Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Friday, February 14, 2014

. New insight on the spread of contamination from Fukushima

 http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/310na3.pdf

European Commission, Science for Environment Policy News Alert (pdf) (emphasis added): [...] The EU-funded study modelled the global spread of radionuclides of caesium and iodine from Fukushima [...] between March and May 2011 [...] It focused on radionuclides that were emitted as gases [...] The International Atomic Energy Agency defines ’contamination’ as the presence of a radioactive substance in quantities more than 40 kilobecquerels per m². [...] land area affected by radioactivity from both types of radionuclides above this threshold is approximately 34,000 km² of Japan, inhabited by around 9.4 million people. However, the estimate used for the iodine radionuclide emissions from the incident is considered to be an underestimate. A separate calculation which assumed source emissions that were five times greater, suggested that a relatively large and densely populated part of Japan – 56,000 km² [21,622 square miles] – would be classified as contaminated. [...] It should be emphasised that this refers to two radionuclides only, whereas additional ones are unaccounted for due to a lack of measurements. [...]

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/310na3.pdf

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