Radiation Exposure

February 4, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Radioactive Contamination of Shrimp, Cloves, Shoes, Zinc Powder

**The U.S. Food and Drug Admin. issued a recall of shrimp contaminated with cesium-137 but the radioactive trail extends further. Photo: FDA.**

Ultimate Source of Cesium-137 in Consumer Goods Still Unclear, Criminal Charges Pending

By John LaForge

The widespread cesium-137 contamination that spread far beyond an industrial area in Indonesia has led to radioactive contamination of exported shrimp, cloves, shoe parts, and concentrated zinc powder. The contaminated products were exported to the United States, the Netherlands, and possibly elsewhere.

The discovery of shipping containers contaminated with cesium-137 at several U.S. seaports last August led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to urge a recall of tons of the frozen shrimp. Recalls were then ordered by Walmart, Kroger and dozens of other grocers in as many as 29 states. At that time the source of the radioactivity was unknown and a matter of intense investigation.

Natural News reported Sep. 29 that “millions of pounds of contaminated shrimp were sold at major retailers before recalls, exposing a systemic failure in food safety.”

Cesium-137, or Cs-137 for short, is a dangerous, cancer-causing form of radioactive waste not found in nature. It is only produced inside operating nuclear reactor cores, bz the detonation of nuclear weapons, or in the processing of waste reactor fuel. If ingested, cesium 137 tends to concentrate in soft tissue and muscles where hot particles irridate surounding tissue.

Laboratory testing has found that the contaminated shrimp in the United States contained an Cs-137 activity concentration of 68.48 b ecquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg), well below the U.S. FDA’s arbitrary permitted maximum of 1,200 Bq/kg in general foodstuffs. (Food Safety magazine, Oct. 6, 2025,

https://www.food-safety.com/articles/10757-indonesian-officials-find-cause-of-cs-137-contamination-behind-radioactive-shrimp )

The FDA’s allowable level Cs-137 in food is controversially 12 times higher than what’s permitted in Japan. Today the U.S. cesium contamination limit of 1,200 Bq/kg compares to Japan’s limit of 100 Bq/kg. http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/12/27/japans-new-limits-for-radiation-in-food-20-times-stricter-than-american-and-eu-standards/

Cesium-137 emits harmful ionizing beta and gama radiation. When particles of Cs-137 are ingested they can spread through the bloodstream and distribute across muscle and other soft tissues where the radiation will bombard surrounding tissue. Interviewed by Tempo English, Professor of Nuclear Medicine at Padjadjaran University, Dr. Achmad Hussein Kartamihardja sais the radioactive half-life of Cs-137 is 30-years, so “It takes 30 years for half of the cesium to disappear from the body.” (https://en.tempo.co/read/2055242/what-happens-inside-the-body-contaminated-with-cesium-137)

Investigations and declarations of decontamination

Last September, investigators with Indonesia’s hastily assembled “Cesium-137 Radiation Hazard Management Task Force” reported that the Cs-137 contamination came from inside the 12-square-mile Modern Cikande Industrial Estate, or MCIE, on west end of the island of Java, 40 miles west of Jakarta (the world’s most populous city with 42 million). The HYPERLINK “https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/asean/indonesia-races-determine-extent-radioactive-contamination-industrial-zone” The complex includes 270 companies involved in everything from food processing and automitive components, to scrap metal smelting and materials production for construction and manufacturing.

The Asean Business Times reported Oct. 3 that Indonesian inspectors found ten spots of cesium-137 contamination inside the MCIE “with high levels of exposure.” Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq said then, “We have declared PT PMT (Peter Metal Technology) as the epicenter [sic] with a 5 kilometer perimeter.”

On Oct. 15, Al Jazeera reported that the government’s investigation found cesium “contamination was spread through airborne dust from a smelting plant” and that authorities suspect it might “have been caused by scrap metal imports.” Tempo English noted Nov. 17 that the while the Cs-137 contamination originated from radioactive scrap metal used in PT PMT’s smelting process, and that “radioactive particles” were dispersed, it claimed in error that the Cs-137 was blown to other points “within the industrial area.”

The Indonesian news agency Antara reported Oct. 15 that Bara Hasibaun, head of communications for the cesium task force, confirmed that “Cs-137 contamination spread through the air from PT PMT’s facility.” Radiation levels at one site in the MCIE were recorded to be 875,000 times routine background (https://cbrneworld.com/news/cesium-137-contamination-spreads-with-levels-thousands-of-times-higher-than-normal ) radiation, and Indonesia’s Ministry of Industry identified a total of 24 factories in the MCIE that had been contaminated with the Cs-137.

Tempo news service in Indonesia reported that by Nov. 17 (HYPERLINK “https://en.tempo.co/read/2066429/all-22-cikande-factories-exposed-to-cesium-137-have-been-fully-decontaminated ) some 22 of the factories and 13 junkyards in the MCIE had been “decontaminated,” and that Rasio Ridho Sani, the chair of the Cs-137 Handling Task Force, said that decontamination efforts inside the MICE were ongoing.

“Up to this point, 975 tons of Cs-137 contaminated material have been successfully moved. The material is currently stored temporarily at the PT PMT” grounds Sani said, according to the Tempo Nov. 17. By Dec. 4, Tempo English was reporting that 1,136 tons had been collected and stored at PT PMT. (https://en.tempo.co/read/2071004/environment-ministry-seeks-additional-rp28bn-for-cesium-137-remediation)

[Indonesia’s collection of 1,000+ tons of material contaminated by the accidental dispersal of cesium-137 is a tiny echo of the unrelated and far greater decontamination project underway in Japan, where some 20-million tons of conataminated material have been collected in bags from around the devastated Fukushima-1 nuclear reactor complex.]

The head of Indonesia’s Nuclear Energy Research Organization at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Syaiful Bakhri, told the press the contaminated material will be stored at the PT PMT company site inside the MCIE “until the radioactive contamination naturally decays,” Tempo reported Oct. 29. The BRINCs-137 is not “natural” is only created in operating nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons blasts and that it persists in the environment for 300 years while it “naturally” decays.

Contaminated cloves, shoe soles, powdered zinc

An area far wider than the 12-square-mile industrial zone of the MCIE was evidently contaminated with the Cs-137 dispersed from the smoke stacks of PT PMT’s smelting furnaces.

ABC News reported Oct. 15, 2025 — well after the August shrimp recall — that cesium-137 was found in cloves that were shipped to California in September from a clove plantation in far-removed Lampung province.

Lampung is not even on the island of Java, but the neighboring island of Sumatra, across the Sunda Strait, and over 15 miles west of the MCIE industrial zone. The discovery of the contaminated cloves from the plantation owned by PT Natural Java Spice moved the U.S. FDA to halt all imports of spices processed by the firm. Here again, the U.S., like Indonesia, firmly slammed the barn door after the horse escaped.

The 8/15/25 ABC News report also noted that Bara Hasibuan of the cesium task force declared in a written statement that “The government is moving quickly to localize this contamination so that it does not spread to other areas.”

This absurd assurance was made after the airborne plume of Cs-137 had apparently moved miles beyond the PT PMT smelting site, contaminating a clove plantation over 15 miles to the west.

Hasibuan’s Oct. 15 letter from the task force also noted that it had “information that shoe soles exported to the U.S. were found to be contaminated with Cs-137.”

The Indonesian news agency Antara reported Nov. 12 that customs officials in the Netherlands found cesium-137 contamination in imported sneakers from Indonesia a month prior to the August recall of the frozen shrimp in the United States.

Hasibaun said the shoe soles were produced by the company PT Bahari Makmur Sejahtera (BMS), based in Cikande about five kilometers [ 3.1 miles] outside Cikande’s MCIE industrial zone. On Nov. 13, Tempo English news service reported the United States had returned two shipping containers filled with the cesium-contaminated shoe soles to Indonesia. The same article listed 24 individual companies in the MCIE that had been contaminated and that Hasibaun wrote in a Nov. 12 statement that “the government has completed the decontamination of all factories contaminated with Cesium-137.”

Health risks and evacuation, 1,500 exposed to cesium-137

The dangerous dispersal of cesium-137 forced Indonesia’s Serang Regency Government to evacuate at least 91 people from a village in the vicinity of the industrial estate in order to conduct decontamination services. The head of the task force’s Mitigation and Cs-137 Contamination Management Division, Rasio Ridho Sani, reportedly said on Oct. 27 that, “during the decontamination process, residents are at risk of exposure to airborne radioactive dust.” The federal Ministry of Health reported that 15 individuals tested positive for exposure to the cancer-causing radioactive cesium Oct. 16.

On Oct. 3, Asean Business Times reported that government authorities had examined over 1,500 local people and workers and found nine were exposed, according to Hasibuan, the investigation spokesperson. The exposed persons were said to be being “treated.”

Philippine exports to Indonesia

The broadening cesium contamination scandal now includes shoe parts exported to the United States and the Netherlands, and concentrated zinc powder imported from the Philippines.

The MCIE scrap metal smelting complex evidently imported highly contaminated metal scrap or waste from the Philippians, although the source of that hot scrap is still unknown. Now, according to importation documents, several containers of contaminated concentrated zinc powder also originated from the Philippines.

Antara reported Sept. 22, that Indonesia’s Nuclear Energy Regulatory Agency had “prevented the entry” of nine shipping containers filled with concentrated powdered zinc also contaminated with cesium-137. News reports said that monitors at the port of Tanjung Priok triggered alarms on five of the containers after they detected radioactivity up to 210 times background levels.

Zinc power is used heavily in the galvanizing of steel, making it rustproof. Its use in coating steel would make zinc a commonly imported material at the MCIE. Beyond rustproofing, zinc powder is used in batteries, paint, sun screen, rubber, cement, chemicals, as even in calamine lotion, baby powder, anti-dandruff shampoo, and diaper rash ointment.

On Oct. 19, Tempo Media in Jakarta reported that “Philippine authorities will investigate the source of a shipment of 14 containers of zinc concentrate powder, commonly used for battery powder from the Philippines to Indonesia, after the powder was found to be contaminated with … cesium-137.”

Later in October the Philippines was looking at certain steel processing facilities that allegedly supplied the zinc powder to the Chinese exporter, Zannwann International Trading, which has offices in the Philippines’ Bulacan province, and which shipped the hot zinc to Indonesia.

Early in the Cs-137 investigation, Indonesia’s Minister of Science and Technology Renato Solidum, Jr. gave the press a version of the standard industry assertion, saying, “This is likely an isolated contamination case without widespread danger to the public.”

Minister Renato’s reassurance recalls the famed undersea explorer Jacque Cousteau who said in 1998: “A common denominator, in every single nuclear accident is that before the specialists even know what has happened, they rush to the media saying, ‘There’s no danger to the public.’ They do this before they themselves know what has happened.”

— This news was gathered from reports by ABC News, Al JaZeera English, the American Nuclear Society, Antara (Indonesia’s national news agency), Asean Business Times, Asia News, CBRNe World (in the UK), CBS News, Consumer Reports, Food Safety magazine, The Guardian, The Jakarta Globe, The Jakarta Post, NaturalNews.com, Reuters, and Tempo Media English [in the UK]

February 4, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima Reactor Disaster Ongoing

**Some of the 14 million tons of radioactive soil and debris bagged and stacked in thousands of places following the 2011 triple reactor meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi. Photo: Asia News**

By John LaForge

Japan’s Prime Minister endorses public spread of Fukushima radioactive waste

Japan’s new Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae visited Fukushima Prefecture December 2. One stop on her tour was at a temporary storage site holding some of the roughly fourteen-million tons of radioactive soil and debris that was collected in heavy bags and stacked in thousands of places following the March 2011 triple meltdowns. The PM said she wants to expand government plans to use some of the bagged-up radioactive waste in road building and construction projects, the national broadcaster NHK reported. Federal agencies have decided that the radioactive soil can be declared “recyclable” if it emits 8,000 becquerels per kilogram or less. (A becquerel is one measure of radioactive decay among many.) The collecting, transporting, dumping, and spreading of this material will endanger the workers involved, and will increase chances of public radiation exposures, as high winds and rainfall runoff can spread the material. The Japan Times reported on June 20, 2023 that a 5-year estimate of the cost of the program was then about $12.7 billion.

China reimposes Japanese seafood import suspension

On November 8, China’s government partially lifted its ban which was imposed in August 2023 after Japan began pumping radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean in the face of worldwide criticism. China’s partial easing of restrictions left in place its ban on seafood from 10 of Japan’s 47 prefectures, all of which were heavily hit with radioactive fallout from the 2011 reactor explosions and meltdowns.

Then, on November 19, following hostile statements by Japan’s right-wing PM Takaichi regarding the military defense of Taiwan, China re-imposed its blanket ban on seafood imports. In a related tit-for-tat, Taiwan on November 24 lifted its blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports and its Food and Drug Administration justified the move after it checked over 270,000 batches of Japanese food for radiation, without finding “problems.”

Waste discharge to Pacific ongoing

On October 31, 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had conducted analysis of the 16th series of radioactive wastewater discharges from the destroyed Fukushima-1 site, and that “about 117,700 cubic meters of water have been released through the first 15 batches.” The IAEA reported that each batch met its “standards” and that “monitoring data remained consistent with negligible environmental impact.” Fukushima’s owner/operator Tepco says it will take the next 30 years to filter and pump all 1.3 million tons of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific, but routine earthquakes nearby threaten to destroy the 1,000 giant steel tanks that now store the cooling water near the shore. About 880 tons of highly radioactive molten nuclear reactor fuel remain inside the three wrecked reactors. The rubbished fuel is composed of enriched uranium, plutonium (in fuel that was being used in Unit 3), and hundreds of highly radioactive materials created by the reactors’ operational fissioning of uranium. The melted fuel and surrounding wreckage inside the exploded reactors’ cores is so radioactive that it can only be approached and examined robotically using machines that must be controlled at a distance.

February 4, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The Double-Threat: New Nuclear Power and the Data Center Boom

**Graphic by Rise and Repair Alliance, riseandrepair.org**

By Lindsay Potter

Small modular and so-called “advanced” nuclear technology is riding the coat tails of yet another capitulation to the seemingly unstoppable march of
“progress.” Progress not in feeding or housing families, lighting or heating homes, or providing jobs and education, but in the unchecked development of computer technology and artificial intelligence.

In the face of soaring cancer rates over the last five decades, despite consistent proof of the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation, despite the generations-long objections of indigenous communities bearing the burden of uranium mining, and the more than seventy years of reactor operations without a true high-level radioactive waste storage solution — tech billionaires are personally financing the next wave of nuclear energy infrastructure.

But why? Renewable energy sources are growing at a remarkable rate. Scientists and researchers have shown that current and projected grid loads through 2030 and 2050 can be met using renewable sources without nuclear. Renewable energy costs less. According to Forbes, nuclear is the most expensive way to generate electricity. Renewable sources can be built in a fraction of the time it takes to construct new nuclear. However, the goliaths of computer and technology innovation insist small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs) are the only way to generate enough power for their coming wave of new data centers.

What are SMNRs?

There are many different reactor designs out there, with different fuel sources and parent companies, but a small modular nuclear reactor is typically any reactor producing between 20-300 megawatts of electricity. There are no commercially operational SMNRs in the United States. Many SMNR designs require fuel different from conventional reactors and those experimental fuel sources are still under development and not scaled commercially. Companies such as Oklo, already permitted to proceed with a SMNR design at the Idaho National Lab site, would be unable to produce fuel until at least 2030. According to Reuters, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates the domestic demand for certain new types of SMNR fuel could reach 50 metric tons per year by 2035. However, the only U.S. maker of the fuel produced 900 kilograms in 2024. All of this takes enormous amounts of funding to develop and test. This fuel processing infrastructure still requires mining of new uranium and leaves additional radioactive waste — from the reprocessing of waste fuel into new fuel.

The first SMNR project approved in the U.S. was cancelled when the cost per megawatt hour ballooned 53% and subscribers pulled out. The four SMNRs that are operating — in China, Russia, and Argentina — cost 3-7 times more than predicted. The capital costs per kilowatt hour for SMNRs are 41% higher than for large reactors. A 2022 study found that SMNRs increase the volume of nuclear waste by a factor of 2-30 times over conventional reactors.

In nuclear reactor operator Xcel Energy’s current 2024-2040 resource plan, its own modeling EnCompass software did not choose an SMNR when given the option to select one among future sources of energy generation. This proves even Xcel’s own software, when confronted with projected energy demands, cannot justify the cost of new nuclear infrastructure.

The data center connection

Nukewatch joins other water protectors and environmental groups at the Rise and Repair Rally Day at the Minnesota capitol to protest the proposed repeal of the state’s 31-year-old nuclear moratorium.

Data centers, used to power A.I. computing technology, can require an entire large-scale commercial reactor’s output equivalent. New nuclear reactors are not necessary to address the climate crisis, to cut out fossil fuels, or to meet the needs of the average person. New nuclear is being green washed and promoted because it is the silver bullet for the data center boom’s astronomical energy appetite.

The largest data centers can use as much electricity as the entire city of Minneapolis. If the total number of data centers proposed in Minnesota are built, they would require as much electricity as every home in Minnesota, or roughly 2.3 million houses. Many regulators and local governments do not have oversight in place for how to track and vet these data center projects. Georgia Power anticipates that data center growth will cause electricity demands to triple in the next decade.

But some communities are fighting back. In Tucson, Arizona, local leaders voted down Amazon’s Project Blue data center proposal. In Missouri, the St. Charles City Council unanimously adopted a year-long moratorium for data center proposals in the area. In Denver, local resistance and the city council halted a SMNR 48 hours after it was proposed.

Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being handed out as subsidies to experimental SMNR developers. Additionally, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are directly investing in or are in negotiations to purchase power from SMNR startups. Such tech figureheads as Bill Gates, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Peter Thiel (a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies), Unity software’s David Helgason, and Amazon’s “Climate Pledge Fund” are privately funding SMNR research and development.

Why the moratorium matters

Despite opposition from the Prairie Island Indian Community — the closest reservation to a nuclear reactor and temporary waste storage in the U.S. — and environmental groups, the 1994 Minnesota state legislature passed a law permitting nuclear waste storage onsite at the Prairie Island reactors. This 1994 law included the nuclear moratorium — which bans consideration of proposed new nuclear reactors. Xcel requested additional waste storage at Prairie Island in 2003, 2005, 2008, 2023, and 2024. Over the last 55 years, the Prairie Island Indian Community has received only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars given to other towns or communities near the reactors.

A few stalwart pro-nuclear legislators have tried over the last thirty years to repeal the moratorium. Several bills failed in 2025 and are likely to be introduced in the next session. The moratorium is a crucial point in keeping SMNRs and more data centers out of the state of Minnesota and protecting fresh water. While a hyperscale data center can require millions of gallons of water a year, a small modular reactor can consume on average 1.5 billion gallons of water per-year for cooling, depending on the design and size of the reactor.

The severe health and environmental risks posed by highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste was at the heart of the creation of the moratorium in
Minnesota, and that problem remains unresolved, especially in the face of a new nuclear boom.

The U.S. has more than 95,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive used nuclear fuel and has no long-term storage solution. The only attempted storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada had an estimated cost of $96 billion. After spending $8 billion and eighteen years, the project failed. Any repository would need to isolate radioactive waste from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years, requiring engineering beyond anything existing today and incurring maintenance costs generations beyond the operational life of any nuclear reactor.

According to Brice Smith, in his report for the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, in the scenario of proposed expansion of nuclear power through 2050, in order to keep up with the production of high-level radioactive nuclear waste fuel, a new Yucca Mountain repository would need to open every three to six years to store the waste.

It is crucial now, more than ever, that states such as Minnesota maintain their nuclear moratoriums. These are the only guardrails to slow down data centers and the wholesale deployment of untested new nuclear technology. Without the moratoriums, there is an imminent threat that much of the funding meant to help transition the grid to renewable energy will be spent on nuclear infrastructure that is designed to serve the needs of tech giants, not the needs of the people.

Some, such as Minnesota Senator Spencer Igo, sponsoring legislation to repeal the moratorium, have suggested that the moratorium is impeding innovation in the nuclear power sector. To the contrary, according to a Congressional Budget Office report examining funding from 1948-2018, nuclear received three times more research and development funding than renewables and twice as much as fossil fuels. With the wealthiest and most technologically resourced people on the planet — and the federal government and U.S. military backing this industry it is hard to imagine any impediment.

Igo and others insist that removing the moratorium would only be in the service of using ‘all the tools in the toolbox’ and that regulators can be trusted to ensure only infrastructure that serves the public interest will be built. But time and again the NRC and Minn. Public Utilities Commission have been found to cater to the wealth of corporate utility shareholders who heavily lobby regulators. These regulators almost never deny applications.

Those who stand to gain from new nuclear deployment will scheme to see data centers and small reactors in towns across the country ahead of any large movement to stop them. Communities have already risen up to protect local water, the right to affordable energy, and the right to fight further consolidation of wealth. People everywhere must join the call to keep nuclear moratoriums, in fact to increase the number of them nationwide, in a stand against the railroading of the public by the wealthiest few. Just as Exxon lied about climate change science, the Silicon Valley influencers have been pushing nuclear as green in order to stage this very play, and now their aims are being laid bare.

Sources: U.S. Dept. of Energy; TechCrunch; Sierra Club; Forbes; Arjun Makhijani and Brice Smith, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research; Ed Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists; Mark Jacobson, Stanford University; Reuters; National Academy of Sciences; Scientific American; S.F. No. 1706, Minnesota Session Laws; MPR News; KJZZ News; KCUR News, NRDC

November 5, 2025 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima Triple Meltdown Recovery Plagued with Setbacks

By John LaForge

Workers flee disaster site after tsunami scare

Japan is one of the most earthquake prone areas in the world, and the regular quakes raise traumatic memories of the March 11, 2011 record-breaker that left 19,000 dead and smashed the six-reactor Fukushima-Daiichi site. This July there were several: a magnitude 5.5 quake struck just off Japan’s southeast Tokara coast July 3; a mag. 4.2 quake hit east of Iwaki, in Fukushima Prefecture July 12; and a mag. 4.1 quake shook the same area July 25.

In late July, an extremely powerful 8.8-magnitude quake struck Avacha Bay in Russia’s Far East, triggering tsunami warnings and evacuations across the entire Pacific Rim. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was one of the strongest ever recorded.

The owner/operator of the wrecked reactor complex, Tokyo Electric Power Co., evacuated its entire staff of 4,000 in response to warnings of a possible nine-foot tsunami, after first halting its pumping of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific.

Elsewhere in Japan, over two million people were urged to evacuate the eastern seaboard, and a 4-foot tsunami wave did strike north of Fukushima at Iwate Prefecture, some 1,090 miles from Avacha Bay, site of the major Russian earthquake.

— Nukenet, The Independent, BBC News, July 30, 2025

China partially lifts ban on Japanese seafood imports

China “conditionally resumed” the importation of Japanese seafood products June 30, after conducting water sample inspections off the coast of the Fukushima disaster site. Beijing had banned all such imports as a protest and precaution, following Japan’s 2023 launch of its deliberate discharging of large volumes of radioactively contaminated cooling water into the Pacific Ocean. The 2023 ban was imposed to “comprehensively prevent the food safety risks of radioactive contamination caused by the discharge of nuclear wastewater from Fukushima into the sea,” China’s General Administration of Customs said then.

Chinese customs officials said June 30 the seafood import ban would continue for ten prefectures, namely Fukushima and its nine closest neighboring states. Products from other regions will need health certificates, radioactive substance detection qualification certificates, and production area certificates issued by the Japanese government for Chinese customs declarations, the government said.

Relatedly, Hong Kong announced that it will maintain its ban on Japanese seafood, sea salt, and seaweed imports from the same ten prefectures still targeted by mainland China — Fukushima, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Miyagi, Niigata, Nagano, Saitama, Tokyo, and Chiba — citing ongoing concerns about the risks associated with the discharge of radioactive wastewater.

— NavigatorInsurance.com, July 7; BBC, June 30; Reuters, June 29, 2025; Agence France Presse, Daily Sun, Aug. 24, 2023

Tepco lost $6 billion as meltdown recovery falters

Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings corporation (Tepco), the owner and operator of the six reactors at Fukushima, lost $6.1 billion (903 billion yen) between April and June this year, overrun with the costs of inventing, designing, building, and testing robotic machines with which to remotely extract the ferociously radioactive melted reactor fuel from deep inside the earthquake and tsunami-wrecked reactors. There are a total of over 880 metric tonnes of “corium” or melted and rubblized uranium and plutonium fuel in three reactors that Tepco claims it will extract. Nikkei-Asia reported August 1 that Tepco says it has $4.7 billion “earmarked for future demolition work,” which doesn’t even cover this spring’s one-quarter loss. Tepco has said that its preparations for the extraction are “expected to take 12 to 15 years.”

The quarterly financial loss makes a mockery of announced plans by the government and Tepco to fully complete decommissioning of the rubbished reactors by 2051.

— Nikkei-Asia, July 29 and Aug. 1; The Mainichi Japan, Aug. 1, 2025

Japan’s placement of radioactive soil on the grounds of the Prime Minister in Tokyo has theatrical precedents. During a 2016 meeting with officials, President Barack Obama drank a glass of filtered water in Flint, Michigan, which was scandalized by lead-poisoned drinking water. Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Radioactive soil placed in Prime Minister Ishiba’s office grounds, in “safety” parody

In a surreal display of political slapstick July 19th, the office of Japan’s PM Shigeru Ishiba buried on his office’s garden grounds two cubic meters of radioactive soil scraped up during Fukushima clean-up operations (in which some 14-to-20 million metric tonnes of topsoil and debris were scraped up) — “to show it is safe to reuse.”

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported that “The radioactive cesium concentration in the soil being buried is 6,400 Becquerels per kilogram” (Bq/kg). “Becquerels” are a standard measuring unit of radioactivity. The 6,400 is below the legally permitted limit of 8,000 Bq/kg for the so-called “recycling.”

The radioactivity emitted by the soil comes from cesium-137 which was spewed in huge amounts by Fukushima’s melting and exploding reactors, and which came down as fallout. Cesium fallout still contaminates huge areas of forests and farmlands in the region.

The millions of tons of collected soil now in storage are being tested and sorted to identify material with cesium at 8,000 Bq/kg or less. Several million tons of it may then be used as fill in construction projects, road-building, and railway embankments all around Japan. Asphalt, farm soil, “or layers of other materials should be used to seal in the radioactivity,” Akira Asakawa, an Environment Ministry official with the soil project, told the Agence France Presse or AFP.

The PM’s demonstration plot is the first “reuse” of the poisoned waste, while experiments elsewhere have been halted due to public protest. The PM’s contaminated dirt was covered up with about eight inches of normal soil to provide some radiation shielding.

Any radiation exposure is unsafe, but negative effects like radiation sickness, immune disorders, or cancers caused by contact with the radioactive soil would take years or decades to appear, owing to the latency period between radiation exposure and the onset of induced health problems. The joke seems to be that since Prime Minister Ishiba hasn’t dropped dead after walking by, low-dose exposure must be harmless.

Readers may remember a very similar high-level comedy sketch performed by former President Barack Obama, who traveled to Flint, Michigan in May 2016. Drinking water supplies there had been contaminated with lead and to calm the public uproar, Obama sat before the cameras and theatrically downed a glass of water. The straight-faced routine was proof positive, and rock-solid confirmation beyond doubt of any kind whatsoever that Flint’s tap water was safe to drink. Bottom’s up!

— Nippon TV, July 23; NHK, July 19; AFP, New Straits Times, July 15; Associated Press, May 27, 2025; PBS, May 4, 2016

Disaster response to last eons

Countless dilemmas and setbacks have plagued the now 14-year-long emergency response to the triple reactor meltdown and widespread radiation releases that began March 11, 2011 at Fukushima on Japan’s northeast coast.

One of the latest stumbling blocks acknowledged by Tepco July 29 are the “unprecedented” technical complexities of finding, contacting, removing, and containerizing 880 tonnes of highly radioactive melted reactor fuel still smoldering at the bottom of three devastated reactors.

Unprecedented is the key word here, since the industry has never before had to contain such a large mass of wasted and unapproachable radioactivity. All the work of dealing with the wasted fuel must be done robotically and remotely, since the waste’s fierce radioactivity kills living things that come near.

Toyoshi Fuketa, head of a regulatory body overseeing the site, said at a press conference earlier that “The difficulty of retrieving the first handful of debris has become apparent,” the Kyodo News agency reported.

In 14 years’ time, engineers have managed to design, build, test, and rebuild a one-of-a-kind robot that finally succeeded in removing less than one gram of the meltdown waste from reactor No. 2 last year. That “success” was already three years behind schedule, “and some experts estimate that the decommissioning work could take more than a century,” CBS News and Mainichi Japan reported.

The torturously slow process has made Tepco’s early prediction of complete cleanup by 2051 (40 years’ time) appear to have been made up for PR reasons.

Tepco said July 29 that it would need another 12 to 15 years’ worth of preparation — until 2040 — “before starting the full-scale removal of melted fuel” at the No. 3 reactor. Tepco earlier claimed that “full-scale” extraction would begin four years ago, in 2021 according to the daily Asahi Shimbun August 1.

Of an estimated 880 tonnes of debris, only 0.9 gram has been recovered to date. With one million grams in a tonne, Tepco has only 879 million grams to go, and “A simple calculation based on the time since the accident suggests the removal process could take another 13.6 billion years to complete,” the Asahi Shimbun smirked.

— Mainichi Japan, Aug. 5; Asahi Shimbun, August 1; Nuclear Engineering International, July 31; UPI, CBS, AP, World Nuclear News, July 29, 2025

China’s reactor report card omits embarrassing radioactive emission info

China issues annual reports on its large nuclear power operations known as “China Nuclear Energy.” The 2024 edition, its latest, made headlines by omitting for the first time information on the routine radioactive gases and liquids released from its operating reactors.

Kyodo News reported that the omission may be a way to avoid accusations of hypocrisy since China has strenuously condemned Japan’s discharge of radioactively contaminated wastewater to the Pacific. At the same time China’s domestic reactors in 2022 reportedly “released wastewater containing tritium at levels up to nine times higher than the annual discharge limit” set by Japan’s discharge authorities.

— Kyodo News, July 17; Agence France Presse, New Straits Times, July 15, 2025

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