New Images Reveal Nuclear Fuel Rack Exposed to AirFrom Liveleak, via Godlike Productions.New video from Arnie Gundersen, explaining how serious Reactor Four's lack of any water in the cooling pool is. Very. Very Very Serious.
NEARLY 1,000 bodies of victims of the Japan earthquake and tsunami are not being collected because of fears they have been exposed to radiation.
Radioactive human remains would create a huge problem as cremating them could spread the radiation, while burying them could lead to it simply leaking into the surrounding ground.
Nuclear energy just never stops giving, now does it?
On Friday, the government said it will start spraying a synthetic resin over debris on plant grounds.Authorities hope that coating the area with the sticky resin will prevent contamination, present on debris that was spread in explosions to reactor buildings, from being blown to surrounding regions.
Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant face new threats to their health after radiation exceeding safety levels was found to have seeped into groundwater near the facility.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), was the target of further criticism amid reports that some workers at the site had not been provided with personal radiation monitors.(Completely incompetent, or ever worshipful to The Bottom Line? This is Privatized Response.)
Tepco's handling of the crisis has come under closer scrutiny since three workers were exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation last week. They have all been discharged from hospital after suffering no ill effects. .. Earlier on Friday Tepco reported that groundwater beneath one of the plant's six reactors contained levels of radioactive iodine 10,000 times higher than government standards.
TOKYO: Japanese workers struggling to contain a crisis at a crippled nuclear plant discovered Saturday a crack in a pit leaking highly radioactive water straight into the sea, the firm operating the facility said.
As emergency crew members rushed to cement the crack, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said it is also preparing to take samples from the ocean near the Fukushima nuclear plant to determine the level of contamination. (So we have no idea how bad this will be yet: None.)
"Today, at about 9:30 am (0030 GMT), workers found that some water, with a radioactivity of 1,000 millisievert per hour, had accumulated in a pit near reactor number two's water intake facility," a TEPCO official said.
"They then found that a 20 centimetre (eight-inch) crack had emerged in the pit and that radioactive water was leaking directly into the sea."
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's prime minister made his first visit to the country's tsunami-devastated region on Saturday and entered a nuclear exclusion zone to meet workers grappling to end the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Japanese automakers Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. plan to resume regular vehicle production in Japan in mid-April after a month-long stoppage, but said output levels will be modest initially.
Toyota, Japan's largest car maker, hasn't said when it expects to resume normal auto-making operations.
The industry is watching the pace of recovery in Japan, where a record earthquake unleashed a tsunami, destroying or damaging a large number of parts-makers.
An unemployed man from Tokyo was arrested Friday after allegedly intruding by car into the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant premises, near the radiation-leaking Fukushima Daiichi plant in Fukushima Prefecture, police said.
Hikaru Watanabe, 25, from Shinjuku Ward, allegedly broke through the western gate of the Daini plant around 1:10 p.m. Thursday, before driving inside its premises for about 10 minutes, the plants' operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said, adding that no one was injured in the incident.
Watanabe was arrested on suspicion of unlawful entry and property destruction, the local police said, adding that he admitted to the allegations.The purpose of the intrusion remains unknown.
The thousands of employees of Reactor Park No 2 are not exempt from getting Zapped by the outgoing 70 Billion Lethal Doses of deadly Radiation in the air just because they work for the electric company, Tepco.
If you were working there what would you do faced with that question? "Would you go to work today?"
The loss of two nuclear power plants means the Tokyo region will face the summer peak demand with a loss of about 20% of capacity, the plant's owner said Thursday.
File this under: This was fucking smart, now wasn't it?
Other utilities can supply only a limited amount of additional electricity to the Tokyo Electric Power Co. grid because (Wait for it..)Tokyo Electric runs power at a different frequency from the rest of the country, according to industry officials. .. Tokyo Electric, Japan's largest power utility, uses 50-cycle power,while most of the rest of the country uses 60-cycle electricity.Because of a lack of machinery, only a limited amount of about 1 million kilowatts can be converted and shared, according to industry officials. And: Building conversion facilities to share power from other grids would be almost as expensive as building a new power plant, a Tokyo Electric official said Thursday.
- Japan will take control of Tokyo Electric Power Co , the operator of the plant, in the face of mounting public concerns over the crisis and a huge potential compensation bill, the Manichi newspaper reported on Friday. The government has said it has not decided how to support TEPCO.
- UN watchdog on Thursday suggested widening of the exclusion zone around Fukushima nuclear power station after radiation measured at a village 40 km from the facility exceeded a criterion for evacuation.
- Japanese manufacturing activity slumped to a two-year low in March and posted the sharpest monthly fall on record as the quake and tsunami hit supply chains and output.
Thousands of Japanese and US troops launched an intensive air and sea operation on Friday to recover bodies of those killed in the huge earthquake and tsunami that ravaged northeast Japan three weeks ago.
The grim search came as the government revealed that radiation from a nuclear power plant crippled by the twin disaster had been found in groundwater, with contamination already reported in the air, ocean and food.
In the search for bodies, Japanese and US armed forces deployed 120 aircraft and 65 ships for a three-day search along the northeast coast, where houses, ships, cars and trains still lay scattered across the muddy wastelands.
A total of 24,000 military personnel were to join the massive sweep, media said. "The focus will be along the coastline, river mouths and land areas still submerged in sea water," a Japanese ground forces official told AFP.
And once again our prediction about Fukushima (namely the inevitable entombment of the entire facility in thousands of tons of concrete) is about to be realized. Bloomberg reports that Japan will consider pouring concrete into its crippled Fukushima atomic plant to reduce radiation and contain the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.The reason for the admission of total defeat is the gradual comprehension that the worst case scenario has come to pass: "The risk to workers might be greater than previously thought because melted fuel in the No. 1 reactor building may be causing isolated, uncontrolled nuclear chain reactions, Denis Flory, nuclear safety director for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a press conference in Vienna." Not one to cover up the worst case outcome for a week, TEPCO only did so... for five days:"Radioactive chlorine found March 25 in the Unit 1 turbine building suggests chain reactions continued after the reactor shut down, physicist Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, wrote in a March 28 paper." It's good thought" Radioactive chlorine has a half-life of 37 minutes, according to the report." Itappears Japan is willing to give up, and write off a several hundred square kilometer area, as nobody in their right mind will ever agree to move in next to a territory that, contrary to lies, er, promises, will not seep radioactivity in the soil and in the water. This is an unprecedented admission of defeat by the Japanese which unfortunately may be the only solution, which will certainly have major implications for the Japanese economy.
Japan is to decommission four stricken reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, the operator says.
Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) made the announcement three weeks after failing to bring reactors 1 - 4 under control. Locals would be consulted on reactors 5 and 6, which were shut down safely.
Harmful levels of radioactivity have been detected in the area.
Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s disaster plans greatly underestimated the scope of a potential accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant,calling for only one stretcher, one satellite phone and 50 protective suits in case of emergencies.
Disaster-response documents for Fukushima Daiichi, examined by The Wall Street Journal, also contain few guidelines for obtaining outside help, providing insight into why Japan struggled to cope with a nuclear crisis after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the facility.
The disaster plans, approved by Japanese regulators, offer guidelines for responding to smaller emergencies and outline in detail how to back up key systems in case of failure. Yet the plans fail to envision the kind of worst-case scenario that befell Japan: damage so extensive that the plant couldn't respond on its own or call for help from nearby plants.There are no references to Tokyo firefighters, Japanese military forces or U.S. equipment, all of which the plant operators eventually relied upon to battle their overheating reactors.
The main disaster-readiness manual, updated annually, envisions the fax machine as a principal means of communication with the outside world and includes detailed forms for Tepco managers when faxing government officials. One form offers a multiple-choice list of disasters, including "loss of AC power," "inability to use the control room" and "probable nuclear chain reaction outside the reactor."
Again, to stress the point: This is what happens with a limited-government regulations, and a Privatized Response. Again, to stress the point: We are fucked.
The spent uranium rods were blown sky high in reactor 3 and deposited in the ocean which is adjacent to the reactors. Probably hundreds of them are sitting on the bottom.
Over the last several weeks, I've become wistful for 1993. It wasn't a particularly easy year for me personally, but vibe of Everyday Life was so much lighter, slower, less dense than it is now. Looking back at our recent history, 1993 was the last realistic year we had to "course correct" away from what has mutated into our present path. Of course, We as a Society had no idea the lateness of hour, so nothing changed, and our fate was effectively sealed.
But, in reality, 1993 was already way too late, too..
Due to my age now and then, I look to that time as a time of prolonged calm and optimism after 12 years of the Reagan/Bush 80's. 1993 felt like we were finally on the Right Path, and we were well on our way.. Which, in reality, we were not. The cards were still stacked against us, yet we believed otherwise.
And now, here we are. I wish we had more vigilant, but now there is nothing to be done about the past. Maybe the lesson isn't about mistakes from that past, but preventing making even bigger mistakes in our present, and immediate futures..
In the meantime, when taking a break from Japan and Libya and Financial Meltdown and domestic turmoil and general disaster fatigue, I'll be looking back to 93, thinking of sunny days and smiling people and crowded restaurants and MTV and past friends and all of future's promise, all there, every morning, just like it was the night before..
I stumbled upon Goro Adachi's site close to eight years ago, and have been fascinated with this man's thought process ever since. He is the Interpreter of Multicontextural Reality. He is fluent in the language of Symbolic Events and in the art of decoding said Events. From his March 30th post:
Last year it was was oil (BP/Gulf). This year it's radiation. The poison. Once the container is breached, it's too late. Pandora's Box unleashes its contents and it's history, we live in it.
And so in this way our world interacts with the "underworld" - the realm beyond the threshold of awareness and physicality where Osiris, Atlantis, Lucifer, King Arthur, the phoenix all reside.Truth, poisonous to the world of lies and illusions, bides its time there.Like fire, truth is a two-edged sword, often too hot to handle. It has to be under control, otherwise meltdown ensues and the world is in peril. .. The radioactive brick road's next destination is ~April 7-8... the last stop before we enter the dark rabbit hole that is the latter half of April. And: As you may have guessed, plutonium was named after the dwarf planet Pluto which in turn took its name from the Greek god of the underworld Pluto (aka Hades), reiterating the connection between nuclear/radioactivity and the Underworld.Pluto (very slow-moving) is currently right inside the Milky Way as viewed from Earth near the Galactic Center, or in other words, in the so-called "Dark Rift" which the Maya considered a portal to their Underworld, "Xibalba".So we have a double-underworld configuration going now in that part of the sky, which became triple when Venus transited the same region late January-early February 2011. We felt its impact down here on the earth in the form of the Egyptian Revolution the duration of which (January 25-February 11) precisely matched that of Venus' trek across the Dark Rift.The two planets, Venus and Pluto, were closest to each other (literally side by side near the Galactic Center) on February 9-11 or right at the climax of the revolution (resignation of president Mubarak on Feb 11).
Even after the years of reading, I'm still a novice, but am becoming more versed in recurring themes, periods of time, relevant mythology, and astronomical alignments, and how these are woven together to form a predictive narrative from someone who clearly sees what others don't, and understands those quiet, but ever-present signals as bits of light and clarity, lighting the way through the darkness and confusion surrounding them.
If you've got plenty of time, Goro's entire archive is at the top right of the Etemenanki page.
Goro's also got some devoted fans, like The Boxer Rebellion, who wrote a song about him..
Etemenanki isn't for everyone. Far from it. But if it is for you, you'll never see World Events the same way you do now.
The radioactive core in one reactor at Fukushima's beleaguered nuclear power plant appeared to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel, an expert warned yesterday, sparking fears that workers would not be able to save the reactor and that radioactive gases could soon be released into the atmosphere.
Richard Lahey, who was a head of reactor safety research at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, said the workers, who have been pumping water into the three reactors in an attempt to keep the fuel rods from melting, had effectively lost their battle."The core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell," he said.
The damning analysis came as it emerged that workers at Japan's stricken nuclear plant are reportedly being offered huge sums to brave high radiation in an attempt to bring its overheated reactors under control.
The prime minister of Japan has said that his government is “not in a position where we can be optimistic” about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Is there any logical conclusion to draw from that statement other than that a large chunk of Japan is going to be uninhabitable?
They’ve got four nuclear reactors right next to each other in various states of disaster and probably meltdown. Two more are damaged. The workers on site are exhausted, sick and dying. The ocean and air around the plant are highly radioactive. The surrounding farms are producing radioactive vegetables. The drinking water in Tokyo is radioactive. If the Fukushima reactors keep exploding and burning and blowing radiation into the reservoirs, how long before Tokyo becomes Jonestown with a population of 13,000,000?
Michio Kaku, the physicist and author, has suggested on CNN that the best option right now is entombment. There’s nothing to salvage, he said, so the Japanese government should get some shielded helicopters and dump sand, boric acid, dolomite and concrete on the reactors and bury them for eternity. This could be done in ten days, he said, if they just got the materials together, which they aren’t doingbecause the government is not facing the implications of its own declared lack of optimism.
I’m not a physicist, but entombment at Chernobyl was vastly more complicated than Kaku was able to discuss in the time limits of American television. The Chernobyl reactor had to be mostly neutralized before being permanently buried, which meant that 800,000 or so “liquidators” had to run into the plant, perform some menial task in the presence of boiling nuclear waste for a minute or two, and then run out. Most of them are now sick, dying or dead from radiation poisoning.
Perhaps burying Fukushima will be a more complicated process, because it has a lot more waste lying around and four out-of-control reactors while Chernobyl had just one. I don’t know. Either way, there is a moral problem that needs to be discussed.
In 2004, Leuren Moret warnedin the Japan Times of the exact type of nuclear catastrophe that Japan is now experiencing:
Of all the places in all the world where no one in their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near the top of the list.
*** Japan sits on top of four tectonic plates, at the edge of the subduction zone, and is in one of the most tectonically active regions of the world. *** Nonetheless, like many countries around the world -- where General Electric and Westinghouse designs are used in 85 percent of all commercial reactors -- Japan has turned to nuclear power as a major energy source *** Many of those reactors have been negligently sited on active faults, particularly in the subduction zone along the Pacific coast, where major earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 or more on the Richter scale occur frequently. The periodicity of major earthquakes in Japan is less than 10 years. There is almost no geologic setting in the world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan -- the third-ranked country in the world for nuclear reactors.
"I think the situation right now is very scary," says Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist and professor at Kobe University. "It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode."
The nuclear safety crisis entering its third week in Japan was not exactly the disaster that long-term activist and author Takashi Hirose foresaw in his book last summer, "Nuclear Reactor Time Bomb".
But except for the location --Hirose had predicted an imminent megaquake and nuclear accident at the Hamaoka plant 200 km southwest of Tokyo, not the Fukushima Daiichi plant 240 km northeast-- the scenario depicted in his first book on nuclear power in 15 years has proved eerily prescient.
As Hirose watches what he believes is a bungled response by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) (9501.T), which runs the plant, his fears are as strong as ever that a repeat is set to hit on the other side of the Japanese capital.
"I think it will definitely occur soon," he said, citing geological research on earthquake cycles suggesting that a massive quake may be imminent in the Tokai region near the Hamaoka plant.
Seawater outside the hobbled nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan was found to contain 3,335 times the usual amount of radioactive iodine — the highest rate yet and a sign that more contaminated water was making its way into the ocean, officials said Wednesday.
The amount of iodine-131 found offshore some 300 yards (meters) south of the coastal Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant does not pose an immediate threat to human healthbut was a "concern," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official. He said there was no fishing in the area.
Last-minute planners beware: Spirit Airlines has added fees for travelers who wait to pay for carry-on or checked luggage within 24 hours of departure.
Calling its previous bag fees an "Early Bird Discount," the airline will now charge travelers who pay for checked or carry-on bags within 24 hours of departure online an extra $5 and an extra $10 for travelers who pay over the phone. .. Fliers who pay for carry-ons early -- and aren't members of the airline's fare club -- pay $30 for a carry-on that won't fit under the seat. Spirit became the only U.S. carrier to charge for carry-on bags when it instituted new fees in April 2010
This is nice..
Spirit Airlines also has dropped its threshold for overweight checked bags from 50 pounds to 40 pounds.
So if your bag weighs between 41 and 50 pounds, you'll pay an additional $25 on top of whatever you paid to check the bag. Checked bag fees start at $28 for the first bag checked online or by phone -- 24 hours in advance -- for travelers who aren't part of the airline's fare club.
Other U.S. airlines start charging fees for overweight luggage at 50 pounds.
"Evil Spirit Airlines" is pretty funny. Listen: Evil. Spirit. Airlines. Yeah, that's the good stuff.
So, on the advent of your desperate money grab new policy changes, Evil Spirit Spirit Airlines, we wish you well.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said his government is in a state of maximum alert over the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.
Plutonium has been detected in soil at the facility and highly radioactive water has leaked from a reactor building.
Officials say the priority remains injecting water to cool the fuel rods.
Mr Kan told parliament the situation at the quake-hit plant "continues to be unpredictable".
The government "will tackle the problem while in a state of maximum alert", he said, adding that he was seeking advice on whether to extend the evacuation zone around the plant.
Meanwhile National Strategy Minister Koichiro Gemba said the government could consider temporarily nationalising Tepco, the company running the plant.
On its own, TEPCO will NEVER get ahead of this situation. They should step aside, and allow the rest of the world to entomb this nuclear abomination in concrete. This massive release of radiation must be fully stopped, and soon.
Radiation levels that can prove fatal were detected outside reactor buildings at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant,signaling a partial fuel meltdown and complicating efforts to contain the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Water in a tunnel outside the No. 2 reactor had radiation levels exceeding 1 sievert an hour, a spokesman for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. told reporters yesterday. Exposure to that dose for 30 minutes would trigger nausea and four hours might lead to death within two months, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A partial meltdown of fuel rods in the No. 2 reactor probably caused a jump in the readings, Japan Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. Preventing the contaminated water from leaking into the ground or air is key to containing the spread of radiation beyond the plant.
The inevitable consequence of that will be a dramatic withering of the cultural, social, commercial and economic life of the huge Tokyo megalopolis. As more and more people abandon Tokyo it will become a radioactive shadow of its former self. Of course the economic implications of that for global finance and commerce are immense, Tokyo is one of the three major centers of high finance in the world, along with London and New York, so its abandonment therefore has ineluctable repercussions that will rock the modern, global civilization to its core.(This is not an overstatement.) And: The plain English translation of all of this activity is that the evacuation of Fukushima, of Japan, and of Tokyo, has already begun.Large numbers of people are already “voluntarily” on the move and fleeing from harm's way. The longer the crisis grinds on, the greater the numbers of people who will leave.
The impact on Japan, Tokyo and the world is incalculable.The dominoes are just beginning to topple and where this concatenation of catastrophic events will finally end, no one can say with certainty just yet.
But I can promise you this much: The Mother Of All Radioactive Roller Coaster Rides has left the starting gate and life will never again be the same for any of us.These weeks, thus, effectively mark the end of one era, and implicitly herald the beginning of another.
We are in new territory now, uncharted, radioactive territory and as this crisis grinds on, one of its initial big victims will assuredly be the city of Tokyo.If these reactors cannot be brought under control then its fate is all but sealed.
Those who think Japan's Fukushima disaster is today's headlines and tomorrow's history need to take a good look at the Chernobyl disaster, which to this day is a continuing threat to the people of Ukraine. It will be hundreds of years before the area around the destroyed reactor is inhabitable again and there are disputes over whether or not Chernobyl's nuclear fuel still poses a threat of causing another explosion. There is also a teetering reactor core cover and the deteriorating sarcophagus itself that may collapse and send plumes of radioactive dust in all directions.
Over the last two days workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have discovered numerous pools of radioactive water in reactor turbine buildings and maintenance trenches. This contamination has given Japanese officials yet another tough problem to deal with as they struggle to bring the crippled complex back under control.
The radioactive water in these pools also poses a mystery: Where is it coming from?
I don't know. In the millions of hours of collected, recorded television/media footage throughout the course of the camera's invention, I'm sure lots of examples of these strokes or seizures or aphasia are out there, making their way onto various blooper reels, but I don't remember seeing any of them. Not that I haven't seen some, or many, but as dramatic as these episodes are, I don't ever recollect specific incidentsseen, or any memories about my reaction to that event, either.. I am sure, though,that I'veneverseen threeof these events clustered this tightly(Considering The Grammys were six weeks ago..). Odd, indeed.
My top three reasons/factors: 1. Aspartamerelated Neurological Disorders. 2.MK Ultraconfusion. 3. The Matrix isbreaking down.
Federal agency recognizes pot for medical useIt seems as if the government just lost its biggest legal tool in persecuting prosecuting Marijuana dispensaries in states where Medical Marijuana is legal. Nice excerpts here:
Medical marijuana dispensaries currently under fire from the IRS may have been handed a critical new weapon in their fight to stay open.The National Cancer Institute, one of the many federal agencies who make up the National Institute of Health, has ruled that marijuana does in fact have medical benefits, making it the first federal agency to do so.
The NCI has issued a statement that in clinical trials, cancer patients successfully treated nausea and vomiting, sleeplessness, pain, and loss of appetite using marijuana.It stated that cannabis was being investigated as having not only a palliative effect on symptoms, but also a possible "direct antitumor effect".
The new NCI assessment could have an impact on the classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug, the harshest possible drug classification,which has resulted in a prison population in which 1 in 8 prisoners in the U.S. is locked up for a marijuana-related offense.One of theprincipal criteria for a Schedule I determination is that there be “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” The U.S. Justice Department may have a hard time maintaining that claim if challenged, considering a federal agency now recognizes marijuana’s medical use in cancer treatment.
So, the effect of this ruling will be immediate? Now that a government agency has assigned medicinal value to marijuana, does that nullify any more prosecutions, or is there some form of appeal AG Holder will use to continue busting pot shops despite this ruling? If this development stands, this ruling will be remembered as a turning point in the phony War on Drugs, when rational opinions about Marijuana began to prevail, and the tide visibly began to turn..
Mercury goes retrograde April 30th, so Aquarius Papers details the aspects and implications. Short answer?
..adapt to the slowing pace of things, be willing to put some things on hold for a little while, and take a look at what's been set into motion up to now with an eye to seeing what has to be done before things can again move forward in 2011. And: This period will be highly energizeddue to Mercury conjunct the Sun, both conjunct Jupiter during the entire retrograde period.Add that these will also oppose Saturn, as will Mars, during the 3 week retrograde and many hard realities and/or concrete opportunities will be very evident by the end of April.Just be willing to let go of lesser duties and limitations, and concentrate on learning, since this retrograde is one where we can train our mind and speech in very favorable ways.
Also:
For all of us, during the next several weeks the future that's already rolling forward will slow a little so we can get a new look at crucial elements of the process we cannot afford to ignore.This will help us shape our expectations of types of future fulfillment, and many will see one or more promises redeemed. This one helps us rehearse or do the research we need to get ready to spring forward at the end of April. And of course, more on this very important Mercury retrograde period will come soon!
..Hartwell said he's certain the isotopes came from Japan because they're not usually detected in Nevada. But he said the readings were far below levels that could pose any health risks. .. California, Colorado, Hawaii and Washington have also reported tiny amounts of radiation from the Japan accident. Officials have said those levels also are not harmful. .. Nevada health officials have said they do not expect any risk to the state from Japanese radiation releases because of the distance the materials would have to travel.
"Any material released must travel 10,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, during which time it will be dispersed and diluted in the atmosphere to levels that might eventually be detectable, but which will not present a health hazard nor require any protective actions," said Eric Matus, radiation physicist for the Nevada State Health Division.
These readings and explanations would be better accepted as valid, provided the event was fully contained, and these were the final readings. They Are Not. When you read these stories, keep in mind, this situation is: 1. An Ongoing Event. 2. Increasing in Size, Scope, and Intensity. 3. Deteriorating. 600 people standing between us and ELE have been working nonstop in a highly radioactive situation. They won't live much longer. Soon, the ratio of People Averting Disaster to Disaster will be changing drastically, towards Disaster's favor.
Globally, Japan is fucking downwind from North America. When the readings continue to increase, and the effects become clearer, what will officialdom say six, ten, twenty four months from now?
..quite apart from the impact detailed above to global supply chains as key manufacturers and component suppliers are knocked out,it is also having some unexpected short-term and possible long-term effects.
One immediate impact is that the country is now sucking in imports of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP)as local production shutdowns hit supplies. Demand is primarily for linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) used mainly for foodpackaging, as well as commodity PP in the automotive sector.
Expect to see more unexpected shortages as supply chains and components dry up, spread, and manifest throughout the global markets. Knocking the world's third largest economy off its foundations will be globally felt, quickly, and comprehensively. These anomalous-looking shortage events are just the beginning of the spike.
THE economic disruptions from Japan's crisis have cascaded into another crucial link in the global supply chain, cargo shipping.
Fearing the potential impact on crews, cargo and vessels worth tens of millions of dollars, some of the world's biggest container shipping lines have restricted or barred their ships from calling on ports in Tokyo Bay because of concerns about radiation from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. And: Big Japanese ports much farther south of Tokyo, like Osaka and Kobe, are still loading and unloading cargo. But the Tokyo Bay ports of Tokyo and Yokohama are normally Japan's two busiest, representing as much as 40 per cent of the nation's foreign container cargo.If other shipping companies join those already avoiding the Tokyo area, as radiation contamination spreads from Fukushima 225 kilometres north, the delays in getting goods in and out of Japan would only get worse.
The shipping industry's fears have escalated since port officials in Xiamen in China detected radiation on a large container ship belonging to Mitsui OSK Lines last week. The vessel, which is under quarantine, had sailed down Japan's north-eastern coast and reportedly came no closer than 130 kilometres to the damaged nuclear plant.
When the quake and tsunami hit Japan, the spillover effects were thought to be economic ones, stemming from Japan's need for funding to rebuild the disaster-hit areas.
No one thought about the spillover effect from nuclear power, particularly the energy authorities in Thailand. .. The incident in Japan raises the question of how can developing countries deal with a crisis of this proportion, when the country with the best security measures is facing great difficulties. Nearly two weeks after the quake, the reactors in Fukushima remain in a precarious state with the likelihood that reactor No 3 could suffer a meltdown.
Low levels of radioactive iodine linked to the nuclear disaster in Japan were detected in a sample of rainwater in Massachusetts, state health officials announced yesterday.
The concentration of radioiodine-131 found in the sample is very low and did not affect the health of the state’s drinking-water supplies, said John Auerbach, commissioner of the Department of Public Health.(Again; At the moment/Right now)
The rain sample was taken during the past week in Boston as part of regular monitoring by the US Environmental Protection Agency. No detectable increases in radiation were discovered in the air that was tested in the same location where the rainwater was collected, Auerbach said at a press conference yesterday at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute in Jamaica Plain.
Apologists for the type of old, unsafe nuclear reactors which are leaking in Japan argue that the amount of radiation released from Fukushima is small compared to the amount of "background radiation".
There Are NO Background Levels of Radioactive Caesium or Iodine.
Video from TheCruise Ship Jobs Guru Guy. This is him now. Rambling, intermittent weeping, anger.. It's all here, and it's sincere.. The evacuation notice is unofficial, of course--He's telling the world what his acquaintances are doing. This is now Life in Tokyo: Isolation, unreliable knowledge, massive Unknowns, not knowing What's Next, Helplessness, and palpable Tension and Fear. Those poor people..
Japan on Sunday faced an increasing challenge of removing highly radioactive water found inside buildings near some troubled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, with the radiation level of the surface of the pool in the basement of the No. 2 reactor's turbine building found to be more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour.
Exposure to such an environment for four hours would raise the risk of dying in 30 days. Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the government's nuclear safety agency, said the figure is ''quite high'' but authorities must find a way to pump out the water without sending workers too close to push ahead with the restoration work.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the concentration of radioactive substances of the puddle was 10 million times higher than that seen usually in water in a reactor core,but later decided to reanalyze the data because it found some errors.(Again with the vague bullshit..)
Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric, known as TEPCO, is studying whether highly toxic plutonium is contained in the soil of the plant. The No. 3 reactor was using plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel for so-called ''pluthermal'' power generation.
Japan appeared resigned on Monday to a long fight to contain the world's worst atomic crisis in 25 years after high radiation levels complicated work at its crippled nuclear plant.
Radiation at the plant has soared in recent days: latest readings at the weekend showed contamination 100,000 times normal in water at reactor No. 2 and 1,850 times normal in the nearby sea. .. "It's very worrying ... there is something seriously wrong (at No. 2)," said Rianne Teule, a nuclear expert for environmental group Greenpeace based in South Africa.
Under-pressure plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) conceded what experts have long been saying: that Japan now faces a protracted and uncertain operation to contain overheating fuel rods and prevent a meltdown.
Further afield, beyond the evacuation zone around Fukushima, there has been plenty of evidence of radiation -- from tap water in Tokyo 240 km (150 miles) south of the nuclear facilityto particles found as far away as Iceland. This is not a fucking "local event." This is not a "local event." Do--You--Understand?
Tyler Durden points out that - when you consider the fact that the amount of Caesium-137 released at Fukushima in the first 3-4 days of the crisis amounted to 50% that released by Chernobyl over 10 days - the real run rate of the radiation released at Fukushima is now about 120-150% the figure released by the Chernobyl explosion.
There are other signs of high levels radiation. See this and this. And it is important to remember that the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.
Highly radioactive pools of water found inside buildings near some troubled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant highlighted the deepening seriousness of the nuclear crisis in Japan on Sunday, with the radiation level of the surface of the water in the basement of the No. 2 reactor's turbine building found to be over 1,000 millisieverts per hour.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the government's nuclear safety agency, said, ''This is quite a high figure...and it is likely to be coming from the reactor.''
Adding to woes is the increasing level of contamination in the sea near the plant. Radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration 1,850 times the legal limit was detected from water extracted Saturday, compared with the 1,250.8 times the limit found Friday, the agency said.
Citing a telephone interview, the newspaper wrote that the world's chief nuclear inspector said his biggest concern now centered on spent fuel rods sitting in open cooling pools atop reactor buildings of the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi plant, about 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.
More than two weeks after the March 11 massive quake-tsunami disaster, which crippled the plant, Amano cautioned that the nuclear emergency could still go on for weeks, if not months, given the enormous damage to the plant, the paper said.
Japanese authorities evacuated workers today from a reactor building they were working in after radiation in water at the crippled nuclear power plant reached potentially lethal levels, the plant's operator said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co said radiation in the water of the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour. That compares with a national safety standard of 250 millisievertsover a year.
The US Environmental Protection Agency says a dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause haemorrhaging. Japanese nuclear regulators said the water contained 10 million times the amount of radioactive iodine than is normal in the reactor, but noted the substance had a half life of less than an hour, meaning it would disappear within a day.
JAPANESE emergency teams are using fresh water instead of seawater to try to cool reactors at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant.
They had switched to using fresh water at the Fukushima nuclear power facility because it was less corrosive than seawater, the UN atomic watchdog said in a statement.
"The IAEA has been informed by Japanese authorities that fresh water is now being used in place of seawater to cool the reactor pressure vessels at units 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima nuclear plant," it said.
encouraging. hooray.
This will be the week when everything changes. Get ready, then hang on.
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