Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday that 1,973 workers at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant have estimated thyroid radiation doses exceeding 100 millisieverts and are therefore at higher risk of getting thyroid cancer. japantimes.co.jp

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) last week conducted an International Radiological Assistance Program Training for Emergency Response (I-RAPTER) training in Almaty, Kazakhstan. yournuclearnews.com

Southern California Edison has just filed a so-called Notice of Dispute on its former vendor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries over the shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. forbes.com

The Vietnamese government needs to set up a national nuclear regulatory agency right away, to ensure the country’s nuclear project gets underway as well as keeping in line with international rules and guidance that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demands. asianewsnet.net

Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745

Ambient office = .089 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .095 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .100 microsieverts per hour

Romaine lettuce from local grocery store =  .095 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .121 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .105 microsieverts per hour

The failings of the Fukushima nuclear reactor were so substantial that three General Electric scientists who helped design the now imperiled reactors resigned from the company. newsfeed.time.com

Nearly 80 percent of the 1,200 Japanese citizens questioned believe that a crisis like the one at the Fukushima nuclear power plant will possibly occur again if Japan chooses to restart currently idled reactors. japantimes.co.jp

 The operator of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant insisted Thursday there was no sign of spiking radiation at the crippled facility, after steam was found in a reactor building. channelnewsasia.com

With billions of dollars wasted and one of the largest power plants in California shut down permanently, Southern California Edison has initiated its legal fight with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries over faulty steam generators at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. nuclearstreet.com

Ambient office = .147 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .143 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .124 microsieverts per hour

Carrot from local grocery store =  .097 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .083 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .079 microsieverts per hour

              In Mid-June I posted four blogs about a meeting at the Mountaineer’s Headquarters building at Magnuson Park in Seattle, Washington. The meeting was called by the U.S. Navy, the Washington State Department of Ecology and the Washington State Department of Health. The purpose of the meeting was a presentation of information about radium contamination in a couple of old Naval buildings and soil around drainage systems left over from World War II aircraft repair activities.

            The City of Seattle found reference to radium in blueprints they were reviewing in 2010 in preparation for remodeling of the old buildings. At that time, the Navy boarded up the contaminated sections of the buildings and put up fences around the contaminated soil. Small signs of warning people to keep away were posted but there was no public announcement.

             Last winter, when the facts began to become public, the Navy partnered with the Washington State Department of Health to develop a plan for cleaning up the site. The Washington State Department of Ecology which has jurisdiction over the environment in the park was brought in late in the planning process in June. The State Department of Health has standards which allow for a higher level of residual radiation than the State Department of Ecology or the Federal Environmental Protection Agency.

            The Navy and the Washington State agencies called the meeting to present their picture of the current situation and to explain their plan to clean up the radioactive contamination. They had a series of stations with posters and they said that they would accept written comments but were not going to accept verbal comments. Their plan called for public comment to end at the end of June and work on the cleanup to begin on July 15^th. This schedule implied that they are not really interested in incorporating public input into their cleanup plan.

              State Representative Gerry Pollet forcefully argued with the Navy and State presenters, saying that the people needed to have more input into the process. The Navy was utilizing a special fast track procedure that they said was necessary. This appears to be at odds with the fact that they claimed that at no time was there any danger to the public. And now they wanted to rush through a cleanup without allowing public meetings or an environmental impact statement.

           After the heated argument at the meeting, the Navy and the State understood that the people of Seattle’s Magnuson Park neighborhood were not about to passively accept the plan to rush through a questionable cleanup of radioactivity in their neighborhood. Public pressure forced the Navy and the State to extend the public comment period to the end of July and to hold additional meetings for public input. Unfortunately, the Navy announced that they were going ahead with “preliminary” work on July 8^th.

         The Navy says that they want the public to be confident that everything necessary is being done to protect the public and that all relevant documents are available on their website and at Northeast Branch of the Seattle Regional Library at 6801 35th Ave NE.  However, Representative Pollet points out that the Navy has not provided the usual reports that should accompany such environmental clean projects.

          There will be another public meeting tonight at the Mountaineer’s Headquarters at Magnuson Park tonight from 6 to 10 PM. It will be interesting to see if the Navy and the State of Washington have indeed decided to incorporate public feedback into the cleanup process at Magnuson Park or whether tonight’s meeting is simply for show. It is an open question of whether the Navy is more concerned about insuring the safety of the citizens that use Magnuson Park or forcing the acceptance of a quick fix to the public embarrassment of a contaminated site that they were responsible for.

Mountaineer’s Headquarters at Magnuson Park:

Black stuff that has been found around Eastern Japan may be pulverized nuclear fuel from Fukushima. simplyinfo.org

TEPCO, the company responsible for the Fukushima disaster has been left in charge of the cleanup and has not been completely honest about what they have found in the wreckage and what they have been doing.    simplyinfo.org

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant stood ready Thursday to inject boric acid into one of its most heavily damaged reactors after it found steam emanating from the reactor building.  nytimes.com

A tentative agreement reached by a group of Polish companies this week will move the country a step closer to building its first nuclear plant. nuclearstreet.com

Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745

Ambient office = .061 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .111 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .089 microsieverts per hour

Celery from local grocery store =  .122 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .083 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .068 microsieverts per hour

           I have written extensively about the problems in Japan that followed the Fukushima disaster. One major problem was the fact that the nuclear industry was being monitored by the same Japanese government agency that promotes industrial development and trade. After Fukushima, a new agency, the Nuclear Regulation Agency (NRA), was created to deal with nuclear regulation independently. A new set of much more strict nuclear safety regulation was drawn up. There is great pressure to restart the Japanese fleet of around fifty reactors which were all shut down following Fukushima. While the owners of the reactors are supposed to implement the new strict regulations before restarting their reactors, there has been criticism of the new regulations on the grounds that there are loop holes that give reactor owners years in which to implement the new regulation fully. Presumably, the reactors would operate as they did before Fukushima while the required changes were being made. Considering the safety record of some reactors owners such as TEPCO, the owners of Fukushima power plant where the reactors melted down, it might be better if none of the reactors were permitted to restart until all the mandated changes had been accomplished.

            Since the Fukushima disaster started with a massive earthquake, there is obvious concern in Japan about danger from future earthquakes. Considering that about twenty percent of the seismic activity on Earth occurs in the area of Japan where three tectonic plates meet, it seems like a valid concern. There is a vast network of inactive and active faults under Japan. One important aspect of the Japanese nuclear regulations is that no reactor will be allowed to operate if it is above an active fault. For years, the NRA and its predecessor agencies have been analyzing the complex set of fault lines beneath the Tsuruga nuclear power plant on the east coast of Japan. There is evidence of a quake a few thousand years ago which qualifies that particular fault as being “active”. There are other faults nearby and the NRA is afraid that if they moved together they could generate a quake more powerful than previously thought.

           Recently, the NRA told the Japanese Atomic Power Company (JAPCO), the owners of the Tsuruga nuclear power plant, that they would not be allowed to operate the plant because the fault beneath the plant was active. JAPCO has insisted that the fault under the plant should not be classified as active. It turns out that JAPCO did not make seismic readings about the fault available to the Japanese government from studies done in 2005.The NRA has said that if convincing scientific evidence is provided that proves that the fault is not active, then they would consider reversing their decision.

             In addition to denying that the fault under their reactor is active, JAPCO has refused to submit a requested report on what would happen to the spent nuclear fuel stored at Tsuruga in the event of an earthquake caused by the fault under the plant. If the reactor at Tsuruga is a GE Mark I or Mark II design like the reactors at Fukushima, then the spent fuel is stored in a pool on the fourth floor of the reactor building. If the water covering the spent fuel rods drains away because of damage caused by a quake, the rods will burst into flames and inject huge amount of radioactive gases and particulates into the atmosphere. Given the results of the Fukushima disaster, any such radiation plume would circle the whole Northern Hemisphere and endanger a majority of the human race.

             While the Japanese government has made changes to the way they regulate nuclear power plants, it appears that the operators of the nuclear power plant are refusing to respect the authority of the NRA. If this continues, it almost guarantees another major accident. The public backlash against another accident could end the use of nuclear power in Japan permanently.

Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant:

TEPCO lied when they said recently that it would take 100 years for contaminated groundwater to reach the ocean from the area of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. fukushima-diary.com

A report has been published about high levels of radiation in a shaft at the Fukushima Unit Three reactor. fukushima-diary.com

State Representative Jim Cantwell, D-Marshfield, has presented legislation addressing expansion of the emergency zone around the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  wickedlocal.com

Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear plant will come back online this week after extensive work that included a 12 percent power uprate and equipment upgrades needed for its license extension. nuclearstreet.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 17, 2013

Ambient office = .127 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .100 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .083 microsieverts per hour

Redleaf lettuce from Costco =  .109 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .083 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .070 microsieverts per hour