Sunday, April 17, 2011
က်ေနာ္တို႔တေတြ အေၾကာင္းအမ်ိဳးမ်ိးေၾကာင့္ မိခင္ႏိုင္ငံက ထြက္ခြာလာခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ့ စား၀တ္ေနေရးေၾကာင့္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ့ ပညာေရးေၾကာင့္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ့ ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္ေတြေၾကာင့္ မိခင္ေျမကို စြန္႔ခြာလာခဲ့တဲ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ဒီေနရာကို ေရာက္လာခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ ဒီေနရာေလးက က်ေနာ္တို႔ကို ဆီးၾကိဳ ေထြးေပြ႔ခဲ့တယ္၊ က်ေနာ္တို႔ကို ေနရာ ထိုင္ခင္း ေပးခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ကို အသက္ရွင္ ေနထိုင္ခြင့္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ယံုၾကည္တဲ့ လမ္းမွာေလွ်ာက္လွမ္းခြင့္ေတြ ေပးခဲ့ၾကတယ္။
ဒီေနရာဟာ က်ေနာတို႔ရဲ့ ဒုတိယ အိမ္ပဲျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒီေနရာေလးဟာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ့ နားခိုရာပဲျဖစ္တယ္။ဒီေနရာေလးရဲ့ အဆိုးအေကာင္း အက်ိဳးအေၾကာင္း အားလံုး က်ေနာ္တို႔နဲ႔ ဆက္စပ္ ပတ္သက္ေနတယ္၊ က်ေနာ္တို႔ကို ရိုက္ခတ္ေနတယ္၊ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေရာက္ေနတဲ့ ဒီေနရာေလးမွာ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ မတ္လ ၁၁ ရက္ေန႔မွာ အင္မတန္ ၾကမ္းတမ္းတဲ့ သဘာ၀ေဘးဒဏ္ တခုက်ေရာက္ခဲ့တယ္။ဒီေဘးဒဏ္ေၾကာင့္ လူေတြ အေျမာက္အမ်ား အသက္ဆံုးရံႈးခဲ့ရတယ္။ အိုးအိမ္စည္းစိမ္ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ေတြ မယံုၾကည္ ႏိုင္ေလာက္ေအာင္ ပ်က္စီးသြားခဲ့တယ္၊ ဒီလူေတြဟာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ့ မိသားစုေတြပဲ။ ဒီလူေတြဟာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ့ ညီအကို ေမာင္နွမေတြပဲ။ က်ေနာ္တို႔တေတြ အားလံုး ေ၀မွ်ခံစားၾကရေအာင္၊ က်ေနာ္တို႔တေတြ တတ္ႏိုင္သမွ် ေမတၲာ တုန္႔ျပန္ၾကရေအာင္ အားလံုးကိုဖိတ္ေခၚပါတယ္။
ဂ်ပန္ငလွ်င္ႏွင့္ ဆူနာမိ ေဘးဒဏ္ခံခဲ့ရေသာ ေနရာေဒသမ်ားသို႔ လုပ္အားေပးႏွင့္ ဂ်ပန္ငလွ်င္ႏွင့္ လုပ္အားေပးႏွင့္ အစား အေသာက္ ခ်က္ျပဳတ္ ေကၽြးေမြး အလွဳျပဳလုပ္မည္ ျဖစ္ပါ တယ္၊ ဒါဟာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ရဲ့ အမိျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ တခုပဲျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါဟာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ႏိုင္ငံသားအားလုံးရဲ့ မြန္ျမတ္တဲ့ ေစတနာ အလွဴပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္၊
အစီအအစဥ္ (၁)။ ။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ား။ အဖဲြ႔အစည္းမ်ားမွ စုေပါင္းလွဴဒါန္းထားေသာ အလွဴေငြမ်ား ေပးအပ္လွဴဒါန္းမည္၊
အစီအအစဥ္ (၂)။ ။ကယ္ဆယ္ေရး စင္တာမ်ားတြင္ ေနထိုင္ေနရေသာ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအတြက္ ေန႔လည္စာ တနပ္ ခ်က္ျပဳတ္ ေကၽြးေမြး လွဴဒါန္းမည္။
အစီအအစဥ္ (၃)။ ။လမ္း အေဆာက္အဦး တခုခုတြင္ သန္႔ရွင္းေရး လုပ္အားေပး ေဆာင္ရြက္မည္၊
သြားေရာက္မည့္ေနရာ။ ။ မီယာဂိခရိုင္၊ အိရွိႏိုမခိ ျမိဳ႔ (Miyagi ken, Ishinomaki town)
သြားေရာက္မည့္ေန႔ရက္။ ။ဧျပီလ ၃၀ ရက္ေန႔(စေနေန႔) ည ဂ နာရီ စတင္ထြက္ခြာမည္၊
တနဂၤေႏြေန႔ မနက္ေရာက္မည္။ တနဂၤေႏြ ေန႔တေန႔လံုး လုပ္အားေပး ေဆာင္ရြက္မည္။ တနဂၤေႏြေန႔ ညေန ၄ နာရီတြင္ လုပ္အားေပး ရပ္နား၍ ညေန ၆ နာရီခန္႔တြင္ ျပန္လည္ထြက္ခြာမည္။ တိုက်ိဳသို႔ ေမလ ၂ ရက္ေန႔တနလာၤေန႔ နံနက္ ၄ နာရီခန္႔တြင္ ျပန္ေရာက္မည္ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ လိုက္ပါ လုပ္အားေပး လိုသူမ်ား ဆက္သြယ္ စာရင္းေပးၾကပါရန္ ဖိတ္ေခၚအပ္ပါသည္၊
လုပ္အားေပး လိုက္ပါမည့့္သူမ်ားအားလုံး မိမိစားစရိတ္ျ္ဖင့္ လိုက္ပါရမညျဖစ္ပါ၍ တဦးလွ်ွင္ ယန္း၁၀ ၀၀၀ သတ္မွထ္ ထားပါသည္။ အစားအေသာက္ခ်ကျ္ပဳတ္ ေကၽြးေမြးျခင္း အစီအစဥ္အတြက္ ဟင္းလွ်ွာ၊ အစားအေသာက္၊ ေရ၊ ေစ်း၀ယ္ စားရိတ္ စသျဖင့္ ထဲ့၀င္ လွဴဒါန္း ၾကပါရန္ ႏိႈးေဆာ္ တိုက္တြန္း အပ္ပါသည္၊
ဆက္သြယ္ရန္- စုံစမ္းရန္- စာရင္းေပးသြင္းးရန္
ကိုသန္းေဆြ။ ၀၉၀ ၄၉၆၄ ၉၇၁၈ ကိုေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္စိုး။ ၀၉၀ ၆၀၃၁ ၄၈၉၄ ကိုမိုင္ေက်ာ္ဦး။ ၀၉၀ ၉၈၃၁ ၇၁၉၂၊ကိုေဇာ္မင္းခိုင္။ ၀၉၀ ၉၂၀၀၃၈၃၁ ကိုကိုေအာင္။ ၀၉၀ ၁၅၀၆ ၂၈၉၃ ကိုဘုန္းလိႈင္။ ၀၉၀ ၅၃၁၈ ၅၀၅၄ ၊ ကိုျမင့္ေဆြ။ ၀၈၀ ၄၀၀၅ ၇၀၉၈ ကိုေမာင္ေမာင္ဦး။ ၀၉၀ ၆၇၉၈ ၀၁၃၇ ကိုဘုန္းျမင့္ထြန္း။ ၀၉၀ ၄၂၂၁ ၁၉၈၈ ၊ကိုရဲျငိမ္း။ ၀၈၀ ၅၀၇၀ ၀၀၈၀ ကိုလွေအးေမာင္။ ၀၉၀ ၂၅၂၅ ၁၉၆၆ ကိုလိႈင္ေအး။ ၀၉၀ ၂၂၅၈ ၃၃၀၇ ၊ကိုျမတ္သူ ၀၈၀ ၃၄၂၄ ၂၇၅၉
Posted by PNSjapan at 9:11 AM
Labels: ႏႈိးေဆာ္ျခင္း
Monday, April 18, 2011
က်ေနာ္တို႔ ႏိုင္ငံသားအားလုံးရဲ့ မြန္ျမတ္တဲ့ ေစတနာ အလွဴလိုက္ပါ လုပ္အားေပး လိုသူမ်ား ဆက္သြယ္ စာရင္းေပးၾကပါရန္ ဖိတ္ေခၚအပ္ပါသည္၊
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Japan nuke plant dumps radioactive water into sea
AP – A Buddhist monk, offering prayer, walks through the area destroyed by a tsunami in Yamada, Iwate prefecture, … By MARI YAMAGUCHI and YURI KAGEYAMA, Associated Press Mari Yamaguchi And Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press – 18 mins ago
TOKYO – Workers began pumping more than 3 million gallons of contaminated water from Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean on Monday, freeing storage space for even more highly radioactive water that has hampered efforts to stabilize the reactors.
It will take about two days to pump most of the less-radioactive water out of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, whose cooling systems were knocked out by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
Radioactivity is quickly diluted in the ocean, and government officials said the dump should not affect the safety of seafood in the area.
Since the disaster, water with different levels of radioactivity has been pooling throughout the plant. People who live within 12 miles (20 kilometers) have been evacuated and have not been allowed to return.
The pooling water has damaged systems and the radiation hazard has prevented workers from getting close enough to power up cooling systems needed to stabilize dangerously vulnerable fuel rods.
On Saturday, they discovered that some radioactive water was pouring into the ocean.
The less-radioactive water that officials are purposely dumping into the sea is up to 500 times the legal limit for radiation.
"We think releasing water with low levels of radiation is preferable to allowing water with high levels of radiation to be released into the environment," said Junichi Matsumoto, an official with plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Workers need to get rid of the highly radioactive water, but first they need somewhere safe to put it. Much of the less-radioactive water being dumped into the sea is from the tsunami and had accumulated in a nuclear waste storage building.
The building is not meant to hold water, but it's also not leaking, so engineers decided to empty it so they can pump in the more-radioactive water. The rest of the water going into the sea is coming from a trench beneath two of the plant's six reactors.
More water keeps pooling because TEPCO has been forced to rely on makeshift methods of bringing down temperatures and pressure by pumping water into the reactors and allowing it to gush out wherever it can. It is a messy process, but it is preventing a full meltdown of the fuel rods that would release even more radioactivity into the environment.
"We must keep putting water into the reactors to cool to prevent further fuel damage, even though we know that there is a side effect, which is the leakage," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency. "We want to get rid of the stagnant water and decontaminate the place so that we can return to our primary task to restore the sustainable cooling capacity as quickly as possible."
Engineers have been using unusual methods to try to stop the more highly radioactive water leaking into the sea.
They thought it was coming from a crack in a maintenance pit they discovered Saturday, but an attempt to seal the crack with concrete failed, and clogging it with a special polymer mixed with sawdust and shredded newspapers didn't work, either.
They dumped milky white bath salts into the system around the pit Monday to try to figure out the source of the leak, but it never splashed out into the ocean.
In the meantime, workers plan to install screens made of polyester fabric to try to stop some of the contamination in the ocean from spreading.
Although the government eventually authorized the dumping of the less-radioactive water, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said officials were growing concerned about the sheer volume of radioactive materials spilling into the Pacific. It is not clear how much water has leaked in addition to what is being dumped purposely.
"Even if they say the contamination will be diluted in the ocean, the longer this continues, the more radioactive particles will be released and the greater the impact on the ocean," Edano said. "We are strongly urging TEPCO that they have to take immediate action to deal with this."
Experts said Monday that at this point, they don't expect the discharges to pose widespread danger to sea animals or people who might eat them.
"It's a very large ocean" with considerable powers of dilution, noted William Burnett of Florida State University.
Very close to the nuclear plant — less than half a mile (800 meters) or so — sea creatures might be in danger of problems like genetic mutations if the dumping goes on a long time, he said. But there shouldn't be any serious hazard farther away "unless this escalates into something much, much larger than it has so far," he said.
Also Monday, a spokesman for the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom, Sergei Novikov, told reporters that Japan has requested Russia send it a vessel used to decommission nuclear submarines, and that Moscow was considering the request.
"If the Japanese side arranges answers to the questions we sent them, it can be transferred ... within a very short period," Novikov said, according to a statement on Rosatom's website. The nature of the questions wasn't specified.
Novikov said the vessel, called the Landysh, was built with Japanese funds under the "Global Partnership" program to help dispose of liquid nuclear waste from decommissioned submarines.
The crisis has unfolded as Japan deals with the aftermath of twin natural disasters that devastated much of its northeastern coast. Up to 25,000 people are believed to have died and tens of thousands lost their homes.
The situation at the Fukushima plant has brought protests in Japan and raised questions around the world about the safety of nuclear power. Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told delegates at a nuclear safety conference Monday that the industry cannot afford to ignore these concerns.
"We cannot take a business-as-usual approach," Amano said.
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, who was in Tokyo this week to meet with TEPCO's chairman, defended the industry when asked by a reporter if the Fukushima incident would cause global concern about nuclear safety.
"This is an industry that's had an extremely safe track record for more than 40 years," Immelt said. "We have had more than 1,000 engineers working around the clock since the incident began and we will continue in the short, medium and long term working with TEPCO due to this horrific natural disaster."
All of the plant's reactors were designed by GE, and Immelt offered assistance in dealing with the electricity shortage brought on by damage to the Fukushima Dai-ichi facility and other power plants. Japan is expecting a shortfall of at least 10 million kilowatts in summer, and Immelt said gas turbines with both short- and long-term capabilities are on their way from the U.S.
___
Associated Press writers Ryan Nakashima and Noriko Kitano in Tokyo and Jim Heintz in Moscow and science writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.
Democratic Party of Japan is standing up well to the tragic earthquake and tsunami
Democratic Party of Japan is standing up well to the tragic earthquake and tsunami
Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is standing up well to the tragic earthquake and tsunami and the Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, is gaining in stature. Despite this, the media in Japan is often too critical and people should remember the shortcomings of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) during the Kobe earthquake which struck in 1995.
Factionalism is a huge problem in Japan and this applies to the main political parties and back stabbing, power constraints, no focused hierarchy which is united, and other factors, is hindering the political system in Japan.
Therefore, prime ministers resign quickly and factions once more start to focus on their respective power concentrations. This leads to a cycle of “nothingness” and shortsightedness and it is refreshing to hear Naoto Kan stating that he will serve out his term and not resign.
Irrespective if people support the current DPJ led government or if they are loyal to the LDP or other minor political parties; it is instrumental for the political system to have stability and people in Japan and the media need to take the rough with the smooth.
Karel van Wolferen, the author of The Enigma of Japanese Power, states “Amid the horrifying news from Japan, the establishment of new standards of political leadership there is easy to miss – in part because the Japanese media follow old habits of automatically criticizing how officials are dealing with the calamity, and many foreign reporters who lack perspective simply copy that critical tone. But, compared to the aftermath of the catastrophic Kobe earthquake of 1995, when the authorities appeared to wash their hands of the victims’ miseries, the difference could hardly be greater.”
This is a fair point and the current crisis in Japan is much more devastating than Kobe in terms of the numbers of people killed, the fact that the 2011 earthquake also led to a destructive and deadly tsunami and added to this you have the nuclear factor and the fear of radiation.
This is not to understate the Kobe earthquake because this earthquake also killed many people and over 6,000 people died and this earthquake was truly devastating.
However, the earthquake which struck on March 11, 2011, is the first earthquake in the world to compose of an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis. Therefore, the DPJ, which is beset with factionalism, just like the LDP, is doing a good job given the circumstances.
Karel van Wolferen, referring to the Kobe earthquake, states that “This time, Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) government is making an all-out effort, with unprecedented intensive involvement of his Cabinet and newly formed specialized task forces. The prime minister himself is regularly televised with relevant officials wearing the work fatigues common among Japanese engineers.”
The Kobe earthquake in 1995 epitomized the aloofness of the LDP and appeared to be based on consensus thinking and bureaucratic mindsets which were ill prepared to act promptly. Also, the earthquake appeared to be based on stratification because according to Karel van Wolferen many people were left to look after themselves because the main priority was to focus on people who “belonged to corporations or religious groups.”
The DPJ ended the monopoly of rule under the LDP and for bureaucratic mandarins the consensus faced a new approach because the philosophy of the DPJ is that elected officials should rule and be made accountable for their actions.
Since the DPJ took power it is clear that career officials, the judiciary, and all the mechanisms under the tight bureaucratic ship have faced power concentration issues and it is not easy for the DPJ to alter the status quo and mechanisms of power in Japan.
The American government under President Obama undermined the first DPJ leader, Yukio Hatoyama, because the Obama administration appears to look down on Japan and instead of a genuine discussion about Okinawa; it was a case of dictate and enforcing an American objective and ultimately this led to the resignation of Yukio Hatoyama.
This was an auspicious start for the new DPJ government and added to this initial setback the Ichiro Ozawa “shadow” continues to linger and he is not helping the cause of the Naoto Kan government.
Karel van Wolferen also lambasts the media in Japan because he states that “Japan’s main newspapers have mostly backed the status quo as well. Indeed, they now appear to have forgotten their role in hampering the DPJ’s effort to create an effective political coordinating body for the country. A half-century of reporting on internal LDP rivalries unrelated to actual policy has turned Japan’s reporters into the world’s greatest connoisseurs of political factionalism. It has also left them almost incapable of recognizing actual policy initiatives when they see them.”
However, despite everything the DPJ is focused under Naoto Kan and the government is being very transparent and daily briefings can be seen on television. It is obvious that some mistakes will be made during the current crisis because all governments would struggle under such an enormous crisis.
Despite this, the Kan government is thinking on its feet and the government is part of the people and if we think about the Kobe earthquake; then clearly the LDP government at the time was aloof and rigid.
The future of the current Kan administration is still uncertain because of factional politics in Japan, the Ozawa “shadow,” major economic issues which have been created by the LDP, and power concentration mechanisms are still potent within the body politic of Japan.
Yet the current leader of Japan is holding up well and decisions are being made promptly and transparency is part and parcel of the Kan administration.
leejay@moderntokyotimes.com
http://www.moderntokyotimes.com
700 fishermen missing in Myanmar after storms
ShareretweetEmailPrint– Mon Apr 4, 6:12 am ET
YANGON, Myanmar – Nearly 700 fishermen from Myanmar are missing after a three-day burst of unseasonable storms that ripped apart rickety fishing boats in the Andaman Sea, news reports said Monday.
Rescued fishermen gave harrowing accounts. Some told local media they held on for days to broken bamboo rafts before being rescued by offshore oil companies, Thai fishing boats or Myanmar naval boats.
The Weekly Eleven news journal reported that 15,583 fisherman were rescued after the March 14-17 storms whipped up 70 mph (112 kph) winds, battering fishing rafts and trawlers, and sweeping thousands of fisherman into the open seas. It said 682 fisherman were missing.
The storms hit ahead of the typical rainy period and came during the shrimp fishing season, when thousands of fisherman ply the waters on bamboo rafts.
Authorities in the tightly ruled country tend to not immediately report the effects of natural disasters and have been criticized in the past for being slow to send help and humanitarian aid.
The Myanmar government has not yet announced an official death toll. The Weekly Eleven journal said three people died, while another weekly, The Voice, reported over the weekend that 14 fishermen had died in the storms. The actual number is expected to be higher.
The storms hit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, which was devastated by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. The cyclone left 130,000 people dead.
"At least during Nargis we had enough time, because there was a light drizzle before the strong winds," fisherman Kyaw Lwin, 42, told The Voice news weekly. "But this time, in the middle of summer, it happened so abruptly we had no time."
He said he was rescued by a Thai fishing boat after drifting at sea for three days.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
A lesson from Japan: Be prepared for earthquakes
ShareretweetEmailPrint Play Video Earthquakes Video:Tokyo hit by toilet-paper, milk, bread shortages AFP Play Video Earthquakes Video:A Mother's Nightmare in Japan FOX News Play Video Earthquakes Video:Japan Self-Defense Forces look for tsunami dead AFP By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid, Ap Science Writer – 7 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Americans may have been lulled into a false sense of security because it's been so long since the country felt a truly devastating earthquake, but major temblors can and will occur here, the National Research Council warned Wednesday.
The March 11 quake and tsunami that struck Japan illustrate the sort of devastation that can occur even in a well-prepared nation, the council said in a new study.
The council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, urged a 20-year program for increasing U.S. ability to withstand and recover from a major quake.
"The United States will certainly be subject to damaging earthquakes in the future, and some of those earthquakes will occur in highly populated and vulnerable areas," the report warned.
Moderate earthquakes are not unusual in parts of the United States, but the last "great" earthquake to strike the United States shook Alaska in 1964. Many people also are aware of the devastating quake and fire that affected San Francisco in 1906.
"Just as Hurricane Katrina tragically demonstrated" for hurricanes, the report noted, "coping with moderate earthquakes is not a reliable indicator of preparedness for a major earthquake in a populated area."
Other major quakes have occurred in the United States include California in 1857; the Memphis, Tenn.-St Louis area in 1811-12; South Carolina in 1886; and Massachusetts in 1755.
Recommendations in the new report include:
• Install the remaining 75 percent of the Advanced National Seismic System to provide magnitude and location alerts within a few minutes after an earthquake.
• Complete coverage of national and urban seismic hazard maps to identify at-risk areas.
• Develop and implement earthquake forecasting to provide communities with information on how seismic hazards change with time.
• Work to combine Earth science, engineering and social science information so communities can visualize earthquake and tsunami impacts and find ways to reduce potential effects.
• Plan emergency response and recovery activities to improve preparedness.
• Establish a network to measure, monitor and model the disaster vulnerability and resilience of communities.
• Develop new techniques for evaluating and retrofitting existing buildings to better withstand earthquakes.
The report was commissioned by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the lead agency in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Latest find sounds scary but risk is limited
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
ANALYSIS
Latest find sounds scary but risk is limited
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer
Revelations that low amounts of plutonium, a component of nuclear bombs, were detected in soil near the Fukushima No. 1 plant sent shock waves across the nation Tuesday.
But experts say despite plutonium's dangers and the mounting fears, there is little risk of the deadly radioactive particles spreading to a wider area.
The plutonium leak "will have no impact on the surrounding residential areas," Hironobu Unesaki, a professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, told The Japan Times. The nuclear engineering expert added the continued dispersal of radioactive iodine and cesium is much more worrisome than the plutonium leaks.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced the plutonium find late Monday during a hastily arranged news conference. Officials said they found plutonium-238, -239 and -240 during a study conducted a week ago in and around the power plant.
A few hundred grams of soil were taken from five locations between 500 meters and 1 km from reactors No. 1 and No. 2, they said. Although traces of plutonium were found, Tepco stressed the contamination levels pose no health hazard.
Detected so far are levels of radioactive decay ranging between 0.18 and 0.54 becquerel per kilogram of soil — about the same amount observed in Japan after the nuclear tests carried out in the Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s.
"This does not pose any (threat) to human health," an official of the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency in Tokyo said Monday. But he also acknowledged that because plutonium is produced within the central parts of reactors, the five levels of the containment mechanism — designed to be airtight — have been breached since the tsunami knocked out the power plant's electricity supply.
Tepco officials claim the plutonium leak is small, but people were still alarmed.
This is because plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, unlike the eight days for iodine-131 and 30 years for cesium-137, the two major radioactive substances that have contaminated vegetables and tap water as far away as Tokyo.
In addition to the long-lasting risks plutonium poses, the radioactivity it emits is in alpha particles, compared with the beta particles from iodine-131. Alpha particles are known to pose a greater risk to health.
For example, in data compiled by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, 21 mg of potassium cyanide is considered a lethal dose to an average male weighing 70 kg. When it comes to plutonium, 13 mg is enough to kill.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission explains on its website that if one drinks or eats plutonium oxide, most of it will pass through without the body absorbing it. But if inhaled, usually between 20 and 60 percent is retained in the lungs. Plutonium entering from an open wound may also move directly into body parts and organs, the commission said.
Even Tepco is aware of the dangers and talked of the hazards related to plutonium in its 2010 nuclear power pamphlet, noting the substance "can cause cancer once retained in liver and bones."
But one crucial characteristic limiting the spread of plutonium is that it weighs 20 times more than water and 2.5 times more than iron.
Based on such data, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano assured reporters at a news conference Tuesday that plutonium will not become airborne and therefore spread to a wider region.
While Kyoto University's Unesaki said the area found to have traces of plutonium will require appropriate management, he agreed that the heavyweight particles will not spread over a wide area.
"Even in the case of Chernobyl, in which traces of iodine and cesium were found thousands of kilometers away and all over Europe, plutonium was found only within a radius of 30 km from the nuclear power plant," Unesaki explained.
The spread of plutonium at Chernobyl was due in part to the reactors' use of solid graphite as neutron moderators, which started a ferocious fire and a strong updraft. The reactors in Fukushima use light-water as moderators.
For such reasons, even if the reactors in Fukushima were to experience a hydrogen explosion that completely obliterates all safety measures — which is impossible from an engineering point of view, according to Unesaki — the spread of iodine and cesium will do much more damage than plutonium.
So far all parties, including Tepco, the government and the nuclear safety agency, have been unable to find the plutonium leak. Possibilities include reactors No. 1, 2 and 3, which were in operation when the earthquake hit, and any of the fuel rod pools adjacent to all six reactors.
The leak may also have come from reactor No. 3, which uses MOX fuel, which is known to contain weapons-grade plutonium. Thirty-two of the 548 fuel elements in reactor No. 3 use the mixed plutonium and uranium oxide fuel, according to Tepco.
Some people expressed strong concern over using such highly toxic fuel at the aging Fukushima plant. But Tepco opted to go forward, concluding it was a more efficient way of using limited resources. Tepco began producing energy from MOX fuel last October.
But Kyoto University's Unesaki advised that instead of fearing an unlikely catastrophe, Tepco and others should keep their focus on the task at hand.
"It's hard to believe that conditions of the nuclear reactors will abruptly deteriorate at this point. Instead of fearing an explosive outbreak of radioactive particles, there should be more focus on not allowing the ongoing leaks to continue for an extended period of time," he said.
Japan's crisis leadership
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN
AMSTERDAM — Amid the horrifying news from Japan, the establishment of new standards of political leadership there is easy to miss — in part because the Japanese media follow old habits of automatically criticizing how officials are dealing with the calamity, and many foreign reporters who lack perspective simply copy that critical tone. But compared to the aftermath of the catastrophic Kobe earthquake of 1995, when the authorities appeared to wash their hands of the victims' miseries, the difference could hardly be greater.
This time, Prime Minister Naoto Kan's Democratic Party of Japan government is making an all-out effort, with unprecedented intensive involvement of his Cabinet and newly formed specialized task forces. The prime minister himself is regularly televised with relevant officials wearing the work fatigues common among Japanese engineers.
In 1995, Kobe citizens extricated from the rubble were looked after if they belonged to corporations or religious groups. Those who did not were expected to fend mostly for themselves. This reflected a 'feudal' like corporatist approach, in which the direct relationship between the citizen and the state played no role. This widely condemned governmental neglect of the Kobe earthquake victims was among the major sources of public indignation that helped popularize the reform movement from which Kan emerged.
Unfortunately, today's Japanese media are overlooking that historical context. For example, the newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun recently lamented the shortcomings of the Kan government's response, emphasizing the poor lines of command running from the Cabinet to officials carrying out rescue and supply operations. But it failed to point out that the feebleness of such coordination, linked to an absence of Cabinet-centered policymaking, was precisely the main weakness of Japan's political system that the founders of the DPJ set out to overcome.
When the DPJ came to power in September 2009 it ended half-a-century of de facto one-party rule by the Liberal Democratic Party. But even more significantly, its intentions addressed a cardinal question for Japan: Who should rule, bureaucratic mandarins or elected officials?
The LDP, formed in 1955, had not done much actual ruling after helping to coordinate postwar reconstruction, which extended without debate into an unofficial but very real national policy of, in principle, unlimited expansion of industrial capacity. Other possible priorities hardly ever entered political discussions.
The need for a political steering wheel in the hands of elected politicians was highlighted in 1993, when two major political figures bolted from the LDP with their followers. By doing so, they catalyzed the reformist political movement that resulted in the DPJ, the first credible opposition party that — unlike the Socialists who engaged in mere ritualistic opposition — was prepared to win elections and actually govern rather than merely maintain the facade of government that had become the norm under the LDP.
Lowering the prestige of the government right now is the fact that Kan has not shown any talent for turning himself into a TV personality who can project a grand image of leadership. But his government is dealing without question as best it can in the face of four simultaneous crises, its efforts encumbered by huge logistic problems that no post-World War II Japanese government has ever faced before.
The efforts of Kan's government are obviously hampered by a rigid and much fragmented bureaucratic infrastructure. The DPJ has had scant time to make up for what the LDP has long neglected. Its 17 months in power before the current catastrophe have been a saga of struggle with career officials in many parts of the bureaucracy, including the judiciary, fighting for the survival of the world they have always known. Other countries could learn much from the DPJ's attempt to alter a status quo of political arrangements that has had half a century to form and consolidate.
But it was the United States that first undermined the DPJ administration, by testing the new government's loyalty with an unfeasible plan — originally the brainchild of the George W. Bush-era U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld — to build a new base for the U.S. Marines stationed on Okinawa. The first DPJ prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, miscalculated in believing that a face-to-face meeting with the new American president to discuss long-term matters affecting East Asia could settle the issue. He was steadily rebuffed by the American government. As Hatoyama could not keep his promise to safeguard the interests of the Okinawan people, he followed up with a customary resignation.
Japan's main newspapers have mostly backed the status quo as well. Indeed, they now appear to have forgotten their role in hampering the DPJ's effort to create an effective political coordinating body for the country. A half-century of reporting on internal LDP rivalries unrelated to actual policy has turned Japan's reporters into the world's greatest connoisseurs of political factionalism. It has also left them almost incapable of recognizing actual policy initiatives when they see them.
The rest of the world, however, has marveled at the admirable, dignified manner in which ordinary Japanese are dealing with terrible adversity. I am repeatedly asked why there is no looting or signs of explosive anger. The term "stoicism" appears over and over in media coverage of Japan's calamity.
But, in my half-century of close acquaintance with Japanese life, I have never thought of the Japanese as stoic. Rather, the Japanese behave as they do because they are decent people. Being considerate, they do not burden each other by building themselves up as heroes in their own personal tragedies. They certainly deserve the better government that the DPJ is trying to give them.
Karel van Wolferen, author of "The Enigma of Japanese Power," is emeritus professor of comparative political and economic institutions at the University of Amsterdam. © 2011 Project Syndicate
Monday, March 28, 2011
Japan's crises spark wide alarm and some unlikely sympathizers
By ROGER PULVERS
The outpouring of goodwill toward Japanese people since the triple calamities of March 11's earthquake and tsunami and subsequent nuclear crises has overwhelmed the nation. There is generally so much indifference to — and criticism of — Japan in the West and parts of Asia, that the Japanese have been taken aback, pleasantly, by this goodwill.
The world has reacted in two ways — with sympathy and alarm.
The sympathy comes first. To see hundreds of thousands of innocent victims being traumatized by the death of loved ones and friends, and then watch them stoically endure further great hardship in evacuation centers, has moved people outside Japan to empathize with the plight of the Japanese.
The alarm arises in countries with nuclear power plants. Could this happen to us, their citizens wonder and worry? Of course, it is a natural human trait to relate to tragedy in terms of one's own life. We empathize most deeply with those who are like us.
Perhaps the biggest shift in sentiment has come in China. Although the usual anti-Japan blogs have called this tragedy "divine punishment." How, I wonder, would these racist and chauvinist Chinese people have responded to foreigners saying the same thing of the Great Tangshan Earthquake, in which approximately 250,000 people perished? Tragedy is tragedy, irrespective of the politics, ideology or religion of the victims.
But one story emerging from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami has touched the hearts of the Chinese public. Hopefully it will act as a turnaround mechanism in a country where public expressions of positive sentiment toward the Japanese, especially in schools and the media, have been few and far between.
The incident occurred in Onagawa, a fishing town in Miyagi Prefecture. That part of the coastline is called a ria, which is a drowned river system caused by either sea level having risen or the land having sunk. Rias are notoriously subject to horrendous flooding when struck by a tsunami.
The silver salmon and mackerel pike of Onagawa-cho are renowned in Japan; and the fishermen of the district also harvest scallops, abalone, sea squirt and oysters.
Sato Suisan is an established Onagawa firm that processes sea urchin for sale at Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market. It just so happens that a group of 20 young Chinese women were resident trainees at Sato Suisan on March 11. When the earthquake struck, they took refuge near their dormitory. Managing director Mitsuru Sato immediately realized that these young women were in great danger. He ran to them and rushed them up the hill to the shrine, then returned to the dormitory to make sure that no one was left behind. Some of the young women watched from the hill as Sato was swallowed up by the incoming tsunami.
Sometimes a single kind and selfless act can move an entire nation; and the Chinese media has run the story of Mr. Sato's altruism with these words that recognize a universal truth: "Love knows no national boundaries."
Another nation that has not been particularly well disposed toward Japan, particularly of late, is Russia. The Russians are wont to interpret relations with all neighboring countries almost solely in a political context, and Japan is no exception. Recent posturing over the four disputed islands north of Hokkaido attests to this.
Following the earthquake, a call went out to Muscovites on Twitter to demonstrate sympathy for the Japanese people in front of the Japanese embassy in the Russian capital. This is a place, I might add, that has often seen Russians burning the Japanese national flag and hurling eggs.
On the evening of March 19, however, answering the call, a group of mostly young people gathered in front of the embassy. They placed flowers, stuffed toys and origami cranes against the wall. They lit candles and left messages, largely in English. One message that I saw on television said, "Pray for Japan." Above it was a picture of a boy sitting cross-legged with his hands clasped together.
Workers in the embassy put out messages of their own. One of them, in Russian, read: "Thanks to your support we are able to endure. A million thanks to you!"
Such spontaneous outpourings of sympathy and affection toward Japan as demonstrated by those young people are rare in Russia.
As for the alarm, countries around the world with existing nuclear facilities or plans for new ones have stood up and taken notice. The Russians, with April 1986's unprecedented nuclear disaster at Chernobyl behind them — a disaster that spread radioactive particles for thousands of kilometers and resulted in several thousand premature deaths — have given much space in all their media to the ongoing events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
"The majority of nuclear plants in Russia are located in the European part of the country," said Bulat Nigmatullin, a former minister of atomic energy, to the leading newspaper Argumenty i Fakty. "The standards under which all our plants have been built enable them to withstand strong earthquakes. After the Chernobyl incident, our system of building nuclear plants became one of the best in the world. We are prepared for natural cataclysms."
Such assurances to the native population are common. How true they are remains to be seen.
Russian experts had predicted a disaster in a Japanese nuclear facility. Aleksandr Melik-Yolchyan, a Russian scientist based in Belgium, warned earlier this year of a catastrophe in Japan, adding, "When it will occur is a rhetorical question."
By and large, countries with nuclear power plants do not have to worry about a tsunami striking their facilities, even though — as in China and the United States in particular— earthquakes may pose a significant danger. The Fukushima plant would no doubt have been damaged by the earthquake alone; but all evidence suggests that the backup generators supplying electricity to the pumps would not have failed if it hadn't been for inundation from the tsunami.
In that sense, the planning of that facility was entirely lax. The backup system should have been located in a place invulnerable to a tsunami.
We humans are a bizarre species. We invent the technology to bomb each other with pinpoint accuracy from thousands of kilometers away, but we can't seem to get water — with the ocean a stone's throw away — into a building.
A frenzy of hatred can be fomented in a matter of days, so vicious that we can talk about "obliterating" an entire nation to punish it for its presumably wicked leaders; but it can take decades for us to realize that even those who once perpetrated evil upon us did it because they were misled and temporarily crazed.
We maintain our rage in the form of self-righteous superiority, often perpetrating similar aggression on others in its name.
Such a holocaust as that which began in Japan on March 11 may have the effect of showing those in the world not necessarily favourably disposed toward the Japanese people that they, and their nation, deserve sympathy, support and respect.
It is to that sentiment that I want to dedicate the words: "Never forget!"
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Kan breaks silence, vows to help locals rebuild lives
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer
Addressing the public for the first time in a week, Prime Minister Naoto Kan vowed Friday evening to do everything in his power to prevent the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant from escalating.
"The current situation at the Fukushima No. 1 plant is unpredictable and we are trying to prevent it from deteriorating," Kan told a news conference at the Prime Minister's Official Residence. "I believe we need to continue dealing with each problem with a strong sense of urgency."
Friday marked two weeks since the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami struck the Tohoku region, claiming the lives of more than 10,000 people and leaving over 17,000 unaccounted for. The disaster also sparked a nuclear crisis after tsunami wrecked four reactors at the Fukushima plant, causing people to increasingly fear the health effects from radiation leaking from the plant.
Kan has basically shunned the media during his handling of the crisis, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano has instead been giving daily briefings on the nuclear emergency and Tohoku disaster response.
During the news conference, Kan stressed the need to help Tohoku residents rebuild their lives, including in the areas of housing, medical treatment, education and jobs in the fishing and farming industries.
"From now on, we need to begin preparing for a full-scale reconstruction . . . of the region, as well as people's lives," Kan said.
"We shall not burden individuals or each household with the damages of the disaster — society and Japan as a whole will share the burden equally."
Ever since the March 11 disaster, confusion and fear has spread through foreign communities in Japan as embassies temporarily closed or relocated to the Kansai region, and helped their citizens' efforts to flee Tokyo.
But Kan said: "I think every country has their own way of thinking and is setting their own standards. We have been providing information with transparency to all nations and international organizations."
Saturday, March 26, 2011
It's in the water, food, soil: But what are the risks?
Friday, March 25, 2011
Q&A
It's in the water, food, soil: But what are the risks?
By MIZUHO AOKI and JUN HONGO
Staff writers
Radioactive materials from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant have been spreading, contaminating milk, vegetables, water and soil in Fukushima and neighboring prefectures.
On Wednesday, 210 becquerels of iodine-131 per liter of water, more than double the government-set safety level of 100 for infants, were detected in water at a purification plant in Tokyo, and 163,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per kg were detected in soil in Fukushima.
Following are questions and answers about the effects of radioactive materials, including iodine-131 and cesium-137, that have been detected in food, water and soil.
How does iodine-131 affect human health?
Once ingested, about 30 percent of iodine-131 concentrates in the thyroid gland, increasing the risk of thyroid cancer, according to Kunikazu Noguchi, a lecturer specializing in radiation safety at Nihon University School of Dentistry.
"The thyroid gland collects iodine to produce hormones. So once a body takes in iodine, the organ collects it, resulting in high concentrations of the radioactive iodine in the thyroid," explained Noguchi.
Iodine was blamed for cancer cases following the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Will that happen in Japan?
Apart from the difference in the amount of radiation leakage in the two cases, Japanese in general consume more foods rich in iodine, including fish and seaweed, than the people around Chernobyl. Some believe as a result the presence of more nonradioactive iodide in their thyroids will reduce the intake and accumulation of toxic iodine.
Iodine not accumulated in the thyroid tends to pass into the bloodstream and is expelled in urine, Noguchi said.
What about cesium-137?
Unlike iodine-131, radioactive cesium does not concentrate in a specific organ, experts say.
It spreads almost equally, but mostly in soft tissue, such as muscles, Noguchi said. But people need to bear in mind that the half-life of cesium-137 is much longer than iodine-131.
What is a half-life?
A half-life is the time it takes for the radioactivity of a specific substance to decrease by half. Iodine-131's half-life is about eight days, while the half-life of cesium-137 is about 30 years.
After 16 days, iodine-131 has decayed to about a quarter of its original level. Within about 90 days, it is effectively harmless, according to Noguchi.
Cesium-137, on the other hand, sticks around for about 300 years, he said.
Because soil contaminated with cesium-137 continues to emit radiation for hundreds of years, it's important for the government to analyze the soil around the power plant and inform the public of the levels, Noguchi said.
Is there any way to remove radioactive iodine and cesium from foods?
Although complete removal is difficult, rinsing food with water removes radioactive substances from the surface.
"Think of it like a stain. It's better to use boiling water rather than just water. And it's even better if you use detergent, although it's not an option," Noguchi said.
Is it safe to shower or wash your hands with the contaminated water detected in Tokyo and Fukushima?
There is no problem using the water to shower or for other daily uses, such as laundry, according to the health ministry.
But it's best to avoid soaking open wounds in the water because radiation can be more easily absorbed into the body through cuts, according to Noguchi.
Can iodine-131 be removed from water and air?
At its water purification plants, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has opted to use activated carbon, which reacts with iodine-131 and, to an extent, absorbs it.
By the same token, household water purifiers that use activated carbon can filter out some radioactive iodine.
Boiling tap water can also be somewhat effective, a team of radiology experts at the University of Tokyo said via Twitter after the news of the contamination broke.
It's harder to remove iodine from the air, according to a spokesman for Shinwa Corp., which provides air filters to nuclear power plants. Their machines use special carbon sheets infused with iodide to extract radioactive iodine from the air.
Purchasing one for home use is not practical because each machine weighs a couple of tons and costs "probably about the price of the house itself," the spokesman said.
The spokesman also said Tokyo Electric Power Co. has asked Shinwa to keep some in stock as they may be needed.
Does iodine-131 have any medical uses?
According to the U.S. Environment Protection Agency, because radioactive iodine is taken up by the thyroid so readily, it can in some cases be given to patients with thyroid problems to aid doctors in making a diagnosis.
How can I know if I've been exposed to iodine-131?
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, some major medical centers are equipped to test for exposure.
But the Japan Radiological Society says those residing far from the Fukushima power plant don't need to take the test since even people evacuated from the vicinity haven't shown signs of serious exposure.
Why are children more vulnerable to iodine-131?
Preschoolers are about two to three times more likely to be affected by exposure to radiation than adults, according to the Japan Radiological Society.
This is because children's thyroids are smaller, explained Noguchi of Nihon University. A Japanese adult's thyroid weighs on average about 18 grams, whereas an infant's is about 1.8 grams, and a 1- or 2-year-old's is about 2.6 grams, he said.
Experts also point out that cell division is more active in children than adults.
But the special steps taken with children are only precautionary "just as every child needs extra care regarding any other issue," the society said.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Japanese firemen battle invisible danger
ABC News
TOKYO (Reuters) – The most difficult thing in a nuclear crisis, the Tokyo firefighter said, was the inability to sense where the danger was.
The Tokyo Fire Department's elite rescue team was among those called in to cool down a nuclear plant north of the capital that was badly damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami and was leaking radiation.
"We usually detect dangers, like fire and smoke, with our eyes, ears and nose, and eliminate some of them, if not all," said Yukio Takayama, a leader of the team.
"At our latest site, we couldn't sense the dangers. It can be very scary if you cannot eliminate dangers for yourselves. As long as you work on the scene, you are constantly in danger, and a sense of fear is with you all the time ... But someone had to do this and that someone was us."
[Related: What is acute radiation syndrome?]
Takayama said he and his men had been tested for radiation exposure after they installed equipment and left the plant and they were all fine.
After the disaster knocked out cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power plant in Fukushima, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, the government scrambled to send in military and firefighters to hose down the reactors and spent fuel pools.
The magnitude 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunami devastated northeastern Japan and left more than 27,000 people dead or missing.
Radiation was released into the air as the plant operator was forced to vent nuclear containment vessels to reduce high pressure building up inside.
Underlining the risk the damaged nuclear plant poses, three Tokyo Electric employees were injured by radiation on Thursday, and two were taken to hospital with burns, Japan's nuclear safety agency said.
[Related: What is radioactive iodine poisoning?]
"There were no people for us to help on the site. There were no flames to douse. But I believe having given relief to the Japanese people through our activities was a form of a rescue operation," said Takayama, a 54-year-old father of two daughters and a son.
The plant was littered with rubble after a series of explosions, making running water hoses from the nearby coast to the reactor No.3, their target, difficult and time-consuming.
Takayama said he did not know whether the industry minister had threatened to punish rescue workers if they refused to participate in the operation, as reported by some media.
But he added that a final decision in a life-threatening situation like at the Fukushima plant should be left to a leader on the scene.
"We work to fulfill the duties that are given to us. But part of the job of a leader on the scene is to discern what's doable from undoable. You can't give instructions without knowing what's going on the ground."
"As a squad leader I can never tell my men to go in there and die."
(Additional reporting by Hyun Oh; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Nuclear plant shadows future of neighboring towns
TOKYO/HONG KONG (Reuters) –
Millions of Tokyoites are worried about radiation in tap water or in the air, but the thousands of people living in the shadow of Japan's stricken nuclear plant have another fear: it may force them to abandon their homes for years, if not forever.
More than 70,000 people have already been evacuated from an area within 20 km (12 miles) of the plant, and another 130,000 are within a zone extending a further 10 km (6 miles) in which residents are recommended to stay indoors. They too could be forced to leave their homes if the evacuation is extended due to worsening radiation levels.
Nobody in government has yet touched on the issue directly, but given growing worries about soil contamination in the largely rural area and bans on shipping and sales of local milk and vegetables, many residents fear the worst.
"Nobody wants to say it out loud, but I think that in their hearts everybody worries that they won't be able to go home for years at least," said Yoichi Azuma, principal of Koriyama Commercial High School, not far west of the 30-km (18-mile) zone, whose gymnasium has been turned into an evacuation center.
"People here have suffered three disasters: the quake, the tsunami and the invisible danger of radiation, which is a man-made disaster. We feel a lot of anger about the last one."
Though some experts say the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, will likely turn out to be less serious than the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the radioactive substances being emitted are the same -- iodine 131, caesium-134 and caesium-137.
The radioactivity in iodine-131 fully disintegrates in 80 days, but it can find its way rapidly into people through the air and through milk and leafy vegetables, lodging in the thyroid gland, where it can cause DNA damage and raise the risk of cancer, particularly in young children.
Caesium is more troubling as it remains radioactive for over 200 years, threatening people with longer-term exposure through food and from external exposure as it settles on the ground.
"The length of time these areas will remain contaminated depends on the radionuclide composition," said Jim Smith, Reader in Environmental Physics at the University of Portsmouth in southern England.
"If a significant proportion is radiocaesium, food bans and, potentially, evacuation may be long-term."
FOOD CONTAMINATION
Food contamination levels in Fukushima, which is known for its peaches, nashi Japanese pears, apples and strawberries as well as milk and vegetables, have risen sharply over the past week, opening up the logical option of extending the exclusion zone.
The United States as early as last week said its citizens should stay out of a broader 50 mile zone, but the Japanese government has not spoken of extension -- a view backed by experts such as Kenji Kamiya, director of the Institute for Radiation Biology and Medicine at Hiroshima University.
"We must consider the impact of radiation on human health, but at this point I think the government's decision is correct given the radiation levels," he said.
A Fukushima prefectural official said there are no firm numbers on how many people remain within the 20-30 km radius but added that many appear to have already left voluntarily, whether from worry or just the growing difficulty of life within an area running out of food and other goods. Media reports say some truck drivers, wary of radiation, refuse to enter the zone.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano touched on this on Thursday, noting that "social needs" might have to be dealt with over the longer term.
"But we must be careful not to send the wrong message that danger is getting bigger if we were to issue such a direction (to evacuate)," he said.
In addition, experts said, the practical issues are huge.
"There is a limit to extend the zone because Japan is an island and one thing we have to face is we have to provide shelter, prepare enough housing and schools for these people," said Lam Ching-wan, a chemical pathologist at the University of Hong Kong and member of the American Board on Toxicology.
Some Fukushima towns and cities have laid on buses for citizens who want to leave, in some cases to nearby prefectures.
At present, Azuma's school hosts 150 people ranging in age from infants to 97 years old. Some had homes destroyed by the tsunami, but many were fleeing the radiation.
Some have chronic health issues, such as kidney problems requiring dialysis, and there are several pregnant women. There are enough blankets to go round, and enough food -- barely.
"People really want to go home, but since many of them grow things or are dairy farmers, they're really worried about what might happen and what the experts might say," Azuma said.
"Foreigners might be told to leave a wider area, but all we have is what we have here."
(Editing by John Chalmers and Michael Watson)
Japan faces its next chore: cleaning up
The legacy of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastline in 2005, gives an idea of both the immensity of the job and the environmental hazards Japan could face for years to come.
"In Katrina, you had debris that had seawater, sewage, chemicals, gasoline, oil, that was all mixed together in a toxic soup," said David McEntire, a disaster expert at the University of North Texas. "And you're going to have similar problems with the disaster in Japan."
Three years after Katrina, which spawned enough debris to cover Britain, the U.S. government said the mess is not even close to being cleaned up in the New Orleans area.
The mess looks endless in Japan, and hauling it away seems unimaginable. The cost? No one really knows, though the crisis is emerging as the world's most expensive natural disaster on record, with Japanese officials saying losses could total up to 25 trillion yen ($309 billion). The World Bank says reconstruction could take five years.
So there's nothing to do but start.
Mayumi Hatanaka began with the knee-high mud that had flooded into her little seafood restaurant in the small seaside city of Shiogama.
"It's been four days, and we've been working, working," she said, standing beneath a sign that promised food "Straight From The Fishery To You."
She and her daughter were scraping the muck down their driveway and into the street. The thick, dark goo looked almost volcanic. Workers hired by the city used a gargantuan truck-mounted vacuum, normally used for well-drilling, to hose it up. The noise of the pump and the sucking splutter of the hose nearly drowned out her voice, and she had to shout to be heard.
Simply carving out an aisle in the restaurant took three days, Hatanaka said, so she has no idea when she'll be able to reopen. "I think we'll never finish," she said, only briefly willing to set aside her shovel before getting back to work.
Much of the official cleanup effort so far has been to support rescue teams. Soldiers and city crews have cleared streets of debris so rescuers can get through, and some buildings have been pulled apart in search of survivors.
Now, with little chance left of finding anyone still alive, the concern is to avoid accidentally clearing away corpses with the debris.
Takashi Takayama is a city official in Higashimatsushima, a port town brutalized by the tsunami, leaving nearly 700 people dead. He said the city, where the Chokai Maru ship was thrown ashore, is still cleaning up — and footing the bill — from a major earthquake in 2003.
"I don't know how long it will take," he said. "The last time it was just parts of houses that were destroyed. Now it's the whole house. So I don't know how we'll do it."
With city workers desperately overworked, officials turned to a local association of construction companies to help. Those private contractors helped clear the roads and have started piling up debris in small hills, soon to be small mountains, on city land near the port.
Japan is a country where separating trash into its various components is almost sacrosanct: There are the burnables, the food items, the array of different recyclables. Takayama is already dreading the arguments when disaster-weary residents refuse to categorize their garbage properly.
"Sorting everything out will be the first challenge," he said.
A 2004 tsunami, which killed 230,000 people in 14 Asian and African countries, left thousands of cities and towns facing a task similar to Japan's today.
In Indonesia, the United Nations employed 400,000 workers to clear 1.3 million cubic yards (1 million cubic meters) of debris just from the urban areas of the hard-hit city of Banda Aceh.
Many of the countries affected by that disaster were less developed than Japan and lacked sophisticated waste disposal systems. In the initial cleanups, some burned debris in the open air, dumped it in makeshift landfills and used other environmentally risky methods, polluting wells, inland waterways and the nearby seas.
Japan will presumably use state-of-the-art incinerators and sanitary landfills, though technological prowess doesn't guarantee there won't be problems. In the United States, there were allegations of corruption by cleanup companies after Hurricane Katrina, including claims that hazardous debris was improperly dumped in landfills.
___
Associated Press writers Joji Sakurai in Tokyo and Denis Gray in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Tokyo shoppers clean store shelves of basic goods
AP – A worker prepares to load boxes containing bottles of water onto a truck to distribute to households … By SHINO YUASA and TOMOKO A. HOSAKA, Associated Press Shino Yuasa And Tomoko A. Hosaka, Associated Press – 1 hr 35 mins ago
TOKYO – Nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts, distribution problems and contamination fears prompted by a leaking, tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have left shelves stripped bare of some basic necessities in stores across Tokyo. Some people are even turning to the city's ubiquitous vending machines to find increasingly scarce bottles of water.
At the source of the anxiety — the overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear plant — there was yet another setback Thursday as two workers were injured when they stepped into radiation-contaminated water. The two were treated at a hospital.
Supplies of bottled water grew scarce in Tokyo, one day after city officials warned that the level of radioactive iodine in the tap water was more than twice what is considered safe for babies to drink. Tests conducted Thursday showed the levels in the city's water fell to acceptable limits for infants, but they were up in neighboring regions.
Frightened Tokyo residents hoping to stock up on bottled water and other goods flocked to shops across the city, some of which tried to prevent hoarding by imposing buying limits.
"The first thought was that I need to buy bottles of water," said Reiko Matsumoto, a real estate agent and mother of a 5-year-old, who rushed to a nearby store to stock up on supplies. "I also don't know whether I can let her take a bath."
The shortages were mainly limited to basic staples, such as rice, instant noodles and milk. Vegetables, meat and tofu, meanwhile, were readily available in most places.
Japan has been grappling with an avalanche of miseries that began with a massive, 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11. That triggered a violent tsunami, which ravaged the northeast coast, killed an estimated 18,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. The quake and tsunami also damaged the critical cooling system at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, which overheated and began spewing radiation into the environment.
Workers have been struggling to get the cooling system operating again, but their efforts have been hampered by explosions, fires and radiation scares. Lighting was restored Thursday to the central control room at Unit 1 for the first time since the quake and tsunami.
But two workers were hospitalized after stepping into contaminated water while laying electrical cables in one unit, nuclear and government officials said. The water seeped over the top of their boots and onto their legs, said Takashi Kurita, spokesman for plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co.
The two likely suffered "beta ray burns," Tokyo Electric said, citing doctors. They tested at radiation levels between 170 to 180 millisieverts, well below the maximum 250 millisieverts allowed for workers, said Fumio Matsuda, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Click image to see photos of quake, tsunami damage
Reuters/Kyodo
The men will be transferred to a radiology medical institute Friday, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, another nuclear agency spokesman. Their injuries were not life-threatening.
More than two dozen people have been injured trying to bring the plant, located 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, under control.
The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami continued to rise, meanwhile, with more than 9,800 bodies counted and more than 17,500 people listed as missing. Those tallies may overlap, but police from one of the hardest-hit prefectures, Miyagi, estimate that the deaths will top 15,000 in that region alone.
The crisis has stoked fears about the safety of Japan's food and water supply. Radiation has been found in raw milk, seawater and 11 kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower and turnips, grown in areas around the plant.
The U.S. and Australia halted imports of Japanese dairy and produce from the region, Hong Kong said it would require that Japan perform safety checks on meat, eggs and seafood, and Canada said it would upgrade controls on imports of Japanese food products. Singapore, too, has banned the sale of milk, produce, meat and seafood from areas near the plant.
Concerns also spread to Europe. In Iceland, officials said they measured trace amounts of radioactive iodine in the air but assured residents it was "less than a millionth" of levels found in Europe in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — the world's worst nuclear accident.
Radioactive iodine is short-lived, with a half-life of eight days — the length of time it takes for half of it to break down harmlessly. However, experts say infants are particularly vulnerable to radioactive iodine, which can cause thyroid cancer.
In Tokyo, government spokesman Yukio Edano pleaded for calm over the water contamination, and said the government was considering importing bottled water from other countries to cover any shortages. Officials urged residents to avoid panicked stockpiling and the city began distributing 240,000 bottles — enough to give each of the 80,000 children under age 1 three small bottles of water.
New readings Thursday showed the city's tap water was back to levels acceptable for infants, but the relief was tempered by elevated levels of the isotope in two neighboring prefectures: Chiba and Saitama. A city in a third prefecture, just south of the plant, also showed high levels of radioactive iodine in tap water, officials said.
Tap water in Kawaguchi City in Saitama, north of Tokyo, contained 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine — well above the 100 becquerels considered safe for babies but below the 300-becquerel level for adults, Health Ministry official Shogo Misawa said.
In Chiba prefecture, the water tested high for radiation in two separate areas, said water safety official Kyoji Narita. The government there warned families in 11 cities in Chiba not to give infants tap water.
"The high level of iodine was due to the nuclear disaster," Narita said. "There is no question about it."
Radiation levels also tested dangerously high in Hitachi in Ibaraki prefecture, about 70 miles (120 kilometers) south of the Fukushima plant, city water official Toshifumi Suzuki said, adding that officials were distributing bottled water.
The limits refer to sustained consumption rates, and officials said parents should stop using tap water for baby formula, although it was OK for infants to consume small amounts.
Despite the appeals, shelves were bare in many stores across Tokyo.
Maruetsu supermarket in the city center sought to impose buying limits on specific items to prevent hoarding: only one carton of milk per family, one 5-kilogram (11-pound) bag of rice, one package of toilet paper, one pack of diapers. Similar notices at some drugs stores told women they could only purchase two feminine hygiene items at a time.
Maruetsu spokeswoman Kayoko Kano acknowledged that the earthquake and tsunami resulted in delays of some products.
Some frustrated shoppers have turned to the city's many vending machines as an alternative. The machines are found everywhere in the city and one can feature about three dozen different beverages — ranging from hot coffee and green tea to power drinks and juice. A 500-milliliter bottle of imported water costs about 100 yen (about $1.25).
A spokesman for Procter & Gamble Japan said its plant was fully operational but that rolling blackouts in Tokyo may be affecting distribution. "Consumers are nervous, and they may be buying up supplies," Noriyuki Endo added.
Worse hardships continued in the frigid, tsunami-struck northeast. Some 660,000 households still do not have water, the government said. Electricity has not been restored to some 209,000 homes, Tohoku Electric Power Co. said. Damage is estimated at $309 billion, making it the most costly natural disaster on record.
In one bright spot of economic news, Toyota Motor Corp. — which had suspended production due to damage to suppliers' factories and power shortages in the quake zone — said it will soon resume production of the Prius and two other hybrid models.
But rival Honda Motor Co. said the suspension of car production at its Saitama and Suzuka factories will be extended to April 3.
The economic woes spawned by the disasters were especially painful for farmers in the region near the nuclear plant.
Sumiko Matsuno, a 65-year-old farmer in Fukushima, spent Thursday frantically harvesting vegetables from her fields.
"We are digging up all our carrots and onions as fast as we can. We can't sell them but we need them ourselves for food," she said. "We are really worried about our future. If this goes on, it is going to really hurt us."
___
Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge in Fukushima, and Mari Yamaguchi, Elaine Kurtenbach, Yuri Kageyama, Kaori Hitomi, Jean H. Lee and Ian Mader in Tokyo contributed to this report.
Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook
Posts
