Category Archives: Quotes from Papers

Plants growing bizarre since the Fukushima meltdown

Original Japanese written by  staffer
The English below translated from the original Japanese by Heeday
The English translation edited by Rev. Dr. Henry French, ELCA

In the parking area next to our Project’s office, a maple tree and a morning glory grow. Ever since the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant began melting down, both have been showing abnormalities. After the disaster began, the maple was trimmed to the bare trunk, as part of the decontamination work.

The morning glory was sown two years ago, and has been left unattended since. Still, every early summer it shoots out buds. It is overgrown with many leaves of different sizes and shapes, but it has borne almost no flowers in the last two years.
土壌の計測値The soil around the maple’s root has not been “decontaminated.” We measured the radioactivity there and found 1.03mSv/h, on August 12th, 2015.

On the same day, we took a leaf from both the morning glory and the maple, and took them for radioactivity measurement at the Health Control Section, Koriyama Public Health Center. The documents shown right describe their measurements.
朝顔楓測定結果The person who took the measurements gave the following explanation:

“The radioactive isotopes, Cs134 and Cs137, are both artificial and do not exist naturally. Cs134 has a half-life of around 2 years, and Cs137 some 30 years.

In case Cs134 is detected, it is mostly ascribable to the Fukushima meltdown, not the Chernobyl disaster or any nuclear tests, since this isotope’s half-life is very short. Also, due to their half-lives, the two isotopes, 134 and 137, exist at the ratio of 3 to 10. In the morning glory leaf, we measured 12.2 Becquerel per kg of Cs137. Applying the existence ratio to this measurement, it should contain around 4 Becquerel of Cs134 per kg. This is below the minimum quantity detectable, so our equipment was unable to detect 134.

Since the morning glory and maple leaves measured this time were not cleansed after they were taken off, it is uncertain whether the radioactivity measured is from some substance on the leaf or from some soil mixed in.

Also, an air dosimeter, when placed close to a subject of measurement, does not respond unless its radioactivity is 8,000 Becquerel or above. So, with this morning glory leaf’s radiation dose, an air dosimeter will not respond.”

Now, last summer, we witnessed similar abnormalities with the plants.

▲Some gigantic leaves of different shapes from the same morning glory. They are around 16cm (6.3”) in full length. (Photographed on September 8th, 2014)
朝顔と楓2014年[Right] A regular-sized maple leaf

[Left] A leaf from the maple that has grown into a giant
(Photographed on August 11th, 2014)

Here in Fukushima, every day TV and radio news programs and newspapers report air radiation doses at many different places in the Prefecture. They also report monitoring of radioactivity in the sea water near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Sea water monitoring results often say “ND” (Not Detected) with respect to Cs134 and 137. Such a report does NOT mean the sea water inspected was found to contain no radioactivity. It actually means that the radioactivity was below the minimum measurable limit of the measuring instrument used. Thus, a ND report does not guarantee “safety.” Please be careful.

Also, the municipal government of Koriyama City reported, in July 2015, that the average air dose of radiation across the city was 0.10 to 0.20mSv/h. Still, when our Project’s staffers tried measuring doses with a Geiger counter, they found some places exceeding 1mSv/h. Thus, too much trust in publicly announced air doses can be dangerous.

Different people have different notions about radioactivity, which is invisible. If one is exposed to “take-it-easy” reports day in and day out, they can be tempted to ignore unusual things that they find in their environment. However, such small, unusual things might be signs of some greater issues.

Thus, we, the Project, intend to examine and publish in this website little abnormalities that we notice in our everyday life, without discounting them as “simply subjective,” in the years to come.

Issues growing more exacerbated with collected radioactive wastes from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown

Original Japanese written by  staffer
The English below translated from the original Japanese by Heeday
The English translation edited by Rev. Dr. Henry French, ELCA

(Sources: articles of August 21st and 23rd, 2015 editions of the Fukushima Minpo newspaper)

Click each image to enlarge it and read the caption.

Today, we are witnessing the emergence of many new and complex issues with the processing of the radioactive waste collected during the “decontamination” work following TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s meltdown.

Since the relevant municipalities plan to complete the “decontamination” work by the end of FY2016, Japan’s Ministry of the Environment is demanding an expanded budget of some 450 billion yen for FY2016, an increase from this year’s 415.3 billion yen. Acquisition of land for intermediate storage of such waste is lagging behind schedule. Therefore, the Ministry intends to expand the budget for land acquisition considerably, from this year’s 75.8 billion yen to 130 billion yen next fiscal year, and they are assigning more officials than today to take care of negotiations with landowners.

Since the existing temporary storage sites for radioactive waste are already full, much of the collected waste has no place to go. Some of it is simply buried under gardens, some is kept under house eaves or somewhere else within the premises. Known as “collection site storages,” more than 100,000 of such “storages” currently exist in Fukushima Prefecture.

Things are no different here in Koriyama City, where our Project’s office is. The decontamination work is progressing very slowly. When a citizen, at long last, welcomes in decontamination workers, the radioactive soil they collect is either buried in the citizen’s own yard or kept somewhere else within the premises – possibly under the eaves. He/she simply cannot have any peace of mind.

A decontamination subcontractor does the collection work, and then digs a large, deep hole in the yard and buries the collected radioactive soil which has been wrapped up in big vinyl sheets. An unsuspecting child often plays in the same yard, above the underground radioactive soil, while his/her parents anxiously watch.

We can see heaps of vinyl-packed radioactive soil here and there as we walk around. We measured the radioactivity at one such heap under the eaves of an apartment house in the neighborhood of our Project’s office. The counter showed 2mSv/h. The dose can exceed that amount following a rainfall or on a windy day. We find weeds, growing out of the contaminated soil and sticking out of the vinyl bags. No one thinks such bags containing radioactive soil are strong enough to withstand aging for years to come.

Click each image to enlarge it and read the caption.

Furthermore, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is to be decommissioned, and more radioactive waste will result from the decommissioning of the plant. No one knows what to do with this new waste, at least at this moment. Although the Japanese Government has said concerning radioactive waste, “It should be buried within the nuclear plant’s premises, as is done in many other countries,” in reality, Fukushima Daiichi’s premises are already occupied with numerous tanks containing radioactive water. Those tanks are growing larger and larger in number every day. The plant’s premises have no space to accommodate more waste. Also, the tanks themselves will become radioactive waste someday. In a regular decommissioning, it is hard to win consent of the neighboring municipalities. In the case of Fukushima Daiichi, this consent should be even harder to win, since Fukushima’s citizens are victims of the meltdown.

I (the author) have a feeling that all of this ever-expanding radioactive waste will eventually be “pushed” off onto Fukushima’s citizens. If we go on seeking for wealth and ignoring the negative results that come from such wealth, in the long run, what kind of a world are we going to build?

Here in Koriyama City, we see the piles of collected radioactive soil growing larger and larger every day. Many children, with their futures before them, walk beside these heaps of contaminated soil. And that has become part of the ordinary cityscape here.

Radiation effect?? Some fir trees in Fukushima do not grow upward. —NIRS to investigate the abnormality—

Original Japanese written by  staffer
The English below translated from the original Japanese by Heeday
The English translation edited by Rev. Dr. Henry French, ELCA

(Source: article of August 29th, 2015 edition of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper)

Radiation effect?? Some fir trees in Fukushima do not grow upward. —NIRS to investigate the abnormality—
Radiation effect?? Some fir trees in Fukushima do not grow upward. —NIRS to investigate the abnormality—

Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) conducted an examination of some populations of fir trees naturally growing in areas contaminated heavily by the meltdown of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The trees are located in areas within the “no-go” zones with especially high air dose rates of radioactivity. The Institute’s analysis of the examination results found that, compared to those tree populations within areas with lower radioactivity, the heavily contaminated trees showed a remarkably greater rate of morphological changes. Also, the NIRS found that this rate increased in proportion to the air dose rate of radiation.

In the hardest-hit town, Okuma (33.9mSv/h), more than 90% of the fir trees surveyed showed some morphological changes, while in two places within neighboring Namie Town (19.6mSv/h and 6.85mSv/h, respectively) the abnormality rate was more than 40% and slightly less than 30%, respectively. Though this might seem to suggest a quick decline in the radiation effect with distance, actually around 10% of the trees surveyed in Kitaibaraki City (some 90km [55 miles] south of the nuclear plant) showed similar abnormalities.

Generally, coniferous trees are sensitive to radiation. This was proven by radiation exposure experiments with trees conducted in outdoor radiation exposure facilities (gamma fields) of the US and Japan, as well as by what was found around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, after its meltdown in 1986. We have reports showing that, in the vicinity of the Chernobyl disaster, two domestic species of coniferous trees, namely Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) and Norway spruce (Picea abies), carried some obvious biological abnormalities.

The morphological changes found by the NIRS survey, though they provide precious data, have yet to prove that those fir trees are suffering from the effects of radioactivity, since some other factors, such as insect damage, diseases not caused by radioactivity, cold weather, etc., might have played a part. Thus, according to the Institute, the examiners now need to expose some fir trees to radiation in a lab to see what changes arise.

In Fukushima Prefecture, many are voicing their worries over those plants showing abnormalities following the nuclear plant meltdown.

A weeping cherry tree in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture (Photographed in 2013) The leaves are spreading horizontally.
A weeping cherry tree in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture (Photographed in 2013) The leaves are spreading horizontally.
A loquat tree in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture (Photographed in 2013) Notice the leaves are covering up the trunk.
A loquat tree in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture (Photographed in 2013) Notice the leaves are covering up the trunk.

Someone who visited a forest in Tomioka Town, to the south of Fukushima Daiichi, told me (the author) that the forest is now crowded with numerous overgrown trees. I have always felt something is wrong with the plants here. Living in Koriyama City, Fukushima, I see countless overgrown roadside plants.

Judging from experiences following the Chernobyl tragedy, it will be years before scientists discover the causes of these abnormalities in plants. Here in Fukushima, while no expert has yet to make an official announcement admitting the effects of radiation, many, including myself, spend every day feeling anxious over what radiation might do to us humans. The changes with plants are so obvious no one can deny them.

Another Fukushima child diagnosed with thyroid cancer – 104 patients in all so far

Original Japanese written by  staffer
The English below translated from the original Japanese by Heeday
The English translation edited by Rev. Dr. Henry French, ELCA

(Sources: articles of September 1st, 2015 editions of the Asahi Shimbun and Fukushima Minpo newspapers)

Diagnosis of thyroid cancer, for another Fukushima child. Now there are 104 Fukushima children known to have the cancer. (The article is from the September 1st, 2015 edition of the Asahi Shimbun.)
Diagnosis of thyroid cancer, for another Fukushima child. Now there are 104 Fukushima children known to have the cancer. (The article is from the September 1st, 2015 edition of the Asahi Shimbun.)

A full thyroid checkup, carried out between the beginning of April and the end of June this year, to investigate the effects on human health of the meltdown of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, found another child with a diagnosis of thyroid cancer. This means we now have 104 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of thyroid cancer, among the some 385,000 residents of the prefecture who were 18 years in age or younger when the meltdown began. These people were also examined during the preliminary thyroid checkup. Said Fukushima Prefecture’s Citizen Medical Examination Committee, “At this point, it is hard to consider these cancer cases are ascribable to radiation.”

The full thyroid examination found another patient with a definite diagnosis of thyroid cancer. So far, the examination has found six such patients.<br /> —The results from the thyroid checkups (preliminary and full) conducted from 2011 to 2015 are published, for each municipality covered.—<br /> (The article is from the September 1st, 2015 edition of Fukushima Minpo, a local paper.)
The full thyroid examination found another patient with a definite diagnosis of thyroid cancer. So far, the examination has found six such patients.
—The results from the thyroid checkups (preliminary and full) conducted from 2011 to 2015 are published, for each municipality covered.—
(The article is from the September 1st, 2015 edition of Fukushima Minpo, a local paper.)

“Fukushima Minpo,” the local paper of Fukushima Prefecture with the greatest circulation, had extensive coverage of these checkup results on Page 3 of the paper, while “The Asahi Shimbun,” one of the major nationwide papers of Japan, printed only a small article about it, on its “Society” pages. (In the convention of most Japanese newspapers, the “society” pages come last, following pages about “politics,” “foreign affairs,” etc.)

Now, following the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blast, which took place on April 26th, 1986, there were many reports of thyroid cancer in children living in the vicinity of the nuclear plant, especially among girls. Generally, experts say that thyroid cancer is usually found in one to three out of a million children. A few years after the Chernobyl tragedy, the thyroid cancer rate among children in the nuclear plant’s vicinity showed a sharp rise. Also, the rate’s peak time differed, depending on how old children were when they were exposed to radiation. Among those who were infants or very young when they were exposed (0 to 10 years in age), the rate peaked seven years after the accident. Then it slowly diminished until 1997, and later it came down to the pre-disaster level. Among those who were in adolescence at the time of the accident (10 to 19 years in age), the rate peaked 10 years after their exposure to radiation. Then it took a sharp drop in and after 2002, though it has never dropped enough to reach the pre-disaster level.

Still, some say that the rather small number of thyroid cancer cases found after the Chernobyl disaster were ascribable to some problems with the thyroid checkups conducted. Though the relevant authorities currently deny a cause-effect relationship between Fukushima’s thyroid cancer cases and the nuclear disaster there, as more patients are diagnosed, they might have to admit this relationship.

(Source: September 1st, 2015 editions of Fukushima Minpo newspapers)

The thyroid examination to estimate the number of future patients of thyroid cancer —The Fukushima Prefectural Government to launch a new study, whose results should help the examinees take better care of themselves.—
The thyroid examination to estimate the number of future patients of thyroid cancer —The Fukushima Prefectural Government to launch a new study, whose results should help the examinees take better care of themselves.—

So far, we have only seen the results from the thyroid checkups that were conducted. No future estimate of potential cases has been given, and no detailed analysis has been made. However, the Fukushima Prefecture’s Citizen Medical Examination Committee and the parents of children demanded, over and over again, that the effects from radiation must be made clear. The Fukushima Prefectural Government, therefore, has decided to conduct objective analyses of the thyroid checkups and study radiation-thyroid cancer correlations in each district. The government intends to predict the numbers of future patients of thyroid cancer in order to help its people take better care of their health.

Fukushima’s mothers are seriously worried over their own children’s health and future, yet they see no way to help their kids. Also, many have fled the prefecture following the nuclear disaster. Those remaining in the prefecture frequently ask themselves whether they are right in remaining there or not. Also, in their situations, they can bring up topics for discussion only if is really necessary to do so—there might be some people employed by the nuclear plant or related employers around them. Citizens are divided over their opinions about the effects of radiation. There is a complex web of interests. Furthermore, many children of Fukushima are not allowed to play outdoors, to minimize their exposure to radiation. Some are worried this might lead to a lack of physical strength in such children.

I sincerely hope that the planned new study of the thyroid examinations will answer questions from children and their parents and therefore wipe out their fears.