Photo Credit: Reuters
By Marie-louise Olson.
A beach in San Francisco contains five times the safe levels of radiation fueling concerns that Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant’s crisis is impacting areas across the country.
It comes just days after radiation readings were found to be double the normal amount in Missouri’s recent snowfall.
According to YouTube user, DutchSinse, who posted a video of him taking the Geiger readings in St Louis, the findings mean that ‘small particles of radioactive material are indeed coming down in the precipitation. Past tests show around 30CPM in the same spot on a nice day with no precipitation’.
He said snowstorms in 2012 also showed alert level radiation readings.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: AFP Photo / Spencer Platt
Health officials in California are now telling residents not to worry after a video uploaded to the internet last month seemed to show high levels of radiation at a Pacific Coast beach.
The video, “Fukushima radiation hits San Francisco,” has been viewed nearly half-a-million times since being uploaded to YouTube on Christmas Eve, and its contents have caused concern among residents who fear that nuclear waste from the March 2011 disaster in Japan may be arriving on their side of the Pacific Ocean.
Throughout the course of the seven-minute-long clip, a man tests out his Geiger counter radiation detector while walking through Pacifica State Beach outside of San Francisco. At times, the monitor on the machine seems to show radiation of 150 counts-per-minute, or the equivalent of around five times what is typically found in that type of environment.
After the video began to go viral last month, local, state and federal officials began to investigate claims that waste from the Fukushima nuclear plant has washed ashore in California. Only now, though, are authorities saying that they have no reason to believe that conditions along the West Coast are unsafe.
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[Editor’s Note: The source story is from RT News. RT News originates from Russia and has alleged connections to the Russian government.]
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UPDATE: Removal of nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant resumes
By THE ASAHI SHIMBUN. Work to remove nuclear fuel from a damaged reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was proceeding smoothly as efforts resumed Jan. 6 after the conclusion of the New Year’s holidays.
Work initially got under way on Nov. 18 at the storage pool of the damaged No. 4 reactor building to remove 1,533 nuclear fuel assemblies, but was suspended Dec. 22 for the holiday period.
Two officials from the Fukushima prefectural government’s safety management division observed the resumption of the removal work for an hour during the afternoon of Jan. 7.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Fukushima: Dispelling the Myths
By Joel I. Cehn. Wild speculation on the widespread dangers of Fukushima radioactive fallout has been popping up lately, including posts on the Internet with titles like “Holy Fukushima—Radiation From Japan Is Already Killing North Americans.” These are thin on facts and create more heat than light. But they do certainly grab our attention. For example, videos and news out of California and Missouri claim that high levels of radiation were detected. What they mean is “higher” levels of ambient radiation. Higher than what? Well, higher than measured elsewhere. Here’s the bottom line: natural levels vary a lot. I can see large variations around my own neighborhood. Tenfold differences are not unusual. This is due to a lot of factors, including ground cover, building materials, minerals in the soil, and even weather conditions.
It is true that the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami wreaked havoc on Japan. It also resulted in the largest nuclear power plant accident since Chernobyl when the tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Radioactive particles were released into the atmosphere and ocean, which effectively closed local Japanese fisheries.
While there were unfortunate effects from the disaster around the Fukushima Power Plant in Japan, the facts show that people in Alaska, Hawaii, and the West Coast of the United States aren’t in any danger.
The fuel rods in the Fukushima power plant partially melted and radionuclides were released into the ocean. To a lesser extent, radionuclides were also released into the air and were absorbed by the ocean when they rained down upon it. These two pathways introduced mostly iodine-131, cesium-137, cesium-134, and strontium-90 into the area surrounding the power plant. Only two of those remain today (cesium-137 and strontium-90), because the other two radionuclides have short half-lives and have since decayed away.
We have no accurate estimates of how much of each of these radionuclides was released into the ocean, but the current estimates are above levels released by the Three Mile Island accident, but below levels released by the Chernobyl accident. How much will reach the U.S. West Coast? Answer: not much—certainly not enough to increase radiation levels five- or tenfold. Claims of such increases are the tip-off that facts are being sacrificed for attention. The good news is that factual information is available to those interested, and this Health Physics Society website is a good place to start.
Read more from this story HERE.
