Radiation detected in beef, vegetables

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Radiation detected in beef, vegetables

Radiation exceeding safety standards has been detected in beef from Fukushima and vegetables from Ibaraki, Tochigi and Chiba prefectures. The health ministry says it detected 510 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, above than the national limit of 500, in round beef from a cow raised in a village in Fukushima prefecture on Wednesday. The beef has not been shipped. In Hitachi city, Ibaraki prefecture, 8,300 becquerels, or 4 times above the accepted limit, of radioactive iodine was detected in spinach. Spinach and parsley from other parts of Ibaraki were also found to be contaminated with higher-than-acceptable levels of radiation. Spinach, shungiku, or garland chrysanthemum, and parsley with radiation exceeding acceptable levels were found in Chiba prefecture. High levels of radiation were also detected in spinach in Tochigi prefecture. The ministry says these vegetables are not on the market, as producers have not shipped them, either voluntarily or in line with the government's instructions. Read more at www3.nhk.or.jp

 

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Radiation in seawater at new high

Radiation 4,385 times higher than the legal standard has been detected in seawater at a location 330 meters south of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

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Radiation in seawater at new high

Radiation 4,385 times higher than the legal standard has been detected in seawater at a location 330 meters south of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Tokyo Electric Power Company says 180 becquerels per cubic centimeter of radioactive iodine-131 have been detected in seawater sampled on Wednesday afternoon. The figure is far above the 3,355-times level detected on Tuesday. Wednesday's sampling also revealed cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, at a level 527 times higher than the legal standard. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says no fishing is being carried out in waters within 20 kilometers of the plant, and the radiation is likely to be diluted significantly by the time humans take it in through seafood. The agency says it will monitor radiation levels in seawater at points 15 kilometers from the plant, in addition to surveys being carried out by the science ministry at 30-kilometer points. Read more at www3.nhk.or.jp

 

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Bomb explodes Swiss nuke industry office

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Parcel bomb explodes at Swiss nuke industry office

A parcel bomb has exploded at an office of a nuclear power industry association in Switzerland, injuring 2 employees. The explosion occurred as staff were opening the parcel at the office in the northern city of Olten on Thursday. No one has claimed responsibility, but local police suspect the bomb may have been sent by anti-nuclear power activists. Nuclear power opponents have become active in the country, following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Switzerland has 5 nuclear power plants. After the trouble in Japan, the government announced that it will suspend its plan to renew 3 decrepit plants. Read more at www3.nhk.or.jp

 

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Radiation in underground water

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Radioactive substances in underground water

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has detected radioactive substances in underground water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. TEPCO, operator of the plant, has been checking below-ground water on the advice of the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan. The company says radioactive water was detected beneath the ground near the turbine buildings of five of the 6 reactors. The remaining reactor, No. 4, could not be checked because it was blocked by debris. TEPCO says radioactive substances dispersed into the atmosphere may have seeped into the soil through rain and sprayed water. Highly radioactive water has been found in the basement of the turbine buildings and other locations. Damage to nuclear fuel rods in the reactors is believed to have caused the contamination. The company will further analyze underground water and release the result later on Friday. In response to the announcement, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters on Friday morning that the government will tighten monitoring of seawater and nearby areas. Read more at www3.nhk.or.jp

 

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IAEA: High level iodine-131 outside zone

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IAEA: High level of iodine-131 outside zone

The International Atomic Energy Agency has revealed that iodine-131 was the radioactive substance that exceeded its criterion for evacuation in a village 40 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The agency did not give the name of the substance at its news conference on Wednesday. The village of Iitate to the northwest of the plant is outside the 20 kilometer exclusion zone and the 20 to 30 kilometer alert zone where the Japanese government advises voluntary evacuation. On Wednesday, the IAEA said radiation levels twice as high as its evacuation level were detected in Iitate and it had advised the Japanese government to carefully assess the situation. But it did not give details of the substance or who carried out the measurement. The UN nuclear agency revealed on Thursday that its judgment was based on data obtained from the Japanese authorities. Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission said it sees no reason to change the evacuation zone and advice to stay indoors as its criteria are based on how much radiation people would be exposed to, and not the radiation level in the ground. The IAEA also corrected the reading of 2 million becquerels of iodine-131 per square meter it announced on Wednesday. The revised figure is 20 million becquerels per square meter. The IAEA will continue analyzing radiation levels in cooperation with the Japanese government. Iodine-131 has a radioactive half-life of 8 days, and the half-life of Cesium-137 is 30 years. Read more at www3.nhk.or.jp

 

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Man arrested breaking into Fukushima

Man arrested after breaking into Fukushima Daini plant premises

Amplify’d from english.kyodonews.jp

Man arrested after breaking into Fukushima Daini plant premises

FUKUSHIMA, Japan

An unemployed man from Tokyo was arrested Friday after allegedly intruding by car into the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant premises, near the radiation-leaking Fukushima Daiichi plant in Fukushima Prefecture, police said.

Hikaru Watanabe, 25, from Shinjuku Ward, allegedly broke through the western gate of the Daini plant around 1:10 p.m. Thursday, before driving inside its premises for about 10 minutes, the plants' operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said, adding that no one was injured in the incident.

Watanabe was arrested on suspicion of unlawful entry and property destruction, the local police said, adding that he admitted to the allegations. The purpose of the intrusion remains unknown.

The police, who were alerted to the incident and went to the scene, asked the suspect to voluntarily go with them for questioning. The vehicle and the suspect underwent a radiation decontamination process before being taken to a police facility, they said.

About 50 minutes before the incident, the suspect's vehicle attempted to break through the front gate of the crippled Daiichi nuclear power plant, which is located about 12 kilometers north of the Daini plant, but he was blocked by Tokyo Electric Power employees, company officials said.

A Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official said the Daiichi and Daini plants are both guarded, but the agency is confirming whether sufficient security is being maintained under radiation-contaminated conditions.

Many of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are still in an emergency state after the March 11 quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan, with radioactive substances likely to be continuing to leak into the environment.

The four reactors at the Daini plant are basically in a stable situation, as they achieved a so-called ''cold shutdown'' after the quake.

The agency said it ordered Tokyo Electric Power to take all measures to ensure security especially from the viewpoint of nuclear material protection.

==Kyodo Read more at english.kyodonews.jp

 

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Mayor of Fukushima appeals to world

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Mayor of Fukushima city in restricted area appeals to world over plight

TOKYO

The mayor of Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, a city subject to a government directive for its residents to stay indoors to avoid radioactive fallout from a nuclear plant crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, has begun appealing to the world over the ''injustice'' of such an instruction.

Speaking in a roughly 11-minute English-subtitled video posted on the video-sharing site Youtube on March 24, Katsunobu Sakurai said the government's directive has made life extremely difficult for local residents.

''Even volunteers and those delivering relief supplies have no choice but to enter (the city) at their own risk,'' said a grim-looking Sakurai, wearing the same sort of protective clothing worn by workers in charge of disaster relief and other emergencies. ''Residents are being forced into starvation.''

The city of Minamisoma is located within a 20-30-kilometer radius of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which is leaking amounts of radioactive material into the air, soil and sea.

While the government has issued a directive for people who live within a 20-km radius of the plant to evacuate, those inside the ring have largely been left to themselves, many of them leaving on their own due to severe disruptions to their daily lives.

Kenichiro Nakata, a Minamisoma resident who made the video, said he wants the world to know that inhumane conditions exist in Japan. ''Residents affected by the disaster don't even know whether they should stay or evacuate,'' he said.

In the video, Sakurai notes that his people have suffered extensive damage from both the tsunami triggered by the earthquake and the subsequent nuclear disaster.

Besides lacking information from the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., as well as manpower and supplies, he said, ''Many residents can't secure any means of transportation'' in the 20-30 km ring.

Sakurai called for more assistance and cooperation, noting that few journalists have ventured into his city and that telephone interviews -- the most common way of contacting residents -- are inadequate for reporting on their plight.

An evacuation directive has been imposed since the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami knocked out power supplies to the nuclear plant's cooling systems and led to massive leaks of radioactive materials, with a directive issued for those living in the ring to stay indoors.

With criticism mounting over the directive for those living in the ring, the government began urging them on March 25 to evacuate voluntarily.

==Kyodo Read more at english.kyodonews.jp

 

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Millions of Spiders in Pakistan

Millions of Spiders in Pakistan Encase Entire Trees in Webs

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Millions of Spiders in Pakistan Encase Entire Trees in Webs

By Wired UK

By Duncan Geere, Wired UK

The unprecedented flooding in Pakistan in the latter half of 2010 disrupted the lives of 20 million people, but it also affected the country’s arachnid population.

With more than a fifth of the country submerged, millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwaters. The water took so long to recede, the trees became covered in a cocoon of spiderwebs. The result is an eerie, alien panorama, with any vegetation covered in a thick mass of webbing. (You can see images from the region in the gallery linked below.)

However, the unusual phenomenon may be a blessing in disguise. Britain’s department for international development reports that areas where the spiders have scaled the trees have seen far fewer malaria-spreading mosquitos than might be expected, given the prevalence of stagnant, standing water.

The agency is providing aid to the communities affected by the disaster, including safe drinking water, health care, food and shelter. To reduce the population’s long-term dependence on that aid, the government agency is now offering wheat seeds and tools to farmers, and jobs and skills training for those in rural areas. However, reconstruction in the worst-hit areas is expected to take many years.

See more images with the original story on Wired UK.

Image: U.K. Department for International Development

See Also:

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Black Widow Spiders Are Wasteful Gluttons Read more at www.wired.com

 

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Con/Chemtrails Worse for Climate Change

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Contrails Worse for Climate Change Than Planes’ Carbon Emissions

By Ars Technica

By John Timmer, Ars Technica

Air travel has come under fire for its potential contributions to climate change. Most people probably assume that its impact comes through carbon emissions, given that aircraft burn significant amounts of fossil fuel to stay aloft. But the carbon released by air travel remains a relatively minor part of the global output; The impact of planes results from where they burn the fuel, not the mere fact that they burn it.

A study in the brand-new journal Nature Climate Change reinforces that by suggesting that the clouds currently being generated by air travel have a larger impact on the climate than the cumulative emissions of all aircraft ever flown.

That fact isn’t mentioned in the article at all, however (it’s part of a Nature press release on the paper). What the authors do consider is the fact that carbon emissions are only one of the impacts of aviation.

Others include the emissions of particulates high in the atmosphere, the production of nitrogen oxides and the direct production of clouds through contrail water vapor. Over time, these thin lines of water evolve into “contrail cirrus” clouds that lose their linear features and become indistinguishable from the real thing. Although low-altitude clouds tend to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight, high-altitude clouds like cirrus have an insulating effect and actually enhance warming.

To figure out the impact of these cirrus clouds, the authors created a module for an existing climate model (the ECHAM4) that simulated the evolution of aircraft-induced cirrus clouds (they could validate some of the model’s output against satellite images of contrails). They found hot spots of these clouds over the United States and Europe, as well as the North Atlantic travel corridor.

Smaller affects were seen in East Asia and over the northern Pacific. Over central Europe, values peaked at about 10 percent, in part because the output of the North Atlantic corridor drifted in that direction.

On their own, aircraft-generated cirrus produces a global climate forcing of about 40 milliwatts per square meter. (In contrast, the solar cycle results in changes of about a full watt/M2.) But these clouds suppressed the formation of natural cirrus clouds, which partially offset the impact of the aircraft-generated ones, reducing the figure to about 30 mW/M2. That still leaves it among the most significant contribution to the climate produced by aircraft.

Some reports have suggested we might focus on making engines that emit less water vapor, but the water is a necessary byproduct of burning hydrocarbon. We’ll almost certainly be accomplishing that as a result of rising fuel prices, and will limit carbon emissions at the same time.

The nice thing is that, in contrast to the long atmospheric lifespan of CO2, if we can cause any changes in cloud formation, they’ll have an impact within a matter of days.

Image: Contrails over the southeastern United States/NASA

Nature Climate Change, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1068

See Also:

Weird Clouds Look Even Better From Space

Weird, Rare Clouds and the Physics Behind Them

Mysterious Tubular Clouds Defy Explanation

Strange Hole-Punch Clouds Explained Read more at www.wired.com

 

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Secret Space Plane Can’t Hide

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Secret Space Plane Can’t Hide From Amateur Sleuths

By Noah Shachtman

The U.S. military likes to be a little sneaky with its robotic space planes. Unlike typical spacecraft, these vehicles can shift their orbits, frustrating the global network of skywatchers who keep track of just about every man-made object rotating the planet.

But the sleuths have their tricks, too. They’ve tracked down the X-37B on its second secret mission. And the information the skywatchers are finding says quite a bit about the classified operations of this mysterious spacecraft.

It took the amateur sleuths nearly a month to hunt down the first X-37B after it launched on its inaugural mission. That’s an eternity in sky-spotting time.

The second time around was easier. The U.S. space plane was discovered just four days after it blasted into orbit, earlier this month. Cape Town, South Africa’s Greg Roberts — “a pioneer in using telescopic video cameras to track spacecraft, chalking up exceptional results over the years,” according to Space.com — spotted this second secret spacecraft, just like he found the first.

The X-37B has generated intense interest, long before it ever left the ground. Boeing originally developed the 29-foot unmanned craft — a kind of miniature Space Shuttle — for NASA. Then, the military took over in 2004, and the space plane went black. Its payloads were classified, its missions hush-hush.

Depending on who you talk to, the space plane could be a prototype commando transport, an orbiting bomber or (most likely) a spy-above-the-skies. It could launch, repair or reposition U.S. satellites in low orbit. It could sneak up and disable or steal enemy satellites. Its pickup-bed-sized payload bay is particularly enticing to observers.

And now, there are observers — plural. Ontario’s Kevin Fetterof filmed the X-37B “gliding past the binary star Eta Serpentis,” according to Space.com, which has video of the flyby. Skywatchers Brad Young, Bill Young, and Alberto Rango have all reported sightings, as well.

You can even see the space plane for yourself: The X-37B is traveling in a slightly elliptical orbit more than 200 miles up, swooping from 43 degrees north latitude to 43 degrees south. (Check the real-time map at n2yo.com.)

That orbit gives some indications about what the space plane is actually doing up there. The typical spy satellite has a polar orbit, which means “it can cover the whole earth, and it can fly over the same spot at the same sun angle each time it comes overhead,” explains Brian Weeden, a former Air Force Space Command officer, now with the Secure World Foundation.

The X-37B, on the other hand, is orbiting around the fat middle of the planet, traveling over the Middle East, Africa, and fair chunk of China. “It means they are giving up global coverage and predictable shadow lengths, but getting more frequent passes,” Weeden says. The orbit lends credence to the idea that the space plane is an orbiting spy.

So does the X-37B’s altitude. It’s flying pretty low — one of the rare orbiters traveling beneath the International Space Station. “The lower you are,” Weeden notes, “the higher resolution you can get in any imagery.”

And the easier you are to spot from the ground.

Photo: U.S. Air Force. Illustration: Scott Madry/International Space University

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