Fakushima Tragedy and Indian Crime against Kudankulam masses - A Survey 

-By DR. ABDUL RUFF

Dr. Abdul Ruff, Specialist on State Terrorism;Chancellor-Founder of Centor for International Affairs(CIA); Independent Analyst;Chronicler of Foreign occupations & Freedom movements(Palestine,Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Xinjiang, Chechnya, etc.) Former university Teacher; website: abdulruff.wordpress.com/write: abdulruff_jnu@yahoo.com. Call: (91)9349537946 or (91)0/8129081217

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Global warming process due to contamination of atmosphere more by ongoing terror wars plus other human activities is taking place much stronger than ever before in world history but now the nuclear emissions would add more danger to environment. Several terrocracies keep unleashing nuclear plants unheeded by global outcry against this. Nuclear arsenals cannot ensure peace or stability of the planet.

The operator of Japan's quake-struck Fukushima nuclear power plant said recently that it could not rule out the possibility that it may still be leaking radiation into the sea.

In a way as to mislead the Supreme court, Indian nuclear regime managed by a hired PM Manmohan has said it has undertaken every step to care for the safety and security of the people of Kudankulam where the nuclear gang in India led by the regime itself is eager to unleash nuclear terror on masses whose major occupation is fishing.

Earlier, the regime had cold bluffed to the courts in their face that no humans live in Kudankulam in Tamilnadu and the nuclear plant can operate without fear of human losses. Once the lie was disproved by the popular agitation, the regime attacked them, killing already several innocent persons.

Under tremendous pressure from Russia that sells nuclear reactors to India, the cold corrupt regime  and its political nuclear agents have terrorized the people by arresting  the leaders and charge-sheeting them with false cases. The regime even obtained permission of Apex court to refuel the terror plant. That however has not deterred the besieged people who know their fate is being compromised by Indian terror regime.  .  

Levels of radioactive contamination in fish caught off the east coast of Japan remain raised, official data shows. It is a sign that the Dai-ichi power plant continues to be a source of pollution more than a year after the nuclear accident.

Cutting across all national political outfits, there is seems to be a consensus on nukes production. Parties including the communists want India to expand its foreign territories and nuke arsenals. Communist parties having got disillusioned by ideological misbehaviour of both Moscow and Beijing, yet suffer from the Soviet syndrome and they continue to live in Soviet era promoting Russian sale of nuclear goods to India. This explains the opposition they have posed against the people agitating against the nuclear terror project in Kudankulam, Tamilnadu.

Russia has gone too far from the communist agenda and is already into capitalist and imperialist mode. So are the Indian communists.

A massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 triggered fuelrod meltdowns at the plant, causing radiation leakage, contamination of food and water and mass evacuations, although the government declared in December that the disaster was under control. 

Post Fakushima disaster has revealed one by one devastating effects on life on the earth.  Flora and fauna have been attacked and polluted. Fishing off Fukushima prefecture, north of Tokyo, is prohibited except for test fishing for a few species such as certain types of octopus and squid, which are shipped only when they are found to be safe.

In listening to global nuclear lobbyists and operators, Japan regime takes risks by reactivating the nuclear terror plant. Japan conducted obligatory safety drills as a mere formality knowing fully well that nothing can really stop potential disasters inherent in nuclear plants. Last year's quake and tsunami caused three catastrophic core meltdowns at the facility, but Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) to act because it feared the political, economic and legal consequences of implementing new measures. TEPCO, however, feared efforts to bolster its nuclear facilities in the event of major natural disasters would spur antinuclear sentiment, interfere with operations and increase litigation risks.

Meanwhile, the Fukushima No. 1 plant has been stabilized to a considerable extent, but is still running on makeshift equipment as workers continue preparations to decommission its four wrecked reactors, a process that could take up to four decades.

An American academic journal Science article said high radiation levels in bottom-dwelling fish caught off Fukushima prefecture indicate continued radiation leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.  Asked if Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco, could confirm that the plant is not leaking radiation into the sea any more, a spokeswoman said: "Tepco cannot say such a thing, but we have confirmed that radiation levels are declining in both the sea water and seabed soil around the plant." Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution of the United States, said that little change in radioactive caesium levels found in Fukushima fish suggested a continued leak. "The fact that many fish are just as contaminated today with caesium 134 and caesium 137 as they were more than one year ago implies that caesium is still being released to the food chain," he said.

Recent research shows there is genuine danger that vast majority of fish caught off the northeast coast of Japan could be unfit for human consumption. The caesium does not normally stay in the tissues of saltwater fish for very long; a few percent per day on average should flow back into the ocean water. So, the fact that these animals continue to display elevated contamination strongly suggests the pollution source. Although caesium levels in any fish type and on any day can be highly variable, it is the bottom-dwelling species off Fukushima that consistently show the highest caesium counts. For the WHOI researcher, this points to the seafloor being a major reservoir for the caesium pollution. Even tightening of the threshold re-classified fish, previously deemed fit as unfit, even though their actual contamination count has not changed the pollution levels.

About 40% of fish caught close to Fukushima itself are regarded as unfit for humans under Japanese regulations. The respected US marine chemist Prof Ken Buesseler says there are probably two sources of lingering contamination. Buesseler is affiliated to the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).  His evaluation covers a year's worth of data gathered by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF). Its monthly records detail the levels of radioactive caesium found in fish and other seafood products from shortly after the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami - the double disaster that triggered the Fukushima crisis. The caesium-134 and 137 isotopes can be traced directly to releases from the crippled power station. MAFF uses the information to decide whether certain fisheries along five east-coast prefectures, including Fukushima, should be opened or closed (it is not a measure of contamination in actual market fish). "There is the on-going leakage into the ocean of polluted ground water from under Fukushima, and there is the contamination that's already in the sediments just offshore".  "It all points to this issue being long-term and one that will need monitoring for decades into the future."

The contamination question is a pertinent one in the Asian nation simply because its people consume far more fish per head than in most other countries. Radioactive elements from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected in seawater and marine organisms up to 600km from Japan. Even as pressure from the regime keeps mounting to promote nuclear terror, Prof Buesseler, with Japanese colleagues, is organising a scientific symposium in Tokyo on 12/13 November to present the latest thinking on Fukushima and its impacts on the ocean. The information will then be shared with the public in a free colloquium on 14 November.

But the scientists who made the discovery stress the natural radioactivity of seawater dwarfs anything seen in their samples.

The researchers from the US, UK, France, Spain and Japan conducted just three months after the Fukushima crisis began an "independent check" on Japanese government-funded research and the information released by Tepco, the owners of the beleaguered Daiichi plant in Fukushima. The Research Vessel KOK sailed a zig-zag path from 600km to 30km off the coast, taking thousands of samples of seawater, including the organisms living in it, such as plankton and small fish. It also deployed "drifters" into the water to understand better the behaviour of local currents and eddies. Analysis revealed elevated levels of radioactive elements that could be tied directly to releases from the nuclear power station. These included caesium-137 and caesium-134. Radioactivity readings in the seawater across the track ranged from less than three becquerels per cubic metre up to 4,000 becquerels per cubic metre. The maximum of these readings is about a thousand times what could be measured in the water prior to the nuclear accident.

Almost a year after the Japanese Tohoku earthquake and mega-tsunami, the Pacific Ocean is still dealing with the consequences of the catastrophe. A mass of debris was washed out to sea as floodwaters receded from the land, and some of that wreckage continues to float around the ocean.

International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) scientific computer programmer Jan Hafner explained: "So far, the debris field has spread in length more than 2,000 nautical miles, and is more than 1,000 nautical miles wide," he told BBC News. That is approaching 4,000km by 2,000km. Japanese estimates suggested perhaps 20 million tonnes of debris were generated by the earthquake and the incoming rush of water on 11 March last year. Most would have stayed on land, and a fair proportion pulled out to sea would have sunk rapidly. But it is possible a million tonnes is still floating on the ocean.

It is clear also, 11 months on from the accident, that Fukushima-originated radioactivity levels in the seawater are not declining as fast as many scientists would have hoped.

"The reactor site still seems to be leaking; it hasn't shut off completely, and at those levels right on the coast you could still have these concentration factors that we measured that would indicate some organisms would be at levels unfit for human consumption," Dr Buesseler said.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was badly damaged by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. It is now in a state of "cold shutdown". Officials in Japan's Okinawa prefecture have been forced to cancel two children's snow events amid residents' fears the snow was radioactive. About 600kg of snow had been flown into Naha city from north-eastern Japan. Reports say that residents expressed fears the snow had been contaminated in the wake of the crisis at the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant. But officials said the snow was from an area 400km (248 miles) from Fukushima and had undergone several safety tests.

Japan's Mainichi Daily News reported that some of the concerned residents were evacuees from the Tohoku area, which was hit by the earthquake and tsunami last March.

One of the cancelled events was due to take place on Thursday, at a children's hall in the Matsuo area of the Naha city, with the second scheduled for Friday. The snow events have become a traditional fixture in the Okinawa prefecture, which has a sub-tropical climate. Air force soldiers who go for training in Japan's northern Aomori prefecture bring the snow back with them.

New research has found that radioactive material in parts of north-eastern Japan exceeds levels considered safe for farming. The findings provide the first comprehensive estimates of contamination across Japan following the nuclear accident in 2011.

Food production is likely to be affected, the researchers say.

In the wake of the accident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive isotopes were blown over Japan and its coastal waters. Fears that agricultural land would be contaminated prompted research into whether Japanese vegetables and meat were safe to eat. An early study suggested that harvests contained levels of radiation well under the safety limit for human consumption. But that now looks like  a state hoax.

To estimate crops contamination levels, Teppei Yasunari, from the Universities Space Research Association in the US state of Maryland, and his colleagues, took measurements of the radioactive element caesium-137 in soil and grass from all but one of Japan's 47 regions and combined these results with simulations based on weather patterns following the meltdown. Caesium-137 lingers in the environment for decades, and so is more of a concern than other radioactive elements released in the cloud of team when the reactors' cooling systems failed, leading to explosions. The team found that the area of eastern Fukushima had levels of the radioactive element that exceeded official government limits for arable land.

The researchers estimate that caesium-137 levels close to the nuclear plant were eight times the safety limit, while neighbouring regions were just under this cut off; the rest of Japan was well below (averaging about 25 Bq/kg) the safety limit. Relatively low contamination levels in western Japan could be explained by mountain ranges sheltering those regions from the dispersal of radioactive material.

Food production in the most contaminated regions is likely to be "severely impaired", and that Fukishima's neighbouring regions, such as, Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata, Niigata, Tochigi, Ibaraki, and Chiba are likely to also be affected.

They urge the Japanese government to carry out a more thorough assessment of radioactive contamination across Japan before considering future decontamination plans. A second study, published in PNAS, collected over a hundred soil samples from within 70km of the Fukishima plant, and found similarly high caesium-137 levels across the Fukishima prefecture, and its neighbouring regions. England and Wales still have some post-Chernobyl restrictions in upland areas. Ploughing, and some fertilisers can help farmers reduce plants' uptake of the dangerous elements, and binding agents can be added to animal feed to reduce their uptake from the gut.

The Japanese nuclear waste ‘material’ is likely to spread beyond Japan Sea.  Radioactive elements from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected in seawater and marine organisms up to 600km from Japan. What the simulation shows is the area of ocean where debris might be found, but look over the side of any ship and you would very probably see no debris at all because the individual items have now become widely separated. The information is of immense interest to shipping authorities because objects in the water, depending of their size, can be a serious collision hazard.