We have been dealing with Nuclear Technology without knowing the full implications of it.
Now the situation is serious and we are debating as to how to dispose of Contamination.
Learn to use less power and shut down Nuclear Plants,it is not worth our lives.
With operations to pump out massive amounts of contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant running into trouble, new ideas surfaced Wednesday to move the effort forward, including storing the tainted water in tankers and covering the reactor sites with fabric shrouds.
While many ideas are under consideration, no concrete decisions have been made, he said.
One of the ideas being mulled would be to cover the walls and ceilings of the reactor buildings damaged in explosions with special fabric capable of containing radiation.
However, the feasibility of the proposed ideas had yet to be studied.
Related:
Radiology experts from Greenpeace urged the government Wednesday to expand the evacuation zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after they found high levels of radiation outside the 20-km mandatory no-go zone.
Jan van de Putte, the radioactivity safety adviser of the NGO, said the survey, taken on a road between the villages of Iitate and Tsushima in Fukushima Prefecture, saw a radiation level of 100 microsieverts per hour, despite being outside of the evacuation area.
This contrasts with the 7.86 microsieverts per hour measured in Iitate by the Fukushima Prefectural Government on Wednesday afternoon.
One would reach the annual limit of 1,000 microsieverts — or 1 millisievert — of radiation as set by international radiation authorities in about 10 hours in such an environment, van de Putte said, adding it is likely residents of Iitate, about 9 km outside the no-go zone, “have surpassed that level” already.
The team of experts at Greenpeace said they conducted their monitoring Saturday and Sunday, and found proof radioactivity hasn’t spread evenly from the reactors.
In an earlier post on Nuclear Radiation in Japan, I wondered whether we know how to treat Radioactive water.
I have found some information.
Certain rock types naturally contain radioactive elements referred to as NORM (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials). When a source of drinking water comes in contact with NORM-bearing rocks, radionuclides may accumulate in the water to levels of concern. The predominant radionuclides found in water include:
As water is treated to remove impurities, radionuclides may collect and eventually build up in filters, tanks, and pipes at treatment plants. The small amounts of NORM present in the source water may concentrate in sediment or sludges. Because the NORM is concentrated due to human activity, it is classified as TENORM (Technologically Enhanced Radioactive Material). Most of this waste is disposed in landfills and lagoons, or is applied to agricultural fields.
Most drinking water treatment sludges are thought to contain radium (Ra-226) levels comparable to typical concentrations in soils. However, some water supply systems, primarily those relying on groundwater sources, may generate sludge with much higher Ra-226 levels. Furthermore, some water treatment systems are more effective than others in removing naturally-occurring radionuclides from the water.
The table below lists the current radionuclide standards for drinking water.
a) Radioactive contamination of drinking water in Japan at this point in time can come about in only two ways:
1) The source is actual surface water like lakes or rivers, possibly filtratedthrough river banks and thus came into contact with e.g. radioactive rain and/or dust. The Netherlands rely almost totally on water drawn from the Rhine and fed into the drinking water supply after conditioning.
2) The water may have been contaminated after production (e.g. in open cisterns/basins), which in effect is similar to bullet a1).
In all other cases it springs from groundwater (wells) and has often been concealed for years before being extracted again. As limnologists would say “groundwater” has an elephant’s memory, i.e. if you drop a can of used oil in a forest it may take ten years until you become aware of oil traces in your drinking water. This means that on one hand ground water wells should as a rule not yet show contamination from rain fall so shortly after a nuclear accident and on the other hand that when it appears further “down the road” all short-lived contamination should have decayed. This is by no means meant to downplay the issue.
So far I would have thought it unlikely to already find radioactive contamination in water that does not come from surface water or bank filtrate. If it should be true it would be alarming.
Now though, let’s assume it were true as authorities would rather hush up things than exaggerate them, thus let’s take some degree of water contamination for granted.
b) How can you reprocess radioactively contaminated (drinking) water so that it is (relatively) safe to use?
1) It is in the form of radioactive hydrogen (called tritium, three times as heavy as normal hydrogen and emitting very weak beta rays, i.e. electrons, which, however, can damage yourgenome and cause cancer etc. when swallowed). When tritium has been released to the environment it will be incorporated in “heavy” water molecules. However, these are chemically indistinct from normal water, hence you cannot chemically separate radioactive water from normal water. You will have to live with tritium in your water and air (vapour) until it has decayed. With a half-life of approx. 12 years it will be down to one thousandth in about 120 years … All you can do (in theory) is move to another location where the tritium from “your” power plant has not yet reached (eventually the tritium will be evenly dispersed world-wide by wind and wave, however, then also the dosage of radiation will diminish reciprocally with its dilution). Or you “import” clean water (and add a pressurised air cylinder from a clean pristine source for good measure).
And don’t forget: once you’ve moved to another place there might be yet another malfunctioning nuclear power station around the corner – from the frypan into the fire … Help close down all nuclear power stations and so-called reprocessing plants!
2) The water could contain gases, esp. radioactive noble gases (like neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), radon (Rn)) Rather unlikely but for the sake of completeness we will mention them here. These can be driven out from the water by heating it to boiling temperature as hot liquids dissolve less gases than cold ones (with solid solubles, e.g. salts, it is vice versa with the rare exception of kitchen salt –sodium chloride- which hardly changes in solubility from almost zero to 100 degrees centigrade).
3) The main contaminants by far should be soluble solids, e.g. metal salts of e.g. radioactive caesium, rubidium etc.These can not be filtered e.g. by charcoal or any ceramic or paper filter with whatever fine pore structure since they are dissolved! You can only either try to demineralise that water (e.g. by reverse osmosis) or purify it by distillation thus leaving the radioactive solids behind (the condensed water in the lids of your pots consists of such distilled water droplets). A third potential method would be chemical precipitation. However, in order to know which chemical to use to precipitate the contaminant(s) with, you’d first have to analyse the water components. And in all probability the traces would be too small for normal analysis and if the salt etc. was determined then you might find there is noprecipitant to go with it or it may have adverse side effects, e.g. be poisonous. So de-mineralisation or distillation it is.
While activated charcoal does by virtue of adsorption delay the passage even of solved saltsall these filtration methods are only really designed for capturing suspended matter. But what has been bank filtrated or springs from ground water wells is not a suspension, or at least no water utility would dare inject murky water into its system!!!
Can you still use contaminated water for the following purposes (keep in mind, it is always a matter of how contaminated it all is!):
> – cleaning a garden path for example,
Yes, but may I suggest: only if the path would be less contaminated than before. But before you breathe contaminated dust from a contaminated path by all means use contaminated water to keep it in place! This is what is already done at Fukushima – they spray water not only for cooling purposes but also to keep the contaminated dust or radioactice debris wet and in place!
> – personal hygiene,
Rather not! You would also absorb some contaminants through your skin, however small. However, if you need to decontaminate yourself from a greater dose than what is in your water, do wash it all down and reduce your exposure! Again – “contaminated” water may be heavily or only negligibly contaminated – use your best judgment! We are talking dangerously contaminated here! The situation in your region may not yet be so dire – so please compare to normal radiation levels from the past – traces of radioactivity may not always be dangerous, but are likely to rise with ongoing leaks and further rainfall adding to ground water supplies from contaminated sources above ground:
Meanwhile, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. turned on the lights in the control room of the No. 2 reactor the same day, and was analyzing and trying to remove pools of water containing radioactive materials in the turbine buildings of reactors 1 to 3.
The iodine-131 in the seawater was detected at 8:30 a.m. Friday, about 330 meters south of the plant’s drain outlets. Previously, the highest amount recorded was about 100 times above the permitted level.
If a person drank 500 ml of water containing the newly detected level of contamination, it would be the equivalent of 1 millisievert of radiation, or the average dosage one is exposed to annually, the NISA said.
“It is a substantial amount,” NISA spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama told a news conference.
But he also stressed there is “no immediate risk to public health,” as the changing tides will dilute the iodine-131, and its half-life, or the amount of time it takes for it to lose half its radioactivity, is only eight days.
Nishiyama said the high concentration was perhaps caused by airborne radiation that contaminated the seawater, or contaminated water from the plant that flowed out to sea.
Tepco said early Saturday that it had detected a radiation reading of 200 millisieverts per hour in a pool of water in the No. 1 reactor’s turbine building on March 18 and failed to notify workers, but later denied that a radiation level that high was found.
“If we had warned them, we may have been able to avoid having workers (at the No. 3 reactor) exposed to radiation,” a Tepco official said.
Concerns about radiation in Japan have now spread to the soil surrounding the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. One level that was reported this week was high enough to suggest people in that area should be evacuated, an expert says. But he cautions that it’s hard to draw conclusions about these spot measurements without more data.
Today, Japanese officials told the population living up to 30 kilometers from the plant that they should consider leaving the area, expanding the previous 20-kilometer radius evacuation zone. But according to news reports, the advice stems from difficulties in supplying the region with food and water, not radiation levels.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday the Japanese science ministry began to report measurements of cesium-137 in upland soil around the plant. The levels are highest from two points northeast of the plant, ranging from 8690 becquerels/kilogram to a high of 163,000 Bq/kg measured on 20 March from a point in Iitate about 40 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima plant.
The soil measurements are more significant for evacuation purposes than radioactivity in the air, says nuclear engineer Shih-Yew Chen of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, because cesium dust stays underfoot while air is transient. Levels of cesium-137 are also more important than soil readings of iodine-131, which is short-lived and more of a concern in milk and vegetables. “It’s the cesium that would prompt an evacuation,” says Chen.
Based on a rough estimate, a person standing on soil with 163,000 Bq/kg of cesium-137 would receive about 150 millisieverts per year of radiation, says Chen. This is well above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard of 50 millisieverts per year for an evacuation. (Per day, it’s 0.41 millisieverts, which is equivalent to four chest x-rays.) But Chen adds, “one point [of data] doesn’t mean that much.”
The hot spot is similar to levels found in some areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in the former Soviet Union. Assuming the radiation is no more than 2 centimeters deep, Chen calculates that 163,000 Bq/kg is roughly equivalent to 8 million Bq/m2. The highest cesium-137 levels in some villages near Chernobyl were 5 million Bq/m2.
Japanese food products have long been regarded as synonymous with “safety” and “security” in other parts of Asia, but their reputation is now at stake as radioactive materials far exceeding legal limits have been found in farm produce.
The detection of radioactive materials prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to announce a ban on imports of dairy products and vegetables from the area near the crisis-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Countries in Asia and authorities in the Russian Far East have stepped up screening of Japanese food imports for radioactive contamination, while seawater has also been contaminated near the nuclear plant.
“Japan had been promoting its food overseas by emphasizing its safety and security,” a Japanese man in Beijing who engages in trade with China said. “Actual safety may be secured by inspection, but it is difficult to restore a sense of security.”
The nuclear crisis triggered by the massive quake and tsunami occurred just after the government moved to market Japanese agricultural products such as rice, which has a reputation for being “safe and tasty,” in the Chinese market, where the popularity of Japanese foods was growing mainly among wealthy people.
South Korea’s Food and Drug Administration has started similar measures, stepping up screening of foreign farm products shipped through Japan by adding dry, frozen and processed foods produced in Japan as subject to inspection.
The amount will be too small to affect humans, the Vienna-based CTBTO said Thursday.
The commission operates a network of monitoring facilities at 63 locations around the world, including Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture.
A senior official at the commission’s monitoring department said figures observed in Takasaki continue to go up and down and the amount of radioactive substances from the Fukushima plant can’t be said to be on the decrease.
Small amounts of radioactive substances were already detected at observation facilities in western California on March 18 and in Iceland on Tuesday, and they are expected to reach European countries in a few days, according to the official.
But Japan’s Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency said it doesn’t expect any impact on other countries, citing data observed so far.
On Thursday, Singapore’s food safety authority said it has found radioactive contaminants in four samples of vegetables from Japan.
The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority said the contaminants were found in vegetables imported from Chiba and Ehime prefectures, in addition to Tochigi and Ibaraki.
As a result, it said it will suspend food imports from Chiba and Ehime. On Wednesday, the ministry suspended the import of foods such as seafood, meat, milk, fruits and vegetables from Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma, the four prefectures worst hit by the March 11 quake and tsunami.
The vegetables found tainted were “mitsuba” Japanese wild parsley from Tochigi, “nanohana” rape seed plant from Chiba, “mizuna” Japanese mustard from Ibaraki and perilla leaf from Ehime.
The government on Monday told Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma prefectures to suspend shipping of spinach and kakina, a locally produced leaf vegetable, following the detection of radioactive substances at levels above the provisional limits under the Food Sanitation Law. It also told Fukushima Prefecture to suspend shipping of raw milk for a similar reason. The radioactive substances apparently came from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The government the next day called on people to limit consumption of spinach, cabbage and a few other leaf vegetables from Fukushima Prefecture.
Tokyo (CNN) — Despite being urged not to hoard bottled water, residents
of Japan’s capital on Wednesday snapped it up in droves after testing
showed radioactive material in tap water at levels unsafe.
The city’s water agency said the spike was likely caused by problems at
the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, located 240 kilometers (150 miles)
away. Earlier Wednesday, Tokyo government officials advised residents
not to give tap water to infants or use it in formula after tests at a
purification plant detected high levels of radioactive iodine.
Grocery store owner Seiji Sasaki said he noted a sudden increase of
customers. He had 40 cases of water in his store, but they were gone
quickly.
Meanwhile, officials evacuated some workers at the Fukushima plant
Wednesday afternoon as a black plume of smoke billowed above one of the
reactors, plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. The cause of the
smoke was unclear.
The team of seven workers were planning to inspect gauges and
instrumentation at reactor No. 3, but were unable to determine
conditions in the control room before evacuating, officials with Tokyo
Electric and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.
Workers have been scrambling to cool down fuel rods at the nuclear plant
since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami on March 11 knocked
out cooling systems.
Some radiation has been released, officials said, but it was unclear
whether radiation levels spiked after the black smoke was spotted
Wednesday. Japan’s nuclear agency said radiation levels near the plant
had not changed, public broadcaster NHK reported.
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