Fukushima Daiichi Common Spent Fuel Building Leaking Steam/Gas?

I've posted before that the real story at Fukushima Daiichi has been the ongoing contamination of the ocean as the underground river and water injections at Daiichi lead to unstoppable "leakage" of highly contaminated water into the ocean.

TEPCO has to inject water into the reactor buildings because, nine years after the disaster, the fuel is still so hot that it must be cooled or TEPCO risks radioactive fires.

TEPCO has removed spent fuel from building 4 and some of that was re-located in the common spent fuel pool.

You can see the common spent fuel pool in the screenshot below - Look in the corner where you see what appears to be"steam" rising 3/9/2020 at 6:42 AM:



Three minutes later, it is mostly gone


It is possible this "steam" is smoke from off-screen machinery but the plant has been quite steamy looking over the last couple of weeks.

The emissions started becoming more visible mid-February after an earthquake in the area:
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2020/02/significant-earthquake-near-fukushima.html

The emissions have visibly worsened since then, although they are still far less than during the first few years.

LONG TERM FUKUSHIMA EFFECTS?

About 6 months ago, Japan ended its maternal health survey from Fukushima because they claimed there to be no health effects:

Fukushima Pref. to end maternal health survey as no effects of radiation found 5:12 pm, August 21, 2019 The Yomiuri Shimbun https://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0005952743

Relatively little research has been conducted on animal life in Japan and its coastal waters after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster but anomalies have already been identified.

One study found a marked decline in bird abundance in Fukushima.[i]

Spiders, grasshoppers, dragonflies, butterflies, bumblebees and cicadas also suffered population declines since the accident.[ii]

Another study found cesium contamination in Japanese macaques, ranging across time from a high of 25,000 Becquerels per kilogram in 2011 to 2,000 in 2012.[iii]

Yet another study published in 2015 found chromosomal malformations in wild mice caught in Fukushima Prefecture, with young mice more adversely impacted than older mice.[iv]

Research conducted by Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences on fir trees near the Fukushima Daiichi plant found significant increases in morphological defects corresponding to radiation exposure doses.[v]

Taken together, these studies point to increased biological risks for flora and fauna living in radiation contaminated zones.


MEANWHILE IN THE US

Meanwhile, death from cardio-vascular disease was up 25% in Colorado between 2010-2011 and 2015-2016, which received considerable fukushima fallout according to the US Geological survey (http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2020/01/death-from-cardiovascular-disease-up-25.html).

And the proportion of patients diagnosed w/ colorectal cancer under age 50 rose from 10% in 2004 to 12.2% in 2015 https://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2020/02/proportion-of-patients-diagnosed-w.html

And then there was the California spike in cases of childhood autism: Majia's Blog: Sharp Increase in Autism Rate Among California ...

Can these US increases be attributed to Fukushima entirely, or even at all?

No - correlation doesn't prove causation so there is no "proving" any of the above posited relationships to Fukushima fallout, especially when looking at factoids in isolation.

However, when you consider these cases as part of a series of mass mortality events in animals and increased health ailments in humans a theme of decreasing ecological and biological health emerges quite clearly:

You can read more about the relationship I posit between human health effects and ionizing radiation here:

http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/animal-anomalies-is-fukushima-daiichi.html

http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/americans-lifespan-is-shrinking-experts.html

Majia's Blog: Ionizing Radiation and Germ Cell Damage: Link to Autism?

 

REFERENCES
[i] A. Moller, A. Hagiwara, S. Matsui, S. Kasahara, K. Kawatsu, I. Nishiumi, H. Suzuki, K. Ueda, T. and A. Mousseau (2012) ‘Abundance of Birds in Fukushima as Judged from Chernobyl’, Environmental Pollution, 164, 36–39.

[ii] A. Moller, I. Nishiumi, H. Suzuki, K. Ueda, T. A. Mousseau (2013) ‘Differences in Effects of Radiation of Animals in Fukushima and Chernobyl’, Ecological Indicators, 24, 75–81.

[iii] S. Kimura and A. Hatano (4 October 2012) ‘Scientists in Groundbreaking Study on Effects of Radiation in Fukushima’, The Asahi Shimbun, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201210040003, date accessed 6 October 2012.

[iv] Yoshihisa Kubota, Hideo Tsuji, Taiki Kawagoshi, Naoko Shiomi, Hiroyuki Takahashi, Yoshito Watanabe, Shoichi Fuma, Kazutaka Doi, Isao Kawaguchi, Masanari Aoki, Masahide Kubota, Yoshiaki Furuhata, Yusaku Shigemura, Masahiko Mizoguchi, Fumio Yamada, Morihiko Tomozawa, Shinsuke H. Sakamoto, and Satoshi Yoshida Chromosomal Aberrations in Wild Mice Captured in Areas Differentially Contaminated by the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident. Environ. Sci. Technol., 2015, 49 (16), pp 10074–10083. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b01554.

[v] Watanabe, Yoshito, San’ei Ichikawa, Masahide Kubota, Junko Hoshino, Yoshihisa Kubota, Kouichi Maruyama, Shoichi Fuma, Isao Kawaguchi, Vasyl Yoschenko, Satoshi Yoshida, “Morphological defects in native Japanese fir trees around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant,” Scientific Reports 5.13232 (2015): doi:10.1038/srep13232.

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