Nuclear Power Exposed as a Product of the State (Video)

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Quotes of the Day: Associated Press Propaganda

Activist Post

Yesterday, the Associated Press included this absolute statement in their article titled Japan Frantically Tries To Trace Radioactive Water In Pacific Ocean:

Radioactivity is quickly diluted in the ocean, and government officials said the dump should not affect the safety of seafood in the area.

Today, they hedged their bold statement slightly:

Experts have said that radiation dissipates quickly in the vast Pacific, but they have also said that it's unclear what the long-term effects of large amounts of contamination will be. No fishing is allowed in the vicinity of the complex.

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'No Safe Levels' of Radiation in Japan

Dees Illustration

Dahr Jamail
IPS News

TOKYO, Apr 4, 2011 (IPS/Al Jazeera) - In a nuclear crisis that is becoming increasingly serious, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex that was seriously damaged by the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.

Airborne radiation near the plant has been measured at 4-times government limits.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the company that operates the crippled plant, has begun releasing more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water that was used to cool the fuel rods into the ocean while it attempts to find the source of radioactive leaks. The water being released is about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits.

Meanwhile, water that is vastly more radioactive continues to gush into the ocean through a large crack in a six-foot deep pit at the nuclear plant. Over the weekend, workers at the plant used sawdust, shredded newspaper and diaper chemicals in a desperate attempt to plug the area, which failed. Water leaking from the pit is about 10,000 times more radioactive than water normally found at a nuclear plant

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EPA to raise limits for radiation exposure while Canada turns off fallout detectors

Mike Adams
Natural News

The mass radioactive contamination of our planet is now under way thanks to the astonishing actions taking place at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan. As of last night, TEPCO announced it is releasing 10,000 tons of radioactive water directly into the Pacific Ocean. That 2.4 million gallons of planetary poison being dumped directly into the ocean.

This water is being released because they have run out of places to keep it on land. It's too deadly to transport anywhere else, and all the storage pools around Fukushima are already overflowing. So they're dumping it into the ocean, then calling it "safe" because they claim the ocean will "disperse" all the radiation and make it harmless.

But because there's more radioactive water being produced every day at Fukushima, this process of releasing radioactive water into the ocean could theoretically continue for years, easily making Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in the history of our world.

Quick, fudge the numbers before anybody notices!

Fukushima, you see, is doing to the Pacific Ocean what BP and the Deepwater Horizon did to the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Except that in the case of Fukushima, that radiation doesn't just disappear with the help of millions of gallons of toxic chemicals. Nope, that radiation sticks around fordecades.

So what to do? If you're the United States Environment Protection Agency, there's only one option:  Declare radiation to be safe!

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A 100-year battle awaits Fukushima while suicide workers are needed to keep up the rescue efforts

Mike Adams
Natural News

The unfolding of the Fukushima catastrophe continues to worsen. Here are today's most important developments:

• A nuclear expert is now warning that it will take 50 to 100 years before the spent nuclear rods at Fukushima will cool enough to be removed from the site. In the mean time, Japan must keep pouring water on the fuel, and that creates highly radioactive water that's being flushed directly into the ocean. So now we're looking at the possibility of a century-long radiation leak (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/01/3179487.htm).

• The groundwater underneath the Fukushima nuclear power facility is now showing 10,000 times the level of radiation normally allowed by government authorities. This is from iodine-131 measured at 15 meters below one of the reactors. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/31/501364/main20049240.shtml)

• You've probably already heard that there have been efforts to use robots to help solve the Fukushima crisis, but those efforts have failed. Then again, who needs robots when you can just pay humans to do the same deadly work? Reuters is now reporting that a U.S. recruiting company is signing up U.S. workers to go to Fukushima and work on-site there as part of the crew that's trying to save the reactors (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-wanted-u-workers-crippled-japan-nuke-plant-20110331-165506-832.html). Why would anyone agree to do such a thing? Because they're being promised extra pay, if you can believe that.

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US Marines being sent to Japan for nuclear response

© AFP/APS-HO/File

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military on Wednesday ordered a Marine unit specializing in emergency nuclear response to deploy to Japan to assist local authorities in addressing the massive crisis, officials said.

Some 155 Marines from the service's Chemical Biological Incident Response Force are scheduled to leave the United States on Thursday and arrive in Japan Friday, a US defense official told AFP.

The CBIRF team, trained in identifying chemical agents, monitoring radiation levels and decontaminating personnel, would not participate in the frenzied efforts to stabilized the reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, crippled by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
It was also hit by several explosions, triggering fears of a catastrophic meltdown as radiation has wafted into the air and seeped into the ocean.

US military personnel are currently barred from penetrating a 50-mile (80-kilometer) radius around the stricken plant, far exceeding the 12-mile (20-kilometer) exclusion zone imposed by the Japanese government.


Another military official characterized the deployment as "prudent planning," a precautionary move to have the Marines on hand if needed, not an emergency.

The team is "an initial response force," the official added, because it is only one part of the larger CBIRF unit based at the Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland.

"They would provide radiological expertise to the on-scene commander and, if needed, to the JSDF (Japan Self-Defense Forces) in the areas of medical, logistical, chemical, biological, nuclear and hazardous materials," the official said.

The unit is specially trained to counter the fallout from a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive (CBRNE) incident, usually assisting local, state or federal agencies in their response.

On March 17, Admiral Robert Willard, who is overseeing American military assistance after Japan's earthquake and tsunami, said 450 radiological and disaster specialists were awaiting orders to deploy as Japanese teams tried to cool fuel rods in reactors at the damaged Fukushima plant.

Rear Admiral Scott Swift, director of operations at US Pacific Command, said that around 15,000 US personnel were taking part in the round-the-clock relief operations since the disaster began as part of a mission dubbed Operation Tomodachi, or "friend."

The United States stations some 47,000 troops in Japan, a close US ally which lies near the tense Taiwan Strait and Korean peninsula.

The US military says it has taken more than 50,000 tons of fuel and 650 tons of cargo to areas of northern Japan hit by the earthquake, which has killed more than 11,000 people and left over 16,000 others missing.

Around a quarter of a million people are living in evacuation centers.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Fukushima nuclear plant to be entombed in concrete as Japan admits it has lost battle with crippled reactors

Richard Shears
Daily Mail

• Radioactivity levels in the ocean 4,385 times above regulatory limit
• Fisherman warned not to operate within 12 miles of plant
• Compensation claims could top $12bn
• Power firm's shares lose 80% of value - may need government bailout
• President still recovering in hospital recovering from 'fatigue and stress'
• U.S. sends specialist Marine unit to assist in decontamination
• Traces of radioactive particles found in U.S. milk

Fukushima Meltdown/Wikimedia-Digital Globe image

Japan has finally conceded defeat in the battle to contain radiation at four of its crippled reactors and they will be closed down.

Details of how this will be done are yet to be revealed, but officials said it would mean switching off all power and abandoning attempts to keep the nuclear fuel rods cool.

The final move would involve pouring tonnes of concrete on the reactors to seal them in tombs and ensure radiation does not leak out.

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Traces of Japan radioactivity in US rain

AFP/GREENPEACE image

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Traces of radioactivity from damaged nuclear power facilities in Japan have been detected in rainwater in the northeast United States, but pose no health risks, officials said.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in an update Sunday, said it had received reports of "elevated levels of radiation in recent precipitation events" in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and that it was "reviewing this data."
The EPA has been monitoring radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, and had previously detected "very low levels of radioactive material" in the United States, while saying that these "were expected" and that "the levels detected are far below levels of public health concern."

"Elevated levels of radioactive material in rainwater have been expected as a result of the nuclear incident after the events in Japan since radiation is known to travel in the atmosphere," the EPA added.

The agency has stepped up its monitoring of precipitation, drinking water, and other potential exposure routes for radiation as a precaution.

Last week, EPA cited "minuscule levels of an isotope that were consistent with the Japanese nuclear incident," that also posed no "concern for human health."

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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The Doomsday Scenario: Is Fukushima About to Blow?

Wikimedia Commons Image

Mike Whitney
CounterPunch

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)

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Nuclear Meltdown Reaches Tokyo! 30 Million Told NOT to Drink or Shower in Tap Water (Video)

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This Is Beyond The Ability Of Japanese Authorities To Contain! I Think This Will End VERY Badly!

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US experts unsure about Fukushima situation

Greenpeace team member holding a 
Geiger counter in Fukushima
© AFP/GREENPEACE Christian Aslund

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US experts have expressed uncertainty about the seriousness of the situation at Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex, steering clear of speculation whether the core of one of the reactors there had been damaged.

Dave Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent advocacy group that has been a nuclear industry watchdog for 40 years, said there had been reports that the reactor vessel for Unit 3 at the power plant had been breached.

But he also noted that there was some data put out by the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency that the reactor vessel was still intact.
"So, it's contradictory data," Lochbaum told reporters Friday. "I think that's reflective of the situation over there. There's quite a bit of damage in quite a few areas. There's not a lot of instrumentation available. There's not a lot of access available for workers to go through the facility and more accurately assess conditions in lieu of the instrumentation that's spotty at best."\


Lochbaum added that he thought it was going to take a while to fully identify what happened at Fukushima and why.

Two weeks after the 9.0-magnitude March 11 quake and subsequent tsunami seriously damaged the ageing nuclear plant in northeastern Japan, rescue work is still under way to avoid a major nuclear disaster.

Radiation levels have surged in the seawater in the area and there are concerns that fuel rod vessels or their valves and pipes are leaking.

More than 27,000 people are dead or missing after the quake and tsunami.

According Edwin Lyman, a physicist who works for the group, even the worst case scenario may not be as bad as it might appear.

If the reactor vessel is breached and the reactor core falls into the containment, Lyman noted, the uranium release would be on the order of one to 10 percent, and for plutonium and less volatile isotopes, it would probably be less than one percent.

"So, if the vessel breaches and the containment failure is still delayed significantly, then you have more played out and less environmental release," the scientist pointed out.

Ian Hutchison, professor of nuclear science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that radioactivity in the water around the plant was not necessarily surprising given the amount of water sprayed onto and pumped into the reactors.

"I am not particularly alarmed," he noted on CNN television.

Steve Kerekes, senior director of communications for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said his organization did not have enough information about the situation with the Fukushima reactors to draw conclusions.

When asked what can be expected if the the reactor vessel is breached, he answered: "This is a speculative question, we have to wait and see."

According to Adrian Heymer, senior director of strategic programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, even in the worst case scenario, there should not be significant harm to the public.

"It should not have additional harm to the public," he said. "The Japanese authorities are taking all the necessary measures."

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Doomsday Machine: Why Nuclear Will Never Be the Answer

Hope Creek Nuclear Plant/AFP image

Andrew McKillop
21st Century Wire

What the atomic energy lobby calls The Nuclear Renaissance is advance warning of uncontrolled and runaway financial and economic disaster.

This adds on to vastly growing risks of industrial disaster like we have witnessed this month in Japan, nuclear weapons proliferation, and reactors turned into and used as massive Dirty Bombs while their wastes are recycled as Depleted Uranium ordnance.

The so-called ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ could or might see as many as 225 new large-size reactors built in as many as 45 countries, through 2010-2020. World uranium demand – already at least 20 percent more than uranium mine supply – could almost double in the same period.
Presently almost unknown to the public and ignored by the media, national security and even the concept and present reality of nation states is under threat. Nuclear accidents, nuclear weapons production, and financial disaster triggered by the nuclear subprime asset bubble now under way are direct challenges to the existence of nation states. Nuclear power has ever less credibility as its costs spiral upward, pumping ever growing amounts of taxpayers’ money to feed the beast in every country treading the nuclear path, as is shown by any rational analysis of the nuclear industry’s energy and economic facts. But the real strategic role of civil nuclear power, despite it being able to yield nuclear weapons in “a few screwdriver turns”, is now economic and financial.


DOOMSDAY MACHINE: The risks of nuclear power far outweigh the benefits.

Fast increasing numbers of civil reactors, uranium mines, fuel fabrication and reprocessing plants, waste fuel centres and “plutonium repositories” across the world have generated a surge of political and corporate, economic and finance sector elite support. Nuclear power is the new “No Alternative”, shading down and crowding out the reality that massive volumes and quantities of nuclear materials, in any country, destroy all reality of national defense and the nation state.

The choice is simple: nuclear power or national defence. In the coming decade we will have to choose between the atom and the nation. Conventional war, like conventional nation states is not credible in a world with 45 or more nuclear power using states. Due to certain assured massive destruction of the economy when, or if , large reactors and nuclear installation are hit… conventional war is finished. Do our political leaders know this, as they sign ever bigger reactor and nuclear fuel contracts with a growing list of low income Emerging economy countries? How many politicians are factoring this into their decision making?

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An 8.9 Quake in California Could Have Irradiated the Entire US

Wikimedia Commons

Harvey Wasserman
Common Dreams

Had the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.

The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.

All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.

San Onofre sits between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.

Diablo Canyon is at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive eruption there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.


By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors---including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison---would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the fallout victims. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.

The most definitive recent study of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster puts the death toll at 985,000.  The accident irradiated a remote rural area. The nearest city, Kiev, is 80 kilometers away.

But San Luis Obispo is some ten miles directly downwind from Diablo Canyon. The region around San Onofre has become heavily suburbanized.

Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. Itcovered an area far larger than the United States.

Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.

Chernobyl Unit Four was of comparable size to the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, and somewhat larger than the two at San Onofre.

But it was very new when it exploded. California's four coastal reactors have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s. Their accumulated internal radioactive burdens could exceed what was spewed at Chernobyl.

Japanese officials say all affected reactors automatically shut, with no radiation releases. But they are not reliable. In 2007 a smaller earthquake rocked the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki site and forced its lengthy shut-down.

Preliminary reports indicate at least one fire at a Japanese reactor hit by this quake and tsunami.

In 1986 the Perry nuclear plant, east of Cleveland, was rocked by a 5.5 Richter-scale shock, many orders of magnitude weaker than this one. That quake broke pipes and other key equipment within the plant. It took out nearby roads and bridges.

Thankfully, Perry had not yet opened. An official Ohio commission later warned that evacuation during such a quake would be impossible.

Numerous other American reactors sit on or near earthquake faults.

The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors.

Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org. 

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US deploys two nuclear experts to Japan

© AFP Kazuhiro Nogi

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Saturday it has sent two experts to Japan, where authorities were seeking to calm fears of a reactor meltdown in the aftermath of a massive earthquake.

"We have some of the most expert people in this field in the world working for the NRC and we stand ready to assist in any way possible," commission chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement announcing the deployment.

The NRC -- an independent agency mandated by Congress to regulate US commercial nuclear power plants and other nuclear materials -- said the pair were experts in boiling water nuclear reactors and are part of a broader US aid team sent to the disaster zone.


The commission has activated "its Maryland-based headquarters Operations Center since the beginning of the emergency in Japan, and is operating on a 24-hour basis," the statement added.

A blast at a Japanese nuclear plant triggered fears of a meltdown after a massive earthquake and tsunami left more than 1,000 dead and at least 10,000 unaccounted for.

As workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the chaos unleashed by Friday's 8.9 magnitude quake was an "unprecedented national disaster."

On Sunday in Japan, the operator of the plant said the cooling system of another reactor was not working and risked a possible explosion.

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