There is a serious media-block about the great danger in the Daiichi Nuclear Facility in Fukushima. According to nuclear experts who were send out by the parliament at the end of July there was 29.6 times more contamination than the Hiroshima bomb.

Another problem which occurred in the last few days is the foundation under the reactor has begun to crack and the radioactive materials are leaking into the ocean which results in a radioactive steam cloud around the Daiichi facility. Also there is a hydrogen build-up in the containment vessel which can only happen by nuclear fusion. As long TEPCO is filling the vessel with nitrogen, the risks of a nuclear explosion in the vessel is at minimum. But if oxygen is coming in from the cracks into the containment vessel, the risks of an explosion is at maximum. If this scenario occurs, nuclear materials will come along with this explosion and an other nuclear disaster will happen.

Impact on atmosphere after Fukushima disaster

The Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) led research on the release of the radioactive noble gas xenon 133 and aerosol-bound cesium 137 after the Fukushima event. The lead author, Dr Andreas Stohl, said ‘There is no doubt that the Fukushima accident is, at least in terms of the isotopes xenon 133 and cesium 137, the most significant event after the catastrophe in Chernobyl 25 years ago’.

The amount of xenon 133 is called the ‘largest civilian noble gas release in history’ with strong evidence that emissions started in the morning of the earthquake on 11^th March.

Cesium 137 has a half life of some 30.17 years, which means that the amount of radiation it emits halves every 30.17 years. Exposure to this element can increase the risk of cancer and, if exposure is very high, it can cause burns and even death. Radioactive iodine was also released but with a half life of around a week the risks have now become extremely small. Although xenon 133 is not a health hazard, the sheer amount released does show how big the incident was.

Marine impact of Fukushima incident

MOST of the radioactive fallout from Fukushima dropped into the ocean and began circling the planet. Up to 80 per cent of the caesium released by the Fukushima Daiichi power plant landed in the Pacific and made its way into other oceans around the world, scientists at the Meteorological Research Institute said yesterday.

“The rest has fallen on land” in and around Fukushima, said Hiroshi Takahashi, a researcher at the institute in Ibaraki, northeast of Tokyo.

“The results mean the ocean was more contaminated than land, although recent data have shown that ocean pollution resulting from the accident was well below levels affecting humans,” said Mr Takahashi.

The Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), France’s nuclear monitor, has updated earlier research and called the release of cesium 137 into the Pacific Ocean ‘greatest single contamination by artifical radionuclides of the sea ever seen’.

Although the report says that the Pacific will soon dilute the risks, John C K Daly writing in OilPrice.com, citing a Mainichi news agency report, says that the amount of cesium 137 that entered the Pacific was actually about thirty times that stated by the Daiichi reactor operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). This study has, he said, ‘effectively demolished TEPCO and the Japanese government’s carefully constructed minimalist scenario’.

He points out that cesium 137 can build up in the food chain contaminating seafood stocks ‘as evidenced by mercury contamination of swordfish, none of whom swam around ingesting globules of the silvery metal’ he writes.

He goes on to say that the health impact of long term exposure to cesium 137 has not been assessed and that Japan owes it to the rest of us to stop down-playing the event and come completely clean about true state of affairs.

‘While trillions of dollars are at stake in the worldwide nuclear industry, the potential health consequences are now simply too significant to ignore.’ He said.