Thousands evacuate as Fukishima nuclear emergency is declared

[Magda Hassan]

TEPCO Admits To Finding Radioactive Cesium 1Km Off Coast Of Fukushima

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/22/2013 22:03 -0400

The dismal news keeps coming for the Fukushima nuclear power facility. According to NHK World, TEPCO is admitting to detecting radioactive cesium about one kilometer off shore. While the level is low, it is the secoond time radioactive substances have been found that far offshore and it is believed to be from wastewater leaking out with the groundwater. The company, reassuringly, says the leak poses no environmental risk... As if that was not enough, Bloomberg reports TEPCO also found high levels of radiation in the drainage ditches and wells at the site. Of course, this will likely be met with cries of delight by Abe who will "need to build a bigger wall" to contain the leaks and thus create a Keynesian utopia from the 'broken nuclear plant fallacy' that is ongoing.

Via NHK World,

Tokyo Electric Power Company says a very small amount of radioactive cesium has been detected about one kilometer off the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant it operates.

TEPCO has been analyzing seawater taken at 5 locations outside the plant's harbor. This is to monitor the spread of radioactive substances in wastewater that's believed to be seeping out with groundwater.

A sample taken last Friday about one kilometer offshore was found to contain 1.6 becquerels of cesium-137 per liter.

The level is far below the 90 becquerels-per-liter limit for releasing cesium-137 into the sea. But it is the second time the substance has been detected at this location since monitoring began in August. The previous finding was on October 8th.

TEPCO says it does not know why cesium has been found at that specific spot. But the company says it poses no environmental risk as the level is near the minimum detection threshold. It adds that hardly any cesium is being found elsewhere in the sea outside of the port.

Via Bloomberg,

Co. found 59,000 Bq/L of beta radiation levels from water taken yesterday at B-2 drainage ditch at Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, higher than previous record of 34,000 Bq/L in Oct. 17 sample, according to an e-mailed statement from the utility.

Co. detects 350,000 Bq/L of tritium radiation at monitoring well "No. 1-12" near turbine buildings, according to a separate statement

First time to take sample from monitoring well "No. 1-12"

Co. found record 790,000 Bq/L of tritium radiation near H4 storage tank area on Oct. 17

We just can't wait to see the Olympic sailing events with boats whose hulls are lead-shielded...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-22...-fukushima

[Peter Lemkin]

TEPCO Admits To Finding Radioactive Cesium 1Km Off Coast Of Fukushima



Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/22/2013 22:03 -0400

The dismal news keeps coming for the Fukushima nuclear power facility. According to NHK World, TEPCO is admitting to detecting radioactive cesium about one kilometer off shore. While the level is low, it is the secoond time radioactive substances have been found that far offshore and it is believed to be from wastewater leaking out with the groundwater. The company, reassuringly, says the leak poses no environmental risk... As if that was not enough, Bloomberg reports TEPCO also found high levels of radiation in the drainage ditches and wells at the site. Of course, this will likely be met with cries of delight by Abe who will "need to build a bigger wall" to contain the leaks and thus create a Keynesian utopia from the 'broken nuclear plant fallacy' that is ongoing.

Via NHK World,

Tokyo Electric Power Company says a very small amount of radioactive cesium has been detected about one kilometer off the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant it operates.

TEPCO has been analyzing seawater taken at 5 locations outside the plant's harbor. This is to monitor the spread of radioactive substances in wastewater that's believed to be seeping out with groundwater.

A sample taken last Friday about one kilometer offshore was found to contain 1.6 becquerels of cesium-137 per liter.

The level is far below the 90 becquerels-per-liter limit for releasing cesium-137 into the sea. But it is the second time the substance has been detected at this location since monitoring began in August. The previous finding was on October 8th.

TEPCO says it does not know why cesium has been found at that specific spot. But the company says it poses no environmental risk as the level is near the minimum detection threshold. It adds that hardly any cesium is being found elsewhere in the sea outside of the port.

Via Bloomberg,

Co. found 59,000 Bq/L of beta radiation levels from water taken yesterday at B-2 drainage ditch at Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, higher than previous record of 34,000 Bq/L in Oct. 17 sample, according to an e-mailed statement from the utility.

Co. detects 350,000 Bq/L of tritium radiation at monitoring well "No. 1-12" near turbine buildings, according to a separate statement

First time to take sample from monitoring well "No. 1-12"

Co. found record 790,000 Bq/L of tritium radiation near H4 storage tank area on Oct. 17

We just can't wait to see the Olympic sailing events with boats whose hulls are lead-shielded...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-22...-fukushima

Without becoming overly technical, the above 'its nothing much to worry about' position of TEPCO is both unscientific and absurd. As to the levels in the sea one Km off-shore, think of how much moving/circulating water is there to dilute to that level - BUT, two phenomena are well known which will concentrate those levels in living tissues in the sea for great distances [or in those who eat things from the sea]: bioaccumulation and bioconcentration. There are also other radioactive elements being emitted - some with very long half-lives or in such quantities that with moderate half-lives they still will do tremendous damage. This is really already worse than Chernobyl and to get worse still - only how much worse is unknown.

The levels of radioactives in the areas around the plant itself are alarming and will become more so with time [all the damaged reactors are disintegrating and/or slowly undergoing certain processes that will cause more leakage or a potential meltdown]. Moving the fuel rods out will be a perilous activity under the present conditions, and even a small 'slip up' could cause enormous radiation releases. TEPCO is obviously unable or unwilling to really deal with the situation - which is far from 'local' - although the local situation is worst - the problem extends for hundreds of Km on land and sea at alarming levels and many thousands of Km at dangerous levels that will or could become alarming. Thanks GE! ['they bring good things to life']

[Magda Hassan]

How the Yakuza and Japan's Nuclear Industry Learned to Love Each Other

JAKE ADELSTEIN4,726 ViewsMAY 24, 2012
After the arrest of a yakuza boss for his alleged role in supplying workers to TEPCO's Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Plant, we are learning the details of how Japan's nuclear industry relied on organized crime. Since July of last year, a few months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami resulted in a triple meltdown at the Fukushima plant, investigators have been probing possible yakuza links to TEPCO and the nuclear industry under the guidance of the National Police Agency.
"Yakuza involvement in the nuclear industry is believed to go back to 2007 or earlier," said a police source, "and the gangs involved were dispatching yakuza to nuclear sites all over Japan."
The yakuza boss arrested has been identified as Makoto Owada, a high-ranking member of the Sumiyoshi-kai (住吉会) crime group, the second largest organized crime group in Japan with roughly 12,000 members. Owada is charged with illegally dispatching workers to the reconstruction site from May to July of last year. The Fukushima plant is located in Sumiyoshi-kai territory (in yakuza parlancenawabari). However, in his initial statements to the police at the time of his arrest, Owada admitted that he had dispatched workers, including his own yakuza soldiers, to nuclear power plant construction sites all over Japan from as early as 2007.
"If we didn't do it, who would?" asked one mid-level yakuza boss, who defended the criminal groups' involvement. He even praised the yakuza workers as heroes in the aftermath of the disaster. "When everyone else was running away as Fukushima melted down, our people stayed to avert disaster. We're not the bad guys."
Police suspect that Owada was also working with Japan's largest crime group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, in providing labor to areas outside of the Sumiyoshi-kai turf in a "joint business venture." Organized crime in Japan tends to be extremely organized. (At right is an issue of a yakuza fanzine that is dedicated to the Sumiyoshi-kai.) And, in fact, one of the business partners, Yamaguchi-gumi Oshuaizukaikka, which also calls Fukushima Prefecture home, has been praised for their fast and effective relief efforts after the quakeeven providing hot food and security from possible looters at disaster shelters. The other business partner, the Yamaguchi-gumi Shimizu-ikka was founded by one of the four yakuza who received a liver transplant at UCLA under controversial circumstances.
However, it's becoming apparent that yakuza involvement in Japan's nuclear industry is not limited to the Sumiyoshi-kai and Yamaguchi-gumi. In January of this year, the Fukuoka Police Department arrested an executive at a front company for the Kyushu-based yakuza Kudo-kai, for her role in illegal labor contracts with the KEPCO (Kansai Electric Power Company) managed Ooi Nuclear Power Plant.
Police and underworld sources said that starting in late May of last year, Owada allegedly dispatched several people, including gang members, to the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant where they did cleanup work and reconstruction of damaged areas. According to these sources, Owada did not directly dispatch workers to the nuclear power plant; he first sent them to an official TEPCO subcontractor in Tochigi Prefecture. These sources say the way the scheme worked is that Owada then received the extra hazard pay (危険手当) that TEPCO was giving to workers at the radioactive Fukushima site. Some of that money was allegedly kicked back to the Sumiyoshi-kai as "association dues."
While most firms in Japan now have in place exclusionary clauses in all contracts that forbids the use of organized crime or affiliated companies, TEPCO has been fairly lax about taking similar measures. Last July, according to the National Police Agency and TEPCO, the firm began meeting regularly with officials from the National Police Agency to discuss rooting out organized crime influence at the company. Up until October 1, 2011, however, it was not necessarily illegal to employ yakuza at nuclear facilities or work with their front companies. It is now.
The involvement of the yakuza in Japan's nuclear industry has gone on long before last year's disaster. According to Japanese government sources, Yakuza have been supplying labor to Japan's nuclear industry since the late 90s. TEPCO and other firms have paid off yakuza groups in the past to remain silent about safety problems at their nuclear plants and other scandals. In 2003, the Japanese media reported that TEPCO had been making protection payments to a Sumiyoshi-kai front company for over ten years. The June 2005 issue of the political and news magazine, SEIKEI TOHOKU, had an in-depth expose of TEPCO pay-offs to a Yamaguchi-gumi boss. Police sources also confirmed that TEPCO ties to organized crime dated back to the late nineties.
"The yakuza provide the labor for a job no sane person would do considering the crappy working conditions," said Tomohiko Suzuki, author of Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry: Diary of An Undercover Reporter Working at the Fukushima Plant (ヤクザと原発-福島第一潜入記-鈴木-智彦). "The only way to get the yakuza out of the atomic power business is probably to shutter all the reactors. Even then, like savvy vultures, the yakuza will be living off the cleanup work for years to come."
Considering the intimate entanglements between organized crime and nuclear power in Japan, it would not be a shock if this investigation has a very short half-life. "The arrest of Owada is just the tip of the iceberg but how far the investigation will go or be allowed to go is difficult to say," said the police source. "Things don't change overnight."
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/20...her/52779/

Japan Lax Nuclear Security Could Make It The Land Of The Melting Sun

POSTED BY JAKEADELSTEIN ON SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2013

Japan is a giant nuclear pressure cooker. Let's hope it doesn't get set off.

full article is in the Japan Times (May 5th, 2013) On April 15, two alleged terrorists in Boston killed three people, injured more than 170 others and terrified a nation for about $100 it cost them to modify pressure cookers into bombs. We should be glad they didn't come to Japan, where they may have been able to explode a ready-made nuclear dirty bomb, kill untold thousands, render huge swaths of the country uninhabitable and get paid by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) in the process. I wish I were kidding. Japan has more than 50 gigantic nuclear "pressure cookers" ripe for exploitation by terrorists. And they wouldn't even have to lay siege to the facilities. Instead, they could just walk into a nuclear plant and leave with enough weapons-grade plutonium for a small atomic device which later could be detonated wherever they chose. How?

In Japan, getting access to a nuclear power plant is very simple: fill out a job application.

It is now more than two years since the start of the nuclear crisis following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, and there are still no mandatory background checks for workers at its nuclear facilities. After the three reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex in March 2011, it became clear that Tepco, the plant's operator, was allowing members of Japan's organized crime groups, the yakuza, to staff the well-paid cleanup just as they had been allowed into plants long before then. Indeed, members and associates of the Sumiyoshi-kai (Kanto) and Kudo-kai (Kyushu) mobs have been arrested for their roles supplying labor to Tepco and its Kansai cousin, Kepco. So the dirty secret that yakuza-linked workers and companies have long sustained Japan's nuclear industry along with yakuza members themselves, ex-convicts, wanted criminals, and drug addicts working there is now public knowledge. Although many yakuza groups claim to have a protective role in society, most of their members are sociopathic felons who would commit theft, assault or murder to make a little money. And if you consider the black-market value of a little plutonium, you may feel a tad uneasy knowing such people have long had access to it and can still get their hands on nuclear materials. Don't worry, though: Last month the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said a panel will be set up to discuss atomic energy security issues, and it will consider introducing a system to investigate the backgrounds of workers to avoid acts of terrorism at nuclear plants. Specifically, it seems the panel will examine ways to check whether nuclear facility employees are drug addicts or have a criminal record, among other issues, in order to screen out anyone who could potentially get involved in terrorism. The panel will comprise NRA Commissioner Kenzo Oshima and outside experts. However, one expert who will not be on the panel is Haruki Madarame, former chief of the now-dissolved Nuclear Safety Commission. He is currently being investigated by prosecutors for alleged criminal negligence. But hey, let's not dwell on the past. The good news is that the NRA is thinking about making nuclear plants safer in the future. They may even reach the same conclusions that the Nuclear Security Expert Commission of the Atomic Energy Commission announced … in September 2011. Of course, why take action when you can spend more time debating about taking action? The AEC makes recommendations for nuclear energy policy. However, that 2011 report, titled "Basic Nuclear Security Assurance," doesn't give a positive view of Japan's countermeasures. For the rest of the story …

Reference materials for the article and those interested in Japan's nuclear issues

A few source materials for the article are below for those who would like to know more. 原子力防護専門部会 (Nuclear Security Expert Commission of the Atomic Energy Commission aReport on Basic Nuclear Security ) Their full report, which discusses the threat from dirty bombs made out of nuclear facility materials, is on-line. (Japanese only) For a prescient look at the crisis that came, see Japan's Nuclear Roulette from 2004 For a comprehensive history of Japan's troubled and corrupt nuclear industry, Jeff Kingston's essay from Contemporary Japan is a must read. Also very prescient. The Melting Sun: Japan's Nuclear Follies
For another view of the problems at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and Japan's nuclear security problems, Professor Kingston's recent article: Power Politics: Japan's Resilient Nuclear Village is a very succinct and chilling read.

TEPCO is beyond parody sometimes but we try.

http://www.japansubculture.com/japan-lax...MQ.twitter

[Magda Hassan]

http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com//13/10/FUKUSHIMA.pdf

[Peter Lemkin]

Fukushima Radiation Traced in Pacific Seafood 25 Oct 2013 Just offshore from the Fukushima plant, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States are working alongside their Japanese counterparts, monitoring radiation levels. Among them is senior marine chemist Ken Buesseler. "That radiation is moving across the Pacific, but it gets much, much lower even short distances offshore," he said. Buesseler said a bigger concern is the accumulation of isotopes in marine life. Earlier this year, cesium isotopes from Fukushima were found in tuna caught off California.

This is the bioaccumulation and bioconcentration effects I mentioned in a post above - a well known biological effect: Atoms or molecules are ingested or absorbed by plants/animals low on the food chain and as they are in turn eaten by higher and higher animals on the top of the food chain, the concentrations of these undesirable substances is increased by up to 1000 to 100,000,000 times - depending on many factors. At the very top of the current food chain for many to most things are humans.

[Keith Millea]

Moved To:

https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...=78648#top

[Peter Lemkin]

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The Pacific Ocean Does Not Belong to Japan: It Belongs to All of Us

By Sheila Parks [/TD]
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All of the world's oceansare connected to one another; there is only one world ocean. A fifth-gradestudent looking at a world map can easily see this. So when we talk about thePacific Ocean being contaminated by Fukushimawith radiated water, we are saying that all this radiation is flowing into ourone world ocean on a daily basis, with no end in sight. Whether we say 300 tonsof radiated water have been flowing into the Pacific Ocean every day since Fukushima, March 11, 2011,or whether we say 83,000 gallons/day of radiated water -- an incomprehensibleamount of poisoned water is flowing into our one ocean.

Some may argue that Japan has aterritorial right to the waters off its shores. The definition of territorialwaters is as follows http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters "Territorial waters, or a territorialsea, as defined by the 1982 United NationsConvention on the Law of the Sea, [SUP][1][/SUP]is a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22.2 km;13.8 mi) from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastalstate. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of thestate"
Since the radiation in theocean from Fukushima flows way beyond theterritorial waters of Japan,why are the nations of the world allowing Japan and TEPCO to have totalcontrol over what happens? We must allhave a say about Fukushimaand radiated water flowing into our one ocean. Can the people of the world finda way to take control away from Japanand TEPCO legally now and have an independent international team ofexperts give their brains, hearts, and souls to the job?


Some participants of the weekly vigil at the Japanese Consulate in Boston by Photo courtesy Sheila Parks

On December 1, 2013 ArnieGundersen (http://fairewinds.org/) said, "DaleKlein [the former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and thecurrent chair of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee -- an advisory board toTEPCO] is now suggesting that we're just going to take [Fukushima's radioactive water] and pump itinto the Pacific. And I don't think that's a very good idea. It's cheap andit's fast, it's the expedient way of doing it, but really there's somethingcalled the Londondumping convention. And back in 1972, Greenpeace was very active in preventingradiation from being dumped into the ocean and to my way of thinking, thiswould violate the London Dumping Convention if they did it." See the interview and transcript with Gundersen,and this particular question to him and his response at 4:10 minutes. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?opti...ival=11085.
Here is the London Conventionaka Marine Dumping law and also note the 1996 protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Conv...her_Matter. On ABC News on November20, 2013, Klein said, "At the end of the day, when the water isdischarged, it will be released in a way that it's diluted." http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-20/fu...-o/5104584. A few questions for Klein: What do you mean specifically by "diluted"?The ocean cannot dilute radiation. Please give us hard, cold evidence that whatyou call dilution is possible. Many scientists state that this is not true.
With the disintegration of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, many kinds of wildlife arestrangely dying and disappearing from the Pacific Ocean, in places as far awayas Hawaii, Canadaand southern California.For example star fish, sea lions and Pacific herring are having nightmarishproblems: http://enenews.com/alarming-epidemic-
mass-die-off-of-starfish-on-canadas-pacific-coast-theyve-disintegrated-now-theres-just-goo-left-appeared-to-melt-arms-just-detach-single-arms-clingi;
http://enenews.com/tv-historic-number-of...-on-oceano;
http://enenews.com/biologist-pacific-her...mer-of-201
TheOcean is Broken , October 18,2013, is a narrative by and about a sailor, Ivan Macfadyen, crossing the oceanfrom Melbourne, Australiato Osaka, Japanand from Osaka to San Francisco.
"" The next leg of the long voyagewas from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation wastinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear"After we left Japan, it feltas if the ocean itself was dead"We hardly saw any living things. We saw onewhale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a bigtumour on its head. It was pretty sickening"I've done a lot of miles on theocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and bigflurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there wasnothing alive to be seen" In place of the missing life was garbage inastounding volumes"" http://www.theherald.com.au/story/184843...is-broken/.
John LaForge, co-director of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog andenvironmental justice group in Wisconsin , tells us, "Japan has decided that fishcontaminated with fewer than 100 Becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) of cesium-137is good enough to eat. Some local officials have set a stricter bar of 50Bq/kg.
"In the U.S. the permissible level ofcesium in food is 1,200 Bq/kg. Canadaallows 1,000 Bq/kg. The difference is startling. The huge discrepancy allowsimportation by the U.S. and Canada of what Japan considers highly contaminatedfish, vegetables and meat. Rice, fish, beef and other Japanese exports poisonedby nuclear power's single worst nightmare is doubtless being consumed in the United States." http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/23/f...on-gusher/ It is unfathomable that the US and Canada have set the bar for permissible cesiumin food to be lower than Japan.However, there is never any permissible level for any country to allow cesiumin our food.
This curse of radiation from Fukushima in our ocean willbe with us for time untold. I urge that you,your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren not eat anything from theocean.
Sheila Parks, Ed.D., of Watertown,is the Convenor of the weekly vigil at the Japanese Consulate in Boston, On Behalf ofPlanet Earth. See our FB page, On Behalf of Planet Earth and please join usThursday mornings 8:15AM-9:15AM at 600 Atlantic Avenue, corner of Summer Street, at SouthStation.

[Magda Hassan]

I have much respect for Sheila who has done many good works in her life. Actually spent a year in prison for her activism. Working with Plowshares and supporting women and voters.

[Peter Lemkin]

Radioactive Sushi anyone? MMMmmmmm-mmmmum! Good for you! Helps build strong bones that will give you cancer soon via the cesium....there are lots of other radioactive elements from Fukashima and most that WILL come into the environment have not yet...but will soon!::

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5569[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]5570[/ATTACH]

[Peter Lemkin]

Radioactive San Francisco

By Michael Steinberg




Photo: A fenced-off residential area on Treasure Island warns of possible radioactivity left behind by the U.S. Navy. Michael Short/The Bay Citizen

December 20, 2013

This story is important in and of itself, but also because it once again unearths the region's role in the birth of the atomic age, and also highlights the radioactive legacy that continues to haunt us.

On November 13 the San Francisco Chronicle ran a lead story written by the SF-based Center For Investigative Reporting. The story was about the radioactive contamination of Treasure Island, a former US Navy base in the middle of the Bay. The Chron article reported that 575 metal discs consisting of radioactive radium-226 had been found in the ground at Treasure Island as of 2011. The report did not mention that the radioactive life of radium-226 is millennia, over 16,000 years.

The Navy has claimed that all its radwaste on the island had already been hauled away. In August 2012 RT News, a Russian English language news service, reported "Navy contractors excavated and removed 16,000 yards of contaminated dirt, some with levels of radiation up to 400 times above the EPA limit for human exposure."
And in September 2012 the East Bay Express reported "Over the past five years, at least 3 shipments of extremely radioactive wastemost of it from the metal diskshave moved from Treasure Island to a secure location."
This radwaste was so hot that proximity to it for a few hours could kill you in a month.
But where is this "secure" location, and who's going to keep and eye on it for the next 16,000 years? And what effect has it had on the health of the mostly low income tenants who have been living in former Navy housing on Treasure Island?
Or the people who use its recreational facilities, such as Little League fields? The Center For Investigative Reporting article reported:

"Every weekend, families from around the region flock to the baseball fields along Treasure Island's eastern side for Little League games. Outfielder Cole Scott, 13, said fly balls have often sailed into fenced areas posted with radiation warning signs. And he said people just as often climbed over the fence to fetch them."

The Chronicle did not include the above passage in its November 13 top story.
So, where did all this hot stuff come from?

Treasure Island

In October 2010, Calwatch.org provided the following information, from a 2006 Navy report "Treasure Island Historical Radiological Assessment:"

The Navy operated a training center on Treasure Island for the study of nuclear warfare and decontamination from the late 1940s up into the 1990s. "Part of the training involved the hiding of radioactive buttons around the training school. Then students armed with Geiger counters would try to find them." Maybe the emphasis here should be on "try?"

One school document listed "Radionuclides of Concern." This included cesium-137, radium-226, thorium-232, strontium-90 and plutonium 239. All of these are potentially lethal, with long radioactive lives. They would be expected to appear after a nuclear weapon detonation, which the students were training to deal with. "All made appearances at one time or another on the Treasure Island base, Cal Watch member Anthony Pignatori reported.
In April 2013 Bay Citizen, a publication of the Center for Investigative Reporting, broke the news that it had found cesium-137 (radioactive life 300 years) on Treasure Island. Two of its reporters had taken soil samples from the site and sent them to two independent testing labs. Both labs found C-137 in the soil.
Bay Citizen also reported on the findings of an August 2013 Navy study of radwaste on Treasure Island. Among these was that for the -

"first time the military acknowledged that the island, created from landfill in 1937, was used as a repair and salvage center during the Cold War for ships that may have been exposed to nuclear testing in the Pacific."

The most common way to decontaminate the nuked ships back then was to sandblast them, creating more radioactive waste in so doing.
And so there are multiple ways Treasure Island could have become a nuclear hotspot.
On November 27, a few weeks after the Chron story, KTVU Channel 2 reported that low income residents of 24 units on Treasure Island, some of whom had lived there for more than a decade, had received a letter from San Francisco officials informing them that would have to move soon.
With soaring evictions in San Francisco another hot topic, the timing couldn't have been worse. The letter, dated November 25, was from Richard Beck, boss of the Treasure Island Development Authority.
Beck said their homes were contaminated, but that the eviction action was "not related to an ongoing radiological survey." Supposedly the tenants could move to other housing units on the island.
Becker claimed that six units, said to be contaminated with arsenic "may have to be demolished."
The city plans to have luxury highrise housing built on Treasure Island. Only the continuing contamination and the remaining low income tenants are standing in the way.

Hunters Point

Sign posted at the entrance to Hunters Point, one of the country's dirtiest Superfund sites
Disturbing as Treasure Island's radioactive history is, that of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard appears to be even more sordid. To begin with, it was the transit departure point for Little Boy, the atomic bomb the US dropped over the civilian population of Hiroshima in August 1945, murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians.
A review of the events leading up to that action seems to be in order here. Since Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor in late 1941, the military forces of the two nations had fought a furious and increasingly degenerate war.
The US knew that Germany was trying to build an atomic bomb too, and the race was on.
By June 1945 the fighting was over in Europe, with the Allies victorious. But the war was still raging in the Pacific, though the US had the upper hand. It wanted to get it over with ASAP. In March 1945 US B29 bombers firebombed Japanese cities. They dropped hundreds of thousands of napalm bombs on Tokyo.
But even after horrendous conflagrations and major loss of life, Japan would not surrender.
In mid July, the Navy ship Indianapolis, which had just been repaired at Mare Island Naval base in Vallejo, CA, received orders to report to Hunters Point to pick up "special cargo."
The following account by a Naval officer from July 1945 appeared in the SF Bayview newspaper on August 31, 2009:

"On July 15 we were ordered to go to San Francisco (Hunters Point) to pick up some cargo. We tied up there and two big trucks came alongside. One truck was put in the port hangar. Two Army officers from [the other] truck carried "a canister about 3 foot wide by 4 foot tall…Later on, I found out that this held the nuclear ingredients for the bomb, and the large box in the hanger contained the device for firing the bomb.
"We sailed at 0800 the morning of 16 July. We arrived in Tinian [near Guam Island in the Pacific, from which the B-29 carrying theA-bomb flew off] the morning of 26 July and unloaded the material and bomb which was later dropped over Hiroshima,"

Also on July 16 the US set off the first atomic bomb ever in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
But that was just the beginning of Hunters Point's involvement with nuclear operations.
Hunters Point began operating as a Navy shipyard in the early 1940s. It soon became the only Navy shipyard in Northern California that could deal with large warships.
After World War II ended, the US wasted no time in continuing nuclear operations. In July 1946, during Operation Crossroads, it set off two A-Bombs at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Nearly 100 "target" and 150 "support ships" sat in surrounding waters.
The Navy wanted to see how the ships would do in an atomic blast.
There were animals on some of the ships, ranging from goats to rats. The Navy wanted to know how they would do too. As it turned out, neither did so well. A lot of the animals died, and a lot of the ships, those that didn't sink, ended up contaminated with radioactive fallout from the two atomic blasts.
The Navy did what it could to decontaminate them, but its efforts "revealed conclusively that removal of radioactive contamination of the type encountered on target ships cannot be accomplished successfully," a Navy fact sheet on Operation Crossroads stated.
As for the support ships, the fact sheet goes on, they "were decontaminated as necessary and received a radiological clearance before they could rejoin the fleet. This required a great deal of experimentation, primarily in San Francisco."
And primarily at Hunter's Point.
Community Window at Hunters Point reported "18 target and observation vessels were decontaminated at Hunters Point," after Operation Crossroadsd, and that subsequently the shipyard "decontaminated ships associated with Pacific atomic and thermonuclear (H Bomb) testing generated radiological materials and waste."
Hunters Point was also the home of the Naval Radiological Defense Lab. This facility's "purposes included radiological decontamination of ships exposed to atomic weapons testing," and also "included conducting research and experiments on decontamination, the effects of radiation on living organisms, and the effects of radiation on materials," the Navy reported, from post WWII until 1969. It became the "US military's largest facility for nuclear research," according to the September 1, 2001 SF Weekly.
And, the Weekly reported:

the "shipyard also consolidated radioactive waste from other facilities, including the University of California, Mare Island, and McClellan Air Force Base (near Sacramento)."

As a result of all these activities, substantial amounts of radioactive and other toxic wastes have been found at Hunters Point since its closure in the late 60s.
Subsequently the EPA found "various radionuclides, primarily radium-226 and cesium-137" there.
The EPA declared Hunters Point a Superfund site. How well its been cleaned up is still a matter of controversy, similar to that at Treasure Island. And, as with Treasure Island, at stake is a high end housing development that could destroy surrounding, primarily low income African American, communities.

Farallones

Some radioactive wastes were created or received at Hunters Point, while others ended up in the ground, air and water. Still others were transported off site. Beneath the waters adjacent to the Farallon Islands, 30 miles off San Francisco, sits the Farallon Nuclear Waste Site, the largest US undersea radwaste dump.
From 1946 until 1970 the Navy loaded an estimated 45,000 55-gallon drums of radioactive waste onto barges at Hunters Point, then dumped them in the vicinity of the Farallones. If the barrels didn't immediately sink, sailors shot at them until they did.
Several sources report that the US Navy ship Independence was deep sixed somewhere in the region as well. The Independence was one of the Navy war ships exposed to nuclear fallout in a US Pacific test of an atomic bomb.
The ship was brought back to Hunters Point, where it was determined that it was too radioactive to salvage. According to the September, 2001 SF Weekly report, the Independence was "packed with huge amounts of radioactive waste before it was sunk, very probably in the Farallones."
The Navy's official line is that the 45,000 barrels it sunk contained relatively low levels of radiation that would be harmless to living things by now. But the SF Weekly article reported:

" two government officials say the Navy has acknowledged dumping thousands of barrels of high level, long lived special' nuclear waste at the site."

This reportedly included large amounts of uranium and plutonium.
The Farallon Islands are adjacent to the Monterey Marine Sanctuary, which includes much of the coastal waters of Northern and Central California.
And they are smack dab in the middle of the 1282 square mile Gulf of Farallones Marine Sanctuary.

Half Lives

While it is true that the shorter lived radioactive wastes at Treasure Island, Hunters Point and the sea floor beneath the Farallon Islands have decayed away by now, that of the longer lived dangerous ones like radium -226, cesium -137, plutonium and uranium will be around for hundreds of more years, if not millennia. Plutonium 239 has a radioactive life of 240,000 yeaars.
And so too will the threat of cancer and other serious diseases to living things they come in contact with, as well as the potential to cause genetic damage to future generations.
When there is money to be made off of the sites, some the radwastes may be hauled away or covered over. The Navy is supposed to be responsible for this, but it doesn't want to spend the money to do a complete job (if there is such a thing), despite an annual US military budget of over $700 billion.
And there don't appear to be any accessible health studies of people in possibly affected communities.
After a fire at Hunters Point in August 2000, the EPA hired the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to study what the fire might have done to residents of the surrounding Bayview and Hunters Point communities.
The agency reported that this was an "87% minority population," with "higher than the national average rates of asthma, respiratory disease, lung cancer and diabetes."
The communities were "considered vulnerable and may be more sensitive to the effects of exposure to hazardous substances."
And these substances at the former Hunters Point Shipyard included "radiological elements. PCBs, mercury, lead and over 400 toxins that emit very high readings and adversely impact all life forms and that includes humans," according to Francisco Da Costa, director of Environmental Justice Advocacy, in the April 7, 2010 edition of SF Bayview newspaper.
Yet the agency only recommended that the communities should be notified when toxins in the air were higher that usual, so they could leave their homes.
Once again, there don't seem to be any definitive health studies, leaving residents on their own to deal with the diseases related to environmental racism, as well as social maladies like gentrification that seek to push them out of their neighborhoods altogether, dead or alive. And leaving the "better class" that is to replace that population around the toxic sites on their own as well.
Meanwhile the marine life beneath the Farallones is at the no mercy of what's in the 45,000 barrels of radwaste and scuttled A-bombed Navy ship as well. The marine sanctuaries that are supposed to help protect these living things are powerless to deal with this nuclear threat.
And so the atomic war that the US started almost seven decades ago continues in San Francisco and off its shores, giving the lie to its market image as a green city, and continuing to threaten the lives of the innocents and unborn, just as we did in Hiroshima.
All this points to the pressing need to denuclearize our city, our country and our world. The need to stop producing more radioactive wastes is paramount. Because at this point the question is: will we outlive them, or will they outlast us? :hock::
Michael Steinberg a former OBcean - is a veteran activist and writer based in San Francisco.
http://sandiegofreepress.org/2013/12/hot...francisco/