Latest Developments in the Fukushima Crisis - in Korea and Japan

Since last week's forecast of radioactive rain in Korea, I am not entirely at ease anymore when it rains.

On Monday, it rained again in Busan, and I have been wondering about the radioactivity of the rainwater.  Today, on Tuesday, the Korean Institute for Nuclear Safety (KINS) published measurements of the radioactivity of Monday's rain.  I was relieved to read that the measured radiation levels of the rainwater are lower than Canadian drinking water standards.  But I would obviously prefer it if no radioactivity could be detected at all.

Yesterday, though they did not publish measurements of the radioactivity of the rainwater, the KINS published measurements of the radioactivity of the air, measurements of the radioactivity of drinking water, and measurements of the radioactivity of various sea foods.  The Korean Broadcasting System reported the air measurements and sea food measurements with the right units.  Some radioactivity was detected in the air and in sea food.  Thankfully, no radioactivity at all was detected in drinking water.

Unfortunately, it was reported today that some radioactivity has been detected in some foods produced in Korea.  I will keep a watchful eye on this issue.

(By the way, the documents published by the KINS are in HWP format.  On this web-site, they can be converted into PDF's, sometimes on the first try and sometimes on the 4th or 5th.)




In Japan, the Fukushima accident was upgraded to a category 7 nuclear accident, the same category as the Chernobyl disaster.  Japanese officials chose to upgrade the severity of the accident because it resulted in the release of large quantities of radioactive pollution, in the order of terabecquerels, into the environment.  They maintained, however, that the Chernobyl disaster was much more serious than the Fukushima accident.  Nonetheless, the Fukushima accident has already had, and will continue to have serious consequences.

It was also reported today that dangerously large accumulations of radiation have been detected in some locations outside the emergency evacuation zone around the Fukushima power plant.  As a result, the government has ordered more people to evacuate their homes.  This comes about one week after it was reported that the Japanese government temporarily withheld the publication of computer simulations predicting that radiation levels could be higher than initially thought outside the original evacuation zone.

Finally, during the last week or so, Japanese officials dumped large quantities of radioactive water into the Pacific ocean.  Doing so could not be avoided if more water was to be sprayed onto the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactors in order to keep them cool.  I remain worried about the radioactive materials that have been dumped into the ocean.  Specifically, I wonder if it is possible that this material could be carried into clouds by evaporating rain water, and then dropped on land masses in falling rain.  This is particularly worrisome to me because typhoon season is coming in the Asia-Pacific region.  Typhoons are storms that carry water evaporated from the Pacific ocean onto the Asian land mass.  Each year, many Asian countries are affected by typhoons, including Japan, and Korea.  I fear that there could be serious consequences if the rainwater carried by typhoons became radioactive.