By the end of the summer, Japan will compile a radiation contamination map
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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The Ministry of Science of Japan intends to create a special radiation contamination map that will display the level of radioactive elements in the soil emitted into the atmosphere as a result of the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant after the March earthquake, NHK television reported on Thursday.
Data collection will begin in June. Employees of more than 25 universities and research centers will make measurements on more than 2.2 thousand sites. At the same time, as noted in the report, measurements of radionuclide content within a radius of 80 kilometers around the emergency nuclear power plant will be carried out every four square kilometers, in the rest of the country - every hundred square kilometers.
The analysis will be subject to soil samples taken at a depth of five centimeters from the surface.
It is expected that the map will be made public by the end of August.
After a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11 in Japan, a series of accidents caused by the failure of the cooling system was recorded in the Fukushima-1 NPP in the northeast of the country. As a result of incidents at the nuclear power plant, several leakages of radiation were detected, which forced the authorities to evacuate people from the 20-kilometer zone around the nuclear power plant, ban people from being in the exclusion zone, and send urgent recommendations for the evacuation of residents in a number of areas within a 30-kilometer radius more from nuclear power plants.
Later information began to appear about the detection of radioactive elements in Japan, in particular, iodine and cesium isotopes, in air, sea and drinking water, as well as in products.
As it became known in May, the first, second and third blocks of the station were melted fuel assemblies due to the fact that electricity shortages after the earthquake led to the termination of the supply of cooling water. According to experts, all three reactors are likely to have a worse scenario, according to which melting fuel rods led to the so-called "melt-down" phenomenon, when nuclear fuel falls out of molten rods and accumulates in the lower part of the reactor vessel.
The operator of the TEPCO nuclear power plant stated that it expects stabilization of the situation at the emergency power units of the nuclear power plant within approximately six to nine months, and a significant reduction in the radiation level in the station area within three months.
The Japanese Agency for Nuclear and Industrial Safety (NISA) announced on April 12 about assigning the maximum - the seventh level of danger of the accident to "Fukushima-1." The seventh level of nuclear danger was established only once - during the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986.
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