Drink your milk and eat your spinach and you’ll grow up to be a big boy. That is what our mothers always told us. If you do that in Japan you might grow up to be 25 feet tall. So a little radiation is popping up in milk, spinich, and water. Who needs those things to live? Believe the government drones when they tell you not to worry. They’ve never lied to you before. The government really cares about you.
Japan cites radiation in milk, spinach near plant
FUKUSHIMA, Japan – In the first sign that contamination from Japan’s stricken nuclear complex had seeped into the food chain, officials said Saturday that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near the tsunami-crippled facility exceeded government safety limits.
Minuscule amounts of radioactive iodine also were found in tap water in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan — although experts said none of the tests showed any health risks.
The discovery came as officials said the crisis at the nuclear plant appeared to be stabilizing, with near-constant dousing of dangerously overheated reactors and uranium fuel, but the situation was still far from resolved.
“We more or less do not expect to see anything worse than what we are seeing now,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Japan has been grappling with a cascade of disasters unleashed by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11. The quake spawned a tsunami that ravaged Japan’s northeastern coast, killing more than 7,300 people and knocking out cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, causing the complex to leak radiation.
Nearly 11,000 people are still missing, and more than 452,000 are living in shelters.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, meanwhile, insisted the contaminated foods “pose no immediate health risk.”
The tainted milk was found 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the plant, a local official said. The spinach was collected from six farms between 60 miles (100 kilometers) and 75 miles (120 kilometers) to the south of the reactors.
Those areas are rich farm country known for melons, rice and peaches, so the contamination could affect food supplies for large parts of Japan.
More tests was being done on other foods, Edano said, and if they show further contamination, then food shipments from the area would be halted.
Officials said it was too early to know if the nuclear crisis caused the contamination, but Edano said air sampling done near the dairy showed higher-than-normal radiation levels.
Iodine levels in the spinach exceeded safety limits by three to seven times, a food safety official said. Tests on the milk done Wednesday detected small amounts of iodine-131 and cesium-137, the latter being a longer-lasting element that can cause more types of cancer. But only iodine was detected Thursday and Friday, a Health Ministry official said.
After the announcements, Japanese officials immediately tried to calm an already-jittery public, saying the amounts detected were so small that people would have to consume unimaginable amounts to endanger their health.
“Can you imagine eating one kilogram of spinach every day for one year?” said State Secretary of Health Minister Yoko Komiyama. One kilogram is a little over two pounds.
Edano said someone drinking the tainted milk for one year would consume as much radiation as in a CT scan; for the spinach, it would be one-fifth of a CT scan. A CT scan is a compressed series of X-rays used for medical tests.
Masayuki Kubo, an environmental protection official in Tochigi prefecture, where the highest tap water reading was found, said the water was also safe.
“You can drink it safely without limiting the amount of water you take,” Kubo said.
At the Fukushima plant, emergency workers have been struggling to cool the reactors and the pools used to store used nuclear fuel, as well as to put the facility back on the electricity grid.
A replacement power line reached the complex Friday, but workers needed to methodically work through badly damaged and deeply complex electrical systems to make the final linkups without setting off a spark and potentially an explosion. Company officials hoped to be able to switch on the cooling systems Sunday.
Once the power is reconnected, it is not clear if the cooling systems will still work.
A fire truck with a high-pressure cannon pumped water directly from the ocean into one of the most troubled areas of the complex — the cooling pool for used fuel rods at the plant’s Unit 3. Because of high radiation levels, firefighters only went to the truck every three hours to refuel it.
Holes were also punched in the roofs of units 5 and 6 to vent buildups of hydrogen gas, and the temperature in Unit 5′s fuel storage pool dropped after new water was pumped in, according to officials with Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the complex.
More workers were thrown into the effort — bringing the total at the complex to 500 — and the safety threshold for their radiation exposure was raised 2 1/2 times so they could keep working.
Officials insisted that would cause no health damage.
Edano said conditions at the reactors in Units 1, 2 and 3 — all of which have been rocked by explosions in the past eight days — had “stabilized.”
The reactors and the storage pools both need constant sources of cooling water. Even when they are taken from reactors, uranium rods remain very hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.
Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles (220 kilometers) south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself.
People evacuated from around the plant, along with some emergency workers, have tested positive for radiation exposure. Three firefighters needed to be decontaminated with showers, while among the 18 plant workers who tested positive, one absorbed about one-tenth of the amount that could induce radiation poisoning.
Outside the bustling disaster response center in the city of Fukushima, 40 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of the plant, government nuclear specialist Kazuya Konno was able to take only a three-minute break for his first meeting since the quake with his wife, Junko, and their children.
“It’s very nerve-racking. We really don’t know what is going to become of our city,” said Junko Konno, 35. “Like most other people, we have been staying indoors unless we have to go out.”
She brought her husband a small backpack with a change of clothes and snacks. The girls — aged 4 and 6 and wearing pink surgical masks decorated with Mickey Mouse — gave their father hugs.
The government conceded Friday that it was slow to respond to the crisis and welcomed ever-growing help from the U.S. in hopes of preventing a complete meltdown.
Nishiyama, of the nuclear safety agency, also said backup power systems at the plant had been improperly protected, leaving them vulnerable to the tsunami.
The failure of Fukushima’s backup power systems, which were supposed to keep cooling systems going in the aftermath of the earthquake, let uranium fuel overheat and were a “main cause” of the crisis, Nishiyama said.
“I cannot say whether it was a human error, but we should examine the case closely,” he told reporters.
A spokesman for Tokyo Electric said that while the generators were not directly exposed to the waves, some electrical support equipment was outside. The complex was protected against tsunamis of up to 5 meters (16 feet), he said. Media reports say the tsunami was at least 6 meters (20 feet) high when it struck Fukushima.
Spokesman Motoyasu Tamaki also acknowledged that the complex was old, and might not have been as well-equipped as newer facilities.
The crisis has led to power shortages and factory closures, and triggered a plunge in Japanese stock prices.
On Saturday evening, Japan was rattled by 6.1-magnitude aftershock, with an epicenter just south of the troubled nuclear plants. The temblor, centered 150 kilometers (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo, shook buildings in the capital.
bluestem says:
just raise the safety threshold and” keep on workin’ boys’. Mercy. John
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19th March 2011 at 2:32 pm
Centerfield says:
I heard some dipshit reporter say last night that the whole Japanese nuclear issue is now “on about a part with Three Mile Island,.” Are you fucking kidding me?!? This is Chernobyl class stuff…TMI is a distant third now.
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19th March 2011 at 3:56 pm
cv51 says:
I wonder why they didn’t build those reactors below sea level so flooding them would just involve turning a valve?
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19th March 2011 at 10:46 pm
Administrator says:
Tokyo (CNN) — Workers began to see some success in their battle to cool down reactors at the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant Sunday, but Japanese officials said they may need to release additional radioactive gas into the air.
The plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said electricity was being supplied to a switchboard in reactor No. 2.
But officials said they were monitoring reactor No. 3 to determine whether to release gas to reduce mounting pressure in the containment vessel — the steel and concrete shell that insulates radioactive material inside.
Power company officials said pressure was higher than previous readings — but stable — Sunday afternoon. And Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the pressure increase did not require “an immediate release of the air at this moment.”
Still, “even in the best scenario, there will be a lot of bumps ahead,” Edano told reporters as he assessed the situation at the plant in a briefing Sunday.
Workers have injected steam to release pressure in previous operations.
The dual disasters, which struck March 11, devastated much of northeastern Japan. On Sunday, the country’s national police said 8,277 people were confirmed dead and more than 12,722 remained missing as search efforts continued. In Miyagi prefecture — one of the hardest hit areas — police said the death toll could climb to 15,000 there alone.
Amidst the gloom came one ray of hope Sunday when medical officials in the Miyagi city of Ishinomaki said they had rescued an 81-year- old grandmother and her 16-year-old grandson, who had been trapped inside their house for nine days.
In Fukushima, authorities have evacuated about 200,000 people from a 20-kilometer (12-mile) area surrounding the plant, but the crisis there has sparked concern across the country.
Very small amounts — far below the level of concern — of radioactive iodine have been detected in tap water in Tokyo and most prefectures near the Fukushima plant.
And on Sunday, Edano said authorities were still analyzing data after finding abnormally high levels of radiation in milk and spinach.
The government hopes to decide Monday whether to ban consumption and shipment of food from farms near the plant, he said.
The contaminated milk detected in Fukushima prefecture had not been distributed or sold, he said.
On Saturday, officials said tainted milk was found 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the plant, and spinach was collected as far as 100 kilometers (65 miles) to the south, almost halfway to Tokyo.
A person who consumed the tainted food continuously for a year would take in the same amount of radiation as a single CT scan, Edano said Saturday. That’s about 7 millisieverts, or double what an average person in an industrialized country is exposed to in a year, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Even if you consume the spinach in question for a long time, it will not pose an immediate threat to your health,” Edano said Sunday.
At the plant itself, workers from the power company and firefighters helping douse reactors with water are taking on the risk of far greater radiation exposure.
Firefighter Yasuo Sato told reporters his family was well aware of the risk — and proud that he was taking it.
When he sent a text message to his wife telling her he was heading to the troubled nuclear plant, he said her reply was simple: “Please become a savior for Japan.”
Six members of an emergency crew working to restore electricity at the plant have been exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation per hour.
Officials say regaining electrical power could bring cooling systems back online — a key step in curbing the further emission of radioactive material and preventing a full nuclear meltdown. A meltdown occurs when nuclear fuel rods get so hot that they melt the steel and concrete structure containing them, spilling out into the air and water with potentially deadly results.
The earthquake and tsunami Friday knocked out regular and backup cooling systems at the plant.
It was unclear whether the cooling system in reactor No. 2 was working after power was restored Sunday.
The plan is to get power up and running for the Numbers 1, 3 and 4 reactors soon. Cooling systems at the Numbers 5 and 6 reactors — the least-troublesome of the group — have already been restored, Kyodo News said.
Japan’s nuclear agency said workers were spending about five hours installing electrical cables Sunday before water spraying operations resumed. Radiation levels at the plant declined during that operation, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.
On Saturday, authorities set up a new system to spray seawater continuously on the troubled reactors for extended periods of time. Previously, firefighters, soldiers and electric company workers had manually done the same in brief intervals to avoid prolonged radiation exposure.
Water was directed at the No. 3 reactor’s spent fuel pool on Saturday in order to cool it and prevent the emission of more radioactive material into the atmosphere. Authorities have also started spraying the No. 4 reactor and continued efforts there Sunday.
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19th March 2011 at 11:11 am
KaD says:
Apparently the Japanese don’t have milk or food in general around the disaster area:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8392549/Japan-crisis-Theres-no-food-tell-people-there-is-no-food.html
Let this be a lesson if you think the government can or will help you when there’s a crises here.
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19th March 2011 at 12:46 pm
Administrator says:
TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s Health Ministry says tests have detected additional types of radiation-tainted vegetables, in more places, suggesting that contamination from its tsunami-crippled nuclear complex is reaching further into the food chain.
Ministry official Yoshifumi Kaji said Sunday that tests found excess amounts of radioactive elements on canola and chrysanthemum greens, in addition to spinach. He said the areas where the tainted produce was found included three prefectures that previously had not recorded such contamination.
Kaji said it was possible that some tainted foods may already have been sold. He also said that the government ordered shipments of milk from Fukushima, where the plant is located, to be halted after finding tainted milk at four farms out of 37 tested.
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19th March 2011 at 1:35 pm
Buckhed says:
I wonder if glowing blowfish will be served as the ultimate near death delicacy !
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19th March 2011 at 4:24 pm
howard in nyc says:
if the fugu don’t get you, then the cesium will
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19th March 2011 at 4:34 pm