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Japan Radiation Medicine

Working Group email address:  ***@***.***

Members

AlMac99 bdfmchuv Bea Alvarez bevcorwin brandongraham Craig Vanderwagen
duane.caneva Emi Kiyota GBrozowski James Miller Kathy Gilbeaux leiderman
Mark Ryan mdmcdonald MichelSPawlowski Patrick Young rasmussene Richard Walden
RJ Danzig safecast safecastdotorg Samuel Bendett Susan Fassig Tomo
UserTest WVISecurity Yuki Karakawa

Email address for group

radiation-medicine@m.resiliencesystem.org

Japan Nuclear Crisis: Radiation Spike Detected Outside Evacuation Zone

March 31, 2011

Japanese officials are testing the soil contaminated by radiation from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to try to determine whether spring farming can begin as alarmingly high radiation levels were detected outside the evacuation zone today.

"As a ratio, it was about two times higher" than levels at which the agency recommends evacuations," International Atomic Energy Agency Official Elena Buglova said at a news conference.

Separately, the amount of iodine found in seawater near the plant has reached a new high; 4,385 times the legal limit. Officials said earlier this week that dangerous plutonium was found in soil near the reactors.

Residents within 12 miles of the nuclear plant were evacuated after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami knocked out the reactor's cooling system March 11.

Read more...

Highly radioactive water leaks from Japanese nuclear plant

 Mon Mar 28, 2011 11:10am EDT

 TOKYO (Reuters) - Highly radioactive water has leaked from a reactor at Japan's crippled nuclear complex, the plant's operator said on Monday, while environmental group Greenpeace said it had detected high levels of radiation outside an exclusion zone.

 Reflecting growing unease about efforts to control the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi complex, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (9501.T) (TEPCO) had appealed to French companies for help, the Kyodo news agency said.

The plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, was damaged in a March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 28,000 people dead or missing across northeastern Japan.

Fires, explosions and radiation leaks have repeatedly forced engineers to suspend efforts to stabilize the plant, including on Sunday when radiation levels spiked to 100,000 times above normal in water inside reactor No. 2.

Radiation Levels at Japan Nuclear Plant Reach New Highs

The Washington Post: Chico Harlan and Brian Vastag, Sunday, March 27, 

TOKYO — Already-grave conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant worsened Sunday with the highest radiation readings yet, compounding both the risks and challenges for workers trying to repair the facility’s cooling system.

Leaked water sampled from one unit Sunday was 100,000 times more radioactive than normal background levels — though the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the plant, first calculated an even higher, erroneous, figure that it didn’t correct for several hours.

Tepco apologized Sunday night when it realized the mistake; it had initially reported radiation levels in the leaked water from the unit 2 reactor as being 10 million times higher than normal, which prompted an evacuation of the building.

After the levels were correctly measured, airborne radioactivity in the unit 2 turbine building still remained so high — 1,000 millisieverts per hour — that a worker there would reach his yearly occupational exposure limit in 15 minutes. A dose of 4,000 to 5,000 millisieverts absorbed fairly rapidly will eventually kill about half of those exposed.

(Full story in links below)

Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) - Higher Levels of Radioactive Iodine in Seawater Detected - March 26, 2011

UPDATE AS OF 9:30 A.M. EDT, MARCH 26, 2011

Japanese scientists yesterday detected higher levels of radioactive iodine in seawater at water outlets near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

"Iodine 131 was detected at a level 1,250 times the national safety limit," Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said during a news conference. Officials said there is no immediate danger to residents near the plant from these levels.

Samples taken on Friday were significantly higher than those taken on Wednesday, which had 147 times the legal concentration of I-131. Authorities said the concentration of radioactive materials in the water will decrease as the water is diluted by ocean currents. Indeed, a sample taken at 8:50 a.m. on Friday had one-fifth the concentration of I-131 as the earlier measurement. Three subsequent measurements that morning showed fluctuation. All were below the highest level found at 8:30 a.m. on Friday.

IAEA - Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log

IAEA - most recent update, and links to all updates

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Iodine advice for children dosage

IAEA PDF 19 March (attached) reports that on 16 March, Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission recommended local authorities to instruct evacuees leaving the 20-kilometre area to ingest stable (not radioactive) iodine. The pills and syrup (for children) had been prepositioned at evacuation centers. The order recommended taking a single dose, with an amount dependent on age:
Baby 12.5 mg
1 mo.-3 yrs. 25mg
3-13 yrs. 38mg
13-40 yrs. 76mg
40+ yrs. Not necessary

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Excellent resource for environmental information regarding radiation

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/

Japanese Nuclear Emergency:  Radiation Monitoring - from the EPA

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/rert/radnet-sampling-data.html

RadNet Laboratory Analysis - from the EPA

http://opendata.socrata.com/Government/RadNet-Laboratory-Analysis/cf4r-dfwe

U.S.: Nuclear Safety Task Force To Be Formed

March 23, 2011

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will set up a task force to review nuclear plant safety, according to a statement released by the commission March 23. The task force will be made up of former senior managers and former agency experts to analyze lessons from the nuclear disaster in Japan. Each plant will send representatives to participate in the task force’s work, which will be released to the public, according to the commission.

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