Radiation Exposure

June 21, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima Meltdowns 15 Years On

By John LaForge

Bailed-out Again, Operator Still Flailing

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) — whose reactors went into catastrophic triple meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi in 2011 — has taken another major financial blow. In January, it reported a “substantial extraordinary loss” $5.7 billion for 2025, “due to newly anticipated expenses” covering disaster response, according to the financial investment service TipRanks.

Tepco was effectively nationalized following the meltdowns and the disaster’s major releases of radioactive gases and liquids. The company was bailed out by a government infusion of $12.5 billion in 2012.

Costs are still skyrocketing as the 15-year-long and ongoing process of recovery, decontamination, and radiation dispersal work continues. (The company continues to pump radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean after used to cool the reactors’ wreckage.) The latest financial hit comes from exploding costs of developing and testing never-before-used methods of analyzing, grasping, and possibly removing roughly 880 tonnes of melted reactor fuel from below the three rubblized, explosion-destroyed reactor buildings.

The melted fuel still lost under the reactors consists of a mix of ferociously hot, radioactive, and unapproachable uranium and plutonium debris. While most reactors run on uranium fuel alone, Unit 3 at Fukushima also used plutonium, the most toxic material known to science.

Additionally, Tepco’s “financials remain heavily influenced” by disaster damage compensation costs, reported TipRanks. The company won government approval of a secondary bailout to cover a recent $443 million increase in its required compensation payments to relocated families.

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster - Alchetron, the free social ... — Photo: alchetron.com

Radioactive Contamination Persists

Because forests in the region were hard hit by radioactive fallout from the out-of-control reactors in 2011, some of the contamination persists. Residential areas, school yards, parks, and some farm land had tons of contaminated topsoil scraped up, bagged up, and removed. According to the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection’s report, “Environmental impact of the Fukushima accident: Radiological situation in Japan,” “Huge quantities of [cesium-137] contaminated soil (around 20 million cubic meters in total), primarily from the decontamination of gardens [and school yards], as well as organic waste such as leaves and branches were stored temporarily in situ in plastic bags.”

However, forests remain widely contaminated. According to the Journal of Radiation Research, forest areas cover 68-70% of Fukushima Prefecture, and the forests accumulated 72% of the air borne cesium-137 that fell in the . The radioactive, gamma-ray emitting cesium-137 persists in the environment for 300 years.

Under a federal law adopted after the disaster began, Tepco must decontaminate and restore affected areas to their pre-accident state, but the law left contamination in forests and other areas outside of its clean-up mandate.

The Journal of Environmental Radioactivity has reported that because the radioactivity can remain stored in forest canopies, in vegetative litter on the ground, or in the soil, rainfall can re-suspend cesium-137 (and other radioisotopes), carry it downhill, and “contaminate downstream areas, even areas that did not receive fallout or may have been decontaminated” — areas including creeks, streams, and rivers, farm lands, ditches, gutters, and storm drains.

Tetsuji Imanaka, a nuclear engineering specialist at Kyoto University, wrote for Kyodo News March 27 that the government should create hazard maps showing compliance with these standards and provide the maps to residents as a basis for decision-making to avoid unnecessary exposure.

Thousands Rally in Tokyo Against Re-start of Old Power Reactors

More than 8,000 people took to Tokyo’s streets on Saturday March 7 protesting the government’s push to restart aging nuclear reactors, demanding it and Tepco address ongoing problems of lingering contamination, resettlement of evacuees, and compensation claims.

“It’s been 15 years … and there’s still no clear plan for how to resolve these issues. I find this extremely dangerous and frightening,” said one protester, according to China’s online news source BastillePost.

“I don’t think the government or Tepco have any real intention to solve these problems. Actually, there’s no long-term plan at all. Yet they talk about restarting and even building new nuclear plants. It’s utterly absurd,” said another participant. “Now my wife and I live together in Chiba [174 miles away from home]. We only return to our hometown once or twice a year. It’s basically impossible to go back.”

About 26,000 people were still living as evacuees as of February.

Film: “Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare”

Lee Clark Zumpe reviewed the new Fukushima documentary that highlights heroes, and criticizes corporate blunders for Tampa Bay, Florida newspapers, and wrote in part:

“The HBO original documentary ‘Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare,’ details the disaster timeline while bringing to light the individuals who worked selflessly to try to minimize the threat to surrounding communities. It is a distressing yet imperative depiction of a catastrophe. The film is directed by both James Jones — the award-winning documentarian who directed ‘Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes’ — and Megumi Inman.

“Though only 90 minutes long, ‘Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare’ moves at a… slow pace, highlighting the mounting pressures the plant’s workers faced. The film captures the atmosphere of anxiety and fear, but it also unabashedly praises the commitment of the workers who fought courageously” to restore offsite power, and to patch up emergency cooling water delivery. “The directors also include commentary that shows Tepco was unprepared to deal with a disaster of [such] magnitude and that its failure to respond appropriately in the first few days likely exacerbated the grim situation.”

Book: Return to Fukushima

Return to Fukushima (OR Books, 2024) by Thomas Bass, a professor of English and journalism at the State Univ. of New York in Albany, is the best, most easily read chronicle of the disaster and its aftermath. Professor Amory Lovins of Stanford says, “Return to Fukushima clearly, calmly, and crisply describes this vast nuclear, social, and environmental disaster, its preventable causes, its continuing misrepresentation.” Cindy Folkers of Beyond Nuclear writes, “Bass brings poetic prose, incisive analysis, and a deeply ethical lens to a subject often buried under technical jargon and political spin.” Bass’s short text (196 pages) is a must-read for anyone interested in knowing the causes and effects of the world’s worst industrial accident and the worst radioactive contamination of the ocean in history.

For a boiled-down, magazine-length consideration, see Bass’s article “Fukushima at 15: Living with radioactive hot spots and stigma as Japan’s government pushes for more reactors,” in the March 9 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, where he writes: “The world’s worst industrial accident took place in an advanced industrial country with 54 nuclear reactors, supplying a third of Japan’s electricity. The final bill for containing the destroyed reactors, storing the waste, and rebuilding parts of the nuclear exclusion zone could [be] over $1 trillion. This is one quarter of Japan’s annual economy.”

June 21, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Mississippi River Coalition Commemorates 15 Years Since Fukushima Reactor Meltdowns

By John LaForge

On Wed., March 11, the Coalition for a Nuclear- Free Mississippi River commemorated the 15th anniversary of the triple reactor meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan by hosting a “No More Fukushimas! Close the Monticello Nuclear Reactor” rally on the walkway of the large Lake Street Bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

The rally piggybacked on the very long-running weekly anti-war vigil on the bridge, which was launched in 2003 by Women Against Military Madness, or WAMM.

The effort to raise awareness of Monticello’s relationship to Fukushima succeeded in bringing out the local news. With signs and banners demanding protection of the public drinking water the Mississippi provides, several rally participants spoke to a reporter from local KARE 11 News, and Nukewatch’s John LaForge ended up in a segment of the evening news calling for the reactor’s shutdown.

Xcel Energy’s 55-year-old Monticello reactor ― 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis/St. Paul ― has the same design as the three devastated Fukushima units.

Two people drove to the rally from the city of Monticello and reported that they’d taken photos of an oil slick on the surface of the Mississippi, which resulted from a leak of lubricating oil from the reactor which began March 9. While Xcel Energy first announced that the oil would not reach the river, the company was forced to admit later that it had.

Local organizations representing thousands of residents in the Twin Cities and surrounding communities, including Monticello, launched the Coalition to raise awareness of the dangers of nuclear power following the massive 829,000-gallons leak of cooling water from the reactor in 2022. The Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011 is often ignored by the media.

At Fukushima, three reactors suffered complete core meltdowns and hydrogen explosions. It was the world’s worst industrial disaster and the second-worst accidental radiation release in history ― after Chernobyl. Following the March 11, 2011 earthquake (Japan’s worst ever) and its resulting tsunami, Fukushima’s GE “Mark-1” boiling water reactors ― identical to the Monticello unit ― suffered smashed reactor foundations, and a station black-out, or total loss of electric power.

A station black-out is a severe reactor crisis, because it stops the circulation of cooling water. This loss of cooling, if not reversed, causes fuel melting, massive radioactive releases, and ⸺ from Fukushima and from Chernobyl ⸺ radioactive “fallout” which spreads around the world.

Several common natural disasters could lead to a station blackout at Monticello: severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and straight-line windstorms (derechos); floods, wildfires, and blizzards ― or some combination ― could cut power to the station. Back-up emergency generators are on hand to power cooling water circulation, but they are also subject to failure, as happened in Fukushima.

To learn more, see nuclearfreemississippi.wordpress.com or write to the Coalition at nuclearfreemississippi@zohomail.com.

June 21, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

From the archives: 1971 Monticello Reactor Releases Led to Mpls Water Shutoff

Editor’s note: A look into archives of Minneapolis papers from the 1970s shows that the Monticello reactor has poisoned the Mississippi River in the past, and one of its spills was so radioactive that Minneapolis shut down its drinking water intake from the river. Verbatim transcripts from the papers follow.

NSP to delay atom discharges

The Minneapolis Star, Wed., Nov. 24, 1971, p.23

Northern States Power Co. [now Xcel] has tentatively agreed to hold up on any future unexpected discharge of radioactive water from its Monticello nuclear power plant until state agencies can analyze the water, a Minnesota Health Department official said today.

Russell Frazier, chief of the laboratory analytical services of the department, said the agreement with NSP on future procedures was made after what he termed “the high drama which accompanied the release of a minor amount of radioactivity from the Monticello reactor.”

Frazier said NSP has tentatively agreed to notify the state health department and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

He said that there was confusion and a lack of data last weekend when NSP decided to drain about 50,000 gallons of low-level radioactive water from the Monticello plant into the Mississippi to permit the repair of a loose baffle.

Fraizer said a “purely precautionary decision” was made by health officials and the Minneapolis Water Department to shut down the city water intake pump, which supplies drinking water to the city at a point about 30 miles downstream from Monticello.

“The action is no way a measure of the importance to be attached to the Monticello release,” he said.

Radioactive discharge fits state standards

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Tue., Dec. 21, 1971, p.16

Northern States Power (NSP) Company’s Monticello nuclear plant Monday discharged 8,500 gallons of radioactive water that met state standards for the isotope cesium 137.

The 4 p.m. release, object of a week-long dispute between the firm and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (PCA), was analyzed twice by PCA and Minnesota Health Department scientists.

First it was found to contain 4.1 microcuries of cesium 137, and then 5.7 microcuries. But an average of the two tests, 4.9 microcuries, fell below the state’s weekly maximum limit of 5.3 microcuries for the isotope, said Grant Merritt, PCA director.

The discharge came after NSP exchanged the water within the plant to produce a “cleaner” release. Earlier, PCA measurement had shown the cesium 137 to be about twice the amount allowed by the disputed state standards, although well below limits set by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

PCA technicians today hope to sample a second batch of about 6,500 gallons that NSP says also must be discharged as part of a maintenance procedure.

Since NSP earlier said it would not discharge within 48 hours after a sample is taken, PCA officials said the second batch isn’t expected to be released before Thursday.

An NSP spokesman confirmed yesterday’s release but would not answer questions about the sampling or timing of the second discharge.

Merritt maintains that NSP earlier committed itself to meeting state standards, even though federal courts thus far have held that only AEC regulations apply to nuclear plants. The state restrictions on cesium 137 are from 100,000 to 100 million times more stringent than those of the AEC.

A-water released by NSP

The Minneapolis Star, Wed., Dec. 29, 1971, p.29

Five thousand gallons of radioactive water were released from the Monticello nuclear power plant into the Mississippi River today, according to a spokesman for the Northern States Power Co.

A Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman said tests of the water showed that the levels of radioactive cesium-137 were 45 percent below state standards.

The PCA spokesman said overall radiation in the water was even lower than that.

The water is the second of two discharges NSP said it needed to make because of modification and maintenance work being done at the nuclear plant.

PCA officials had managed to get the first discharge delayed while they investigated radiation levels.

By splitting the discharge into two batches and waiting a week before letting the second one go, NSP was able to keep radiation levels below rigid state weekly standards.

Today’s discharge began at 6 a.m. and an [NSP] spokesman said it normally would take five hours.

June 5, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Radiation Exposure Rule Changes to Increase Cancer Rates

PLEASE SEND COMMENTS TO THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

John LaForge

Image by Dan Meyers.

Among the hundreds of Trump White House executive orders (EO), No. 14300 directs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to weaken its long-standing radiation exposure rule, “Standards for Protection Against Radiation.

Based on the EO, an upcoming NRC rule change calls for setting a radiation exposure “threshold” or level below which your exposure to ionizing radiation “would not count” or would be considered “never to have occurred.”

The proposed NRC exposure rules will be 5-100 times less protective than current law, and will likely be based on the archaic “Reference Man” standard, the grossly outdated radiation risk model. “Reference Man” represents a young adult male, and so the standard both ignores and denies the greater harm exposure to the fetus, to infants, to children, and to women, done by a given radiation exposure.

The EO would impact people in thousands of communities surrounding the 94 operating nuclear reactors in the United States by increasing exposure to radiation from routine offsite emissions: from reactors, nuclear weapons facilities, nuclear material transport systems, and nuclear waste sites.

Forty citizen organizations, including the national nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility, wrote to federal officials warning of public health consequences of Trump’s EO. The joint letter points out sharply disproportionate impacts on women and children from weakening existing radiation exposure standards and calls for strengthening them.

But vested interests in the nuclear industry want to save money by attacking the basis of NRC regulation, the “Linear No Threshold” or LNT risk model.

Decades of published peer-reviewed research support the LNT model, including the authoritative National Academy of Sciences report “Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, VII Phase 2” (BEIR VII), as well as many studies of nuclear industry and nuclear weapons production workers.

One industry-sponsored “Petition for Rule-making” appealed to the NRC in 2015 and it triggered a formal review of the ‘no threshold” model. The NRC then soundly rejected the petition in a 2021 decision. In fact, the NRC reaffirmed the scientific basis and global consensus that no radiation exposure is so small as to carry no risk of harmful effects. Well-documented findings show that even exposures so small that they cannot be measured may, sometimes, result in fatal cancer. Reducing the risk to zero requires zero radiation exposure.

A detailed analysis of the proposed rule change and its dire consequences was published by Princeton’s Frank von Hippel in the May 27 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. For more about sending comments to the NRC, see: www.nirs.org/radiation or www.radiationproject.org/online .

NRC rule changes, and its abandonment of the no-threshold model, are scheduled to be issued as a proposal on June 8, 2026, marking the start of a 30-day public comment period. We must oppose this dangerous deregulation and demand more, not less, protection against radiation. ###

— A version of this article appeared at Counterpunch, June 5-7, 2026

February 4, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Declaration of Rights of Nuclear Victims Adopted in Hiroshima

Correction: The print version of this article that appeared in the Winter 2025 Nukewatch Quarterly included an outdated definition of nuclear perpetrators. It has been corrected below.

Editor’s Note: This October the World Nuclear Victims’ Forum in Hiroshima, Japan welcomed global hibakusha (nuclear victims) from nine different countries “to create a place of international solidarity… for nuclear victims and their allies, aiming for the elimination of the nuclear cycle and a world in which no more hibakusha are created.” Forum participants joined organizers from Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World adopting the “Hiroshima Declaration” and “Declaration on the Rights of World Nuclear Victims.” Updated from a 2015 declaration, the new statement is more inclusive, intersectional, and comprehensive than any other previous declaration adopted on the rights of nuclear victims. Selected excerpts of the “Hiroshima Declaration” follow.

“We define nuclear victims (hibakusha) as follows: All victims of radiation exposure and radioactive contamination, including victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; victims of nuclear testing; victims of human experiments using nuclear materials; not distinguishing between victims of military and civilian nuclear use, those impacted by uranium mining, milling, and enrichment activities and those impacted by radioactive contamination from nuclear labor and environmental contamination of nuclear weapons-related activities and entire processes of nuclear energy and nuclear fuel such as nuclear development, use and waste; victims of nuclear power plant disasters; and victims of depleted uranium weapons that are produced from radioactive waste….

“As long as war persists, the urge to use nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear war will only increase…. We recognize that unless we end the nuclear age, humanity could become a nuclear victim (hibakusha) at any time, and we reaffirm that nuclear and humanity cannot coexist.

Hiroshima Declaration and Declaration on the Rights of Nuclear Victims ... — **Graphic: NuclearNews.net**

“We acknowledge that uranium mining and milling, nuclear testing, and nuclear waste disposals have been conducted under ongoing colonial rule, discrimination, and oppression. We also acknowledge that use of nuclear technology is based on the social structure of inequality, discrimination, oppression, and exploitation, such as building nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel facilities in rural areas and forcing radiation exposure onto subcontracted workers at nuclear power plants. In particular, we acknowledge the history and current state of “nuclear colonialism” against Indigenous Peoples around the world, which excludes them from policy- making processes, violates their rights (including those related to their ancestral lands), oppresses them when they assert their individual or collective rights, and inflicts upon them the violence of radiation exposure, which can be considered a form of genocide.

“We define nuclear perpetrators as follows: This includes nuclear-armed countries and those who, through the use of nuclear weapons, have destroyed the foundations of human existence and created conditions that threaten the survival of all living things; the military-industrial-government-academia complex and its members, as well as the three nations that support it; United Nations organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) as well as institutions that have previously downplayed the effects of radiation exposure and concealed the true impacts of nuclear disasters, such as the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) led by pro-nuclear scientists; countries that promote nuclear energy policies; and shareholders and creditors of operators that caused radioactive contamination and manufacturers of nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities. We strongly demand that nuclear perpetrators be held accountable for their actions and be required to pay compensation to victims. We also call for the acknowledgement that the promotion, support, and investment of nuclear-related industries, including the export of nuclear power plants and the import of uranium, have the risk of violating human rights and destroying the environment….”

See the full Hiroshima Declaration and Declaration on the Rights of Nuclear Victims 2025.

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