The following is the fourth installment of a new series of editorials which will communicate portions of my recent trip to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (Read the first installment here, the second installment here, the third installment here, and a bonus installment about the animals at Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl here.). After we visited the […]
Tokyo Electric has determined that it will cease use of AREVA’s decontamination system, which uses chemicals to remove radioactive materials from water, as it has not lived up to expectations since it was installed. The utility will file an application with the Nuclear Regulation Authority in order to scrap the system. The decontamination system was […]
South Korean authorities plan to return contaminated steel scrap imported from Japan after detecting Cesium 137 over allowable levels in steel scrap imported from Japan earlier this month. The scrap metals arrived in Gyeongsang Province on Thursday, but according to authorities there was no way of determining the areas in Japan where the scrap originated […]
TEPCO has announced that they estimate some 1.1 trillion becquerels of radiation was released during debris cleanup operations at the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 reactor. According to TEPCO’s estimates the removal work generated 280 billion becquerel per hour releases. Some of the radioactive cesium which was released during the debris removal operations was found over […]
Officials from the agriculture ministry told reporters on Monday that efforts to clean up debris at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have been the source of cesium that contaminated rice crops about twelve and a half miles away in the city of Minami Soma. The officials suggested that the radioactive materials were transported […]
It has been almost 70 years since the first nuclear device known as “Trinity” was tested in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16th, 1945. At 5:30 in the morning, the Plutonium implosion device, also known as “The Gadget” produced a blast powerful enough to send a mushroom cloud nearly 40,000 feet in […]
New data released from Japan may help researchers to determine exactly how radioactive materials were released into the atmosphere from the Unit 1 reactor during the early days of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and determine the effectiveness of venting operations. After the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11th, 2011, 14 monitoring posts […]
On Saturday, workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan were operating a remote-controlled robot to remove debris on the first floor of the Unit 3 reactor building when they discovered a stream of water nearly a foot wide flowing through the first floor the reactor building before escaping into a drain on […]
Levels of contamination in and around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are continuing to rise since the March 11th nuclear disaster. In the town of Marumori, officials measured 10 fallen cedar tree quills; the average cesium level was 26,684 becquerels per kilogram as of June 2012, but in 2013 measurements recorded some 42,759 becquerels […]
Tokyo Electric Power Company, the utility which owns and manages the cleanup at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant admitted earlier this summer that highly contaminated water was leaking from the plant into the Pacific Ocean. TEPCO has estimated that some 10 trillion becquerels of strontium and 20 trillion becquerels of cesium have leaked […]
In the rare event that the reader has never seen Mickey Mouse starring in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, I will remind them that the whole story revolves around an apprentice who is tempted to use magic to do things that he does not wish to do for himself, which starts out well enough, only to find […]
The situation at Fukushima Daiichi is prompting workers and officials to yet again change their stance on the status of the crippled nuclear power plant. Due to recent spikes in radioactivity in groundwater around the reactors, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has said that it strongly suspects that contaminated water is leaking directly into the Pacific, […]
Researchers in Japan have found that fish close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had absorbed a large dose of radioactive materials, like cesium, immediately after the March 2011 nuclear disaster, rather than gradually accumulating it as experts had previously predicted. Researchers at the National Research Institute of Fisheries Science focused on a special […]
Due to concerns that sea life was allowed to travel freely in and out of the port at Fukushima Daiichi after finding high levels of cesium in fish and shellfish caught in the port, TEPCO announced that it would put up a net in the end of January of this year to contain marine life. […]
Concerns over nuclear weapons proliferation has re-emphasized the need for swift and accurate detection of nuclear tests conducted anywhere in the world. Most nuclear weapons states publicly declare their nuclear status by way of nuclear tests, which can be conducted above ground, above the atmosphere, or underwater, but most recent tests have been underground detonations […]
After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster released enormous amounts of radiation into the environment, scientists and researchers in Japan began monitoring the concentration of Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 in the organs of 79 abandoned cattle within a 20 kilometer radius of the nuclear power plant. Over 3,000 cows, 30,000 pigs, and 625,000 chickens were left behind […]
TEPCO announced that it had captured a Murasoi fish from inside of the harbor at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Analysis detected 254,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in the fish, 2,540 times the legal dose. The internal dose if eaten would be 4mSv per kilogram. The Murasoi fish is somewhat similar […]
The Miyagi Prefectural government announced that cesium levels in rice grown in Kurihara had been found contaminated up to 240 becquerels of cesium per kilogram. Kurihara is mostly farmland, mostly known for its rice fields, and small mountain ranges dispersed throughout. The prefectural government announced that it will prevent nearby rice farms from shipping their […]
The University of Tokyo hosted a conference this week on the 12th and 13th of November, where researched presented data which revealed that the levels of radioactivity in the ocean waters around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remain stable around 1,000 becquerels, rather than falling as expected. Researchers believe that run-off from rivers, […]
TEPCO to construct cover over Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3 TEPCO has released designs for a cover to construct around the crippled Unit 3 reactor building in order to allow the utility to remove fuel rods from the spent fuel pool by crane. The high radiation fields around the reactor building prevent workers from performing the […]