Hello, I'm Radimaru, a radiation detector who live in west suburb in Tokyo.
Today, I want to thanks to all of you who tried to read my blog written in Japanese.
I think you understood the meaning of the photos.
I am mostly detecting in Hachioji city which has a population of more than 550,000, the largest city in Tokyo. It's located about 155 miles (250km) from Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Why should I had to do this, was because detecting radiation became essential for citizen here. The government has been monitoring radiation in Shinjuku ward and other regions all over in Japan. The monitoring posts had been built during the time of the cold war in 1960's. But this month, they're going to build eight more monitoring posts in Tokyo including Hachioji city. That would be great, but it doesn't help much.
The radioactive materials stay everywhere around and it's gathering particular place call "hotspot" or "microspot". It sounds like the hotspot was used for larger area about kilometer and the microspot means less than few meter area like under the drain. So it stays like many dots in everywhere in the city, and the government couldn't find it so far. When Hachioji municipal came to detect after a reporting from citizen who found the micro spot where was detected 0.38 microsieverts per hour with her DOSERAE2, I thought they did fine until I wonder where do they bring that contaminated mud.
"3.99 microsieverts per hour at the school detected by citizen" I saw the news on T.V. about in Adachi ward Tokyo. The working group from municipal came to the school, took out the polluted soil, put it into the huge strong plastic bag, then dug a hole in the school property and they buried it.
The latest article is about a waste water treatment property in Hachioji city. They have been dehydrating and burning the substances from the waste water to reduce its amount. But after the working group had found in Fukushima that the ashes in the waste was contaminated. The Nuclear Safety Commission had decided to stop using the ashes for recycle cement since June. They are suspending until it reduce the contamination and allow to use diluted with amount of concrete. Now municipal have to store that tons of ashes at the storehouse in their property and they are no where to go. Also the Commission has made a rules that the ashes less than 8,000 becquerels of radioactive caesium per kilogramme is allowed to leave without distance from land border between private land or bury it with certain treatment (a plastic bag?) even if it's beneath the residential area or the farm land.
Thus the municipal has been monitoring it since then. They monitor the gas emitted from chimney, the water after treated, the ashes after reducing process and the air at the four monitoring points inside their property. The results are on the Hachioji official web site and it says non detect in the gas and water, but around 6,000 becquerels of radioactive caesium per kilogramme are still in the ashes. And the radiation in the air near the storehouse is little bit higher than the other places.
Consequently, they stopped monitoring water since they couldn't detect any caesium and iodine end of July. According to Hachioji official data, they are perfectly excluded caesium during the reducing process.
Meanwhile 129 becquerels of radioactive strontium per kilogramme of with another 39,012 becquerels of radioactive caesium per kilogramme had been found from a roadside ditch in Yokohama- same 155 miles from Fukushima Daiichi plant. It was reported in Yokohama official web site on 14th October. The government has been saying "it won't fly that far." so that only fell on Yokohama other than Fukushima.
Not only strontium but also there are no information of other hundreds of radioactive materials from the Fukushima Daiichi plant when it exploded and rained in Tokyo. Yokohama city will ask to the government to broad the survey area in the outside of 62-mile (100km) from the power plant.
Hachioji city has been checking only those three radioactive materials at the drinking water, waste water, and incinerator property by the order from the government, so that municipals other than Fukushima is really depend on volunteering act to survey their area.
Thanks for reading with my poor English and Japanese blog.
I'll be very happy if you give me any comments.
I found here an article on the guardian, much easier to read for you...
