Fukushima Soil Contamination Probed

AmiMoJo writes "New research has found that radioactive material in parts of north-eastern Japan exceeds levels considered safe for farming. The findings provide the first comprehensive estimates of contamination across Japan following the nuclear accident in 2011. An international team of researchers took measurements of the radioactive element caesium-137 in soil and grass from all but one of Japan's 47 regions. The researchers estimate that caesium-137 levels close to the nuclear plant were eight times the safety limit, while neighbouring regions were just under this limit."

Re:See, this just shows how safe nuke is ...

[Moheeheeko]

A huge earthquake and a tsunami both well above the level the plant was designed to withstand and it took it, with just some slight explosions and making great swathes of land uninhabitable for generations.

Nuclear power ftw!

Lets not forget the reactor up the coastline that took just as big of a hit..and came out relatively unscathed because someone took the time and knowledge to build it higher than sea level in a country prone to Tsunami.

Poor Engineering FTW!

...is this supposed to be some big suprise?

[JustAnotherIdiot]

The only thing that surprises me is that someone seriously came out with a study prior to this one saying the soil was A-OK after what happened.
You'd have to be pretty dense to believe that.

Re:...is this supposed to be some big suprise?

[CrimsonAvenger]

The only thing that surprises me is that someone seriously came out with a study prior to this one saying the soil was A-OK after what happened.

Of course, if you read TFA, you find that the legal limits are only exceeded in the area immediately around the plant, and that everywhere else it's fine.

In other words, we have this exclusion zone. And we shouldn't be farming there....

Re:See, this just shows how safe nuke is ...

[MightyYar]

Ploughing, and some fertilisers can help farmers reduce plants' uptake of the dangerous elements, and binding agents can be added to animal feed to reduce their uptake from the gut, he added.

Oh, no! How will humanity survive???

BTW Cesium-137 half life is about 30 years, so "uninhabitable for generations" is a bit of a stretch. The only way that statement could be true is in the area immediately surrounding the plant, and only If they do absolutely nothing at all - no treatment, no cleanup, nothing. Then, yeah, it would take 90 years to get down to the limit.

Re:See, this just shows how safe nuke is ...

[russotto]

A huge earthquake and a tsunami both well above the level the plant was designed to withstand and it took it, with just some slight explosions and making great swathes of land uninhabitable for generations.

With radiation levels of 8 times the safe level for farming, it'll take 3 half-lives for them to decline to the safe level. Or, about 90 years, as Cs-137 has a half-life of about 30 years and it decays to the stable barium-137.

Re:See, this just shows how safe nuke is ...

[Moheeheeko]

Except the earthquake is not what caused the problems. The generators that were shut down by flood waters, effectively killing the cooling system, causing overheating and eventually meltdown, Did.

Journalism at its best as usual ...

[slb]

So this is a computation using a statistical model to give estimates of the soil contamination, and it becomes facts and measured quantities in the ground. But worse, look at the original scale provided by the authors [pnas.org] of the paper: it clearly shows the areas under 2500Bq/kg, but the journalist conveniently merged it with the upper-bound area and also avoided the use of the green/blue colors usually associated with safe values in any mapping. Maybe the original map had not enough red and orange area for effective scare-mongering ? BBC I am disappointed...

Re:Not good for farming, but perfect for gardening

[sandytaru]

There are two options: For the long term contamination that will be around for decades, the best thing to do is plant trees (sourgum trees have been proven to work.) The trees will pull the radioactive matter into their tissue, and keep it locked away safely for the remainder of the tree's life For the shorter term contaminants with brief half-lives, mustard plants (annuals) are preferred. If necessary, they can be "harvested" and stored in nuclear waste facilities until they're clean. The most important thing, however, is to get the radioactivity out of the soil and thus out of the groundwater supply. When the material is in a perennial plant, it's bound and the rate of release into the air and soil is dramatically reduced. In the case of non-radioactive materials, many of the soaked up materials are chemically altered by the plant into a much less harmful form, so that even if it is an annual that biodegrades, the material returned to the soil is in a less dangerous form.