On the 6/12/11 issue of Sunday Mainichi, there is an article called "Mystery of Plutonium that Crossed Across the Pacific Ocean" that includes comments by Professor Kunihiko Takeda. We blogged at the end of April about dramatically increased amount of Plutoniumand Uranium detected on the west side of the United States. Though that blog was widely shared on internet, this Sunday Mainichi article would give chance to many more people to get to know this serious matter. Here's a summary of the Sunday Mainichi article.
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Sunday Mainichi (2011/6/12) "Mystery of Plutonium that Crossed Across the Pacific Ocean" (pg. 19-21).
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) detected Plutonium and Uranium "in the maximum amounts in last 20 years" at the west side of the country (Guam, Hawaii, California, Alaska etc.) from the end of March to the beginning of April. Also, other "abnormal data" have been found in the United States; for example, Strontium has been detected in Hawaiian milk.
Prof. Kunihiko Takeda at Chubu University, who is also a former member of the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission, said, "(These particles) Must have spread from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. It is quite possible that they are Plutonium and Uranium that came from the Reactor #3 (MOX)."
Based on the radiation forecast by the German meteorological Agency, Prof. Takeda stated that "In Japan, the amount of spread Plutonium could reach over 100 times of what have been detected in the United States."
These US data plus facts of meltdown and breakage of reactor containers could imply the possibility of spreading Plutonium in Japan. Prof. Takeda said if Plutonium has been thrown out by explosions, "TEPCO and the government is probably concealing some very important facts about the hydrogen explosions."
Prof. Takeda also talked about the US report on 4/6/11 in which detected amounts of Plutonium were all described in "ND (Not-Detected)" though raw data shows the amounts seemingly much more than just being called non-detected. Prof. Takeda thinks that The US government could have considered "consistency" with official information that have been publicized by TEPCO and the Japanese government.
Prof. Takeda concluded that the EPA findings are "very valuable" in order to be able to understand the real picture of contamination that has still been unclear to us. The EPA data could warn us possibilities of very serious contamination in Japan.
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We repeatedly ask the Japanese government the following things 1) immediate check on more radioactive materials including ones emit Alfa ray 2) health check-up on internal exposure on its citizens by Whole-Body Counter and urinalysis 3) obligatory food inspection that tells us levels of contamination in Bq units 4) monitoring of all the radioactive materials in water, soil, and air in wider areas of Japan, and 5) enforcement of sufficient measure to clean up radiation.
In this article by Sunday Mainichi, it also features Prof. Teruo Henmi at Ehime University mentioning that "Filters that TEPCO is going to use in order to clean contaminated water cannot get rid of Plutonium." The correspondent of the article has asked EPA for an interview, but he has not heard back their answer yet. I hope that this matter of Plutonium gets more attention so that we can understand a real picture of contamination by the Fukushima Daiichi Accident.
