The operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the meltdowns it believes took place at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant released about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air during March 2011. The accident, which followed an earthquake and a tsunami, occurred on March 11.
The latest estimate was based on measurements suggesting the amount of iodine-131 released by the nuclear accident was much larger than previous estimates, the utility said in the report. Iodine-131 is a fast-decaying radioactive substance produced by fission that takes place inside a nuclear reactor. It has a half-life of eight days and can cause thyroid cancer.
It is difficult to judge the health effects of the larger-than-reported release, since even the latest number is an estimate, and it does not clarify how much exposure people received or continue to receive from contaminated soil and food. Experts have been divided on the health impacts since the disaster because the studies of assessing radiation risks are based mainly on a different type of exposure — the large doses delivered quickly by the atomic bombs in Japan in 1945.
The world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming billions of people,...
For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has assigned a dollar value to the lives saved and...
The aurora could be visible across Canada and much of the northern tier of US states...
The Trump administration sued two California cities on Monday, seeking to block local laws that restrict...
