Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[Iamwhomiam]

Zirconium! The wonder metal. A great choice to contain the MOX uranium and plutonium dioxides fuel, don't you think. Though zirconium's reactive with air, that's not a problem as the 'spent' fuel rods are kept safely for eons submerged in earth's most abundant natural resource, water, as long as the water's been desalinated, of course. Another one of the many reliable and redundant safety features incorporated into the plant's design.

Nevertheless, should there be some catastrophic accident, due no doubt to a terrorist attack, ultimately, we have instituted reliable evacuation plans, should the populace need to relocate.

Fukushima is ancient history in the making.

Yesterday's news. Here's today's:

Asia airs nuclear ambitions at U.N. gathering
Reuters – Fri, Sep 20, 2013

VIENNA (Reuters) - China, India and other Asian states used a United Nations nuclear agency meeting this week to signal their determination to expand the use of atomic energy.

At the September 16-20 annual gathering of the IAEA's 159 member states, China outlined plans for more nuclear power plants despite safety worries around the world in the aftermath of Japan's Fukushima disaster.

"The Chinese government has never wavered its firm determination to support nuclear energy development," Ma Xingrui, chairman of China's Atomic Energy Authority, said.

With 17 nuclear power units now operating on the Chinese mainland, Beijing has another 28 under construction, the largest number in the world, he told the IAEA conference.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has cut its long-term outlook for nuclear energy growth for a third year in a row, in part because of hesitancy following Japan's crisis. But, it said, the industry could still nearly double its capacity by 2030 due to growth in Asia.

"Nuclear power faces challenges but the outlook remains strong," Agneta Rising, director general of World Nuclear Association industry body, said. "That a few countries have a negative view is not enough to affect its long-term growth."

South Korea too is continuing efforts to expand its nuclear power program; it now has 23 plants and plans to build 11 new reactors by 2024, Sank-Mok Lee, head of the South Korean delegation, said.

India's construction of four home designed pressurized heavy water reactors is progressing as scheduled and it aims to build sixteen more such plants, Ratan Kumar Sinha, chairman of its Atomic Energy Commission, said.

India now has 19 reactors in operation, he said.

Indonesia said it was "resolved to harness nuclear energy" and Vietnam said the site investigation and feasibility study for two plants would be completed and submitted to the government for approval by the end of 2013. Pakistan too spoke of its intention to construct more nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power has long been used as a reliable alternative to fossil fuels in natural resource-starved parts of Asia, even though the 2011 Fukushima reactor meltdowns caused a growing crisis of confidence.

In contrast with growth plans in Asia, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium have decided to move away from nuclear power after the disaster.

The IAEA's projections said low natural gas prices, an increase in subsidised renewable energy capacity and the financial crisis were expected to have an impact on nuclear prospects in the developed world in the short term.

But population growth, demand for electricity, climate change concerns and price volatility for other fuels "continue to point to nuclear generating capacity playing an important role in the energy mix," it added.

(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl, editing by William Hardy)

http://news.yahoo.com/asia-airs-nuclear-ambitions-u-n-gathering-091900910.html

[justdrew]

why not encase each control rod in a carbide ceramic container with enough of a receptacle tip to accommodate swelling of the melting rod inside. So many opportunities to make these things much more resilient were ignored.

[seemslikeadream]

Nuclear Crisis at Fukushima Could Spew Out More Than 15,000 Times as Much Radiation as Hiroshima Bombing

HARVEY WASSERMAN FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT


We are now within two months of what may be humankind's most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focussed on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.

Fukushima's owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.

Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.

The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.

Why is this so serious?

Combat the epidemic of misinformation that plagues the corporate media! Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout and BuzzFlash, and help keep independent media strong.

We already know that thousands of tons of heavily contaminated water are pouring through the Fukushima site, carrying a devil's brew of long-lived poisonous isotopes into the Pacific. Tuna irradiated with fallout traceable to Fukushima have already been caught off the coast of California. We can expect far worse.

Tepco continues to pour more water onto the proximate site of three melted reactor cores it must somehow keep cool.Steam plumes indicate fission may still be going on somewhere underground. But nobody knows exactly where those cores actually are.

Much of that irradiated water now sits in roughly a thousand huge but fragile tanks that have been quickly assembled and strewn around the site. Many are already leaking. All could shatter in the next earthquake, releasing thousands of tons of permanent poisons into the Pacific. Fresh reports show that Tepco has just dumped another thousand tons of contaminated liquids into the sea.

The water flowing through the site is also undermining the remnant structures at Fukushima, including the one supporting the fuel pool at Unit Four.

More than 6,000 fuel assemblies now sit in a common pool just 50 meters from Unit Four. Some contain plutonium. The pool has no containment over it. It's vulnerable to loss of coolant, the collapse of a nearby building, another earthquake, another tsunami and more.

Overall, more than 11,000 fuel assemblies are scattered around the Fukushima site. According to long-time expert and former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal cesium on site as was released at Chernobyl.

Radioactive hot spots continue to be found around Japan. There are indications of heightened rates of thyroid damage among local children.

The immediate bottom line is that those fuel rods must somehow come safely out of the Unit Four fuel pool as soon as possible.

Just prior to the 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami that shattered the Fukushima site, the core of Unit Four was removed for routine maintenance and refueling. Like some two dozen reactors in the US and too many more around the world, the General Electric-designed pool into which that core now sits is 100 feet in the air.

Spent fuel must somehow be kept under water. It's clad in zirconium alloy which will spontaneously ignite when exposed to air. Long used in flash bulbs for cameras, zirconium burns with an extremely bright hot flame.

Each uncovered rod emits enough radiation to kill someone standing nearby in a matter of minutes. A conflagration could force all personnel to flee the site and render electronic machinery unworkable.

According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with forty years in an industry for which he once manufactured fuel rods, the ones in the Unit 4 core are bent, damaged and embrittled to the point of crumbling. Cameras have shown troubling quantities of debris in the fuel pool, which itself is damaged.

The engineering and scientific barriers to emptying the Unit Four fuel pool are unique and daunting, says Gundersen. But it must be done to 100% perfection.

Should the attempt fail, the rods could be exposed to air and catch fire, releasing horrific quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. The pool could come crashing to the ground, dumping the rods together into a pile that could fission and possibly explode. The resulting radioactive cloud would threaten the health and safety of all us.

Chernobyl's first 1986 fallout reached California within ten days. Fukushima's in 2011 arrived in less than a week. A new fuel fire at Unit 4 would pour out a continuous stream of lethal radioactive poisons for centuries.

Former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata says full-scale releases from Fukushima "would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival."

Neither Tokyo Electric nor the government of Japan can go this alone. There is no excuse for deploying anything less than a coordinated team of the planet's best scientists and engineers.

We have two months or less to act.

The clock is ticking. The hand of global nuclear disaster is painfully close to midnight.

[seemslikeadream]

Japan agrees to foreign help with Fukushima
Mark Willacy reported this story on Wednesday, September 25, 2013 12:40:00


PETER LLOYD: To nuclear issues of another kind now, and Japan has finally accepted international help to sort out the mess at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

It's agreed to let the French help decommission and dismantle it.

Our Tokyo correspondent Mark Willacy says it's a climb-down that signals how little success Japan has had stopping the spread of contaminant since the earthquake two and a half years ago.

MARK WILLACY: Well there are a couple of factors, Peter. Firstly, there's been a lot of international attention and consternation, as you'd imagine, about these leaks at the Fukushima nuclear plant. We have the seepage of about 300 tonnes of contaminated groundwater into the sea every day.

We've also been told that there was a leak of 300,000 litres of highly radioactive water from a storage tank at the site. And that some of that water could have gone into the ocean. That's according to the operator TEPCO.

So there's not just concern about that in Japan, but there's also concern in neighbouring countries such as South Korea and China. So there's a sense that Japan needs outside help, particularly to stem this flow of groundwater under the plant.

But secondly, there was the pledge by Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe earlier this month that the situation at Fukushima was "under control". And that pledge was made to an international audience and was aimed particularly at the International Olympic Committee. And of course we now know that hours later, Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Games.

So there's a feeling in the government here in Tokyo that TEPCO needs help to get the plant and its problems in order. And to do that, may finally mean accepting international help and international technology.

PETER LLOYD: What sort of know-how do the French bring to the table? What do we know about the agreement they've made?

MARK WILLACY: We don't know a lot about the agreement. We do know that the Japanese prime minister, Mr Abe, did meet on the sidelines of the United Nations meeting in New York with the French president Francois Hollande. And that this agreement was struck. We don't know much more than that. We don't know how the French will help. But we do know that France is one of the world's leaders in nuclear technologies. We know that the French nuclear firm Areva designed a radiation filtration system that was used for months at the Fukushima plant.

So it seems French help may now extend beyond that but it appears the detail has yet to be fleshed out.

PETER LLOYD: Right. And the French aren't the only ones. The Russians are on the sidelines offering help too.

MARK WILLACY: That's right. In fact the Russians offered to help more than two years ago, but that offer of help was never taken up. Russia's state-owned Rosatom sent Japan a sample of what it said was a special absorbent to help clean up contaminated water but the sample just wasn't used by the Japanese.

The Russians have said all along that pumping in water to cool the melted reactors was always going to cause more problems than in was worth. That it was just going to create more radioactive water. And in fact we now know that's what TEPCO is grappling with at the site. So the Russians did offer this absorbent technology but as I say it was never used by the Japanese.

However, the Russians are now reporting a more positive attitude in Tokyo towards accepting their help. After all, Moscow has pointed out in the past that there's no such thing as a national nuclear accident. They are all international accidents. And after Chernobyl, the Russians would know.

PETER LLOYD: Is there, for the Japanese, a loss of face in this kind of climb-down?

MARK WILLACY: Well there's certainly been this sense in Japan that they can handle it themselves. In fact not only can they handle it themselves but they left all the running to TEPCO, the company was held at fault by many for this accident. So yes, there has been that sense of isolationism here about, look, we don't need outside help.

But then we saw the government step in and say to TEPCO, look, we need to play a bigger role in helping you with this. And I suppose now the government has said well to do that we'll need international help. So maybe there would be a loss of face.

But I think it goes beyond that, and especially with Japan having the Olympics in a few years time, there could be more international scrutiny about the safety issues at Fukushima which means that they may need to accept more international help to assuage those concerns.

PETER LLOYD: Mark Willacy is the ABC's North Asia correspondent.

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Thursday, September 26, 2013 by Common Dreams
Crisis at Fukushima Continues to Spiral With Hole in Radiation Barrier
Fence made of silt that sits in harbor has been breached, TEPCO admits, sparking further concern of ocean contamination

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

IAEA experts examine recovery work on top of Unit 4 of TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on 17 April 2013. (Photo: Greg Webb / IAEA)
In the latest in a series of mishaps to hit the crisis-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, a radiation-stopping "fence" around the reactors has developed a hole, plant operator TEPCO admitted on Thursday.

Fences made of earth and sand sit in the harbor next to the plant and were erected to help contain radioactive material from flowing into the ocean. They "are suspended from floats and anchored with weights on the seafloor," the Japan Times explains.

One of the fences that sits next to still-intact reactors five and six was found to be breached, sparking further worry about the amount of radioactive contamination heading into the ocean.

TEPCO has struggled to contain the "emergency without end" at Fukushima since the disaster began to unfold in March of 2011. An unsustainable contaminated water-storage system plagued by a series of leaks, soaring radiation levels in groundwater that head into the ocean, and high levels of radiation found in fish have catalyzed widespread resistance to nuclear power and raised international alarm.

As out of control as the situation seems, one expert has warned that it may actually be "much worse" than claimed. Also, long-time anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman warned last week that a plan to "remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air" risked putting the "hand of global nuclear disaster... painfully close to midnight."

[seemslikeadream]

SEPTEMBER 26, 2013

A Letter to All Young Athletes Who Dream of Coming to Tokyo in 2020
Some Facts You Should Know About Fukushima
by TAKASHI HIROSE
On September 7, 2013 Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said to the 125th session of the International Olympic Committee, the following:

Some may have concerns about Fukushima. Let me assure you, the situation is under control. It has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.

This will surely be remembered as one of the great lies of modern times. In Japan some people call it the “Abesolute Lie”. Believing it, the IOC decided to bring the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo.

Japanese government spokespersons defend Abe’s statement by saying that radiation levels in the Pacific Ocean have not yet exceeded safety standards.

This recalls the old story of the man who jumped off a ten-storey building and, as he passed each storey, could be heard saying, “So far, so good”.

We are talking, remember, about the Pacific Ocean – the greatest body of water on earth, and for all we know, in the universe. Tokyo Electric Power Company – TEPCO – has been pouring water through its melted-down reactor at Fukushima and into the ocean for two and a half years, and so far the Pacific Ocean has been able to dilute that down to below the safety standard. So far so good. But there is no prospect in sight of turning off the water.

Here are eight things you need to know.

1. In a residential area park in Tokyo, 230 km from Fukushima, the soil was found to have a radiation level of 92,335 Becquerels per square meter. This is a dangerous level, comparable to what is found around Chernobyl ④ zone (the site of a nuclear catastrophe in 1986). One reason this level of pollution is found in the capital is that between Tokyo and Fukushima there are no mountains high enough to block radioactive clouds. In the capital people who understand the danger absolutely avoid eating food produced in eastern Japan.

2. Inside Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactors #1 – #3 the pipes (which had circulated cooling water) are broken, which caused a meltdown. This means the nuclear fuel overheated, melted, and continued to melt anything it touched. Thus it melted through the bottom of the reactor, and then through the concrete floor of the building, and sank into the ground. As mentioned above, for two and a half years TEPCO workers have been desperately pouring water into the reactor, but it is not known whether the water is actually reaching the melted fuel. If a middle-strength earthquake comes, it is likely to destroy totally the already damaged building. And as a matter of fact, in the last two and a half years earthquakes have continued to hit Fukushima. (And as an additional matter of fact, just as this letter was being written Fukushima was hit by another middle-strength earthquake, but it seems that the building held up one more time. So far so good.) Especially dangerous is Reactor #4, where a large amount of nuclear fuel is being held in a pool, like another disaster waiting for its moment.

3. The cooling water being poured into the reactor is now considered the big problem in Japan. Newspapers and TV stations that previously strove to conceal the danger of nuclear power, are now reporting on this danger every day, and criticizing Shinzo Abe for the lie he told the IOC. The issue is that the highly irradiated water is entering and mixing with the ground water, and this leakage can’t be stopped, so it is spilling into the outer ocean. It is a situation impossible to control. In August, 2013 (the month prior to Abe’s IOC speech) within the site of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor, radiation was measured at 8500 micro Sieverts per hour. That is enough to kill anyone who stayed there for a month. This makes it a very hard place for the workers to get anything done. In Ohkuma-machi, the town where the Daiichi Nuclear Reactor is located, the radiation was measured in July, 2013 (two months before Abe’s talk) at 320 micro Sieverts per hour. This level of radiation would kill a person in two and a half years. Thus, over an area many kilometers wide, ghost towns are increasing.

4. For the sake of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, an important fact has been left out from reports that go abroad. Only the fact that irradiated water is leaking onto the surface of the ground around the reactor is reported. But deep under the surface the ground water is also being irradiated, and the ground water flows out to sea and mixes with the seawater through sea-bottom springs. It is too late to do anything about this.

5. If you go to the big central fish market near Tokyo and measure the radiation in the air, it registers at about 0.05 micro Sieverts – a little higher than normal level. But if you measure the radiation near the place where the instrument that measures the radiation of the fish is located, the level is two or three times greater (2013 measurement). Vegetables and fish from around the Tokyo area, even if they are irradiated, are not thrown away. This is because the level established by the Japanese Government for permissible radiation in food – which if exceeded the food must not be sold – is the same as the permissible level of radiation in low-level radioactive wastes. Which is to say, in Japan today, as the entire country has been contaminated, we have no choice but to put irradiated garbage on the dinner table. The distribution of irradiated food is also a problem. Food from near Fukushima will be sent to another prefecture, and then sent on, relabeled as produced in the second prefecture. In particular, food distributed by the major food companies, and food served in expensive restaurants, is almost never tested for radiation.

6. In Japan, the only radiation from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactors that is being measured is the radioactive cesium. However large amounts of strontium 90 and tritium are spreading all over Japan. Strontium and tritium’s radiation consists of beta rays, and are very difficult to measure. However both are extremely dangerous: strontium can cause leukemia, and tritium can cause chromosome disorder.

7. More dangerous still: in order, they say, to get rid of the pollution that has fallen over the wide area of Eastern Japan, they are scraping off the top layer of the soil, and putting it in plastic bags as garbage. Great mountains of these plastic bags, all weather-beaten, are sitting in fields in Eastern Japan subject of course to attack by heavy rain and typhoons. Eventually the plastic will split open and the contents will come spilling out. When that happens, there will be no place left to take them.

8. On 21 September, 2013 (again, as this letter was being composed) the newspaper Tokyo Shimbun reported that Tokyo Governor Naoki Inose said at a press conference that what Abe expressed to the IOC was his intention to get the situation under control. “It is not,” Inose said, “under control now.”

It’s a sad story, but this is the present situation of Japan and of Tokyo. I had loved the Japanese food and this land until the Fukushima accident occurred. But now…

My best wishes for your health and long life.

[justdrew]

All the resources our species can muster must immediately be focused on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.
[*]The REAL Fukushima danger.
[*]Tepco has no idea how to stablize the reactors. But someone in the comments does.
[*]Stunning story from a Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant worker. Five pages!
[*]Unbelievable consequences if risky Fukushima cleanup goes bad.

[Iamwhomiam]

I haven't taken the time to review the links, Drew, but all the world's resources thrown at Fukushima are useless. We cannot stop what's to occur anymore than we can extinguish the Sun. We have no technology capable of protecting humans or electronics necessary for remote control of equipment from its intense radiation.

[Nordic]

I haven't taken the time to review the links, Drew, but all the world's resources thrown at Fukushima are useless. We cannot stop what's to occur anymore than we can extinguish the Sun. We have no technology capable of protecting humans or electronics necessary for remote control of equipment from its intense radiation.

Well I think the whole idea is that the great minds of the world, backed by massive and basically unlimited amounts of capital, need to figure out something that might actually work. In other words DISCOVER something.

It's not like we have anything to lose at this point.

[seemslikeadream]

OCTOBER 01, 2013

Hitting Critical Mass
Demand for Global Takeover at Fukushima
by HARVEY WASSERMAN
More than 48,000 global citizens have now signed a petition at http://www.nukefree.org asking the United Nations and the world community to take charge of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Another 35,000 have signed at http://www.rootsaction.org . An independent advisory group of scientists and engineers is also in formation.

The signatures are pouring in from all over the world. By November, they will be delivered to the United Nations.

The corporate media has blacked out meaningful coverage of the most critical threat to global health and safety in decades.

The much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” has turned into a global rout. In the face of massive grassroots opposition and the falling price of renewable energy and natural gas, operating reactors are shutting and proposed new ones are being cancelled.

This lessens the radioactive burden on the planet. But it makes the aging reactor fleet ever more dangerous. A crumbling industry with diminished resources and a disappearing workforce cannot safely caretake the decrepit, deteriorating 400-odd commercial reactors still licensed to operate worldwide.

All of which pales before the crisis at Fukushima. Since the 3/11/2011 earthquake and tsunami, the six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos.

For decades the atomic industry claimed vehemently that a commercial reactor could not explode. When Chernobyl blew, it blamed “inferior” Soviet technology.

But Fukushima’s designs are from General Electric (some two dozen similar reactors are licensed in the US). At least four explosions have rocked the site. One might have involved nuclear fission. Three cores have melted into the ground. Massive quantities of water have been poured where the owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), and the Japanese government think they might be, but nobody knows for sure.

As the Free Press has reported, steam emissions indicate one or more may still be hot. Contaminated water is leaking from hastily-constructed tanks. Room for more is running out. The inevitable next earthquake could rupture them all and send untold quantities of poisons pouring into the ocean.

The worst immediate threat at Fukushima lies in the spent fuel pool at Unit Four. That reactor had been shut for routine maintenance when the earthquake and tsunami hit. The 400-ton core, with more than 1300 fuel rods, sat in its pool 100 feet in the air.

Spent fuel rods are the most lethal items our species has ever created. A human standing within a few feet of one would die in a matter of minutes. With more than 11,000 scattered around the Daichi site, radiation levels could rise high enough to force the evacuation of all workers and immobilize much vital electronic equipment.

Spent fuel rods must be kept cool at all times. If exposed to air, their zirconium alloy cladding will ignite, the rods will burn and huge quantities of radiation will be emitted. Should the rods touch each other, or should they crumble into a big enough pile, an explosion is possible. By some estimates there’s enough radioactivity embodied in the rods to create a fallout cloud 15,000 times greater than the one from the Hiroshima bombing.

The rods perched in the Unit 4 pool are in an extremely dangerous position. The building is tipping and sinking into the sodden ground. The fuel pool itself may have deteriorated. The rods are embrittled and prone to crumbling. Just 50 meters from the base is a common spent fuel pool containing some 6,000 fuel rods that could be seriously compromised should it lose coolant. Overall there are some 11,000 spent rods scattered around the Fukushima Daichi site.

Dangerous as the process might be, the rods in the Unit Four fuel pool must come down in an orderly fashion. Another earthquake could easily cause the building to crumble and collapse. Should those rods crash to the ground and be left uncooled, the consequences would be catastrophic.

Tepco has said it will begin trying to remove the rods from that pool in November. The petitions circulating through http://www.nukefree.org and http://www.moveon.org , as well as at rootsaction.org and avaaz.org, ask that the United Nations take over. They ask the world scientific and engineering communities to step in. The Rootsaction petition also asks that $8.3 billion slated in loan guarantees for a new US nuke be shifted instead to dealing with the Fukushima site.

It’s a call with mixed blessings. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is notoriously pro-nuclear, charged with promoting atomic power as well as regulating it. Critics have found the IAEA to be secretive and unresponsive.

But Tepco is a private utility with limited resources. The Japanese government has an obvious stake in downplaying Fukushima’s dangers. These were the two entities that approved and built these reactors.

While the IAEA is imperfect, its resources are more substantial and its stake at Fukushima somewhat less direct. An ad hoc global network of scientists and engineers would be intellectually ideal, but would lack the resources for direct intervention.

Ultimately the petitions call for a combination of the two.

It’s also hoped the petitions will arouse the global media. The moving of the fuel rods from Unit Four must be televised. We need to see what’s happening as it happens. Only this kind of coverage can allow global experts to analyze and advise as needed.

Let’s all hope that this operation proves successful, that the site be neutralized and the massive leaks of radioactive water and gasses be somehow stopped.

As former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata has put it: full-scale releases from Fukushima “would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

[Sounder]

Nordic wrote....

Well I think the whole idea is that the great minds of the world, backed by massive and basically unlimited amounts of capital, need to figure out something that might actually work. In other words DISCOVER something.

It is not in the interest of the infinite money men to do anything that would undermine existing understanding of reality.

Our (precious) standard atomic model will look like so much witch doctoring in 100 years time, oops, there I go again.

It's not like we have anything to lose at this point.

I'm afraid we still have a good bit more to lose before the resulting identity breakdown can provide a path and means for healing.

[cptmarginal]

Meltdown - The Timers
recorded live at Fukuoka Electric Hall
Kiyoshiro Imawano was the greatest - still is!
RIP

In 1988, Kiyoshiro's band, RCSuccession recorded the album "Covers", but their record company Toshiba EMI refused to release it, because of the anti-nuclear, anti-war message of some of the songs, particularly "Summertime Blues" and "Love Me Tender".

Toshiba is one of the three main manufacturers of nuclear reactors, along with Hitachi and Mitsubishi, so they were obviously not too happy with one of their star artists singing against their main product!

The album was eventually released by Kitty Records and went to No.1 in Japan.
In response to Toshiba EMI's censorship, Kiyoshiro (under the psuedonym "Zerry") and the band "secretly" tranformed into "The Timers" and made songs like this one.

Apparently this film was recorded at Fukuoka Electric Hall, ironically owned by Kyushu Electric Power Company, a nuclear power plant operator.

[Sounder]

These folk have concern about this situation.

But pay no mind; they seem like nuts and are not at all up to RI standards of thinking.

http://enenews.com/forum-best-practices ... -radiation

[seemslikeadream]

New radioactive leak reported at crippled Fukushima nuclear plant

By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, October 2, 2013 12:52 EDT


A new radioactive water leak has been discovered at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, its operator said on Wednesday, according to Japanese news agencies.

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said the highly radioactive water had leaked at the Fukushima No. 1 plant from a different storage tank to the one where a similar leak was found in August, Jiji and Kyodo news agencies reported.

It was not clear how much water had leaked from the 450-ton tank. TEPCO said it had determined that contaminated water had accumulated within barriers around the tank, and may have flowed past the barriers.


The barriers were installed to block water from spreading when a leak occurs in the storage tanks at the plant, which was heavily damaged by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

In August, some 300 tons of toxic water was discovered to have leaked from a separate tank, with part of it believed to have flowed into the Pacific Ocean.

Concerns have grown over TEPCO’s handling of radioactive water at Fukushima since the August leak was discovered, with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month ordering the operator to set a timeline to fix the leaks.

[Nordic]

Nordic wrote....

Well I think the whole idea is that the great minds of the world, backed by massive and basically unlimited amounts of capital, need to figure out something that might actually work. In other words DISCOVER something.

It is not in the interest of the infinite money men to do anything that would undermine existing understanding of reality.
.

Well. I know that. But I'm saying fuck the money men and let's deal with the situation as intelligent beings who are facing a planetary existential threat.

I'm talking about common sense and what needs to happen, not the suicidal status quo.

The status quo has been suicidal for a very long time.