The first seafood caught off Japan's Fukushima coastline since last year's nuclear disaster went on sale Monday, but the offerings were limited to octopus and marine snails because of persisting fears about radiation.
Octopus and whelk, a kind of marine snail, were chosen for the initial shipments because testing for radioactive cesium consistently measured no detectable amounts, according to the Fukushima Prefectural fishing cooperative. They were caught Friday and boiled so they last longer while being tested for radiation before they could be sold Monday.
Flounder, sea bass and other fish from Fukushima can't be sold yet because of contamination. It was unclear when they will be approved for sale as they measure above the limit in radiation set by the government. The government is testing for radioactive iodine as well, but its half-life is shorter than cesium and thus is less worrisome.
"It was crisp when I bit into it, and it tasted so good," said Yasuhiro Yoshida, who oversees the seafood section at York Benimaru supermarket in Soma, which sold out of about 30 kilograms of the snails and 40 kilograms of the octopus that had been shipped to the store.
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami last year left the coastlines of northeastern Japan devastated, and displaced tens of thousands of people. Entire towns were contaminated by the radiation leaking from Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant, where three reactors went into meltdowns.
"I was filled with both uncertainty and hope today, but I was so happy when I found out the local supermarket had sold out by 3 p.m.," said Hirofumi Konno, an official in charge of sales at the fishing cooperative in Soma city in coastal Fukushima.
He said he hoped crabs would be next to go on sale as radiation had not been detected in them, but he acknowledged things will take time, perhaps years, especially for other kinds of fish. Radiation amounts have been decreasing, but cesium lasts years.
The octopus and snail were selling at almost half of what they fetched before the disaster, he said. But he said people were buying Fukushima seafood to show support for local fishermen. The items were available locally but not in the whole prefecture or the Tokyo area.
Nobuyuki Yagi, a University of Tokyo professor studying the fisheries industry after the disaster, said serious concerns remain over whether anyone would buy Fukushima fish, and the key lay in finding the types of fish that don't store radioactive elements.
"Fishing cannot survive unless people buy the fish. That may seem obvious, but Fukushima is facing up to this," he said in a statement earlier this month.
Farmlands have also been contaminated, and every grain of rice will be tested at harvest in some areas before they can be sold. The image of Fukushima produce has been seriously tarnished, and worried consumers, especially those with children, are shunning Fukushima-grown food.
"We are in for the long haul," Konno said in a telephone interview.
© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
74 Comments
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kurisupisu
Meanwhile,
several countries, including the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, China, the Philippines and Australia have banned food imports from radiation-hit areas of Japan.Fish from Honshu has been completely banned by Russia! Korea now has a seafood ban in effect, yet fish from Fukushima is being peddled in Japan as edible and safe for human consumption?
A little radiation here,a little radiation there and maybe a few hot particles or radioactive pollen too adds up to ....？
SquidBert
Alrighty then
Bon Appetit!
basroil
SquidBertJun. 27, 2012 - 03:46PM JST
And if you check the numbers, the plutonium in soil falls within the international average concentration for plutonium before Fukushima and the averages for Japanese soil before Fukushima. There are slightly elevated Pu 241 ratios, indicating some added plutonium, but the overall content is still almost all pre-existing plutonium. Hence it's "natural" in that it was there before when nobody considered it contaminated with plutonium.
SquidBert
Basroil, you are doing it again.
MEXTs readings show that Plotonium was released in the plume, so you are irrelevant to this discussion.
basroil
SquidBertJun. 27, 2012 - 02:05PM JST
In this case, he is simply talking about recoverable amounts created by forced fission rather than if it exists at all or not. If we assume that Uranium 235 is 0.7% of uranium deposits (actually closer to 0.72+-0.06) and just take into account the uranium we can economically mine, we end up with 44000 tons of U235. The spontaneous fission rate for U235 is about .5e-5 per gram per second. The percent fission product is 8% Cs137 for fission of U235. In the world, every second, 19kg of Cs137 is being produced.
At 3.215TBq/gram, we have 61000 TBq of Cs-137 being produced every second. Japan has 0.1% of the world natural uranium ore reserves (not used uranium), and therefore creates 61TBq/s. Given NISA's revised report stating a total of 630PBq was released, it is about the same amount of Cs-137 produced naturally in Japan every three hours. As less than 1ppb of that even has a chance to leave the ore, we don't see it, but it doesn't mean it is non-extant.
Of course, these are simple estimates, I don't have the time to look through to see if spontaneous fission rates are equal to thermal rates, and calculations for Cs-137 created through neutron induced fission from both U235 and other decays.
SquidBert
-2, And here comes the sock puppets
basroil
SquidBertJun. 27, 2012 - 02:05PM JST
Good to see that you hate your own actions. The discussion was on contamination by plutonium in fish off of Fukushima. In this case, the plutonium is, as mentioned in 4, mainly already in the environment and has been since long before Fukushima, and a small portion of that is naturally occurring Pu-239 from Uranium in just about any rock (though most concentrated where uranium mines are, and leeching by ground water will carry it elsewhere). Again, we are not discussing decades of nuclear bomb testing by practically every country and several kg of missing plutonium from Chernobyl, rather we are discussing what changed since Fukushima.
SquidBert
Basroil says,
I know you have the habit of removing and or changing information on wikipedia that you do not agree with, or do not want other people to know about. But they have already reverted most of your changes to wikipedia basroil.
In this specific case, The highly respected Wikipedia editor Kolbasz says: "(Undid revision 499527180 by Basroil (talk) Oklo was millions of half-lives ago.)"
I have seen the same tendency of bending the truth in discussions in this forum, and I think it is not so nice.
SquidBert
You are joking right?
SquidBert
I said in the environment, not in uranium ores.
basroil
SquidBertJun. 27, 2012 - 11:10AM JST
1) Oklo mine in Africa was a natural nuclear reactor and connected to ground water.
2) Pu 238, 239, 244 can all be found in trace amounts within rocks, and due to bio-accumulation, higher in living organisms than in rocks.
3) Nearly 100% of naturally occurring plutonium is Pu 239, hence it's atomic weight of 239.05
4) We can consider atomic testing and other nuclear events more than 20 years old to be "naturally occurring" for the purposes of this discussion, as we are talking about contamination that supposedly did not occur before Fukushima.
5) Radiation level in seafood wasn't properly recorded before Fukushima, so we can't make comparisons about anything that is under the legal or safe limits.
SquidBert
@basroil
You disappoint me basroil, I really thought your science was better than that. Except for, perhaps plutonium 244, there is no naturally occurring plutonium in the environment. It was all put there by humans one way or another.
I did not say anything about whether it was dangerous, or not in my original comment. I just provided some data, as is, without valuation.
basroil
SquidBertJun. 27, 2012 - 08:14AM JST
considering it's on a scale of a million times smaller than the already very small Cs137, AND the halflife is several times larger, it is likely due to natural sources. At the rate found in the highest "contaminated" fish, you would have to eat 200kg per hour for 80 years. I don't know about you, but I can't eat more than 200 grams a day of fish, let alone 200 kg/hour. And that's assuming 1Bq=1mSv, which is impossibly high. You would likely have to end up eating something near a million tons of fish an hour.
nath
always wanted to try glowing green octopus
SquidBert
Plutonium measured in marine products fished 54 km offshore from fukushima
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/06/plutonium-measured-from-marine-products-fished-offshore-fukushima/
David Wagner
www.facebook.com/Japan.Food.Safety
basroil
gaijinTechieJun. 26, 2012 - 12:32PM JST
Where did you come up with that? From all the stuff I've seen, you practically have to eat two or three times your body weight in legal limit fish a year to get anywhere near any levels of increased concern. I don't know about you, but I don't spend 50000 yen a year on seafood.
gaijinTechie
The safety levels are ok. Concentrations will become dangerous only if one keeps eating them for more than 12 months. Hate to mention it, but there has been contaminated food in the markets for 15 months already and counting. Bon appetit. I'll skip, since import food is always honestly checked due to naturally occurring xenophobia, they are good enough.
TSRnow
Farmboy, thank you for the info.
Yes, I do have kids and I have tried to be as calm about this as possible, but fish is pretty hard to avoid in this land of sushi and all other sorts of marine cuisine.
basroil
moomoochooJun. 25, 2012 - 10:18PM JST
So you linked to an article that discusses information by TWO known anti-nuclear people who are not certified nuclear engineers, and yet the article states them as being nuclear engineers. So falsification of credentials for a certified profession, which is illegal in the US (in the case of Alverez), and academic records falsification for Koide (which is grounds for expulsion for his 40 year profession as ASSISTANT professor (not even full fledged professor after 40 years!). In the case you didn't know, Alverez has made many statements in the past, all of which have been dis proven.
Koide, who is supposed to be an expert, has been shown to make up radiation readings (somewhere about 100x higher than anyone else, including independent researchers), ignore all known medical data on radiation exposure (talks of cancer and mutations at accident cites that even the hospitals don't seem to know about), and make up things that don't even begin to make sense (comparing nuclear waste to atomic bombs by weight of uranium, ignoring what makes things radioactive in the first place).
If you believe every nutjob with falsified credentials on the internet, you might as well eat as much plutonium as someone else can ingest caffeine. Yes, plutonium is the safer one. Your fish are fine now, and will be fine later too.
waltery
Hmm! if people can't enter the (??) Km zone, do the fish and the fishermen adhere to this? I guess the ocean is different.
globalwatcher
@moomoochoo, I've got it. I did not click on the "transcript" as you have suggested.
moomoochoo
@globalwatcher I think you need to click the "Transcript" button :P I think the audio is mostly the same as the video link I posted.
Terry Tibbs
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-25/experts-warn-of-nuclear-fire-at-fukushima/4091748
This is a hectic read indeed.
globalwatcher
You have been eating it already. Corruption of moral standards among merchants, fishermen, farmers and businesses as a whole in Japan encourages pople to do anything for money. I am sorry.
moomoochoo
You won't see this on Japanese TV. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-25/experts-warn-of-another-disaster-awaiting-at/4091826 I might be a bit late, but maybe I'll buy that geiger counter after all....
ushosh123
In the end the government can't do anything for people that won't trust them. I mean how can they label properly if you believe they are lying. With radiation that is so hard to trace, verify, and account for error in measurement. Not to mention the effects are not that well proven and come into play 10, 20 years later, how can you specifically attribute it to that? There's just too many factors that come into play over a 20 year period. If you are so afraid, I would just suggest you give up seafood all together.
basroil
FadamorJun. 25, 2012 - 09:25PM JST
Inverse square only works for point sources. In the case of ocean contamination, there's ocean currents, sedimentation, bio-concentration, etc. You can get wildly different results depending on different locations and times. Even without extra contamination you can get results saying you do if you aren't careful.
Fadamor
Penfold said:
Hmm, good point. You seem to be up on these issues, just how much radiation IS leaking into the ocean from Fukushima now? I haven't heard about any measurements since they've put the "condoms" over the buildings.
Then, of course, we need to apply the inverse square law to the dilution of that leakage to get an idea of how much area is critically contaminated.
Penfold
Basroli - if you think I am over reacting that's fine, enjoy your dinner and I'll enjoy mine. Sensenotsocommon - what keeps you here?, your love of sashimi?
SenseNotSoCommon
Penfold,
What keeps you here, then?
tmarie
Just make sure not to buy Chinese milk because of toxic protein substitutes. Or canned fruits from the Philippines with toxic levels of lead. Or NZ meats that may have hoof and mouth. Or Mexican produce with E.Coli. (etc)
Or baby formula, meat, rice, certain kinds of fish that are all over the level okay's by the government or relabeled cucumbers, raw meat that has killed people.... I won't bother with gravel and drinking water... See how easy this is? You throw it out, we can all throw it back and give examples from Japan where you claim they have such strict food guidelines...
basroil
PenfoldJun. 25, 2012 - 06:58PM JST
No kids, but if you want produce without any issues, your only choice is to hydroponically grow it yourself in a greenhouse with air and water purification. My point was that you are over-reacting and actually making things worse. Lets not forget that to import food costs dozens of tons of CO2 and toxic gasses into the air, which are worse for the environment and your kids than radiation levels that the World Health Organization states are safe enough for infants.
Penfold
Basroli Thanks for your concern, I'll try my best to avoid all the bad stuff and if you have kids you might have some recommendations as to where I can buy such produce.???
basroil
PenfoldJun. 25, 2012 - 06:40PM JST
Just make sure not to buy Chinese milk because of toxic protein substitutes. Or canned fruits from the Philippines with toxic levels of lead. Or NZ meats that may have hoof and mouth. Or Mexican produce with E.Coli. (etc)
Independent tests show that the radiation levels in food is far below the internationally accepted limits, and in fact, you are many times more likely to get mercury poisoning or bacterial infection related illness than radiation related ones.
Penfold
Shouldn't they at least stop the radiation leaking before allowing this to happen. The food chain in Japan is compromised. I try to feed my child imported food and water whenever possible.
basroil
FarmboyJun. 25, 2012 - 04:59PM JST
Interestingly though, those are still ten times lower than the internationally accepted safe levels. We are seeing these types of articles just because Japan has overly stringent regulations that sometimes are not in touch with reality.
Moderator
Back on topic please. The beef issue is not relevant to this discussion.
Cletus
basroil
No lm referring to the beef that was in excess of government set safety limits that still managed to find its way into the retail market and was sold in supermarkets and also fed to kids in their school lunches.
basroil
CletusJun. 25, 2012 - 03:19PM JST
You mean the 2000-3000Bq/kg beef discarded that was actually the same as European grown beef? Or the 500Bq/kg beef that was deemed unsafe even though it was well under half the WHO recommendations?
Cletus
Yeah right! I believe you.... NOT
No doubt it will somehow make its way to the market regardless of the readings if they even bother doing readings at all. Im sorry but l wouldnt and will not trust the fools to give truthful results. It will be like the beef all over again. And no doubt if the readings are to high the government will merely alter the safety standards again
nath
I agree with Pukey. Let the market decide, but label EVERYTHING. Saw wagyu from Fukushima the other day. Unbelievably cheap! But not interested. I'd rather pay more for food from safer sources than knowingly contribute to my risk of serious health issues later on.
nath
Great. More to be extra vigilant about at the supermarket. It was tedious enough to have to check where the meat came from every time. Now seafood too?
basroil
GWJun. 25, 2012 - 01:43PM JST
Animals move, and generally fishing boats keep track of those movements. But if they don't check for a while, they lose track of where and what direction the animals are. You'll see an increase in catch rates relatively soon.
GW
6 trawlers out fishing for 3-5days & they come back with about 500kgs......................................
Doesnt add up!
basroil
50Bq/kg? That is 20 times the WHO recommended levels for INFANTS. Even at 100Bq/kg, you have statistically zero chance of any side effects. , and 50Bq is so low most devices can't accurately measure it and are drowned out by the radiation from K-40 and C-14 which are also both beta decay isotopes naturally found in any living thing.
And I thought Japan had a limit of 500Bq/kg, when did it become ten times more stringent?
smithinjapan
Oh, come off it. It's not the first time seafood caught off Fukushima has been sold -- it's been sold as 'origin: Pacific Ocean' for a while now. This is probably just the first time they're going to label it 'Fukushima', although I wonder if they'll do even that.
Franchesca Miyara Yang
@Pukey2
Thumbs up!
OMGhontoni
I agree with Pukey - label it all up correctly, put it on the shelves and let the market decide.
Ben Jack
No, thank you.
nath
Cooks itself!!!!
saru_au
thank you for helping clean up the radiation leaks, please keep it up !
tokyokawasaki
Huh! We all know that is has always been sold. Just now it is official. It will still get mislabeled anyway.
Pukey2
People should be allowed to eat this stuff if they want, but everything needs to be labeled properly so that folks like me can avoid anything from that and neighboring regions. Unfortunately not everything can be tested, and, from past experiences, some Japanese individuals and companies will lie just to get rid of their stock. It's already happened with beef, green tea and god knows what.
I saw Fukushima cucumbers on sale this week. Cheap as dirt. Still wasn't interested.
nisegaijin
Well, it's the same from Fukushima,Izu, Hokkaido or whetre this current takes these waters to... I feel sorry for polar bears.
I mean this article appears just a month after another one saying they found cessium in tuna off the coast of California.
That article also said that most of the cessium was metabolized and it was obtained by this tuna by consuming sea organisms near the coast of Japan. How much more evidence do you require to stay away from sea food from Japan and be very careful with the rest of it, especially Asia!
cubic
Place your bets now - how long until the press conference and "moushiwake arimasendeshita" ?
NetNinja
Bon Appetit!!!
TSRnow
So, my big question is, where did all the cesium that was supposed to be sinking in the ocean beds go? Did the current take it elsewhere?
nandakandamanda
If they really wanted to reassure everyone, they should announce a regime of once-a-day random testing.
Failing that there should be a regular once-a-week general check.
Failing that I would like to see them check everything at least once a month.
What? Yearly? No? Not even that?
"They checked it already. In the name of non-discrimination, seafood from Fukushima is safe."
2020hindsights
I wonder why they chose now to restart selling.
Jonathan Hunt
Oh, get over yourselves. We've all been eating the stuff all year. It's fine.
Mirai Hayashi
boycott
OMGhontoni
What, as opposed to all the seafood allegedly caught off Fukushima, allegedly landed in other ports, and allegedly relabelled as "Chiba" or suchlike that has been allegedly on supermarket shelves for the last year?
Cricky
Got to be joking? Sadly no
Beer4me
its all heading to kaiten sushi joints any how.
tmarie
I highly, highly doubt this is the first time things have been caught and sold. Relabeling is a huge issue here after all. Weren't they just catching and testing last week? Why no release of the test info?? Oh right, too many questions, never mind...