The assessment of technical and subject matter experts across United States Government agencies is that while the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant remains serious and dynamic, the health and safety risks to areas beyond the 50 mile evacuation zone, and particularly to Tokyo, Nagoya (Aichi Prefecture), Yokohama (Kanagawa Prefecture) nearby U.S. military facilities and the prefectures of  Akita, Aomori, Chiba, Gunma, Iwate, Nagano, Niigata, Saitama, Shizuoka, Tochigi, and Yamanashi, and those portions of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures which are outside a 50 mile radius of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are low and do not pose significant risks to U.S. citizens. 

This analysis takes into consideration both various age groups and the classification of the severity of the situation at Fukushima Daiichi as a Level 7 event by the Government of Japan, which reflects what has transpired since the initial incident and the potential long-term effects in the area surrounding the plant.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
Source: IPS Online

TOKYO, Apr 13, 2011 (IPS) - April has traditionally been the time for ‘hanami’, or cherry blossom festivals, when millions of Japanese hold parties under the pink flowering trees in parks and streets lit up gaily by lanterns.

But, one month after the earthquake and tsunami of Mar. 11 which left almost 30,000 people dead or missing, a widespread donation drive has supplanted the festive hanami spirit in Tokyo and other major cities.

"The terrible Tohoku disaster has galvanised the nation to launch a nation- wide charity movement," Kyoichi Kobayashi, a social critic and author here, told IPS. "The drive is an entirely new experience for the people who have gotten used to an affluent lifestyle that marks Japan’s post-war economic might."

Indeed, from Hokkaido, Japan’s north island, to Okinawa, the southern tip in the archipelago, hundreds of local volunteer groups, companies and organisations have launched frantic aid projects or are working as volunteers to help the stricken populations in the disaster zones.

WASHINGTON ---- Japan's nuclear emergency highlights a big medical gap: Few treatments exist to help people exposed to large amounts of radiation.

But some possibilities are in the pipeline ---- development of drugs to treat radiation poisoning, and the first rapid tests to tell who in a panicked crowd would really need them.

The U.S. calls these potential products "countermeasures," and they're part of the nation's preparations against a terrorist attack, such as a dirty bomb. But if they work, they could be useful in any kind of radiation emergency.

"Thinking of terrorist events is what drives us. Mother Nature can be much of a terror, too," says Dr. Robin Robinson, who heads the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, that funds late-stage research of products the government deems most likely to pan out.

BARDA has invested $164 million for research into anti-radiation treatment candidates since 2008, and $44 million for radiation testing ---- in hopes of adding such products to the nation's emergency medical stockpile soon. That's in addition to research dollars from the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department.

Robert J. Geller, at the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, Japan, writes in the recent issue of Nature:
"It is time to tell the public frankly that earthquakes cannot be predicted, to scrap the Tokai prediction system and to repeal the LECA. All of Japan is at risk from earthquakes, and the present state of seismological science does not allow us to reliably differentiate the risk level in particular geographic areas. We should instead tell the public and the government to 'prepare for the unexpected' and do our best to communicate both what we know and what we do not. And future basic research in seismology must be soundly based on physics, impartially reviewed, and be led by Japan's top scientists rather than by faceless bureaucrats."

Summary

- The Japanese government should admit to the public that earthquakes cannot be reliably predicted.

- Use of the misleading term 'Tokai earthquake' should cease. The 1978 Large-Scale Earthquake Countermeasures Act should be repealed.

Another earthquake rocked Japan on Monday, one of nearly 500 aftershocks that have hit the country in the month since a 9.0 magnitude quake and the tsunami it caused devastated many areas.

"When the stress exceeds the friction at that fault, you'll have an earthquake," seismologist Paul Earle said.

In the last 24 hours, the United States Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden has kept tabs on seven different 5.0 or stronger earthquakes in the area around Japan.

"We had a 6.6 this morning. That's enough to seriously shake things up," Earle said. "This is a very large earthquake, and that's why we're seeing this very robust aftershock sequence."

Just last week, there was a 7.1 quake. And it appears the aftershocks may not be letting up any time soon.

"This can go on for several more months," Earle said.

He says it can even go on into next year. While the aftershocks have not caused the damage the original earthquake did (13,000 dead, more than 13,000 missing), they make life in the area very difficult.

Read more...

Residency status and property rights are among the legal issues causing concern for foreign nationals directly affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, lawyers assisting them with their inquiries said Tuesday.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations and a local lawyers’ group in Tokyo launched a toll-free telephone consultation service for foreign nationals in late March in the wake of the quake and ensuing tsunami. It received nearly 50 inquiries during the first two weeks, according to Masako Suzuki, a Tokyo-based lawyer.

‘‘In cases where callers lost their Japanese spouses, they wanted to know if they could continue staying in Japan or if they could inherit properties,’’ Suzuki said.

In one case, a woman asked if she could stay in Japan until her late husband, who was buried without cremation, most likely due to a lack of crematorium capacity and shortage of fuel, could be cremated.

The telephone consultation service operates weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon and can be accessed by calling 03-3591-2291.

While it was initially launched in English, Chinese, Portuguese, Tagalog and Japanese, available languages have increased to 10, including Korean. Consulters are required to pay call charges, but they may be able to use phones for free at local international exchange associations in the disaster-hit areas, Suzuki said.

The Japanese government's nuclear safety agency has decided to raise the crisis level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident from 5 to 7, the worst on the international scale.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency made the decision on Monday. It says the damaged facilities have been releasing a massive amount of radioactive substances, which are posing a threat to human health and the environment over a wide area.

The agency used the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES, to gauge the level. The scale was designed by an international group of experts to indicate the significance of nuclear events with ratings of 0 to 7.

On March 18th, one week after the massive quake, the agency declared the Fukushima trouble a level 5 incident, the same as the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979.

Level 7 has formerly only been applied to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 when hundreds of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the air. One terabecquerel is one trillion becquerels.

News Release - Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) - INES rating assessed as Level 7 - April 12, 2011

(see link below - a 3 page .pdf report)

As reported in The Yomiuri Shimbun

The crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has released a large amount of radioactive substances into the air and water, raising serious concerns over possible health risks.

The government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. have repeatedly said there will be no major health impact "for the time being" and that there will be no "immediate" effects.

But what consequences will the radiation fallout actually have?

The following will examine the impact of radioactive substances on people's daily lives, and look at how much radioactive fallout has occurred, possible health effects and how to prevent exposure.

How much radioactive material has so far been released into the atmosphere due to the Fukushima accident?

Let's compare the radioactive contamination caused by the current crisis to past nuclear accidents.

Fallout of cesium-137 has been monitored for every 24-hour period since March 18 at observation points in each prefecture, except quake-hit Fukushima and Miyagi. Cesium-137 is an international indicator for radioactive contamination.

Editorial from The Japan Times  |  Monday, April 11, 2011

Sparkrelief.org: 被災者のために住まいを提供してください。避難中の方は住まいを見つけてください。

Site in both English and Japanese

After studying ancient rocks, a Japanese geologist warned that a disaster was imminent -- to no avail.
From the Wall Street Journal  |  By Peter Landers  |  April 09, 2011

The giant tsunami that assaulted northern Japan's coast surprised just about everyone. But Masanobu Shishikura was expecting it. The thought that came to mind, he says, was "yappari," a Japanese word meaning roughly, "Sure enough, it happened."

"It was the phenomenon just as I had envisioned it," says the 41-year-old geologist, who has now become the Japanese Cassandra. Dr. Shishikura's studies of ancient earth layers persuaded him that every 450 to 800 years, colliding plates in the Pacific triggered waves that devastated areas around the modern city of Sendai, in Miyagi Prefecture, as well as in Fukushima Prefecture.

One early tsunami was known to historians. Caused by the 869 Jogan quake, its waves, according to one chronicle, killed 1,000 people. Dr. Shishikura had found strong evidence of a later tsunami in the same region, which probably took place between 1300 and 1600.

The mayor of the isolated Japanese city of Minamisoma, Katsunobu Sakurai, speaks to Irish Times reporter and Japan resident, David McNeill 

LIKE MOST Japanese men, Katsunobu Sakurai read apocalyptic comic-book stories about the future when he was a boy. He never expected to live through one of those stories.

A common plot sees a modern city reduced overnight to a ghostly husk as fears of nuclear contamination empty it of people. Businesses shut and food, water and petrol run out. Old people left behind begin to die. The city mayor makes a desperate televised appeal for help. Such is real life in Sakurai’s city of Minamisoma.

More than 71,000 people lived here before March 11th. Today there are fewer than 10,000. About 1,470 are dead or missing, the remainder are scattered throughout Japan in more than 300 different locations, “as far as we can tell”, says Sakurai, who took over as mayor in January.

Dangling from his neck are two radiation counters, a reminder that the nightmare that descended on his city last month has yet to end.

Nation must pool wisdom to prepare for 'unforeseeable'

The Yomiuri Shimbun

About a month has passed since a massive earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern and eastern parts of the nation. A powerful aftershock, measuring upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7, jolted the region Thursday, causing power outages over a wide area.

People affected by the disaster have surely passed many long, hard days, unable to feel completely at ease.

The number of people killed or unaccounted for in the wake of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake now stands at more than 27,000.

As many as 460,000 people were evacuated to shelters at one time. The number has been decreasing--some returned to their homes after the water receded, some are staying with relatives, and others have moved outside their home prefectures in group relocations.

However, more than 150,000 people are still living in shelters.

We hope local governments will maintain close contact with disaster victims and continue to extend all necessary support, including housing, goods, medical care and employment.

To the list of destructive forces that have wracked Japan — earthquake, tsunami, radiation from a crippled nuclear power plant — can be added liquefaction, a phenomenon that occurs when the earth’s violent shaking forces sand particles, once packed tightly, to shift apart and allow water to seep in.

Moments after the quake, Urayasu literally began sinking into the ocean.

“It was like we were surfing,” said Chiharu Asami, 58, who operates a newspaper delivery service. “We could see the ground shaking and the telephone pillar sank two meters. The muddy water came right away, up to my ankles. Even when the water went away, the mud stayed for a week.”

David Nakamura  | The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 06, 2011

URAYASU, JAPAN — Nearly four weeks after Japan's great earthquake, most of the 100,000 residents of this low-lying seaside town still have no plumbing. They relieve themselves in plastic bags — mixing in chemicals to harden the waste and hide the smell — and throw the bags into the garbage. Fortunately, trash collection, unlike sewage, water and gas services, has not been disrupted.