Governments "Lied" About Meltdowns and Radiation, Radioactive Dust From Japan

 

Governments "Lied" About Meltdowns and Radiation, Radioactive Dust From Japan Hit North America Days After Disaster ...

Fukushima Spews, Los Alamos Burns, Vermont Rages & We Almost Lost Nebraska 

 

Humankind is now threatened by the simultaneous implosion, explosion, incineration, courtroom contempt and drowning of its most lethal industry.

We know only two things for certain: worse is yet to come, and those in charge are lying about it—at least to the extent of what they actually know, which is nowhere near enough.....

Mainichi Daily reports today:

Radioactive materials spewed out from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant reached North America soon after the meltdown and were carried all the way to Europe, according to a simulation by university researchers.
The computer simulation by researchers at Kyushu University and the University of Tokyo, among other institutions, calculated dispersal of radioactive dust from the Fukushima plant beginning at 9 p.m. on March 14, when radiation levels around the plant spiked.
The team found that radioactive dust was likely caught by the jet stream and carried across the Pacific Ocean, its concentration dropping as it spread. According to the computer model, radioactive materials at a concentration just one-one hundred millionth of that found around the Fukushima plant hit the west coast of North America three days later, and reached the skies over much of Europe about a week later.
According to the research team, updrafts in a low-pressure system passing over the disaster-stricken Tohoku region on March 14-15 carried some of the radioactive dust that had collected about 1.5 kilometers above the plant to an altitude of about 5 kilometers. The jet stream then caught the dust and diffused it over the Pacific Ocean and beyond.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen notes that Seattle residents breathed in an average of 5 "hot particles" a day in April:




Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo. (No, the levels of radiation are not safe.)
I also have repeatedly said that Tepco, the Japanese government and governments around the world covered up the extent of the Fukushima crisis.
Now even the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Meteorological Organization are complaining that they were unable to obtain necessary information from Japan about Fukushima, which led to difficulties projecting how radioactive materials would spread around world.

However, this is somewhat disingenuous given that the IAEA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission knew within weeks that there had been meltdowns.

Indeed, as the prestigious scientific journal Nature notes:

Shortly after a massive tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 11 March, an unmanned monitoring station on the outskirts of Takasaki, Japan, logged a rise in radiation levels. Within 72 hours, scientists had analysed samples taken from the air and transmitted their analysis to Vienna, Austria — the headquarters of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), an international body set up to monitor nuclear weapons tests.
It was just the start of a flood of data collected about the accident by the CTBTO's global network of 63 radiation monitoring stations. In the following weeks, the data were shared with governments around the world, but not with academics or the public.

The attempted cover up of the severity of the Fukushima disaster is nothing new. Governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for 50 years, and the basic design for nuclear reactors was not chosen for safety, but because it worked on Navy submarines ... and produced plutonium for the military.

Arnie Gundersen has said that Fukushima is the worst industrial accident in history, and has 20 times more radiation than Chernobyl.

Well-known physicist Michio Kaku just confirmed all of the above in a CNN interview:

In the last two weeks, everything we knew about that accident has been turned upside down. We were told three partial melt downs, don’t worry about it. Now we know it was 100 percent core melt in all three reactors. Radiation minimal that was released. Now we know it was comparable to radiation at Chernobyl. ***
We knew it was much more severe than they were saying, because radiation was coming out left and right. So in other words, they lied to us.
***

In New York City, you can actually see it in the milk. You can actually see it has iodine, 131, actually spiked a little bit in our milk in New York City, but it is very small.

***

Realize Chernobyl was one core’s worth radiation causing a $200 billion accident and it is still on- going. Here we have 20 cores worth of radiation. Three totally melted, one damaged and the [rest in] spent fuel pumps, 20 cores worth of highly radioactive materials.

They know that they will not allow clean ups that cost too much and that they will lose their nuclear bombs if the public realize how stupid and ignorant they are.

A world governed by stupid greedy thieves yet they ban Comments and other manifestations that explicitly call for violence against them, using such crooked devices as the Patriot act.....

Costs rise in 'worst industrial disaster'

The day after the disastrous level-nine earthquake that triggered the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear crisis, March 12, an Israeli expert on air quality and poisoning, Professor Menachem Luria, told Israeli Channel 2: "From what we can gather, this disaster is even more dangerous than Chernobyl."

At the time, his was a minority opinion in the scientific community; very few believed that a nuclear accident as bad as the 1986 meltdown in Ukraine would occur again. "I think that's basically impossible," said James Stubbins, an expert at the University of Illinois, and many others agreed.

Yet, as we are now slowly coming to realize, Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl. In a revealing recent feature article published by al-Jazeera, Dahr Jamail conveys the comments of Arnold Gundersen, a senior former nuclear industry executive in the United States.

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Gundersen asserts. "We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl ... The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometers being found 60 to 70 kilometers away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up." [1]

The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the operator of the crippled plant, now grudgingly acknowledge that their timeline for bringing the situation under control, by the end of the year, "may be" unrealistic. They also acknowledge that Fukushima has "probably" released more radiation than Chernobyl. Both have come under strong criticism in the past for withholding information and releasing overly optimistic estimates.

Yet even scientists working at the plant apparently have trouble comprehending the severity of the crisis. Last week, they attempted to install a filtration system to decontaminate and recycle the vast amounts of highly radioactive water accumulated as a result of the continuous efforts to cool the reactors. Fukushima is running dangerously low on storage capacities for the used water. However, the system jammed after just five hours of operation.

"The company said that the sprawling system, which is designed to siphon oil, radioactive materials and salt from the water used to cool the reactors, was shut down because of readings that indicated one of the filters had filled up with radioactive cesium," The New York Times writes. "The rapid depletion of a filter that was supposed to have lasted several weeks suggested the presence of far greater radioactive material than anticipated." [2]

According to another New York Times report, the Japanese government was initially in complete disarray over the crisis, issuing contradictory orders and finding itself unable to make use of available resources. Coordination with Tepco, which was in a state of panic itself, faltered. The plant manager likely prevented a greater calamity by disobeying an order to stop using sea water to cool the reactors.

"We found ourselves in a downward spiral, which hurt relations with the United States," a close aide to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan told The New York Times. "We lost credibility with America, and Tepco lost credibility with us." [3]

Reportedly, American pressure for more information and concerted action eventually helped jerk the Japanese authorities from their shock. This narrative carries the seeds of another narrative which most of us would very much like to believe: a story of international cooperation and the coming together of the world's finest technological achievements to combat a natural disaster.

Yet American officials were also caught unprepared. Most continue to deny outright that the radioactive pollution will have a palpable effect on the United States. Recent reports, however, indicate that infant mortality rates in eight major cities in the northwestern United States, where the fallout was greatest, jumped 35% in the four weeks following the accident. This is consistent with the biological effects of radiation. [4]

Previous reports have indicated the presence of radioactive particles in rainwater as far east as Massachusetts, and in milk and other products throughout the country. The American authorities, as indeed most authorities in the world, appear to be in denial. Many important reports continue to be classified, and there is a sense that governments are lying to their people for lack of a better response.

In all likelihood, the scope of the disaster continues to evade us. There is little doubt that "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind" will force us to learn painful lessons, and that we are only just beginning to grapple with its meaning.

Some of the consequences are fairly mundane, if hard to pinpoint very precisely yet, in that they are economic and technical. The nuclear industry will be doing some major soul-searching, and seems set for a period of decline; numerous countries are already reconsidering their reliance on nuclear plants. The global economy will face reshuffles, as will the global energy market.

It has the potential, however, to go much deeper than that, shaking the very foundations of our sense of collective security. Certainly if some of the worst-case predictions materialize, and a sizeable part of Japan turns into a nuclear desert, we'll face urgent questions about where we are heading as a species; this may happen even in a more optimistic scenario.

It is possible, for example, that people's trust in the state system will be shaken, and on many levels. This is not to say that the predominant current form of political and social organization will disappear, at least in the near future. But it has been under stress for quite some time now, and this disaster seems capable of bringing the existing stresses into public attention; so far they have been mostly confined to academic discourse.

A few leading anthropologists and political theorists have concluded that the current state system (whose origins arguably lie in the distant 1648 when the treaty of Westphalia was signed) is obsolete, and that it is incapable of adjusting to the ever more fluid borders and rapid rates of communication that come with globalization. Their argument is that new types of organizations, some criminal while others representing legitimate economic, political, and other interests, will rise up to challenge the national state; we have started to see some of this in the proliferation of multinational corporations, international political organizations, and international crime networks of the last decades.

But while these former developments draw on the positive aspects of globalization - the availability of new resources to which new types of structures are better adapted - there is also a darker side. It is visible in Fukushima. The new possibilities have led to the manufacture of technology that is too powerful to control; its effects cannot be confined to national borders - and what better example than Japan of the fact that, to paraphrase John Donne, no society is an island nowadays.

Add to this that increased global interdependence comes with increased global vulnerability to crises in distant parts of the world, and we have a situation where our sense of security is not guaranteed any more.

The concept of the state, in a sense, offers a counter-balance to all these powerful and often blind forces, a regulatory mechanism that we like to believe works well and in the public interest.

This is part of why the scale of the Fukushima disaster is so hard to grasp, both for experts and for lay people. In the face of the increased vulnerability of modern societies, we desperately need something that gives us a sense of security. What better safeguards than progress, technology, and order, exemplified by the spectacular ability of nation states, separately and in concert, to mobilize unprecedented resources to achieve an urgent goal? And where a more safe expectation for all these forces to produce the desired effect than in Japan, one of the top industrialized world economies and a paradigm of social cohesion and discipline?

In many ways, Fukushima is the perfect paradigm for the failure of our source of security at its finest. The confusion and panic of the government and industry officials in the wake of the disaster should humble us all. So should our face to face encounter with our limitations, and the contrast with how we like to imagine ourselves.

In some of our most popular science-fiction narratives, the best astronauts of the leading world powers destroy asteroids that threaten the Earth with nuclear weapons (Armageddon grossed over half a billion dollars, attesting to our eagerness to consume the images; suffice it to mention that early on in the Fukushima crisis, some observers suggested nuking the reactors). [5] Yet in reality, we can't deal with a sizeable pile of radioactive waste, even long after the chain reaction has stopped.

Gundersen's conclusions speak loudly: "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

So do those of Dr Sawada, another scientist interviewed by Dahr Jamail: "Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations."

Fukushima is worse than what we are being told. There is no doubt about that. How bad exactly it is may not become clear for years. Debates about its meaning are likely to stretch much longer. The crisis brings some fundamental questions about our system of social organization to the fore, and the answers may influence what the world looks like in the future.....

FUKUSHIMA-DAIISHI Cover-ups unravel......

 

 

 

The Japanese government, other governments and nuclear companies have covered up the extent of the Fukushima crisis.
Asia Pacific Journal reports:

Japan’s leading business journal Toyo Keizai has published an article by Hokkaido Cancer Center director Nishio Masamichi, a radiation treatment specialist.

***

Nishio originally called for “calm” in the days after the accident. Now, he argues, that as the gravity of the situation at the plant has become more clear, the specter of long-term radiation exposure must be reckoned with.

***

Former Minister for Internal Affairs Haraguchi Kazuhiro has alleged that radiation monitoring station data was actually three decimal places greater than the numbers released to the public. If this is true, it constitutes a “national crime”, in Nishio’s words.

The Atlantic points out:

The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious. Katsunobu Onda, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire ... who sounded the alarm about the firm in his 2007 book explains it this way: “If TEPCO and the government of Japan admit an earthquake can do direct damage to the reactor, this raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systematic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping.”

***

Oddly enough, while TEPCO later insisted that the cause of the meltdown was the tsunami knocking out emergency power systems, at the 7:47 p.m. TEPCO press conference the same day, the spokesman in response to questions from the press about the cooling systems stated that the emergency water circulation equipment and reactor core isolation time cooling systems would work even without electricity.

***

On May 15, TEPCO went some way toward admitting at least some of these claims in a report called “Reactor Core Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit One.” The report said there might have been pre-tsunami damage to key facilities including pipes. “This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart,” said Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear waste consultant. “It raises fundamental questions on all reactors in high seismic risk areas.”

***

Eyewitness testimony and TEPCO’S own data indicates that the damage [done to the plant by the quake] was significant. All of this despite the fact that shaking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s approved design specifications.

The Wall Street Journal writes:

A former nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan blasted the government’s continuing handling of the crisis, and predicted further revelations of radiation threats to the public in the coming months.

In his first media interview since resigning his post in protest in April, Toshiso Kosako, one of the country’s leading experts on radiation safety, said Mr. Kan’s government has been slow to test for possible dangers in the sea and to fish and has understated certain radiation dangers to minimize what it will have to spend to clean up contamination.

And while there have been scattered reports already of food contamination—of tea leaves and spinach, for example—Mr. Kosako said there will be broader, more disturbing discoveries later this year, especially as rice, Japan’s staple, is harvested.

“Come the harvest season in the fall, there will be a chaos,” Mr. Kosako said. “Among the rice harvested, there will certainly be some radiation contamination—though I don’t know at what levels—setting off a scandal. If people stop buying rice from Tohoku, . . . we’ll have a tricky problem.”

British Shenanigans

It's not just the Japanese. As the Guardian notes:

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse...

Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power.

***

The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who sits on the Commons environmental audit committee, condemned the extent of co-ordination between the government and nuclear companies that the emails appear to reveal.

***

The official suggested that if companies sent in their comments, they could be incorporated into briefs to ministers and government statements. "We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public.

***

The office for nuclear development invited companies to attend a meeting at the NIA's headquarters in London. The aim was "to discuss a joint communications and engagement strategy aimed at ensuring we maintain confidence among the British public on the safety of nuclear power stations and nuclear new-build policy in light of recent events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant".

Other documents released by the government's safety watchdog, the office for nuclear regulation, reveal that the text of an announcement on 5 April about the impact of Fukushima on the new nuclear programme was privately cleared with nuclear industry representatives at a meeting the previous week. According to one former regulator, who preferred not to be named, the degree of collusion was "truly shocking".

The Guardian reports in a second article:

The release of 80 emails showing that in the days after the Fukushima accident not one but two government departments were working with nuclear companies to spin one of the biggest industrial catastrophes of the last 50 years, even as people were dying and a vast area was being made uninhabitable, is shocking.

***

What the emails shows is a weak government, captured by a powerful industry colluding to at least misinform and very probably lie to the public and the media.

***

To argue that the radiation was being released deliberately and was “all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation” is Orwellian.

And - as the Guardian notes in a third article - the collusion between the British government and nuclear companies is leading to political fallout:

“This deliberate and (sadly) very effective attempt to ‘calm’ the reporting of the true story of Fukushima is a terrible betrayal of liberal values. In my view it is not acceptable that a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister presides over a department deeply involved in a blatant conspiracy designed to manipulate the truth in order to protect corporate interests”. -Andy Myles, Liberal Democrat party’s former chief executive in Scotland

“These emails corroborate my own impression that there has been a strange silence in the UK following the Fukushima disaster … in the UK, new nuclear sites have been announced before the results of the Europe-wide review of nuclear safety has been completed. Today’s news strengthens the case for the government to halt new nuclear plans until an independent and transparent review has been conducted.” -Fiona Hall, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European parliament....

 

 

 

"Global cataclysms" not conspiracy theory any longer....

 

June 15, 2011 -- "Global cataclysms" not conspiracy theory any longer....
In a June 13 article in The Guardian of the UK, reporter John Vidal writes that the weather extremes our planet is now experiencing constitute a "new normal."

 

We have been citing planetary anomalies for a few years and now the so-called "main stream" media is beginning to take notice. Vidal calls the phenomenon "global weirding." While Vidal does not add the increase in quakes and volcanic eruptions plaguing the Earth, the suggestion that something is radically wrong is being noticed.

Although U.S. government scientists and their stenographers in the media continue to call the spate of quakes, volcanoes, and wild weather "normal," it is becoming clear that our planet is being affected by forces that have little to do with human activity. Whether the planet is flipping its axis prior to the cataclysmic event foretold by the ancient Mayan calendar is still any one's guess, but what is clear is that Earth-changing events are now affecting politics, economics, the environment, and standards of living around the planet.

Volcanic ash is even affecting the ability of U.S. leaders to travel abroad. Recently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was forced to cut off a visit to Ethiopia after the Nabro volcano in Eritrea closed air routes to and from the Horn of Africa. Just last month, President Obama was forced to cut off his trip to Ireland when Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano forced the closure of air routes in northern Europe. And last November, Obama was forced to cut short his visit to Jakarta after volcanic ash imperiled the planned air route for Air Force One.

Ash from Chile's Puyehue volcano, which is blanketing southern South America, has forced Uruguay's President Jose Mujica a visit to Argentina. Airports are closed throughout Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, contributing to travel chaos, such as that previously experienced in Europe when an eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano resulted in cancellations of European and transatlantic flights, stranding thousands of travelers at airports. Obama was forced to cancel his attendance at the Lech Kaczynski in April 2010 when ash from Eyjafjallajökull prevented Air Force One from crossing the Atlantic.

The fact remains that never in recent history has the Earth witnessed such a degree of disruption from repeated natural disasters and drastic earth changing events. Japan's economy, the world's third largest, was devastated as a result of the super-quake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear core meltdown. Haiti is still in economic paralysis from its devastating quake and New Zealand continues to be hit by a series of destructive quakes. Extreme weather in the United States and Australia has partially destroyed entire towns.

Tornadoes in the southern states of the U.S. and Missouri have devastated small businesses, contributing to pre-existing high unemployment in the states most affected by the extreme weather. The Gulf Coast of the United States is still recovering from the twin disasters of hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil blowout.

Based on The Guardian's prediction about the future of weather patterns on our planet, we should all prepare ourselves for the  utter continuation of "disaster capitalism" policies that see wealthy investors thrive on natural disasters and the man-made calamities that stem from them....

 

 

COLLAPSE - IT'S COMING! http://rense.com/general94/collapse.htm

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzxVhLcCH8w

 

 

When it comes to catastrophic events, the Uniformitarian-dominated sciences permit only consideration of those which may have happened on a timescale of millions of years, like the Cretaceous - Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs. To admit that catastrophic impact events occur on the timescale of human history would mean surrendering the comfortable notion we live in a safe and stable world that has evolved in splendid isolation, shielded from cosmic intervention. Few people, even scientists, are prepared to examine the overwhelming data indicating the reality of cyclic catastrophism. The elite of our world have gone to enormous lengths to prevent the masses from knowing this, so it's not difficult to see how today's Uniformitarianist approach serves a lot of interests. 

 

Tomorrow is a full moon which tends to bring out quakes, also a lunar eclipse, also a round of CMEs fired from the sun will reach earth. Might be fireworks on some fault line or volcano again. We just had a 2.9 quake in Seattle minutes ago. California is up in quakes for several days again. Other regions are pretty dramatic - look over the last few days. LINK Mt. St. Helens is unhappy - realtime seismic strip here. LINK. Fresh quakes around Yellowstone, too.  

                   

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3Eo2YTQUr8

 

 

 

Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through Base of Fukushima-Daichii Plant, 'Far Worse than a Core Meltdown' ...

 

It's Official: "Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through Base of Fukushima Plant" ... “The Findings of the Report, Which has Been Given to the International Atomic Energy Agency ... Described a 'Melt-Through' as Being 'Far Worse than a Core Meltdown' and 'The Worst Possibility In a Nuclear Accident'"

 

 

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/06/07/japan-admits-worse-meltdown-nuclear-meltthrough-3-reactors-23671/

 

The Telegraph reports today:

The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.
The findings of the report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a "melt-through" as being "far worse than a core meltdown" and "the worst possibility in a nuclear accident."
***
The pressure vessel of the No. 1 reactor is now believed to have suffered damage just five hours after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contrary to an estimation released by Tepco, which estimated the failure at 15 hours later.
Melt-downs of the fuel in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors followed over the following days with the molten fuel collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessels before burning through and into the external steel containment vessels.
***
"The recovery effort at the plant is likely to be more difficult as they will not be able to use their previous plan to contain the fuel," Yoshiaki Oka, a professor of nuclear science at Tokyo's Waseda University told The Daily Telegraph.
"So it may take longer and be more difficult, but it is something they have to do.

Other portions of the Telegraph article underplay the severity of the crisis, such as:

The fuel appears to be stable at present as it is being cooled by water pumped into the vessels, although it will complicate the emergency recovery plan put forward by the government.
***
But we now know that this happened at the very beginning of the accident, so I see no particular additional affects on human health, he said.

Alexander Higgins notes:

The Telegraph report once again echoes statement from TEPCO that the fuel at the plant is now being cooled and that plant is stable. However, we have heard the same exact statements from TEPCO day after day for almost three months now. We heard it when there was no meltdown. and an were assured the rods were stable so the risk of meltdown was little to none. The media printed the statements.
When we were told that there was only a partial nuclear meltdown under way and there is no comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl. Again, TEPCO and the media told use there was no danger because the fuel rods were stable and being cooled.
Then were found out this was in fact a level 7 incident on par with Chernobyl and were reassured the plant and fuel rods were stable.
Then they reveal a full meltdown occurred at 3 reactors, and the media again reported the fuel rods were stable and being cooled.
Now even with news that the nuclear lava inside the reactor has melted through the base of 3 reactors they once again print the same lies again that the cool rods are being effectively cooled and are in stable condition? Should we believe them this time after 3 months of lies?
The media is also still reporting that there is no risk to human health in Japan. What a joke. Does anyone seriously believe these lies?

Indeed, as NHK reported Saturday:

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says steam was observed coming out of the floor of the No.1 reactor building, and extremely high radiation was detected in the vicinity.

***

TEPCO said it found that steam was rising from a crevice in the floor, and that extremely high radiation of 3,000 to 4,000 millisieverts per hour was measured around the area. The radiation is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant.

TEPCO says the steam is likely coming from water at a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius that has accumulated in the basement of the reactor building.

And Japan Times reports today:

The government should consider evacuating children and pregnant women from a wider area around the Fukushima No. 1 power plant because radiation levels remain high even outside the 20-km no-go zone, Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, said Thursday in Tokyo.

Naidoo's team of radiology experts found hot spots that had a maximum hourly reading of 45 microsieverts of radiation alongside a school zone.

***

During the news conference, Jan Beranek, an expert on radiology from Greenpeace International who joined Naidoo's trip to Fukushima, recommended that the government widen the evacuation zone to at least 60 or 70 km from the power plant.

He said there were parks and public spaces where the level of radiation activity hit 9 microsieverts per hour.

Even some nursery schools that have already undergone a decontamination process had a relatively high reading of 0.5 microsievert per hour, he said. That would translate into an annual exposure of 5 millisieverts, which was the evacuation threshold for Chernobyl, Beranek said.

The government recommends a maximum intake of 1 millisievert a year during normal times, but raises that to 20 millisieverts in times of a nuclear accident.

Beranek recommended that people in Fukushima residing in areas with high levels of radiation wear masks and remain inside their homes.

Radiation from some kinds of particles "is not something that goes away in weeks or months," he said, explaining that some chemical elements can be absorbed into organs and bones.

While expressing concern that the level of decontamination "hasn't been adequate" in Fukushima, Naidoo also said he fears that people there haven't received sufficient information from the central government.

Pointing out that many children living near areas with high levels of radiation are playing outdoors without proper masks, he criticized the government for being "too slow" in explaining the risks of exposure....

 

 

Ten reasons for Japan's revolving door...

 

Ten reasons for Japan's revolving door...By Kosuke Takahashi

 

 

http://mikaobara.ideasoneurope.eu/2010/08/27/japan%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Crevolving-door%E2%80%9D-hello-mr%E2%80%A6whoever/

TOKYO - Going by the revolving door of prime ministers who keep resigning after very short tenures, the top job in Japan should be the world's hardest post.

A year since he took office, Naoto Kan has been forced to pledge to step down once the nation has recovered from the worst of a triple whammy: earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown.

Kan will be the fifth prime minister in five years, should he quit by late September. Why does Japan politics play musical chairs with a new prime minister every year? Is there any systemic problem with Japan politics? Or has the nation just had poor leaders?
 
Many wonder.

Here are 10 reasons for the revolving door.

1. Economic doldrums
Poorer economies weaken already vulnerable governments anytime and anywhere. This was especially true during Japan's post-bubble "lost decades" since early 1990s. The country headed into a downward deflationary spiral, which is far worse than an inflation spiral because there is no way to break the flight from borrowing and spending until it bottoms out and consumers begin to consume again.

With the national economy and budget shrinking, Japanese politicians became more and more inward-looking and began to engage in internal fighting. They always get in each other's way. Japan has had 14 prime ministers in the past 20 years of post-bubble downturn.

2. Very short primary election campaigns with no fierce battles
The Japanese political system is unique in that, unlike the United States, the party that gains a majority of seats in a general election produces the next prime minister under a parliamentary cabinet system. Thus, the majority party's presidential election is quite significant, as the outcome of that race will essentially decide Japan's next leader.

But the election time of the party presidential race tends to be very short. For example, following the former prime minister Yukio Hatoyama's resignation announcement on June 2, 2010, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had just a two-day election campaign for presidency before selecting Kan as the next party leader on June 4. This is in contrast to the US presidential campaign, which spans around one year including primary elections.

Without enough election time, voters cannot sort out any good politician from multi-candidates. Candidates also cannot be tempered by trials and tribulations such as money scandals.

3. The twisted Diet
In recent years, many prime ministers such as Yasuo Fukuda resigned because of a political deadlock called "the twisted Diet (parliament)", where the ruling party has a majority of seats in the House of Representatives (lower chamber) while opposition parties maintain a majority of parliamentary seats in the House of Councilors (upper chamber).

This makes it almost impossible for any prime minister to get key bills through. Unlike the US, Japanese political parties' headquarters order their lawmakers on whether to support or vote against bills. Lawmakers who don't follow their party's decision are punished. Cross-party voting is not permitted.

Japanese politicians act in a group, not as individuals. They form political factions and usually don't vote on the basis of personal convictions.

4. No lawmaking in the Diet
The Japanese constitution says the Diet is the only legislative authority and the cabinet is a policy-implementation organization. But in reality, Japanese lawmakers usually do not make laws. Central government bureaucrats make laws.

The misnomer is heightened by the sense that all lawmakers do is criticize the cabinet, which is evident in current attacks on the Kan administration by opposition parties and some ruling Diet members. This has sunk Japanese politics to new depths.

5. Hereditary politicians
Japanese political cycles are full of hereditary politicians. In one account, nearly 20% of lower house members are hereditary politicians, whose family members used to be national lawmakers. This hereditary ratio is especially high in the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Nearly 40% of LDP members are hereditary politicians.

This well-entrenched hereditary system works negatively, especially at the time of disaster. Preppy Japanese politicians fail to understand the public mindset and have little grasp of the tasks that disaster victims at evacuation centers most expect the government to fulfill.

Public perceptions that their politicians spinelessly relinquish the reins of government when times get tough have provoked anger. Ordinary Japanese cannot abandon their jobs and are forced to tighten their belts.

6. No civic journalism
Japanese media have exacerbated domestic problems by concentrating on what central ministries and agencies announce passively. Rather than going out into the town and pouring into the streets, many reporters heavily plump onto seats and sofas at the in-famous press club, or Kisha club in Japanese.

Central ministries and agencies, as well as local cities, prefectural polices and economic organizations, provide plenty of space for the benefits of those exclusive media clubs, along with facilities such as phone and faxes. This system causes Tokyo-oriented reporting and authority-focused journalism, rather than "man-on-the-street" journalism.

Moreover, control of the national daily newspapers, commercial television and most radio stations is in the hands of several Japanese media conglomerates. With media power so concentrated and strong, politicians who are not liked by reporters find it hard to get the air time needed to raise their popularity among voters.

7. US pressure
Japanese premiers of the post-World War II period with long tenures were those who preserved the golden era of US-Japan relations. Among them were Yasuhiro Nakasone, who was best known for his strong relationship with president Ronald Reagan, popularly called the "Ron-Yasu" friendship, and Junichiro Koizumi, who nurtured a close personal accord with George W Bush.

In sharp contrast, the late prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, who signed the Japan-China joint communique and achieved the normalization of diplomatic relations with China in 1972, was kicked out of office because of the so-called Lockheed bribery scandal. Japanese political analysts believe many allegations of bribery over Lockheed originated from the US administration, because Tanaka put relations with China ahead of the US-Japan alliance.

Most recently, former prime minister Yukio Hatoyama, who tried to move the controversial US Futenma Marine air base from Okinawa prefecture and campaigned for an East Asia community involving China, had a tenure of less than nine months.

8. National treasuries by bureaucrats
The WikiLeaks documents have shown high-ranking officials in Japan's foreign and defense ministries were very critical of the ruling DPJ-led administration, which originally called for a more equal partnership with the US.

A WikiLeaks document revealed the views of Akitaka Saiki, director general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of the Foreign Ministry at the time:

Saiki theorized that the DPJ, as an inexperienced ruling party, felt the need to project an image of power and confidence by showing it had Japan's powerful bureaucrats under control and was in charge of a new and bold foreign policy that challenged the US. Saiki called this way of thinking "stupid" and said "they will learn".

Moreover, sentiments of the then-Defense Ministry's defense policy bureau director general Nobushige Takamizawa were reported as suggesting, "The US delegation ought not to take [Akihisa] Nagashima's assessment of current realignment plans at face value" and that Takamizawa had "cautioned against premature demonstration of flexibility in adjusting the realignment package to be more palatable to the DPJ Government."

Nagashima was then vice minister of defense. Takamizawa spoke to a US delegation in a lunch meeting when Nagashima was absent.

Japanese voters last August ended the one-party domination of the LDP by giving a massive victory to the DPJ. Should national bureaucrats not follow the orders of politicians, who were chosen by historical national elections? In Washington, it is said around 3,000 bureaucrats are moved from office once voters eject a government. In Tokyo, bureaucrats stay on-site, where they neutralize nationally elected politicians.

9. The nail that sticks out gets banged down
Japanese society cherishes groupism and tends to beat those who break from traditional social rules. This social norm works negatively on such politicians as Ichiro Ozawa, who boldly try to address national problems through strong-arm tactics and risk-taking to confront and rein in the bloated bureaucracy. More than a few political analysts, along with the mainstream mass media, say that in the arrest of his aides over political donations, Ozawa is the real target.

10. Japanese people quick to catch a trend
Japanese people are prone to follow the trend of the times and to try to make sure "I'm one of the guys". Thus, once a political and economic climate changes, they tend to follow the new fashion by throwing out the old. The popularity of politicians is also usually short-lived.

Political leaders of true merit are difficult to find at any time and anywhere. This is a universal, not Japanese problem. However, as the hard times roll in Japan anyone seeking the top job needs iron-clad political mettle, extra special spiritual strength and unwavering guts.

Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. His twitter is @TakahashiKosuke

Massive Solar blast from Sun speeds toward Earth.

 .

 

Earth's magnetic shield to be dealt "glancing blow."

 

http://i.bnet.com/blogs/32955_web.jpg

 

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/516921main_x2flare.gif

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXzYpfLFFes&feature=player_embedded

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vT7H4bakm8Y

 

The largest solar flare in 4 years  today. It might knock out some power grids.

If we don't harden the grids and nuclear power plants against electromagnetic forces, a solar flare could eventually cause widespread nuclear disasters which make Fukushima look tame....

The Sun unleashed a medium-sized solar flare on June 7 which will hit Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th or June 9th, NASA said late Tuesday.

"The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface," it said in a statement.

NASA said the coronal mass ejection (CME) should deliver a "glancing blow" to Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th or June 9th.
High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed the flare's peak at 1:41a.m. ET (0641 UT). SDO recorded these images in extreme ultraviolet light that show a very large eruption of cool gas.
Scientists say it is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material -- at temperatures less than 80,000 K.

When viewed in Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) coronagraphs, the event shows bright plasma and high-energy particles roaring from the Sun. This not-squarely Earth-directed CME is moving at 1400 km/s according to NASA models.
The minor radiation storm and a spectacular CME was observed from sunspot complex 1226-1227.

Japan Finally Admits TOTAL Meltdown at 3 Nuclear Reactors, DOUBLES Estimate of Radiation

Japan Finally Admits TOTAL Meltdown at 3 Nuclear Reactors Within Hours of Earthquake ... And More Than DOUBLES Estimate of Radiation Released After Accident.... 

For months, Tepco and Japanese officials refused to admit that there had been any meltdowns at Fukushima.
Then they said there were meltdowns at reactors 1, 2 and 3 ... but they might have only been partial meltdowns.
Finally, today, they admitted the obvious: there were total meltdowns at all 3 reactors. As CNN reports:

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.
The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
***
Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.
***
But Tokyo Electric [on May 24th] released a second possible scenario for reactors 2 and 3, one that estimated a full meltdown did not occur. In that scenario, the company estimated the fuel rods may have broken but may not have completely melted.
***
Temperature data showed the two reactors had cooled substantially in the more than two months since the incident, Tokyo Electric said in May.
***
Tokyo Electric avoided using the term "meltdown," and says it was keeping the remnants of the core cool. But U.S. experts interviewed by CNN after the company's announcement in May said that while it may have been containing the situation, the damage had already been done.
"On the basis of what they showed, if there's not fuel left in the core, I don't know what it is other than a complete meltdown," said Gary Was, a University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor and CNN consultant. And given the damage reported at the other units, "It's hard to imagine the scenarios can differ that much for those reactors."

As the Japan Times reports today, the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has "more than doubled its estimate of the radioactive material ejected into the air in the early days of the Fukushima nuclear crisis".

Japan Times also notes that plutonium has been found in soil outside of the nuclear complex - about 1.7 kilometers from the front gate of Fukushima. However, the plutonium probably came from the so-called "hydrogen explosions", which hopefully won't happen again. (However, nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen believes that at least some of the explosions were caused by nuclear reactions in the fuel pools.)

While it is tempting to believe that the worst of the crisis is over, some of the reactors are more radioactive than ever, and nuclear chain reactions may still be occurring.

 

And it's not just the reactors themselves.
Remember that - when the spent fuel rods stored onsite within the reactor buildings are included - the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.

 

For background, see this.

 

 

 

 

Fukushima is a constant worry, and will continue to be until they decide how to fix the problem.

 

 

http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/exclusive-arnie-gundersen-interview-dangers-fukushima-are-worse-and-longer-lived-we-think/58689

 

The best idea I've heard so far is to set-off a nuke underneath it causing the reactor to slide into the ocean. The water would contain the nuclear material until a submarine could come and carefully remove the radioactive material... I know it sounds insane, but what else can they/we do? Besides plutonium, there are apparently many other isotopes to be worried about according to Lauren Moret and Helen Caldicott, who know more about it than I ever will. Besides Fukushima, the DU from wars since the first Gulf War is accumulating in our atmosphere, and it only takes a tiny nano-particle of DU lodged in your body to destroy your health, and destroy your DNA. Woman in war zones are deciding not to risk getting pregnant after seeing what is coming out of other mothers in their area. Our military people face the same threat to their health, and even Israel has suffered from "blow-back" of DU they used. DU is used instead of tungsten penetrators, but tungsten is highly toxic too - they use tungsten nano-particles in DIME bombs. There are many other toxic substances commonly used during war, like white phosphorous which creates a toxic gas. DU is the most dangerous though.

If you see this - the following link is a good reference about which munitions use DU:

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR407A.html

1943 MANHATTAN PROJECT BLUEPRINT FOR DEPLETED URANIUM

In a declassified memo to General Leslie R. Groves, dated October 30, 1943, three of the top physicists in the Manhattan Project, Dr James B Conant, A H Compton, and H C Urey, made their recommendation, as members of the Subcommittee of the S-1 Executive Committee, on the ‘Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon’:

"As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small … There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty … it will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging."

As a Terrain Contaminant:

"To be used in this manner, the radioactive materials would be spread on the ground either from the air or from the ground if in enemy controlled territory. In order to deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiations … Areas so contaminated by radioactive material would be dangerous until the slow natural decay of the material took place … for average terrain no decontaminating methods are known. No effective protective clothing for personnel seems possible of development. … Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated or food poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from inhalation of dust or smoke."

Internal Exposure:

"… Particles smaller than 1µ [micron] are more likely to be deposited in the alveoli where they will either remain indefinitely or be absorbed into the lymphatic's or blood. … could get into the gastro-intestinal tract from polluted water, or food, or air. … may be absorbed from the lungs or G-I tract into the blood and so distributed throughout the body."

Both the fission products and depleted uranium waste from the Atomic Bomb Project were to be utilized under this plan. The pyrophoric nature of depleted uranium, which causes it to begin to burn at very low temperatures from friction in the gun barrel, made it an ideal radioactive gas weapon then and now. Also it was more available because the amount of depleted uranium produced was much greater than the amount of fission products produced in 1943.

Britain had thoughts of using poisoned gas on Iraq long before 1991:

"I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good... and it would spread a lively terror..." (Winston Churchill commenting on the British use of poison gas against the Iraqis after the First World War).

 

Imagine for a moment that everywhere was destroyed by a calamity, except for your own community, which somehow survived with only minor damage. How long would it take you to begin talking to your neighbors, and gathering your friends and family, to figure out how you're going to survive? Not long I think. When faced with the problem of managing our own local survival, we would quickly put our difference aside and begin working together creatively. That is what empowerment looks like, and it begins with a shift of consciousness, from The Spectacle, to the local. It is about unplugging from The Matrix, and facing the realities of the world of the real.

You may be here by accident, or you may have booked a place to watch the perfect storm. I'm here to witness the liberation of humanity. The fact is that 'the everywhere' (the global systems) have been destroyed by a calamity (the engineered financial collapse). We may not realize it yet, but 'the real world' (our communities) is where we need to be pursuing our survival.

The herders have corralled us into a corner, where our only remaining path of hope is the path of liberation from the herders. This is your wake up call.

http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/interesting_times.htm

 

Just prior to the Fukushima quake/tsunami, Japan offered to enrich uranium for Iran. Was the nuclear meltdown revenge for this? Are Nuclear Reactions Still Occurring at Fukushima?

Was Fukushima Stuxnet Attack?

Just prior to the Fukushima quake/tsunami, Japan offered to enrich uranium for Iran.  Was the nuclear meltdown revenge for this?

http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/fukushima.html

.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q3ljfLvHww&feature=player_embedded

You know that Fukushima reactors 1, 2 and 3 all melted down fully within hours of the Japanese earthquake.
You also know that at least some of the subsequent explosions could have been caused by small-scale nuclear reactions called "prompt moderated criticalities".
But you might not know that nuclear reactions may still be ongoing.
Specifically, it is well-known by nuclear scientists that the ratio of iodine 131 to cesium 137 tells a lot about when nuclear reactions have stopped. For example, on May 2nd, University of Tokyo physics professor Tetsuo Matsui published a scientific paper with the following summary:

We calculate the relative abundance of the radioactive isotopes Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 produced by nuclear fission in reactors and compare it with data taken at the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The ratio of radioactivities of these two isotopes can be used to obtain information about when the nuclear reactions terminated.

Technology Review summarizes Professor Matsui's findings as follows:

Nuclear reactors produce radioactive by-products that decay at different rates. One common by-product is iodine-131 which has a half life of about 8 days while another is cesium-137 with a half life of about 30 years.

When a reactor switches off, the iodine decays more quickly so the ratio between these two isotopes changes rapidly over a period of days. That's why measuring this ratio is a good way to work out when the nuclear reactions terminated.

There are some complicating factors, however. The most important of these is that the ratio of iodine-131 and cesium-137 to start with depends on how long the reactor has been operating and so is not constant.
*** Today, Tetsuo Matsui at the University of Tokyo, says the limited data from Fukushima indicates that nuclear chain reactions must have reignited at Fuksuhima up to 12 days after the accident.
Matsui says the evidence comes from measurements of the ratio of cesium-137 and iodine-131 at several points around the facility and in the seawater nearby. He has calculated what the starting ratio must have been by assuming the reactors had been operating for between 7 and 12 months.
***


The data from the drain near reactor 2 and from the cooling pond at reactor 4, where spent fuel rods are stored, indicate that the reactions must have been burning much later. "The data of the water samples from the unit-4 cooling pool and from the sub-drain near the unit-2 reactor show anomaly which may indicate, if they are correct, that some of these fission products were produced by chain nuclear reactions reignited after the earthquake," he says.
These chain reactions must have occurred a significant time after the accident. "It would be difficult to understand the observed anomaly near the unit-2 reactor without assuming that a significant amount of fission products were produced at least 10 - 15 days after X-day," says Matsui.
So things in reactor 2 must have been extremely dangerous right up to the end of March.

As Time Magazine blogger Eben Harrell pointed out on March 30th:

The IAEA has said that the Fukushima nuclear power plant may have achieved re-criticality. “There is no final assessment,” IAEA nuclear safety director Denis Flory said at a press conference on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg News. “This may happen locally and possibly increase the releases.”

On April 18th, nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen said that iodine 131 readings indicated ongoing nuclear reactions.
Indeed, Gundersen says today:

Unit 3 may not have melted through and that means that some of the fuel certainly is lying on the bottom, but it may not have melted through and some of the fuel may still look like fuel, although it is certainly brittle. And it's possible that when the fuel is in that configuration that you can get a re-criticality. It's also possible in any of the fuel pools, one, two, three, and four pools, that you could get a criticality, as well. So there’s been frequent enough high iodine indications to lead me to believe that either one of the four fuel pools or the Unit 3 reactor is in fact, every once in a while starting itself up and then it gets to a point where it gets so hot that it shuts itself down and it kind of cycles.

Similarly, a Daily Kos writer points out today:

Radiation levels in water inside the silt fence near reactor 2 are high and rising, despite large amounts of dilution. Continued very high levels of Iodine 131 with a half life of 8 days are very hard to explain for a reactor that has been "shut down". Normally Iodine levels would drop several orders of magnitude below cesium activity levels over the sixty day period shown in the graph, but instead they continue to track each other. The level of 10,000 Bq/liter I-131 is very problematic. It is much higher than would be expected for a reactor in cold shut down for 2 1/2 months.