Contaminated sewage sludge worries Japanese

"Already the radioactivity from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has contaminated groundwater and seawater, the air and soil.

Now it has somehow seeped into sewage in dozens of treatment plants.

Radioactive caesium has been found in sewage sludge in treatment facilities from Hokkaido in the north to Osaka in the west, as well as in Tokyo.

So serious is the problem that Japan doesn't know where to put the growing pile of contaminated waste." ABC

Tokyo now measuring radiation levels at 100 sites

The Tokyo metropolitan government has decided to take radiation readings at 100 sites around the city and to measure at ground level and near ground level. The city was previously taking readings only from a 19-meter high monitoring station in Tokyo. The action was prompted after citizens began finding higher readings that those released by the city government.

It doesn't take a tsunami...

...as this AP picture shows, with the Ft. Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska now completely surrounded by water as levels continue to rise in the Missouri River.

Following the June-July 1993 flooding along the Missouri River, the NRC published Information Notice 94-27 which revealed that while giving safety assurances to the public during the flooding around the Cooper nuclear power station near Brownville, Nebraska, water was actually coming into the reactor building and rising on safety-related electrical circuits vital to reactor cooling even with the unit in shutdown. Floor drains can become fountains. There is additional concern from rising flood water inundating an on-site auxillary building and the reactor's "spent" fuel storage pool now located on the nuclear  island in our midwest.

Toxic strontium found in Fukushima groundwater

"Highly toxic radioactive strontium has been found in groundwater near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

It is the first time the substance has been detected in groundwater near the plant's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors.

The operator of the Fukushima plant has also confirmed strontium up to 240 times the legal limit has been found in seawater near the facility.

Strontium tends to accumulate in bones and can cause bone cancer and leukaemia.

"Last week, soil samples from outside the Fukushima plant also revealed concentrations of strontium." ABC News

Fukushima city officials say they will distribute radiation readers to 30,000 children between the ages of four and 15.  ABC News

News reports vary as to when the children will receive the badges.

Throwing away crops is "like killing your children"

Japanse farmers are being forced to destroy their radioactive crops as far away as 300 kilometers (180 miles) from the Fukushima nuclear disaster site. Radiation hot spots have been detected far away from the exclusion boundaries and radiation monitoring by Japanese authorities has been shown to be highly inadequate.