In Japan, a grisly consequence of radiation
Boy, hadn’t thought about this aspect of the tragedy in Japan … from the Japan Times:
Radiation is preventing the retrieval of hundreds of bodies from inside the 20-km evacuation zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, police sources said Thursday.
Based on initial reports after the March 11 catastrophe, the number of bodies is estimated at between a few hundred and 1,000, one of the sources said, adding that high radiation is now hampering full-scale searches.
That view was supported by the Sunday find of high radiation levels on a body found in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, 5 km from the plant.
The rescuers are now in a bind. Even if they retrieve the bodies, anyone who comes into contact with them risks being irradiated, too, whether they’re in the evacuation zone or not.
And if the bodies are cremated, the smoke could spread radioactive materials as well, the sources said. Even burial poses a problem. When the bodies decompose, they might contaminate the soil with radioactive materials.
Other news looks equally grim:
(The International Atomic Energy Agency) said Wednesday in Geneva it detected about 2 million becquerels of radioactive substances per sq. meter, or double the threshold at which the IAEA itself would order an evacuation, in soil samples from the village of Iitate about 40 km northwest of the nuclear power plant.
With the data, the IAEA effectively urged Japan to expand the current no-go zone of 20 km around the plant. Residents in areas 20 km to 30 km of the plant have been advised to stay indoors.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano only said the government may consider expanding the mandatory evacuation zone if the higher levels of radiation continue…..
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Thursday the level of radioactive iodine-131 in seawater near the plant was 4,385 times the maximum tolerable amount, the highest reading since the crisis began March 11.
Other highly radioactive materials were also detected, including cesium-134 at 783.7 times the maximum amount permitted, and cesium-137 at 527.4 times the legal limit.
The half-life of cesium-137, or the time its radioactivity dissipates by half, is 30 years compared with eight days for iodine-131 and two years for cesium-134.”
Workers at the disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan say they expect to die from radiation sickness as a result of their efforts to bring the reactors under control, the mother of one of the men tells Fox News….
Speaking tearfully through an interpreter by phone, the mother of a 32-year-old worker said: “My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary to save the nation.
“He told me they have accepted they will all probably die from radiation sickness in the short term or cancer in the long-term.”
The woman spoke to Fox News on the condition of anonymity because, she said, plant workers had been asked by management not to communicate with the media or share details with family members in order to minimize public panic.
She could not confirm if her son or other workers were already suffering from radiation sickness. But she added: “They have concluded between themselves that it is inevitable some of them may die within weeks or months. They know it is impossible for them not to have been exposed to lethal doses of radiation.”
– Jay Bookman
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
321 comments Add your comment
Mick
April 1st, 2011
8:47 am
normal
I wish that were true but they had to weed out any potential deadwood because every day in the coast guard there is action whether it be search and rescue, drug interdiction or helo ops. I was at cape may and it was tough..
Paul
April 1st, 2011
8:48 am
sfd
Looks like a good read, but I gotta say, “how much we can tell from polls conducted during the very early stages of a presidential primary campaign’ sounds like the setup for an April Fool’s prank.
1811/1801 - 0311/0317
April 1st, 2011
8:50 am
Atlas Shrugging :
Some of us are retired and/or work at home from our computers ………….. thus we have time to play ………………
1811/1801 - 0311/0317
April 1st, 2011
8:51 am
Mick:
You’re welcome. I would think all of the swimming/rescue stuff would make yours difficult.
I saw a program once about the Coast Guard rescue swimmers training. It was bad !
getalife
April 1st, 2011
8:53 am
Today, we will all get along and be nice to each other.
Happy April fools day.
I'm a Goofy Goober, YEAH!
April 1st, 2011
8:54 am
I must have too much time on my hands.
Normal
April 1st, 2011
8:55 am
Mick,
I was just funnin’…I know the Coasties had it tough. I served with them occasionally in the Delta
I'm a Goofy Goober, YEAH!
April 1st, 2011
8:57 am
Some of us are retired and/or work at home from our computers ………….. thus we have time to play
While others of us are just your ordinary congressmen, congressional aids, and other government workers taking advantage of the tax payer’s generosity.
DW
April 1st, 2011
8:58 am
@WOW youre a moron
Were you a awake during 2008 when oil was $147 a barrel? Idiot
Mick
April 1st, 2011
8:59 am
normal
I know, puddle jumpin was my specialty…
stands for decibels
April 1st, 2011
9:01 am
I gotta say, “how much we can tell from polls conducted during the very early stages of a presidential primary campaign’ sounds like the setup for an April Fool’s prank.
He makes a pretty good case, so far, anyway. I look forward to his analysis of the Democrats’ primary polling history.
Beyond that, though, with the nation’s stat-geekiest sport just now opening up its doors for the season, I consider it my patriotic duty to savor the deliciousness of stat-geeky grafs like these:
[W]e were able to find some name recognition data, most often from Gallup, for perhaps 80 or 90 percent of the candidates. For the others, I made an educated guess based on factors like whether the candidate had run for the presidency before and the types of offices that he’d held. For instance, an otherwise undistinguished senator or governor will usually start with name recognition of about 30 percent once he begins to make some noise about running for president and gets some early media attention, so that figure would be applied for this type of candidate when we lacked more specific data.
There certainly is some imprecision in my estimates because of factors like the different wording pollsters use to get at the name recognition question — as well the handful of cases in which there was no hard data at all — but in most cases, they ought to be sound estimates — considerably better than rough ones.
Pardon my ongoing man-crush, but that’s poetry..
I'm a Goofy Goober, YEAH!
April 1st, 2011
9:06 am
This just in: The booming economy created 216 billion jobs. The unemployment rate has dropped to negative 10%. Illegal aliens are being offered signing bonuses of as much as three free social security cards.
jm
April 1st, 2011
9:11 am
FYI. Unemployment rate dropping because as unemployment benefits are getting cut back, people stop looking, because as a requirement for unemployment benefits, you have to prove and indicate you are looking for a job. Ie, the 99ers no longer count in the labor force. There’s more free-loading going on than economists understand from traditional models.
We’re not in a job recovery, though we are in an economic recovery.
TnGelding
April 1st, 2011
9:11 am
Happy Days are Here Again!
230,000 jobs ain’t that bad. Not enough, but trending nicely.
TnGelding
April 1st, 2011
9:14 am
Wrong, jm. Jobs are actually being created. But people are dropping out of the workforce and the Labor Department is dutifully reporting it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110401/bs_nm/us_usa_economy
“The private sector accounted for all the new jobs in March, adding 230,000 positions after February’s 240,000 increase. Government employment fell 14,000, declining for a fifth straight month as local governments let go 15,000 workers.”
getalife
April 1st, 2011
9:14 am
jm,
8.8%.
Bad news for you cons but great news for the rest of us.
Have a great day jm.
jm
April 1st, 2011
9:16 am
getalife – voters won’t vote based on a headline number getalife. They’ll vote based on how they feel. And I don’t think they’re likely to actually feel good in a year and a half. We’ll see.
jm
April 1st, 2011
9:17 am
TnGelding – wrong. job creation does not necessarily lead to a drop in the unemployment rate.
Jay
April 1st, 2011
9:18 am
Job data upstairs….
getalife
April 1st, 2011
9:19 am
jm,
Confidence is high .
Try to support your country today.
Try something different than the same ole get Obama.
Thulsa Doom
April 1st, 2011
11:41 am
Mick,
I saw you complain earlier about the oil companies screwing us on the price of gas and the prolific rise in gas prices. 2 points to be noted.
1) The oil companies do not set the price of gas/oil. Opec does. This is not debateable.
2) I remember when gas rose quickly in the Bush administration- I believe it was after Katrina that it temporarily ran up to $5 for a day or a couple days and gradually started dropping. The reason gas rose quickly was due to Wall Street speculation mostly likely from Obama’s largest campaign contributor Goldman Sachs and their buddies on Wall Street. Supply and demand also had a great deal to do with it. Panic and individual gas station proprietors also had something to do with it.
3)When this happened people like yourself, the libs, and the self-righteous blowhards in DC all called for investigations and studies of oil companies for running up the cost of gas. The truth is that before that there had already been 37 different studies done as to whether or not there was any collusion by oil companies to run up the cost of gas. Few of the studies found any evidence of the oil companies running up the cost of gas and the few that did concluded that if there was any collusion at all that it accounted for possibly 1 % of the cost of the gas. And that’s IF there was any collusion.
The rise in the cost of oil was always attributed to either market speculation of the product, supply and demand, and or kinks in the distribution system such as with Katrina that interrupted the supply of oil. If you will remember the main pipeline that help supplied oil to metro Atlanta was shut down for a few days.