, 2013 at 2:01pm

      Just for the record, in the above article's context, "non-profit" does not necessarily means "non-biased".

      Kismet

      Jul 6, 2013 at 6:41am

      It is not unusual for plants to accumulate high levels of radioactive materials in them, they suck up these materials from the nearby area. A tiny amount of moss with high levels of caesium, is not necessarily dangerous - which you will not, the article implies but does not say

      Randy

      Jul 6, 2013 at 9:30pm

      According to the publication the radiation dose rate above the moss was 0.5 microsievert per hour, so to reach the 500 millisievert accumulated dose that theoretically can show signs of radiation sickness would require 1 000 000 hours, or 114 years.

      This is roughly the same dose a person living in the Canadian Shield receives from natural Uranium.

      Ed

      Jul 7, 2013 at 1:50am

      The utility has no control over the melting plants. It is going to get worse and the damage is going to continue accumulating for several hundred years. There is also a high probability of more accidents like these.

      Em dawg

      Jul 7, 2013 at 6:39pm

      There is not a high probability of more accidents happening like these.

      1) Accidents like these help us learn, and make adjustments.

      2) Japan is in the ring of fire with 3 plate tectonic boundaries. There is ALOT of seismic activity and earthquakes, it is a very unstable region known to have Tsunami's. This plant was built in the 50's when geoscience was a developed science. The theory of plate tectonics came out in the late 50's. We know now that there are areas around the globe which are much more tectonically stable (such as a Saskatchewan) where you would not see a 8.0 + earthquakes, or Tsunami.

      Engineer design now incorporates alot of risk mitigation. We can measure a rock/soil/ foundation resistance to shear, we can measure the sub surface ground water flow patters to ultimately choose locations where risk is greatly mitigated

      Events like these are tragedies, but they help us learn from our mistakes

      flo

      Jul 8, 2013 at 3:06pm

      "em dawg" is an apologist...and not a particularly convincing one.

      alex

      Jul 8, 2013 at 11:58pm

      we are fucked guys the place is melting down, 5 days till the cloud hits west coast of north america!

      alex

      Jul 9, 2013 at 1:54am

      July 5, 2013 at around 21:00 hours MOX Plutonium Reactor #3 at Fulkushima burned and had heavy releases into the atmosphere. TEPCO has hidden all live cam footage of this time period as to hide the truth and not scare the northern hemisphere. Get your geiger counters ready because as before it only takes 3 to 5 days for this fall out to reach the west coast of north america.