Assessment of the effectiveness of the post-Fukushima food monitoring campaign in the first year after the nuclear accident: A hypothesis

The purpose of this study was to assess whether or not the food monitoring campaign after the Fukushima nuclear accident has been successful in reducing the number of above-limit-food from reaching the consumers. The hypothesis of this study is that the fraction of "post-market" food can be used for this purpose, when the post-market fraction in the above-limit (p') items is compared to the post-market fraction in the entity of food items (p) that have been screened for radionuclides (134Cs and 137Cs). Indeed the post-market fraction in most vegetarian produce decreased significantly in the above-limit food items (p'/p < 1), indicating a high efficiency of the monitoring campaign. For tea, however, the analysis reveals a low efficiency of the campaign (p'/p ≈ 1). For beef, the fraction of post-market-foods within the above-limit samples was much higher than the respective fraction in the entity of measured samples (p'/p > 1), indicating a much lower effectiveness of the monitoring action for beef. The author speculates that, by following the governmental monitoring manual (which gives "meat" only second priority), the sudden exceedances caught the monitoring agencies unprepared and triggered a much higher density monitoring of beef with the delay of several weeks. Even then, many above limit items reached the market (mainly because the monitoring during this period had focused on the post-market). Therefore, it is likely that some above-limit beef has been consumed by the public. For other meat products, the fraction of post-market samples was very low, which does not allow for the validation of the effectiveness of the monitoring campaign. Overall, the monitoring seemed to have been more effective for vegetarian produce than for meat. © 2015 The Author.CDC NIOSH Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center/T42OH009229-07US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)/NRC-HQ-12-G-38-004

Monitoring and radioecological characteristics of radiocesium in Japanese beef after the Fukushima nuclear accident

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, beef proved to be a problematic food item with several exceedances entering the market. The reason was contaminated rice straw that was fed to cattle. Japanese authorities responded quickly to the exceedances and made beef one of the most-monitored food items after the Fukushima accident with more than a million samples within 5 years. Activity levels dropped quickly and are now considerably below the regulatory limit. No exceedance of the regulatory limit was observed after October 2012. The monitoring campaign focuses on the pre-market to catch any exceedances before they reach the consumer. The analysis also showed that some late beef samples exhibited an unusually high 134Cs/137Cs activity ratio. The reason for this is unknown. © 2016 The Author(s

Exemplifying the “wild boar paradox”: dynamics of cesium-137 contaminations in wild boars in Germany and Japan

Wild boars (Sus scrofa) are notorious for accumulating high contamination levels of 137Cs in their meat. Publicly available data of 137Cs contamination levels in wild boars from 2011 to 2019 were used to determine some radioecological characteristics in Germany (affected by Chernobyl-fallout, 1986) and Japan (affected Fukushima, 2011). The effective half-life of 137Cs in wild boar meat was much longer in Germany (7.3 y) than in Japan (2.6 y), respectively. Wild boars in Germany thus show much more persistent contamination levels than other game or forest animals. This unusual behavior has been termed “wild boar paradox.” In German wild boars, the data sets reveal a distinct geographical and seasonal dependence with higher activity concentrations in winter than in summer. In Japan, contamination levels only exhibit a distinct decline behavior

Correction: Exemplifying the “wild boar paradox”: dynamics of cesium-137 contaminations in wild boars in Germany and Japan

In the original publication of the article, some of the corrections received from the author were not incorporated by the journal production team. Now, the original article has been updated with those corrections

137Cs in the meat of wild boars: a comparison of the impacts of Chernobyl and Fukushima

The impact of Chernobyl on the 137Cs activities found in wild boars in Europe, even in remote locations from the NPP, has been much greater than the impact of Fukushima on boars in Japan. Although there is great variability within the 137Cs concentrations throughout the wild boar populations, some boars in southern Germany in recent years exhibit higher activity concentrations (up to 10,000 Bq/kg and higher) than the highest 137Cs levels found in boars in the governmental food monitoring campaign (7900 Bq/kg) in Fukushima prefecture in Japan. The levels of radiocesium in boar appear to be more persistent than would be indicated by the constantly decreasing 137Cs inventory observed in the soil which points to a food source that is highly retentive to 137Cs contamination or to other radioecological anomalies that are not yet fully understood.CDC NIOSH Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center/T42OH009229-07NRC/NRC-HQ-12-G-38-004

On the interference of 210Pb in the determination of 90Sr using a strontium specific resin

We investigated the interference of radiolead in the isolation of radiostrontium using a strontium-specific resin by means of 85Sr and 212Pb radiotracers. The resin was found to be almost equally specific for lead ions as well. Elution of Pb2+, however, was found to occur at very low acid concentrations (£0.02 M HNO3) of the elutant. Even with pure distilled water as the elutant, elution of lead cannot compete with strontium, due to the delayed elution dynamics caused by residual acid in the column. In contrast to strontium, which is eluted quickly from the column and almost quantitatively after 4 mL elutant (practically independently of the acid concentration of the elutant), lead is eluted with much delay and not completely after the 10 mL elution. The Eichrom method for the determination of radiostrontium in water proposes elution with 0.05 M HNO3, which was found extremely useful, because at such an acid concentration, no radiolead is eluted from the column and allows the production of a pure radiostrontium fraction which can be measured by liquid scintillation counting

Effective and ecological half-lives of 90Sr and 137Cs observed in wheat and rice in Japan

Published pre-Fukushima food monitoring data from 1963 to 1995 were used to study the long-term presence of 137Cs and 90Sr in rice and wheat. Effective half-lives (T eff) were calculated for rice (137Cs: 5.6 years; 90Sr: 6.7 years) and wheat (137Cs: 3.5 years; 90Sr: 6.2 years), respectively. In rice, 137Cs exhibits a longer T eff because putrefaction processes will lead to the formation of NH4 + ions that are efficient ion exchangers for mineral-adsorbed cesium ions, hence making it more readily available to the plant. Knowledge on the long-term behavior of radiocesium and radiostrontium will be important for Japanese food-safety campaigns after the Fukushima nuclear accident.JSPS KAKENHI/25870158CDC NIOSH Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center/T42OH009229-07NRC/NRC-HQ-12-G-38-004

Detection of Fuel Release in a Nuclear Accident: A Method for Preconcentration and Isolation of Reactor-Borne 239Np Using Ion-Specific Extraction Chromatography

Although actinides are the most informative elements with respect to the nature of a nuclear accident, plutonium analysis is complicated by the background created by fallout from atmospheric nuclear explosions. Therefore, we propose 239Np, a short-lived actinide that emits several γ rays, as a preferred proxy. The aim of this study was to screen ion specific extraction chromatography resins (RE-, TEVA-, UTEVA-, TRU-, and Actinide-Resin) for the highest possible recovery and separation of trace amounts of 239Np from samples with large activities of fission products such as radiocesium, radioiodine, and, most importantly, radiotellurium, the latter of which causes spectral interference in gamma spectrometry through overlapping peaks with 239Np. The investigated environmental media for these separations were aqueous solutions simulating rainwater and soil. Spiked samples containing 239Np and the aforementioned volatile radionuclides were separated through extraction chromatographic columns to ascertain the most effective means of separating 239Np from other fission products for detection by gamma spectroscopy. We propose a method for nuclear accident preparedness based on the use of Eichrom's RE-Resin. The proposed method was found most effective for isolating 239Np from interfering radionuclides in both aqueous solution and soil using 8 M HNO3 as the loading solution and H2O as the eluent. The RE-Resin outperforms the more commonly used TEVA-Resin because the TEVA-Resin showed a higher affinity for interfering radiotellurium and radioiodine. (Figure Presented)

Fukushima-derived radionuclides in sediments of the Japanese Pacific Ocean coast and various Japanese water samples (seawater, tap water, and coolant water of Fukushima Daiichi reactor unit 5)

We investigated Ocean sediments and seawater from inside the Fukushima exclusion zone and found radiocesium (134Cs and 137Cs) up to 800 Bq kg-1 as well as 90Sr up to 5.6 Bq kg-1. This is one of the first reports on radiostrontium in sea sediments from the Fukushima exclusion zone. Seawater exhibited contamination levels up to 5.3 Bq kg-1 radiocesium. Tap water from Tokyo from weeks after the accident exhibited detectable but harmless activities of radiocesium (well below the regulatory limit). Analysis of the Unit 5 reactor coolant (finding only 3H and even low 129I) leads to the conclusion that the purification techniques for reactor coolant employed at Fukushima Daiichi are very effective.JSPS KAKENHI/25870158CDC NIOSH Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center/T42OH009229-07NRC/NRC-HQ-12-G-38-004

New Forensic Insight into Carl Auer von Welsbach's 1910 Observation of Induced Radioactivity: Theoretical, Experimental and Historical Approaches

In 1910, Carl Auer von Welsbach noted that he had made an observation of a radioactive substance inducing radioactivity to an inactive substance. From today's point of view, this could have been the first observation of neutron activation. Herein, we present new insights into our investigation of this ‘mysterious observation’ as Auer von Welsbach termed it. We believe that one of the activated objects was a platinum–iridium crucible. The dominating activation product of the crucible could have been iridium-194. We have discovered several platinum crucibles from Auer's heritage and investigated them by gamma-spectrometry and, one of them, by SEM/EDX. In the EDX investigations, however, no iridium was found in the most promising crucible. Hence this particular crucible was probably not the activated object. In any case, gamma-ray spectrometry revealed very low but detectable amounts of natural radionuclides. This indicated that these crucibles were used by Auer von Welsbach for his radioactive work and that these crucibles were bought prior to World War I. Hence Auer von Welsbach somehow managed to save these crucibles from the noble metal collections during the war. Auer's 1910 publication carried the suffix ‘Part I’, however, Part II was thought to be lost. In our recent work, however, we rediscovered a hand-written manuscript of Part II, in which the peculiar observation is mentioned vaguely. Lastly, we converted Auer's uranium standard into becquerels. Based on this conversion, we estimated that Auer von Welsbach observed an 194Ir activity of the crucible of 500 kBq. It is further estimated that a (thermal) neutron flux density of approximately 8E+4 cm−2 s−1 was needed to activate the crucible in a way to meet Auer's description. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews on 2017-01-09, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2016.1251731