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8% of Japan's land area, or more than 30,000 square kilometers, has been contaminated with radioactive cesium from the Fukushima atomic power plant.

Spanning 13 prefectures, the affected area has accumulated more than 10,000 becquerels of cesium 134 and 137 per square meter.

Senior government officials withheld from reporting Russia's offer to store and reprocess spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants in Japan to other relevant government bodies in a bid to thwart any unfavorable move toward the operation of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant in Aomori Prefecture.

On November 17, the architect of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3, Uehara Haruo, was interviewed in Japan. He warned that a “China Syndrome” situation is inevitable at the plant. Haruo said that considering eight months have passed since the tsunami and the crippling of the nuclear plant without any improvement in the condition of the reactors, it is likely melted fuel has escaped the container vessel and is now burning through the earth. On September 20, 2011, Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, estimated that material from the nuclear fuel rods may be twelve meters deep underground at reactors one and three.

All farming east of Fukushima City should be suspended for 7-10 years. The atomic power plant continues to release very high levels of radiation.

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from the nuclear power plant.

The government and TEPCO have still not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity. On Aug.2, the science ministry stated that readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant. Nov.20, TEPCO stated that the radiation level inside reactor No2 building was 1.2 sieverts/hr, and inside No3 building, 1.6 sieverts/hr. That level of radiation would kill any worker exposed for a couple of hours.

10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays. The Aug.20 readings are 250% higher than levels recorded at the plant in March. The readings could have been higher but the measuring device used by TEPCO had a maximum reading of 10,000 mSv.

Early on in the disaster, Dr Makoto Kondo of the department of radiology of Keio University's School of Medicine warned of "a large difference in radiation effects on adults compared to children".

Kondo explained the chances of children developing cancer from radiation exposure was many times higher than adults. 

Some months ago, the Fukushima government stated it would start a free 30 year annual radiation check for all residents of the prefecture. This should be extend to include free health care for all residents, for any radiation related medical problems.

In a recent Tokyo court case involving the owners of two golf courses and TEPCO, the lawyers for TEPCO stated to the court, that once the radiation leaves the atomic power plant, the radiation is no longer the property of TEPCO.

A quarter-century after the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, some 14 percent of the land area in neighboring Belarus remains contaminated with radioactive cesium.

 

As of January, levels exceeding 37,000 becquerels per square meter were recorded. As such, the land is designated as "polluted."

 

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