"Japan has opened the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to journalists for the first time since the disaster of last March. RT has obtained a video of the inside of the crippled complex.
On Saturday, representatives of the Japanese and international media – more than 30 reporters, photographers and cameramen – were taken on a tour of the facility which was the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.
Despite TEPCO’s assurances that the radiation leaks pose much less danger now, the visitors had to wear a full set of protective gear during the tour."
They have rendered a vast swath of their country uninhabitable. Think that word over. Uninhabitable. How long until we have our own? It's anyone's guess.
That said, try and picture this scene in Ohio. Or Illinois. Or California. Ask yourself, is it worth it?
No more Fukushimas. Take action today. Information via Beyond Nuclear:
"More than 6,000 of you co-signed Beyond Nuclear's petition to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The petition calls on the NRC to halt operations on the deteriorating General Electric Mark I boiling water reactors here in the US similar in design to the Fukushima Dai-ichi units.
CALL TOLL FREE
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10 AM TO 12 NOON EASTERN STANDARD TIME
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"Workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have discovered a radioactive hot spot far more lethal than anything previously recorded at the damaged facility, the plant's owner reported Tuesday.
The reading at the base of a ventilation tower between the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors Monday afternoon was 10,000 millisieverts per hour, the Tokyo Electric Power Company announced -- high enough that a 60-minute exposure could kill a man or woman within weeks. A U.S. expert told CNN that radioactive particles most likely concentrated in that area in the first days of the disaster, as plant operators tried to vent the damaged reactors.
By comparison, the average resident of an industrialized country receives 3 millisieverts of background radiation per year, while the highest level reported in the days following the disaster was about 400 millisieverts."
"When you hear 'no immediate danger' [from nuclear radiation] then you should run away as far and as fast as you can." -- Alexey Yablokov, member of the Russian academy of sciences, and adviser to President Gorbachev at the time of Chernobyl
April 1st, 2011
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The crisis in Japan is already making some speculators very rich. The third paragraph in a Bloomberg article this morning detailing the ongoing irradiation of the area surrounding the Fukushima Dai-Ichi meltdown reads as follows:
"Cattle futures surged to a record in Chicago yesterday on speculation demand for U.S. beef would increase in Japan after radiation from the stricken nuclear plant contaminated food supplies. Tyson Foods Inc., the top U.S. meat processor, said the country may increase imports."
When most of us see tragedy unfolding, we think of the impact on the lives of those involved. But there are always those savvy players who see opportunity. Look at Larry Kudlow's shockingly honest off-the-cuff remarks about the human versus economic toll immediately following the tsunami:
"The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that."
For all the heat he took over this, what went largely unsaid is how widely held his world-view has become. Listen closely to his whole statement. It never occurred to him that what he had just said was in any way wrong. Frankly, I found his apology more offensive. Oh, he was sorry he said it, alright, but it is "normal" for many in the West to view markets in a moral vacuum. We should be discussing this. But we aren't. We move along after every outbreak of war, disaster or carnage to the next exploitive media frenzy. We rarely take time to shine a light upon those who stick around to make a killing after the killing.
I have complained before about the especially predatory potential of commodities trading. The fiscal right and Libertarians in particular bristle at the suggestion that this might be prevented via some form of regulation. They live in a bubble where there is an inherently benevolent outcome of allowing the "market" to run free. Those who dare to even suggest that there are moral imperatives that demand we limit some financial activity are met with accusations of dabbling with "socialism" or even outright "Communism." I am willing to take the heat from the "free market" zealots this time.
Exploiting Fukushima for financial gain is not just flat out wrong. It's pathological.
March 29th, 2011 BREAKING 11:58am CST Please donate to Japan Relief by clicking HERE
The situation is increasingly disturbing at Fukushima. It seems likely that the entire Fukushima Dai-Ichi complex is a write off. From the reports of the last 30 minutes, it appears that the real question now is how bad the larger release of radioactivity is going to be when it eventually occurs.
From The Guardian: "The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.
The warning follows an analysis by a leading US expert of radiation levels at the plant. Readings from reactor two at the site have been made public by the Japanese authorities and Tepco, the utility that operates it.
Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, told the Guardian workers at the site appeared to have "lost the race" to save the reactor, but said there was no danger of a Chernobyl-style catastrophe.
Workers have been pumping water into three reactors at the stricken plant in a desperate bid to keep the fuel rods from melting down, but the fuel is at least partially exposed in all the reactors.
At least part of the molten core, which includes melted fuel rods and zirconium alloy cladding, seemed to have sunk through the steel "lower head" of the pressure vessel around reactor two, Lahey said.
"The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that 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," Lahey said. "I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards."
The major concern when molten fuel breaches a containment vessel is that it reacts with the concrete floor of the drywell underneath, releasing radioactive gases into the surrounding area. At Fukushima, the drywell has been flooded with seawater, which will cool any molten fuel that escapes from the reactor and reduce the amount of radioactive gas released.
Lahey said: "It won't come out as one big glob; it'll come out like lava, and that is good because it's easier to cool."
The drywell is surrounded by a secondary steel-and-concrete structure designed to keep radioactive material from escaping into the environment. But an earlier hydrogen explosion at the reactor may have damaged this.
"The reason we are concerned is that they are detecting water outside the containment area that is highly radioactive and it can only have come from the reactor core," Lahey added. "It's not going to be anything like Chernobyl, where it went up with a big fire and steam explosion, but it's not going to be good news for the environment."
The radiation level at a pool of water in the turbine room of reactor two was measured recently at 1,000 millisieverts per hour. At that level, workers could remain in the area for just 15 minutes, under current exposure guidelines."
March 28th, 2011 12:39pm CST If you can give to support relief efforts in Japan, please do so by clicking HERE
Michio Kaku, writing for Big Think, dissects yesterday's confusion at the Fukushima complex which we reported HERE and HERE.
"First, workers at Unit 2 were astonished to find that radiation levels in the water were extremely high. This prompted them to evacuate the site immediately. Second, they rushed out so fast that they did not do a second measurement of the water. Third, the first readings were slightly incorrect. The workers got iodine-134 (with a half-life of 53 minutes) confused with iodine-131 (with a half-life of 8 days). Also, cesium-137 was also found in the water (with a half - life of about 30 years). Fourth, by confusing the two, they also go the wrong level of radioactivity. They found more iodine-134 that was actually present in the water. The shorter the half-life, the more radioactive an isotope is - the longer the half-life, the less the radioactivity. So their calibration of iodine-134 was incorrect, yielding thefalse number of 10 million. Fifth, the utility did not send in another crew to check the measurements, so they got their calibration wrong, but they went public with this incorrect number."
The money quote from his piece comes next:
"The main point, however, from the workers perspective, is that radiation levels are 1,000 milliseverts/hour. That does not change at all with this new calibration. This means that workers will come down with radiation sickness with only 15 min. of exposure. Some workers will die after 6 hours of exposure."
March 28th, 2011 11:55am CST
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Remember, there is absolutely, positively no reason whatsoever to worry at all. Not even a teensy weensy bit. After all, most experts and a wide variety of cartoons agree.
"Low levels of radioactive iodine believed to be from Japan's disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected in the atmosphere in South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida, officials said on Monday.
"There is no current threat to public safety," said Progress Energy spokesman Drew Elliot.
Monitors at Progress Energy's nuclear plants in Hartsville, South Carolina, and Crystal River, Florida, picked up low levels of radioactive iodine-131. So did Duke Energy's monitors at its two nuclear facilities in South Carolina and the plant in Huntersville, North Carolina.
"If there were radiation coming from one our own sites, we would be seeing other types of radiation than iodine-131," Elliot said. "Other nuclear stations throughout the East Coast all started picking this up within the last week. It all points to something coming from overseas.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency both say it poses no threat to public safety," he said.
Trace amounts of radioactive iodine have also turned up in rainwater samples in Massachusetts, California, Pennsylvania and Washington state."
"Three types of plutonium have turned up amid the radioactive contamination on the grounds of the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, its owner reported Monday.
The plutonium is a byproduct of nuclear reactions that is also part of the fuel mix at the damaged No. 3 reactor.
It was found in soil at five different points inside the plant grounds, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said late Monday."
"The plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said early Monday that the concentration of radioactive substances of a pool at the No. 2 reactor was 100,000 times higher than usual for water in a reactor core, correcting its earlier analysis of 10 million times higher.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a press conference that the highly radioactive water found at the basement of the No. 2 reactor's turbine building is ''believed to have temporarily had contact with fuel rods (in the reactor's core) that have partially melted.''
The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, a government panel, said Monday in its recommendations to Prime Minister Naoto Kan that highly radioactive water in the No. 2 reactor's containment vessel could have directly leaked, raising concerns that polluted water could spread to the building's underground and to the sea.
The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency also said Monday radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration 1,150 times the maximum allowable level was detected Sunday in a seawater sample taken around 1.5 kilometers north of the drainage outlets of the troubled No. 1-4 reactors."
In other news, there has been a dust-up between the Japanese government and Greenpeace over the groups calls for broader evacuations.
The American Red Cross: Text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10.
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If you can give to support relief efforts in Japan, please do so by either clicking HERE or by texting any of the resources below the video:
The American Red Cross: Text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10.
Convoy of Hope: Text TSUNAMI to 50555 to give $10.
Feed My Starving Children: MANNA to 50555 to give $10.
GlobalGiving: Text JAPAN to 50555 to give $10.
Operation Blessing: Text BLESS to 50555 to give $10.
Project Hope: Text HEALTH to 90999 to give $10.
United Way Worldwide: Text JAPAN to 864833 to give $10.
Volunteers of America Southeast: Text VOA to 27722 to give $10.
World ReliefCorp of National Association of Evangelicals: Text WAVE to 50555 to give $10.
Please click HERE and donate to support relief for Japan
It is hard to know what to believe. TEPCO's history of dishonesty and increasingly contradictory releases of information do not help us parse the situation.
UPDATE 8:34AM CST from AP via Yahoo:
"Emergency workers struggling to pump contaminated water from Japan's stricken nuclear complex fled from one of the troubled reactors Sunday after reporting a huge increase in radioactivity — a spike that officials later apologetically said was inaccurate.
The apology came after employees fled the complex's Unit 2 reactor when a reading showed radiation levels had reached 10 million times higher than normal in the reactor's cooling system. Officials said they were so high that the worker taking the measurements had withdrawn before taking a second reading.
On Sunday night, though, plant operators said that while the water was contaminated with radiation, the extremely high reading was a mistake.
"The number is not credible," said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita. "We are very sorry."
He said officials were taking another sample to get accurate levels, but did not know when the results would be announced."
ORIGINAL POST - As most experts and advocates for "the peaceful atom" continue to assure us that there is no substatntial threat beyond Fukushima, this is being reported by Channel 4:
"Radiation in the water of the Number 2 reactor was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour, the highest reading since the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11.
Officials said there was 10 million times the amount of radioactive iodine than is normal in the reactor at Fukushima, but noted the substance had a half-life of less than an hour, meaning it would disappear within a day.
The latest radiation scare is confined to inside the reactor. Radiation levels in the air beyond the evacuation zone and in Tokyo have been in normal ranges.
The Japanese government said that, overall, the situation was unchanged at the plant which lies 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, even if there were hitches from time to time.
"We did expect to run into unforeseen difficulties, and this accumulation of high radioactivity water is one such example," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news briefing.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has warned the nuclear emergency could go on for weeks, if not months."
TOKYO (AP) reports: "There's been a huge jump in radioactivity in water at one unit of Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant. The water has radiation levels 10 million times the norm and the air in the same unit is hot too -- four times the safety limit. It's a major setback to efforts to control and cool the leaking complex."
March 23rd, 2011 5:05am CST BREAKING Please give to Japanese Relief HERE, HERE,HERE,HERE and HERE
The Fukushima Dai-Ichi facility has evacuated again as plumes of black smoke are pouring from the building that houses troubled reactor #3 itself. Radiation has reached Iceland and is expected in France soon. Japanese food products have been banned from export to the U.S. Fear continues to dominate the world’s reaction in spite of expert pronouncements that it's not the level of disaster it could have been.
"Two US Navy ships pulled out of the base at Yokohama due to fears over rising radiation"
USS George Washington
"The USS George Washington and the USS Lassen left the base, which is located south of Tokyo, as a precautionary measure to ensure a state of readiness in the long term for the defense of Japan, The US Navy said in a statement."
The defense of Japan? If you think these assets are positioned for any other purpose than rapid readiness to combat North Korea's potential aggression, you are kidding yourself. We do not radically alter the locations of these units lightly.
March 21st, 2011 10:40am CST Please give to Japanese Relief HERE, HERE,HERE,HERE and HERE
The catastrophe at Fukushima continues. From CNN: "Gray smoke spewed Monday out of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's No. 3 reactor, a setback that came despite fervent efforts to prevent the further release of radioactive materials at the stricken facility. Those who had been working nearby were evacuated to safety shortly after the smoke was spotted around 4 p.m. Monday , a Tokyo Electric Power Company official told reporters. This is the same reactor that has been authorities' top priority -- and concern -- in recent days. Hidehiko Nishiyama, an official with Japan's nuclear and industrial safety, said measurements taken soon after the smoke was spotted did not indicate any spike in radiation. He said that there was no evident explosion, and no one was reported injured."
By F. Grey Parker
I have received hundreds of e-mails over the last several days from readers wondering "where" I had gone and, more pointedly, why I had "stopped covering" the events at TEPCO's Fukishima Dai-Ichi and Dai-Ni facilities. I have been right here.
Let me start by saying this: I believe the concepts of nuclear power make perfect sense. Surprised? Don't be. We're dealing with provable physics. It's not subject to whim or ideology. Science does what it does.
Science is verifiable, it is repeatable and it is consistently obedient to elemental laws. What I don't believe in is man. The limits of each cannot achieve parity. Bottom line.
I oppose nuclear energy as an option more fervently now than ever before. My long-time, two-fold argument against it not only remains unchanged but has been utterly affirmed by the events in Japan. The question of workable spent fuel storage and the limits of human discipline render the pursuit of this thing we can do extremely unwise. The profit motive as we tend to demonstrate it also renders our species nearly unworthy of the knowledge itself.
The atom doesn't lie. Industrialists seeking the shortest path to the largest treasure do.
At times, immediate safety was secondary to the steady flow of favorable quips about "growth" by the CEO. These are the obvious risks when unbridled greed is improperly regulated in capital driven systems. We have dealt with this flaw in our nature in arguably every endeavor where a few sought to enhance their wealth by enticing the many.
Sometimes, though, the stakes really are just too high.
Meet "the spent fuel rod":
There is no question that the energy demands of world society are at the breaking point. But know this. The disaster of failing to meet the future has already happened. What I have described before in this space as "Hoover Dam Thinking" is no longer possible as the global economy is presently defined.
Please give to relief efforts for Japan by clickingHEREandHERE
Well. This is not as surprising as it should be. From The Australian:
"Tokyo Electric Power Co injected air into the containment vessel of Fukushima reactor No 1 to artificially “lower the leak rate”. When caught, the company expressed its “sincere apologies for conducting dishonest practices”.
The misconduct came to light in 2002 after whistleblowers working for General Electric, which designed the reactor, complained to the Japanese government. Another GE employee later confessed that he had falsified records of inspections of reactor No1 in 1989 - at the request of TEPCO officials. He also admitted to falsifying other inspection reports, also on request of the client. After that incident TEPCO was forced to shut down 17 reactors, albeit temporarily.
Dale Bridenbaugh, a GE employee who was not the whistleblower, resigned 35 years ago after becoming convinced that the design of the Mark 1 reactor used at Fukushima was seriously flawed. Five of the six reactors were built to that design.
Mr Bridenbaugh told ABC News: “The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant.”
In a document entitled Lessons Learned from the TEPCO Nuclear Power Scandal, released by the company and seen by The Times, TEPCO blamed its “misconduct” in 2002 on its “engineers' overconfidence of their nuclear knowledge”. Their “conservative mentality” had led them to fail to report problems, the company said, resulting in an “inadequate safety culture”.
March 16th, 2011 Please give to relief efforts for Japan by clickingHEREandHERE
We mustn't lose our sense of humor. No matter what happens, we must not lose our ability to laugh. Even if it is gallows humor. This didn't start out to be funny. But the observation was grimly amusing. On a whim, we happened to do a basic google search of "flights to japan" expecting there to be many stories discussing flights to Japan having been cancelled. Hmm.
To be fair, this was the result of google's infamous "sponsored" search targeting. The cheapest flight we actually found was just over 1700 dollars.
