Is Japan Safe?

[Mu No Hito]

Hi

I am a student from England and I will be traveling to Japan to study for 1 year as part of My uni degree. I will study in a city called Kobe, which further south of Tokyo. Although the limit of the radioactive area is set to 30km (my city is around 500 km away from the nuclear plant)... I would like to ask, do you think it is safe to go to Japan right now?

I've heard many foreigners have left Japan since the nuclear issue, but is the US / UK media exaggerating the seriousness of the issue?

Thank you guys,

[aelle]

Kobe is totally safe.

Radiation is being monitored daily over Japan, and even in Tokyo, which is much closer to Fukushima than Kobe, it remains below naturally occurring background ratiation levels in, for example, Rome. Slightly elevated compared to Tokyo's naturally occurring radioactivity, but completely within normal ranges commonly found elsewhere.

Here's one of the official websites monitoring radiation leve;ls: ??????????
And a lot of journalists and academics do independent measurements too, such as: ��る国会�拡散�る放射能汚染: 山本宗補�雑記帳

Also, you no longer get aftershocks powerful enough to be felt in Kobe (you still feel them on a daily basis in Tokyo though, but they are not dangerous).

The only thing I would recommend if you plan to stay for a year or more is watch the origin of your food. I would forgo beef and dairy entirely (both are known for concentrating radioactive isotopes), or if I have to get some on occasion, consume products from Kansai (or imported) rather than from Kanto. Also avoid leafy greens grown in Kanto (or at least in the most damage stricken areas). So learn to read those Kanjis
Tap water is sourced locally so in Kobe you'll have nothing to worry about. I know some people with infants who insist on getting imported bottled water for their babies, usually Evian or other European brands ( ay ay carbon footprint) but they are a definite minority.

I believe a large number of the foreigners who left in a bit of a panic when news were unclear were back at their desk within a week (I hosted a couple friends from Tokyo and yeah, they stayed with us less than a week).

I go to Japan on business on a regular basis ; I have been in the country 4 times since the quake including 2 in Tokyo (and 3 in Kobe). I would not hesitate for a second if I was offered an interesting position there.

On another topic, Kobe is a super lovely city! It's got a lively downtown area (around Sannomiya station) but the rest of it has a quiet small town feel that's vert relaxing. And it's super accessible - it's cheap to get buses or local trains to Kyoto or Osaka, and if then you're just under 3 hours away from Tokyo by shinkansen. And of course you're connected to both the domestic Kobe airport and Kansai International Airport. Let me know if you want to chat more about Japan!

[liamona]

At this point it's a crap shoot, since they've been lying about the problem from the beginning (the reactors were melting down basically from day one, but they didn't admit to this for months. What else are they lying about?).

I'm concerned because Fukushima radiation has reached California and other parts of the U.S.; I wonder what this means for Japan—will it possibly be uninhabitable in the future? I sure hope not.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have detected radiation in food and soil samples in northern California since March.

UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Air Monitoring Station | The Nuclear Engineering Department At UC Berkeley

"8/4 (10:03am): We have tested two samples of topsoil from San Diego, CA. One sample was soil that had been stored inside, while the other sample was exactly the same kind of soil but it had been outside during the period 3/11 to 6/29/2011. As expected, the sample from outside has detectable levels of Cs-134 and Cs-137 while the sample kept inside does not."

Just this week, researchers at UCSD reported that radioactive sulfur was measured in air samples within weeks of the disaster.

Measurements at Scripps Pier Reveal Extent of Leakage from Damaged Fukushima Reactor

A couple of months ago the Japanese government started banning tea grown in Shizuoka because the plants were contaminated with radioactive cesium. That's pretty far south of Fukushima.


I read this site daily:

ENENEWS.COM

These are some of the headlines for today:

Tokyo: Radioactive cesium detected in 53 of 56 samples — Average of 30,032 Bq/m², near Chernobyl’s “Radiation Protection Area” levels

Gov’t: South of Tokyo 12,400 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium found next to children’s swimming pool — Radiation measurements nearly doubled over recent 5 day period

Dr. Kodama: Tokyo radiation “continuously high” since raining on March 21

Book: US gov’t was considering plan to evacuate all 90,000 citizens living in Tokyo — US knew fuel had melted early on via Global Hawk data

[aelle]

Liamona, none of this information contradicts the fact that Japan, especially Kobe, is safe at the moment.
There is a difference between "elevated" (compared to pre-Fukushima control levels), "elevated beyond allowable levels" (legal levels take a large safety margin) and "dangerously elevated". Our environment, everything we consume is, and has always been, radioactive (the cause being primarily the sun, secondarily naturally occurring radioactive isotopes of heavy elements). Animals, including humans, have a good tolerance for low and constant radiation exposure.

The Japanese government may have had messy communication policies and poor decision making skill during the crisis. But anyone can buy a Geiger counter and check background radiation levels for themselves, and a lot of independents do.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by aelle

Liamona, none of this information contradicts the fact that Japan, especially Kobe, is safe at the moment.

Really? Is anyone there measuring the radiation like what UC Berkeley is doing?

There is a difference between "elevated" (compared to pre-Fukushima control levels), "elevated beyond allowable levels" (legal levels take a large safety margin) and "dangerously elevated".

I disagree, especially when it comes to inhaled or ingested radioactive particles (like cesium 137 in the lettuce and milk in California). There are no safe limits to INGESTING these things. Once they get in you, they start damaging your cells.

Our environment, everything we consume is, and has always been, radioactive (the cause being primarily the sun, secondarily naturally occurring radioactive isotopes of heavy elements). Animals, including humans, have a good tolerance for low and constant radiation exposure.

Sure, from the sun and externally. But not INTERNALLY.

The Japanese government may have had messy communication policies and poor decision making skill during the crisis. But anyone can buy a Geiger counter and check background radiation levels for themselves, and a lot of independents do.

Thank goodness for that. It's too bad there's so little monitoring by the people who are supposed to be doing it, that regular people who have enough to do and worry about (like some Japanese citizen groups) have to take on this task.

[liamona]

Even so, it can't hurt to take extra magnesium, bathe our foods in baking soda, and eat lots of apples and foods containing pectin (everyone, not just the Japanese). Start doing it now, before years from now when the "authorities" admit that our food has been contaminated since...god knows when. May as well get in the habit.

[liamona]

I like this article:

There is no ‘safe’ exposure to radiation

Radiation from Japan is now detectable in the atmosphere, rain water and food chain in North America. Fukushima reactors are still out of control and hold 10 times more nuclear fuel than there was at Chernobyl, thousands of times more than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The official refrain is, “No worries here, perfectly harmless.” Our best scientists of the previous century would be rolling over in their graves.

In the 1940s many of the world’s premier nuclear scientists saw mounting evidence that there was no safe level of exposure to nuclear radiation. This led Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb, to oppose development of the hydrogen bomb.

In the 1950s, Linus Pauling, the only two-time winner of the Nobel Prize, began warning the public about exposure to all radiation. This opinion, ultimately endorsed by thousands of scientists worldwide, led President John F. Kennedy to sign the nuclear test ban treaty.

In the 1960s, Drs. John Gofman, Arthur Tamplin, Alice Stewart, Thomas Mancuso and Karl Morgan, all researchers for the Atomic Energy Commission or the Department of Energy, independently came to the conclusion that exposure to nuclear radiation was not safe at any level.

The government terminated their services for coming up with what Dr. Gofman called the “wrong answer,” that is, the opposite of what the AEC wanted to hear. The top Russian nuclear physicist in the 1960s, Andrei Sakharov, also a Nobel Prize winner, and Vladimir Chernousenko, who the Soviet Union placed in charge of the Chernobyl cleanup, are among other international experts who drew similar conclusions.

To distract from the danger of man-made radioactivity, we hear from nuclear cheerleaders that watching TV and airline travel also expose us to radiation. True, although they never mention that flight crews have higher rates of breast and skin cancer. Equating those very different types of radiation is like equating the damage of being hit with ping pong balls (photons) with being hit by bullets (beta particles). Your TV doesn’t shoot bullets at you.

Even if your TV only shot a few bullets per show, you probably wouldn’t watch much TV. Furthermore, the damage done by these radioactive “bullets” can vary tremendously depending on which organs are hit. To carry the analogy one step further, spraying a few bullets into a large crowd can hardly be considered harmless even if the ratio of bullets per person is very low.

Bioaccumulation increases the concentration of many contaminants as one moves up the food chain. Beef is much higher in dioxins than cattle feed and tuna fish have much higher mercury than their marine environment. Radioactive iodine, cesium, and strontium, all beta emitters, become concentrated in the food chain because of bioaccumulation. At the top of the food chain, of course, are humans, including fetuses, and human breast milk

In 1963, one week after an atmospheric nuclear bomb test in Russia, our scientists observed the magnifying power of bioaccumulation when they detected radioactive iodine in the thyroids of mammals in North America even though they could not detect smaller amounts in the air or on vegetation.

Bioaccumulation is one reason why it is dishonest to equate the danger to humans living 5,000 miles away from Japan with the minute concentrations measured in our air. If we tried, we would now likely be able to measure radioactive iodine, cesium, and strontium bioaccumulating in human embryos in this country. Pregnant women, are you OK with that?

Hermann Mueller, another Nobel Prize winner, is one of many scientists who would not have been OK with that. In a 1964 study, “Radiation and Heredity”, Mueller spelled out the genetic damage of ionizing radiation on humans. He predicted the gradual reduction of the survival of the human species as exposure to radioactivity steadily increased. Indeed, sperm counts, sperm viability and fertility rates worldwide have been dropping for decades.

These scientists and their warnings have never been disproven, but they are currently widely ignored. Their message is very clear: Virtually every human on Earth carries the nuclear legacy, a genetic footprint contaminated by the Cold War, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the 400-plus nuclear power plants that have not melted down and now Fukushima.

Albert Einstein said, “The splitting of the atom changed everything, save man’s mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.”

[aelle]

Originally Posted by liamona

Sure, from the sun and externally. But not INTERNALLY.

Of course we do. All living creatures are radioactive and that's all we eat. C14 anyone?

[liamona]

Here's some other good sites to get more info.:

NuclearCrimes.org - formerly Idealist.ws - Radiation coverups, Downwinders, Nuclear Coverups, Radioactive Fallout, Radiation-Linked Diseases and Epidemics

Radiation and Public Health Project

Low Level Radiation Campaign

Updates on Fukushima: | Fairewinds Associates, Inc

Also, at the bottom of the Enenews.com site, you can see the latest news for "Fukushima Reactors," "US & Canada Nuclear News," and "Air, Water, Food & Land Contamination."

[liamona]

I forgot to add this info.: On the Enenews site, I met someone who used to be a nuclear reactor plant operator, and attributes his getting cancer to his old job.

He is very knowledgeable about this field; in fact, he theorized on March 30th that the Fukushima reactors were in meltdown just from knowing how they were designed and what (little) information was being provided about their condition.

He started a thread on another forum about Fukushima and radiation in general, which has a lot of news stories documenting the crisis from the beginning.

Increasing Revelations of the Truth at Fukushima!

Here are some salient comments:

"I worked in the Nuclear field for years and now have three tumors in my body. My father did not have tumors. My mother did not have tumors, but they did not work in the nuclear power field either. I did and I do.

Based upon my experience any radiation exposure in excess of normal back ground is too much because it can cause cancer or tumors to grow in your body wherever the radiation has done DNA damage to a cell."

About finding a home and living as far away from his job at a nuclear reactor as possible:

"I knew that nuclear reactor plants are constantly releasing radioactive particulate to the air and I wanted that particulate to be well scattered before it reached me.

None of the 30 children that I raised have come down with cancer or autism or other DNA damage while growing up in my house. A radiation free location was my primary consideration. I even had the cement slab of the house surveyed for radiation before I bought the house.

Never, ever choose to raise your children where there is high background radiation."

He says that he would NOT recommend living in Japan right now.

[russianrocket]

Holy crap, he raised 30 children? Radiation sure as hell didn't make him sterile, that's for sure.

[stanmrak]

Originally Posted by Mu No Hito

I've heard many foreigners have left Japan since the nuclear issue, but is the US / UK media exaggerating the seriousness of the issue?

Never trust the media. They will print whatever serves them and their masters.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by russianrocket

Holy crap, he raised 30 children? Radiation sure as hell didn't make him sterile, that's for sure.

Haha. Actually those are all adopted children.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by stanmrak

Never trust the media. They will print whatever serves them and their masters.

Yeah, no kidding. In this case, US media is severely under-reporting and under-estimating the radiation poisoning of Japan.

I know someone who is trying to get a green card to come to the U.S., and she said that the process is unusually slow because so many people are emigrating to the U.S. I said the first thing that came to mind: "Why, is it because of concerns about radiation?" She said no, it's because so many new Japanese and sushi restaurants are opening up here.

She gets almost all her news from watching NHK.

[liamona]

Yesterday the NY Times reported that the Japanese government will finally admit that large zones around Fukushima are uninhabitable, perhaps for decades.

Since the government has been dragging its feet and not very forthcoming with the truth I predict that next year, it will be a larger area, and the following year, another larger zone, and on and on and on. It's too bad that so far, only the wealthy have enough money to emigrate to other countries like the U.S.

"Large Zone Near Japanese Reactors to Be Off Limits"

[JamesKnochel]

I tell people not to worry about Radiation (though it can be very problematic), because worrying makes the problem worse. It is much more productive to carry a Cayce Energy Disc to properly ionize the body, and do plenty of figure 8's in your own personal auric field.

Here's the page I put up some months ago:
Cayce’s Perspective on the Radiation Problem

sincerely,
James Knochel

[Mu No Hito]

Hey Guys thanks for all the feedback.

So I have done some more research and been in contact with a few professors. One of them has replied to me and said that as long as I am outside the exclusion zone, there should be no need to worry.

I do have a few questions though:

What if the wind direction suddenly changes south (currently east) and radioactive particles reach Tokyo or Kobe city (348 miles away)? Is that even possible?

What about the contaminated foods like tea? It seems that it is not only beef and dairy is a problem but there are other things which may be contaminated.

Have the power plants achieved cool shut down? Is there any risk of them blowing up again?

What is the worst case senario if the water which leaked out is dumped into the ocean by TEPCO?

Regards,

[Tok]

Mu No Hito, hi! I wonder: have you gone to Japan or stayed at home?

I was going to visit Japan (Tokyo and Kyoto) in the late November for the period of 14 days. I've already booked hotels. A month ago the risk of radiation didn't bother me. But the closer I get to the date of my trip, the more anxious I become. Actually, I'm pretty sure that there is no risk, but anyway I'm hesitating, and cannot make a final decision: to go or not to go.