Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
The following story has appeared on Facebook and if only half true is still worrying.
Thirteen months have passed since the Fukushima reactors exploded, and a U.S. Senator finally got off his ass and went to Japan to see what is going on over there.
What he saw was horrific.
And now he is saying that we are in big trouble.
But what is so ironic about this is that we have been in this heap of trouble since March of 2011. March 17th, to be exact, when the plume of radioactive materials began bombarding the west coast of California.
And Oregon. And Washington. And British Columbia. And later Maine, Europe, and everywhere in between.
Independent researchers, nuke experts, and scientists, from oceanography to entomology and everywhere in between, having been trying to sound the alarm ever since.
The scientists most upset are those who have studied the effects of radiation on health. I'll say it again, so its really clear: we are in big trouble.
The most preliminary reports of soil contamination are starting to come in from the USGS, who has seemed reluctant to share this information. Los Angeles, California, Portland, Oregon, and Boulder, Colorado, so far have the highest radioactive particle contamination out of the entire US.
That being said, every single city tested across the country showed contamination from Fukushima. What is even more alarming, however, about the numbers coming in, is that they are from samples taken April 5th, of last year.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has only recently confirmed that there were three meltdowns, and they have been ongoing, unabated, for thirteen months, and no effort has been made to contain them.
Technology has to be developed/invented to deal with the melted out corium under the reactors. Until then, they will keep doing what they have been doing.
TEPCO just keeps dumping water on them, after which they let it pour into the ocean, and steam up through the ground, every second of every day. The jet stream, and a highly dynamic portion of our atmosphere called the troposphere, have been swirling around massive amounts of radioactive particles and settling them out, mostly in rain, over the entire northern hemisphere, especially the west coast of North America, from Alaska down to Baja and even further.
Iodine, cesium, strontium, plutonium, uranium, and a host of other fission products have been coming directly from Japan to the west coast for thirteen months.
Maybe you have heard about sick seals, polar bears, tainted fish, mutations in dandelions and fruits and vegetables, possibly even animals already, and seaweed. In fact the kelp from Corona del Mar contained 40,000,000 bcq/kg of radioactive iodine, as reported in Scientific American several weeks ago.
If you don't know your becquerels, its a lot. That's what your pacific fish feed on. And that was only ONE isotope reported. There were up to 1600 different isotopes that have been floating around in our air, pouring out of the reactors, and steaming out of the ground, every second of every day, for 13 months.
And there has been silence from our mainstream media, for which the depths of depravity are so severe I will devote an entire article just to the "why" at a future time.
But back to the research: reports in the past week indicate the pollen in southern California is radioactive now too, and it is flying around, and if you live there and go outside, you are breathing it in. And so are your children.
Along with fission products blowing over from Japan. And radiation in your drinking water. And in your rain. And in the fish you are eating. And your vegetables. And the milk supply. And its happening every second, of every day. For 13 months. Are you starting to see a problem here?
Problem is, that's not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is what Senator Wyden is all bent out of shape about, even though independent researchers and nuke experts have been warning about this for a year.
And that is that the Reactor #4 building is on the verge of collapsing. Seismicity standards rate the building at a zero, meaning even a small earthquake could send it into a heap of rubble. And sitting at the top of the building, in a pool that is cracked, leaking, and precarious even without an earthquake, are 1565 spent fuel assemblies (give or take a few), some of them "fresh fuel" that was ready to go into the reactor on the morning of March 11th when the earthquake and tsunami hit.
If they are MOX fuel, containing 6% plutonium, one fuel rod has the potential to kill 2.89 billion people. If this pool collapses, as Senator Wyden is now saying too, we would face a mass extinction event from the release of radiation in those rods.
That is, if we aren't in one already. Nuke experts like Arnie Gundersen and Helen Caldicott are prepared to evacuate their families to the southern hemisphere if that happens. It is that serious.
So now you know, if you didn't before. We are in big trouble.
P.S.
If they are MOX fuel, containing 6% plutonium, one fuel rod has the potential to kill 2.89 billion people. If this pool collapses, as Senator Wyden is now saying too, we would face a mass extinction event from the release of radiation in those rods.
That is, if we aren't in one already. Nuke experts like Arnie Gundersen and Helen Caldicott are prepared to evacuate their families to the southern hemisphere if that happens. It is that serious.
***Arnie Gundersen: Arnie Gundersen has 40-years of nuclear power engineering experience. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he earned his Bachelor Degree cum laude while also becoming the recipient of a prestigious Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship for his Master Degree in nuclear engineering. Arnie holds a nuclear safety patent, is a licensed reactor operator, and was a former nuclear industry senior vice president. During his nuclear power industry career, Arnie also managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants in the US.
***Helen Caldicott: is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use ofnuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, war and military action in general. She hosts a weekly radio program, If You Love This Planet. In 2009 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by theNational Women's History Project.[1]
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
I saw that on facebook, Chris, and after the slug of whisky I needed afterwards I wondered how to verify it all. I would not be surprised about a globe-threatening event dropping out of that accident, so not doubting its possibility - it would be good to check it out properly, though. It would also save quite a bit on my whisky bills.......
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
I had a no doubt moment there. Must be all that radiation. I've copied and pasted some of the text of the original scare and it appears on many websites mostly those of the David Icke persuasion. It's a slow news week in terms of scare stories so this particular one keeps the ball in the air, no doubt.
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
I did do a quick google on the two named and their entries were consistent with the story. Worrying that it is in the pollen considering how much of our food is supplied from foreign parts.
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
People are tired of climate change stories, they're so last decade. They dare not think too much about real threats such as an economic meltdown because that is real and tangible. These secret of these types of scare stories is that they must remain at a distance rather like watching a disaster movie. Safe but gives people food for thought and is a great opener to a conversation which can last hours and hours. All highly entertaining but not to be taken seriously.
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
....."Maybe you have heard about sick seals, polar bears, tainted fish, mutations".......
Yeah re-reading that I missed the bit about the polar bears. The poster child of concerned citizens worldwide.
I can verify this is nonsense.
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
Well Done PhilipP, and BP will assure you that they have cleaned up all their oil spills while government ministers will assure you that radioactive waste is fine to bottle feed to babies.
As a hint at the possibility here is a link to a story put out by the people that own and operate Fukushima.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-05/tepco-reports-another-radioactive-water-leak-at-fukushima-plant
Remember when doctors would advertise which were the best cigarettes to smoke?
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
I'll stick my neck out and say no truth at all.
Consider the evidence.
The text of this message reads like alot of chain emails we all receive from time to time. Alarmist, badly written as if by a sixth former and in general including just enough facts to worry the worriers. A little bit of scare can go a long way and the text ticks all the boxes.
Of course the situation is bad but haven't we heard millions of scare stories about the world's climate and not one of them are verifiable - not one.
If some bloke came up to you in the pub and started talking about this you would probably find some way to conveniently walk away from him. Just because the text of this message has been copy and pasted millions of times on the internet does not make it true.
It just makes it copied.
Guest 673- Registered: 16 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,388
The nuclear fallout stuff sounds a bit shrill and hysteric but it is interesting to see the detritus which is turning up on the other side of the Pacific carried by the ocean currents. Following courtesyof gCaptain.com :
More than a year after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, a Japanese fishing boat has been found drifting aimlessly off the coast of British Columbia. The beat up 150-foot trawler was spotted on March 20 by an aircraft while on a routine patrol approximately 150 nautical miles from the southern coast of Canada's Haida Gwaii islands, drifting south. Officials have traced the boat to a squid fishing company in Japan, who had confirmed no one was believed to be on the vessel when the tsunami struck. NOAA, among other organizations, have been warning that marine debris generated by the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011 would be making its way across the Pacific, posing navigational hazards to vessels and threatening coastlines, but what, when, and where the debris is expected to wash up has been difficult to predict.
More than a year and thousands of miles later, a soccer ball that had been washed away during the Japan tsunami, turned up on Middleton Island, in the Gulf of Alaska. Local beachcomber David Baxter found the soccer ball as well as a volleyball with Japanese writing on both of them. Remarkably, both owners been identified. The soccer ball's owner, 16 year-old Misaki Murakami lost everything in the 2011 Japan tsunami and is grateful that this object of sentimental value has been found. He received it in 2005 as a gift from his classmates in third grade before moving to a new elementary school, and one of the messages on the ball reads "Good luck, Murakami!!" (or rather "Hang in there, Murakami!!"). David Baxter and his wife Yumi plan to send him the soccer ball. The volleyball was traced to a 19 year-old woman, Shiori Sato, whose home was washed away.
Guest 730- Registered: 5 Nov 2011
- Posts: 221
A bit of Google research shows there is some truth. Senator Wyden did go to Fukushima, he did raise concerns. There are some concerns over MOX fuel and reactor 4. It's just been hugely exaggerated into a typical internet scare story.
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
Nor does it make it false. Even a very quick google search reveals a lot of associated stories that tell much the same thing, and I started with TEPCO (who are in charge of the place). On the climate debate, none of the refutations stand up to scrutiny any more than the claims do (although it doesn't take much sense to know that finite and/or dangerous sources of energy have to be replaced at some point sooner rather than later - only those who cannot stand the thought of any change can deny that).
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
