Japan’s radiation sleuths toil with borrowed Geiger counters – TEPCO response characterized by ‘ineptitude, negligence’
By Shigeru Sato, Sachiko Sakamaki, and Tsuyoshi Inajima
13 Jun 2011 Makoto Tonami starts his workday by slipping on a white surgical face mask and then drives around with a borrowed Geiger counter, taking radiation readings. Three months ago, he was sorting garbage claims in Minami Soma, a city north of the Fukushima nuclear plant. “It’s usually two or three of us and we drive till sunset,” said the 43-year-old city official, who grew up in the coastal town. His group takes readings at 35 locations with equipment loaned from the Fukushima government, he said. Masanori Monma, principal of the Kashima Elementary School in Minami Soma, borrowed a portable Geiger counter from the science ministry. Last month, he got a reading of 2.1 microsieverts an hour at a ditch next to a school flowerbed, about 35 times higher than in downtown Tokyo and at the top end of the annual safety limit for radiation exposure. More than three months after the biggest earthquake in Japan’s history and a 15-meter (40-foot) tsunami wrecked the Fukushima atomic power station, a picture emerges of ad-hoc responses to the crisis. In the days after the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl, Tokyo Electric Power Co. was using fire hoses and makeshift pumps to try and cool the crippled reactors. About 100,000 evacuees still sleep on gymnasium floors, unsure if they can ever go home. Less than half of Minami Soma’s 71,000 residents now live there, with some carrying personal Geiger counters. Tepco forecasts the reactors will be brought under control by October at the earliest. […] “If Tepco was operating this facility in the U.S., all of the reactors would have been shut down indefinitely and there would have been a complete changeover of management,” said nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander. “In terms of the way they handled the accident, in terms of the way they let the information out to the press, the inconsistency in the data they have presented; words like ineptitude, negligence is the only way to characterize it,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating U.S. nuclear power plants, including the Crystal River Station in Florida now owned by Progress Energy Inc. […]
Japan’s Radiation Sleuths Toil With Borrowed Geiger Counters
By Antoni Slodkowski
15 June 2011 TOKYO (Reuters) – Thousands of anti-nuclear protesters marched in Japan on Saturday, three months after an earthquake and tsunami triggered the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years, urging the government to cut reliance on atomic power. Three reactors went into meltdown after the earthquake hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan, forcing 80,000 residents to evacuate from its vicinity as engineers battled radiation leaks, hydrogen explosions and overheating fuel rods. Company workers, students and parents with children on their shoulders rallied across Japan, venting their anger at the government’s handling of the crisis, carrying flags bearing the words “No Nukes!” and “No More Fukushima.” “If they don’t get the message now, what else has to happen before we stop using atomic energy which has proved so dangerous?” said kindergarten worker Yu Matsuda, 28. She brought her children, aged 2 and 4, to protest at the headquarters of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Corporation (Tepco) (9501.T). “I want my children to play outside safely and swim in our sea without any worries,” Matsuda said, listening to speeches by civil rights activists and people from tsunami-affected areas. […] “The nuclear lobby says the cost of green energy is too high. But I say the cost of cleaning up this mess and the possibility of more such accidents at the expense of our lives is much higher,” said entrepreneur Yonosuke Sawada, 59. […]
