Crisis in Japan - Page 193

Chile finds radioactive traces in Korean cars

(AFP) – 15 hours ago

SANTIAGO — Chilean officials found traces of radioactivity in tests on around 20 used cars on a ship from South Korea that had been in the vicinity of Japan's damaged Fukushima atomic plant, a report said Monday.

The report in the daily El Mercurio quoted Iquique customs director Raul Barria as saying the radioactivity did not appear to pose a danger.

He said the vehicles were showing a level of one to five on a radioactive index, below the level of nine needed for an alert.

The ship sailed from South Korea and then docked at the Japanese ports of Osaka and Yokohama, located 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the reactor in Fukushima, which saw several explosions after the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11.

Nonetheless, workers at the Chilean port some 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) north of Santiago were concerned and asked for testing, said Moises Chavez, a spokesman for the stevedores.

The 83 workers who had contact with the vehicles "were tested by customs at their request," Barria said, adding that none of them showed any ill effects.

The cars were part of a shipment of 2,500 vehicles arriving in Chile. Officials said the cars were all to be cleaned by the shipping company before sale in the South American nation.

Workers at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant have entered one of its reactor buildings for the first time since it was hit by a powerful earthquake on 11 March, officials say.

They have installed a ventilation system in the No 1 reactor to filter out radioactive material from the air.[...]

New systems
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said a total of 12 engineers worked inside the reactor building in small teams in shifts of 10 minutes for about an hour.

The ventilator system and filters are reported to be running.

The company faces similar problems at three other reactors at the six-reactor plant.

Tepco is also dealing with highly radioactive waste-water leaking from the No 2 reactor which it is moving to secure storage on site.

Tepco has said it expects to bring the crisis under control and achieve a cold shutdown of the plant by the end of the year, but some doubt whether this target can be achieved.

At the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, a robot sent into the building housing Reactor No. 1 on Saturday detected the highest levels of radiation measured since the crisis began on March 11.

According to the Japan Times, The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reported that radiation levels in the air around Reactor 1 were at 4000 millisieverts per hour, an exposure level equivalent to approximately 40,000 chest x-rays. TEPCO says it has no plans to send workers into the area because of its dangerously high radioactivity.

On Friday, a spokesman for TEPCO announced that steam was rising from underneath the reactor building. That afternoon, Japanese national television carried blurry footage of smoke rising from an opening in the floor.

Underneath the reactor, an estimated 40,000 tons of "highly contaminated" radioactive water have collected in what is known as the pressure suppression containment vessel, and it's this water that is believed to be producing the steam. TEPCO officials warn that the water will begin to overflow from the storage vessel by June 20 as it reaches its maximum capacity, sooner if there are heavy rains.

Massive tanks are being sent to contain the water from nearby Tochigi Prefecture. An estimated 370 will be needed for the job, two of which are due to arrive this weekend. The tanks each hold 100 tons of water and will continue to arrive at the plant through August.

Record levels of radiation have been recorded at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant reactor, just months after the nuclear accident resulting from the earthquake and tsunami in March.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reported that Geiger counters [a hand-held device used to measure radiation] registered their highest possible reading at the site on Monday.

TEPCO said that radiation exceeding 10 sieverts (10,000 millisieverts) per hour was found at the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between two reactors.

Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, reporting from Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, said the level recorded is "fatal to humans" but that it is contained just to the plant's site. However, scientists are planning to carry out more tests on Tuesday.

"Authorities are working on the theory though that it has come from those initial hydrogen explosions that we've saw at the plant in the days after the earthquake and tsunami," she said.

"It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami but noone realised until now."

The company used equipment to measure radiation from a distance and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is 10 sieverts.

"It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami but noone realised until now."

TOKYO — Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.

The government was apparently forced to alter its plans after the survey by the Ministry of Science and Education, released over the weekend, which showed even higher than expected radiation levels within the 12-mile evacuation zone around the plant. The most heavily contaminated spot was in the town of Okuma about two miles southwest of the plant, where someone living for a year would be exposed to 508.1 millisieverts of radiation — far above the level of 20 millesieverts per year that the government considers safe.

The survey found radiation above the safe level at three dozen spots up to 12 miles from the plant. That has called into question how many residents will actually be able to return to their homes even after the plant is stabilized.