Thursday, March 31, 2011

Japan, to limit nuclear danger

Workers were evacuated from a nuclear reactor plant in Japan damaged after the discovery of potentially lethal levels of radiation in the water, a huge setback in attempts to avoid a catastrophic merger. The plant operator said that the radiation in the water reactor number two had more than one mSv per hour, the highest reading so far in the midst of a crisis caused by the earthquake of March 11 and the tsunami that followed minutes later.

The reading is far from the national safety standard of 250 mSv per year. The Environmental Protection Agency United States said that a single dose of millisieverts thousand is enough to cause bleeding. The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said later that the extremely high radiation readings may have been wrong, adding that estimates were being revised.

"The situation is serious. They have to get this water from the soil, get rid of it to lower the radiation, "said Robert Finck, expert from the Radiation Safety Authority in Sweden, speaking before the operator expressed his doubts about the story. The Japanese government said that in general, the situation has not changed in the plant located some 240 kilometers north of Tokyo, even if difficulties arise from time to time.

Radiation at the plant has risen in recent days. The latest readings on the weekend show contamination 100 000 times higher than normal water reactor number two thousand and 850 times what is considered normal in the sea near the nuclear plant. Those were the most alarming levels since the crisis began.

Although experts said the radiation in the Pacific waters will dissipate quickly, the levels at the site are clearly hazardous, and 450 or more engineers working there have earned the admiration and sympathy from around the world for their courage and sense of duty. The nuclear crisis is a particularly sensitive issue for Japan because it is the only nation to have been affected by atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), warned that Japan's nuclear crisis could continue for weeks, months or longer. "This is a very serious accident by all criteria (...) And yet over." Too much radiation can increase the risk of developing any type of cancer a few years later, scientists and young people are most vulnerable.

However, knowing what or how much radiation is risky exposure time is unclear. When did the Chernobyl nuclear accident 25 years ago, there were six thousand cases of thyroid cancer, although to date have not checked whether this was due to radiation. Of these, only 15 were fatal until 2005 because the Soviet government was slow to treat victims.

The Bureau of Environmental Protection United States said that no amount of radiation is completely safe over the figure of three to six mSv per year, most people get to live a normal life. High doses "of over 500 mSv" may increase the risk of leukemia or cancer of the breast, bladder, colon, liver, lung, esophagus, ovaries or stomach, and blood cancer producing multiple myeloma.

said he agreed with the way in which the Government is making efforts to assist the victims. supports increasing taxes for the reconstruction of areas affected by the disaster. increased the popularity of Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, placing it at 28.3 percent.

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