Is Fukushima About to Blow?
Mon 28 Mar 2011 02:44

By MIKE WHITNEY ~ Counterpunch.com

 

Conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are deteriorating and the doomsday scenario is beginning to unfold. On Sunday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) officials reported that the levels of radiation leaking into seawater at the Unit 2 reactor were 100,000 times above normal, and the airborne radiation measured 4-times higher than government limits. As a result, emergency workers were evacuated from the plant and rushed to safe location. The prospect of a full-core meltdown or an environmental catastrophe of incalculable magnitude now looms larger than ever. The crisis is getting worse.

If spent fuel rods catch fire from lack of coolant, the intense heat will lift radiation plumes high into the atmosphere that will drift around the world. That's the nightmare scenario, clouds of radioactive material showering the planet with lethal toxins for months on end. And, according to the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna, that deadly process has already begun. The group told New Scientist that:

"Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl. ("New Scientist", March 24 ---thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")

So, volatile radioactive elements are already being lofted into the jet stream and spread across continents. What's different here is that the quantities are much larger than they were at Chernobyl, thus, the dangers are far greater. According to the same group of scientists "the Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site" (while) "the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes." The troubles at one nuclear facility now pose a direct threat to humans and other species everywhere. Is this what Obama meant when he called nuclear power, "Safe and green?"

This from CNN:

    "Authorities in Japan raised the prospect Friday of a likely breach in the all-important containment vessel of the No. 3 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a potentially ominous development in the race to prevent a large-scale release of radiation."

And this from the New York Times:

    "A senior nuclear executive who insisted on anonymity but has broad contacts in Japan said that there was a long vertical crack running down the side of the reactor vessel itself. The crack runs down below the water level in the reactor and has been leaking fluids and gases, he said....

    "There is a definite, definite crack in the vessel — it's up and down and it's large," he said. "The problem with cracks is they do not get smaller." (Thanks to Washington's Blog)

So, there's a breach in the containment vessel and radioactive material is being released into the sea killing fish and marine life and turning the coastal waters into a nuclear wasteland. This is from the Kyodo News:

    "Adding to the woes is the increasing level of contamination in the sea near the plant....Radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration 1,850.5 times the legal limit was detected in a seawater sample taken Saturday around 330 meters south of the plant, near a drainage outlet of the four troubled reactors, compared with 1,250.8 times the limit found Friday, the agency said.

    Nishiyama told a press conference in the morning that he cannot deny the possibility that radioactive materials are continuing to be released into the sea. He said later that the water found at the basement of the turbine buildings is unlikely to have flowed into the sea, causing contamination." ("Woes deepen over radioactive water at nuke plant", Kyodo News)

Predictably, the media has switched into full "BP Oil Spill-mode", making every effort to minimize the disaster and to soothe the public with half-truths and disinformation. The goal is to conceal the scale of the catastrophe and protect the nuclear industry. It's another case of profits over people. Still, the truth is available for those who are willing to sift through the lies. Radiation has turned up in the Tokyo water supply, imports of milk, vegetable and fruit from four prefectures in the vicinity of Fukushima have been banned, and the evacuation zone around the plant has widened to an 18 mile radius.

Also, monitors have detected tiny radioactive particles which have spread from the reactor site across the Pacific to North America, the Atlantic and Europe...According to Reuters: "It's only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere," said Andrea Stahl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research."

Here's more from Brian Moench, MD:

    "Administration spokespeople continuously claim "no threat" from the radiation reaching the US from Japan, just as they did with oil hemorrhaging into the Gulf. Perhaps we should all whistle "Don't worry, be happy" in unison. A thorough review of the science, however, begs a second opinion.

    That the radiation is being released 5,000 miles away isn't as comforting as it seems.... Every day, the jet stream carries pollution from Asian smoke stacks and dust from the Gobi Desert to our West Coast, contributing 10 to 60 percent of the total pollution breathed by Californians, depending on the time of year. Mercury is probably the second most toxic substance known after plutonium. Half the mercury in the atmosphere over the entire US originates in China. It, too, is 5,000 miles away. A week after a nuclear weapons test in China, iodine 131 could be detected in the thyroid glands of deer in Colorado, although it could not be detected in the air or in nearby vegetation." (Washington's Blog)

The smoldering Fukushima hulk is a perpetual death machine poisoning everything around it--sea, sky and soil. Here's a clip from the Collin's article:

        "...The soil contamination is really high. Soil found 40 kilometers away.... the levels on the soil were very high—in fact, a thousand times iodine, 4,000 times the cesium standard. And we just got a report from the Kyoto Research Reactor Institute, Dr. Tetsuji Imanaka, that said that—he had to look a little bit more into the sampling of the Japanese government, but depending on how the sampling was done, this level of contamination in the soil could be twice the amount that was compulsory evacuation for Chernobyl. Aileen Mioko Smith, March 24 (thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")

Twice as high as Chernobyl already, and the disaster is likely to persist for months to come. Things are getting worse, much worse.

The Japanese government has been downplaying the crisis to make it look like they have matters under control, but it's all a sham. They control nothing. The rescue mission has been a flop from the get-go and now things are at a boiling point. The emergency effort has been overtaken by events and now it's a matter of "wait and see". We're approaching zero hour.

So why the cover up? Why is the media trying to soft-peddle the real effects of a nuclear cataclysm? Does the Japanese government really believe they can make things better by tweaking their public relations strategy? They should focus on saving lives and abandon "perception management" altogether. This is from the Union of Concerned Scientists website:

    "Our assessment is that the Japanese government is squandering the opportunity to initiate an orderly evacuation from larger areas around the site–especially of sensitive populations, like children and pregnant women. It is potentially wasting valuable time by not undertaking a larger scale evacuation at this time."

The Japanese government is trying to protect the powerful nuclear lobby. The same is true of Obama, who continues to promote nuclear energy even while radiation belches from battered Fukushima. He's not thinking about the public; he's thinking about the deep pocket constituents who fill his campaign coffers.

Japanese workers are putting their lives on the line to regain control of the broken facility, but with little success. The probability of another fire, another monstrous explosion, or a full-core meltdown increases by the day. The Fukushima fiasco is gaining pace putting tens of thousands of people at risk of thyroid cancer, childhood leukemia and other life-threatening ailments.

On Saturday, Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, said the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant was ''serious''. That might be the understatement of the century.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com.

It's almost like a nightmare how people in Tokyo are just going about their business, and this is happening two hundred miles away or less.  I wonder what will start happening.  Are people going to start developing cancer at high rates?  Will this overwhelm the hospitals?  Will it cause a panic?

What happened to pouring the concrete?

Watch the docuмentary, The Battle With Chernobyl, for free online carefully.  Then you will understand what the template for this situation may well be.  Some important info is mixed in this rather well done piece.

Then you could google < gorby depopulation >and so forth to round it all out.  See who owns general electric, and what his philosophy of life for the majority of the souls on earth is.  

It is too late for any intervention of the many many tons of plutonium, but never too late to become a slave of Our Lady.
 

Though the applause was loud for the fearless fifty, the ones who stayed behind to help, I don't think history will be so kind to the way the Japanese handled this.

That is to put it mildly.

The way I reckon it, though my information is limited, the Tepco guys tried to downplay the extent of the disaster either to save face, in the hopes of a miracle, or a combination of both.  But much more could and should have been done.

In short, I suspect this is a matter of pride.  Have you seen those pictures of the executives bowing their heads in shame? In Japan it is a dishonor to admit to failure, it is only done when things are REALLY bad.  But what if they had admitted it sooner?  Would they have had more help?

A little prediction -- the word Tepco will one day be more infamous than Chernobyl.  The world has seen profits being placed before lives before, or even before common sense, but if Tokyo and then Japan ends up literally being destroyed due to their errors, we have reached a new stage of insanity.

Trickle-down economics, anyone?  No government checks on corporations?  

Good article, Gladius.

Sayonara, Tokyo
And so begins the radioactive ruination of Japan, and much of the rest of the world, at the hands of the nuclear demons unleashed in Fukushima by General Electric and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The harsh reality, the cruel truth of the matter, is that this ghastly crisis is going to last months or maybe years, and maybe even a very, very long lot of years, given that the half-life of plutonium 239 is twenty-four thousand years.

But don't take my word for it. Here it is straight from the horse's mouth, a bit evasive, but nevertheless a tolerable admission of the truth:

“'Regrettably, we don't have a concrete schedule at the moment to enable us to say in how many months or years (the crisis will be over),' TEPCO vice-president Sakae Muto said ...” (1)

Months or years, the man says. Meanwhile, by the day, the crisis spirals more and more out of control and radiation levels are soaring to their highest levels since the reactors first began melting down and exploding. (2,3,4)

Tokyo is only about 160 miles from the site of the reactors that are melting down. As radiation levels rise in the region it is a firm guarantee that more and more radioactivity will fall out on Tokyo.

No doubt about it.

The inevitable consequence of that will be a dramatic withering of the cultural, social, commercial and economic life of the huge Tokyo megalopolis. As more and more people abandon Tokyo it will become a radioactive shadow of its former self. Of course the economic implications of that for global finance and commerce are immense, Tokyo is one of the three major centers of high finance in the world, along with London and New York, so its abandonment therefore has ineluctable repercussions that will rock the modern, global civilization to its core.

Do you think I'm full of it? That I don't know what I'm talking about?

Tell that to the 25 foreign governments that have already either closed their embassies in Tokyo, or have evacuated Tokyo and moved their embassies to Osaka. (5)

Tell that to the international bankers who are now fleeing Tokyo and Japan in droves. (6)

Tell that to the U.S. Navy which announced on March 17th that it was prepared to evacuate as many as 87,000 personnel if necessary. (7)

Tell that to the USO that announced two days later on March 19th that the U.S. Military has begun a voluntary evacuation of up to 200,000 military personnel and their dependents from Japan. (8, 9)

While all of this has been going on the Japanese government has also urged more evacuations and quietly widened the evacuation zone around the melting down Fukushima reactors. (10, 11)

The plain English translation of all of this activity is that the evacuation of Fukushima, of Japan, and of Tokyo, has already begun. Large numbers of people are already “voluntarily” on the move and fleeing from harm's way. The longer the crisis grinds on, the greater the numbers of people who will leave.

The impact on Japan, Tokyo and the world is incalculable. The dominoes are just beginning to topple and where this concatenation of catastrophic events will finally end, no one can say with certainty just yet.

But I can promise you this much: The Mother Of All Radioactive Roller Coaster Rides has left the starting gate and life will never again be the same for any of us. These weeks, thus, effectively mark the end of one era, and implicitly herald the beginning of another.

We are in new territory now, uncharted, radioactive territory and as this crisis grinds on, one of its initial big victims will assuredly be the city of Tokyo. If these reactors cannot be brought under control then its fate is all but sealed.

Like swarming rats fleeing a sinking ship, the mass exodus of “international bankers” from Tokyo and Japan over the past two weeks has a transparently plain meaning: it's finished, it's over.

So, sayonara, Tokyo. What comes next will not be pleasant.


Source links:

(1) http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/28/japan-idUSL3E7ES03620110328
(2) http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/27/japan-idUSL3E7ER06020110327
(3) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12872707
(4) http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110326D26JF033.htm
(5) http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/nuclear-fears-shut-25-embassies-in- tokyo/story-e6frf7jx-1226026999531
(6) http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/japan-quake-bankers-idUKL3E7EG13R20110316
(7) http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/03/navy-pacific-command-prepared-to-evacuate-87k-from-japan-031711/
(8) http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-thousands-of-us-military-and-dod-evacuees-return-from-honshu-japan-20110319,0,3570243.story?track=rss
(9) http://www.kirotv.com/news/27248974/detail.html
(10)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/world/asia/26japan.html?_r=2&hp
(11)http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japan-urges-more-evacuations-as-prime-minister-kan-addresses-nation/2011/03/25/AFKm2IVB_story.html