1- IT COULD BE MONTHS BEFORE THE CRISIS AT THE NUCLEAR PLANTS IS UNDER CONTROL.
"TOKYO — Japanese engineers put dye into radioactive water on Monday to check if they had managed to stop a leak from one reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant but one official warned it would be months before the crisis was under control.
In the face of Japan’s biggest crisis since World War Two, one newspaper poll said that nearly two-thirds of voters want the government to form a coalition with the major opposition party and work together to recover from the massive damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Underlining the concern over the impact on the world’s third largest economy, a central bank survey showed that big manufacturers expect business conditions to worsen significantly in the next three months, though they were not quite as pessimistic as some analysts had expected."
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Japan+says+take+months+radiation+leaks/4552523/story.html#ixzz1IZtroTUT
2) USED MILKY BATHWATER DYE TO TRY TO TRACE THE PATH OF RADIOACTIVE WATER SEEPAGE.
3) PLANT OPERATORS PURPOSELY DUMPED 10,000 TONS OF HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE WATER INTO THE OCEAN.
TOKYO — Workers used a milky bathwater dye Monday as they frantically tried to trace the path of radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant.
The crack in a maintenance pit discovered over the weekend was the latest confirmation that radioactivity continues to spill into the environment. The leak is a symptom of the primary difficulty at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex: Radioactive water is pooling around the plant and preventing workers from powering up cooling systems needed to stabilize dangerously vulnerable fuel rods.
The plant operators also deliberately dumped 10,000 tons of tainted water – measuring about 500 times above the legal limit for radiactivity – into the ocean Monday to make space at a storage site for water that is even more highly radiactive.
Engineers have turned to a host of improvised and sometimes bizarre methods to tame the nuclear plant after it was crippled in Japan's magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami on March 11.
Efforts over the weekend to clog the leak with a special polymer, sawdust and even shredded newspapers failed to halt the flow at a cracked concrete maintenance pit near the shoreline. They still can't say for sure if the pit, where radioactive iodine was measured at 10,000 times the legal limit, is the source of the leak.
Suspecting they might be targeting the wrong channel to the pit, workers tried to confirm the leak's pathway by dumping several pounds (kilograms) of salts used to give bathwater a milky hue into the system, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday.
"There could be other possible passages that the water may be traveling. We must watch carefully and contain it as quickly as possible," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency.
4) RADIOACTIVE PARTICLES ARE LIKELY TO GET INTO THE FOOD SUPPLY.
5) THERE IS ONLY CONJECTURE AS TO WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE SEA LIFE AFTER ALL OF THE DUMPING OF THE RADIOACTIVE WATER FROM THE PLANTS...NO ONE KNOWS HOW MUCH MORE WILL BE NECESSARY.
It's true that radioactive particles from a nuclear disaster like this do get into the food supply, but so far there's no indication that there's cause for alarm. The particles emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant bind to dust, which is how they travel through the air and eventually fall on the ground, according to CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
When cows eat contaminated grass, those particles can get into milk. Large surfaces of leafy veggies are at risk because they present a greater surface area for the particles to fall on; that's why several green vegetables can no longer be exported from certain areas near the nuclear power plant. Still, levels detected so far pose little risk, Gupta said. And so far there is no contamination of beef in Japan, the government said Friday.
Radioactive particles disperse the farther they travel, so by the time they get to the United States from Japan they are not concentrated enough to pose any health risk. The state of Washington and California have both reported low levels of radioactivity in milk; however, this milk is safe to consume, experts say.
And how about what that water might do to fish? If you're still craving sushi, it seems that, unlike after the Gulf oil disaster, there isn't as much concern about the safety of fish from Japan, Eatocracy reports. Fishing in the prefectures near to the nuclear plant - Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate - has been suspended since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which makes it less likely that tainted fish will reach the market.
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6) THERE IS A RUN ON INDONESIAN COCONUT HUSKS
7) ACTIVATED CHARCOAL IS BECOMING SCARCE BECAUSE OF THE AMOUNT THAT JAPAN IS USING IN ITS WATER SUPPLY.
April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Efforts to protect Tokyo’s tap water from radiation leaked by a damaged nuclear-power plant have led to a run on Indonesian coconut husks.
Granulated charcoal, made of shells of coconuts and oil- palm kernels, is being used by treatment plants in Tokyo and neighboring regions to filter tap water supplies. Prices for the absorbent carbon material have risen as much as 44 percent since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that triggered the radiation threat, said Yoshio Toi, a spokesman for the municipal government in Chiba, a prefecture neighboring Tokyo.
Treatment plants are trying to remove any traces of radioactive matter, such as iodine-131, known to cause thyroid cancer, and convince customers that water supplies are safe. Some Tokyo facilities more than quadrupled the amount of activated charcoal used in filtration after a March 21 sample contained iodine-131 that exceeded the safe limit for infants.
“Tokyo is ordering more activated charcoal as we deplete our stocks,” said Gen Ozeki, a spokesman for the city’s Bureau of Waterworks. “It’s not just Tokyo doing this, others are taking extraordinary measures for their water, too, so charcoal is becoming scarce.”
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8) RESTAURANTS AND OTHER BUSINESSES ARE STOCKPILING CHARCOAL BECAUSE OF THEIR CONCERN ABOUT THE WATER.
Radiation from Japan rained on Berkeley, California, during recent storms at levels that exceeded drinking water standards by 181 times. A rooftop water monitoring program managed by the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering detected substantial spikes in rain-borne iodine-131 during those torrential downpours. The levels exceeded federal drinking water thresholds, known as Maximum Contaminant Levels -- or MCLs -- by as much as 181 times or 18,100%. Iodine-131 is one of the most cancer-causing toxic radioactive isotopes spewed when nuclear power plants are in meltdown. It is being ingested by cows, which have begun passing it through into their milk and radioactivity has been detected. [Multiple Sources] READ MORE http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/frameset.php?pageid=http%3A//www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/040411.php
9) San Francisco Rainwater: Radiation 181 Times Above US Drinking Water Standard
10) THERE IS HIGHER THAN NORMAL RADIATION LEVELS BEING FOUND IN PRECIPITATION ALL ACROSS THE UNITED STATES BUT IT IS NOT BEING REPORTED IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA.
