Radioactive caesium heading for US coastline
Radioactive caesium heading for US coastline
By North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy
Posted 1 hour 31 minutes ago
Japanese scientists say radioactive caesium leaking from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is expected to reach the west coast of the United States in five years.
Japan's Atomic Energy Agency has put together a map predicting how caesium-137 from the Fukushima plant will spread through the Pacific Ocean.
It estimates the contamination will travel 4,000 kilometres off the Japanese coast in one year, reach Hawaii in three years, and wash along the west coast of the US within five years.
But the agency believes that by then the density of the radioactive caesium will have declined so significantly it will pose no risk to human or marine life.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/28/3255151.htm?section=justin
Gross Stupidity
"The Stupidity that is IAEA"
“When news of the Japanese nuclear disaster started filtering out, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Incident and Emergency Centre released a statement that the four nuclear power plants which were closest to the quake had been “safely shut down”. Further, on March 12, the IAEA peddled to the world the statement of Japanese authorities that “no radiation was released” from various nuclear plants hit by the disastrous 8.9 magnitude earthquake. On March 19, an IAEA expert released a statement stating that the radiation levels detected in Japan till then did not pose any harm to human health. Wonder of wonders, the IAEA did not have an on-ground team at the site of the nuclear disaster, the Fukushima prefecture, even on March 19, and was like a simpleton forwarding Japanese government press releases.”
http://www.businessandeconomy.org/14042011/storyd.asp?sid=6054&pageno=1
“Such a series of responses from the IAEA personifies an attitude that is not only inanely irresponsible, but also unbelievable to the extent of even being called stupid. How could the UN’s global nuclear watchdog ever publicise the logic that a set of nuclear plants were safe, when the reality was quite different? Did not IAEA realize that this was not a matter of ensuring that Japanese public relations remain pristine, but of ensuring that the human race and its existence is protected?”
Japan was even dumber
And even the IAEA rightfully thinks Japan is stupid.
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110601/wl_nm/us_japan_un_6
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan underestimated the risk of tsunamis and needs to closely monitor public and workers' health after the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a team of international safety inspectors said in a preliminary review of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
The report, from an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team led by Britain's top nuclear safety official Mike Weightman, highlighted some of the well-documented weaknesses that contributed to the crisis at Fukushima when the plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, was hit by a massive earthquake and then a tsunami in quick succession on March 11.
Those start with a failure to plan for a tsunami that would overrun the 5.7-meter (19 ft) break wall at Fukushima and knock out back-up electric generators to four reactors, despite multiple forecasts from a government agency and operator Tokyo Electric Power Co's own scientists that such a risk was looming.
"The tsunami hazard for several sites was underestimated," the report's three-page summary said.
"We had a playbook, but it didn't work," said Tatsujiro Suzuki, a nuclear expert and vice chairman of Japan's Atomic Energy Commission.
In the report, the IAEA team urged Japan to follow up with monitoring of worker and public health.
"There are aspects of the planning for the safety of the Fukushima plant which are, in retrospect, very stupid, and show a lack of imagination," said Kim Kearfott, a University of Michigan nuclear safety expert who toured Japan on her own this week. "The nuclear industry can do better than this."
The plant's chief operating officer, Masao Yoshida, ignored an order to stop injecting seawater into the No. 1 reactor based on a request from Kan's office. Experts say Yoshida made the right call, but say the confusion underscored the bigger problems in the early response to the accident.
Others say Japan needs to show it will act on the toughest advice from critics, including long-delayed steps to make its nuclear regulatory agency independent of the politically powerful utility industry.
"Japanese nuclear operations need to be upgraded based on international advice," said Kearfott. "Much of this advice was ignored in the past."