Fukushima - the continuing saga

[samsara]

Caught On Video: Radioactive Wild Boar Roam Fukushima

First photos of radioactive wild boar roaming Fukushima's nuclear wastelands as they're culled for attacking people

These incredible photos were taken as a culling team entered the towns inside the exclusion zone set up after the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011

By Kiyoshi Takenaka, Teppei Kasai
12:36, 9 MAR 2017 - Updated: 01:01, 10 MAR 2017

We've all heard the crazy stories about radioactive boar roaming the nuclear wastelands of Fukushima.

But such an outlandish tale can't possibly be true, can it?

No-one has ever seen pictures of these creatures

Until now.

These incredibly unusual photographs of the terrifying mammals were taken in the exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant, whose reactors went into meltdown after it was struck by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

There have been many obvious dangers faced by Japan in the wake of the disaster, but one of the most unexpected has also proved to be one of the most fascinating.

The bloodied teeth and gums of a radioactive wild boar as he gnaws away at the wires of its booby trap (Photo: REUTERS)

Fat pig: The boars need to be culled because the owners of these homes ware returning to the town at the end of the month (Photo: REUTERS)

When the exclusion zone was set up - with the surrounding towns population evacuated to a safe distance - hundreds of the wild boars, which have been known to attack people when enraged, descended from surrounding hills and forests into the deserted streets.

Now they roam the empty streets and overgrown garden's of Japan's deserted seaside town of Namie, foraging for food

However, the people of Namie are scheduled to return to the town at the end of the month, which means the bloody-toothed interlopers have to be cleared.

"It is not really clear now which is the master of the town, people or wild boars," said Tamotsu Baba, mayor of the town.

Wild boar meat is a delicacy in northern Japan, but animals slaughtered since the disaster are too contaminated to eat. According to tests conducted by the Japanese government, some of the boars have shown levels of radioactive element caesium-137 that are 300 times higher than safety standards.

Authorities in the town of Tomioka say they’ve killed 800 so far, but officials there say that’s not enough, according to Japanese media. The latest statistics show that in the three years since 2011, the number of boars killed in hunts has grown to 13,000 from 3,000.

But at town meetings earlier this year to prepare for the homecoming, residents had voiced worries about the wild boars.

[...]
MORE pictures at Daily Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/first-photos-radioactive-wild-boars-9996080

 

[terranMarine]

As Trump would put it: a total disaster. Seriously, Japan a well developed country has failed utterly in handling the nuclear disaster. Robots failed in their missions, the plant is still leaking extremely high dose of radiation. Soil, ground water and the Sea are so contaminated and even the radiated wild boars are terrorizing the neighborhood since they now consider it's their territory since the locals abandoned their homes. Japanese Media is keeping this fiasco down to suppress the possibility of national panic. Sadly there's more at stake here. The beautiful Pacific Ocean all ruined at the hands of mankind. The Americans and French conducted countless of nuclear testing and now the Japs are adding another layer of contamination.

 

[onebyone]

Potentially radioactive wild boars worry Fukushima

Animal control workers carry a wild boar killed by a pellet gun in a booby trap, at a residential area in an evacuation zone near the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Tomioka town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, March 2, 2017.

REUTERS/TORU HANAI

Hundreds of aggressive, and potentially radioactive, wild boars have prompted public safety concerns in Japan, according to news reports, as homeowners prepare to return to towns near Fukushima, where a 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in the region.

Six years after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, people from the region are preparing to return home, reported Reuters. Evacuation orders for parts of Namie, a seaside town located just 2.5 miles from the nuclear plant, and three other towns will be lifted by the Japanese government at the end of March, according to Reuters.

However, after the area was evacuated, wild boars moved in from the surrounding hills and forests. The animals, which can be aggressive toward humans, now freely roam the deserted towns, reported Reuters. [In Pictures: Japan Earthquake & Tsunami]

“It is not really clear now which is the master of the town, people or wild boars,” Tamotsu Baba, mayor of Namie, told Reuters. “If we don’t get rid of them and turn this into a human-led town, the situation will get even wilder and uninhabitable.

Despite concerns over radiation that leaked from the nuclear power plant following the earthquake and tsunami, and amid questions about the plant’s safety (it is being decommissioned), a government survey found that more than half of the 21,500 former residents of Namie plan to return, according to Reuters. Those who are planning to return home are now worried about the wild boars, and residents voiced their concerns about the animals at town meetings earlier this year, Reuters reported.

In the nearby town of Tomioka, located 11.4 miles south of Namie, a team is working to catch and kill the wild boars, according to Reuters. Since April 2016, the hunters have captured an estimated 300 boars. Shoichiro Sakamoto, a local hunter who leads the wild boar team, told Reuters that the animals aren’t afraid of people now.

“After people left, they began coming down from the mountains and now they are not going back,” Sakamoto told Reuters. “They found a place that was comfortable. There was plenty of food and no one to come after them.”


18 PHOTOS
In Fukushima's wake: A radioactive wasteland


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-japan-potentially-radioactive-wild-boars/

 

[onebyone]

Fukushima News: Deadly Nuclear Radiation Levels Detected
BY PRANSHU RATHI @PRANSHURATHI ON 03/22/17 AT 7:26 AM


Extremely high radiation levels were detected using cameras and robots in tainted water inside a reactor containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Japan Times reported Tuesday, citing Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (Tepco).

The latest readings, taken six years after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, showed 11 sieverts per hour, according to Japan Times. It is the highest radiation level detected in water inside the containment vessel and is extremely dangerous. Sievert is a unit measurement for a dose of radiation. One sievert is enough to cause illness if absorbed all at once, and 8 sieverts will result in death despite treatment, according to PBS who relied on data from multiple sources including United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and MIT’s Nuclear Science and Engineering department.

Following a major earthquake on March 11, 2011, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima reactors, causing a nuclear accident. Tepco, who operated the plant and has been tasked with cleaning up the worst nuclear incident, since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union, has been some problems of late in its cleanup operation.

Recently, an exploratory robot malfunctioned and died after being sent inside reactor 2, in mid-February, due to exposure to "unimaginable" levels of radiation, close to 650 sieverts per hour. The previous highest recorded level was 73 sieverts per hour. Following the incident, Naohiro Masuda, president of Tepco's Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning project, told reporters the company had to rethink its methods in order to examine and extract the hazardous material stuck in the plant's second reactor.

“We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out,” Masuda said, according to the Japan Times.

Tepco has been attempting to locate melted fuel which leaked from the reactor’s pressure vessel and is believed to have settled at the bottom of the containment vessel that holds the contaminated water. So far, no such debris has been found, and Tepco decided to extend the survey by one day through Wednesday.

A robot sent by the company on March 20 reached the bottom but was unable to locate the melted fuel due to some pipes that blocked its view. But it was able to take pictures of what appeared to be sand piling up near the pipes. The radiation readings near them were 6.3 sieverts per hour.

“Judging from the radiation level, there is a high possibility that what is piling up on the pipes is not nuclear fuel,” a Tepco official said, according to the Asahi Shimbun.

Cleaning up the plant may take an estimated 40 years and cost an estimated 21.5 trillion yen ($189 billion), according to the Guardian.

http://www.ibtimes.com/fukushima-news-deadly-nuclear-radiation-levels-detected-2512867