As Japan goes all out to spread debris all over , we learn far many radioactive were released last March !

Japanese Government's All-Out Offensive to Push Disaster Debris All Over Japan

The push has gotten noticeably stronger in the past week or so, gearing toward the one-year anniversary of the March 11, 2011 disaster.

Even the far-away prefecture like Okinawa, some of whose islands are physically much closer to Taiwan than to the Japanese mainland, eagerly wants disaster debris from Tohoku to be shipped there (I hate to think how much it would cost), much to the despair of parents who have thought they escaped to Okinawa with their children to avoid radiation contamination.

Now, Prime Minister Noda has promised a beefed-up support (i.e. more subsidy, i.e. more taxpayers' money) to those exemplary municipalities who take the debris and burn, on a TV show.

Jiji Tsushin (3/4/2012):

野田佳彦首相は４日夜、日本テレビの番組に出演し、東日本大震災で生じたがれきの広域処理について「受け入れ自治体への支援をこれからやらなければいけない。放射能検査を国が支援する。放射能検査は不安を解消する唯一の方法で、場合によっては国が直接検査する」と述べ、受け入れ自治体への財政支援を積極的に行う方針を表明した。

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda appeared on a program aired on Nippon Television in the evening of March 4. About the wide-area processing and disposal of the debris from the March 11, 2011 earthquake/tsunami disaster, he said, "We will have to support the municipalities that will accept the debris. The national government will support the testing of radioactivity, which is the only way to dispel fears. In some cases, the national government will conduct the test", indicating the policy to financially support the municipalities that accept the debris.　首相は受け入れ自治体が処分場を拡充したり、新たに建設したりする際にも、政府が財政支援する考えを示した。「一番大事なことは、処分場周辺の皆さまの理解を得ることだ。必要によってはわれわれが説明にいく」と強調した。

The prime minister also promised the financial support from the national government when the municipalities expand the existing disposal sites or build new disposal sites. He said emphatically, "The most important thing is to get approval from people near the disposal sites. If necessary, we will go ourselves to explain to them."

政府は、２０１４年３月末までに全てのがれきを最終処分する目標を掲げている。しかし、被災地だけでは処理能力に限界があり、首相は先月１０日の記者会見で、全国の自治体に広域処理への協力を呼び掛けていた。ただ、がれきの放射能汚染への不安から、受け入れ自治体は現在、東京都と青森、山形両県にとどまっている。

The national government makes it the goal to dispose all the debris by the end of March 2014. However, there is a limit to how much debris can be processed at the disaster affected areas, and the prime minister called for cooperation from municipalities in Japan in wide-area debris processing in the press conference on February 10. However, only Tokyo, Aomori Prefecture, and Yamagata Prefecture have accepted the debris, because of the fear of radiation contamination of the disaster debris.

Oh boy. This prime minister may have been a good speaker on the street corner in his younger days, but he doesn't seem to live in the reality-based world.

1. No one outside the government believes the numbers that the government churns out regarding radiation contamination. Even the ranking official at the Ministry of the Environment has admitted that people do not trust any government numbers.

2. His understanding that the only people that should matter are the residents near the final disposal sites is plain wrong. The debris will be burned elsewhere, and the residents near the incineration plants do matter. Besides, the final disposal sites are often located near or at the water source, and even without radioactive materials there have been numerous problems with contaminated runoffs polluting the water and soil, affecting people and businesses downstream.

3. Capacity to process the debris at the disaster-affected area is a matter of debate right now. More and more municipalities and waste management industry people are saying they want the debris to stay where they are, instead of wasting money to transport it as far away as to Okinawa.But it doesn't seem to matter to the Japanese government a bit. They seem to think if they repeat the same words over and over again people will get weary and give up.

and....

Discovery of Neptunium-239 in Iitate-mura Finally Published by a Peer-Review Magazine (Nearly One Year after the Discovery)

A paper by a researcher at Tokyo University about discovery of neptunium-239 and other short-lived nuclides in Iitate-mura seems to have finally been accepted and published by Environmental Pollution, a peer-reviewed scientific magazine. It was made available online on January 20, 2012, and is published in the April 2012 issue of the magazine.

It took nearly 1 year for off-line readers to know about the discovery. The researcher took the samples of soil, plants and water in early April last year.

In August last year there was an article of neptunium-239 having been discovered in Iitate-mura, 35 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, by a researcher at Tokyo University. The article was written by a husband and wife comedian couple. (For more, see my post on August 15, 2011.) They were criticized for not revealing the source (name of this researcher) or the details. Their response was that the researcher was submitting the paper to a peer-reviewed magazine.Well here it is, published by a peer-reviewed magazine nearly one year after the accident, and now utterly irrelevant except for some academic curiosity. The information, as it sat in limbo of peer-reviewing process, was not used to educate, warn people in Fukushima, particularly in Iitate-mura, so that they could decide what to do. If they had known their soil and vegetation were extremely contaminated with short-lived radionuclides with strong radioactivity, they might have done things differently.

I hope the researcher at least warned the villagers privately.

From Sciencedirect.com:

Environmental Pollution

Volume 163, April 2012, Pages 243–247

Deposition of fission and activation products after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident

* Katsumi Shozugawa (a), Corresponding author
* Norio Nogawa (b),
* Motoyuki Matsuo (a)

* a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan
* b Radioisotope Center, The University of Tokyo, 2-11-16 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0032, Japan

* Received 22 August 2011. Revised 24 December 2011. Accepted 1 January 2012. Available online 20 January 2012.

Abstract

The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, damaged reactor cooling systems at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The subsequent venting operation and hydrogen explosion resulted in a large radioactive nuclide emission from reactor containers into the environment. Here, we collected environmental samples such as soil, plant species, and water on April 10, 2011, in front of the power plant main gate as well as 35 km away in Iitate village, and observed gamma-rays with a Ge(Li) semiconductor detector. We observed activation products (239Np and 59Fe) and fission products (131I, 134Cs (133Cs), 137Cs, 110mAg (109Ag), 132Te, 132I, 140Ba, 140La, 91Sr, 91Y, 95Zr, and 95Nb). 239Np is the parent nuclide of 239Pu; 59Fe are presumably activation products of 58Fe obtained by corrosion of cooling pipes. The results show that these activation and fission products, diffused within a month of the accident.Highlights

► We collected environmental samples near the Fukushima nuclear power plant. ► We observed 239Np and 59Fe along with many fission products. ► 239Np is evidently an activation product of 238U contained in nuclear fuel. ► 239Np is also parent nuclide of 239Pu. ► Our results show that activation products diffused within a month of the accident.

If the data in the paper is not much different from what the researcher had put on his own website last year, Iitate-mura had several thousand becquerels/kg of neptunium-239, exceeding one of the two sampling locations in front of the Fukushima I plant gate. Iitate-mura also had a host of other radionuclides in amounts exceeding the immediate vicinity of the plant or the front gate of the plant or even inside the plant.

You can see the charts for yourself, here. They are from the researcher's presentation last year, not from the paper submitted and accepted at Environmental Pollution.