Japan decontaminates towns near tsunami-hit nuclear plant, unsure costly effort will succeed

From the Star Tribune:

Workers in rubber boots chip at the frozen ground, scraping until they've removed the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of radioactive soil from the yard of a single home. Total amount of waste gathered: roughly 60 tons.

One down, tens of thousands to go. And since wind and rain spread radiation easily, even this yard may need to be dug up again.

The work is part of a monumental task: a costly and uncertain effort by Japan to try to make radiation-contaminated communities inhabitable again. Some contractors are experimenting with chemicals; others stick with shovels and high-pressure water. One government expert says it's mostly trial and error.

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Wider U.S. Evacuation at Fukushima Supported in NRC Transcripts

From bloomberg.com:

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released transcripts that officials said supported Chairman Gregory Jaczko’s recommendation last year to evacuate Americans from within 50 miles of Japan’s crippled reactor.

“If this happened in the U.S., we would go out to 50 miles,” Bill Borchardt, the NRC’s executive director for operations, told Jaczko in a conversation on March 16, five days into the crisis, included among 3,000 pages of documents released today by the agency. “That would be the appropriate guidance to give the ambassador to pass on at this point.”

Republicans in Congress have criticized Jaczko’s leadership during the 2011 disaster, and Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, in May questioned why Jaczko recommended a 50-mile (80-kilometer) evacuation zone when Japan’s government cleared 12 miles. Jaczko has said his response was consistent with what the NRC would propose in a similar U.S. crisis.

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Watchdogs: Expand safety zones around nuke plants

From the Press and Journal:

Nuclear watchdog groups, including Three Mile Island Alert, are asking the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to vastly expand the emergency evacuation zones around commercial nuclear reactors from 10 miles to 25.

The petition also seeks changes in emergency planning, and more scrutiny for food contamination.

In the wake of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant in Japan last March, a 10-mile emergency zone is not large enough to protect public health and safety, the groups said.

“The accident at Fukushima, added to the experience of the Chernobyl disaster, demonstrates that ... severe accidents are clearly more likely than any government previously has estimated ... ,” said the petition, spearheaded by the anti-nuclear Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and signed by 37 clean energy groups.

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Watchdogs: Expand safety zones around nuke plants

From the Press and Journal:

Nuclear watchdog groups, including Three Mile Island Alert, are asking the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to vastly expand the emergency evacuation zones around commercial nuclear reactors from 10 miles to 25.

The petition also seeks changes in emergency planning, and more scrutiny for food contamination.

In the wake of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant in Japan last March, a 10-mile emergency zone is not large enough to protect public health and safety, the groups said.

“The accident at Fukushima, added to the experience of the Chernobyl disaster, demonstrates that ... severe accidents are clearly more likely than any government previously has estimated ... ,” said the petition, spearheaded by the anti-nuclear Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and signed by 37 clean energy groups.

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