Posted on 08/09/2011 12:51:43 PM PDT by ransomnote
Full Title: Radioactive Rice to Come? Rice Growing in a Rice Paddy with 35,000 Becquerels/kg of Radioactive Cesium?
No wonder the first trading of rice futures in Osaka fetched 40% premium over the exchange-suggested contract price.
If this number is correct, the harvest season in Japan will be indeed "chaos".
From the tweet of Ryuichi Kino, who has attended and reported on almost all TEPCO/government press conferences regarding the Fukushima accident since March, reporting on the TEPCO/government joint press conference on August 8: SNIP (Japanese text) Germany's ZDF Television is here. Said 35,000 becquerels/kg [of radioactive cesium, most likely] has been found in the soil of a rice paddy planted with rice, and asked if the government does any thorough check. Hosono [minister in charge of the nuclear accident] consulted with his staff for a very long time, and said they will confirm the number. He said the government will check the rice as they grow in the rice paddies.
The transfer factor from the soil to rice is considered to be about 0.1. 35,000 becquerels/kg in soil may result in 3,500 becquerels/kg of harvested rice, 7 times the provisional safety limit which is already far too loose for the staple like rice.
I've found the video clip for this part. It's the rice paddy in Fukushima City. Fukushima City was OUTSIDE the evacuation zone of any kind, so the soil was apparently never tested by the prefectural government. The reporter asks the question in English, with a Japanese interpreter.
SNIP
35,000 becquerels/kg of cesium in soil would translate into 2,275,000 becquerels/square meter (35,000 x 65), which is way above the forced evacuation criterion in the Chernobyl accident (1,480,000 becquerels/square meter).
(Excerpt) Read more at ex-skf.blogspot.com ...
I don’t understand all that tech talk.
Can we get it to cook itself? Save energy.
About how many KT Courics is that?
It’s OK as long as it doesn’t glow in the dark and make you throw up.
Make sake. Sell it as especially invigorating...
Export it?
Why not? Advertize drinking it as a macho thang...
I wonder where the radioactive rice will go? Might they export it to third world countries?
I see in the comment section of the article that a reader says that the rice will be used as an ingredient in many other foods sold in Japan. So even if you don’t buy bags of rice in Japan you could still end up eating it as ingredients added to other foods.
So Tequila has a worm at the bottom of the bottle and Sake can have a few grains of glowing rice at the bottom....
Hmmmmm. Maybe a little luciferin and luciferase? As soon as you open the bottle and pour it would start to use the oxygen in the air to glow...
It’s worrisome. Being aware of anything grown in Japan is the best option we have now.
They’ll sell it to China, China will sell it to us...
Agreed. When I wrote that it would be used in other ingredients of foods sold in Japan I was really thinking (but not writing!) that the Japanese citizens have either the possibility of eating contaminated rice directly or, when switching to alternative prepared foods, eating contaminated rice indirectly as an ingredient or paste or starch or rice flour or rice milk etc. You make a good point though - we do import some foods like rice flour, rice proteins etc. which are ingredients that may be in made into foods like protein bars etc. To get past import limits on radiation, they may mix higher levels of contaminated rice with lower levels of contaminated rice - it’s kind of what they were doing with tea etc. in Japan.
*Ding Ding Ding Ding* We have a WINNER!
Hadn’t thought of that. I know that the Japanese are catching tuna off the coast of Fukushima where they dumped massive amounts of radioactive water and then rather than go into ports in Fukushima, the fishing boats make their way to ports farther away so their catch will not be stamped as having originated from Fukushima or the ports their. By sailing to other ports they conceal the origin of the fish.
I have wondered if China will buy some of Japan’s pearl harvest (pearl beds are located north along the coast of Fukushima which is ‘downstream’ of the plant’s radioactive wastes since currents flow north there) and sell them as Chinese pearls?
If China sells us rice, they may have to mix it with non irradiated rice to bring it down to US import limits on radiation.
I won’t stop eating rice, but I may buy a Geiger counter.
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