s a result of an earthquake on
11 March 2011, the Japanese
nuclear power plant Fukushima
Dai-ichi experienced a worst
case disaster scenario, which included
multiple meltdowns. A great deal of what
nuclear regulatory authorities and thenuclear industry typically dismiss as irrelevant and “practically impossible” played a role in the course of the disasterin three reactors and four fuel rod pools– an earthquake, an electricity blackout,
the failure of emergency batteries, steam
powered cooling pumps, explosions, etc.
On 12 April 2011, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) categorized
the reactor accident as being at Level 7(catastrophic accident), the highest levelon the International Nuclear Event Scale(INES), as a result of the massive releaseof radioactivity. An international researchteam concluded in a study published on
21 October 2011 that the Fukushima
nuclear disaster led to the release of 2.5
times as much of the radioactive noble
gas xenon-133 as was the case in Chernobyl. The study, conducted under the
auspices of the Norwegian Institute for Air
Research, estimates a release of 16,700
petabecquerels of xenon-133 in the period from 11-15 March. According to theauthors, this was “the largest non-military
release in the history of mankind.”
The study further indicates that a total of
36 petabecquerels of radioactive caesium-137, especially dangerous for humanhealth, was released during March andApril. The amount released in this period
equalled around 40% of the estimated release of caesium-137 by Chernobyl. Approximately 20% of the caesium-137 fell
on Japan, while around 80% contaminated the Pacific Ocean, the study reports.

2011: A mother at Yonezawa gymnasium – a shelter for
people who lived near Fukushima nuclear Power Station.
Initially, the greater Tokyo area with its 36
million inhabitants was spared the worst.
As the heaviest radiation clouds passed
over the capital on 15 March, it did not
rain. Between the 20 and 22 March, however, radioactivity once again blew overan even larger area of the main Japaneseisland stretching from the north of the nuclear plant to Osaka in the south. Strong
rains led to practically all of the caesium-137 being washed out of the atmosphere. As a result, there was considerable
caesium contamination of a large area ofJapan, including Tokyo.

The study came to another alarming finding. According to the analyses of theinternational research team, there are“strong indications” that the release ofradiation on 11 March 2011 began very
quickly as a result of the earthquake andpossibly even before the tsunami hit theplant. Even the documents published by
Tepco, the plant operator, raise suspicionsthat there were major problems with thereactor cooling system in the immediatewake of the earthquake. The High Pressure Coolant Injection system (HPCI) of Unit
1 completely failed to operate. The operators then manually turned off the only

Fukushima: Put an end to the nuclear age© Christian Âslund/GreenpeaceAbulletin

information of the ippnw
no. 25 feb 2012german affiliate of theinternational physicians
for the prevention of
nuclear war, physiciansin social responsibility

Fukushima: To Put an end the Nuclear Age!

What actually took place at the Fukushima plant before it was hit by the tsunami – the cause of the catastrophe in theofficial version of events – remains unexplained both in Japan and in Germany.
Reports commissioned by the German
government from the Gesellschaft für Reaktorsicherheit (GRS), a non-profit organization that provides safety assessmentsof nuclear facilities, avoid any conclusive analyses or statements on this issue.
There are strong indications of serious
safety flaws in Fukushima’s boiling water
reactors, which were designed by General
Electric. For instance, there was the lackof heat exchangers in the emergency cooling system (HPCI, Core Spray System) tocool the water. According to the American
nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen, theunusually large explosion in Unit 3 on 14© Christian Âslund/Greenpeace

other available cooling system, the isolation condensers, minutes after the earthquake, because the reactor was cooling off
much too quickly. It subsequently heatedup again with dangerous speed. The cooling system was once again quickly turned
on, but by 15:34, minutes before a total
electricity blackout, it was no longer operating – for whatever reason.

March could have been the result of a nuclear explosion in the spent fuel pool. The
German government has not commented
at all on this possibility. Similarly, the German mass media has remained silent on
the issue. Evidently, the German public ismeant to remain in the dark about a nuclear explosion that may have taken place
at Fukushima.
This policy of silence has had dramaticconsequences for the people of Japan.
The Japanese government, for instance,
has long withheld information from the“Speedi” computer simulation system.

German nuclear policy before Fukushima
Just a few months before the Fukushimacatastrophe, the German section of theInternational Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) highlighted
the real danger posed by a new nuclear catastrophe in a leaflet distributed
to hundreds of thousands of people. In
recent years, there have been a numberof near misses that could have turned
into major nuclear accidents in the USA,
Taiwan, and Sweden, as well as serious
incidents in France, Bulgaria, and Germany. The IPPNW has warned for years
about the dangers posed to nuclear power plants from earthquakes and blackouts caused by extreme weather conditions. Yet, the media and politicians havebeen more interested – if at all – in thepossibility of terrorists crashing airplanes
into nuclear plants. They have resisted
any serious discussion of severe gaps insafety and the constant danger of a nuclear accident. The IPPNW has urgently
stressed the danger of hydrogen explosions in nuclear reactors, yet the German
nuclear authorities, safety inspection
agencies, and the nuclear industry havetreated this issue as irrelevant, just as
they have other concerns, such as thelack of steam operated cooling pumps
not dependant on electricity or the inadequate capacities of emergency batteries.

Failure at the state level can also be observed in the justice system. For years,
the Administrative Court in Hessen refused to seriously consider a lawsuit
by the IPPNW calling for the closureof nuclear plants. The German Federal
Constitutional Court refused to accept
a constitutional complaint. Even politicians did not dare to decommission
nuclear power plants against the will of
the nuclear industry, and yet they allowed the industry to earn a 280 percent
return on their equity from electricity customers. The “fourth estate,” the media,
had been writing articles sympathetic toextending the operating life of nuclear
plants only months before the Fukushima catastrophe. Top politicians as wellas upper echelon bureaucrats in nuclear
energy administrative bodies accepted
high-paying positions in the nuclear industry. Even some members of the German Parliament were on their payroll. A
managing supervisor at the German nuclear supervisory agency took a job witha nuclear power plant operator and thenreturned to the top of a toothless supervisory agency. Everything ran smoothly – inGermany just as it did in Japan …

This led to tragic repercussions for the
21,000 inhabitants of Namie, a city someeight kilometres northwest of the stricken nuclear plant. They fled more than
20 kilometres to Tsushima, where, on 15
March 2011, the largest amount of radioactive fallout rained down. The Japanese
Ministry of Science and Technology latermeasured 4 Becquerel per square meter(Bq/m2) of plutonium-238 in the soil ofNamie. In the coastal city of Minamisoma,
readings indicated 15 Bq/m2 of plutonium-239 and plutonium-240. Radioactive
strontium was even measured some 79
kilometres from the nuclear plant, alongwith many other locations, in the city of
Shirakawa, which has 64,000 inhabitants.

Evacuation of the population
Approximately 100,000 to 150,000 people
had to flee the region around Fukushima.
The widening of the evacuation zones, however, only occurred gradually and was byno means comprehensive. This provokedinternational outrage towards the Japanese government. On 24 March 2011, the
IPPNW, for instance, expressed the needto expand the evacuation zone, especially for pregnant women and children. Japan, a highly industrialized country, wascompletely overwhelmed by the situation.
People from the contaminated zones wereeven denied emergency shelter, in partout of fear from radiation. Permissiblelevels of radiation for children were “officially” raised. In April, the Japanese Ministry of Education raised the radiation levelin schools to 3.8 microsieverts per hour.
Massive protests by parents followed.
Even the IPPNW appealed to the Ministry.
Last August, the maximum levels were finally reduced.
The consequences of the nuclear catastrophe are dramatic and they affect theDangerous levels of radioactivity have also
been measured in tens of thousands oftons of sewage sludge. According to information from Japanese environmental organizations, the government plans to takecontaminated debris from the Fukushimaregion and distribute it around the wholecountry for incineration. The Japanese
Ministry of the Environment estimates thatthe amount of radioactive contaminatedconstruction debris alone in the coastal
regions of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushimaamounts to more than 23.8 million tonnes.
According to a Japanese government report submitted to the IAEA in June 2011,
the population has already been contaminated by numerous airborne radioactive particles. This dangerous radioactive
cocktail consists of xenon-133, caesium-134 and 137, strontium-89 and 90,
barium-140, tellurium-127m, 129m,
131m, and 132, ruthenium-103 and 106,
zirkonium-95, cerium-141 and 144, neptunium-239, plutonium-238, 239, 240,
and 241, yttrium-91, praseodym-143, neodym-147, curium-242, iodine-131, 132,
133, and 135, antimon-127 and 129, as
well as molybdian-99.
Huge quantities of highly radioactive water used to cool the reactors has leakedor been pumped directly into the Pacific
Ocean. This practice is far from ended,even today. Never before has so great an
amount of radioactive fission products
been released into the sea.

Radioactive contamination of food
The massive contamination of soil andsea water will have grave consequences
for the health of the Japanese people.
For example, seaweed, which is cultivated along the coasts of Japan, is a very
important ingredient in Japanese cuisine. The German GRS has clearly laidout the dangers facing the Japanese. An
analysis entitled “On Seawater Contamination near Fukushima Dai-ichi (as of 6
April 2011)” provides readings estimating radiation contamination of seawater in the vicinity of the nuclear power
plant. The result is that the consumptionof only 100 g of seaweed results in an
effective dose contamination of between
2.2 millisieverts (mSv) for red algae and
220 mSv for the brown kombu algae. At a
distance of 10 kilometres from the plant,
the brown algae still showed readings of
2.2mSv. This means that a single servingof seaweed can contain twice or even
220 times more than the official annual
radiation limit. This lies far above the exposure limit of 1 mSv set by the German
Regulations on Radiation Protection.
It should nonetheless be taken into consideration that even exposure at a minutelevel of radiation poses a health risk andcan provoke serious illness such as cancer. This has been the general scientificconsensus for decades. Every assignment of exposure limits is merely a decision determining a tolerable number offatalities. In accordance with the calculation guidelines set by the International
Commission on Radiological Protection,
the EU accepts with its current high exposure limits at least 7700 additional
fatalities a year in Germany alone, evenwhen exposure corresponds to only five
percent of the limit.
The current EU exposure limits for foodlie between 200 and 600 Becquerels of
caesium per kilogramme (Bq/kg). Similarly, in Japan, radioactive contamination of milk and baby food is permitted toa level of up to 200 Bq/kg of caesium,
while other food products can contain up
to 500 Bq/kg. In the case of radioactive

iodine, the levels allowed for milk anddrinking water are 300 Bq/kg and 2000
Bq/kg for vegetables.
According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from
24 March 2011, almost all plant andmilk samples taken from the Ibaraki and
Fukushima prefects contained radioactive iodine and caesium contaminationin excess of the already high official exposure limits. The Japanese Ministry of
Science (MEXT) reported that one monthafter the nuclear catastrophe, vegetablesamples in some regions were showing
readings of more than 100,000 Bq/kg of
iodine-131 and 900,000 Bq/kg of caesium-137. A single serving of vegetables(500 g) would thereby exceed an annual
exposure limit of 1 mSv by seven times.
The IAEA also reported that in March
2011, drinking water in numerous prefects between Fukushima and Tokyo
contained iodine-131 in excess of permissible limits. In one district of Tokyo,
drinking water was contaminated with
210 Bq/l of iodine-131. Considering thatthe limits are set at 100 Bq/l for children
and 300 Bq/l for adults, these findings
provide evidence of considerable radiation exposure in the highly populated capital region.
The degree of danger posed by the contamination measured in Japan becomes
clearer when one recalls that after the
Chernobyl catastrophe, independent radiation protection experts recommended
adult levels for contaminated food consumption not exceed concentrations of
30 to 50 Bq/kg caesium in accordancewith the radiation protection guidelines
valid at that time. The recommended
limit for children as well as for nursing
and pregnant women was set at 5 to 20
Bq/kg. Previously published analysis results also indicate that the fallout from
Fukushima contains a higher proportionof short-lived – and therefore more aggressive – caesium-134 than did theChernobyl fallout.

© Markel Redondo/Greenpeace

whole of Japan, not merely the Fukushima region. According to a publication by
Japanese scientists in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences” in November 2011, soil in thewestern parts of the country is contaminated with around 25 Becquerels per kilogramme (Bq/kg), while eastern regions
are usually burdened with levels of morethan 100 Becquerels. In the prefects ofFukushima, Miyagi, Tochigi, and Ibaraki,
caesium contamination was measured tolevels of around 5000 Bq/kg (with considerably higher values in the vicinity ofthe damaged nuclear plant). The caesium contamination in four Japanese prefects thereby exceeds or is barely underthe (very high) permissible limits, above
which the Japanese government forbids
agriculture and the raising of livestock.

REPORT“Calculated Fatalities from Radiation” report
After the devastating reactor catastrophe in Japan, there was agreat deal of concern in Germany about radioactive contaminated food. Although absurd, the EU nonetheless eased radiation
contamination limits for food products imported from Japan.
Only after massive protest did the EU correct its policies. The report “Calculated Fatalities from Radiation,” which was publishedin mid-September 2011 by the consumer advocacy organization
foodwatch and the IPPNW, concludes that the current maximum
radiation limits in Japan and the EU do not offer adequate healthprotection and must be drastically reduced. The report is available in German, English, French, and Japanese:
http://tinyurl.com/5rhs4es

Act Now
Support the setting up of independent radioactivity measuring stations in Japan
Citizens in Japan have initiated Project 47: A measuring station
is to be set up in every prefect for ordinary citizens (CRMS: Citizens’ Radioactivity Measuring Station). There are a total of 47
prefects in Japan. The first measuring stations have already been
set up in the Fukushima prefect. They allow people to measure
the extent of radioactive contamination in their food. A similar
project was initiated after Chernobyl by 40 citizens’ groups inGerman-speaking countries. The project, however, is still in needof additional measuring devices. A gamma ray measuring station
with sufficient sensitivity to determine contamination in foodstuffs
currently costs around 30,000 Euros. These devices are urgently
needed. In November 2011, the first donations totalling 5.600
Euros were sent to Japan. Aya Marumori, the chairperson of the
CRMS association, wrote, “As you know, since the reactor accident at Fukushima Dai-ichi, the government and the authorities
have concealed the resulting damage and have played down andintentionally manipulated the dangers to health by repeating false
information. Our activities in Fukushima are carried out under
great stress and we are attempting to find some light in the dark-

ness. We often find ourselves fighting an uphill battle. Your heartfelt sympathy for our activities is all the more encouraging. Thankyou very much!”
CRMS homepage: http://en.crms-jpn.com
Please send donations to:
Bank account holder: Gesellschaft für Strahlenschutz
Purpose: Fukushima Projekt 47
Bank code: 200 100 20, Account number: 294 29 208
BIC: PBNKDEFF, IBAN: DE45 2001 0020 0029 4292 08

Get informed …
… about the consequences of the nuclear catastrophe in
Fukushima. Our newsletter, which appears on the 11th of eachmonth, will keep you up to date.
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Imprint
Information provided by the
IPPNW – German Affiliate of
the International Physicians
for the Prevention of Nuclear
War, Physicians in Social
Responsibility e.V.
Editors: Angelika Wilmen,
Henrik Paulitz
Photos: Greenpeace, XantheHall
Layout: Angelika Wilmen
IPPNW Geschäftsstelle,
Körtestraße 10, 10967 Berlin
Tel. 030 / 69 80 74 0
Fax 030 / 693 81 66
E-mail: ippnw@ippnw.de
www.ippnw.de

Fukushima:
Put an end to the nuclear age!