Science cat is concerned about the radioactive buckyballs from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant irradiating California’s water, soil and air. She wants the EPA and NOAA to start monitoring the situation immediately for the health and safety of cats and all living things on the planet. Photo Credit: Flickrballs by sister72 on flickr cc
Radiation monitoring stations in Santa Monica and Los Angeles have picked up radiation in the air 5.3 times normal yet the state and federal governments stopped receiving funds to test air, water, soil and food – especially dairy products – for radioactive fallout or radionuclides from Fukushima Japan since December 2011 or before.
Fukushima Radiative Ocean Radiation Hits Hawaii
Michael Collins of Ventura County Reporter published an article on 6/7/2012 entitled, “A Radioactive Nightmare: As fallout from Fukushima heads our way, the government turns a blind eye.” Michael Collins news article can also be found on RSN (www.ReaderSupportedNews.org).
How come California and the U.S. government stopped monitoring for radiation from the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster? According to a report by University of California Davis, water used to cool down the molten nuclear cores of the three Fukushima plants formed nanosphere “buckyballs” which look like a soccer ball. The shape of these buckyballs enables it to carry the radioactive elements long distances. The balls are named after Buckminster Fuller, the man who created the geodesic dome which was similar in design to the fullerene, also called a Buckminsterfullerene.
So this is what a radioactive buckyball from Fukushima might look like. Photo credit: Soccer Ball by vitroid on flickr cc
Thankfully Collins reported that Radiation Station Santa Monica began transmitting live radiation readings four days after the March 11, 2011 meltdowns in Fukushima. The station provides live readings for the Los Angeles Basin 24 hours, 7 days/week.
1000 Tons of Radioactive Water Used to Cool Fukushima’s Radioactive Cores Dumped Daily into the Pacific Ocean
Tokyo Electric Power Company, the owner of the Fukushima reactors damaged in the Japan’s March 11, 2011 Tsunami, recently revealed they daily “dump at least 1000 tons of highly radioactive water used to cool the melted cores and spent fuel ponds” into the ocean.
Collins said in his article, “The American government has done nothing to monitor the Pacific ocean for over half a year, even though a Texas-sized sea of Japanese earthquake debris is already washing up on outlying Alaskan islands and is suspected to have already hit the West Coast, including California.”
The EPA says it does not have jurisdiction to monitor “marine radiation.” NOAA said it is working with EPA. However, NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stopped testing for radiation from Fukushima in the summer of 2011 after it claimed there wasn’t any radiation to be detected. Why aren’t they monitoring now since radiation has been detected in California?
Fukushima hits California: Radioactive Kelp 4/11/12
Here is a link to the University of California Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Air Monitoring Station.
EPA Needs to Keep It’s Radiation Monitors in Better Working Condition
NTI’s Global Security Newswire reports that an “Audit Confirms EPA Radiation Monitors Broken During Fukushima Crisis.”
According to the article by Douglas P. Guarniro, the EPA’s Inspector General Report of April 19, 2012, entitled: “Weaknesses in the EPA Management of the Radiation Network System Demand Attention,” details problems with EPA’s “RadNet” monitoring system, especially at the crucial time when Fukushima nuclear plants released huge amounts of radiation into the air and water on March 11, 2011 and the aftermath of the nuclear plant crisis:
RadNet consists of 124 stations scattered throughout U.S. territories and 40 deployable air monitors that can be sent to take readings anywhere, according to the IG report. Monitoring stations collect air, precipitation, drinking water and milk samples for analysis of radioactivity, although the audit focused on the stationary air monitors.
At the time of the Fukushima crisis, “this critical infrastructure asset” was impaired because many monitors were broken, while others had not undergone filter changes in so long that they could not be used to accurately detect real-time radiation levels, the IG report says.
“On March 11, 2011, at the time of the Japan nuclear incident, 25 of the 124 installed RadNet monitors, or 20 percent, were out of service for an average of 130 days,” the report says. “In addition, six of the 12 RadNet monitors we sampled (50 percent) had gone over eight weeks without a filter change, and two of those for over 300 days,” the report adds, noting that EPA policy calls on operators to change the filters twice per week.
