Radiation spike in sea near Japan nuclear
plant
SENDAI, Japan: Radiation levels have jumped 10-fold
in days in seawater near Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear plant,
officials said Saturday, as workers battled to stabilise the
crippled power station.
Drinking a half-litre (20-ounce) bottle of similarly
contaminated fresh water would expose a person to their annual safe
dose, said an official who however ruled out an immediate threat to
aquatic life and seafood safety.
The iodine-131 level in the Pacific Ocean waters
just off the Fukushima plant was 1,250 times above the legal limit
-- compared with readings of 126 times higher taken on Tuesday, and
145 higher on Thursday.
"This is a relatively high level," nuclear safety agency official
Hidehiko Nishiyama said in a televised press conference on the test
results from Friday released by plant operator the Tokyo Electric
Power Company (TEPCO).
Assessing the likely impact on aquatic life, Nishiyama added:
"Generally speaking, radioactive material released into the sea
will spread due to tides, so you need much more for seaweed and sea
life to absorb it."
He added that because iodine-131 has a half-life -- the time in
which half of it decays -- of eight days, "by the time people eat
the sea products, its amount is likely to have diminished
significantly."
However, TEPCO in a statement also said that levels of caesium-137,
which has a half life of about 30 years, was 79.6 times the legal
maximum.
The assurances did little to lift the gloom that has hung over
Japan since a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck on March 11
and sent a monster tsunami crashing into the northeast coast in the
country's worst post-war disaster.
The wave easily overwhelmed the world's biggest sea defences and
swallowed entire communities. The confirmed death toll rose to
10,151 on Saturday, with little hope seen for most of the 17,053
listed as missing.
The wave knocked out the cooling systems for the six reactors of
the Fukushima plant, leading to suspected partial meltdowns in
three of them and hydrogen explosions and fires that have ripped
through the facility.
Fire engines have hosed thousands of tons of seawater onto the
facility in a bid to keep the fuel rods inside reactor cores and
pools from being exposed to the air, where they could reach
critical stage and go into full meltdown.
Radioactive iodine, caesium and cobalt levels in water in the
turbine buildings next to reactors one and three were 10,000 times
the normal level -- raising fears that the reactor vessels or their
valves and pipes are leaking.
The worst-case scenario at reactor three would be that the fuel
inside the reactor core -- a volatile uranium-plutonium mix -- has
already started to burn its way through its steel pressure
vessel.
Worried about the salt buildup in the crippled plant, engineers
have started pumping in fresh water instead. More is being shipped
in, including on two US military water barges headed for the plant
from a naval base near Tokyo.
Radioactive vapour from the plant has contaminated farm produce and
dairy products in the region, leading to shipment halts in Japan as
well as the United States, European Union, China and a host of
other nations.
Higher than normal radiation has also been detected in tap water in
and around Tokyo, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) from the plant,
leading authorities at one stage to warn against using it for baby
milk formula.
Japan widened the zone around the plant where it suggests people
evacuate, to 30 kilometres (20 miles) -- still below the 80
kilometres advised by the United States, and larger areas including
Tokyo in other nations' alerts.
Environmental watchdog Greenpeace started its own monitoring near
the plant, charging that "authorities have consistently appeared to
underestimate both the risks and extent of radioactive
contamination".
"We have come to Fukushima to bear witness to the impacts of this
crisis and to provide some independent insight into the resulting
radioactive contamination," said the group's radioactivity safety
advisor Jan van de Putte.
The campaign group said it would provide "an alternative to the
often contradictory information released by nuclear
regulators".
-AFP/ac
