nairiporter | Fukushima forgotten

http://www.ippnw-europe.org/en/nuclear-energy-and-security.html?expand=705&cHash=30fceaa6f9

Months after the disaster in Fukushima, some harrowing facts are beginning to surface. It turns out that a vast quantity of radioactive gas had been released in the atmosphere, and the Japanese government hadn't said a word about it. Turns out that this has been by far the largest amount of radioactive contamination in history, many times more horrific than Chernobyl, although the public was being told that the situation wasn't as serious. And chances were are the no one might have ever learned about it.

During the nuclear fallout in Fukushima in March, a quantity of Xenon-133 was released that was 2.5 times bigger than Chernobyl. The Xenon-133 and Krypton-85 gases can easily get into the respiratory organs and when they reach the blood stream, they can cause radiation disease. Moreover, it has been revealed that these radioactive gases were released into the atmosphere long before the tsunami had hit the shore. In fact, this leak was caused by the earthquake itself.

So far the tsunami has been blamed for the melting of the fuel rods in the reactor. But now we are learning that in fact the official version was never meant to be true. In reality the reactors were affected as early as the earthquake hit. This conclusion became possible only thanks to a new investigation by experts in the field, lead by Norwegian specialists from the Institute for the examination of the atmosphere, and supported by the Austrian central commission of meteorology and geodynamics in Vienna.

The research used data from 1000 air and soil samples which were tested for radioactivity. The results showed that between March 11-15 exactly 16,700 PBq (trillion becquerels) of Xenon-133 had leaked into the atmosphere. Which makes it the greatest leak of rare gas in recorded history, a thing that has been always attributed to nuclear testing by now.

While Xenon decays relatively quickly (a couple of weeks), Cesium-137 has a 30 period of decay. It remains in the environment for a long time and it is extremely harmful to the health of living organisms. The research found that between March and April almost 36 PBq of Cesium-137 was released into the atmosphere. The Cesium developed a 42% higher radioactivity than Chernobyl.

The experts are also looking into the contamination by radioactive rain in several Japanese regions, using the meteorological data during and immediately after the catastrophe. Because the winds were predominantly western at the time and there wasn't much precipitation, about 20% of the Cesium-137 emissions had gotten stuck into the soil, while 80% was dispersed above the Pacific.

The highest contamination with Cesium was recorded on March 19. It was the moment when the radioactive cloud above the Honshu island was the biggest and the densest. The conclusion is inescapable - the nuclear fallout had begun much, much earlier than officially claimed by now. The real disaster had begun with the earthquake at 14:46 local time, and the tsunami only reached shore 50 minutes later, to aggravate the situation even more.

The results are yet another proof that the official position of the Japanese government and the nuclear industry that the earthquake couldn't have caused such an incident and it was the tsunami waves that caused the nuclear catastrophe, were all bunk. The new research puts a serious dent on the attempts of the nuclear lobby to belittle the threat in case of earthquakes at nuclear power stations, and the connection between seismic activity and the risk of constructional failure.

Half a year after the catastrophe, almost no one is talking about Fukushima any more. But this won't make the fact go away that the consequences from the nuclear fallout are yet to be seen in their full manifestation. Radiation disease is a horrible condition and it only shows its first symptoms years after the event. This was the case with the survivors of Hiroshima, and this was the case in Chernobyl.