about the Fukushima plant
The german Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS) (which is owned by the state of Germany to about one half ) has regularily updated information (in english) about the Fukushima plant and other plants at trouble at:
http://www.grs.de/en/news/information-updates-japanese-nuclear-power-plants
A german version is at
http://www.grs.de/informationen-zur-lage-den-japanischen-kernkraftwerken-fukushima-onagawa-und-tokai
The report is by order of the german ministry for the environment.
The japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology has a japanese website on the Readings at Monitoring Post out of 20 Km Zone of Fukushima Dai-ichi NPP at:
http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/saigaijohou/syousai/1303726.htm
and of Readings of environmental radioactivity level by prefecture at:
http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/saigaijohou/syousai/1303723.htm
A partial translation of the pdf’s is possible via google translate
update 19.3.2011: there are now also english pdf’s of the measurements
update 20.3.2011: The above mentioned grs has also a website about the potential dangers of radiation however the old one, which is still in the Google cache was currently a bit more informative. There they say as a “rule of thumb” that
Als Faustregel gilt, dass die Aufnahme von etwa 80 000 Bq Cs-137 bei Erwachsenen einer Strahlenexposition von etwa 1 mSv entspricht.
translation without guarantee: 80 000 Bq of Cs-137 for an adult equates to about 1 mSv.
further translations:
The limit of import into Germany for caesium is 600 Bq/kg. For milk, milkproducts and kids nutrition is 370 Bq/kg. For the beginning of May 1986 (shortly after Chernobyl) the Commission for radiation safety recommended to eat and drink only milk with less than 500 Bq/l of Iodine 131 and green vegetables with less then 250 Bq/kg of Iodine 131 .
March 28th, 2011 at 11:38 am
I found this blog post very readable. Can you give us an update?
March 28th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
betsy wrote:
Not really. The Wikipedia site at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents gathers the various reports quite timely. It is not so easy to get a lot of information together and it seems to me that there is not much information in the internet.
As everybody I am trying to make sense of the rather sparse reports.
I have many questions so for example I find that report of the high radiation
in block 2 and especially the findings of Iodine 134 (see e.g.
nhk) and then the evacuation of the plant and then the later reports that
(citation from Kyodo) quite disturbing. If they would have found Iodine 134 then this would mean that a nuclear fission took place rather recently because Iodine is a fission product (http://prc.aps.org/abstract/PRC/v1/i4/p1491_1, and because Iodine 134 decays rather rapidly. I am not sure but I think Iodine 134 decays into the stable Xenon^134_54, which is I think is a gas, so it seems it would disappear quickly.
But I am not sure and I don’t have the time to check this. Unfortunately e.g. the experts at MIT seem to have a bank holiday (The last update there was two days ago).
I can’t imagine that it is only Tepco who is doing measurements at Fukushima. But I haven’t found any measurement listings, which list in a scientific manner, where and when was found what, regarding contaminated water. There are also not much measurements about the water in the vicinity of the plant. So I am asking myself whats going on there?
March 28th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Tepco has now a pdf with measurements about the puddle at block 2 at:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11032714-e.html
look at the findings of e.g. technetium
March 28th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
You may also want to read about the issue of
Criticality accidents