Some crops grown near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant are not too radioactive to eat, according to Japanese scientists. Radiation in the soil is mainly contained and can be treated, they say. In this photo, students at Tokyo University measure radiation from vegetables grown near Fukushima. EPA / TOMOYUKI KAYA

By Tsuyoshi Inajima and Yuji Okada
23 August 2011 Japan will more than triple the number of regions it checks for airborne radiation as more contaminated “hot spots” are discovered far from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power station. The government said it will increase radiation monitoring by helicopter to 22 prefectures from the six closest to the plant, which began spewing radiation after an earthquake and tsunami struck the station in March. The plan comes after radioactive waste more than double the regulatory limit was found 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the plant this week. Authorities have refused to give a cumulative figure for radiation released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant after estimating in June that fallout in the six days following the quake was equal to 15 percent of total radiation released in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The authorities have been too slow to widen airborne radiation testing, said Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute in Osaka. “The government should have expanded the monitoring area by helicopters much earlier to ease concerns among the public,” Ito said in a telephone interview yesterday. Officials on Aug. 12 found compost in a kindergarten yard in Tokamachi city, Niigata prefecture containing radioactive cesium measuring 27,000 becquerels per kilogram, Kenichiro Kasuga, an official at the city’s disaster prevention department, said by phone. Under Japanese law, waste measuring over 8,000 becquerels per kilogram must be treated as radioactive waste and can’t be buried in a landfill. City officials found sludge measuring 18,900 becquerels per kilogram from radioactive cesium on the same day as part of tests done at 60 educational and childcare facilities, Kasuga said. The city government is storing the waste in drums until the government sets final guidelines for its disposal, he said. […] The government will begin monitoring radiation levels in 16 prefectures from Aomori, in the far north of the main island of Honshu, to Aichi in central Japan 460 kilometers (290 miles) from the plant by the end of October, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology said in a statement on its website yesterday. […] Tokyo Electric’s Dai-Ichi plant released about 770,000 tera becquerels of radioactive materials between March 11 and March 16, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on June 6. Japan’s government is under-reporting the amount of airborne radiation across the country, said Tom Gill, an anthropology professor at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, citing his studies in Fukushima prefecture since March. The “maximum” radiation level given for Fukushima prefecture on Aug. 13 was 2.64 microsieverts per hour in the village of Iitate 40 kilometers northwest of the Dai-Ichi plant, Gill said, according to figures from the Science Ministry published daily in national newspapers. That compares with the official reading in the village itself the next day of 14.2 microsieverts per hour, he said, showing a picture he took of the reading on that day. He was speaking at a presentation in Yokohama near Tokyo on Aug. 19. The government excludes the highest readings among 20 measuring stations in the village from the data it collates for publication, Gill said. “Distrust and cynicism of central government is pretty much universal across Fukushima now,” he said. Medical tests on children living in three towns near the plant between March 24 and 30 found 45 percent of those surveyed suffered low-level thyroid radiation exposure, Japan’s government said earlier this month. […]

Japan Triples Airborne Radiation Checks as ‘Hot Spots’ Spread