Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[eyeno]

At this point I would say it qualifies for being flooded to some degree. The video shows these guys walking on dry land over and over but the very last shot at the end of the video makes it obvious that the water has now reached the main building.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... zosA6pPH_E

[8bitagent]

The fire is pretty much uncontained and literally at the gates of Los Alamos...but not much about it on most the msm front page.

[D.R.]

Can anybody else get radiationnetwork.com up any more?
It is the site that shows a map of the U.S. that shows counts-per-minute and is updated regularly.

I am being redirected to a search engine and no route seems to open up the site today.

Perhaps things are getting to "hot" with Ft. Calhoon, Los Alamos and whatever is going on with the "hot shutdown" in New Jersey???

[The Consul]

I tried to disccuss Fukishima and Ft. Calhoun with some people the other day, asking them what they thought.... and they looked at me like I was asking them if they ever had anal sex. Mum's the word. It's private. Between the elements and the corporatists. Sshhhh.

"What we don't know won't hurt them."

[justdrew]

[url]Jellyfish shut down British nuclear reactor[/url]
By Agence France-Presse | Thursday, June 30th, 2011 -- 8:25 pm

LONDON — A nuclear power station in eastern Scotland had to shut down its reactors after "high volumes" of jellyfish were found on its seawater filter screens, the operating company said Thursday.

"Both units at Torness power station were manually shut down on 28 June, due to the high volumes of jelly fish fouling the cooling water screens," said a statement from EDF Energy, which runs the power station near Dunbar.

It explained that the shutdown was purely a precautionary measure and insisted that "at no time was there a danger to the public", nor had there been any impact on the environment. The nuclear regulator had also been informed.

"Reduced cooling water flows due to ingress from jelly fish, seaweed and other marine debris are considered as part of the station's safety case and are not an unknown phenomenon," the statement said.

Work was underway to clear the jellyfish from the waters near the power station, and staff were also monitoring the area for more jellyfish.

"The reactors will be restarted once the jellyfish situation subsides," the energy company said.

[82_28]

I tried to disccuss Fukishima and Ft. Calhoun with some people the other day, asking them what they thought.... and they looked at me like I was asking them if they ever had anal sex. Mum's the word. It's private. Between the elements and the corporatists. Sshhhh.

"What we don't know won't hurt them."

Dude. You on a roll! That's your second LOL out of me in the span of two minutes. Good one.

[eyeno]

This seems an appropriate place in history for me to find the Zardos video from Dutchsince regarding humanity. It was found on the NILU server. I'll try...

[The Consul]

Zardoz means death.

[crikkett]

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110701a2.html

Friday, July 1, 2011

Cesium found in child urine tests
Citizens' groups urge government to carry out thorough checks on all Fukushima Prefecture kids

By MIZUHO AOKI
Staff writer

Small amounts of radioactive cesium were found in the urine of 10 children in the city of Fukushima, confirming their internal exposure to radiation, citizens' groups that carried out a survey said Thursday.

The groups, including Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation, asked ACRO, a French independent radiation monitoring and sampling laboratory, to conduct tests on its members' own children. ACRO conducted tests in Belarus after the Chernobyl accident.

The groups said they couldn't judge whether the level of contamination was large or small, and urged the government to conduct thorough tests on all Fukushima children to find the precise levels of their internal exposure and take necessary measures to avoid any further contamination.

Cesium-134 and cesium-137 were detected in the urine samples of all 10 children aged between 6 and 16 who participated in the survey. The largest amount of cesium-134, which has a half-life of two years, was 1.13 becquerels per liter, found in the urine of an 8-year-old girl.

As for cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, the largest amount was 1.30 becquerels per liter detected in a 7-year-old boy. No traces of iodine-131 were found in the test.

The government has set a safety limit of 200 becquerels of cesium per liter of water.

The samples were taken in late May in the city of Fukushima, more than 50 km from the Fukushima No. 1 plant.

"All (tested) kids are contaminated. . . . Currently the (government's) policy is mainly on external exposure, but internal exposure should be taken into consideration," ACRO Chairman David Boilley told a news conference in Tokyo.

Boilley said the exact levels of contamination can't be judged by urine tests alone because there is no direct correlation between contamination found in urine and contamination in the entire body. It was difficult to judge the contamination level because the amounts of cesium detected were small, he added.

"If it's mainly due to the plume (from the initial explosions at the Fukushima No. 1 reactors), considering samples were taken two months after the exposure, that means two months before, it was quite a large contamination," Boilley said. "If it's mainly due to the food, then it is minor contamination."

To get a grasp on their contamination levels, continuing urine tests as well as more comprehensive internal tests for radiation known as whole-body counter exams are needed, he said.

Asked to convert the detected becquerel levels to sieverts, Boilley said: "We were not able to do (such a) calculation, because it depends on many parameters. And figures (we would get) may be wrong and we prefer not to give wrong figures," he said.

Masahiro Fukushi, a professor of radiological science at Tokyo Metropolitan University, told The Japan Times it is very difficult to ascertain the dose of internal exposure when radioactivity found in the urine is very small.

"It's very difficult to calculate when the detected amount is very small. Without knowing when and how the detected cesium got into their bodies, there is a huge possibility of making either an overestimation or an underestimation," Fukushi said.

He said that the speed of absorption into and exiting from one's body are different depending on whether the radioactive substances were ingested or inhaled.

[eyeno]

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/06/10/physician-epidemiologist-35-spike-infant-mortality-northwest-citie-meltdown-result-fallout-fukushima-25311/

GHC 468x60 v2
Physician and Epidemiologist Say 35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown Might Be the Result of Fallout from Fukushima

[freemason9]

Some guy at Ft. Calhoun was apparently refueling something or other outside one of the buildings at the plant and managed to catch himself afire. He is hospitalized, and that's basically all I know.

[eyeno]

Don't know what this will mean if true. Incendiary language aside, article says a levee was intentionally blown up and nobody is taking credit for it. Using tractors to remove a half a mile of levee then blow it up is no small operation either.

Unknown Parties Blow Up Levee Along Missouri River Near Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant

Friday, July 01, 2011 4:02

The Intel Hub
July 1st, 2011

A levee near the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant has been intentionally blown up by unknown parties.

This is startling information considering the history of false flag terror. While this may simply be locals blowing up a levee to divert flood waters, it remains highly suspicious.

KETV.com

Authorities are investigating an intentional breach in a levee near Desoto Bend.

Pottawattamie County officials said a half-mile stretch of the Vanmann #30 levee was mechanically excavated and then lowered by using explosives.


Officials have claimed that no government officials were involved in the detonation. The fact that it was mechanically evacuated indicates that this was not a small operation and was most likely noticed by locals.

Authorities said they’re investigating the levee breach. Pottawattamie County officials said no government entity had anything to do with the detonation, and they did not have advance notice from the people responsible for the breach.

Interestingly enough, President Obama recently signed a new executive order that established The White House Rural Council.

Keywords frequently identified as Agenda 21 language are used throughout the order.

It has also come to light that the Army Corps of Engineers, through anti human policies and objectives, effectively created/caused the major flooding that America’s Heartland is currently experiencing.

We will keep you updated as the situation develops.
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/772/948/ ... Plant.html

[justdrew]

FLOOD: Citizens blow levee north of Council Bluffs

Staff photo/Cindy Christensen - Floodwaters have already risen to the ground level windows at Ameristar Casino.
By Chad Nation, cnation@nonpareilonline.com
Published: Saturday, July 2, 2011 8:13 AM CDT
LOVELAND – A Pottawattamie County levee was intentionally blown up Friday morning by an unidentified group of citizens.

Pottawattamie County public information officer and County Attorney Matt Wilber said authorities were not notified before the explosion and are investigating who was involved with the decision and execution of the act.

The county was aware previously that a group of citizens wanted to breach the levee to drain pooling water back into the river.

Wilber said the citizens – who operate Vanmann No. 30 Levee – built the levee higher after seeing inundation maps from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in May in an attempt to keep water out. But when a natural breach occurred in Harrison County on June 25, water began to pool behind the new fortified levee.

The county was notified that a group of citizens wanted to breach the levee on June 26.

Pottawattamie County Emergency Management Coordinator Jeff Theulen met with the group that evening and informed them that they would likely need the permission of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, before such an activity could take place.

Wilber said Theulen also cautioned that any activity undertaken by them that affected the flow of water would be at their own risk should the lives and property of others be impacted.

On Tuesday, the Iowa DNR determined that it did not have authority to regulate the levee and the Corps indicated Friday morning it had no authority to regulate the levee either since it was not a federal levee.

Wilber said Theulen received a telephone call at 9:50 a.m. Friday from Harrison County Emergency Management Coordinator Larry Oliver. Oliver notified Theulan that the Vanmann No. 30 Levee might be in the process of being intentionally breached via explosives.

At 10:10 a.m., the Pottawattamie County Emergency Operations Center received a complaint call from a private citizen who had apparently witnessed the explosion and wanted to know “why the county was blowing up levees.”

Wilber said Pottawattamie County did not participate in this intentional levee breach.

“It is our understanding that neither the State of Iowa, nor the Army Corps of Engineers, nor any other governmental entity, had anything to do with the detonation,” he said.

Wilber said a representative of the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office contacted a member of the Vanmann No. 30 Levee District Friday morning.

Pottawattamie County Sheriff Jeff Danker said a deputy spoke with an unidentified person involved in the breach who confirmed that that a half-mile stretch of the levee was excavated, and lowered through the use of explosives.

“There were some questions and concerns of who did it; I assume they hired a licensed individual, but I don’t know for sure,” Danker said.

However, only a licensed commercial explosives-user can purchase and handle dynamite.

Danker said individuals can purchase and use dynamite, but only with a permit from his office. In his more than 20 years as sheriff, he said he has never issued a private permit.

“When I was a deputy, I do know farmers would come into our records department and there was a form they would sign off on to get dynamite,” he said. “Now even with our bomb disposal team, there are restrictions on what they can get.”

Any use outside the legally mandated process could be a Class C Felony under Iowa law, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, Wilber said.

Wilber also said it is unclear how the actions were performed because the area is under water.

“I couldn’t tell you how they got back there to blow it up, the whole area is inaccessible,” he said.

Wilber said the Missouri River rose between 1- and 2-inches after the breach.

“It is tough to say if it was caused by the breach or if that is the normal ebb and flow of the river,” he said.

The long-term affect of the breach is not that concerning, Wilber added, but for the short- term, it must be monitored.

“Obviously, we will be monitoring this situation very closely – both in terms of observing the effect that this breach has on water flow and river levels, and in terms of tracking potential damage to critical infrastructure and private property elsewhere downstream,” he said.

Wilber said it was “disappointing” that the decision to go forward with breaching the Vanmann No. 30 Levee was made without notifying any authorities in Pottawattamie County.

“There are tens of thousands of citizens on both sides of the river who are affected by the flooding on the Missouri River, and private activities such as this which have the potential to affect those lives should not be undertaken without a full consideration of the consequences,” he said.

“We just have to watch it. It will increase the river volume while it drains; our levees are already strained, we’re not looking to put any extra pressure on them.”

A full investigation of these activities will be accomplished as soon as possible.

“We have bigger concerns, like what effect this will have – if any – on the levees to the south or will additional property owners be flooded because of this. There’s a lot to monitor.” Wilber said. “When things calm down we’ll be in a better position to assess what went on there.”

[crikkett]

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2 ... ima/39541/

Reuters
Meltdown: What Really Happened at Fukushima?

JAKE ADELSTEIN AND DAVID MCNEILLJUL 02, 201134,442 ViewsComments (48)
It's been one of the mysteries of Japan's ongoing nuclear disaster: How much of the damage did the March 11 earthquake inflict on Fukushima Daiichi's reactors in the 40 minutes before the devastating tsunami arrived? The stakes are high: If the quake alone structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every other similar reactor in Japan is at risk.

Throughout the months of lies and misinformation, one story has stuck: "The earthquake knocked out the plant's electric power, halting cooling to its reactors," as the government spokesman Yukio Edano said at a March 15 press conference in Tokyo. The story, which has been repeated again and again, boils down to this: "after the earthquake, the tsunami – a unique, unforeseeable [the Japanese word is soteigai] event - then washed out the plant's back-up generators, shutting down all cooling and starting the chain of events that would cause the world's first triple meltdown to occur."

But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes, burst, snapped, leaked, and broke completely after the earthquake -- long before the tidal wave reached the facilities, long before the electricity went out? This would surprise few people familiar with the 40-year-old Unit 1, the grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan.

The authors have spoken to several workers at the plant who recite the same story: Serious damage to piping and at least one of the reactors before the tsunami hit. All have requested anonymity because they are still working at the plant or are connected with TEPCO. One worker, a 27-year-old maintenance engineer who was at the Fukushima complex on March 11, recalls hissing and leaking pipes. "I personally saw pipes that came apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There's no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant," he said. "There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don't know which pipes – that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for Unit 1 had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor."

The reactor walls of the reactor are quite fragile, he notes. "If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls so it needs to be allowed to escape. It's designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it's common sense."

A second worker, a technician in his late 30s, who was also on site at the time of the earthquake, narrated what happened. "It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I was pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn't see for myself. Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate and I was good with that. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn't get to the reactor core. If you can't sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don't have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out."

As he was heading to his car, he could see the walls of the reactor one building itself had already started to collapse. "There were holes in them. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival."

A third worker was coming into work late when the earthquake hit. "I was in a building nearby when the earthquake shook. After the second shockwave hit, I heard a loud explosion that was almost deafening. I looked out the window and I could see white smoke coming from reactor one. I thought to myself, ‘this is the end.'"

When the worker got to the office five to 15 minutes later the supervisor ordered them all to evacuate, explaining, "there's been an explosion of some gas tanks in reactor one, probably the oxygen tanks. In addition to this there has been some structural damage, pipes have burst, meltdown is possible. Please take shelter immediately." (It should be noted that there have been several explosions at Daiichi even after the March 11 earthquake, one of which TEPCO stated, "was probably due to a gas tank left behind in the debris".)

However, while the employees prepared to leave, the tsunami warning came. Many of them fled to the top floor of a building near the site and waited to be rescued.

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

In a previous story, Kei Sugaoka, a Japanese engineer who worked at the Unit 1 site, says that he wasn't surprised that a meltdown took place after the earthquake. He sent the Japanese government a letter, dated June 28, 2000, warning them of the problems there. It took the Japanese government more than two years to act on that warning. Mr. Sugaoka has also said he saw yakuza tattoos on many of the cleanup crew staff. When interviewed on May 23 he stated, "The plant had problems galore and the approach taken with them was piecemeal. Most of the critical work: construction work, inspection work, and welding were entrusted to sub-contracted employees with little technical background or knowledge of nuclear radiation. I can't remember there ever being a disaster drill. The TEPCO employees never got their hands dirty."

Onda notes, "I've spent decades researching TEPCO and its nuclear power plants and what I've found, and what government reports confirm is that the nuclear reactors are only as strong as their weakest links, and those links are the pipes."

During his research, Onda spoke with several engineers who worked at the TEPCO plants. One told him that often piping would not match up the way it should according to the blueprints. In that case, the only solution was to use heavy machinery to pull the pipes close enough together to weld them shut. Inspection of piping was often cursory and the backs of the pipes, which were hard to reach, were often ignored. Since the inspections themselves were generally cursory and done by visual checks, it was easy to ignore them. Repair jobs were rushed; no one wanted to be exposed to nuclear radiation longer than necessary.

Onda adds, "When I first visited the Fukushima power plant it was a web of pipes. Pipes on the wall, on the ceiling, on the ground. You'd have to walk over them, duck under them—sometimes you'd bump your head on them. It was like a maze of pipes inside."

Onda believes it's not very difficult to explain what happened at Unit 1 and perhaps the other reactors as well. "The pipes, which regulate the heat of the reactor and carry coolant, are the veins and arteries of a nuclear power plant; the core is the heart. If the pipes burst, vital components don't reach the heart and thus you have a heart attack, in nuclear terms: meltdown. In simpler terms, you can't cool a reactor core if the pipes carrying the coolant and regulating the heat rupture—it doesn't get to the core."

Tooru Hasuike, a TEPCO employee from 1977 until 2009 andformer general safety manager of the Fukushima plant, also notes: "The emergency plans for a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant had no mention of using sea-water to cool the core. To pump seawater into the core is to destroy the reactor. The only reason you'd do that is no other water or coolant was available."

Problems with the fractured, deteriorating, poorly repaired pipes and the cooling system had been pointed out for years. In 2002, whistle-blower allegations that TEPCO had deliberately falsified safety records came to light and the company was forced to shut down all of its reactors and inspect them, including the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant. Kei Sugaoka, a GE on-site inspector first notified Japan's nuclear watch dog, Nuclear Industrial Safey Agency (NISA) in June of 2000. Not only did the government of Japan take more than two years to address the problem and collude on covering it up, they gave the name of the whistleblower to TEPCO.



In September of 2002, TEPCO admitted to covering up data concerning cracks in critical circulation pipes in addition to previously revealed falsifications. In their analysis of the cover-up, The Citizen's Nuclear Information Center writes: "The records that were covered up had to do with cracks in parts of the reactor known as recirculation pipes. These pipes are there to siphon off heat from the reactor. If these pipes were to fracture, it would result in a serious accident in which coolant leaks out. From the perspective of safety, these are highly important pieces of equipment. Cracks were found in the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, reactor one, reactor two, reactor three, reactor four, reactor five." The cracks in the pipes were not due to earthquake damage; they came from the simple wear and tear of long-term usage.

On March 2, nine days before the meltdown, the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) gave TEPCO a warning on its failure to inspect critical pieces of equipment at the plant, which included the recirculation pumps. TEPCO was ordered to make the inspections, perform repairs if needed and give a report to the NISA on June 2. The report is not confirmed to have been filed as of this time.

The problems were not only with the piping. Gas tanks at the site also exploded after the earthquake. The outside of the reactor building suffered structural damage. There was some chaos. There was no one really qualified to assess the radioactive leakage because, as the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency admits, after the accident all the on-site inspectors fled the site. And the quake and tsunami broke most of the monitoring equipment so there was little information available on radiation afterwards.

Before the dawn on March 12, the water levels at the reactor began to plummet and the radiation began rising. Meltdown was taking place. The TEPCO Press release issued on March 12 just past 4am stated, "the pressure within the containment vessel is high but stable." There was a note buried in the release that many people missed. "The emergency water circulation system was cooling the steam within the core; it has ceased to function."

According to The Chunichi Shinbun and other sources, a few hours after the earthquake extremely high levels of radiation were being measured within the reactor one building. The levels were so high that if you spent a full day exposed to them it would be fatal. The water levels of the reactor were already sinking.After the Japanese government forced TEPCO to release hundreds of pages of documents relating to the accident in May, Bloomberg reported on May 19 that a radiation alarm went off 1.5 kilometers from the number one reactor on March 11 at 3:29 p.m., minutes before the tsunami reached the plant. TEPCO would not deny the possibility that there was significant radiation leakage before the power went out. They did assert that the alarm might have simply malfunctioned.

On March 11, at 9:51 p.m., under the CEO's orders, the inside of the reactor building was declared a no-entry zone. Around 11 p.m., radiation levels for the inside of the turbine building, which was next door to the reactor, reached hourly levels of 0.5 to 1.2 mSv. The meltdown was already underway.

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

Sometime between 4 and 6 a.m. on March 12, Masao Yoshida, the plant manager decided it was time to pump seawater into the reactor core and notified TEPCO. Seawater was not pumped in until hours after a hydrogen explosion occurred, roughly 8:00 p.m. that day. By then, it was probably already too late.

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

As Burnie points out, TEPCO also admitted massive fuel melt --16 hours after loss of coolant, and 7-8 hours before the explosion in unit 1. "Since they must have known all this - their decision to flood with massive water volumes would guarantee massive additional contamination - including leaks to the ocean."

No one knows exactly how much damage was done to the plant by the quake, or if this damage alone would account for the meltdown. However, eyewitness testimony and TEPCO'S own data indicates that the damage was significant. All of this despite the fact that shaking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it's approved design specifications. Says Hasuike: "What really happened at the Fukushima Daiicihi Nuclear Power Plant to cause a meltdown? TEPCO and the government of Japan have provided many explanations. They don't make sense. The one thing they haven't provided is the truth. It's time that they did."

Jake Adelstein is an investigative journalist, consultant, and the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter On The Police Beat In Japan. He is also a board member of the Washington, D.C.-based Polaris Project Japan, which combats human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in the sex trade. David McNeill writes for The Irish Times, The Independent and other publications. He has taught courses on journalism at Sophia University and is a coordinator of Japan Focus. Stephanie Nakajima contributed to this article.

Photos via Reuters.

Topics: Fukushima, Nuclear Power, Japan Earthquake, Tepco, Japan

[StarmanSkye]

"During his research, Onda spoke with several engineers who worked at the TEPCO plants. One told him that often piping would not match up the way it should according to the blueprints. In that case, the only solution was to use heavy machinery to pull the pipes close enough together to weld them shut. Inspection of piping was often cursory and the backs of the pipes, which were hard to reach, were often ignored. Since the inspections themselves were generally cursory and done by visual checks, it was easy to ignore them. Repair jobs were rushed; no one wanted to be exposed to nuclear radiation longer than necessary."

O.
M.
G.


Whatta way to run a potentially ticking dirty-nuclear bomba.

We're supposed to think this is the 'best' that can be done?