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Pengetahuan dan Pengalaman on Monday, September 12, 2011
It's the same researcher who said several thousand becquerels/kg of neptunium-239 was found in the soil in Iitate-mura, about 35 km northwest of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. It seems it's not just Iitate-mura that got doused with neptunium, which decays into plutonium. Date City, about 25 km northwest from Iitate-mura and 60 km from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, also got a large amount of neptunium.
To recap, uranium-239, whose half life is about 24 minutes, decays into neptunium-239 with a half life of about 2.5 days, which then decays into plutonium-239 whose half life is 24,200 years.
Again, the reason for withholding the information is explained in the article below as "the research paper being peer-reviewed by a foreign scientific journal" - a make-or-break event, apparently, for a young researcher at a prestigious university in Japan - and as precaution against the possible Japanese government action to squash the information. The article was written by the same husband & wife comedian couple who first wrote about neptunium in Iitate-mura on their blog magazine in early August.
I'm sure the nuclear experts who have appeared on TV to soothe the populace ever since the March 11 nuclear accident has the good explanation for neptunium-239 in these locations. They've kept saying "No way plutonium will be found outside the compound, because it is heavy and it doesn't fly". Oh I get it. It's plutonium they were talking about, not neptunium which decays into plutonium. My bad.
"I heard it directly from a university researcher whose specialty is radiation measurement. Neptunium, the nuclide that decays into plutonium, flew at least to Iitate-mura and Date City in large quantity. The current survey method focuses only on gamma ray, and all it detects is radioactive cesium. The real danger is alpha-nuclides, which continues to be ignored. Iitate-mura may be being betrayed again..."
The article by the comedian cum independent journalist couple continues and says this person attended a lecture given by this researcher.
It still doesn't make sense to me that the information already freely given at a public lecture has to be withheld because of the peer-review process, but oh well.
Date City by the way has been selected by the national government to conduct "decontamination" experiments. So is Iitate-mura. They are using high-pressure spray washers to blast roofs, sidings and roads, and digging up the soil. Plutonium? What plutonium?
Unlike Iitate-mura, though, almost all residents in Date City still live within the city. Even those who are ordered to move because of high radiation level in their homes have moved to temporary housing that the city has provided, within the city.
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Pengetahuan dan Pengalaman on Sunday, August 28, 2011
(UPDATE on 8/30/2011: NISA still hasn't said a word about conversion, but someone in Japan did the calculation based on the NISA's numbers released on June 6. You can view it at this link or in the image below. In plain language, neptunium-239 will decay into plutonium-239, adding 2×10^7 becquerels (20,000,000 becquerels) to the existing plutonium-239. The calculation was done by Tomohiro Endo, a researcher (nuclear physics) at Nagoya University.)
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(UPDATE on 8/29/2011: NISA backtracked in the joint conference (TEPCO/government) in the afternoon, and now says it's not sure about the conversion rate of neptunium-239 into plutonium-239.)
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Now this is very curious.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA)'s daily press conference is ongoing (August 29). The NISA spokesman Moriyama mentions neptunium-239's conversion ratio to plutonium-239 as 1 to 1.
Plutonium-239: 7.6 x 10^13, or 76,000,000,000,000 or 76 terabecquerels
The amount of plutonium-239 has increased 23,000-fold, according to NISA.
On August 15 I wrote about neptunium-239, half life of about 2 days, having been detected in large quantity in Iitate-mura, 35 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. I had to take down the second post on the subject, but the information was correct.
Now, NISA is suddenly mentioning neptunium-239. Admission of wide dispersion of this nuclide and resultant plutonium-239 may be finally forthcoming, after more than 5 months.
"sievert311" also has a Dr. Shunichi "100 millisievert is safe" Yamashita's video in three languages (English, Spanish, French). Check it out.
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Tokyo Brown Tabby's latest captioning is over the collection of video clips of three Japanese nuclear researchers, claiming safety for plutonium on the national TV. The first two appeared on TV after the March 11 accident to assure the public that there was nothing to worry about on plutonium, because it was so safe.
Three Plutonium Brothers are:
(1)Tadashi Narabayashi
Professor in Engineering
at Hokkaido University
(in TV Asahi "Sunday Scramble" on Apr. 3, 2011)
(2)Keiichi Nakagawa
Associate Professor in Radiology
The University of Tokyo Hospital
(in Nippon TV "news every" on Mar. 29, 2011)
(3)Hirotada Ohashi
Professor in System Innovation
University of Tokyo
(at a panel discussion in Saga Pref. on Dec. 25, 2005, regarding using MOX fuel at Genkai Nuke Plant)
Transcript of the video. Spread the word, make them accountable:
Tadashi Narabayashi
Professor in Engineering
Hokkaido University
(in TV Asahi "Sunday Scramble" on Apr. 3, 2011)
Well, half of adult males will die if they ingest 200 grams of salt. With only 200 gram. However, oral lethal dose of plutonium-239 is 32g. So, if you compare the toxicity, plutonium, when ingested, is not very different from salt. If you inhale it into your lungs, the lethal dose will be about 10 milligram. This is about the same as potassium cyanide. That sounds scary but the point is plutonium is no different from potassium cyanide. Some toxins like botulism bacillus that causes food
poisoning is much more dangerous. Dioxin is even more dangerous. So, unless you turn plutonium into powder and swallow it into your lungs....
MC: "No one would do that."
Besides, plutonium can be stopped by a single sheet of paper. Plutonium is made into nuclear fuels in facilities with good protective measures, so you don't need to worry.
Keiichi Nakagawa
Associate Professor in Radiology
University of Tokyo Hospital
(in Nippon TV "news every" on Mar. 29, 2011)
For example, plutonium will not be absorbed from the skin. Sometimes you ingest it through food, but in that case, most of it will go out in urine or stools. The problem occurs when you inhale it. Inhaling plutonium is said to increase the risk of lung cancer.
MC: "How will that affect our daily lives?"
Nothing.
MC: "Nothing?"
Nothing. To begin with, this material is very heavy. So, unlike iodine, it won't disperse in the air. Workers at the plant MAY be affected. So, I'd caution them to be careful. But I don't think the public should worry. For example, 50 years ago when I was born, the amount of plutonium was 1000 times higher than now.
MC: "Oh, why?"
Because of nuclear testing. So, even if the amount has now increased somewhat, in fact it's still much less than before. However, if it is released into the ocean through exhaust water, that's a problem. Once outside, plutonium hardly decreases.
MC: "It takes 24,000 years before it dicreases to half, doen't it?"
That's right. So, in that sense, plutonium is problematic. But then again, there will be no effect on the public. I think you can rest easy.
MC: "Let me summarize. Plutonium won't be absorbed from the skin. If it's ingested through food, it will go out of the body in urine. If it's inhaled, it may increase the risk of lung cancer. But since it's very heavy, we don't need to worry."
Hirotada Ohashi
Professor in System Innovation
University of Tokyo
(at a panel discussion in Saga Pref. on Dec. 25, 2005, regarding using
MOX fuel at Genkai Nuke Plant)
MC: Dr. Ohashi, please.
I'd like to point out two things. What happens in a [nuclear] accident depends entirely on your assumptions. If you assume everything would break and all the materials inside the reactor would be completely released into the environment, then we would get all kinds of result. But it's like discussing "what if a giant meteorite hit?" You are talking about the probability of an unlikely event.
You may think it's a big problem if an accident occurs at the reactor, but the nuclear experts do not think Containment Vessels will break. But the anti-nuclear people will say, "How do you know that?" Hydrogen explosions will not occur and I agree, but their argument is "how do you know that?"
So, right now in the safety review, we're assuming every technically possible situation. For example, such and such parts would break, plutonium would be released like this, then it would be stopped here...something like that. We set the hurdle high and still assume even the higher-level radiation would be released and make calculations.
This may be very difficult for you to understand this process, but we do. To figure out how far contamination might spread, we analyze based on our assumption of what could occur. However, the public interpret it as something that will occur. Or the anti-nuclear people take it in a wrong way and think we make such an assumption because it will happen. We can't have an argument with such people.
Another thing is the toxicity of plutonium. The toxicity of plutonium is very much exaggerated. Experts dealing with health damage by plutonium call this situation "social toxicity." In reality, there's nothing frightening about plutonium. If, in an extreme case, terrorists may take plutonium and throw it into a reservoir, which supplies the tap water. Then, will tens of thousands of people die? No, they won't. Not a single one will likely die. Plutonium is insoluble in water and will be
expelled quickly from the body even if it's ingested with water.
So, what Dr. Koide is saying is if we take plutonium particles one by one, cut open your lungs and bury the plutonium particles deep in the lungs, then that many people will die. A pure fantasy that would never happen.
He's basically saying we can't drive a car, we can't ride a train, because we don't know what will happen.
MC: "Thank you very much."
Pluto-kun (Little Plutonium Boy)
Mascot Character of Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (now Japan Atomic Energy Agency)
Let's imagine some bad guys have just thrown me into a reservoir. I'm not only hard to dissolve in water, but also hard to be absorbed from the stomach or intestines, and eventually I will be out of the body. So I can't actually kill people.
But it so often happens that bad guys take a small thing and turn it into a big lie to threaten people.
(caption)
See, we've been duped. Plutonium is not dangerous! We'd better ask these three to drink it up to prove it's not dangerous. Then we will feel safe, won't we? Please doctors, would you do it for us?
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Pengetahuan dan Pengalaman on Sunday, July 17, 2011
It is ongoing right now, netcast live on USTREAM here.
I will watch the recording tomorrow (it's way past midnight here) and report to you in detail, but here's some of the things I caught in the beginning:
Shukan Gendai (Japanese weekly magazine) sent (I think) the air filters of the cars from Japan, one from Fukushima, the other from Tokyo. From the air filter from Fukushima, plutonium-239 was detected. From the air filter from Tokyo, uranium-235, tellurium-129.
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Pengetahuan dan Pengalaman on Friday, July 15, 2011
An old "baseless rumor" (back in May) that no MSM mentioned (not even to refute it), although bloggers cited the passage. But as the rice grows in the rice paddies in Kanto and Tohoku and more and more cows are found radioactive because what they ate was highly radioactive (rice hay), it may be worth keeping it in mind, just in case.
As far as I've checked, the report has never been "proven", but never been "disproven" either.
From the report that appeared on Japan Business Press on May 14 (the report was from their free subscription part of the site, written by Satoshi Kawashima, the former editor of Nikkei Business and the founder of Japan Business Press):
According to the private survey by a food company, an extremely high level of radiation, order of magnitude higher than what the government has been reporting, has been detected in the soil in the rice paddy more than 50 kilometers away from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.
The food company says it is withholding the information for now because it may cause panic, but it says the survey has also found a high level of plutonium in the same rice paddy soil.
There has been no follow-up to this report. Back in May, almost all tweets on the subject in Japan were from people who outright dismissed the report as "baseless rumor" and criticized Japan Business Press for fear-mongering. "There's no way plutonium can travel outside the Fukushima plant!" was one typical tweet. (Never mind it did.) "They are manufacturing the story" was another.
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Pengetahuan dan Pengalaman on Tuesday, June 7, 2011
The municipal government of Genkai-cho in Saga Prefecture (red in the map) in Kyushu and Kyushu Electric Power Company are ready to re-start the Reactors 3 and 4 at Genkai Nuclear Power Plant.
The Reactor 3 at Genkai Nuclear Power Plant uses MOX fuel in addition to uranium fuel, in what the Japanese call "pluthermal" (plutonium + thermal) nuclear power generation. In fact, it is the first MOX fuel reactor in Japan. (The Fukushima I's Reactor 3 is the third one.)
Japan's MOX fuel comes from France, by the way.
In December 2010, 1 year after they started using MOX fuel in the reactor for commercial power generation, an elevated level of radioactive iodine was detected in the RPV cooling water (4 times the limit). They discovered that there were minute pinholes in one fuel rod (uranium) through which radioactive iodine was leaking (Yomiuri Shinbun Kyushu edition, 12/11/2010, Kyushu Electric press release 2/8/2011, in Japanese). Upon the discovery, the plant shut down the Reactor 3 and started a "regular maintenance" earlier than scheduled.
8 out of 12 town assemblymen in Genkai-cho are in favor of re-starting the reactors, quite satisfied with the beefed-up safety measures at the plant. Problem? What problem? Iodine leaking? What is iodine?
The plant is located in northern Kyushu, in Saga Prefecture. Talk about downwind. Almost entire Japan will be downwind from the plant.
Money talks, and talks loud.
From Tokyo Shinbun, citing Kyodo News but including more info than Kyodo News (02:14AM JST 6/8/2011):
Hideo Kishimoto, mayor of Genkai-cho in Saga Prefecture, said on June 7 he would agree to Kyushu Electric Power Company's re-starting the Reactors 2 and 3 at its Genkai Nuclear Power Plant by early July, after showing Kyushu Electric the conditions for the re-start including increased safety measures at the plant. It will be the first time any local government agrees to the re-start of a nuclear power plant in its jurisdiction.
There is no law that requires the consent of local municipalities and assemblies to restart reactors after a regular maintenance. However, Kyushu Electric has said the "local consensus" of the prefecture and the town should be in place before the restart. Saga governor Yasushi Furukawa, who has shown
Mayor Kishimoto plans to call the executives at Kyushu Electric to his office around July 1, hand them the memorandum that specifies the conditions for the restart which include 1) stronger measures against terrorism and heavy rains; 2) reduction of human errors as much as possible; 3) PR to the local residents for greater understanding, and will verbally give his consent to the re-start.
The Genkai-cho Assembly already gave its approval in a special committee meeting on June 1, with 8 assemblymen out of 12 giving their consent to the re-start. Mayor Kishimoto says, "The national government ought to give the decision, but the town Assembly has approved, and we are able to confirm that the emergency safety measures after the March 11 earthquake have been effectively carried out. In order to protect the way of life in Kyushu, the re-start of the reactors at Genkai is necessary."
Meanwhile, the Saga prefectural government will call on the METI's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on June 9, and receive the explanation on earthquake countermeasures. The prefectural government is still in talks with Kyushu Electric over the re-start of the reactors.
The governor of Saga is another elite Tokyo University graduate (law school), and a career government bureaucrat.
Minute amounts of plutonium have been detected for the first time in soil outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Shinzo Kimura of Hokkaido University collected the roadside samples in Okumamachi, some 1.7 kilometers west of the front gate of the power station. They were taken during filming by NHK on April 21st, one day before the area was designated as an exclusion zone.
Professor Masayoshi Yamamoto and researchers at a Kanazawa University laboratory analyzed the samples and found minute amounts of 3 kinds of plutonium.
The samples of plutonium-239 and 240 make up a total of 0.078 becquerels per kilogram.
This is close to the amount produced by past atomic bomb tests.
But the 3 substances are most likely to have come from the plant blasts, as their density ratio is different from those detected in the past.
Professor Yamamoto said the quantities are so minute that people's health will not be harmed.
But he recommended that the contamination near the plant should be fully investigated, saying that a study may shed light on how radioactive materials spread in the air.
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Pengetahuan dan Pengalaman on Wednesday, June 1, 2011
It seems like an oblique way for the Japanese government to admit plutonium (and other transuranium elements such as americium and curium) has been released from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant and dispersed in wide enough areas to warrant a very quick approval of drugs that expel them from the body.
Transuranium elements are the chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than 92, the atomic number of uranium. They are all highly radioactive.
Two drugs that expel radioactive materials from the body are set to be approved in July, as the experts agreed at a meeting on June 1 of the Committee on Medicine and Food Safety of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The drugs are " ジトリペンタートカル" and "アエントリペンタート"*. They are used as intravenous drugs. Nihon Mediphysics (in Tokyo) will be the sole importer and distributor of the drugs.
[* I have no idea how they are spelled, or who makes these drugs. These are the brand names to be used in Japan, not the chemical names. The latter has "アエン" in the name, that's "zinc" in Japanese. Does anyone know more about these drugs? What I've found by a quick Google search is at the bottom of the post.]
According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the drugs are used for people who have inhaled a large amount of radioactive materials or who have open wounds from which the radioactive materials have entered the body in a nuclear power plant accident. They have been found effective in expelling plutonium in urine. They are approved in the US, Germany and France as of October 2010.
No information is posted on the Ministry's site, and there's nothing in Nihon Mediphysics' site.
CBNews has a bit more information about these two drugs (original in Japanese):
The drugs will help lessen the internal radiation from the transuranium elements - plutonium, americium, and curium - by "replacing calcium and zinc with the transuranium elements" (カルシウムや亜鉛を超ウラン元素で置き換えて) and "expel them in urine".
It seems what these drugs do is to chilate the transuranium elements.
So I googled "plutonium chilation" and the search came up with this paper "Three Plutonium Chelation Cases At Los Alamos National Laboratory" (Oct 2010) (emphasis is mine):
Abstract
Chelation treatments with dosages of 1 g of either Ca-DTPA (Trisodium calcium diethylenetriaminepentaacetate) or Zn-DTPA (Trisodium zinc diethylenetriaminepentaacetate) Occupational Medicine in three recent cases of wounds contaminated with metallic forms of 239Pu. All cases were finger punctures, and each were undertaken at Los Alamoschelation injection contained the same dosage of DTPA. One subject was treated only once, while the other two received multiple injections. Additional measurements of wound, urine, and excised tissues were taken for one of the cases. These additional measurements served to improve the estimate of the efficacy of the chelation treatment. The efficacy of the chelation treatments was compared for the three cases. Results were interpreted using models, and useful heuristics for estimating the intake amount and final committed doses were presented. In spite of significant differences in the treatments and in the estimated intake amounts and doses amongst the three cases, a difference of four orders of magnitude was observed between the highest excretion data point and the values observed at about 100 d for all cases. Differences between efficacies of Zn-DTPA and Ca-DTPA could not be observed in this study. An efficacy factor of about 50 was observed for a chelation treatment, which was administered at about 1.5 y after the incident, though the corresponding averted dose was very small (LA-UR 09-02934).
I don't know if these two drugs mentioned in the abstract of the paper above are the ones to be sold in Japan, but the chemical names suggest they are.
