Nuclear Meltdown Watch

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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby Iamwhomiam » Fri Feb 24, 2017 9:44 pm



Weather report: 66 degrees Fahrenheit at 8:35pm in Albany NY on February 24, 2017. Yesterday was an all-time record breaker - 74 degrees Fahrenheit at 4:19 pm
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 07, 2017 9:11 am

MARCH 6, 2017
Fukushima Catastrophe at 6: Normalizing Radiation Exposure Demeans Women and Kids and Risks Their Health
by CINDY FOLKERS

Since the election of President Trump, certain words have taken prominence in our lexicon: “alternative facts”, “gaslighting”, “normalization”. But the techniques these words represent have been used by the nuclear industry and its purveyors in government since the Cold War love affair with nuclear weapons began.

And as we deal with the continuing fallout 6 years after the Fukushima, and 31 years after the Chernobyl, catastrophes began, the nuclear industry continues to put these techniques to good use. They have labeled “radiophobic” those who question nuclear power or who refuse to move back to contaminated areas or eat contaminated food. They shame people into taking health risks and socially isolate those who refuse to comply. They sell the lie of decontamination despite the fact that what has been decontaminated one day, may be recontaminated the next.

Women and children are often the focus of these “normalization” techniques. And they are the ones with the most to lose including supportive social and familial structures, and ultimately, health. Females, children and pregnancy pay a disproportionate price for nuclear energy because they are especially vulnerable to radiation damage. When a catastrophe like Fukushima happens, they become targets: targets of gaslighting, social isolation, radiation damage.

Japan’s radiation refugees

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) estimates that as of Nov 2016, the number of people displaced because of the earthquake, tsunami and radioactive contamination remains at 134,000. Of this number, 84,000 are still displaced around Fukushima, where evacuation orders are not yet lifted around the reactor.

In 2017, Japan is lifting evacuation orders and basically forcing people to move back to towns that were, and still are, contaminated with radioactivity from the ruined Fukushima nuclear reactors. Those who return are promised a one-time sum for doing so. For those who will not go back, the Japan government will cut off compensation. The IDMC frames the issue as a horrible choice: return to risk or try to reintegrate elsewhere without any resources. Greenpeace, in their February 2017 report, demonstrates that the uncertain risks and unpredictable nature of radiological contamination mean there is no return to normal.

Taking radiation into your psyche, as if it is normal

Radiation is associated with disease, even at low levels. Nuclear power proponents incorrectly contend that if you think you are sick from radiation exposure, it is all in your head and your health problems resulted from your worry. In other words, it was your fault, not theirs. They term it “radiophobia”. This pernicious label was first coined in the United States in the 1950’s. Like much of the initial Cold War nuclear policy, it attempted to “normalize” nuclear technology so that above ground atomic bomb tests could continue unhindered.

In fact, an opinion piece in the Western journal of surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, a medical journal which addressed women’s health issues, blamed caretakers for inciting fear of nuclear weapons in children. In the piece, entitled “RADIOPHOBIA; a new psychological syndrome,” the author claims “Anxiety-ridden parents or teachers who fear atomic bombs probably project the same fears to their children…” And that this “conditioning amounts to psychological punishment”. In essence the author, who was not a qualified mental health practitioner, was accusing these parents of abuse. The not-so-subtle implication was that radiophobia was a woman’s disease that she passed to any children she contacted.

The unscientific radiophobia label has persisted through the larger nuclear power catastrophes. For instance, according to a Macmillan dictionary entry, “Chernobyl has left an enduring legacy of opposition to nuclear power, now often referred to as radiophobia by technical experts…” However, the targets of this dismissive and derisive label are not just those who oppose nuclear power. The mysogynistic overtones of the radiophobic label are clearly present as the Fukushima and Chernobyl catastrophes continue to unfold.

In the wake of a nuclear catastrophe, exposed women and children are specifically berated into silence. If they continue to express concerns about health impacts, they risk becoming social outcasts. In this context, radiophobia is a social label used to stigmatize, not a scientific or medical diagnosis. In the case of Japan, radiophobia is called “radiation brain mom“. This epithet particularly refers to women who question whether food is contaminated; and it implies that they are irrational, overly emotional and unscientific, merely for asking the question.

Radiophobia accusations at Fukushima put children and women’s health at risk

After Fukushima began, doctor of psychosomatic medicine, Katsuno Onozawa, was interviewed by the Asahi Shimbun in 2013. As an actual expert on psychosomatic disorders, she stated: “children were exhibiting a range of symptoms including sore throats, nosebleeds, diarrhea, fatigue, headaches and rashes…” Yet these symptoms were written off as “radiophobia” and the mothers were accused of making their children sick by worrying. “Many reproach themselves, thinking, ‘Maybe I’m the one who’s strange,’ and become depressed.” She concludes: “If we say ‘it’s safe’ despite the risks only to erase fears, then we simply leave in place the danger that defenseless children may be contaminated.”

For the record, here are some symptoms of short-term, higher radiation exposure: “nausea, vomiting, headache, and diarrhea…swelling, itching, and redness of the skin” Many around Three Mile Island complained of similar symptoms following the partial meltdown there. The higher the radiation dose, the quicker the symptoms manifest. Children are more vulnerable to radiation exposure than adults, women more vulnerable than men.

In Japan, the “radiation brain mom” label has resulted in a self-censoring of concern about radiological contamination, leaving women and children unprotected after exposure to the initial radiation cloud. Subsequently their health is continually put at risk from food and environmental contamination. “Silence was not imposed by an iron fist of government, but rather wrapped around people like soft velvet, gently making women feel that they had to be silent.”

Taking radiation into your body, as if it is normal

Since the Fukushima catastrophe started, recommendations for radiation exposure limits in Japan were increased by 20 times. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) sets non-binding recommendations internationally for post nuclear catastrophes. Their limit is 1 mSv per year in addition to background radiation. This effectively would double the dose from unavoidable natural background, which is already 0.8 to 1 mSv per year. However, according to the IAEA, 1-20 mSv per year “is acceptable and in line with the international standards and with the recommendations from the relevant international organisations, e.g. ICRP, IAEA, UNSCEAR and WHO”.

Therefore Japan is, under controversy, encouraging resettlement in areas up to 20 mSv/yr. The increase in the allowable exposure limit occurred after contamination created wide-reaching negative economic impacts. Before the radioactive release contaminated Fukushima province, it was a center for organic farming and the “eat locally” movement. Since the contamination, consumer instinct has been to avoid Fukushima products.

Since studies show cancer and other disease impacts can occur within the range of natural background, clearly, the decision to allow a higher exposure level had nothing to do with health. Instead, it was an economic decision that took advantage of the fact that many diseases induced by this radiation exposure may not show for years, or may show as hard-to-attribute subclinical impacts, masking radiation’s disease-causing role. For those health impacts that do appear, nuclear proponents can always fall back on the argument that “it is all in your head”–i.e. radiophobia.

International agencies and industries normalize eating contaminated food to save face and money.

The ICRP is guilty of encouraging radiation ingestion, despite known risks. One recommendation is the encouragement of growing, selling and consuming, contaminated food, as an economic imperative for those in contaminated areas.

ICRP has also supported an effort in the wake of Fukushima called ETHOS that encourages “practical radiation protection culture” (PRPC). ETHOS was an effort originally started with the French nuclear industry, after the Chernobyl catastrophe began, when they realized that the cost of evacuation and compensation was starting to impact the nuclear industry’s financial and public standing worldwide.

Encouraging PRPC is a cowardly way of saying it’s too expensive to move people away from contaminated areas or allow them to eat clean eat food, so officials need to tell people there is no health risk from contamination. This is done under the guise of empowering the local populations by providing them with monitoring equipment, training, and a sense that eating contaminated food is okay. Mothers in Belarus were trained to measure the radioactive contamination of their children and to accept a certain level, resigning them to the fate of living with and eating radioactivity.

ETHOS goes one step further in claiming that individuals bear the responsibility to keep themselves safe from radioactive contamination with little to no help or resources from the industry that caused the contamination in the first place. Now, ETHOS is in Fukushima, protecting the nuclear industry from those whose lands it has defiled and whose lives it has marred.

The U.S. will be no different

For those who are hoping the U.S. will somehow escape the radiation normalization process, think again. We are learning from Fukushima and Chernobyl that international bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO) or ICRP will provide no support for clean food and relocation to uncontaminated land should we suffer a nuclear catastrophe.

We are further learning that our U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admits that decontamination is a lie. Using very colorful and demeaning language regarding radiological cleanup, an EPA employee said in 2013 “‘U.S. residents are used to having ‘cleanup to perfection,’ but would have to abandon their ‘not-in-my-backyard’ mentality in such cases. ‘People are going to have to put on their big-boy pants and suck it up…'”.

Dove-tailing on this egregiously tone-deaf statement, EPA proceeded to institute “protective” action guides (PAGs) meant to provide levels of acceptable contamination in food and water subsequent to a radiological incident. A radiological incident can include a catastrophic release but also lesser releases from transport accidents, for instance. The limits EPA recommends are hundreds to thousands of times higher for some radionuclides than previously allowed. Exposure could continue at these levels for years, endangering women and children the most. Just like women have been resigned or bullied into silence at Chernobyl and Fukushima, we can expect the same modus operandi here.

UN Human rights instruments offer women and children radiation protection when other national and international agencies fail to

Women and children are more susceptible to radioactivity, therefore any attempt to label women as irrational for fearing radioactivity is ludicrous. The fact is, women and early life stages are not protected by the recommendations of international experts. Women and children have, and will continue to, pay a disproportionate price for the use of nuclear power, it’s routine radioactive releases, and the catastrophes it causes.

Increasing allowable levels of exposure post accident for economic convenience or to tamp down fear is unacceptable. Encouraging women and children to eat contaminated food appears to be in violation of Article 24 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), particularly the principle of needed access to “adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking-water, taking into consideration the dangers and risks of environmental pollution”.

Women’s voices should count for more, not less

Women are often the most concerned about social health, and are the first and most vociferous in protecting public health following a nuclear catastrophe. And science shows they should be. Women and children are more vulnerable to radiation’s impacts and the life-stage of pregnancy is uniquely sensitive. They pay the highest price for nuclear power and it releases, so their voices should count for more, both in the energy decisions we currently face and in how we protect those whose lives are upturned by nuclear catastrophes.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/06/ ... ir-health/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 11, 2017 9:21 pm


Japan marks 6 years since devastating tsunami
News | WSBTV
4:52 p.m Saturday, March 11, 2017 AJC Homepage

Image
The Japan tsunami of 2011 (Photo: AP)

TOKYO (AP) - Six years ago, more than 18,000 people died or went missing as a tsunami triggered by a massive quake engulfed coastal areas of northeastern Japan. Tens of thousands more people's lives were unraveled when they lost family members, friends, homes and livelihoods. The displacement widened as entire communities fled after meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.

Japan is marking the anniversary of the disaster Saturday with somber ceremonies in Tokyo and in cities and towns in the northeast. Most of the towns devastated in the March 11, 2011, disasters have only partially rebuilt, and local authorities are struggling to finance construction. Meanwhile, despite an abundance of jobs thanks to the rebuilding, the population in most of the region is falling.

Here are some measures of progress in Japan's recovery:

___

RECONSTRUCTION: The government spent 26 trillion yen ($220 billion) in recovery and rebuilding from 2011-2015, but is due to slash that to only 6.5 trillion yen in 2016-2020. Reconstruction has been hampered by a shortage of workers, and while much of the public housing planned to replace destroyed homes has been finished, about a fifth of the units stand empty.

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DISPLACED FAMILIES: As many as 150,000 people fled radiation-affected areas near the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. As of February, 123,000 were still displaced. Housing subsidies for so-called "voluntary evacuees" - those who left areas not designated as evacuation zones - are due to run out by the end of March. Japanese media say some of those families have struggled to find new housing.

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THE NUCLEAR PLANT: Tokyo Electric Power Co. is struggling to decommission the wrecked plant and the estimated total cost exceeds 21 trillion yen ($182 billion). Cleanup of nearby areas has lagged and radiation levels remain high. The cost of that cleanup has reportedly almost doubled to 4 trillion yen ($35 billion). TEPCO officials say radiation is not leaking outside of the reactors.

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FISHERIES: Many of the seaside towns in the disaster zone relied heavily on fishing and aquaculture. Data from Iwate prefecture, one of the hardest-hit areas, shows harvests of salmon and oysters still only at 40 percent of the level when the tsunami hit. Other industries, such as sea urchin and abalone, have recovered to about 80 percent of normal. The region's fisheries still employ about 14,000 people, but that's down from about 18,000 in 2010.

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THE MISSING: As of Friday, 2,553 people are still missing, and occasionally teams still search the coastline for signs of their remains. What's also missing are the many close-knit fishing hamlets and waterfronts in areas that were scoured bare by the tsunami, where only foundations remain.

http://www.ajc.com/news/japan-marks-yea ... 5kF9raSDM/



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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 16, 2017 11:05 am

A new boar war: Big radioactive pigs overrun Fukushima site
March 13, 2017 12:00 AM
By the Editorial Board
Six years after Fukushima became a cautionary tale about the tragic collision between the unfettered forces of nature and technology, it is providing yet another ominous metaphor for our troubled times — wild radioactive boars.

Northern Japan has been overrun by hundreds of wild boars, toxic from the radiation meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant that led to the abandonment of the city by its human residents. Even before radiation is figured into the equation, wild boars are ornery, frightening creatures. They’re also a delicacy in Japan, which accounts for their presence in the first place.

Delicacy or not, anything capable of setting off Geiger counters makes it inedible for human consumption. The boars have also proved themselves to be anti-social marauders who invade empty homes and destroy untended, wild crops.

These animals have been the kings and queens of Fukushima since the mass evacuation of humans more than half a decade ago. Within the next month, the Japanese government will lift evacuation orders on four towns within the 12-mile zone circling the nuclear plant. In advance of the return of humans to the area, a systematic culling of wild boars has begun.

More than 800 of the contaminated animals have been killed so far, but there may be as many as 13,000. Many of the boars have settled into homes and appear to have lost their natural fear of humans. Authorities are using drones, traps and other tactics to bring the number down.

Still, only half of the city’s former residents have expressed any interest in returning. The broken and contaminated nuclear plant won’t be completely dismantled for another 40 years.

In the meantime, the municipal incinerators will be busy burning boar carcasses using filters that eliminate radioactive cesium leakage. There’s a metaphor and possibly an even more terrible irony in all of this. As time passes, it may make itself more obvious.

http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/edi ... 1703130021


The illusion of normality at Fukushima
Six years after it suffered a nuclear meltdown, Fukushima appears to have returned to a semblance of normalcy. But there is still a long way to go in terms of cleaning up the site. Martin Fritz reports.
Japan Sechs jahre nach dem Reaktorunglück in Fukushima (Reuters/T. Hanai )
A filter mask covering the mouth and nose, a headscarf, a helmet, gloves and two layers of socks – they constitute the protective gear that must be worn by any ordinary visitor to the Fukushima nuclear power station.
Only a few workers now have to wear face masks and hazmat suits, since most of the ground at the site has been sealed with concrete.
"The radiation is now as low as in the Tokyo's Ginza shopping district," Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) manager Yuichi Okamura assured a group of journalists during their recent visit to the plant.
But the illusion of normality evaporates as soon as the visitors get off their bus and stand within sight of the reactors, with dosimeters indicating radiation levels of around 160 to 170 microsieverts per hour - nearly 2,000 times above what is considered safe.
"We cannot stay here for long," warns Okamura.
On the surface, it appears that much has changed in Fukushima since the disaster struck six years ago. The clean-up work has evidently made progress.
Watch video03:27
Japan: Six years after Fukushima disaster
But the sight of skeletal steel frames, torn walls and broken pipes immediately reminds one of the 17-meter-high tsunami which flooded the facility six years ago and brought its reactors to a complete standstill.
It's expected to take 30 to 40 years to completely clean up the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was hit by the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl following a magnitude-9 earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. The operation is likely to carry a hefty price tag, with Japanese officials recently estimating it to cost around $189 billion in total.
Today, with 6,000 workers employed, the nuclear power plant is Japan's largest and most expensive construction site - and it will remain so for decades. "We're struggling with four problems," says TEPCO manager Okamura: "Reducing the radiation at the site, stopping the influx of groundwater, retrieving the spent fuel rods and removing the molten nuclear fuel."
DW RECOMMENDS

Six years after Fukushima - women and children still suffer most
The Japanese government is trying to get back to normality after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, but the crisis is far from over for women and children, says Greenpeace. Thousands of mothers have sued the authorities. (10.03.2017)
Fukushima nuclear disaster evacuees 'pressured' to return to contaminated homes, says Greenpeace
Radiation at Fukushima plant hits 5-year high
Japan pulls plug on experimental nuclear reactor
Black lumps in the reactor containment
Progress in these areas, however, is slow. For instance, workers are erecting scaffolding around the collapsed roof of reactor No 1, but it will likely take four more years for the debris there to be cleared away. Only then can the almost 400 old fuel rods be retrieved from the reactor's holding basin.
In the adjacent reactor No 2, the blue exterior still remains intact. Workers in hazmat suits can be seen walking on a new metal platform halfway up the reactor building. But behind the wall lies a nuclear nightmare. A robot sent into the reactor in January found highly dangerous black lumps of leaked fuel on a platform in the outer reactor containment.
"There is now fatally high radiation in that part," says Okamura.
The engineer quickly turns to reactor No 3, where the progress is more obvious. A hydrogen explosion had turned the reactor's roof into a tangle of bent metal. It took years of work to dismantle this steel scrap and remove the rubble. "Now we're building a new roof with an integrated hoisting crane," says Okamura proudly.
"From next year, we would finally be able to close in on the nearly 600 burnt fuel rods," he noted. But unlike in reactor No 4, the clean-up must be undertaken remotely as the radiation is so strong that people can only stay there for a few minutes. As a result, the construction of the lifting device has already been delayed by several years.
Unclear conditions
The situation at the reactors raises doubts about the optimism shared by Japanese officials with regard to the orderly decommissioning of the plant. At the next stop, Okamura shows the control center of the underground ice wall that was built to prevent groundwater from leaking into the reactor basements and mixing with radioactive coolant water.
Since its construction, it has managed to reduce the amount of groundwater flowing into the reactor basements. But five sections of the wall have had to be kept open to prevent water inside the reactor basements from rising and flowing out too rapidly.
Despite all these adversities, the Japanese government and TEPCO are planning to decide as early as this summer how to remove the molten nuclear fuel from the reactors.
Even Shunji Uchida, the Fukushima Daiichi plant manager, couldn't hide his skepticism from the visiting journalists. "Robots and cameras have already provided us with valuable pictures," says Uchida, adding: "But it is still unclear what is really going on inside."
http://www.dw.com/en/the-illusion-of-no ... a-37885120
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:10 am

Return to Fukushima: Eerie pictures show the abandoned streets and buildings six years after 100,000 fled Japanese nuclear disaster zone
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rmath.html




The hero who averted nuclear catastrophe
The tsunami that hit Japan six years ago almost caused another Chernobyl in Fukushima. Journalist Rob Gilhooly was there and has written a book about the aftermath

Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 15:03
Rob Gilhooly

A Tokyo Electric Power Coompany employee walks past storage tanks for contaminated water at the company’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan, on February 23rd. Photograph: AFP / Pool / Tomohiro Ohsumi
A Tokyo Electric Power Coompany employee walks past storage tanks for contaminated water at the company’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan, on February 23rd. Photograph: AFP / Pool / Tomohiro Ohsumi

More than six years have passed since the earthquake and tsunami struck the Tohoku region of northern Japan, yet memories of that time still haunt me.
It’s difficult to forget some of the heart-wrenching scenes, such as the man slumped over the foundations of a destroyed home in Ishinomaki, and that fleeting, fanciful thought that at any moment he might emerge from a TV- and green tea-induced slumber.
Likewise the teenaged boy in Rikuzentakata, shovel in hand, searching among the rubble for his brother, or the pathos of a scene where a military official returned a slipper to the foot of a man as his limp, lifeless body was unloaded from a truck and transported to a makeshift morgue inside a high school gym.
I hadn’t sufficiently prepared myself for such sights, or indeed the scale of devastation that the disasters had wrought on coastal Tohoku when I headed up there from Tokyo on the morning of March 12th with two journalist friends.
Nor for that matter, had I given much thought to a third, more insidious danger that soon began to unfold.
As we headed north toward the scene of the disaster, I passed through territory I knew well as I had spent the first few years of my Japan life there back in the early 1990s. A literal translation of its name would be “Lucky Island”, but little did I know that Fukushima was about to become a place synonymous with nuclear catastrophe.
Speeding along almost entirely alone for large stretches of normally busy highway, I called an old friend from my days there. As he relayed the welcome news that he and his young family were safe, his voice took an unusually alarmed tone. The local news was reporting that there had been an explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station about 50 miles away from where we were presently driving.

Realising the potentially wide-reaching consequences, we turned east toward Iwaki, a city located about 20 miles south of the plant. The last thing my friend said was the thing I remember most clearly to this day: “Fukushima’s finished. We’re the new Chernobyl.”
More explosions followed and tens of thousands of residents living near the plant were evacuated as radioactive materials fell on the fields and mountains that surrounded their homes. Despite assurances by the plant’s operator TEPCO that everything was under control, it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t and my old friend was right: Fukushima had quickly become a byword for nuclear catastrophe – the new Chernobyl.
Over the weeks, months and years that followed, I continued to visit the devastated area in an attempt to uncover the story of the nuclear disaster from the standpoint of those who had battled away to fight it and those who had been forced to flee from it.
This culminated in the book Yoshida’s Dilemma: One Man’s Struggle to Avert Nuclear Catastrophe. Fukushima – March 2011, which was released by inknbeans Press last month, the sixth anniversary of the disasters.
The book is named after Masao Yoshida, the superintendent of the plant and one of the so-called “Fukushima 50” – the skeleton team of workers who stayed behind and braved multiple explosions and meltdowns in an attempt to bring the plant back under control.
Yoshida, who retired from the plant in late 2012 after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, has widely been afforded hero status for his leading role in averting a far more devastating catastrophe. Most famously, he defied official orders to stop using seawater to cool the melting reactors, one of many dilemmas he faced throughout the lengthy ordeal.
In addition to speaking with Yoshida, plant officials and workers for the book, many of them off the record or on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, I also interviewed Naoto Kan, Japan’s prime minister at the time, who some believe played an equally important hand when he put a stop to an alleged worker pullout from the plant as it spiralled out of control. Such a move, he believed, would trigger an even wider nuclear catastrophe that would require an evacuation zone stretching as far as Tokyo, impacting a total of 50 million people.
With time, the plant was brought under control, but tens of thousands of evacuated residents were displaced, and indeed remain so today, unable or unwilling to return.
The most significant reason is that much of that zone remains off limits, while small pockets have been reopened. Another is the uncertain health risks, exacerbated by a lack of trust in a government that issued a ruling just days after the nuclear crisis started that effectively increased the official safe level of radiation exposure for residents by a factor of 20.
Indeed, confusion reigns with regards to the impact of the accident on health. Some researchers, such as Geraldine Thomas, a cancer specialist at London University, insist that the radiation levels seen at Fukushima are too low to bring about the high numbers of thyroid and other cancers that were among the more prominent illnesses to come to light in the decades after Chernobyl.
Others, such as Hisako Sakiyama, a former senor researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences, disagree, saying sufficient data has been gathered to show even lower radiation doses can cause sufficient DNA damage to bring about cancer and other illnesses.
Away from the laboratory, however, about 200 thyroid cancer cases have already been detected among the Fukushima residents aged 18 and under at the time of the accident, though experts say that a stigma attached to radiation-induced cancer, which harks back to the A-bomb “hibakusha” survivors in Hiroshima and Nagashima, means the figure is almost certainly higher.

Other illnesses are also starting to come to light.
On February 2nd, a former plant worker took utility TEPCO to court after he was diagnosed with leukemia. His illness had already been recognised by Japan’s health and labour ministry as being work-related, though a TEPCO spokesman flatly denied the possibility of a connection between the cancer and radiation exposure at the plant.
This case seemed to make for a poignant ending to Yoshida’s Dilemma. Yoshida and a large cast of workers and fire-fighters battled courageously to prevent a potentially world-changing disaster. Yet, for tens of thousands of people affected by the nuclear accident, that battle continues.
Yoshida’s Dilemma is a tribute to the former, and a reminder of the plight of the latter, who remain in limbo as politicians in Japan’s capital turn their attention to what they see as more pressing issues, such as the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books ... -1.3045114


IAEA chief urges global support for decommissioning Fukushima plant
KYODO
APR 12, 2017

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano has called for international cooperation in the decommissioning of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex.

“It is important to gather as much knowledge as possible from around the world and engage in the (decommissioning) with the cooperation of the global community,” Amano said at a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday, calling efforts to scrap the nuclear plant “extremely difficult.”

While reiterating his agency’s support for dealing with the Fukushima plant, he said getting the international community to work together will serve as a good “reference” in the event other countries carry out their own decommissioning work.

The Fukushima crisis, the world’s worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, resulted in meltdowns at three reactors after a powerful earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

Decommissioning the crippled reactors is expected to take 30 to 40 years and the total cost has been estimated by the Japan Center for Economic Research, a private think tank, at ¥11 trillion ($98.9 billion), while a government panel estimated the total cost at ¥8 trillion.

Amano also expressed concern over the threat to regional security posed by North Korea’s repeated nuclear tests and missile launches, saying the IAEA was ready to immediately send inspectors to North Korea, even for a brief period.

In 2009, North Korea kicked out the IAEA’s monitoring staff from its Yongbyon nuclear facility. Last year alone, North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and test-fired more than 20 ballistic missiles.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/0 ... O-aw1PytMA
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 24, 2017 4:34 pm


Image
Mothers who fled to the Itoshima, Fukuoka Prefecture, to escape radiation spewed by the March 2011 core meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture say they are concerned about the safety of the Genkai nuclear plant in neighboring Saga Prefecture. | KYODO
NATIONAL
Mothers who fled Fukushima fallout raise voices against Genkai plant restart in Saga
KYODO
APR 23, 2017

SAGA – A group of mothers who evacuated from the Kanto region to Fukuoka Prefecture after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis is ramping up protests against efforts to restart the Genkai nuclear plant in neighboring Saga.

After meeting with Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko on Saturday, Saga Gov. Yoshinori Yamaguchi is expected to approve the restart of two reactors in the town of Genkai as early as Monday.

Earlier this month, four of the moms gathered for a meeting in Itoshima in Fukuoka and discussed plans to send the city a document and an inquiry conveying their opposition.

As they racked their brains to deliver effective expressions, the meeting lasted for around six hours until their children returned home from school.

Three of the moms moved to Itoshima after becoming worried their children would be adversely affected by exposure to the fallout spewed by the triple core meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in Fukushima Prefecture in March 2011. The plant is run by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.

“I wanted to go far away for the sake of my unborn child,” said 39-year-old Fumiyo Endo, the leader of the group.

But the place she relocated to was within 30 km of the Genkai plant run by Kyushu Electric Power Co.

In March, she attended a meeting of residents to get explanations about the restart but was concerned whether safety would be ensured by sheltering indoors as instructed should an accident occur.

She also felt angry after hearing a utility official say that restarting the plant is necessary “for a stable supply of power.” She said it sounded as if the utility did not care about human lives.

But she did not decide to leave Itoshima because she wanted to keep living there, to stay close to the sea and mountains.

Another member of the group said it was important to keep resisting.

“It is significant to protest against nuclear plants near the plant sites,” said photographer Nonoko Kameyama, 40.

Kameyama, a mother of three, has published a photo book of mothers hoping to bring about a society without nuclear power plants.

A day after attending the residents’ meeting, Endo and other members called the Saga Prefectural Government to urge it to reject the restart.

When asked by a prefectural official during the call what the name of their group was, they came up with an impromptu title: “Mothers Who Want to Save Children’s Lives.” Dozens of people have recently joined in response to its Facebook post.

The group has submitted petitions to Saga Gov. Yamaguchi and Itoshima Mayor Yuji Tsukigata.

“Resuming operations only makes residents feel unsettled and we cannot see a bright future,” said Endo. “We want our leaders to understand such feelings.”

Yamaguchi is expected to approve the Genkai restart as early as Monday, after meeting with METI chief Seko on Saturday.

“The central government has shown a strong determination to work on nuclear energy policy in a responsible manner,” Yamaguchi said Saturday, adding he wants to convey his decision “as early as possible.”

The government is pushing for reactor restarts despite the triple core meltdown at Fukushima No. 1, saying nuclear energy is Japan’s key energy source.

In January, reactor Nos. 3 and 4 at the Genkai plant passed the tougher safety requirements introduced in the wake of the Fukushima crisis. On Feb. 24, a majority of the Genkai Municipal Assembly voted in favor of restarting the plant.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/0 ... P5g_1LMzdQ
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby Grizzly » Mon Apr 24, 2017 5:50 pm

Thanks for posting these slad, especially for the article about the hero, Masao Yoshida The world needs more Yoshida's.

The hero who averted nuclear catastrophe
The tsunami that hit Japan six years ago almost caused another Chernobyl in Fukushima. Journalist Rob Gilhooly was there and has written a book about the aftermath
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/book ... -1.3045114
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 01, 2017 11:19 am

Published on
Monday, May 01, 2017
byCommon Dreams
Sparking Fears of Airborne Radiation, Wildfire Burns in Fukushima 'No-Go Zone'
Contaminated forests such as those outside fallout sites like Fukushima and Chernobyl 'are ticking time bombs'
byLauren McCauley, staff writer

Kendra Ulrich, senior Global Energy campaigner for Greenpeace Japan on the Asakaze, a research vessel chartered by Greenpeace Japan, doing radiation survey work off shore of Fukushima Daiich. (Photo: Greenpeace)

A wildfire broke out in the highly radioactive "no-go zone" near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant over the weekend, reviving concerns over potential airborne radiation.

Japanese newspaper The Mainichi reports that lightning was likely to blame for sparking the fire Saturday on Mount Juman in Namie, which lies in the Fukushima Prefecture and was one of the areas evacuated following the 2011 meltdown. The area continues to be barred to entry as it is designated a "difficult-to-return zone" due to continually high radiation levels.

Local officials were forced to call in the Japanese military, the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), to help battle the blaze, which continued to burn on Monday. At least 10 hectares of forest have burned so far.

"A total of eight helicopters from Fukushima, Miyagi and Gunma prefectures as well as the SDF discharged water on the site to combat the fire," The Mainichi reports. "As the fire continued to spread, however, helicopters from the GSDF, Fukushima Prefecture and other parties on May 1 resumed fire extinguishing operations from around 5 am [local time]."

An official with the Ministry of the Environment said Monday that there has been "no major changes to radiation levels" in the region, according to the newspaper, but added that they will "continue to closely watch changes in radiation doses in the surrounding areas."

In a blog post last year, Anton Beneslavsky, a member of Greenpeace Russia's firefighting group who has been deployed to fight blazes in nuclear Chernobyl, outlined the specific dangers of wildfires in contaminated areas.

"During a fire, radionuclides like caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium rise into the air and travel with the wind," Beneslavsky wrote. "This is a health concern because when these unstable atoms are inhaled, people become internally exposed to radiation."

Contaminated forests such as those outside fallout sites like Fukushima and Chernobyl "are ticking time bombs," scientist and former regional government official Ludmila Komogortseva told Beneslavsky. "Woods and peat accumulate radiation," she explained "and every moment, every grass burning, every dropped cigarette or camp fire can spark a new disaster."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/ ... no-go-zone
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 01, 2017 3:37 pm

Fukushima continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean every day.



May 11, 2017

Fukushima’s radiation dosed everyone on Earth

Juliana Rose Pignataro

Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster had an impact on every single person on Earth, according to scientists. The meltdown hit everyone on the planet with a dose of radiation, but fortunately, not enough to have a real impact.

The disaster dosed everyone on Earth with radiation equivalent to that of a single x-ray, according to the first global survey of the radiation’s effect. In other words, a negligible amount.

“We don’t need to worry,” said Nikolas Evangeliou, according to New Scientist. He is part of the team at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research that conducted the survey.

Read: Fukushima's Nuclear Radiation So Destructive, Not Even Robots Can Survive

The average person was dosed with 0.5 millisieverts of radiation from the accident. For those in the immediate vicinity of Fukushima, the amount was much higher, at about one to five millisieverts. It takes about 1000 millisieverts to cause radiation sickness. The World Nuclear Association holds that no deaths or cases of radiation sickness were caused by the accident.

“More than 80 percent of the radiation was deposited in the ocean and poles, so I think the global population got the least exposure,” he said. “What I found was that we got one extra x-ray each.”

A Tepco employee stands in a building at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan, Feb. 23, 2017. Photo: Getty Images


For comparison, the average American receives about 6.2 millisieverts per year, according to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That radiation comes partly from natural background radiation, or sources naturally occurring on earth like radon in the air and cosmic rays. The other half comes from man-made sources like medical procedures and industrial sources.

The team noted that while the effect on humans was minimal, plants and animals were likely impacted much more significantly. Bird populations in areas around Fukushima showed a decline between 2011 and 2014. The team also said the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history, had a far worse impact on humans because the fallout was larger and hit areas that were much more populated.

Read: Fukushima's Nuclear Radiation Caused Thyroid Cancer In 4-Year-Old

While the amount of radiation received by the overall population was negligible, that’s not to say the disaster didn’t have direct effects on health. There have been ongoing disputes over whether increased cases of thyroid cancer were a direct result of radiation or just a result of overdiagnosis. Thyroid cancer is, however, known to be caused in some cases by radioactive iodine released during nuclear accidents like the one at Fukushima.

“The evidence suggests that the great majority and perhaps all of the cases discovered so far are not due to radiation,” said Dillwyn Williams, a thyroid cancer specialist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, according to the journal Science.

The prefectural government of Fukushima also denied the cases are linked to radiation. But a support group for children with thyroid cancer contends otherwise. The 3.11 Children’s Fund for Thyroid Cancer discovered after auditing medical bills that a 4-year-old had a thyroid operation at a state-run university despite the university saying it had never treated a person under five for thyroid cancer

In any case, Fukushima and Japan as a whole are still dealing with the after-effects of the disaster. The company responsible for decommissioning the plant, known as Tepco, said that while they’ve made significant progress, the multibillion-dollar process could likely take decades.

“We have caused it,” Daisuke Hirose, a spokesperson for Tepco, told the Japan Times in April. “We have to make every effort to create a place to which people want to return.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/fukushi ... -on-earth/


Fukushima: Japanese Government Guilty of Destroying Pacific Ocean

By Daniel Newton
Global Research, May 08, 2017


The Japanese Government has been ordered to pay tens of millions in compensation after it was found guilty of negligence causing the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Reports also claim that the ruling could also include other pacific nations like the US who could also be eligible for compensation from the Japanese government who has effectively poisoned the entire Pacific Ocean and damaged the world’s food chain beyond repair. YNW reports: The nuclear plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings, was also found guilty of negligence that led to the disaster that nuclear experts say will likely continue affecting wildlife and humans for the next 250,000 years.

Friday’s stunning ruling by the Maebashi District Court was the first to recognize negligence by the state and Tepco. Previously the Japanese government and Tepco, a subsidiary of General Electric, had strongly denied any wrongdoing, arguing they were the victims of bad luck. The judge called the massive tsunami “predictable” and said the major nuclear disaster, which is responsible for 300 tons of radioactive water entering the Pacific Ocean every single day, could have been avoided. According to Japan Times:

The district court ordered the two to pay damages totaling ¥38.55 million to 62 of 137 plaintiffs from 45 households located near the plant, which suffered a triple meltdown caused by the tsunami, awarding ¥70,000 to ¥3.5 million in compensation to each plaintiff. The plaintiffs had demanded the state and Tepco pay compensation of ¥11 million each — a total of about ¥1.5 billion — over the loss of local infrastructure and psychological stress they were subjected to after being forced to relocate to unfamiliar surroundings.

Citing a government estimate released in July 2002, the court said in the ruling that

“Tepco was capable of foreseeing several months after (the estimate) that a large tsunami posed a risk to the facility and could possibly flood its premises and damage safety equipment, such as the backup power generators.”

Image result for Japanese Tepco

It pointed out that the state should have ordered Tepco to take bolstered preventive measures, and criticized the utility for prioritizing costs over safety. Fukushima radiation has contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean. The nuclear disaster has contaminated the world’s largest ocean in only five years and it’s still leaking 300 tons of radioactive waste every day. According to a True Activist report:

Radioactive Debris from Fukushima approaching North America’s western coast.

If that weren’t bad enough, Fukushima continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean every day. It will continue do so indefinitely as the source of the leak cannot be sealed as it is inaccessible to both humans and robots due to extremely high temperatures. It should come as no surprise, then, that Fukushima has contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean in just five years. This could easily be the worst environmental disaster in human history and it is almost never talked about by politicians, establishment scientists, or the news. It is interesting to note that TEPCO is a subsidiary partner with General Electric (also known as GE), one of the largest companies in the world, which has considerable control over numerous news corporations and politicians alike. Could this possibly explain the lack of news coverage Fukushima has received in the last five years? There is also evidence that GE knew about the poor condition of the Fukushima reactors for decades and did nothing. This led 1,400 Japanese citizens to sue GE for their role in the Fukushima nuclear disaster – and now have been found guilty.

Even if we can’t see the radiation itself, some parts of North America’s western coast have been feeling the effects for years. Not long after Fukushima, fish in Canada began bleeding from their gills, mouths, and eyeballs. This “disease” has been ignored by the government and has decimated native fish populations, including the North Pacific herring. Elsewhere in Western Canada, independent scientists have measured a 300% increase in the level of radiation. According to them, the amount of radiation in the Pacific Ocean is increasing every year. Why is this being ignored by the mainstream media? It might have something to do with the fact that the US and Canadian governments have banned their citizens from talking about Fukushima so “people don’t panic.”

Further south in Oregon, USA, starfish began losing legs and then disintegrating entirely when Fukushima radiation arrived there in 2013. Now, they are dying in record amounts, putting the entire oceanic ecosystem in that area at risk. However, government officials say Fukushima is not to blame even though radiation in Oregon tuna tripled after Fukushima. In 2014, radiation on California beaches increased by 500 percent. In response, government officials said that the radiation was coming from a mysterious “unknown” source and was nothing to worry about. However, Fukushima is having a bigger impact than just the West coast of North America. Scientists are now saying that the Pacific Ocean is already radioactive and is currently at least 5-10 times more radioactive than when the US government dropped numerous nuclear bombs in the Pacific during and after World War II. If we don’t start talking about Fukushima soon, we could all be in for a very unpleasant surprise.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima- ... an/5589155
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 23, 2017 9:37 am

JUNE 22, 2017
Fukushima’s Radiation Will Poison Food “for Decades,” Study Finds
by JOHN LAFORGE

Three of the six reactors at Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi complex were wrecked in March 2011 by an earthquake and tsunami. The destruction of emergency electric generators caused a “station blackout” which halted cooling water intake and circulation. Super-heated, out-of-control uranium fuel in reactors 1, 2, and 3 then boiled off cooling water, and some 300 tons of fuel “melted” and burned through the reactors’ core vessels, gouging so deep into underground sections of the structure that to this day operators aren’t sure where it is. Several explosions in reactor buildings and uncovered fuel rods caused the spewing of huge quantities of radioactive materials to the atmosphere, and the worst radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean ever recorded. Fukushima amounts to Whole-Earth poisoning.

Now, researchers say, radioactive isotopes that were spread across Japan (and beyond) by the meltdowns will continue to contaminate the food supply for a very long time.

According to a new study that focused on “radiocaesium” — as the British call cesium-134 and cesium-137 — “food in japan will be contaminated by low-level radioactivity for decades.” The official university announcement of this study neglected to specify that Fukushima’s cesium will persist in the food chain for thirty decades. It takes 10 radioactive half-lives for cesium-137 to decay to barium, and its half-life is about 30 years, so C-137 stays in the environment for roughly 300 years.

The study’s authors, Professor Jim Smith, of the University of Portsmouth, southwest of London, and Dr. Keiko Tagami, from the Japanese National Institute of Radiological Sciences, report that cesium-caused “radiation doses in the average diet in the Fukushima region are very low and do not present a significant health risk now or in the future.”

This phraseology deliberately conveys a sense of security — but a false one. Asserting that low doses of radiation pose no “significant” health risk sounds reassuring, but an equally factual framing of precisely the same finding is that small amounts of cesium in food pose a slightly increased risk of causing cancer.

This fact was acknowledged by Prof. Smith in the June 14 University of Portsmouth media advisory that announced his food contamination study, which was published in Science of the Total Environment. Because of above-ground atom bomb testing, Prof. Smith said, “Radioactive elements such as caesium-137, strontium-90 and carbon-14 contaminated the global environment, potentially causing hundreds of thousands of unseen cancer deaths.”

No less an authority than the late John Gofman, MD, Ph.D., a co-discoverer of plutonium and Professor Emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, spent 50 years warning about the threat posed by low doses of radiation. In May 1999, Gofman wrote, “By any reasonable standard of biomedical proof, there is no safe dose, which means that just one decaying radioactive atom can produce permanent mutation in a cell’s genetic molecules. My own work showed this in 1990 for X rays, gamma rays, and beta particles.”

The Fukushima-borne cesium in Japan’s food supply, and in the food-web of the entire Pacific Ocean, emits both beta and gamma radiation. Unfortunately, it will bio-accumulate and bio-concentrate for 300 years, potentially causing, as Dr. Gofman if not Dr. Smith might say, hundreds of thousands of unseen cancer deaths.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/22 ... udy-finds/



US sailors who 'fell sick from Fukushima radiation' allowed to sue Japan, nuclear plant operator


The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan heads towards the earthquake and tsunami affected areas of Japan in 2011 CREDIT: REUTERS
Julian Ryall, in tokyo
23 JUNE 2017 • 6:18AM
A US appeals court has ruled that hundreds of American navy personnel can pursue a compensation suit against the government of Japan and Tokyo Electric Power Co. for illnesses allegedly caused by exposure to radioactivity in the aftermath of the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled on Thursday that the 318 sailors who have so far joined the $1 billion (£787 million) class action lawsuit do not need to file their case in Japan.

Most of the plaintiffs were aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier that was dispatched to waters off north-east Japan after the March 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima plant. Three reactors suffered catastrophic meltdowns and released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere after their cooling units were destroyed by a magnitude-9 earthquake and a series of tsunami.

The plaintiffs claim that they were healthy and physically fit before they were exposed to the radiation plume, with some personnel reporting the air on the flight deck tasting "metallic".


The crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant CREDIT: REUTERS
The California-based law firm representing the plaintiffs say they have been affected by a range of complaints, ranging from leukaemia to ulcers, brain cancer, brain tumours, testicular cancer, thyroid illnesses and stomach complaints.

The suit claims that TEPCO is financially responsible for the sailors' medial treatment because it failed to accurately inform the Japanese government of the scale of the problem.

The Japanese government, the suit alleges, also failed to inform the US that radiation leaking from the plant posed a threat to the crew of the USS Ronald Reagan and other US assets dispatched to assist in "Operation Tomodachi", meaning "friend" in Japanese.

The case was originally filed in San Diego in 2012, but has been delayed over the question of where it should be heard. The US government has also vehemently denied that any personnel were exposed to levels of radiation that would have had an impact on their health during the Fukushima recovery mission.


Interviewed for the San Diego City Beat newspaper in February, William Zeller said: "Right now, I know I have problems but I'm afraid of actually finding out how bad they really are."

Formerly a martial arts instructor, he now uses a breathing machine when he goes to sleep due to respiratory problems he blames on his exposure aboard the USS Ronald Reagan in 2011.

"I literally just go to work and go home now", he said. "I don't have the energy or pain threshold to deal with anything else".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06 ... n-nuclear/
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 08, 2017 10:50 am

On Hiroshima Day, radioactive wastes from Fukushima haunt oceans
Ranjan Panda
ByRanjan PandaPosted on August 6, 2017

Each year on 6th August we are reminded of the world’s most heinous crime against humanity done by the use of nuclear bombs. The United States, with the consent of the United Kingdom, dropped these bombs on 6th and 9th August in 1945 respectively on the Japanese cities killing about two hundred and thirty thousand people or even more.

The devastating impacts of the bombings continued for years and the trail they have left haunts humanity even now. The world has however hardly learnt a lesson from this. Even though no country has used a nuclear bomb after that, nuclear power has been aggressively pushed by the world.

More ironically, nuclear power is being touted by nation states as a ‘green energy’ ignoring the 33 serious accidents at nuclear power stations from the one first recorded in 1952 at the Chalk River in Ontario, Canada to the latest reported in Fukushima in the Pacific Ocean in 2011.



Each such disaster has seen unprepared companies and governments that have not only mishandled the disasters but also have left the people and ecology to suffer. Looking into the Fukushima disaster, that’s the latest and worst since the Chernobyl disaster, would tell us why.

The Fukushima disaster



On March 11th in 2011, an earthquake recording magnitude 9.0 occurred at 2.46 pm and shattered the northern part of Japan, especially in Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate. The Fukushima nuclear power plant suffered huge damage as its piping facility, system for external power supply and power backup facilities were destroyed.

Early morning of 12th the next day, leaked radioactive materials were detected all around the plant and the amount of this leakage was said to be one fifth of the Chernobyl accident.

Even though the Japanese govt. as well as TEPCO, the plant operator, initially refused about the leakage the impacts came out in the open. The rate of the accident level was
raised from initial 5 to 7, same as the Chernobyl level.

Marine life and people in the vicinity were severely impacted and from initial danger warning within 3-kilometre, the warnings were extended to 20-30-kilometre but the United States issued an 80-kilometre radius warning.

The radiation threat, that may cause cancer among many other ailments, continue to affect people but the Japanese govt continues to deny the same by specifying higher ‘safe exposure limits’.

Even though no one is said to have died due to exposure of the radiation from the plant, the TEPCO officials are facing a trial for death of 40 elderly people – among other things – who were evacuated from a hospital near the plant.

Three senior officials of the company have been facing a trial for their role in avoiding internal security warnings about the plant in case of such magnitude Tsunamis and the
company is now working on a government roadmap to clean up the plant and decommissioning that may take 30 to 40 years at a cost of around 20 billion US dollars.

TEPCO’s cleaning up act is dangerous for the Ocean

Cleaning up the nuclear wastes by a company that is already facing charges of negligence is a matter of worry. The company is allegedly trying to dump the radioactive wastes in the Pacific Ocean. This would be catastrophic to the marine ecosystem.

According to SumOfUs, a global community of activists, post-Fukushima disaster, contamination in the local marine food chain has not generally improved. 40 per cent of species remain unfit for consumption, according to Japanese standards, which have been relaxed since the disaster.

Each day, 300 tonnes of water wash through the Fukushima reactors, cooling them down and collecting a slew of radioactive material along the way. While some of the contaminants can be filtered out, the water cannot be cleaned from tritium — a radioactive form of hydrogen — resulting in nearly a million tonnes of highly radioactive waste water.

The fishermen are already complaining loss of livelihood that would erode further if TEPCO succeeds in releasing the massive toxic dump into the ocean for which it has sought nod from the Japanese government.

770,000 cubic meters of contamination

The Epoch Times reports that the TEPCO says it may dump as much as 770,000 cubic meters of water contaminated with the radioactive tritium into the Pacific Ocean, as part of its clean-up efforts.

Because it is so difficult to remove tritium, most nuclear plants release tritiated water into the environment, says this report, adding, the releases are controlled, as it would be at Fukushima, to allow the tritium to diffuse in the environment gradually, in concentrations considered safe.

Many regulatory agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the US and World Health Organisation (WHO) consider tritium as having not so dangerous impacts and argue that the chances of cancer by its exposure is very limited. But the problem is not limited to that.

As Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, explains – as reported in the above Epoch Times news – “Other, more hazardous radioactive substances, such as strontium and cesium, have been removed from the Fukushima wastewater. But the filtration system used to remove these substances is not 100 percent effective.”

So the dangers loom large over the marine ecosystem of the Pacific Ocean. Many citizen organisations and others have already petitioned the Japanese government not to give green light for this act by TEPCO.

http://bigwire.in/2017/08/06/on-hiroshi ... ur-oceans/


FUKUSHIMA: SUMMERTIME IMAGES SHOW NATURE ASSERT ITSELF AFTER A NUCLEAR DISASTER
BY SOFIA LOTTO PERSIO ON 8/3/17 AT 2:10 PM
CLOSE

Japan Making Progress In Rebuilding Fukushima Shoreline Six Years After Tsunami

Nature is having its say in the abandoned surroundings of Japan’s failed Fukushima nuclear plant, reclaiming the area in a spectacular display of its power.

Seven summers have passed since a tsunami created by a powerful earthquake crashed into the Japanese coast in March 2011, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and causing a nuclear meltdown, hydrogen-air explosions and a leak of radioactive material.

Fukushima and its environs faced a nuclear catastrophe, prompting then prime minister Naoto Kan to order the immediate evacuation of those who lived within 12 miles of the plant, later expanding the order to those living within 18 miles of Daiichi. Almost 100,000 people still cannot return home.

Access to what came to be known as the Fukushima Exclusion Zone is still strictly regulated, but one photographer working for the Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper visited the areas designated as “difficult-to-return zones” in July, shooting pictures with a drone and a helicopter. The stunning work was published this week.



Tetsuro Takehana, who lived in Fukushima for a decade as a child, returned to a place where time had both stood still and moved on. “It was as if time had stopped,” he said, describing the scenes. “And yet the grass and trees continue to grow.”

The parking lot of the Okuma outlet of Plant 4, a large shopping mall that used to be packed with visitors, is slowly being taken over by weeds creeping through the cracking asphalt surface. At the playground of an elementary school, only football goalposts can still be spotted among the grass reaching to the height of an adult’s waist.

Elsewhere in the Fukushima Prefecture, in Futaba, one abandoned car is seemingly sinking in a field of thick, brightly green grass. Also in Futaba, rampant weeds have reached the second floor of deserted houses.

Not even the buildings owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Daiichi nuclear plant operator, used to house company employees were left untouched, with weeds growing through to the second floor and engulfing the cars still parked nearby.

“In the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house—our houses,” wrote journalist Alan Weisman in his 2007 best-selling book The World Without Us, which imagines a world in which humans no longer exist, adding “Change is the hallmark of nature. Nothing remains the same.” Not even nuclear wastelands.
http://www.newsweek.com/images-fukushim ... ter-646066


This swimming robot may have finally spotted melted nuclear fuel inside Fukushima

This is a first step toward eventually decontaminating the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
by Rachel Becker@RA_Becks Jul 26, 2017, 9:42am EDT

The Little Sunfish robot, equipped with LEDs to illuminate the Unit 3 reactor’s dark interior. Video: Tepco
A robot swimming in the depths of one of Fukushima’s nuclear reactors may have spotted lumps of molten nuclear fuel inside. If it did, it would be the first robot to successfully locate the radioactive material, as efforts to clean up after the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan continue.

This latest robotic investigator, nicknamed the Little Sunfish, was sent into the Unit 3 reactor for the first time on July 19th. That’s one of the three nuclear reactors that melted down after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in 2011. Based on earlier surveys, the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, suspects that the melted fuel in Unit 3 might have burned through the bottom of its container and dropped into what’s called the primary containment vessel. That’s what shields the outside world from the radioactive materials inside.

Powered by five propellers and sporting a camera on its front and back ends, the football-sized robot was remotely operated via a tether attached to its rear. On its first trip, the Little Sunfish successfully navigated underwater. And on its second visit a few days later, the Little Sunfish snapped photos of what look like hardened lumps of lava that may contain melted nuclear fuel. Experts will need to analyze the photos to be sure, but a TEPCO spokesperson told the Japan Times, "There is a high possibility that the solidified objects are mixtures of melted metal and fuel that fell from the vessel.”


The submersible robot captured video of the interior of the damaged Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi. Video: Tepco
Finding this massive source of radiation is among the first challenges TEPCO will need to overcome in order to decommission the plant. Nuclear power plants are fueled by pellets of uranium, packed together inside hollow metal rods “like peas in a pod,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. These fuel rods are part of the nuclear reactor’s core, which keeps producing heat even after the reactor shuts down. That’s why it’s so important to keep nuclear reactors cool: if temperatures climb too high, the reactor core can melt into a kind of radioactive lava.

When the tsunami flooded the Fukushima Daiichi plant after the 2011 earthquake, it took out the backup power generators and cooling systems. Over the next three days, the reactors melted down — and since then, the plant operator has been hunting for the molten messes of metal and radioactive fuel left behind.

So far, at least seven of the robots sent to investigate the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi have broken down during their missions. One robot’s camera was fried by high levels of radiation, another got caught on debris and abandoned. The Little Sunfish successfully made the trip not once, but twice into Unit 3. Attempts to remove the melted radioactive fuel probably won’t even start until after 2020, the Associated Press reports — but this small win could be a sign that robots might be able to help the cleanup efforts, after all.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/26/1603 ... le-sunfish
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby smoking since 1879 » Tue Aug 08, 2017 12:37 pm

Seven summers have passed since a tsunami created by a powerful earthquake crashed into the Japanese coast in March 2011, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and causing a nuclear meltdown, hydrogen-air explosions and a leak of radioactive material.


there is no excuse for this minimising of the disaster, there were three core meltdowns, yes, count them, *** three.

up to 500 tonnes of fuel n debris (from memory) per reactor (that's three of um folks) is ex-containment, leaching in the environment.

want proof? see INEPTCO's own documents here:
Fukushima Unit 3 Muon Scan Finds NO FUEL In Reactor Vessel
July 29, 2017 Nancy Foust 0 Comment 2017, fukushima, muon, muon scan, unit 3


not digging on you SLAD
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby Iamwhomiam » Wed Aug 09, 2017 11:11 am

Some good news?

US Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned
Brad Plumer July 31, 2017

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/climate/nuclear-power-project-canceled-in-south-carolina.html
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