Silent Spring comes to Fukushima

Following up this article..32 swallows found dead at the water purification plant in Nagano

Japan Wild Bird Association tweeted like these below,

 

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visited Iidatemura Fukushima to research how radiation affect swallows. Atmospheric dose was 4~5μSv/h at average, the highest reading was 8μSv/h on the ground. Rice fields were abandoned, all the villagers evacuated, we found only a few swallows.

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silent spring

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It is not only swallow, we couldn’t find other summer birds such as Narcissus Flycatcher or  blue-and-white flycatcher either. It reminded me of “Silent Spring” by Rachel Louise Carson. Forest of no chirp.

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It’s not only swallow to be threatened by radiation. From the analysis of heron’s colony, 24,000 Bq/Kg of radionuclide (*probably cesium) was measured from the soil of the colony. The colony was in Fukushima, analysis was done in this January. Herons breed in the highly radioactive circumstance without knowing the risk, and

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Heron’s diet is freshwater fish. It’s becoming clear that radiation is accumulated in freshwater fish (cf. 18,700 Bq/Kg from fish in Iidate mura), radiation is also starting to be accumulated in herons. Giving contaminated fish to chicks, it’s accumulated in chicks as well.

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About this site

This website updates the latest news about the Fukushima nuclear plant and also archives the past news from 2011. Because it's always updated and added live, articles, categories and the tags are not necessarily fitted in the latest format.
I am the writer of this website. About page remains in 2014. This is because my memory about 311 was clearer than now, 2023, and I think it can have a historical value. Now I'm living in Romania with 3 cats as an independent data scientist.
Actually, nothing has progressed in the plant since 2011. We still don't even know what is going on inside. They must keep cooling the crippled reactors by water, but additionally groundwater keeps flowing into the reactor buildings from the broken parts. This is why highly contaminated water is always produced more than it can circulate. Tepco is planning to officially discharge this water to the Pacific but Tritium is still remaining in it. They dilute this with seawater so that it is legally safe, but scientifically the same amount of radioactive tritium is contained. They say it is safe to discharge, but none of them have drunk it.

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