Examples of radiation contamination:
1. -- April 25, 2012 - "Groundwater from precipitation is mixing with highly radioactive cooling water gathering in the reactor buildings, turbine buildings and basements, increasing the volume of tainted water at the complex.
The utility thus wants to use the wells to direct some of the groundwater into the Pacific Ocean — likely about 1,000 tons per day — before all of it seeps into the reactor buildings and elsewhere.
Tepco says it will check the contamination level of any groundwater before releasing it into the sea."
2. -- May 4, 2012 - "But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel -- 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. These experts also charge that the NRC is letting this threat fester because acknowledging it would call into question safety at dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants around the U.S., which contain exceedingly higher volumes of spent fuel in similar elevated pools outside of reinforced containment."
Source: The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb
3. -- May 4, 2012 - "A press conference about the on-going, rarely publicized and still grave situation around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, featuring a nuclear scientist from Japan, and first hand medical reports of clinical and on site observations in Japan related to the Fukushima radiological contamination, with discussion of the immediate needs to protect Japanese citizens now living in contaminated areas, for better monitoring of radioactive content of food, and for the cessation of incineration and burying of radioactive tsunami rubble throughout Japan."
Source: Voices for Lively Spring, Human Rights Now, and Physicians for Social Responsibility
4. -- May 7, 2012 - "Possibly angry at this situation, on April 21st a 62-year-old nuclear worker broke the silence on the continued leakage of contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi. Speaking to me, he requested anonymity for fear of losing his job. He supervises a construction site aimed at building a new facility to extract radioactive materials such as cesium and strontium from the contaminated water used to cool the plant’s crippled reactors. He revealed that the current facility removes only cesium and that other radioactive materials such as strontium cannot be cleaned up.
He expressed astonishment at the scale of the cleanup operation. “You know how much contaminated water is stored at the Fukushima Daiichi site? It is 200,000 tons. It is an enormous amount!” “In reality,” he said, raising his voice, "it is impossible to store that much water on site. So, it is obvious that some of the contaminated water has been leaked into the ocean.”
TEPCO announced on March 26th, 2012 that approximately 120 tons of water had leaked from a treatment pipe, forcing them to halt operating the treatment facility. Thi was the second time in two weeks that contaminated water leaked from the nuclear power plant."
Source: After The Media Has Gone: Fukushima, Suicide and the Legacy of 3.11
5. -- May 9, 2012 - "On the first anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake, IPRC’s Senior Scientist Nikolai Maximenko speaks about the current status of the tsunami debris that the earthquake generated."
Source: Marine Debris from the March 11, 2011, Tsunami - One Year After the Disaster
6. -- May 15, 2012 - "Although 1.08 million Bq/kg was shocking, it was considered to be specific only to Minami Soma. However, I've been told that "black dust" exists everywhere in Tokyo.
When I brought the radiation detector closer, it visibly responded. So I knew it might be highly contaminated, but didn't know it was this contaminated...", says Ayako Ishikawa incredulously. Ishikawa is the head of the citizens' group "No! to Radiation, Protect Children in Koto". [Koto-ku is one of the eastern Special Wards of Tokyo]. She says, "We found something that looked like "black dust" near the Hirai JR station in Edogawa-ku. We collected the sample and and asked Professor Tomoya Yamauchi of Kobe University to measure the radiation. The result was that it had the maximum 243,000 Bq/kg [of radioactive cesium]."
Source: "Black Dust" in Tokyo? With 243,000 Bq/Kg of Radioactive Cesium
7. -- May 16, 2012 - "Without fanfare, the nation's nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away."
8. -- May 26, 2012 - "Leaks have been a persistent problem at the plant since it was struck by an earthquake and tsunami on 11 March. Three reactors operating at the time of the quake went into meltdown after the tsunami wiped out emergency generators designed to circulate water through the cores. TEPCO recently admitted that all three units probably suffered complete meltdowns before workers could flood them with seawater.
Since then, reactor operators have kept water flowing to the cores and several fuel storage pools above the reactors. That same water appears to be flowing out into the basements of buildings and eventually the Pacific Ocean, where environmentalists and scientists have raised concerns about possible contamination.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the plant, hoped to rectify the problem by pumping water into storage tanks until it can be reprocessed, but today Reuters reports that the storage tanks appear to be leaking.
And that’s just the start of the bad news because the reactors themselves appear to be leaking as well. TEPCO initially hoped that the leaks were largely coming from pipes that could be repaired, but they now concede that both the reactors’ pressure vessels and primary containment vessels, which are designed to contain an accident, are probably leaking water."
9. -- May 28, 2012 - "Researchers have found elevated levels of radioactivity in pacific Bluefin tuna caught off the coast of California that can be tied directly to the Fukushima incident.
The levels are within safe limits for human consumption, but demonstrate how such pollution can be carried vast distances by migratory species.
Nicholas Fisher, a professor of marine sciences at Stony Brook University in New York says he was 'stunned' to find the radioactive signal in bluefin tuna."
See video here.
