Tepco Admits It Knew of Problems at Fukushima BEFORE the Earthquake Hit

And all it took was a year and a half of un-relenting pressure!  And then, TEPCO tries to blame the anti-nuke crowd for its own mistakes?  Such a spanking these people need!  Washington's Blog: 

Tepco Finally Comes Clean … But Tries to Blame Anti-Nuclear Movement


Ever since the Japanese earthquake hit a year and a half ago, we have reported on Tepco’s criminal negligence in failing to prevent the Fukushima disaster...

Due to the pressure put on Tepco by whistleblowers, writers and others, Tepco is finally coming clean.

As the Wall Street Journal reports today:

In a stunning reversal, the operator of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant admitted for the first time Friday that it had made errors of judgment that contributed to one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents last year.

[Tepco] said in a report that the company failed to adequately prepare for a disaster and that it knew it wasn’t prepared, and yet it did nothing, out of fear for the economic and social consequences.

“There was a worry that if the company were to implement a severe-accident response plan, it would spur anxiety throughout the country and in the community where the plant is sited, and lend momentum to the antinuclear movement,” said the report, explaining what it described as the “underlying reasons” Tepco didn’t have a good plan for such accidents.

That makes as much sense as claiming that American football players should take off their helmets and pads because protective gear implies that football is a dangerous activity.

The Journal continues:

The report represents a shift in stance for Tepco, which had continued to maintain it had done its best to prevent an accident from happening—despite repeated criticism from government and private-sector panels that studied events.

Postscript: While a Japanese Parliamentary inquiry found in July that collusion between Tepco and the Japanese government was the cause of the Fukushima disaster, the American government has long played a huge role in dictating Japanese nuclear policy.

Go to the link.  So many other links to peruse..  But hey, we're all on the same page now, right?  TEPCO knew this was a potential disaster, did nothing about it, a disaster happened, and they've spent the last 19 months deflecting the blame we all knew was theirs.  Now what?

Japan Diplomat: Ground underneath Fukushima Unit 4 is sinking — More than 30 inches in some areas — Now in danger of collapse

To restate again, and again..  Just because the dangers are being actively downplayed does not make them any less serious.  Enenews and YouTube..

From Enenews:

Mitsuhei Murata, Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland: Due to its ground has been sinking, Unit 4 is now endangered in collapse. [...] According to secretary of former Prime Minister Kan, the ground level of the building has been sinking 80 cm [31.5 inches] unevenly. Because the ground itself has the problem, whether the building can resist a quake bigger than M6 still remains a question.


From YouTube:  

It's not comforting that this video is over two months old either, is it?

Yet Another Fukushima FUBAR..

25-foot-long metal beam drops into Reactor No. 3 pool at Fukushima — Not clear if any fuel rods have broken — Could further complicate removal efforts.  Just in case you might be thinking TEPCO had this still ongoing, potential nuclear cataclysm under control..  Fuck, man..  Enenews:

From EXSKF:

TEPCO announced on September 22 that a steel frame weighing about 470 kilograms dropped into the Spent Fuel Pool of Reactor 3 during the debris removal operation of the Reactor 3 building [...] So far, there is no major increase in radiation levels nearby, TEPCO says.
According to TEPCO, the accident happened at 11:05AM on September 22 when [EXSKF: the crane operator] tried to grab a piece of debris, an H steel lying next to the Spent Fuel Pool on the 5th floor of Reactor 3 building and failed. The H steel slid into the Spent Fuel Pool.

From Russia Today News Line:

A huge metal beam was dropped into a spent fuel pond at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Workers were trying to extract cement wreckage [...] The crane boom accidentally pushed a metal beam into the pool from its casing, reports ITAR-TASS news agency. [Tepco] says the metal construction, 7.3 meters [~25 feet] in length and weighing 470kg, did not cause any breach in the cooling system, but could complicate further retrieve of spent nuclear rods.

From The Voice of Russia: 

Reports say it was accidentally dislodged from its place by a crane.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident. It is not yet clear whether any of the spent rods has been broken.

Barring any significant damage other than a massive explosion or an event they can't hide, TEPCO won't tell us for at least another six months.  That seems to be Standard Operating Procedure for these knuckleheads, even before the earthquake.. 

Japan Times: “Alarming estimate of cancer fatalities… 1 million extra deaths”

The second part of that headline:  "Nobody mentions krypton and xenon that poured from Fukushima plant, says Gundersen — 2-3 times greater than Chernobyl"  Japan Times via Enenews:
[...]

Experts waved away fears about radiation, cabinet ministers scoffed at comparisons to Chernobyl, and the word “meltdown” itself was effectively scoured from the media.

Some observers, however, were quick to hit the panic button. One of the best known was U.S. antinuclear campaigner Arnie Gundersen, who predicted that the disaster would lead to 1 million extra deaths from cancer.
[...]
Gundersen, a nuclear engineer, says [the official release amount is] an underestimate. He puts the release of cesium at about half that of Chernobyl, and says little attention has been paid to radioactive gases, Xenon and Krypton, which poured out of the No. 1 plant in quantities “two to three times” greater than the 1986 Ukraine meltdown. He is sticking to his original alarming estimate of cancer fatalities.
[...]
Gundersen bases much of his assessment of Fukushima on what he learned from America’s worst nuclear accident, the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. As an expert witness during the probe that followed, Gundersen said the official estimate of radioactive releases there was also much too low. “You have to remember, we don’t know how much radiation was released. It’s guys like me who have to calculate it.” His assessment upped the official radiation figure for the accident by five times. “I’m dead sure that’s too low,” he says, adding that he believes the true figure could be 15 times higher than the industry estimate.
[...]
He cites the work of Steve Wing, an epidemiologist who says he has tracked 10,000 extra deaths from lung cancer in the first six to seven years after the accident.

“The same gases (Xenon and Krypton) that caused those cancers leaked out of the containment vessel at the Daiichi (No. 1) plant,” he says. “Nobody is talking about it.” He says the gases quickly disperse and are notoriously hard to measure. Other emissions are more straightforward. Plutonium is heavy and does not widely disperse. Cesium is relatively easy to track.
[...]
Future overheard statement heard just about anywhere in the world:  "Nobody told me Fukushima was this serious!  Why didn't anybody do anything?"    "No;  Lots of experts said Fukushima was serious.  You just didn't listen.  .. And now we're all dead.  The End!"

More hospital food will be from contaminated area

Unbelievable.  But not really.  Fukushima Diary:

Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is spreading the propaganda called “Support by eating”.


They are pushing food from contaminated area even to hospital and senior citizens’ home.

On 8/22/2012, MAFF sent an official request to Public Interest Incorporated Association “Japan medical kyushoku (Lunch) association” to consume more food from the contaminated area.

In order to improve the consumption of food from disaster area, we request you to actively purchase and consume food from disaster area for medical facilities and nursing facilities.

When you are hospitalized, you can not choose the origin of food.

Wow.  What upside down times we live in.

Do not underestimate the severity of the Fukushima nuclear crisis: interview

Excerpts from The Mainichi:

Before her retirement in 2000 from the University of Bremen in Germany, Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake had been an experimental physicist who some 30 years ago had analyzed data on nuclear bomb survivors and warned of the dangers of low-level and internal exposure to radiation. Since 2004, she has been the chair of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), a Belgium-based civic organization founded in 1997 independent of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and various governments. In 2003 and 2010, the ECRR released recommendations on radiation risk assessment methods.

..
Mainichi: Some people claim that the stress from worrying about radiation is a much bigger health hazard than radiation itself, while others express concern over the effect that extreme reactions can have on economic activity. What are your thoughts on that?


Schmitz-Feuerhake: The argument that panic is a bigger health hazard than radiation is one that's used all the time. The same argument was used in Germany after the Chernobyl accident, but it's one that lacks a scientific basis.

Isn't people's health, including that of unborn children, more important than economic activity? Of course, it's not good to panic without any information. We must measure radiation levels in our environment and food, and get a grasp on our individual levels of exposure. Based on that, we must try to learn what the information means.
Mainichi: How would you evaluate the way the Japanese government has handled the crisis?

Schmitz-Feuerhake: I praise the government for designating the area within a 20-kilometer radius from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant as a no-entry zone. That it set annual radiation levels of 20 millisieverts as a standard for evacuation is understandable for a government that was unprepared for a large-scale nuclear disaster. But it's being grossly irresponsible by reactivating nuclear reactors and trying to shift the public's attention towards "recovery."
With the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and past atmospheric nuclear tests, the total volume of radioactive material released was clear. In the case of the Fukushima crisis, however, we still don't know how much radioactive material has been released. Nuclear fuel that far exceeds the nuclear bombs in both quality and quantity remain in very vulnerable conditions, and it's unclear whether it will be possible to retrieve them safely in the future. While the amount of radioactive material being released may be far less than immediately after the disaster began, the reactors still continue to release these materials. The government needs to recognize the gravity of this situation.

It might help if other governments(Any Other Government) step up and say something..  Anything..  But we all know that won't happen, either.  Nobody has any suggestions, any directives, or any volunteers for cleanup, for that matter. The global non-reaction to this ongoing crisis remains the most stunning aspect of the last 17 months.  It's quiet;  Too quiet.  Deadly quiet, to be exact..