skip to main |
skip to sidebar
All quotes from Banri Kaieda, Japan's Industry Minister during and after the Fukushima event. Presented here these two stories from ENews regarding his recent testimony. Japan’s Ex-Industry Minister: Neutron radiation is degenerating reactors — Admits he was playing a role when saying nuclear plants were safe, and Former Top Official at Hearing: Told that all 6 Fukushima reactors would ‘explode’ if workers left plant — Entire eastern Japan might be lost. Chilling.
[...]
In June, [Banri Kaieda, the industry minister during the early stages of the Fukushima nuclear accident,] declared that nuclear power plants were safe and said he would approve the restarts of nuclear power plants, with the exception of the Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka Prefecture.
But [yesterday May 17, 2012] he told the Diet investigation panel that he did not believe all plants were problem-free, partly because reactors degenerate due to neutron radiation.
Still, he defended his decision to allow operations to resume at nuclear plants, saying he had a “role to play as industry minister.”
[...]
Kaieda said on May 17 that [Tepco Chairman Tsunehisa] Shimizu told him on the phone that TEPCO would evacuate from the Fukushima No. 1 plant to the Fukushima No. 2 plant. [...]
Kaieda asked industry ministry officials what would happen if all TEPCO employees deserted the plant. Kaieda said he was told: “It would be disastrous because not only the No. 1 to No. 4 reactors but also the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors would explode.”
Kaieda then discussed the issue with other Cabinet ministers who were at the prime minister’s office. He said they reached the conclusion: “A (total) withdrawal would lead to a disaster, in which the entire eastern Japan might be lost. We have to ask workers at the plant to hang in there although we feel sorry for them.”
[...]
There. He admitted he lied, and said TEPCO feels sorry for the workers. Don't you feel better now?
Whoopsie. Things just got wobbly for JP Morgan. Street Insider. Excerpts:
Shares of JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) are under heavy pressure after-hours Thursday after announcing a surprise conference call and large surprise mark-to-market loss in its chief investment office and exposure to a possible credit downgrade.
Since March 31, 2012, the company said its CIO has had significant mark-to-market losses in its synthetic credit portfolio. JPMorgan said the portfolio has proven to be "riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than the Firm previously believed."
The company said it now see a loss of $800 million in its CIO unit, versus an expected profit of up to $200 million. (A one billion dollar swing from projections!) Although CEO Jamie Dimon said it could "easily get worse."
The company said the loss was driven by $2 billion trading loss in its synthetic credit portfolio.
Despite the loss, JPMorgan said at this time it still expects to earn $4 billion in the quarter.
My guess is this is just the first of many surprise calls and losses in store for many, many corporations, finance-related or not. If JP Morgan cannot sustain, the worldwide economic repercussions will be significant and quick. Could JP Morgan be that falling domino that starts the chain reaction crash?
Disturbing. Bad things will happen if the bats go away.. PR Web via The Extinction Protocol. Excerpts:
Over 7 million bats have been wiped out by a disease (WNS) that is rapidly spreading across the country. It’s an extinction of animals by disease that has no precedent in recorded history. First identified in the northeastern United States, WNS has wiped out an estimated 95% of Pennsylvania’s bat population and is quickly spreading across the country. It was most recently discovered in Missouri, Delaware and Alabama. “This is like bringing small pox to the New World. It is surely an unprecedented wildlife disaster for North America,” said Bucknell University professor Dr. DeeAnn Reeder. Reeder is one of the country’s leading experts on WNS, and one of the researchers responsible for identifying the cause of the disease in 2011. “We can’t stop this thing. It’s marching across the country and we’re going to see some extinction.”
Does it absolutely blow your mind that so many horrible catastrophes are all happening simultaneously? Now; bats? Good luck in your extinction-level battle for survival, my flying friends. At the moment, the odds are not in your favor. Here's hoping your science-friends can unlock the mystery to your demise before that demise happens, forever changing the entire Web of Life.
A really significant, tectonically-active day. More to come? The Extinction Protocol. Excerpts:
A strong earthquake hit Mexico on Wednesday, shaking buildings and sending people running out of offices onto the streets of the capital Mexico City. The U.S. Geological Survey said the 6.5 -magnitude quake was centered on Mexico’s Pacific coast near Michoacan and struck fairly deep under the earth at 65 km or 40 miles. Prior to the Mexico earthquake, a powerful and shallow 5.9 struck near the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the coast of Oregon- indicating tectonic plates worldwide are being rattled by planetary seismic tension. Prior to Oregon earthquake, two massive 8.0+ magnitude earthquakes (8.6 and 8.2) struck the ocean floor off the north coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
And:
The Indian Ocean strike-slip fault earthquakes are very unusual. As a matter of fact, I’ve never heard of a strike-slip lateral earthquake of this great a magnitude; especially under water. Preliminary assessment of the Indonesian quakes by U.S. geologists suggests one plate lurched past each other as much as 70 feet. San Andreas is a strike-slip, lateral- can we even imagine two sections of ground moving 70 feet near San Francisco? Had the force of the Sumatra quakes been unleashed upon San Andreas, the city would have been completely destroyed. Ironically, the largest surface displacement ever recorded in a lateral strike-slip fault was 21 feet and that was in the 1906 7.9 San Andreas earthquake. Just so we understand the significance of what transpired today; the Japanese March 11, 2011 earthquake move the ocean floor 79 feet sideways and 10 ft upwards, but today’s earthquakes happened in double 8.0+ magnitude sequence and moved the earth nearly as far. Worst, the seismic tension from the event ricocheted around the world and contributed to other earthquakes.
Late to the party: Quakes in Utah, the Gulf of Maine, and Gulf of California. I bet the earthquake sensitives were freaking out these last couple of days..
Timely. And by "Timely," I mean just in time for the one year anniversary of the Birth of Nuclear Godzilla! CBS News. Truly awesome excerpts:
The one year anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan is less than two weeks away, but details about the nuclear meltdown that happened that tragic day are just beginning to emerge. (Just. Beginning.)
..
CBS News correspondent Lucy Craft reported that in the hours after the tsunami struck the nuclear plant, Japanese officials huddled in an emergency bunker struggled to grasp the size of the catastrophe.
"As we listened to our top nuclear experts, we politicians had no idea what they were talking about. Was anyone going to suffer radiation contamination? Would this be another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island? No one could give us a straight answer," Fukuyama recalled in the report.
After 300 interviews with officials and nuclear experts, the report said government was partially at fault for not having an emergency plan if a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck the country.
However, investigators concluded the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric, was to blame for the majority of the problems. "They were astonishingly unprepared for this nuclear accident," lead investigator Youichi Funabash told CBS News.
It seems that Tokyo Electric was unprepared for a power failure. Without electricity, the cores of the reactor couldn't stay cool, and it triggered explosions and meltdowns. (It's excellent that TEPCO didn't know this, but the rest of us were forewarned simply by watching Simpsons episodes..)
And:
"Terrified doesn't begin to describe how we felt," Fukuyama told investigators months after the scare. A "no go" zone still remains around the plant because radiation levels are too high. Clean up at the plant is estimated to take 40 years. (This is still a conservative estimate, btw..)
"When we learned the reactors had in fact melted down, I was overwhelmed, by our inability," he added. Oh, Mr. Fukuyama, we're all overwhelmed by your, TEPCO's, and Japan's inabilities..
Pretty compelling evidence for allowing private sector industries to regulate themselves, no? For my radioactive superpowers, I'd like invisibility, the power to fly, or to be impervious to bullets and explosions, please!
The end is nigh, bitches.. Natural News. Excerpts:
A lot of people believe the world as we know it is going to end on December 23, 2012. Nonsense, I say. The far more honest answer is that the end of the world as we know it has already begun. And it doesn't mean the end of the world; it means the closing of one era and the birth of a new one. It is a transition between the ages. This particular transition, however, promises to be the most tumultuous and costly transition humankind has ever seen.
But don't wait around for December 2012 to look for the signs. Here are 14 signs that the world as we know it is unraveling right now. We are living through the end of one era and the birth of a new one. In the future, they'll look back and call this all one moment in history, but when you're living through it, it seems to move forward at almost a snail's pace. But make no mistake: We are living through the opening chapters of the end of the world as we know it, and on the other side of all this will emerge a new world that's very different from the one we know today.
#1 - Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis
#2 - The silence of the bees (Colony Collapse Disorder)
#3 - The failure of nuclear science (In a word, Fukushima..)
#7 - The runaway destruction of the world by energy companies (Ahh.. Delicious Corexit!)
#11 - The plummeting intelligence of the masses
#13 - The ongoing pharmaceutical pollution of our world
#14 - The radioactive contamination of the global food supply
Get the whole list and descriptors at the link. It's a tad disturbing to see them all grouped together like this, but then again, maybe more people will understand the severity of our collective situation. Probably not, though..
Crap. Zero Hedge. Excerpts:
When it comes to attempts at predicting the future, it often appears that the most desirable outcome by everyone involved (particularly those from the status quo, which means financial institutions and media) is that of the "muddle through" which is some mythical condition in which nothing really happens, the global economy neither grows, nor implodes, and it broadly one of little excitement and volatility. While we fail to see how one can call the unprecedented market vol of the past 6 months anything even remotely resembling a muddle through, the recent quiet in the stock market, punctuated by a relentless low volume melt up has once again set market participants' minds at ease that in the absence of 30> VIX days, things may be back to "Goldilocks" days and the muddle through is once again within reach. So while the default fallback was assumed by most to be virtually assured, nobody had actually tried to map out the various outcome possibilities for the global economy. Until today..
The Point?
"A “muddle through” positioning is potentially dangerous: Our main message is that the muddle-through scenario might be the most plausible alternative, but its joint occurrence in the US and Europe is less likely than the result of a coin toss. Uncertainty is bad for multiples." Specifically - it is 37%
So, Economically, this is still The Lead Up.. Then things go boom!/Get bad..
Posts
