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Posts Tagged ‘cesium’

1 BILLION BECQUERELS PER HOUR Emission of Radioactive Materials from Fukushima I Nuke Plant at the End of June

July 22, 2011 Comments off

ex-skf.blogspot

That’s an amazing reduction from the maximum emission of 2,000 terabecquerels per hour on March 15, it is actually one-2 millionth of the maximum, says TEPCO in the Reference No. 2 of the progress report on the “roadmap” to God knows where.

Is this number, 1 billion becquerels per hour emission, good? TEPCO’s Matsumoto, in the press conference on July 19, avoided the judgment, and said he didn’t know, but it was one-2 millionth of what it had been on March 15.

On closer reading of the document, though, I noticed one strange thing about this emission number. TEPCO is talking about the radiation emission measured in cesium (cesium-134 and -137), not in iodine equivalence.

To come up with the iodine-131 equivalence, you have to multiply cesium-134 Read more…

Straw Fed To Japanese Found To Be Radioactive

July 12, 2011 Comments off

irishweatheronline

MINAMISOMA, JAPAN (BNO NEWS) — Japan’s nuclear crisis has spread to its cattle as high levels of radioactive cesium were detected at a farm in Fukushima, officials said Monday.

The radioactive cesium was found in straw fed to cattle at a farm in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture with an average of 75,000 becquerels of the radioactive isotope per kilogramme (2.25 pounds), which is about 56 times the allowable limit, Kyodo news agency reported.

According to officials, the contaminated straw was stored in an exposed area of the farm without roofs during the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that caused a series of explosions that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Furthermore, the farm is located in one of the high-risk areas of the region, and officials suspect the straw could be the radioactive source of contaminated beef that had been detected in meat shipped from that area.

The contaminated meat of eleven cows was detected in Tokyo, where the meat was shipped for processing. However, at the time of the shipment, the Read more…

US bars some Japan foods over radiation fears

March 24, 2011 Comments off

AFP

WASHINGTON – The United States has announced it was barring some food imports from Japan due to fears of radiation and nuclear contamination in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami disaster.

The US Food and Drug Administration said it had placed an import alert on all milk, milk products, fresh vegetables and fruits from certain regions.

This means that no products of these types from the prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma can enter the United States without first being shown to be safe.

“In addition, FDA will continue to flag all entries from Japan in order to determine whether they originated from the affected area. FDA will test all food and feed shipments from the affected area,” an email statement said.

“FDA import investigators operating at ports of entry have radiation detection devices (radiation pagers) available to them for their personal safety,” the statement Read more…