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FUCK!

They just gave up trying to cool down the reactors.

FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Japan suspended operations to keep its stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after surging radiation made it too dangerous to stay.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the workers dousing the reactors in a frantic effort to cool them needed to withdraw.

"The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now," Edano said. "Because of the radiation risk we are on standby."

The nuclear crisis has triggered international alarm and partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday's earthquake and tsunami, which pulverized Japan's northeastern coastline, killing an estimated 10,000 people and severely damaging the nuclear plant.

Since then, authorities have tried frantically to avert an environmental catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex in northeastern Japan, 140 miles (220 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

Edano said the government expects to ask the U.S. military for help. He did not elaborate. He said the government is still considering whether and how to take up the various offers of help from other countries.

The surge in radiation was apparently the result of a Tuesday fire in the complex's Unit 4 reactor, according to officials with Japan's nuclear safety agency. That blast is thought to have damaged the reactor's suppression chamber, a water-filled pipe outside the nuclear core that is part of the emergency cooling system.

Officials had originally planned use helicopters and fire trucks to spray water in a desperate effort to prevent further radiation leaks and to cool down the reactors.

"It's not so simple that everything will be resolved by pouring in water. We are trying to avoid creating other problems," Edano said.

"We are actually supplying water from the ground, but supplying water from above involves pumping lots of water and that involves risk. We also have to consider the safety of the helicopters above," he said.

A U.S. nuclear expert said he feared the worst.

"It's more of a surrender," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who now heads the nuclear safety program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group. "It's not like you wait 10 days and the radiation goes away. In that 10 days things are going to get worse."

"It's basically a sign that there's nothing left to do but throw in the towel," Lochbaum said.

The government has ordered some 140,000 people in the vicinity to stay indoors. A little radiation was also detected in Tokyo, triggering panic buying of food and water.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_earthquake
 
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jlprk said:
For the sake of Japanese living there I hope the ship passed through very slowly. Sounds like an hour. 720 times normal.
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Different day, but maybe this 800 number is related to my calculation of the 720 number.

Yesterday, an explosion caused the containment vessel covering the Number 2 reactor to crack, releasing into the air a surge of radiation 800 times more intense than the recommended hourly exposure limit in Japan. One third of the fuel rods at the reactor were reportedly damaged.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelo...kout/japans-nuclear-crisis-where-things-stand
 
Anyone we know dying a slow and agonizing death (from this) yet?
 
The slow deaths occur over the next 20 years, as thousands of cancers erupt in Japan. I read that 5% of our food is imported from there, so the government had better cancel the Bush FDA cutbacks and hire back the inspectors, or we'll get some of that too.
 
The W.H.O. is nothing but a lying mouthpiece sworn to do the bidding of the nuclear industry. Do not trust them to protect you or your loved ones:

http://http//www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/28/who-nuclear-power-chernobyl

Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation's assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations "Atoms for Peace" organisation, founded just two years before in 1957. The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.

The WHO's objective is to promote "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health", while the IAEA's mission is to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA's main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in which the other may have an interest, it "shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement". The two agencies must "keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all programs of work which may be of interest to both parties". And in the realm of statistics – a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk – the two undertake "to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest".

The language appears to be evenhanded, but the effect has been one-sided. For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995, and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain unpublished – despite claims to the contrary by a senior WHO spokesman reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.

Meanwhile, the 2005 report of the IAEA-dominated Chernobyl Forum, which estimates a total death toll from the accident of only several thousand, is widely regarded as a whitewash as it ignores a host of peer-reviewed epidemiological studies indicating far higher mortality and widespread genomic damage. Many of these studies were presented at the Geneva and Kiev conferences but they, and the ensuing learned discussions, have yet to see the light of day thanks to the non-publication of the proceedings.

The British radiation biologist Keith Baverstock is another casualty of the agreement, and of the mindset it has created in the WHO. He served as a radiation scientist and regional adviser at the WHO's European Office from 1991 to 2003, when he was sacked after expressing concern to his senior managers that new epidemiological evidence from nuclear test veterans and from soldiers exposed to depleted uranium indicated that current risk models for nuclear radiation were understating the real hazards.

...But the scientific case against the agreement is building up, most recently when the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) called for its abandonment at its conference earlier this month in Lesvos, Greece.

At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times – consistent with the ECRR's own 2003 model of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators' Edition). According to Chris Busby, the ECRR's scientific secretary and visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical sciences:


"The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima, the agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO's independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and publish its findings."
 
jlprk said:
The slow deaths occur over the next 20 years, as thousands of cancers erupt in Japan. I read that 5% of our food is imported from there, so the government had better cancel the Bush FDA cutbacks and hire back the inspectors, or we'll get some of that too.
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It's been 30 years since 3MI...how many thousands of cancers erupted from that? B/c you know, that was a worse "radiological disaster" or whatever the current term du jour is...
 
The W.H.O. is nothing but a lying mouthpiece sworn to do the bidding of the nuclear industry. Do not trust them to protect you or your loved ones:
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Good point. I trust the "Global Force For Good" and their comrades to protect my loved ones. And when dealing with nuclear power or missiles, go with those who've operated for over 50 years accident-free.

You're welcome.
 
BrianFromWA said:
It's been 30 years since 3MI...how many thousands of cancers erupted from that? B/c you know, that was a worse "radiological disaster" or whatever the current term du jour is...
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We'll never know, will we? It's beyond man's capability to determine for certain what causes each case of each kind of cancer.

In the bigger scheme of things, even our brightest minds aren't all that bright.

Cure the common cold? Too tough. Billions of dollars and decades of research have been spent trying. We're simply not that smart.

But play around with a force capable of destroying all life on Earth? Sure, why not? WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Most credible estimates for Chernobyl deaths are near a million now. Could eventually be hundreds of millions over the next century. It's not like the pollution goes away. It's not like the horrible mutations it has caused in humans, plants and animals won't have additional tragic consequences through the coming generations.
 
Plutonium from meltdown contaminating soil around reactor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110328/wl_nm/us_japan_quake

TEPCO clearly not competent to handle the emergency, Japan government considers nationalizing the company to gain control although they also have no people up to the task.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan...jA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNtb3JlcmFkaW9hY3Q-

Of the five soil samples showing plutonium, two appeared to be coming from leaking reactors while the rest were likely the result of years of nuclear tests that left trace amounts of plutonium in many places around the world, TEPCO said.

Plutonium is a heavy element that doesn't readily combine with other elements, so it is less likely to spread than some of the lighter, more volatile radioactive materials detected around the site, such as the radioactive forms of cesium and iodine.

"The relative toxicity of plutonium is much higher than that of iodine or cesium but the chance of people getting a dose of it is much lower," says Robert Henkin, professor emeritus of radiology at Loyola University's Stritch School of Medicine. "Plutonium just sits there and is a nasty actor."

When plutonium decays, it emits what is known as an alpha particle, a relatively big particle that carries a lot of energy. When an alpha particle hits body tissue, it can damage the DNA of a cell and lead to a cancer-causing mutation.

Plutonium also breaks down very slowly, so it remains dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

"If you inhale it, it's there and it stays there forever," said Alan Lockwood, a professor of Neurology and Nuclear Medicine at the University at Buffalo and a member of the board of directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an advocacy group.
 
General Electric installed the reactors. I had assumed a Japanese company had done it. The Japanese are calling the suicide squads samurai squads and paying them big money. Oh yeah, least important, the core has melted through to the ground.

The radioactive core in one reactor at Fukushima's beleaguered nuclear power plant appeared to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel, an expert warned yesterday, sparking fears that workers would not be able to save the reactor and that radioactive gases could soon be released into the atmosphere.

Richard Lahey, who was a head of reactor safety research at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, said the workers, who have been pumping water into the three reactors in an attempt to keep the fuel rods from melting, had effectively lost their battle. "The core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell," he said.

The damning analysis came as it emerged that workers at Japan's stricken nuclear plant are reportedly being offered huge sums to brave high radiation in an attempt to bring its overheated reactors under control. The plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, is hoping to stop a spreading contamination crisis which could see another 130,000 people forced to leave their homes.

Radiation has already found its way into milk, vegetables and tap-water and is leaking into the sea around the complex. Government tests found yesterday that small quantities of plutonium, one of the world's most dangerous elements, have seeped into soil outside the plant.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...mid-fresh-fears-for-nuclear-site-2256741.html
 
The latest on various dangers. This article says that water seeping 50 feet under a reactor contains 1) radiation (will dissipate before reaching underground drinking water) and 2) poisonous iodine (won't dissipate, but should flow downhill to sea, not uphill to underground drinking water).
The groundwater contamination was found in concentrations 10,000 times higher than the government standard for the plant...Three weeks after the disaster in one of the most connected countries in the world, 260,000 households still do no have running water and 170,000 do not have electricity...

Radioactive cesium can build up in the body and high levels are thought to be a risk for various cancers. It is still found in wild boar in Germany 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, making the pigs off-limits for eating in many cases...Despite the leaks, TEPCO hasn't had enough dosimeters to provide one for each employee since many were destroyed in the earthquake...TEPCO has repeatedly relaxed safety standards during the crisis in order to prevent frequent violations.
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-04-01-02-48-39

The company Chairman says 4 of 6 reactors can't be saved, but the government says all 6 are toast. This article says they're trying to stop bad water from flowing to the sea. The previous article says, that's what they want, to prevent it from flowing to the drinking water.
Japan has conceded defeat in its frantic three-week battle to save a crippled nuclear plant, with the announcement that four of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi complex will be shut down...Katsumata, chairman of the operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) [said] "Honestly speaking, work to effectively stabilise the temperature of the reactors has yet to begin," said Mr Katsumata. "Looking at the situation objectively, the company will have no choice but to shut them down for good." He said that "basic functions have been retained" at two remaining reactors and hinted that they might be saved. The was immediately squashed by top government spokesman Yukio Edano who said the complex would have to be scrapped...

At least one of the reactors has been leaking radiation, contaminating food, milk and water and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people within a 30km (19-mile) radius of the complex. Small quantities of the radiation have been detected as far away as Glasgow [Scotland].

The crisis has wiped more than two-thirds of the share value off Tepco, which has been forced to seek emergency loans of nearly 2 trillion yen to avoid bankruptcy and nationalisation...

The new measures have been prompted by fears that highly contaminated water in the bowels of the complex is leaking into the sea. Small quantities of plutonium have also been found in soil near the plant, probably from melted fuel rods. Japan's nuclear safety agency said that radioactive iodine 3,555 times safe limits had been detected in seawater about 300 metres from the plant. Engineers and Self-Defence Force troops have been using sandbags and concrete blocks to stop more water leaking into the ocean. Iodine 131 is widely thought to have caused a sharp spike in thyroid cancers among children after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, probably via contaminated milk...radioactive cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, has been found at 2,200 times normal levels in soil about 40 km from the Fukushima plant.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...lear-reactors-at-fukushima-plant-2257834.html
 
Once they injected the boron and seawater, the fuel and primary piping were toast for nuclear operations. And if there is contamination in the soil underneath, no matter how large or small, you don't want to operate on top of it in case it could mask a future problem.

Additionally, if this causes them to look at plants with both a primary and secondary system for steam generation, that's a good thing. Having to have the amount of water they need for a completely primary system (where the same water that goes through the fuel spins the turbines and is pumped back to the core) isn't the best mode of operation.

One of the problems you'll see in US civilian reactor use is that we're also running reactors that are 40+ years old. New construction would allow modernization, safety upgrades and potentially next-gen energy usage and waste modernization.
 
TMW2011-03-23colorlowres.jpg


barfo
 
And now this...
Nuclear Adviser to Japanese President Resigns Over Radiation Levels

May 1, 2011
Infowars.com

During an emotional and teary news conference, Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the University of Tokyo, announced his resignation as senior nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
[video=youtube;RshqdBuXQDE]
Kosako said he could not stay on while the government set inappropriate radiation limits for elementary schools near the plant. “I cannot allow this as a scholar,” he said, adding that he is also opposed the government raising the limit for radiation exposure for workers at the plant, according to the CBC.

Japanese authorities have set a 20-millisievert limit for radiation exposure as safe. Kosako said that is 20 times too high, especially for children, who are more vulnerable to radiation than adults.

On Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the corruption plagued utility that runs Fukushima Daiichi, revealed that the radiation exposures for two workers at the tsunami stricken plant have been found to have reached the limit of 250 millisieverts.

“I cannot help but to think [the government and other agencies] are only taking stopgap measures,” Kosako said during the news conference.

On Friday, Michio Ishikawa, the former head of the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute and a leading proponent of nuclear energy, appeared on a Japanese television program. Ishikawa said spent nuclear fuel rods at the Fukushima plant have melted down. “Right now, it’s [a] war with radiation. TEPCO’s response is horrendous,” he said, according to a translated transcript posted on a Japanese blog last week.

Ishikawa’s comments went unreported in the West.

The Fukushima story has all but fallen off the corporate media radar screen as it concentrates on the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton and other far less significant news stories.
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...hey Brian, on a serious note, would you have re-signed if you were in a similar situation? At what point would you draw the line?
 
Honestly, if I was in charge and this happened on my watch, I would think that my responsibility would be to direct the efforts to clean up and keep people safe to the best of my ability. Once that was complete, I would probably tender a resignation. And if I was fired prior to the end of it, I would understand.

I would think of it as "quitting when it gets difficult" to resign immediately afterward. And that's not something I either live by or was trained for.
 
bumped b/c I haven't heard much interest from here in a while. Environmentalists using Fukushima to push for more nuclear production?



And, George, you are looking at this disaster with the nuclear plant in Japan, and finding in there a justification for nuclear power. Why?

Prof. MONBIOT: Well, we've seen a really very poor plant and a very old one being hit by one of the worst natural disasters you could conceive of - a force nine earthquake and a major tsunami. And even so, what we've seen has been horrible, no question about it. It's a true disaster. It's caused an awful lot of trauma. It's dangerous. But it's nothing like the sort of scenarios which have been discussed as happening when a catastrophe of this kind affects a nuclear power station.

And my thinking is, well, if this is the worst - just about - that nature can do when it comes to a nuclear power plant and if this is the outcome, then the fears over nuclear power have been exaggerated. ...(a)nd I'm not calling for complacency here, but I am calling for perspective and saying if there is an industry which is absolutely devastating in terms of the level of fatalities, the level of industrial injuries and, of course, pollution, climate change, everything else, than it is coal. It is not nuclear
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I'm trying to get my hands on this lecture, but it's from the NRC perspective.
Also, in a lecture assessment presented at The Ohio State University in April, Dr. Rich Denning, NRC consultant, stated that the data collected thus far indicated a probable surge in the industry following the usual period of assessment.
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I'd imagine that, once people realize that in THE WORST NUKULAR ACCIDENT SINCE CHERNOBYL (only slightly higher than when Homer's bird toy fell over) there were two people hospitalized with burns...and NO acute radiation sickness (much less death), that they may come around to the environmentalists' way of thinking. Education is part of the solution!
 
BrianFromWA said:
I'm trying to get my hands on this lecture, but it's from the NRC perspective.

I'd imagine that, once people realize that in THE WORST NUKULAR ACCIDENT SINCE CHERNOBYL (only slightly higher than when Homer's bird toy fell over) there were two people hospitalized with burns...and NO acute radiation sickness (much less death), that they may come around to the environmentalists' way of thinking. Education is part of the solution!
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How could such a brilliant plan go wrong???
 
they never explained what forces caused the bird to tumble. Did someone hit the table? Did perpetual motion fail (if so, why didn't the bird remain stopped, but upright?!)

I really enjoyed the "The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now" message.
 
Yes, that is definitely the best part of the episode. I'm pretty sure I've quoted it a bunch in regular conversation. Half the time people don't know what I'm talking about.
 
I'm dying the slow death that everyone does - a day at a time. The only agony is when I drive my wife somewhere in the car and she tells me how to drove.
 
BrianFromWA said:
I'm trying to get my hands on this lecture, but it's from the NRC perspective.

I'd imagine that, once people realize that in THE WORST NUKULAR ACCIDENT SINCE CHERNOBYL (only slightly higher than when Homer's bird toy fell over) there were two people hospitalized with burns...and NO acute radiation sickness (much less death), that they may come around to the environmentalists' way of thinking. Education is part of the solution!
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...now it is as bad as Chernobyl, if not worse :sherlock:

Experts: Fukushima ‘Worse’ Than Chernobyl -Tokyo Evacuation Can No Longer Be Ingored
Experts warn the need to evacuate Tokyo can no longer be ignored after radioactive hotspots higher than Chernobyl evacuation limits have been discovered across the city.

Many in the alternative media, including myself, have been reporting on radioactive hotspots across Japan, including across all of Tokyo, with radiation levels higher than Chernobyl evacuation limits. For example: READ MORE>>
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I love that this guy is still getting hits.

Many in the alternative media, including myself, have been reporting on radioactive hotspots across Japan, including across all of Tokyo, with radiation levels higher than Chernobyl evacuation limits...Such reports have been altogether ignored by the corporate/ M$M media, who have instead chose to believe tests published by the government of Japan and TEPCO, who have repeatedly lied over and over again throughout the Fukushima crisis.
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Forget listening to the government, the owners of the plant or nuclear experts...BloggerGuy has the real deal facts! Why won't the Main$treamMedia report his findings?!?! Wait, Japan talked to Al-Jazeera about it in June.
Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns.
TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.
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Has anyone gone to the hospital yet over this? I ask, because they keep bringing up Cesium as the horrible isotope du jour, and yet people like Andrew Maidment, an associate professor of radiology and chief of physics and radiology at the University of Pennsylvania and Yuri Nikiforov, a professor of pathology at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center say the following (from March):
As for cesium-137, a third radioisotope that’s been identified in fallout from the Japanese reactor, it’s effects are pretty much in-between. It’s heavier than iodine-131, but lighter than the plutonium isotopes, Nikiforov says.
“There was considerable contamination around Chernobyl by cesium,” Nikiforov says. “But not as far from the site of the accident as with the iodine — less than 100 miles."
Cesium tends to build up in the muscles, but so far nobody has documented a heightened cancer risk in these tissues, Nikiforov says.
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BrianFromWA said:
I love that this guy is still getting hits.

Forget listening to the government, the owners of the plant or nuclear experts...
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Well, to be fair Brian, those first two sets of people do in fact have a record of not exactly telling the full truth.

barfo
 
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