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Japan Chemical Plant Blast Kills 1, Injures 17 People

by

Diane Creston

   April 22, 2012

According to a news report from the Russian website group, RIANOVOSTI, there was an explosion at a chemical plant in western Japan on Sunday.

The NHK TV channel reported that the blast killed one worker and injured 17, including nearby residents. The explosion occurred at Mitsui Chemicals' Iwakuni-Ohtake facility in the Yamaguchi prefecture.

The blast, which broke windows of about 270 buildings, including nearby houses, hit the adhesive plant shortly after 2 a.m. local time. A 22-year-old worker was killed and 11 others were injured. The hands and heads of six people were cut by broken glass.

A second blast occurred in the compound shortly after 8 a.m. local time, but no one was injured.

Mitsui Chemicals has said production at the plant was halted on Saturday after trouble at another plant, which helped avoid large casualties.

Fire fighters are working at the site of the accident.

The government has not stated that the depleted uranium is stored at the complex, It claims there has been no release of toxic materials from the fire. There are a number of companies that store radioactive waste on the premise, and Mitsui Chemical’s complex in Yamaguchi Prefecture is one of them.

A blogger has found Information from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) that lists companies that have radioactive waste on the premise. According to the MEXT data from 2009, the complex has 3,379 containers of nuclear waste. This is very close to the Iwakuni US base.

Another wake up call worldwide. The question is, what steps will be taken to stop the use of nuclear power plants? According to Greenpeace International, nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devices that man has ever created.
 

Tags: Adhesive Plant , RIANOVOSTI , Japan Chemical Plant Expl , METI , Mitsui Chemicals' Iwakuni , Greenpeace International ,

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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radioactive.gov

« Ambassador Murata writes to UN Secretary General: “It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor” — Appeals for independent assessment team  

  Former Japan Ambassador Warns Gov’t Committee: “A global catastrophe like we have never before experienced” if No. 4 collapses — Common Spent Fuel Pool with 6,375 fuel rods in jeopardy — “Would affect us all for centuries” »

Head Researcher: Boulder, Colorado a “hot spot” for Fukushima fallout — None of their other US or Canadian samples came close to Boulder’s contamination, except Portland which was even higher

Published: April 6th, 2012 at 12:47 pm ET By ENENews  Email Article 23 comments Share839

Title: Kaltofen’s soil measurement 100X UCB’s? – 296 becquerel/kg?
Source: UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering Forum
Date: April 5, 2012

Submitted 2012-04-05 19:51 PT

My group measured soil, air filter and dust samples from Washington, Oregon, California, and British Columbia. This particular soil sample, with 8 pCi/g of radiocesium, was our highest North American result. It came from a site on the outskirts of Portland, OR. The next highest result came from a site near Boulder, CO. Except for followup samples near these two sites, no other US or Canadian samples came close to the levels of radiocesium in these “hot spots.” Given the nature of radioactive fallout, this is an expected result. Both hot spots are likely due to rainouts that took place during March or April 2011. A recent study by the USGS, “Fission Products in National Atmospheric Deposition Program—Wet Deposition Samples Prior to and Following the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant Incident, March 8–April 5, 2011″, found remarkably similar results. The USGS study was more detailed, (and more with a much bigger budget), and found evidence of rainouts at Portland and Boulder. When you collect a lot of samples, some are bound to be much higher than the average.

Marco Kaltofen
WPI

This comment appears consistent with Kaltofen’s communication style and past statements

Read the report here

See also:

• Radiation precautions for areas near Seattle, Vancouver, Portland? "Perhaps you need to wash your shoes"... and other things (VIDEO)
• Gundersen: If in Oregon, Wash., Calif. you need to demand officials test how Fukushima fallout has affected rivers and fish -- Significant radiation hit west coast and settled in on Cascades (VIDEO)
• Expert on US, Canada: We'll see a statistically meaningful increase in cancer from Fukushima on west coast -- After Japan, the most radioactive area is Cascade Mountains -- Portland had cesium at 100 Bq/m² (VIDEO)
• University Researcher: U.S. topsoil with up to 8,000 pCi/kg of cesium from Fukushima -- Over 10,000% higher than highest levels found by UC Berkeley

Published: April 6th, 2012 at 12:47 pm ET By ENENews  Email Article 23 comments Share839

Related Posts

1. University Researcher: U.S. topsoil with up to 8,000 pCi/kg of cesium from Fukushima — Over 10,000% higher than highest levels found by UC Berkeley November 1, 2011
2. Fairewinds President: Organic farm in Portland stopped producing food after radiation tests — “Very frightening what happened on West Coast” (VIDEO) March 26, 2012
3. Plutonium up to 1,579 pCi/kg detected near Denver at Rocky Flats — Contamination levels remain as high as 40 years ago, BEFORE site ‘cleaned up’ February 18, 2012
4. Idaho TV: “Data showed a large spike in deaths — particularly infant deaths — in the 14 weeks following the Fukushima meltdown” -Report (VIDEO) January 25, 2012
5. *AP Headline* ‘Gundersen: Tokyo soil would be nuclear waste in US’ March 27, 2012

April 6th, 2012 | Category: US/Canada

« Ambassador Murata writes to UN Secretary General: “It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor” — Appeals for independent assessment team  

  Former Japan Ambassador Warns Gov’t Committee: “A global catastrophe like we have never before experienced” if No. 4 collapses — Common Spent Fuel Pool with 6,375 fuel rods in jeopardy — “Would affect us all for centuries” »

23 comments to Head Researcher: Boulder, Colorado a “hot spot” for Fukushima fallout — None of their other US or Canadian samples came close to Boulder’s contamination, except Portland which was even higher

• ruth

  April 6, 2012 at 12:59 pm Log in to Reply

  It was previously reported that Portland got the highest Iodine and now also cesium with a half life of 2,300,000 years. What else came down in the rain?

  Report Comment
  

  • sandman

    April 6, 2012 at 1:36 pm Log in to Reply

    The half life of the longest lasting isotope of cesium is 30 years. Not 2 million 3 hundred thousand years. Good grief.

    Report Comment
    

    • Bob Hardin

      April 6, 2012 at 2:18 pm Log in to Reply

      Cesium 135 has a half-life of about 2.3 million years.

      Report Comment
      

      • sandman

        April 6, 2012 at 3:05 pm Log in to Reply

        Thanks, Bob, I stand corrected. Her statement is still misleading, though. From Wiki:

        "Caesium-135 is a mildly radioactive isotope of caesium, undergoing low-energy beta decay to barium-135 with a half-life of 2.3 million years." "The low decay energy, lack of gamma radiation, and long half-life of 135Cs make this isotope much less hazardous than 137Cs or 134Cs." (Half lives of 30 years and 2 years, respectively.

        Report Comment
        

        • ChasAha

          April 6, 2012 at 7:41 pm Log in to Reply

          Clarification: Half-life vs HAZARDOUS to LIFE

          The term half-life can be misleading to many. Just my personal pet peeve. It's true that in the case of cesium-137 the decay rate, also referred to as half-life, is 30 years.

          However…
          The calculation for HAZARDOUS to LIFE is the IMPORTANT number to note:

          (decay rate) x 10 = (HAZARDOUS to LIFE) time span

          so…
          cesium-134 Hazardous to Life = 20 years
          cesium-137 Hazardous to Life = 300 years

          Report Comment
          

        • eatliesndie

          April 6, 2012 at 10:19 pm Log in to Reply

          a beta emitter in your lung is less dangerous than……….

          Report Comment
          

  • chemfood

    April 6, 2012 at 1:42 pm Log in to Reply

    Plutonium and 93+ other nasty long-lived radioactive isotopes
    http://realitycheck.no-ip.info/forum/index.php/topic,188.0.html

    Report Comment
    

  • xdrfox

    April 6, 2012 at 7:29 pm Log in to Reply

    What else came down in the rain?
    They won't tell you, ENE readers do !

    Report Comment
    

    • gerryhiles

      April 7, 2012 at 7:00 am Log in to Reply

      You can "rest"! assured that iodine and cesium are 'just' markers for all or most other radioactive isotopes, which are harder to detect.

      Considering that this fall-out is probably from the early explosion at #3, it's possible that plutonium is in the mix.

      Report Comment
      

      • xdrfox

        April 8, 2012 at 11:21 am Log in to Reply

        gerryhiles,

        Never was a dought that plutonium is in the mix !

        I Know it is !

        Report Comment
        

• Bobby1

  April 6, 2012 at 1:06 pm Log in to Reply

  The Longmont, CO radiation data that anne posts is from a site near Boulder:

  https://pachube.com/feeds/30643

  It is typically very high, and it has been going up lately. Longmont is also near Denver, which had an 11% increase in mortality in 2011:

  http://freepdfhosting.com/ccafb5715d.pdf

  Report Comment
  

  • anne

    April 6, 2012 at 1:15 pm Log in to Reply

    Longmont is also not that far from Fort Saint Vrain Nuclear Power Plant which was decommissioned after only one year. All the fuel is still there being AIR COOLED. I have been thinking that maybe at night there are releases of the radioactive air. It should blow east, but when there is rain or snow it comes from an upslope wind and circles around back towards the mountains.

    The wife of someone who used to work at Rocky Flats as an air tester told me around 1970 that there are uranium tailings in the foothills in Boulder around Canyon Blvd.

    Report Comment
    

• Whoopie

  April 6, 2012 at 2:14 pm Log in to Reply

  http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2012/04/05/1894001/occupy-protesters-bare-breasts.html Just thought I'd let you know, they are still taking comments at Occupy. Took Nap now off to take my SOAK TY SJ!

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  • WorseThanChernobyl

    April 6, 2012 at 4:52 pm Log in to Reply

    They deleted all 120 plus comments complaining that the terms of use were violated. No more comments are allowed on that article, but they put another one up.

    Oregon protesters bare breasts for Hanford
    By Tri-City Herald staff

    Read more here: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2012/04/06/1894344/oregon-protesters-bare-breasts.html#storylink=mirelated#storylink=cpy

    Report Comment
    

  • stock@hawaii.rr.com

    April 7, 2012 at 4:06 am Log in to Reply

    Take care of yourself, I think the Epsom salt bath is awesome…simple, cheap, controls stress and relieves muscular exertion.

    Report Comment
    

• TheBigPicture

  April 6, 2012 at 4:12 pm Log in to Reply

  The more we look, the more radiated hot-spots we'll find in the U.S.A.

  Report Comment
  

• anne

  April 6, 2012 at 10:22 pm Log in to Reply

  Please see my comments in the General Discussion Thread as to why and how radioactive fallout from Fukushima is being fast-tracked to Boulder, CO.

  Report Comment
  

  • anne

    April 7, 2012 at 12:10 am Log in to Reply

    http://enenews.com/forum-general-discussion-thread-nuclear-issues-apr-2-9-2012
    p. 3, April 6, 2012 at 10:24 pm and April 6, 2012 at 10:26 pm
    http://enenews.com/forum-general-discussion-thread-nuclear-issues-apr-2-9-2012

    Report Comment
    

    • anne

      April 7, 2012 at 12:11 am Log in to Reply

      April 6, 2012 at 10:24 pm

      Report Comment
      

• isogoodhumans

  April 6, 2012 at 11:32 pm Log in to Reply

  I can't see the list of samples. Boulder is #1, who is #2, #3 etc

  Report Comment
  

• patriot9878

  April 7, 2012 at 5:28 am Log in to Reply

  How can they know the half life of 1,000 years or whatever? I mean I don't think they can know a CD will last forever. This stuff is so dangerous and we have 500 nuclear power plants and they are building more, but if they had only grown hemp they would never have to have nuclear power plants. These things were created because big business didn't want to lose money to hemp. It's time to close the nuke plants and grow hemp

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• patriot9878

  April 7, 2012 at 6:31 am Log in to Reply

  he USA when the Israelis bombed Bali you notice the FBI was right there involved in something, because they knew who had commiited that crime. They must have gone to cover it up. But something as serious as this, but nobody seems to care. The Russians covered their nuclear accident with a dome and the Japa are going to have to do the same.

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• alasanon

  April 7, 2012 at 12:09 pm Log in to Reply

  They never measure Strontiums, of course…. It's one of the most common, fastest-traveling radioisotopes in nuclear fallout, per studies of bomb testing.

  I'm so ready to just have them lay it out–the facts. Where is the EPA??!! Are they on extended vacation, permanently??!

  Report Comment
  

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« Ambassador Murata writes to UN Secretary General: “It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor” — Appeals for independent assessment team  

  Former Japan Ambassador Warns Gov’t Committee: “A global catastrophe like we have never before experienced” if No. 4 collapses — Common Spent Fuel Pool with 6,375 fuel rods in jeopardy — “Would affect us all for centuries” »

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