Plutonium from Fukushima is a global catastrophe.

[Octafish]

In these images, the building containing Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Reactor 3 explodes.
The thing ran on fuel rods that contain a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxide.



TEPCO has been lying from Day One. The company's boss continued his holiday driving tour the day of the disaster. On this side of the great ocean, the U.S. government has not done a very good job of keeping the public abreast of Fukushima and the dangers it represents. It fired Gregory Jaczko, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, after he pointed out the emergency in public.

One important thing everyone should know is the incredible amounts of plutonium -- one of the most deadly elements known -- that have been introduced into the environment from Fukushima.

Here's some more of what everyone on DU and around the entire planet should know:

DOE-STD-1128-98

Guide of Good Practices for Occupational Radiological Protection in Plutonium Facilities

EXCERPT...

4.2.3 Characteristics of Plutonium Contamination

There are few characteristics of plutonium contamination that are unique. Plutonium
contamination may be in many physical and chemical forms. (See Section 2.0 for the many
potential sources of plutonium contamination from combustion products of a plutonium fire
to radiolytic products from long-term storage.) [font color="red"]The one characteristic that many believe is
unique to plutonium is its ability to migrate with no apparent motive force.[/font color] Whether from
alpha recoil or some other mechanism, plutonium contamination, if not contained or
removed, will spread relatively rapidly throughout an area.

SOURCE (PDF file format): http://energy.gov/hss/downloads/doe-std-1128-98

Why I bring this is up: This is information about Fukushima and plutonium that people have a right to know, yet is what the press and governments of the United States and Japan apparently want people to forget. Thank goodness news and information aren't censored on DU.

[Cleita]

1. Ah c'mon Octafish.

Everyone is saying and many on DU that the ocean is dispersing any radiation and other pollution danger from Fukushima. There's nothing to worry about. Eat your fish and especially shell fish. They're soooo good for you.

[Octafish]

3. Thanks, Cleita. That's why I posted. Few who know are talking about Fukushima in public.

For some reason, this story hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. Personally, I believe it's due to the pressure government and industry put on critics. Those who speak up, lose their sinecures.

While it's true, I don't know much. However, I do know who to listen to. Here are a few brave souls with credentials:

http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/symposium-update--online-archive-now-available-at-live-stream-link.html

Then again, maybe because the dangers from the spent fuel will be around for aeons, why hurry to bring it to anyone's attention?

[Cleita]

6. Maybe when people start discovering they have polluted a whole food supply chain, they will

get it. I, for one, am not eating any fish from the Pacific these days and frankly I don't think it should be sold until that spillage is fully contained and that plant fully decommissioned and sealed up. It has taken a whole group of once healthy food from my diet. Still I wonder how much will be condensed from the ocean into rainfall that waters the crops we eat.

[countryjake]

15. I feel the same, Cleita!

Our freezer is full of it, every time I thaw some out, we just can't bring ourselves to eat it.

[Rockyj]

24. It was brought up on the Stephanie Miller radio show...

The other day. She likes to eat Sushi & Stephie & Chris ganged up on Jim for basically saying this is real bad and the media is being quite about it. They also made fun of him for saying he got the info about how bad Fukushima really is from the internet!

[Octafish]

96. Why would the media lie?

Besides to protect traitors, warmongers, polluters, tax dodgers and banksters, that is?

Stephanie Miller, for all her smarts, doesn't strike me as well informed on Fukushima.

For those interested in learning more:

Fukushima Symposium from the New York Academy of Medicine videos:

http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf


Anti TEPCO:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-a-nuclear-war-without-a-war-the-unspoken-crisis-of-worldwide-nuclear-radiation/28870


Pro establishment science:

http://deepseanews.com/2014/01/all-the-best-scientifically-verified-information-on-fukushima-impacts/


There are more resources, but beware their ties to Big Nuke and Big Gov.

[cui bono]

97. Stephanie Miller isn't all that smart. She means well, but she's not one to go to for info.

Plus she's a total Obama apologist so there's a whole lot of stuff she defends and ridicules that Jim would love to really talk about. I usually have to turn off her show in disgust.

[questionseverything]

60. we don't know what to do

According to reports, several holes were found at the bottom of the nuclear reactor's pressure vessel, where the melted nuclear fuel now threatens to leak out.

On a daily basis, Tepco injects almost 200 tons of water into the pressure vessel, but it is highly likely that the water has been constantly leaking from the vessel and containment chamber, eventually flowing under the reactor building.

Reuters' report on the admission by TEPCO notes that the disclosure "is the latest indication that the disaster was worse than previously disclosed, making it more difficult to stabilize the plant."

They go on to report that "U.S. nuclear experts said that the company may have to build a concrete wall around the unit because of the breach, and that this could now take years."

NHK World adds:

The company believes the melted fuel has cooled down, judging from the reactor's surface temperature.
But it suspects the meltdown created a hole or holes in the bottom of the reactor causing water to leak into the containment vessel.

It also suspects the water is leaking into the reactor building.


http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8520

///////////////////////////////////

we have started a dangerous chemical reaction we can only stop under ideal conditions, when those conditions deteriorate to this point we seem to be helpless......I mean I have read about building "ice walls" in the ocean to try and contain the radioactive waste but it would take years and loads of energy (even if it worked) to do that

I imagine that is why tpb try to minimize this coverage

/////////////////

it maybe too late but I have a simple idea to prevent future nuclear disasters ,it seems it is usually the lack of power to the cooling mechanisms that fail ,currently most back up power systems consist of diesel powered generators to pump the cooling water,we saw in japan this is not adequate

why not add windmills to each nuclear power plant that are wired directly to the back up system so cooling never is interrupted?(windmills did not fail during japans problem)

when everything was running correctly they would simply provide additional power ,but during times of problems they could provide energy to run the cooling systems...seems like a simple win/win to me

[Octafish]

134. More On Fukushima Unit 3, TEPCO Fails To Explain Levels

From the good folks at Fukuleaks/SimplyInfo, a crowd sourced news aggregator...

More On Fukushima Unit 3, TEPCO Fails To Explain Levels

SimplyInfo
January 22nd, 2014

TEPCO released two new handouts on the leak at unit 3. This gives some additional insight but still fails to explain a number of critical issues.

Handout 1: http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/handouts/2014/images/handouts_140122_05-j.pdf

Handout 2: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/roadmap/images/l140120_01-e.pdf

TEPCO does not provide any data to explain their claim for where the water level in containment is. They cite using pressure readings to determine this but give no information to show how they came to such a conclusion. Available pressure readings show a single sensor for the containment structure and one for the suppression chamber (torus). The torus has considerably more pressure than the containment structure. The suppression chamber is around 183 kpa and the containment structure at .22 kpa. TEPCO also does not explain how lower containment penetrations would remain intact yet the MSIV room ones failed. This is a requirement to have happen for their theory that water inside unit 3 containment is unusually high.



Also not explained is why water leaks from the two containment hatches have created much higher ambient radiation levels than the leak from the MSIV room. If both are simply leaks of water from containment they should be nearly equal in radiation level. Levels near the water leak on one of the hatch doors was over 4 Sv/h while the levels near the MSIV room leak are around 30 mSv/h

A scope inspection is planned to look into the MSIV room. The current plan is to insert a camera scope from the room above and look into the MSIV room to determine leakage and other information. This would be done by workers. TEPCO has opted to go in through the ceiling as they think the room may be partially filled with water. The radiation levels for the room above are estimated to be around 2-3 mSv/h while levels outside the MSIV room are around 30 mSv/h. TEPCO does not say when this work will take place.



CONTINUED...

http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=12181

Thank you for grokking what we're up against, questionseverything. TEPCO lies. The government of Japan is cracking down on the press and whistleblowers. And the US government answers to banksters and warmongers. Other than that, we got the Internet for a while.

[antiquie]

2. Starfish dying in the NW Pacific

Last edited Tue Jan 28, 2014, 08:27 PM - Edit history (1)

Starfish eat many things. Mostly bottom dwelling things. Like mussels. It has been discovered that if starfish are removed from some locations, mussel populations explode. It has been discovered that mussels near Alaska have very high concentrations of radioisotopes. When starfish eat these mussels, the radioisotopes then are in the starfish. That is known as moving up the food chain.

How do mussels get the plutonium in them? Mussels are filter feeders. Mussels feed by filtering water and taking suspended solids from that water. Plutonium, and other heavy metals drift to the bottom where the mussels are, and the mussels, in their feeding, filter out the plutonium which ends up in the mussel's meat which the starfish eat.

Conclusion: Atmospheric deposition of radioisotopes from Fukushima is established. Plutonium from Fukushima has been found in mussels in the NW Pacific. Starfish eat mussels. Starfish are dying and causing researchers great alarm. It is possible that plutonium is killing the starfish.

[Vashta Nerada]

5. No, plutonium isn't killing the starfish.

It's a disease that's been around way before Fukushima: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4382099

[L0oniX]

27. Ok then ...we won't worry about it. Thanks.

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. On this you should not

http://www.eeb.ucsc.edu/pacificrockyintertidal/data-products/sea-star-wasting/

Or are you telling me the accident happened in the 1980s the last time UC Santa Cruz tracked this phenomena.

What it MIGHT have something to do with, and the links are NOT clear yet, is climate change.

Now you want to talk cesium in tuna, let's talk

[L0oniX]

42. Oh ...my auto sarc tag isn't working again. My bad.

[Octafish]

7. Thank you for pointing that out, antiquie. We need more information.

Here's the Health Physics Society:

EXCERPT...

Radioactivity has been detected in nearly every state, whether it be in rain water, in the air, or in milk. We understand that the fear that arises from hearing about radioactivity being found nearby can cause increased stress and, sometimes, an overwhelming sense of loss of control. This is why it is important for you to know that the amount of radioactivity being detected in the United States is of no concern; we can drink the milk, eat food out of our gardens, and drink water from our faucets.

http://www.hps.org/fukushima/

Personally, I like to err on the side of caution. Seeing how the government of the United States has the technology to monitor and report testing of food, water, air and land across the nation and planet, I wonder why we don't -- or if we do, haven't made that public. This is a democracy, supposedly.

[antiquie]

8. I worry about my grandkids.

Scientists don’t know what’s causing the problem, whether it’s bacteria, a toxin, something that’s been discharged in the water or ocean acidification. They’ve termed the outbreak “sea star wasting disease.” (Scientists now call starfish “sea stars” because they aren’t fish.)

Starfish die-offs have happened before in Southern California in 1983-1984 and 1997-1998, when El Niño events turned ocean waters warmer than normal. But those events were localized, only affecting portions of the population. That made it easier for starfish to recover.

Scientists say they’ve never seen a die-off of this magnitude. It’s spread through most of the starfish’s range, which stretches from Alaska to Baja California. And it’s affecting several starfish species including pisaster, the five-armed, orange and purple starfish commonly seen on the Oregon coast.

Broad outbreaks can pose recovery risks. A die-off in the Gulf of California in Mexico between 1976-1978 killed 99 percent of one species of starfish there, said Pete Raimondi, chairman of UC Santa Cruz’s ecology and evolutionary biology department. More than 30 years later, the population still hasn’t recovered because the die-off affected the species’ whole range.

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/12/oregon_coast_isolated_from_mys.html

(AP) LOS ANGELES - Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away — the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.

Previously, smaller fish and plankton were found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters after a magnitude-9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-bluefin-tuna-crossed-pacific-to-us/

[Whisp]

30. That's the kicker, isn't it?

Leaving this hell to our kids and grandkids.

We deserve to burn in our makings, but not them.

so sad. awful helplessness

[RobertEarl]

32. We can protect our kids from this

First we have to recognize there is a problem. That's the first step.

We are not helpless. There are medical procedures that can reverse the illness from radiation exposure.

From the Oak Ridge labs, where they built the first reactor, comes a webpage wherein it is revealed some successful countermeasures to nuclear radiation sickness.

http://orise.orau.gov/reacts/guide/measure.htm

[Shivering Jemmy]

226. They'll still be human when they grow up

And will have found things to do that are every bit as awful as what we have done.

No one is ever innocent.

[nadinbrzezinski]

48. Yes, in the case of star fish yes they do

http://www.eeb.ucsc.edu/pacificrockyintertidal/data-products/sea-star-wasting/

[wildbilln864]

138. absolutely! Me too. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. See 39 please

[jeff47]

21. Die off started before the reactor blew up.

So unless you want to claim the radiation can travel through time, it's not from Fukushima.

[RobertEarl]

25. Yep. Plutonium has been there awhile.

There is just more of it since Fukushima. The science is quite clear about that.

Finding plutonium in a melted starfish is not going to be easy. But we do know that in one of the starfishes' main prey, mussels, plutonium has been found. Mussels are quite simple creatures so toxins are not a big killer for them. Starfish are quite complex and not well understood. Did you know a starfish can regrow a missing arm, and nearly a whole starfish from just a piece?

There is an amazing energy in starfish. Add some extra energy from a plutonium atom and there is no telling what may happen.

[jeff47]

26. So....never took a biology class, huh?

Complexity of the creature is not an indication of it's resistance to toxins. Bacteria are extremely simple creatures, yet they get annihilated by a whole lot of toxins at much lower levels than any more complex creatures. Put hydrogen peroxide on a cut. You've slaughtered billions of bacteria, but you are unharmed.

Additionally, you've been claiming that plutonium is building up all over the planet - including the Atlantic.....except now when it magically disappears from starfish.

And that is still ignoring the time-travelling requirement for this claim. This die off started before Fukushima blew up.

[NuclearDem]

29. "there is no telling what may happen"

Who knows, that sea star might travel through time and give your hypothesis some believability.

[antiquie]

36. Not like this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4382265

[jeff47]

38. Yes, like this. In fact, it is literally this die off.

There were previous die-offs. But this very die-off started before the Fukushima incident. Scientists started talking about it a couple months before Fukushima blew up.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. That has zero to do with fukushima

unless the accident happened in the 80s and nobody told me, the last time they had a die out.

UC Santa Cruz, which incidentally is doing the research, is a good source on this issue.

Now you talk of cesium in tuna, let's talk

[G_j]

4. Plutonium

both my parents were exposed while working at Hanford in the forties. Both passed from lung cancer in the late eighties.
No way to prove anything, but essentially, plutonium lasts forever.

[Octafish]

9. 1 Millionth of One Gram of Inhaled Plutonium Will Give You Cancer -- Helen Caldicott, MD

http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/helen-caldicott-on-plutonium.html

Please accept my deepest sympathies and sincere condolences on your loss, G_j.

Going from your writings over the years and getting to know you as a Friend, your parents were extraordinary human beings.

[G_j]

14. thank you

I believe they were. My mom had some patents on safety mechanisms for reactors. She then became a house mom, and raised two boys. She remained pro nuclear power until upon my becoming involved in the anti-nuke movement, she looked into the designs of the then modern reactors. She came to the conclusion that they had cut far too many corners to guarantee safety.

Even though at the time they worked at Hanford, they felt they took extreme precautions, they greatly underestimated plutonium exposure.

[countryjake]

18. G_j, have you heard about this?

KING5 News here aired one hell of a disturbing story last week about an old leaking waste tank over at Hanford.

State blasts feds’ response to Hanford leak ~ by SUSANNAH FRAME KING 5 News January 16, 2014

http://www.king5.com/news/investigators/State-blasts-feds-response-to-Hanford-leak-240657781.html

Washington State Dept. of Ecology officials are fed up with the federal government's handling of a leaking nuclear waste tank at Hanford, prompting an unusually harsh letter to the U.S. Department of Energy blasting Hanford's managers for wasting time and failing to finalize plans on how to address the leak.

"In short, we are deeply disappointed,” Ecology's top Hanford regulator, Jane Hedges, wrote in a January 9 letter. “Your proposal, as we understand it, is to monitor the leaking Tank AY-102 and take no action to remove its waste until conditions get worse. This is unacceptable. You have known for more than a year that Tank AY-102 is leaking ... and what the regulations require in response.”

A 2013 series by the KING 5 Investigators showed that the government contractor charged with managing millions of gallons of radioactive waste at Hanford knew, or should have known, that tank AY-102 was leaking as early as October 2011 -- more than a year before state officials were told. AY-102 contains the most chemically contaminated and radioactive nuclear byproducts held at the site. The worst case scenario would be waste migrating into the groundwater and eventually into the nearby Columbia River.

In the wake of KING 5's reporting, Ecology in May ordered the Energy Department to produce a plan for emptying the tank -- as required by Washington state law, which says any nuclear waste tank at Hanford that's found to be leaking must be emptied within 24 hours. Energy responded on June 14, saying it would take 19 months to plan and prepare to empty the tank.

Just type "Hanford" into the search bar on the KING 5 page, they've been on this story for awhile.

[G_j]

28. yes, but I haven't seen this latest update

They must be aware that once the contamination hits the ground water, it's too late. This is criminal.

[JEB]

10. Corporate media and government silence on Fuku is deafening.

By the way, when I clicked the link above, one of the most deadly elements known, the You tube video has been removed.

http://youtube.digru.com/?v=rankin+taxi+ainu+dub&t=

[Octafish]

55. Thanks for the heads-up, JEB. Don't have a replacement for the original, yet.

In the meantime, a link to the entire symposium:

www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/symposium-update--online-archive-now-available-at-live-stream-link.html

Dr. Caldicott's address there:

Subjects that impact 'national security' seem to get short shrift, for some reason, from the news. Odd, that, for democracy.

Of course, the free press also fails to mention the biggest traitors this nation has ever known have hidden behind cover of "national security." That's where the warmongers (and their banksters) who lied America into illegal and immoral wars hide.

[secondwind]

11. our granddaughter wanted to spend this summer in Japan... that was nixed in a heartbeat

[flamingdem]

12. That's very good

Children are especially vulnerable of course.

[flamingdem]

13. Do you remember the special trip Hillary made to Japan after Fukushima?

I believe that an understanding was agreed to in that we'd look the other way because they are staunch allies. The powers that be have decided to allow x number of cancers, and x amount of environmental destruction rather than risk letting Japan's economy tank or tank further as it would have done if the full truth was revealed. Plus, Tepco was such a disaster as a company there wasn't much choice, and it was nearly impossible to get past cultural and political issues driving decisions there. The US was not allowed to fully cooperate. The world is going to suffer for that albeit more long term, long after we're gone people will be discussing this tragedy.

[Bluenorthwest]

63. So you are claiming the Obama administration is complicit?

That they made a deal to allow harm to come to millions for some financial advantage by a foreign government?
Wow.

[flamingdem]

74. It's more of a tendency rather than a blatant policy

The evidence is that the radiation testing stations stopped reporting data after this meeting and other testing such as imported fish was also reduced. All with the goal of reducing fear, and that's not an evil effort. However the ball was dropped in terms of the USA insisting on being more involved with Tepco's attempts to fix the situation. Not that it was even possible, but I'm not sure every attempt was made.

[cui bono]

98. They've done it for banksters and corporations. n/t

[Octafish]

133. Orders. Word from above...

The president's friends with Illinois-based EXELON.

A Bit More on Barack

Washington Babylon by Ken Silverstein
Harper's October 26, 2006

EXCERPT...

In the magazine article, I asserted that Obama is not a mouthpiece for his donors; neither does his voting record mirror the wishes of his contributor list. But, as I suggested, it's naïve to think that he's completely unaware of who's footing the bills. Exelon, a leading nuclear-plant operator based in Illinois, is a big donor to Obama, and its executive and employees have given him more than $70,000 since 2004. The Obama staffer pointed out that the senator pushed for legislation that would require nuclear companies to “inform state and local officials if there is an accidental or unintentional leak of a radioactive substance,” according to an office press release. Obama took a stand on that issue following reports that a plant operated by Exelon had leaked tritium several times over the past decade.

But Exelon is probably not entirely unhappy with Obama. At a 2005 hearing at the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, of which Obama is a member, the senator—echoing the nuclear industry's current campaign to promotes nuclear energy as “green”—said that since Congress was debating “policies to address air quality and the deleterious effects of carbon emissions on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable—and realistic—for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration.” He was immediately lauded by the industry publication Nuclear Notes, which said, “Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of ‘common sense solutions.’ And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind.”

CONTINUED...

SOURCE: https://web.archive.org/web/20070914180317/http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/10/sb-a-little-bit-more-on-obama-1161881683

[Agschmid]

205. No.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

16. Oh, BULLSHIT!

Radiation is not bad like we thought back in the day. Indeed, these days you can hug a bunch of plutonium and walk away and live a happy life.

Enough of this Fukushima bullshit! Everything is just fine!

[JEB]

17. Yeah, go shopping.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. You first, (in the hug your plutonium for real department with no shielding)

that is

[ChisolmTrailDem]

37. You do realize I was being facetious, right? nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

41. When it comes to this subject my sarcasm-o-meter is non functional

[1000words]

50. Bananas!

[nadinbrzezinski]

59. Phew, not the only one who noticed that meme

that now our friends keep trying to distance themselves from.



I got some, want some?

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSnUlMhxkr8YMlfmkraFadxBJILbMsN3OP_UJZV2uLZkvz_S0DQ

[Octafish]

67. LOL! Plutonium is good business.

I know that you know that I know that you know it's serious. The scary thing:

Fukushima, Plutonium, CIA, and the BFEE: Deep Doo-Doo Four Ways to Doomsday

The story connects a few dots from the present day back to World War II.



War crime, Yakuza, Secret Government. Why not?

Japan’s Nuclear Industry: The CIA Link.

By Eleanor Warnock
June 1, 2012, 10:18 AM JST.
Wall Street Journal Blog

Tetsuo Arima, a researcher at Waseda University in Tokyo, told JRT he discovered in the U.S. National Archives a trove of declassified CIA files that showed how one man, Matsutaro Shoriki, was instrumental in jumpstarting Japan’s nascent nuclear industry.

Mr. Shoriki was many things: a Class A war criminal, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan’s biggest-selling and most influential newspaper) and the founder of both the country’s first commercial broadcaster and the Tokyo Giants baseball team. Less well known, according to Mr. Arima, was that the media mogul worked with the CIA to promote nuclear power.

SNIP...

Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shoriki’s behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.

SNIP…

Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shoriki’s behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.

CONTINUED...

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/01/japans-nuclear-industry-the-cia-link/

After President Carter was out of office, it was pretty much full-steam ahead for the Japanese bomb during the Pruneface Ronnie-Poppy Bush years. Hence, Fukushima Daiichi Number 3 and other select Japanese reactors were set up to process plutonium uranium fuels.

United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium

By Joseph Trento
on April 9th, 2012
National Security News Service

The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.

The diversion of U.S. classified technology began during the Reagan administration after it allowed a $10 billion reactor sale to China. Japan protested that sensitive technology was being sold to a potential nuclear adversary. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations permitted sensitive technology and nuclear materials to be transferred to Japan despite laws and treaties preventing such transfers. Highly sensitive technology on plutonium separation from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and Hanford nuclear weapons complex, as well as tens of billions of dollars worth of breeder reactor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safeguards against proliferation. Japanese scientist and technicians were given access to both Hanford and Savannah River as part of the transfer process.

SNIP...

A year ago a natural disaster combined with a man-made tragedy decimated Northern Japan and came close to making Tokyo, a city of 30 million people, uninhabitable. Nuclear tragedies plague Japan’s modern history. It is the only nation in the world attacked with nuclear weapons. In March 2011, after a tsunami swept on shore, hydrogen explosions and the subsequent meltdowns of three reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant spewed radiation across the region. Like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan will face the aftermath for generations. A twelve-mile area around the site is considered uninhabitable. It is a national sacrifice zone.

How Japan ended up in this nuclear nightmare is a subject the National Security News Service has been investigating since 1991. We learned that Japan had a dual use nuclear program. The public program was to develop and provide unlimited energy for the country. But there was also a secret component, an undeclared nuclear weapons program that would allow Japan to amass enough nuclear material and technology to become a major nuclear power on short notice.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html

Those of who have seen The World at War series on the tee vee are familiar with the black and white footage and great narrative chronicling the main events and figures of World War II. One of those episodes was entitled "The Bomb" and featured an interview with John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War to President Roosevelt and President Truman.

Here's part of what Mr. McCloy said about the Atomic Bomb – the use of which he counseled only as a last resort, after warning Japan to surrender (around 7:30 mark of Part 2):

“Besides that, we’ve got a new force, a new type of energy that will revolutionize warfare, destructive beyond any contemplation. I’d said, I’d mention the bomb. Mentioning the bomb, even at that late date, in that select group, was like, it was like they were all shocked. Because it was such a closely guarded secret. It was comparable to mentioning Skull and Bones at Yale – which you’re not supposed to do.”

After the war, McCloy was the United States High Commissioner to Germany, administering the U.S. zone of occupation, making him one of the front-line leaders of the Cold War. In that capacity, one of the questionable things he did was to forgive several NAZI industrialists and war criminals.

The great cartoonist Herb Block, HERBLOCK, depicted McCloy holding open a prison door for a NAZI, while in the background Stalin took a photo (if anyone has a copy or link to the cartoon, I’d be much obliged). About 15 years later, Mr. McCloy served the nation as a member of the Warren Commission.

While he wasn’t a member of Skull and Bones, McCloy certainly worked closely with a bunch of them, including Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush. As a Wall Street and Washington insider, "Mr. Establishment" he was called, Mr. McCloy used the offices of government to centralize power and wealth. That is most un-democratic.

Mother Jones goes into detail:

The Nuclear Weapons Industry's Money Bombs

How millions in campaign cash and revolving-door lobbying have kept America's atomic arsenal off the chopping block.

— By R. Jeffrey Smith, Center for Public Integrity
Mother Jones
Wed Jun. 6, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Employees of private companies that produce the main pieces of the US nuclear arsenal have invested more than $18 million in the election campaigns of lawmakers that oversee related federal spending, and the companies also employ more than 95 former members of Congress or Capitol Hill staff to lobby for government funding, according to a new report.

The Center for International Policy, a nonprofit group that supports the "demilitarization" of US foreign policy, released the report on Wednesday to highlight what it described as the heavy influence of campaign donations and pork-barrel politics on a part of the defense budget not usually associated with large profits or contractor power: nuclear arms.

As Congress deliberated this spring on nuclear weapons-related projects, including funding for the development of more modern submarines and bombers, the top 14 contractors gave nearly $3 million to the 2012 reelection campaigns of lawmakers whose support they needed for these and other projects, the report disclosed.

Half of that sum went to members of the four key committees or subcommittees that must approve all spending for nuclear arms—the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and the Energy and Water or Defense appropriations subcommittees, according to data the Center compiled from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to lawmakers who are active on nuclear weapons issues because they have related factories or laboratories in their states or districts.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee this year have sought to erect legislative roadblocks to further reductions in nuclear arms, and also demanded more spending for related facilities than the Obama administration sought, including $100 million in unrequested funds for a new plant that will make plutonium cores for nuclear warheads, and $374 million for a new ballistic missile-firing submarine. The House has approved those requests, but the Senate has not held a similar vote on the 2013 defense bill.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/nuclear-bombs-congress-elections-campaign-donations

It isn't ironic or coincidental. It is the Establishment, the in-group, the Elite, the One-Percent that’s pretty much gotten the lion’s share of the wealth created over the last 50 years. The same group that’s pretty much had their fingers on the atomic button ever since the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as profited from the development of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and the almost continuous state of war since then. For lack of a better term, I call them the BFEE, or War Party.

Original OP. Thanks for standing up to them, ChisolmTrailDem!

[AtheistCrusader]

19. Wrong.

All uranium based fuel rods produce plutonium. Every reactor that has burned and released material has released plutonium. Windscale. Chernobyl. Even Chelyabinsk.

And Chernobyl released a HELL of a lot more than Fukushima Dai-ichi has. Chernobyl shit out more than 400 curies of plutonium. Hanford? About 200 curies of plutonium.

That's why the MIC loves reactors; they produce plutonium, which is useful for weapons.


Plutonium is also naturally occurring, by the by.

[Rex]

20. Natural plutonium is extremely rare.

So they have released a lot of radiation, just like people figured they did.

[Orrex]

197. But if it were natural, then it would be healthy and good

It's the artificial stuff in our environment that's bad for us, don'tcha know!

[Rex]

219. I tried to buy some from GNC and they called the cops!

'It's all natural', I says and the manager says...get this...'we don't carry natural plutonium and if we did we wouldn't sell it!' CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!?

The nerve of some people!

[southerncrone]

101. I've wondered if there could be a link between

the Chernobyl melt-down & the increase in autism in kids born after it. The timeline seems to match. I wonder if the USSR keeps records on autism.

[Octafish]

104. That may be so, but the fuel in Reactor 3 is enriched with plutonium.

So is the crapola in the spent fuel rods, once stored in the spent fuel pool, under the now-missing roof of the formerly 10-story tall Reactor 3 containment building. TIME semi-addressed the issue back when the disaster was new.



As for plutonium's role in making the nuclear weapons, oh yeah.

United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium

By Joseph Trento
on April 9th, 2012
National Security News Service

The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.

The diversion of U.S. classified technology began during the Reagan administration after it allowed a $10 billion reactor sale to China. Japan protested that sensitive technology was being sold to a potential nuclear adversary. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations permitted sensitive technology and nuclear materials to be transferred to Japan despite laws and treaties preventing such transfers. Highly sensitive technology on plutonium separation from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and Hanford nuclear weapons complex, as well as tens of billions of dollars worth of breeder reactor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safeguards against proliferation. Japanese scientist and technicians were given access to both Hanford and Savannah River as part of the transfer process.

SNIP...

A year ago a natural disaster combined with a man-made tragedy decimated Northern Japan and came close to making Tokyo, a city of 30 million people, uninhabitable. Nuclear tragedies plague Japan’s modern history. It is the only nation in the world attacked with nuclear weapons. In March 2011, after a tsunami swept on shore, hydrogen explosions and the subsequent meltdowns of three reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant spewed radiation across the region. Like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan will face the aftermath for generations. A twelve-mile area around the site is considered uninhabitable. It is a national sacrifice zone.

How Japan ended up in this nuclear nightmare is a subject the National Security News Service has been investigating since 1991. We learned that Japan had a dual use nuclear program. The public program was to develop and provide unlimited energy for the country. But there was also a secret component, an undeclared nuclear weapons program that would allow Japan to amass enough nuclear material and technology to become a major nuclear power on short notice.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html

Please check your numbers on the severity of Chernobyl vs. Fukushima. You may be relying on TEPCO, which, has a reputation for failing to tell truth going back decades.

[Rex]

122. I wouldn't trust TEPCO to tell us the truth no matter what.

They had a clear 'conflict of interest' from the very beginning and are not to be trusted for accuracy or transparency.

[AtheistCrusader]

131. Something like 80% of the mass of the core of the reactor at Chernobyl

was blown, burning, into the sky. It's physically impossible for the leaking containments at Fukushima to have released as much.

Fukushima has released quite a lot, and it is bad, and never should have happened. But something as-yet hasn't happen, like reactor 4's building falling over and catching fire would have to happen, for Fukushima to catch up.

I would prefer it not catch up.

[RobertEarl]

22. It is extremely embarrassing

We were told, time and again, that nukes were safe. After Chernobyl the story went that it was because the Russians were stupid and no intelligent country would allow such a thing to happen.

Then we had Fukushima. The lies have been exposed and the liars - some of the most powerful and rich people the planet has ever seen, are exposed.

That is why, as you state: "This is information about Fukushima and plutonium that people have a right to know, yet is what the press and governments of the United States and Japan apparently want people to forget."

Thank you, Octafish, for reminding us.

[Octafish]

222. Nuclear Information and Resource Service

http://www.nirs.org/

They also have an excellent resource on Fukushima:

http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/crisis.htm

Thank you for reminding me of the old days on DU, RobertEarl. Rather than ridicule and bully those with whom they disagreed, DUers then would help one another find new information and learn things as a matter of routine.

[RobertEarl]

225. 100th rec

Been waiting for the moment, there it was.

DU is still a great place. 100 recs about something so important and so very much denied, is an accomplishment that only someone like you could deliver. And we all thank you, Sir, for wading through the BS and sticking with us, bringing new information that we all need. You have overcome.

[MyNameGoesHere]

23. Don't worry, there's an app for that

[Octafish]

70. Didn't they take that one off the market?

Here's a marketing problem: Gwynn Guilford of QZ.com brings our attention to a new mascot developed by Fukushima Industries, makers of major appliances.



What’s Fukuppy’s purpose? Ask him! “I fly around on my awesome wings, patrolling supermarket showcases and kitchen refrigerators,” explains Fukuppy on Fukushima Industries’ site (translation from RocketNews24). ”I can talk to vegetables, fruit, meat, and fish and can check on their health!”

Though Fukuppy does claim to be a “bit of a klutz,” his name probably doesn’t have anything to do with what it sounds like pronounced in English. For one, his name is actually pronounced “foo-koo-pee.”

But among English-speakers, Fukuppy probably seems like it would be a fitting name for a Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant mascot. The chief cause of the 2011 meltdown was human error, not the tsunami/earthquake, found a report commissioned by the Japanese government. In July, the head of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority admitted that the plant has been contaminating the ocean for two years since he and his staff have been unable to pinpoint the leak’s origin. As a result, as many as 80,000 people could get cancer, two nuclear experts told the Georgia Straight, a Canadian news weekly.

SOURCE: http://qz.com/135179/fukushima-industries-just-made-a-very-unfortunate-branding-choice/

For the Record: Unlike TEPCO, Fukuppy hasn't hurt anyone.

[flamingdem]

75. wow, that's uhhhh

cute yeah real cute

[Logical]

31. Not this again, Jesus! nt

[Octafish]

92. Fukushima is all over the news?

Up until it wasn't, which seems to have been around two and a half years ago.

What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?

ANNE LANDMAN
PR Watch on June 23, 2011

While the U.S. media has been occupied with Anthony Weiner, the Republican presidential candidates and Bristol Palin's memoir, coverage of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster has practically fallen off the map. Poor mainstream media coverage of Japan's now months-long struggle to gain control over the Fukushima disaster has deprived Americans of crucial information about the risks of nuclear power following natural disasters. After a few weeks of covering the early aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami, the U.S. media moved on, leaving behind the crisis at Fukushima which continues to unfold. U.S. politicians, like Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, have made disappointing and misleading statements about the relative safety of nuclear power and have vowed to stick by our nuclear program, while other countries, like Germany and Italy, have taken serious steps to address the obvious risks of nuclear power -- risks that the Fukushima disaster made painfully evident, at least to the rest of the world.

Problems Multiply

News outlets in other countries have been paying attention to Fukushima, though, and a relative few in this country have as well. A June 16, 2011 Al Jazeera English article titled, "Fukushima: It's much worse than you think," quotes a high-level former nuclear industry executive, Arnold Gunderson, who called Fukushima nothing less than "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind." Twenty nuclear cores have been exposed at Fukushima, Gunderson points out, saying along with the site's many spent-fuel pools, this gives Fukushima 20 times the release potential of Chernobyl.

Efforts to bring problems at Fukushima under control are not going well, either. Japanese authorities only just recently admitted that nuclear fuel in the three damaged Fukushima reactors has likely burned through the vessels holding it, a scenario called "melt-through," that is even more serious than a core meltdown. Months of spraying seawater on the plant's three melted-down fuel cores -- and the spent fuel stored on site -- to try and cool them has produced 26 million of gallons of radioactive wastewater, and no place to put it.

After a struggle, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), finally managed to put in place a system to filter radioactive particles out of the wastewater, but it broke down soon after it started operating. A filter that was supposed to last a month plugged up with radioactive material after just five hours, indicating there is more radioactive material in the water than previously believed. Meanwhile, TEPCO is running out of space to store the radioactive water, and may be forced to again dump contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. TEPCO already dumped some water into the ocean weeks ago, amid protests from fisherman, other countries and environmental organizations. And even if TEPCO does successfully filter the contaminated water and manage to bring its radioactivity down to acceptable levels, the utility will still have to deal with the pile of radioactive sludge the process will produce. The plan they've come up with to deal with the sludge is to seal it in drums and discard it into the ocean, which may cause even more problems. Greenpeace has already found levels of radiation exceeding legal limits in seaweed and shellfish samples gathered more than 12 miles away from the plant. The high levels of radiation in the samples indicate that leaks from the plant are bigger than TEPCO has revealed so far.

CONTINUED...

http://prwatch.org/news/2011/06/10851/what-happened-media-coverage-fukushima

So, besides your personal angst, Logical, anything to add about the plutonium or Fukushima?

[lonestarnot]

117. Nope.

Didn't think so.

[Octafish]

119. One would think, just based on the SCALE of the disaster, it'd be on TV.

For some reason, no.



Here's the Putzmeister 58-meter boom pump truck seen at right in the photo above.

I think it's this one, based on a larger version of the photo:



Here's another image to give an idea how big the Fukushima containment buildings are:



It could be this one, flown in by a Soviet military transport-type aircraft:



Normally they pump concrete, but at Fukushima they were brought in and adapted to pump water into the spent fuel pools...located, way up, on the 10th floor.

Gosh, lonestarnot. For some dumb reason, my local newspaper, radio and tee vee station forgot to show us this comparo.

ETA: confusion.

[lonestarnot]

147. They must not like the smell of plutonium and stapelia gigantea. Sucks the breath right out of them

[NuclearDem]

33. EDIT: Original line here contained statistics I pulled out of my ass. It was wrong, and I apologize.

There are legitimate concerns about nuclear power, but hyperbole, blowing things well out of proportion, and ludicrous claims about radioactive starfish aren't doing the people voicing the real concerns any favors.

[jeff47]

43. But it's going to annihilate all life in the Northern hemisphere!!!!!!!!!

Somebody said so on the Internet, so it must be true.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

44. That is the stupidest thing I've read all day! Just how the fuck can you say that? You have

Last edited Fri Jan 24, 2014, 03:24 PM - Edit history (1)

NOTHING to back up that statement as you have no idea how many people in Japan are sick. You have no idea how many people on the USS Ronald Reagan and other support ships that went to Fuku are sick. You have no idea how many are yet to be found to be sick or will become sick from poisoning from Fuku.

What a bunch of goddamned shit you deniers talk!!!

[G_j]

45. thank you

[zappaman]

47. "You fuckers"?

Who you calling "you fuckers"?

[NuclearDem]

51. And all the other side has is a bunch of hyperbolic faulty reasoning.

I'm not even a particularly big fan of nuclear power, but the bullshit being spewed by more than a few here is doing the argument against nuclear power absolutely zero favors.

[G_j]

53. the comment

mentioned that no links were supplied, still don't see any..

[aikoaiko]

88. And the jury results are....

I forgot to post this in a timely manner.

On Fri Jan 24, 2014, 02:20 PM an alert was sent on the following post:

That is the stupidest thing I've read all day! Just how the fuck can you say that? You have
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4383195

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Fri Jan 24, 2014, 02:26 PM, and the Jury voted 3-3 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Sound and fury, signifying nothing, told by a fool.
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Seriously
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: "What a bunch of goddamned shit you fuckers talk!!!" = hide and vacation

Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Ask the guy to change his wording. This post is in reply to a snide comment that does not add much to the discussion either.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Poster amended the remarks and the changes seem acceptable to me.

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

[SidDithers]

109. Looks like the post was edited after the alert was sent...nt

Sid

[Octafish]

49. Where did I mention starfish?

Not in the OP.

[NuclearDem]

52. Didn't say you did. But I know RobertEarl's OP probably triggered this OP.

[RobertEarl]

54. No. Plutonium is the trigger

I get that you are scared and want to bury this situation. But you can't, so you might as well just work to save lives by helping people become prepared.

[NuclearDem]

57. You're unbelievable.

For the quadrillionth time, the sea star die off wasn't caused by Fukushima pollution.

[Octafish]

56. So, you brought it up to conflate the issues.

That is a strategy also used by propagandists.

What have you to say about plutonium, which was the reason for my post?

[NuclearDem]

58. Ah, Christ.

Octafish, is there anyone who disagrees with you that isn't a COINTELPRO operative?

Calling Fukushima a "global catastrophe" is just pure hyperbolic bullshit. Chernobyl was far worse, and it's hard to even call it a global catastrophe.

Fukushima was built in a place it shouldn't have been, designed in a way it shouldn't have been, and responded to in a way that should have been much better considering how dangerous nuclear material is. It's still not a global catastrophe by any measure.

[SidDithers]

61. "Octafish, is there anyone who disagrees with you that isn't a COINTELPRO operative? "...

Nailed it.

Sid

[Octafish]

65. Tag team is so profound, SidDithers.

It's like what bullies do, but with plausible deniability.

What have you to say about Fukushima? Not much, from what you've posted on my threads on the subject.

Fukushima, Plutonium, CIA, and the BFEE: Deep Doo-Doo Four Ways to Doomsday

[SidDithers]

66. The BFEE are killing starfish!!...nt

Sid

[Octafish]

68. Ha ha. It is to laugh at Fascism.

Bartcop coined the term "Bush Family Evil Empire" to denote the 60-year pre-eminence of one family in the formation of the political philosophy in the United States, that of the War Party. And, yes, personally, I have tried to chronicle their influence on the ascension of the national security state. At least three generations have held high national office, while also making big money off war and looting the public Treasury. The last president of the United States, a man who wasn't elected fair and square by any stretch of the imagination, actually said: "Money trumps peace" at a press conference. For some reason, not a single "journalist" had the guts to ask him what he meant by that.

So, yes. I've noticed you never seem to post anything that adds to what we know about these treasonous warmongers. I also noticed you do like to post the photo of the grinning Joker.

While the BFEE, nuclear power, Fukushima, plutonium and the their undemocratic impact on the world may be funny to you, they aren't funy to me.

[Octafish]

62. If you want honest discussion, don't attribute to me what I didn't write then.

That's undemocratic. I don't need you or J Edgar Hoover to know that.

As for Fukushima, it's a global disaster. Anyone thinking otherwise hasn't been keeping up with the science.

[RobertEarl]

64. You really don't understand any of this, do you?

The Secretary of the US Department of Energy went over to see Fukushima and stated that this situation is an "international problem".

So your idea is shot down by the Sec of the Department of Energy. So what else you got? You gonna argue with the Sec of DoE?

Then there is this gem from monitors around the world:

Fukushima-related radioactive materials measured across entire Northern Hemisphere

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110407121343.htm

Since the double disaster of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that affected hundreds of thousands of people and seriously damaged the Fukushima Daichi power plant in Japan on 11 March 2011, minute traces of radioactive emissions from Fukushima have spread across the entire Northern Hemisphere. A monitoring network designed to detect signs of nuclear explosions picked up these traces from the stricken power plant. To date, more than 30 radionuclide stations that are part of the International Monitoring System have provided information on the spread of radioactive particles and noble gases from the Fukushima accident.

[NuclearDem]

72. "International problem" is pretty far from "global catastrophe."

And I'm supposed to rush to the store and buy up iodine tablets over "minute traces"? Here, from your own link:

A rooftop detector at the CTBTO's headquarters in Vienna still catches traces of emissions from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

So the equipment is sensitive enough to pick up traces. So what?

[RobertEarl]

73. International problem is global.

It is a known catastrophe for the nuclear industry. And the science says it takes just a few plutonium atoms to cause cancer. Cancer deaths have increased tremendously since we tested nukes in the atmosphere. Now why did they halt atmospheric testing? Because they found it would be global catastrophe if they continued. Now we have a blown up NPP that is known to have spread Plutonium around the world.

Did you know that the water borne contamination from Fukushima is near shore already?

This report describes how radionuclides from Fukushima were found in the water offshore in the Pacific. The report is the first to detail this fact. It goes on to say that the contamination is due to reach shore this year. And that much more sampling must be done.

http://www.pices.int/publications/presentations/PICES-2013/2013-MEQ/MEQ-1700-Smith.pdf

[NuclearDem]

76. For the record, I enjoyed the DU Mail back and forth just a few minutes ago.

I especially love this part:

The message got out. And I laugh at the people who got their knickers in a twist over one little word. LAUGH. What stupidity. They have lost all respect.

And you are still hung up on it? Let it go. It doesn't mean a thing. But do look for my reposting the message again, soon. Thanks for the kicks.

[RobertEarl]

77. And?

I get that the Fukushima contamination is scary. A better target for your actions would be making a donation to the science being put together by private individuals who want to sample the pacific. Attacking me will get you nowhere. Here's the link to Woods Hole Oceanic Institute who wants more sampling and needs funds to do so since government won't

http://www.whoi.edu/main/whoi-in-the-news

[NuclearDem]

79. You have GOT to be joking.

Although larger, wind-blown debris from the Japanese tsunami began to be spotted on North American shores shortly after the disaster, and migratory fish such as bluefin tuna have already shown up off California carrying radioactive isotopes from the spill, oceanic currents move much slower. The Fukushima spill therefore is unlikely to have anything to do with reports such as the mysterious die-off of sea stars in California. Now, however, contaminated sea water is finally due to arrive on the eastern side of the Pacific, and so it is time to start keeping watch.

...

I was caught by surprise, in a way, when there was concern about the arrival of the radioactive plume as it moves across the Pacific. Largely, that is related to public misunderstanding of what levels are considered a concern, and what levels shouldn’t be. I certainly don’t believe the levels we’re going to see on the west coast of North America should be of health concern. The human-exposure issues are more for the workers and people moving back into their homes on land. For the ocean it becomes quickly a fisheries issue.

...

The bluefin tuna off San Diego, California, carried Fukushima caesium. The estimate was that someone who eats five times the amount of fish that an average American does, and eat only contaminated tuna for a year, would end up with a dose that would cause an extra two cancers in ten million people. The risk was not zero, but it was very small. It was hundreds of times less than the risk from polonium-210, the natural isotope that’s in seafood — and that we don’t think about.

...

There’s been a lot of undue alarm. In some terms it’s like shouting fire in a crowded theatre. It should be stopped. It’s not accurate. Radioactivity can cause harm and genetic damage, but not at the levels we’re expecting. A lot of those reports of effects on the US west coast were even before this radioactivity showed up. How does that work? It hasn’t even shown up on our coast.

http://www.nature.com/news/cash-wanted-to-help-monitor-fukushima-ocean-radioactivity-1.14552

FIRST link on WHOI site you linked to. The guy you're getting behind thinks the Fukushima radiation panic is overblown!

Keep at it, Robert. You're making it easier and easier to refute your own claims by the day.

[RobertEarl]

80. You caught me

Yes, I post links to sites that don't always agree with me!! How awful is that?

What the failure is in your copied words is that the recent contamination in the NW Pacific is from air deposition which came within days of the explosions.

What happened was that when it rained over the PNW, the rain carried radionuclides to the earth. That rain, and its contamination, made its way into the ocean and the tidepools, and settled offshore where mussels live which the starfish ate. That's my theory, and is backed by much science.

As for panic, I'm not panicking. You, tho, do seem to be a bit overwrought.

[NuclearDem]

81. You mean like the half a nano sievert increase in radiation over BC?

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps/ed-ud/respond/nuclea/data-donnees-eng.php

Yeah, I'll run out and get my potassium-iodine tablets right now.

[RobertEarl]

83. See that>>> ""increase in radiation""

So what happened is that the heavy metals that even you admit were detected, were washed into the ocean from rain. These heavy metals settled in tidepools and nearshore habitats of the mussels and starfish.

Now, we humans can go inside and wash from ourselves the contamination. Not so with the sea life. They live in that contamination 24/7.

Glad for this opportunity to educate. Of course, these are all just words to the wise. Everyone else, what can be said?

[NuclearDem]

85. You know what a nano sievert is right?

It's a millionth of a mSv. 250 mSv is the threshold for health problems due to radiation exposure.

So basically, the radiation increase over Canada would have to be 500,000,000x more concentrated to even cause minor changes in blood chemistry.

But keep going. Your lack of understanding of radioactivity is impressive.

[RobertEarl]

86. Concentrated

Now let us remember that the coastline of tide pools and near shore is in fact a concentration area. Especially for heavy metals. Just look at the mass of land versus the narrow band of coastal areas to see how coasts are areas of concentrate. Too, let's not forget that radiation fell on the Pacific all the way across from Japan. Lots and lots of deposition that concentrates on the coasts.

The radiation level is just one aspect of the problem. Plutonium is a heavy metal which does not give off much radiation and is radiation that can be blocked by skin. The problem with plutonium is that it lasts almost forever and is also toxic, like lead is toxic. So now the sea life which lives in the waters now contaminated are prone to more damage than us landlubbers. Not only do they eat the toxins but they live in close proximity all day and all night.

[RobertEarl]

87. Mercury contamination in fish

It is well known and settled science that airborne mercury deposited on earth which then runs off into water, ends up being concentrated in larger fish.

Plutonium is far more hazardous than mercury. But the deposition science is pretty much the same.

[NuclearDem]

89. Seriously, enough plutonium to completely contaminate the food supply?

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131018/srep02988/full/srep02988.html

There is common agreement among the scientific community that only minute amounts of actinides have been released in the course of the Fukushima nuclear accident.

...

The results of this study confirm the very low release of refractory elements from the Fukushima reactors. The plutonium concentrations found herein and reported by Zheng et al.11 are partly more than three orders of magnitude lower than the values obtained in environmental samples around the Chernobyl site after 1986.

So, no, no three eyed plutonium fish in our near future.

Close your enenews window for a while. You're blowing it entirely out of proportion.

[RobertEarl]

90. There were many tons of plutonium

One day, man may actually be able to get close enough to the two exploded cores and the one other that melted, to see just how much plutonium was released. Given the known concentrations of the cesium in the Pacific that has now reached the west coast (massive amounts!!) it can be figured that estimates from your story are greatly under estimated (as has been proven from the beginning).

The cesium comes from uranium reactions as does plutonium and who could ever imagine that enough cesium could enter the Pacific and then make it all the way to the US? Well, ENEnews.com members did figure that it would pollute the Pacific, way back when, and now have been proved right about that. Fukushima is here. Really, the rest of the world is catching up, just as you are here.

[NuclearDem]

91. Again, at levels far, far below levels that would cause even minor health risks.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-20/worried-about-radioactive-fukushima-fish-us-dont-be-scientists-say

The barely detectable substance was Cesium. It’s a radioactive isotope that was released in the Fukushima meltdown. But the levels in the fish were hundreds of times below federal safety standards.

...

He says the highest level of radioactive contamination he’s found “is more than 1,000 times lower than the point where the FDA would even think about whether or not they need to let people eat that food.”

...

Neville has sampled more than 60 fish since Fukushima. The levels of Cesium traced to Fukushima were so low that his lab couldn’t see it at all until he concentrated the samples.

...

“To actually get a harmful dose of tuna you have to eat 2.5 tons of tuna a year,” Martini says. “I really love Tuna, but I don’t love it that much.”

So, ENENews members, or oceanographers and a Ph.D with the Oregon State's Radiation Health Physics department?

[RobertEarl]

93. Again

Humans are not as susceptible to the radionuclides in the tidepools and near shore. But the creatures that live there are quite impacted by minute amounts that they ingest.

The Department of Energy, in it's long term testing program, found plutonium in starfish prey - mussels - in the Pacific.

Department of Energy: Biological Monitoring at Amchitka Appears to Show Impacts from Fukushima Dai-ichi Incident The U.S. Department of Energy Office Legacy Management (LM) has a long-term stewardship mission to protect human health and the environment from the legacy of underground nuclear testing conducted at Amchitka Island, Alaska, from 1965 to 1971. Atmospheric monitoring in the United States showed elevated cesium activities shortly after the nuclear incident. LM scientists anticipated that atmospheric transport of cesium would potentially increase the cesium activities in the 2011 biological samples collected near Amchitka. Because cesium-134 has a relatively short half-life of 2 years and indicates leakage from a nuclear reactor, it is a clear indicator of a recent nuclear accident.

Because the Amchitka 2011 sampling event occurred soon after the Fukushima nuclear accident, the biota impacted by atmospheric precipitation showed the greatest impact (e.g., species that live in freshwater or shallow ocean waters) when compared to marine biota living in deeper water. This is because ocean currents are a slower transport process than wind currents. LM scientists anticipate that the marine biota will show the impacts of Fukushima during the next sampling event, currently scheduled to occur in 2016.

* Plutonium-239 — .039 pCi/kg Dolly Varden
* Plutonium-239 — .186 pCi/kg Goose Egg no shell
* Plutonium-239 — .104 pCi/kg Gull egg
* Plutonium-239 — .298 pCi/kg Chiton
* Plutonium-239 — .093 pCi/kg Dragon Kelp
* Plutonium-239 — .084 pCi/kg Rockweed
* Plutonium-239 — .379 pCi/kg Greeling
* Plutonium-239 — .038 pCi/kg Halibut
* Plutonium-239 — 4.194 pCi/kg Horse Mussel tissue
* Plutonium-239 — .378 pCi/kg Irish Lord
* Plutonium-239 — .036 pCi/kg Octopus
* Plutonium-239 — .05 pCi/kg Pacific Cod
* Plutonium-239 — .279 pCi/kg Rockfish
* Plutonium-239 — .152 pCi/kg Reindeer Lichen
* Plutonium-239 — .195 pCi/kg Sea Urchin



US Gov’t: Alaska island “appears to show impacts from Fukushima” — “Significant cesium isotope signature” detected — Scientists anticipate more marine life to be impacted as ocean plume arrives

http://enenews.com/us-govt-headline-alaska-island-appears-to-show-impacts-from-fukushima-significant-cesium-isotope-signature-detected-video

[NuclearDem]

95. Where the hell are you getting that 4.194 pCi/kg figure?

Because it sure as hell didn't come from that DoE study. The results for Horse Mussel were nowhere NEAR 4.194.

[RobertEarl]

120. It is found in this DoE report

Go here and download the pdf.

http://www.lm.doe.gov/Amchitka/Sites.aspx

Then look on page 226.

Also my notes show: figure 22 2011 results that exceed 2004 results

The data are reported in units of picocuries per kilogram wet weight.

Table 10. Descriptive Statistics for 234U 28 times Min Detectable Concentrations

* Plutonium-239 — .039 pCi/kg Dolly Varden
* Plutonium-239 — .186 pCi/kg Goose Egg no shell
* Plutonium-239 — .104 pCi/kg Gull egg
* Plutonium-239 — .298 pCi/kg Chiton
* Plutonium-239 — .093 pCi/kg Dragon Kelp
* Plutonium-239 — .084 pCi/kg Rockweed
* Plutonium-239 — .379 pCi/kg Greeling
* Plutonium-239 — .038 pCi/kg Halibut
* Plutonium-239 — 4.194 pCi/kg Horse Mussel tissue
* Plutonium-239 — .378 pCi/kg Irish Lord
* Plutonium-239 — .036 pCi/kg Octopus
* Plutonium-239 — .05 pCi/kg Pacific Cod
* Plutonium-239 — .279 pCi/kg Rockfish
* Plutonium-239 — .152 pCi/kg Reindeer Lichen
* Plutonium-239 — .195 pCi/kg Sea Urchin

[NuclearDem]

126. Granted those figures are in that study...

You are aware Amchitka was a nuclear test site, right? And that, in addition to that, traces of heavier plutonium isotopes from the Marshall Island tests could have blown towards Amchitka?

Oh, and nevermind that the mussels you're referring to are around the Aleutians, nowhere near the starfish dying off along BC and the West Coast.

[RobertEarl]

127. Point is

Plutonium is found in mussels. Where it comes from, is in question. However, it has increased since Fukushima, as that DoE report states.

Knowing that there was air deposition from Fukushima over BC as you related is your evidence. Follow that and see what you come up with.

Begin adding up all the science and the data and then get back to us. Until then, this is RobertEarl saying that ChislomTrailDem spoke for me.

[NuclearDem]

128. No.

The half a nano siervet increase over BC wasn't attributed to Pu-239. You really need to do your homework on what constitutes dangerous levels of radioactivity and what doesn't. You'll get millions times higher a dose just by the radiation from space.

In fact, the DoE study only attributed an increase in cesium to Fukushima (which, by the way, is only concentrated in sealife to the point where someone would have to eat 2.5 tons of infected tuna to feel any ill effects). For plutonium, americium, and uranium:

For 241Am, 239Pu, 240Pu, and uranium isotopes, the reported water concentrations corresponded to year 2000 or earlier.

So again, plutonium in the marine fauna at Amchitka is attributed to the mid-20th century nuclear tests at Amchitka. Given that the study didn't account for decay, those figures are probably lower.

So your claim is patently false, and the study doesn't claim an increase in Pu-239 from Fukushima at all.

[RobertEarl]

129. Like I say

ChislomTrailDem spoke for me

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4383195

[NuclearDem]

130. So you've got nothing else then?

Understood.

[questionseverything]

135. huh?

Department of Energy: Biological Monitoring at Amchitka Appears to Show Impacts from Fukushima Dai-ichi Incident The U.S. Department of Energy Office Legacy Management (LM) has a long-term stewardship mission to protect human health and the environment from the legacy of underground nuclear testing conducted at Amchitka Island, Alaska, from 1965 to 1971. Atmospheric monitoring in the United States showed elevated cesium activities shortly after the nuclear incident. LM scientists anticipated that atmospheric transport of cesium would potentially increase the cesium activities in the 2011 biological samples collected near Amchitka. Because cesium-134 has a relatively short half-life of 2 years and indicates leakage from a nuclear reactor, it is a clear indicator of a recent nuclear accident.

[NuclearDem]

136. I never said that wasn't true.

The argument was about plutonium. In fact, I never said that cesium from Fukushima wasn't detected.

[questionseverything]

139. p239 is an isotope and lasts about 2 years

http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/94/plutonium

Plutonium
Plutonium Element - Visual Elements Periodic Table
Discovery date 1940
Discovered by Glenn Seaborg
Origin of the name Plutonium, is named after the then planet Pluto, following from the two previous elements uranium and neptunium.
Allotropes - 94
Plutonium Symbol (Pu)
244.064
Fact Box

Group Actinides Melting point 640 oC, 1184 oF, 913.15 K
Period 7 Boiling point 3228 oC, 5842.4 oF, 3501.15 K
Block f Density (kg m-3) 19814
Atomic number 94 Relative atomic mass 244.064
State at room temperature Solid Key isotopes 238Pu, 239Pu, 240Pu
Electron configuration [Rn] 5f67s2 CAS number 7440-07-5
ChemSpider ID 22382 ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database

////////////////////////////////////////

[NuclearDem]

141. I think you're confusing Pu-239 with Cs-134

Cs-134 has a half life of about two years. Pu-239 has a half life of about 24,000 years.

[questionseverything]

143. yes i did

Because cesium-134 has a relatively short half-life of 2 years and indicates leakage from a nuclear reactor, it is a clear indicator of a recent nuclear accident.

/////////////////////

since it is the 239 that are so elevated in the mussles...it kind of makes it worse

//////////////

as a side note,i thought yesterday you acknowledged that it is possible the star fish already had a disease and that radiation could be weakening their natural immune systems which lead to their not being to fight off disease......was I mistaken?

I think that is probably the simplest explaination

[NuclearDem]

144. Except that study indicated the plutonium, americium, and uranium levels corroborated with pre-2000

And yes, I said it was possible, but given the poor evidence presented so far for the plutonium hypothesis and the actual evidence presented by oceanographers and marine biologists in favor of the wasting syndrome hypothesis, I'm not particularly inclined to believe the former.

The simplest explanation is not necessarily the best explanation. Not that it's even the simplest either, since it raises even further questions.

[questionseverything]

145. my theory is not either or

For 241Am, 239Pu, 240Pu, and uranium isotopes, the reported water concentrations corresponded to year 2000 or earlier........water concentrates...not marine life

Because the Amchitka 2011 sampling event occurred soon after the Fukushima nuclear accident, the biota impacted by atmospheric precipitation showed the greatest impact (e.g., species that live in freshwater or shallow ocean waters) when compared to marine biota living in deeper water. This is because ocean currents are a slower transport process than wind currents. LM scientists anticipate that the marine biota will show the impacts of Fukushima during the next sampling event, currently scheduled to occur in 2016.

//////////////////////////////////////////

everyone including Robert acknowledges the disease the starfish have, i am saying it is likely that radioactive waste has harmed the starfish's immunity making it more difficult to fight off that disease

ya know the way I understand cancer many of us have cancerous cells for years then something comes along to stress the immune system and all the sudden we have full blown cancer (much like what happened to the crew of uss reagon)

you said my explanation raises more questions, would that be why the starfish dying are so far away? that can be answered by what we don't know

[questionseverything]

146. it si the nonuniform distribution in particulate form

It is remarkable to note that distance alone is no sufficient factor to estimate the findings of refractory elements such as plutonium. Although the vegetation sample taken closest to the reactors (~0.9 km away) exhibited detectable amounts of reactor-plutonium, no other sample in close vicinity of the reactors (1.5, 1.9,… km away) did so. However, a plant sample as far as 16 km away in north-northwestern direction (G-V) is suspected to contain plutonium from Fukushima. If this observation was confirmed, it would indicate a very nonuniform distribution of plutonium, most probably in particulate form. This may also have health physical implications because the inhalation of such plutonium-rich particles may result in high local dose delivery to the lung tissue.

[RobertEarl]

140. Yes, questionseverything

And from where did the Cs134 come from? From the reactor cores or the fuel pools blowing up.

The Cs134 is due to nuclear reaction of uranium. Along with Cs, another product of uranium criticallity is plutonium. It could be said the two are sisters.

Both plutonium and Cs flew away in the explosions and both were detected in samples that the DoE collected thousands of miles away. Both were also found in other monitoring stations. Nuclear Dem just can't accept those facts and is unbelievably in denial.

[G_j]

71. links? nt

[Rex]

123. And dismissing real concerns is being very disingenuous to the people suffering.

Forget the starfish, there are PEOPLE living and dying right now from the meltdown...let us focus on them and not spread the FUD around too much?

[cthulu2016]

46. The word "catastrophe" may not mean what you think it means

[Octafish]

69. You are so right. The lights are still on.

GameBoy has a new Pokemon adventure. All's good.

[Rex]

124. What do you think it means for the Japanese?

Just curious, maybe you don't have to worry about a catastrophe. Maybe you have the luxury of sitting this one out.

[LongTomH]

78. As a child in the 1950s, I got lots of propaganda about the "promise of the peaceful atom."

One of the most memorable was Walt Disney's Our Friend the Atom, broadcast on Disney's Tomorrowland series in 1956. It's still available on " target="_blank">YouTube.

Walt Disney was notable as a futurist for his time; he introduced audiences to the possibility of space travel and the atom. I don't think Disney ever saw the dangers of the Faustian bargain that 'the peaceful atom' presented.

I do have to give Uncle Walt credit for awakening my interest in future studies in general and space in particular. I still consider myself a futurist; I've lost most of my lifelong optimism; but, I still have hope for the future.

Thanks for this post, Octafish. Fukushima, along with the BP Gulf oil spill, is a gift that keeps on giving.

[Octafish]

84. Better Dead than Red.

Many, if not most, people believed that they'd prefer to die and all their family die in a nuclear war, rather than living under communist ideology.

The Real Eisenhower: Planning to Win Nuclear War

by Ira Chernus
Common Dreams
March 18, 2008

Peace activists love to quote Dwight Eisenhower. The iconic Republican war hero spoke so eloquently about the dangers of war and the need for disarmament. He makes a terrific poster-boy for peace. But after years of research and writing three books on Ike, I think it's time to see the real Eisenhower stand up. The president who planned to fight and win a nuclear war, saying "he would rather be atomized than communized," reminds us how dangerous the cold war era really was, how much our leaders will put us all at risk in the name of "national security," and how easily they can mask their intentions behind benign images.

From first to last, Eisenhower was a confirmed cold warrior. Years before he became president, while he was publicly promoting cooperation with the Soviet Union, he wrote in his diary: "Russia is definitely out to communize the world....Now we face a battle to extinction." On the home front, he warned that liberal Democrats were leading the U.S. "toward total socialism."

SNIP…

For Eisenhower, the point of amassing a huge nuclear arsenal was not to deter war but to win it. This was enshrined as official policy in NSC 5810/1: "The United States must make clear its determination to prevail if general war occurs." The only meaningful war aim, he told the NSC, was "to achieve a victory." He described his war plan as "Hit the guy fast with all you've got if he jumps on you"; "hit 'em ... with everything in the bucket."

SNIP…

Eisenhower assumed that a post-holocaust America would be a totalitarian state, ruled by martial law. But he worried about (among other things) what would happen to the credit structure of the country and how to print and sell war bonds to finance the next war if Washington were destroyed. At one NSC meeting he complained that if the President and the Vice President were "knocked off," the "damnable" law of succession would result in the Democrats (he called them "the other team&quot taking the White House. "To assure against that happening, the President thought the Vice President should be put in cotton batting."

SNIP…

And we ignore it at our peril, because it was a policy that put anticommunist ideology above human life, made by a man who would "push whole stack of chips into the pot" and "hit 'em ... with everything in the bucket"; who would "shoot your enemy before he shoots you"; who believed that the U.S. could "pick itself up from the floor" and win a nuclear war, even though "everybody is going crazy," as long as "only" 25 or 30 American cities got "shellacked" and nobody got too "hysterical."

CONTINUED…

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/18/7742

No matter how one feels on the question, many of these Cold Warriors actually believed that nuclear war was winnable. Cough. Allen Dulles.

Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?

Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.

James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell
The American Prospect | September 21, 1994

During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.

But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.

The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.

CONTINUED...

http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963

Thanks for remembering, LongTomH. Thanks also for caring about all of this, what could have been, and what might yet be. That's the real imagineering Einstein talked about:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

[Whisp]

82. How could it not be?

You know, I've stayed out of this topic more or less but when I do pop in and see people actually denying that we are in big fucking trouble with Fukushima - by we I mean the whole world.

When I hear deniers I am just flabbergasted at the pure, unadulterated ignorance and stupidity.

[Octafish]

94. It's a disaster on a planetary scale and yet Corporate Media pretend it isn't.

Going by their utter disregard for the gravity of the situation and intolerance for any opinion other their own, those who say there's nothing to worry about either are personally misguided or acting to intentionally misguide others.

Top Lies from TEPCO? Sounds like BP.

When industry lying is the norm, concern about nuclear energy is not hysteria. It’s a fight for our lives.

Lynn Parramore
Roosevelt Institute

Like British Petroleum, the Tokyo Electric Power Company has a history of playing fast and loose with the truth and endangering lives. So let’s drop the “What, Me Worry?” routine about nuclear energy. When cover-ups and preparing falsified records are part of the corporate culture, we’re not just getting hysterical, as some blindly pro-nuclear power folks would have it.

We’re getting real.

The horrible disaster we saw in the Gulf showed us plenty about what happens when industry and regulatory entities get too cozy and companies like BP are left to self-report on safety and are then actually trusted — by people as high up as the president of the United States — when they do. People die. Our natural world is polluted.

Admittedly there are no means of producing energy that are entirely without risk. Birds do get caught in windmills. But when something goes wrong at a nuclear facility, ENTIRE CITIES CAN BE WIPED OUT. So while nuclear hawks blithely tell us that smart companies and their engineers will take care of making nuclear energy safe and sound, let’s remind them of the actual record.

For example, here’s a little line-up of TEPCO lies:

* In 2002, Michael Zilenzieger reported that top officals TEPCO were forced to resign “after admitting that the company had covered up safety violations and falsified records at three of its largest nuclear power plants”.

* In 2006, the government demanded that TEPCO “check past data after it reported that it had found falsification of coolant water temperatures at its Fukushima Daiichi plant in 1985 and 1988, and that the tweaked data was used in mandatory inspections at the plant, which were completed in October 2005.”

* And in 2007, TEPCO reported that it “had found more past data falsifications, though this time it did not have to close any of its plants.”

Then there were some minor matters of building on fault lines that they claim not to have known about and releasing radiation into the atmosphere. And so on.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/top-lies-tepco-sound-bp

The Roosevelt Institute works to continue the New Deal and progress made under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the kind of people I call Democrats.

[Sirveri]

102. What exactly do you think it's going to do?

Chernobyl happened in 1986, I expect similar reach and effects from fukushima.

[Electric Monk]

99. I try not to dwell on this because, frankly, there's Jack Shit that I can do about it.

[Octafish]

107. I feel that way too, Electric Monk. Problem is, TEPCO also feels that way, too.

Here's what TEPCO had on hand for their people on the ground:



Duct tape, for that ready for anything confidence. Instead of the cheapskate's way, you and I would recommend top quality protective clothing.

If TEPCO had listened, there may not have been a triple nuclear meltdown. Instead, they took the corporate way out.

Seeing how the governments of the United States and Japan have told us there's nothing to worry about, doesn't mean there isn't. And it doesn't mean there's nothing we can do. For starters, we can learn all we can and share what we know; demand our right as citizens to know what the actual threats to our health are; and demand we as as a united people do all we can to protect ourselves in the future.

[southerncrone]

100. Because Justin Beiber's antics are more important

and a good cover for THIS story which effects the health of the planet, but is bad PR for the nuclear industry worldwide.
Or...is reporting on this just wasted words because it's already too late....

[Octafish]

106. No one died when Justin Bieber got drunk -- but they could have.

As for Fukushima, no one knows what the health impacts have been, are, or will be as the most accurate data is classified. One would think that life-or-death information would be of vital interest to the citizens of a democracy, even if it's a strong recommendation to move to Paraguay, but we don't receive that information as we're not authorized to know. One organization, the American competitor of which works with the CIA in the murder-for-hire industries, may have a clue:

Homeless recruited by yakuza for Fukushima clean-up

By Mari Saito and Antoni Slodkowski
Japan Today, CRIME JAN. 02, 2014

SENDAI — Seiji Sasa hits the train station in Sendai before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.

He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan’s nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of 10,000 yen a head.

“This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day,” Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold.

It’s also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the 3.5 trillion yen, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout in Fukushima Prefecture.

Almost three years ago, a massive earthquake and tsunami leveled villages across Japan’s northeast coast and set off multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Today, the most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted is running behind schedule. The effort is being dogged by both a lack of oversight and a shortage of workers, according to a Reuters analysis of contracts and interviews with dozens of those involved.

In January, October and November, Japanese gangsters were arrested on charges of infiltrating construction giant Obayashi Corp’s network of decontamination subcontractors and illegally sending workers to the government-funded project.

In the October case, homeless men were rounded up at Sendai’s train station by Sasa, then put to work clearing radioactive soil and debris in Fukushima City for less than minimum wage, according to police and accounts of those involved. The men reported up through a chain of three other companies to Obayashi, Japan’s second-largest construction company.

Obayashi, which is one of more than 20 major contractors involved in government-funded radiation removal projects, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But the spate of arrests has shown that members of Japan’s three largest criminal syndicates - Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai - had set up black-market recruiting agencies under Obayashi.

CONTINUED...

http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/homeless-recruited-by-yakuza-for-fukushima-clean-up

No wonder the governments of Japan and the United States want to clamp down on news coverage. The truth interferes with running a democracy their way.

[questionseverything]

137. same with the who

http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-refuses-to-publish-report-on-cancers-and-birth-defects-in-iraq-caused-by-depleted-uranium-ammunition/5349556

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.

This issue was first brought to light in 2004 in a WHO expert report “on the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population resulting from depleted uranium (DU) weapons”. This earlier report was “held secret”, namely suppressed by the WHO:

The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO. (See Rob Edwards, WHO ‘Suppressed’ Scientific Study Into Depleted Uranium Cancer Fears in Iraq, The Sunday Herald, February 24, 2004)

Almost nine years later, a joint WHO- Iraqi Ministry of Health Report on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in November 2012. “It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no release date whatsoever.”

To this date the WHO study remains “classified”.

According to Hans von Sponeck, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations,

“The US government sought to prevent the WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.” (quoted in Mozhgan Savabieasfahani Rise of Cancers and Birth Defects in Iraq: World Health Organization Refuses to Release Data, Global Research, July 31, 2013

This tragedy in Iraq reminds one of US Chemical Weapons used in Vietnam. And that the US has failed to acknowledge or pay compensation or provide medical assistance to thousands of deformed children born and still being born due to American military use of Agent Orange throughout the country.

[muriel_volestrangler]

103. Here's a report on plutonium from Fukushima: only detectable very close to the reactor

and sometimes not detectable even very close (less than 2km for the reactor). They took 20 samples in Japan, and did tests to distinguish the isotopes of plutonium from weapons explosions, and from a reactor.

Of 20 samples investigated in this study, 17 did not exceed the detection limit for plutonium. One soil sample was contaminated only by global fallout plutonium with its characteristic isotopic ratio of 240Pu/239Pu < 0.2. However, at least one (A-V) or two (G-V; higher uncertainty) of the vegetation samples showed detectable amounts of reactor derived plutonium (isotopic ratio 240Pu/239Pu > 0.2). One can assume that the ubiquitous fallout plutonium background masked the minute contribution of Fukushima-derived plutonium in soil, as illustrated by Zheng et al.11 However, given the low mobility and bioavailability of plutonium, one can expect that plant uptake of fallout plutonium will be negligible. Consequently, dry or wet deposition of airborne plutonium on the surface of the plants will be highly visible for sensitive analytical techniques such as AMS. This probably explains why plants proved to be such suitable bioindicators for airborne plutonium from Fukushima in the present study.

It is remarkable to note that distance alone is no sufficient factor to estimate the findings of refractory elements such as plutonium. Although the vegetation sample taken closest to the reactors (~0.9 km away) exhibited detectable amounts of reactor-plutonium, no other sample in close vicinity of the reactors (1.5, 1.9,… km away) did so. However, a plant sample as far as 16 km away in north-northwestern direction (G-V) is suspected to contain plutonium from Fukushima. If this observation was confirmed, it would indicate a very nonuniform distribution of plutonium, most probably in particulate form. This may also have health physical implications because the inhalation of such plutonium-rich particles may result in high local dose delivery to the lung tissue.
...
The results of this study confirm the very low release of refractory elements from the Fukushima reactors. The plutonium concentrations found herein and reported by Zheng et al.11 are partly more than three orders of magnitude lower than the values obtained in environmental samples around the Chernobyl site after 198624. This is also true for the semi-volatile radionuclide 90Sr that has been monitored only occasionally after the Fukushima accident and revealed relatively low activity concentrations in environmental samples in Japan. As described in a previous study6, a vegetation sample from spot G (a spot that is also suspected to be contaminated with reactor plutonium according to Table 2) also carried a comparatively high 90Sr contamination, but a rather low radiocesium activity concentration (activity ratio 90Sr/137Cs approximately 0.1). This 90Sr over 137Cs activity ratio was found to be much smaller with all the other samples investigated in the previous study6. Spot G is located outside the main “contamination strip” that goes from the reactor in northwestern direction, which makes the presence of reactor plutonium even more unexpected. If the findings of reactor plutonium at spot G are confirmed, one may speculate what the reason for this unusual radionuclide pattern is (high concentrations of refractory radionuclides, but relatively low in volatile radionuclides). One possible explanation could be that this spot was contaminated with fuel particles that have experienced temperatures high enough to volatilize most of their radiocesium content, before or while they were emitted from the reactors. However, this hypothesis needs further investigations. In any case, it seems that there is not necessarily a correlation between the levels of radiocesium (and other volatile radionuclides) and the presence of reactor plutonium in the environment. This observation makes it likely that the release of plutonium was a more singular event, whereas the volatile radionuclides were released from the pressure vessels over several days in the course of the early venting operations.
...
In summary, our study evidenced the release of plutonium from the damaged FDNPP via its isotopic fingerprint. Two vegetation samples exhibited 240Pu/239Pu isotopic ratios of 0.381 ± 0.046 and 0.64 ± 0.37, respectively, both of which are higher than the global fallout background. The 239+240Pu activity concentrations, however, were relatively low (0.49 and 0.17 Bq·kg?1, respectively), confirming early predictions of a low plutonium release from Fukushima. The fact that reactor plutonium has not been found in more than two samples (one of which remains more in question) indicates that plutonium releases and fallout from FDNPP occurred in the form of particulates causing nonuniform plutonium contaminations. Future investigations will aim at a comprehensive screening for plutonium containing fuel particles in larger samples and if applicable detailed investigation of particles by single particle analytical techniques. Detection limits and decision thresholds will be lowered by use of high purity spikes. Furthermore, a 244Pu spike can be used if no alpha measurements are performed on the same sample. This can further improve the performance of AMS on such environmental samples.

If confirmed, a release of plutonium-rich hot particles is of potential health concern upon inhalation or incorporation. Our findings demonstrate the need for more detailed investigations on plutonium distribution and speciation in order to assess potential radiological consequences for the public. In any case, our study supports previous findings that indicated that the environmental plutonium inventory in Japan has not significantly increased after the Fukushima nuclear accident.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131018/srep02988/full/srep02988.html

So, no, it is not a 'global catastrophe'. It's not even a catastrophe for Japan. Plutonium from Chernobyl was a far greater problem, and from nuclear weapons tests.

[Octafish]

105. Here's a report where plutonium was found 40 km from the plant.

NATURE is a great mag. So is Financial Times.

Plutonium detected 40km from Fukushima plant

By Mure Dickie in Tokyo
Financial Times, October 2, 2011 3:56 pm

Small amounts of plutonium believed to have escaped from Japan’s tsunami-crippled nuclear plant have been detected in soil more than 40km away, say government researchers, a finding that will fuel already widespread fears about radiation risk.

The discovery came as authorities lifted evacuation advisories on other towns near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power station in the north-east prefecture of Fukushima, saying radiation readings showed they were safe for residents.

Government officials played down the health implications of the discovery of the first traces of plutonium from Fukushima Daiichi to be found outside the plant’s immediate environs, saying clean-up efforts should still concentrate on the far greater amounts of radioactive caesium contaminating the area.

The plutonium was found at six sites – including one in Iitate around 40km from the plant – all of which are subject to evacuation orders. However, plutonium’s long half-life and the potential for even small amounts to pose a health hazard if ingested is likely to make it a focus of popular concern.

CONTINUED...

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7e3af460-ece6-11e0-be97-00144feab49a.html#axzz2rPVHTBLv

You may recall, muriel_volestrangler, that TEPCO itself downplayed the significance of plutonium at the time, its spokesman stating, "It is not a health risk to humans."

TEPCO says plutonium found on quake-damaged plant grounds

By the CNN Wire Staff
March 28, 2011 -- Updated 1735 GMT (0135 HKT)

okyo (CNN) -- Some plutonium found in soil on the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have come from its earthquake-damaged reactors, but it poses no human health risk, the plant's owners reported Monday.

The element was found in soil samples taken March 21-22 from five locations around the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company told CNN late Monday. The company said it was equivalent to the amounts that fell on Japan following aboveground nuclear weapons tests by other countries in past decades.

"It is not a health risk to humans," the company said. But it added, "Just in case, TEPCO will increase the monitoring of the nuclear plant grounds and the surrounding environment."

Plutonium is a byproduct of nuclear reactions that is also part of the fuel mix at the plant's No. 3 reactor. It can be a serious health hazard if inhaled or ingested, but external exposure poses little health risk, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Three plutonium isotopes -- Pu-238, -239 and -240 -- were found in soil at five different points inside the plant grounds, Tokyo Electric reported. It said that plutonium found in two of the samples could have come out of the reactors that were damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged northern Japan.

CONTINUED...

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/28/japan.nuclear.plutonium/?hpt=T2

BTW: I noticed that NATURE, nor this report above, addresses what happens to aerosolized plutonium. So while Fukushima may not be a "global catastrophe" for your world, it is for mine.

[questionseverything]

121. this part shows how ununiform movement can be

It is remarkable to note that distance alone is no sufficient factor to estimate the findings of refractory elements such as plutonium. Although the vegetation sample taken closest to the reactors (~0.9 km away) exhibited detectable amounts of reactor-plutonium, no other sample in close vicinity of the reactors (1.5, 1.9,… km away) did so. However, a plant sample as far as 16 km away in north-northwestern direction (G-V) is suspected to contain plutonium from Fukushima. If this observation was confirmed, it would indicate a very nonuniform distribution of plutonium, most probably in particulate form. This may also have health physical implications because the inhalation of such plutonium-rich particles may result in high local dose delivery to the lung tissue.

[TBF]

108. Thank you -

we should be talking about this issue more. I'd love to know if it's affecting the weather patterns.

[hack89]

110. It is impossible for it to impact weather patterns

there is no possible physical mechanism to do so.

[TBF]

113. Ionizing Radiation -

Ionizing Radiation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation

Ionizing radiation is generated through nuclear reactions, nuclear decay, by very high temperature, or via acceleration of charged particles in electromagnetic fields. Natural sources include the sun, lightning and supernova explosions. Artificial sources include nuclear reactors, particle accelerators, and x-ray tubes.

Effects of Chernobyl disaster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disaster

Radiation damage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_damage

High-intensity ionizing radiation in air can produce a visible ionized air glow of telltale bluish-purplish color. The glow can be observed e.g. during criticality accidents, around mushroom clouds shortly after a nuclear explosion, or inside of a damaged nuclear reactor like during the Chernobyl disaster.

Significant amounts of ozone can be produced. Even small amounts of ozone can cause ozone cracking in many polymers over time, in addition to the damage by the radiation itself.

[hack89]

115. Your links saying nothing about changing weather patterns

If Chernobyl had changed the weather then you might have a point - but it didn't.

[TBF]

118. Still reading - I found one USA Today

site that claimed the weather was not affected by Chernobyl.

It's hard to find anything pro/con on this subject. I'm finding studies on surrounding water and fauna but not the air.

[RobertEarl]

125. Krypton Gas effecting weather?

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/193/4249/195.short

There is some science that seems to think it can.

[TBF]

132. Thank you! It's an older article but that's probably better -

before the 80s came along and corporations were allowed to take over everything.

[Octafish]

112. You are most welcome, TBF.

Regarding the weather impact: Radiation from Fukushima's three meltdowns are not supposed to have an impact on the weather, but the "Butterfly Effect" shows systems are more immeasurably more complicated than what they seem:

The Butterfly Effect

Weather prediction is an extremely difficult problem. Meteorologists can predict the weather for short periods of time, a couple days at most, but beyond that predictions are generally poor.

Edward Lorenz was a mathematician and meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who loved the study of weather. With the advent of computers, Lorenz saw the chance to combine mathematics and meteorology. He set out to construct a mathematical model of the weather, namely a set of differential equations that represented changes in temperature, pressure, wind velocity, etc. In the end, Lorenz stripped the weather down to a crude model containing a set of 12 differential equations.

On a particular day in the winter of 1961, Lorenz wanted to re-examine a sequence of data coming from his model. Instead of restarting the entire run, he decided to save time and restart the run from somewhere in the middle. Using data printouts, he entered the conditions at some point near the middle of the previous run, and re-started the model calculation. What he found was very unusual and unexpected. The data from the second run should have exactly matched the data from the first run. While they matched at first, the runs eventually began to diverge dramatically — the second run losing all resemblance to the first within a few "model" months. A sample of the data from his two runs in shown below:

Lorenz's Sample Data

At first Lorenz thought that a vacuum tube had gone bad in his computer, a Royal McBee — an extremely slow and crude machine by today's standards. After discovering that there was no malfunction, Lorenz finally found the source of the problem. To save space, his printouts only showed three digits while the data in the computer's memory contained six digits. Lorenz had entered the rounded-off data from the printouts assuming that the difference was inconsequential. For example, even today temperature is not routinely measured within one part in a thousand.

This led Lorenz to realize that long-term weather forecasting was doomed. His simple model exhibits the phenomenon known as "sensitive dependence on initial conditions." This is sometimes referred to as the butterfly effect, e.g. a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can affect the weather in Central Park. The question then arises — why does a set of completely deterministic equations exhibit this behavior? After all, scientists are often taught that small initial perturbations lead to small changes in behavior. This was clearly not the case in Lorenz's model of the weather. The answer lies in the nature of the equations; they were nonlinear equations. While they are difficult to solve, nonlinear systems are central to chaos theory and often exhibit fantastically complex and chaotic behavior.

SOURCE:

http://www.stsci.edu/~lbradley/seminar/butterfly.html

I'll admit anytime I don't know much about Fukushima or the weather, but what I do know I'd like to share even when people . Thank goodness for you, TBF, DU and DUers who care about a most important issue they have a right to know about.

[TBF]

114. Very helpful -

It is nice to see some science to back up the "common sense" view. It is difficult to capture exactly what is happening in a meltdown situation because humans cannot be sent in - but these days they are attempting to gather some of that information via robots. I've been reading some of the Chernobyl information as that accident occurred more than 25 years ago and there is quite a bit of data regarding how it has affected nearby humans, vegetation in the area, etc.

[DeSwiss]

111. K&R

''Furthermore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and public health experts do not recommend that people in the United States take precautionary measures beyond staying informed. And going forward, we will continue to keep the American people fully updated — because I believe that you must know what I know as President.'' - President Barack Obama, March 17, 2011 link

- See? There's nothing new to report.

[Octafish]

116. LOLOLOLOL! Thanks, DeSwiss. ...except for the Aerosolized Plutonium...

Which, other than breathing in a particle the size of a mote in a bedbug's compound eye, is nothing to worry about.

Environ Radioact. 2012 Dec;114 1-80. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvrad.2011.12.004. Epub 2011 Dec 27.

Radionuclides from the Fukushima accident in the air over Lithuania: measurement and modelling approaches.

Lujanienė G, Byčenkienė S, Povinec PP, Gera M.


Abstract

Analyses of (131)I, (137)Cs and (134)Cs in airborne aerosols were carried out in daily samples in Vilnius, Lithuania after the Fukushima accident during the period of March-April, 2011. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs ranged from 12 ?Bq/m(3) and 1.4 ?Bq/m(3) to 3700 ?Bq/m(3) and 1040 ?Bq/m(3), respectively. The activity concentration of (239,240)Pu in one aerosol sample collected from 23 March to 15 April, 2011 was found to be 44.5 nBq/m(3). The two maxima found in radionuclide concentrations were related to complicated long-range air mass transport from Japan across the Pacific, the North America and the Atlantic Ocean to Central Europe as indicated by modelling. HYSPLIT backward trajectories and meteorological data were applied for interpretation of activity variations of measured radionuclides observed at the site of investigation. (7)Be and (212)Pb activity concentrations and their ratios were used as tracers of vertical transport of air masses. Fukushima data were compared with the data obtained during the Chernobyl accident and in the post Chernobyl period. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs were found to be by 4 orders of magnitude lower as compared to the Chernobyl accident. The activity ratio of (134)Cs/(137)Cs was around 1 with small variations only. The activity ratio of (238)Pu/(239,240)Pu in the aerosol sample was 1.2, indicating a presence of the spent fuel of different origin than that of the Chernobyl accident.

SOURCE: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22206700

GOOGLE scholar shows more stuff published on plutonium from Fukushima since that article. I'll keep searching for more on the aerosolized info. In the meantime, your video made me laugh so hard I want to put on my own favorite HAZMAT suit (to protect the others in the house).

[FreeJoe]

142. well, I'll not argue...

... that it isn't causing mental illness in some people.

[Octafish]

148. How Dangerous Is 400-6000 Pounds Of Plutonium Nano Particle Dust Liberated By Fukushima?

EXCERPT...

This is an important point… A .5 micron size dust particle is also equal to a .5 micrometer dust particle of plutonium. The EPA said that this size of particle is dangerous, because it is small enough to get into the lungs, and then go directly into the bloodstream from there, bypassing the filters in the nose and sinuses and avoiding the mucus that normally protects us from larger dust particles.

“As you have just found out in the section above, some tiny pieces of particulate matter, PM 2.5, are small enough to pass from our lungs to our bloodstream”, such as the .5 micron size particle of plutonium. http://www.hcdoes.org/airquality/monitoring/pm.htm

A small particle (we are not even talking about plutonium or other radioactive substance) inhaled into the lungs with normal breathing either inside or outside the house,  “can alter the body's defense systems against foreign materials, damage lung tissues, aggravate existing respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and can lead to cancer. 

In some cases, PM exposure can even lead to premature death. Adverse health effects have been associated with exposures to PM over both short periods (such as a day) and longer periods (a year or more). The people who are most at risk are people with asthma, influenza, lung, heart, or cardiovascular disease, the elderly, and children.”http://www.hcdoes.org/airquality/monitoring/pm.htm

WHY ARE NANO PARTICLES SO DANGEROUS?

“The human immune system developed in a time and environment where dust was made of large particles. Humans have developed a means of protecting themselves against these large particles. Particles larger than 10 microns generally get caught in the nose and throat, never making it as far as the lungs. Unfortunately, more recent human activity has created many particles that are much smaller, which can make it past our natural defenses, and can enter our systems. Normal particles produced by Nature are larger than 10 microns, and the human lungs in the body are built with defensive mechanisms to filter out these larger particles.

This is why particles smaller than 10 microns are often called "inhaleable particulates" and are regulated by the USEPA. Particles that are smaller than 5 microns can get into the bronchial tubes and the top of the lungs. Particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter can get into the deepest portion of the lungs where the gas exchange occurs between the air and blood stream. These are the dangerous particles because the body has no efficient mechanisms for removing them. (You can also imagine what happens if even .5 of one micron sized nano particle of toxic and radioactive plutonium gets down into this region, can’t you?)

CONTINUED...

http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-dangerous-is-400-6000-pounds-of.html?m=1

Crazy.

[NuclearDem]

149. Wow, first of all, that's a hell of a range (400-6000).

Essentially either from "not that much" to "nearly as much as all the plutonium released by all nuclear accidents and weapons testing combined."

And as for Dr Caldicott, is she still pushing that plutonium meme?

http://www.muller.lbl.gov/papers/PlutoniumToxicity.pdf

Although the popular myth that "plutonium is the most hazardous substance known to man" has been refuted many times, the misconception persists that even a small amount of plutonium taken into the body will be fatal. Plutonium is hazardous, but it is not as immediately hazardous to health as many more common chemicals. This is not to say that plutonium is not a dangerous, toxic material. Chronic exposure to even small amounts should be a matter of concern. But dispersal by terrorists as described in the press could not produce the drastic health effects that are popularly imagined, and that is the issue addressed here.

...


It is important to understand the claims made in the press concerning particles of plutonium in the air. The New York Times[1] says that "A tiny speck of the fine powder can cause lung cancer in anyone who inhales it." The largest speck of plutonium that can be readily inhaled is about 3 micrometers in diameter and has a mass of about 0.14 millionths of a milligram. The risk of dying of cancer as a result of inhaling that amount of plutonium is about 0.0000017 (12 cancers per milligram x 0.00000014 milligrams = 0.0000017 cancers, or 0.00017% additional risk); that is not zero risk, but it is very small.

The Los Angeles Times[2] says that one ten-thousandth of a gram (0.1 milligram) inhaled can cause cancer. This is correct: we have already estimated that 0.08 milligrams inhaled will have 100% probability of causing a fatal cancer. To inhale 0.1 milligram of plutonium, however, a person would have to inhale more than seven hundred thousand particles. (A single 0.1-milligram particle would have a diameter of over 260 micrometers, about 90 times too big to be readily inhaled.) Although a single respirable particle is unlikely to harm an individual,[13] there is still cause for concern if plutonium were to be dispersed in the atmosphere.

There's 3.5 tons of this stuff in the environment, but individuals are exposed to such a low dose that it's essentially irrelevant.

Believe it or not (I know Dr Caldicott doesn't), but not all radiation is going to kill you horribly.

[Octafish]

150. I'll side with Helen Caldicott.

No offense. She sides with open government, you know, what's it called? Democracy, that's it.

One important reason for the reason wide range in the estimate is that much off the information has been withheld by TEPCO, as you probably know.

The link in my reply above also contains sources on plutonium research going back to the MANHATTAN Project. Unfortunately, much of the research on the subject since then is classified and, thus, unknown, or lost, to the public, or, in a democracy, the People who should be in charge.

Fo those new to the subject of the health effects of plutonium and secret nuclear testing, more eye opening info here:

NuclearCrimes.org.

Much of the most egregious criminality, you may notice, occurred in the 1950s, when the Dulles brothers ran the secret government in Washington to the benefit of their cronies on Wall Street.

[NuclearDem]

151. What does Helen Caldicott's position on transparency have to do with the validity of her claims?

Nothing at all. She's been caught misrepresenting studies about Chernobyl and claiming that that accident killed nearly a million people, which is just patently not true.

And as for the site you linked, it's own tag line leads me to distrust it right off the bat--"there is no safe low dose of radiation." Which is also patently not true, since most MRI's, CT's, and PET's expose a patient to close to 100 mSv of radiation, which is still 150 mSv short of toxicity.

But there you go again, claiming conspiracy and persecution. That's one of the hallmarks of pseudoscience. All it does is show me that you don't understand the first thing about radioactivity and have to appeal to emotion and radiophobia to gain any sort of traction with the general population

[Octafish]

152. Diversion, misattribution, strawmen and ad hominem attack.

Did I miss any?

[NuclearDem]

153. Yep, most of those were in your post.

Helen Caldicott got busted lying about Chernobyl. Frankly, I'm not particularly inclined to believe most of her claims since I don't know if I can trust them to be accurate.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dotearth/2013/11/06/helen-caldicott-chernobyl-and-the-new-york-academy-of-sciences/

You attempted to divert the topic from Caldicott's credibility on radiation by bringing up her position on transparency c which is frankly irrelevant.

The straw men about the Dulles' and lack of transparency surrounding nuclear power serve no purpose other than to inflame emotions. Mixes right in with the ad hominem by trying to tie criticism of the anti-nuclear fringe with some really horrible people.

Commenting on your apparent lack of understanding about radioactivity is not an ad hominem, it's a simple analysis of your arguments and rhetoric. Your knowledge on the subject is extremely limited and the little you claim to understand comes from blatant liars and fearmongerers.

For someone who spends so much time bemoaning others for engaging in "propaganda", you seem to be engaging in a ton of it yourself. Diverting from the topic at hand, setting up strawmen, and poisoning the well are all tactics of the propagandists you claim everyone else to be.

[Octafish]

154. Now you are projecting.

I've posted on the subject as an interested citizen, not as an expert and certainly not as a flack for nuclear industry. One example from nine years ago on DU:

Know Your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

So, there's that, which does have to do with the subject at hand.

[NuclearDem]

155. Projecting? You can't be serious.

And you've got an enormous amount of gall to imply that I'm a shill of the nuclear industry when I've been very clear that I'm opposed to the expansion of nuclear power and am vehemently against the proliferation and continued existence of nuclear weapons.

You couldn't defend Caldicott against charges of blatant lying. You couldn't refute that one of your sources is based on a blatant lie about radiation. You cite ENENews as evidence, a website that doesn't bother to fact-check its sources. You attempt to tie critics of the hysteria and fear of radiophobia to some of the worst war criminals in history.

The general dishonesty, compilation of fallacious arguments, ad hominem attacks, and appeals to emotion and fear are doing an extraordinary level of damage to the rational skeptics of nuclear power (like myself), since we're now tasked with not only fighting TEPCO's bullshit but distancing ourselves from and repudiating the pseudoscientific nonsense of radiophobes like yourself, Caldicott, ENENews, and NuclearCrimes.

If you really care about the anti-nuclear movement and the worthy goal of ridding ourselves of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, you'll stop with the bullshit.

[Octafish]

156. Perfectly serious. That's why the OP.

And you continue to accuse me of writing things I did not write, NuclearDem. That's a sign of a disinformationist, among other things.

[NuclearDem]

158. Written entirely without any sort of awareness.

Awesome. Every single thing I accused you of you have done. No disinformation. You have cited ENENews in other threads about Fukushima. In this discussion alone, you've brought in the BFEE and the Dulles brothers. You haven't responded to the claims that NuclearCrimes' tag line is incredibly misleading. You've offered no rebuttal to the evidence of Caldicott's blatant lying, and the little you've done is imply critics are opposed to transparency.

Caldicott is a disinformationist. ENENews is chock full of disinformationists. NuclearCrimes is based on disinformation. You've offered no defense for any of them other than low-brow ad hominems and appeals to emotion and fear.

[Octafish]

159. No. Caldicott made a mistake, based on what was then known. A lot different than what you call her.

No where do you ask why the governments of the United States and Japan quarantine information. You just attack Caldicott and me for bringing her up. Why you do so is your business, not mine.

Researchers call for nuclear data release

Trove of data from Fukushima and beyond could improve nuclear monitoring and benefit research.

Geoff Brumfiel
Nature
13 June 2011

Shortly after a massive tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 11 March, an unmanned monitoring station on the outskirts of Takasaki, Japan, logged a rise in radiation levels. Within 72 hours, scientists had analysed samples taken from the air and transmitted their analysis to Vienna, Austria — the headquarters of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), an international body set up to monitor nuclear weapons tests.

It was just the start of a flood of data collected about the accident by the CTBTO's global network of 63 radiation monitoring stations. In the following weeks, the data were shared with governments around the world, but not with academics or the public. Now scientists working with the CTBTO on behalf of member states are calling for the data to be released, both to give other researchers an opportunity to use them, and to improve the network's performance.

"What I'm after is to make this dataset available to the scientific community," says Wolfgang Weiss, head of the department of radiation protection and health at Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection in Munich. In the coming weeks and months he hopes to persuade member nations overseeing the CTBTO to approve new rules for sharing data with other international bodies and scientific researchers.

SNIP...

Those monitoring stations pick up other things as well. In the latest crisis, the network's sensitive radiation detection sensors were overwhelmed by radioisotopes streaming out of the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Monitoring posts picked up isotopes such as iodine-131 and caesium-137 that were of concern to public health officials in other countries. Other radioisotopes such as niobium-95 and rubidium-103 were an early indicator of a meltdown inside one or more of the reactors.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110613/full/news.2011.366.html

Your posts up and down this thread show what's in your tool kit, and what's not, NuclearDem.

[NuclearDem]

161. No, she took a study that fit her preconceptions despite its numerous known flaws

and subsequently misattributed it. No disclaimer from her about the study's flaws, just fearmongering and BS. The NYT at least had the integrity to issue a correction when they learned how utterly nonsensical her op-ed was.

I never addressed the lack of transparency surrounding the incident because that's not what we were talking about. You only brought it up as a diversion because someone confronted you over your worthless sources. FWIW, I do think the lack of information and transparency around the incident is a big problem, and that's actually one of the perfectly rational concerns about it.

It doesn't change, even remotely, the fact that your sources completely skew data, misrepresent studies, appeal to people's fear, and engage in misinformation about the dangers of radiation.

[Octafish]

164. Again, TEPCO lies.

Caldicott speaks the truth.

TEPCO says plutonium found on quake-damaged plant grounds

By the CNN Wire Staff
March 28, 2011 -- Updated 1735 GMT (0135 HKT)

Tokyo (CNN) -- Some plutonium found in soil on the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have come from its earthquake-damaged reactors, but it poses no human health risk, the plant's owners reported Monday.

The element was found in soil samples taken March 21-22 from five locations around the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company told CNN late Monday. The company said it was equivalent to the amounts that fell on Japan following aboveground nuclear weapons tests by other countries in past decades.

"It is not a health risk to humans," the company said. But it added, "Just in case, TEPCO will increase the monitoring of the nuclear plant grounds and the surrounding environment."

Plutonium is a byproduct of nuclear reactions that is also part of the fuel mix at the plant's No. 3 reactor. It can be a serious health hazard if inhaled or ingested, but external exposure poses little health risk, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Three plutonium isotopes -- Pu-238, -239 and -240 -- were found in soil at five different points inside the plant grounds, Tokyo Electric reported. It said that plutonium found in two of the samples could have come out of the reactors that were damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged northern Japan.

CONTINUED...

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/28/japan.nuclear.plutonium/?hpt=T2

"It is not a health risk to humans," the company said.

I disagree. So does Helen Caldicott, MD. If you don't, state why. Otherwise, you're just wasting time.

[NuclearDem]

165. Did I ever say TEPCO can be trusted? At all?

There is a middle ground between "not toxic at all" and "one millionth of a gram will give you cancer."

Frankly, you're talking about someone who makes claims like how one pound of plutonium evenly distributed in the atmosphere can give everyone on Earth cancer. Given how there's nearly 3.5 tons of this stuff out there (7000 times her number) with a lot of dispersed from atmospheric nuclear testing and there are plenty of cancer free people, it's more proof she exaggerates or outright lies.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp143-c2.pdf

Although a significantly higher incidence of cancer mortality in certain groups of plutonium workers has been found in some studies, higher cancer incidence and/or risks for tissues that received the highest plutonium radiation doses (i.e., lung, liver, bone) have not been found, making causal connections of these outcomes to plutonium exposure more uncertain. The Sellafield study is by far the strongest of these studies and did not find associations between plutonium exposure and cancers to tissues receiving the highest radiation doses from plutonium.

But still, I'm failing to see how TEPCO's shadiness has any bearing on Caldicott's credibility. You set up a false dichotomy--either believe TEPCO or Caldicott. It's exactly what climate change denialists, creationists, and homeopathy pushers do, and it's not science.

Plutonium is not the doomsday element you're so committed to portraying it as. It's certainly toxic, and it should be closely monitored and controlled, but the dangers have been highly exaggerated.

[zappaman]

157. Thank you for bringing some rationality to this issue.

[Octafish]

160. So, you've nothing to write about plutonium from Fukushima, zappaman.

That's the reality.

[zappaman]

162. Nope.

Just thanking someone for being rational and pointing out the disingenuous tactics some use, Brad.

[Octafish]

167. OK. I'd rather be called Brad, than Dude.

Or any of the other handles on DU that onlt serve to echo one another's positions in protection of the warmongers and banksters, the ones I -- Octafish -- call the BFEE. And I've still yet to see one post from you in which you criticize them, zappaman.

[zappaman]

168. Whatever...

Dude.

[Octafish]

170. Why sources matter, from a journalist at Project Censored...

Here's more on why Big Atom wants to keep people in the dark:

Fukushima: An Update from Japan

by Brian Covert
Project Censored

EXCERPT...

Code Name: PODAM

Tetsuo Arima, a professor of media studies at the elite Waseda University in Tokyo, goes where the Japanese mainstream press fears to tread in researching and making public the CIA’s past connections to the media and nuclear power in Japan, having published several books on the subject in recent years. He has visited the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington DC and obtained almost 500 pages of once-secret documents detailing the introduction of atomic energy technology to Japan.39

SNIP...

According to one CIA document that Arima uncovered, Shoriki as atomic energy commissioner was so impatient to get nuclear power online in Japan following the 1955–56 “Atoms For Peace” exhibition that he seriously considered buying a small reactor to power his own home as a public show of atomic energy’s benefits.47 And what was PODAM’s urgent motivation? To help reach his political aspiration of becoming the prime minister of Japan.

The Deep Ties that Bind

SNIP...

That is still the situation today for the most part. The electric power companies in Japan advertise widely in the major print and broadcast media companies. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)—operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant and two others—alone spent about ¥27 billion ($330 million) on public relations and other events promoting nuclear energy in 2010, ranking tenth highest among all Japanese corporations in the amount of money spent on such expenses that year.49 Of that amount, TEPCO spent ¥9 billion ($110 million) directly on advertisements placed in the media.50

So what effect does this kind of relationship between nuclear energy and media in Japan have on news coverage? According to author and independent journalist Osamu Aoki, a former reporter for Japan’s Kyodo News wire service, “Newspapers, TV, magazines—it makes no difference: because they receive these huge advertising monies, it’s hard for them to criticize the power companies, especially with nuclear power. It’s a taboo that’s been going on for some time.”51

CONTINUED...

http://www.projectcensored.org/fukushima-update-japan/

Again, thanks for reminding me, my friend!

[SidDithers]

163. Release of plutonium isotopes from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident

http://www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/anzen_kiban/outcome/Proceedings_for_Web/Topics_4-02.pdf

(4) The amounts of Pu isotopes released from the
FDNPP accident

Unlike the intensive studies on the estimation of total
amounts of fission products, such as 131I and 137Cs, very
few studies have addressed the estimation of total amounts
of Pu isotopes released from the FDNPP accident, due
partly to the lack of environmental monitoring data.

Zheng et al. made a rough estimation of the atmospheric
release of Pu isotopes based on the 137Cs/239+240Pu activity
ratio observed in forest litter samples in the 20–30 km
zones relative to the total amount of 137Cs released
estimated by METI and Stohl et al., with an assumption
that 137Cs and Pu siotopes followed the same deposition
mechanism, and no significant variation of the
137Cs/239+240Pu activity ratio during the release and
deposition. As shown in Table 1, the total amounts of
released 239+240Pu and 241Pu were 1.0×10^9
– 2.4×10^9 Bq, and 1.1×10^11
– 2.6×10^11 Bq, respectively. These values are
very close to those estimated by METI, and about 4
orders of magnitude lower than those of the Chernobyl
accident.

It was found that although the inventories of Pu isotopes
in the reactors in the Fukushima DNPP were ca. 3.5 times
higher than those in the Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor, the
percentages of core inventory released for both 239+240Pu
(1–3×10^-5 %) and 241Pu (2–4×10^-5 %) were about 5 orders
of magnitude lower than those of the Chernobyl accident.
This estimation is in a good agreement with that of
Grambow and Poinssot. However, Schwantes et al.
reported an estimation that roughly 2×10^-3 % of the total
plutonium inventory from Units 1 and 3 was released into
the environment, which is two orders of magnitude higher
than those of Zheng et al. and Grambow and Poinssot.
More studies are required to improve the accuracy of
estimation of the release of Pu isotopes.

Adding some real science to this thread.

Sid

[Octafish]

166. As opposed to this?

DOE-STD-1128-98

Guide of Good Practices for Occupational Radiological Protection in Plutonium Facilities

EXCERPT...

4.2.3 Characteristics of Plutonium Contamination

There are few characteristics of plutonium contamination that are unique. Plutonium contamination may be in many physical and chemical forms. (See Section 2.0 for the many potential sources of plutonium contamination from combustion products of a plutonium fire to radiolytic products from long-term storage.) [font color="red"]The one characteristic that many believe is unique to plutonium is its ability to migrate with no apparent motive force.[/font color] Whether from alpha recoil or some other mechanism, plutonium contamination, if not contained or removed, will spread relatively rapidly throughout an area.

SOURCE (PDF file format): http://energy.gov/hss/downloads/doe-std-1128-98

From the US Department of Energy and which was in the OP. It predates Fukushima by 13 years.

As for the article you brought up: While I very much appreciate its scientific perspective, it comes from an official institution affiliated with the government of Japan. Their track record in regards to Fukushima is so demonstrably loaded with falsehoods, they recently passed new law restricting press freedom and cracking down on official whistleblowers.

"Basically, this bill raises the possibility that the kind of information about which the public should be informed is kept secret eternally," Tadaaki Muto, a lawyer and member of a task force on the bill at the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, told Reuters. -- SOURCE

You see, SidDithers, to me, censorship not only is undemocratic; it's unscientific.

[dipsydoodle]

169. As everything you've republished has links to originals

where's the censorship ?

[Octafish]

171. It may have to do with clouding the central issue: Fukushima is a global catastrophe.

Plutonium, certainly; but also the cesium, strontium, americium and other radionuclides that continue to spew into the planet's fragile environment.

It used to make me angry, seeing important issues sidetracked through the tag team, personal vendetta sideshow. Now, I find them an opportunity expose their true selves to DU.

[dipsydoodle]

172. So are US CO2 emmisions since the late 1840's

when global warming was first predicted. Not much notice is taken of that either.

[Octafish]

174. Carl Sagan and Helen Caldicott...

From "International Peace"

EXCERPT...

I once asked the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who was a friend of mine, if he thought there was other life in the universe, and he paused and thought for some minutes before he said “no”, and when asked why he said ”if any other life forms had reached our stage of evolution they would have destroyed themselves”.

It seems that we need to surmount a rapid evolutionary hurdle before the human race wakes up and decides to stop killing each other, to alter the way we live, to value the wonder of nature and evolution and to decide once and for all that we are indeed capable of such actions and that we will do it.

SOURCE: http://www.helencaldicott.com/2013/09/international-peace/

I don't agree with Sagan here, but I do share his analysis of mankind.

[muriel_volestrangler]

173. You continually claim the plutonium from Fukushima is a 'global catastrophe' without any evidence

You link to general information about plutonium, or the detection of tiny amounts in Japan. It's not global, and it's not a catastrophe. What is known is that far,far less was released than with Chernobyl, and that has not been a 'global catastrophe' either.

[Octafish]

175. The OP and most of my replies are sourced.

If you don't agree, great. You've got that right. Show where I'm wrong, I'll admit it. Please know reiterating science from TEPCO or from the goverments of Japan or the US won't convince me.

[muriel_volestrangler]

176. I gave you science from sources independent of TEPCO, or governments, in #103

Affiliations

Leibniz Universität Hannover, Institut für Radioökologie und Strahlenschutz, D-30419 Hannover, Germany
Stephanie Schneider,
Clemens Walther &
Stefan Bister
Vienna University of Technology, Atominstitut, 1020 Wien, Austria
Viktoria Schauer
Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland
Marcus Christl &
Hans-Arno Synal
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Katsumi Shozugawa
Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1618, United States of America
Georg Steinhauser

[Octafish]

177. Great. And I gave you sources in #105 that showed where it was found 25 miles away from FNPP.

So, there's that.

[Octafish]

178. Thank you. Now I see where you're coming from.

Don't care if it matters to you or not: I still stand by my OP and my sources.

[muriel_volestrangler]

180. And 25 miles is not 'global' (nt)

[Octafish]

181. Right. But it's plutonium and found 25 times further from the plant than you reported in #103.

My source, you might remember, was the Financial Times report, quoting Japanese government researchers. The Japanese scientists seem to have since become silent.

The point of my posting is in the OP: Plutonium, per the US Department of Energy, does not act like other substances. It tends to disperse throughout an area.

Much of the science done on plutonium has been conducted by the Pentagon and other US government agencies and is not readily available. What is known: plutonium is very dangerous, even in microscopic amounts. Since much of the news media have been silent on this, I thought it'd be a good idea to post about it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

182. No; the paper found some at 16km away too. But it's patchy

rather than a general dispersal of plutonium to all places closer to the reactor. Of course, you were the one not wanting to listen to Japanese government researchers, but I guess you will do that to get any report of Pu further away.

"The point of my posting is in the OP: Plutonium, per the US Department of Energy, does not act like other substances. It tends to disperse throughout an area. "

But that doesn't mean it's a 'global catastrophe', and it doesn't say anything about Pu from Fukushima. Your phrase is fear-mongering.

[Octafish]

184. I'd rather people get the facts and use them to set policy. The phrase is democracy.

I don't agree that my posting the information in the OP and in my replies constitutes fear mongering. I've tried to bring up a subject that has become officially taboo in Japan and in the corporate controlled press in the United States: the negative health effects of plutonium from Fukushima.



Use your own eyes and look at the pictures above and in the OP. They are stills from a video camera that recorded the explosion that occurred in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Reactor Number 3. The cloud is at least three times the height of the 400-foot tall cooling towers that appear as white antenna-like structures in the images. The size of the cloud should give people an idea of just how much material was kicked out of the containment building that housed the MOX fueled nuclear reactor.

How much material? Where has it reached? How much has gone 25 miles? 1,000 miles? To the other side of the world?

The people who know aren't talking as the Japanese government is now censoring news from Fukushima. I imagine they have a reason from their perspective for doing so. In a democracy, the people of Japan are entitled to know the true picture of what's going on, unfiltered and uncensored. That way, they can vote for the leadership that best reflects their wishes. When information is kept secret or held by a select few, they are at an advantage over those who do not know. That's undemocratic.

Here's a report from Europe you may find useful:

J Environ Radioact. 2011 Dec 27. (Epub ahead of print)

Radionuclides from the Fukushima accident in the air over Lithuania: measurement and modelling approaches.

Lujanienė G, Byčenkienė S, Povinec PP, Gera M.

Source : Environmental Research Department, SRI Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Savanoriu 231, 02300 Vilnius, Lithuania.

Abstract

Analyses of (131)I, (137)Cs and (134)Cs in airborne aerosols were carried out in daily samples in Vilnius, Lithuania after the Fukushima accident during the period of March-April, 2011. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs ranged from 12 ?Bq/m(3) and 1.4 ?Bq/m(3) to 3700 ?Bq/m(3) and 1040 ?Bq/m(3), respectively. The activity concentration of (239,240)Pu in one aerosol sample collected from 23 March to 15 April, 2011 was found to be 44.5 nBq/m(3). The two maxima found in radionuclide concentrations were related to complicated long-range air mass transport from Japan across the Pacific, the North America and the Atlantic Ocean to Central Europe as indicated by modelling. HYSPLIT backward trajectories and meteorological data were applied for interpretation of activity variations of measured radionuclides observed at the site of investigation. (7)Be and (212)Pb activity concentrations and their ratios were used as tracers of vertical transport of air masses. Fukushima data were compared with the data obtained during the Chernobyl accident and in the post Chernobyl period. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs were found to be by 4 orders of magnitude lower as compared to the Chernobyl accident. The activity ratio of (134)Cs/(137)Cs was around 1 with small variations only. The activity ratio of (238)Pu/(239,240)Pu in the aerosol sample was 1.2, indicating a presence of the spent fuel of different origin than that of the Chernobyl accident.

SOURCE: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22206700

And another one:

Plutonium bioaccumulation in seabirds

Dagmara I. Strumińska-Parulska, Bogdan Skwarzec, Jacek Fabisiak

University of Gdańsk, Faculty of Chemistry, Analytics and Environmental Radiochemistry Chair, Sobieskiego 18, 80-952 Gdańsk, Poland

Received 7 April 2011. Revised 5 July 2011. Accepted 16 July 2011. Available online 23 August 2011.

The aim of the paper was plutonium (238Pu and 239+240Pu) determination in seabirds, permanently or temporarily living in northern Poland at the Baltic Sea coast. Together 11 marine birds species were examined: 3 species permanently residing in the southern Baltic, 4 species of wintering birds and 3 species of migrating birds. The obtained results indicated plutonium is non-uniformly distributed in organs and tissues of analyzed seabirds. The highest plutonium content was found in the digestion organs and feathers, the smallest in skin and muscles. The plutonium concentration was lower in analyzed species which feed on fish and much higher in herbivorous species. The main source of plutonium in analyzed marine birds was global atmospheric fallout.
Highlights

► We determined 239+240Pu in seabirds living in northern Poland at the Baltic Sea. ► We noticed plutonium was non-uniformly distributed in organs and tissues of seabirds. ► We found the highest plutonium content in the digestion organs and feathers. ► We found Pu content was lower in birds feeding on fish and higher in herbivorous.

SOURCE: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X11001676

As I'm just a reporter, I look forward to learning what you find. No matter what you think of what I write, I like to take the scientific approach.

[questionseverything]

187. was this supposed to be "safe" too?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-refuses-to-publish-report-on-cancers-and-birth-defects-in-iraq-caused-by-depleted-uranium-ammunition/5349556

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.

This issue was first brought to light in 2004 in a WHO expert report “on the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population resulting from depleted uranium (DU) weapons”. This earlier report was “held secret”, namely suppressed by the WHO:

The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO. (See Rob Edwards, WHO ‘Suppressed’ Scientific Study Into Depleted Uranium Cancer Fears in Iraq, The Sunday Herald, February 24, 2004)

Almost nine years later, a joint WHO- Iraqi Ministry of Health Report on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in November 2012. “It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no release date whatsoever.”

To this date the WHO study remains “classified”.

According to Hans von Sponeck, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations,

“The US government sought to prevent the WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.” (quoted in Mozhgan Savabieasfahani Rise of Cancers and Birth Defects in Iraq: World Health Organization Refuses to Release Data, Global Research, July 31, 2013

This tragedy in Iraq reminds one of US Chemical Weapons used in Vietnam. And that the US has failed to acknowledge or pay compensation or provide medical assistance to thousands of deformed children born and still being born due to American military use of Agent Orange throughout the country.

//////////////////////////////

[SidDithers]

195. Globalresearch.ca. LOL...

Wow.

Sid

[Octafish]

224. For the cost of Iraq War, we could've built National 100% Renewable Clean Energy Grid.

Details:

For the Price of the Iraq War, The U.S. Could Have a 100% Renewable Power System

By Washington's Blog
Global Research, April 11, 2013

What Are We Choosing for Our Future?

Wind energy expert Paul Gipe reported this week that – for the amount spent on the Iraq war – the U.S. could be generating 40%-60% of its electricity with renewable energy:

Disregarding the human cost, and disregarding our “other” war in Afghanistan, how much renewable energy could we have built with the money we spent? How far along the road toward the renewable energy transition could we have traveled?

The answer: shockingly far.

Cost of the Iraq War

The war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion through fiscal year 2013, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. That’s trillion, with a “t”. Including future costs for veteran’s care, and so on, raises the cost to $2.2 trillion.

SNIP...

If we had invested the $2.2 trillion in wind and solar, the US would be generating 21% of its electricity with renewable energy. If we had invested the $3.9 trillion that the war in Iraq will ultimately cost, we would generate nearly 40% of our electricity with new renewables. Combined with the 10% of supply from existing hydroelectricity, the US could have surpassed 50% of total renewables in supply.

However, this is a conservative estimate. If we include the reasonable assumptions suggested by Robert Freehling, the contribution by renewables would be even greater.

Freehling’s assumptions raise to as much as 60% the nation’s lost potential contribution by new renewables to US electricity supply by going to war in Iraq. With the addition of existing hydroelectric generation, the opportunity to develop as much as 70% of our nation’s electricity with renewable energy was lost.

And unlike the war in Iraq, which is an expense, the development of renewable energy instead of war would have been an investment in infrastructure at home that would have paid dividends to American citizens for decades to come.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/for-the-price-of-the-iraq-war-the-u-s-could-have-a-100-renewable-power-system/5330881

That's just one thing GlobalResearch.ca brought to my attention. Readers are leaders, you know.

[longship]

179. ...

[SidDithers]

183. Exactly...

Sid

[Octafish]

188. Don't worry. The situation may even be worse than what's posted on this thread.

Because TEPCO and Japan have lied from Day One and have no demonstrated no willingness to share what they do know since then, no one really knows how much plutonium and all the other radioactive substances have been leaked into the environment from three nuclear meltdowns for almost three years now.

If you have a source of information that gives this information, let's see it. Otherwise, prepare for the worst.

In the meantime, Hirohiko Izumida is a name you should learn.

[SidDithers]

189. 3-5 orders of magnitude less bad than Chernobyl...

and yet Chernobyl didn't kill us all.

But you go on and keep your hair on fire. About everything.

Sid

[NuclearDem]

191. But Helen Caldicott said Chernobyl killed nearly a million people!

The ghosts of the Dulles brothers are going to kill us all.

[Octafish]

192. ''3-5 orders of magnitude less than Chernobyl.''

So you are saying Fukushima has emitted 1,000 to 100,000 times less plutonium than Chernobyl.

Where do you get your data, TEPCO? They lied about how much has been emitted from the beginning. And three years later, they still don't know how much is leaking into the environment.

[NuclearDem]

198. Oh for crying out loud.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/first-study-reports-very-low-internal-radioactivity-after-fukushima-disaster/2012/08/14/aadd1dc2-e628-11e1-8741-940e3f6dbf48_story.html

The first published study that measured the radiation within a large number of residents reassured health experts because the numbers reported imply only negligible health risks. The threat appeared to be considerably lower than in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, the experts agreed.

“Exposure levels were much lower than those reported in studies even several years after the Chernobyl incident,” said Masaharu Tsubokura of the University of Toyko, lead author of a short paper published in the Thursday issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

...

Roy Shore, chief of research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima, Japan, said in an interview that the measured doses constitute a very low health risk.

“Out of 10,000 people with a dose of 1 millisievert, the radiation would cause two to get cancer during their lifetimes, but about 3,500 would get cancer also without any radiation,” he said. “The jury is still out, but I expect the public health impact from radiation to turn out to be considerably lower than that of Chernobyl.”

http://www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/anzen_kiban/outcome/Proceedings_for_Web/Topics_4-02.pdf

It was found that although the inventories of Pu isotopes in the reactors in the Fukushima DNPP were ca. 3.5 times higher than those in the Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor,24) the percentages of core inventory released for both 239+240Pu (1–3×10-5 %) and 241Pu (2–4×10-5 %) were about 5 orders of magnitude lower than those of the Chernobyl accident. This estimation is in a good agreement with that of Grambow and Poinssot.25)

Or are they just TEPCO's tools as well?

[Logical]

190. I want you on the record about this.....

Your stance is that soon (3 - 6 months) this story will break wide open with mainstream media and our government will take action on this?

[Octafish]

193. Where did I write that, Logical?

And why should I do what you demand?

[Logical]

196. You claim this is a real true crisis! Where is the coverage??? nt

[Octafish]

204. Oh, I see. If it's not on tee vee, it's not real.

Interesting.

[Logical]

208. Where is it? Why was Chernobyl on the tee vee? Or TMI??????? nt

[Octafish]

185. Unfortunately, the facts say otherwise: Plutonium from Fukushima is a global catastrophe.

Plutonium was monitored by a federal government facility on March 14, 2011 in New Mexico -- three days after the earthquake and tsunami and the same day that Reactor 3 containment building exploded.

NMSU research center in Carlsbad monitors environmental effects of nuclear facility

By Emily C. Kelley
Las Cruces News, Dec. 8, 2013

SNIP...

Fukushima

On March 11, 2011, a tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, causing the plant to lose the ability to cool its reactors, resulting in a meltdown. On March 14, CEMRC observed activity from this event in their environmental filters.

"It took roughly three days (for radioactive material) to come 10,000 miles," Hardy said. "It was low-level activity, below any environmental concern, but we started seeing iodine-131, tellurium and cesium. We know that it came from Fukushima because of when it happened and because each of the nuclear incidents -- whether it's Chernobyl, Fukushima or Three Mile Island -- they each use different mixtures in their fuel rods and they have different types of reactors. When they have an incident, they create their own signature. Looking at these ratios of plutonium, americium and cesium, you can determine which event it was tied to."

"The four times that we've seen plutonium out in the desert (from a 1960 Atomic Energy Commission underground explosion 12 miles from Carlsbad), as well as the Fukushima incident, just validates that what we're doing works," Hardy said. "Most of the time we see zero, and that's a good thing, but if there ever were a release, we would be able see it and with the data that we have, be able to determine where it came from."

SOURCE: http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_24682250/nmsu-research-center-carlsbad-monitors-environmental-effects-nuclear

Almost forgot: Why you want to make fun of me for saying plutonium from Fukushima is of concern to the planet is disheartening, as well as undemocratic. And it also says a lot more about you than it does me, longship.

[longship]

186. ARRRRRGH!!!!

Sometimes the only thing left is ridicule.

[RobertEarl]

194. They found Fukushima shit in NM?

"The four times that we've seen plutonium out in the desert (from a 1960 Atomic Energy Commission underground explosion 12 miles from Carlsbad), as well as the Fukushima incident, just validates that what we're doing works," Hardy said. "Most of the time we see zero, and that's a good thing, but if there ever were a release, we would be able see it and with the data that we have, be able to determine where it came from."

[NuclearDem]

199. Same report said it was of no environmental concern.

Try again.

[Octafish]

202. What is it with you? Any amount of plutonium is cause for concern.

So what if the amounts measured are less than what the US government says are safe? Would you want your child to be exposed to it?

[NuclearDem]

206. Alright, so you didn't read the report then.

Because they didn't detect plutonium. They detected iodine-131, tellurium and cesium.

BTW, can the US government be trusted to be factual about plutonium or not? You seem to cite the DoE when you want to scare people about plutonium, but when a report comes out about actual toxicity, it's a conspiracy. Make up your mind, already.

[Octafish]

207. I read the article where the scientist from NMSU said they detected plutonium on March 14, 2011.

"The four times that we've seen plutonium out in the desert (from a 1960 Atomic Energy Commission underground explosion 12 miles from Carlsbad), as well as the Fukushima incident, just validates that what we're doing works," Hardy said. "Most of the time we see zero, and that's a good thing, but if there ever were a release, we would be able see it and with the data that we have, be able to determine where it came from."

http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_24682250/nmsu-research-center-carlsbad-monitors-environmental-effects-nuclear

[NuclearDem]

211. No, that's not what he said.

He said they found iodine, tellurium, and cesium, and they identified that it came from Fukushima through a process that they've used to identify the sources of other radioactive releases.

[questionseverything]

209. do you back the use of depleted uranium in weapons too?

http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/Depleted%20Uranium,%20state%20crime%20and%20the%20politics%20of%20knowing.pdf

^^ balanced discussion worth the read

Under pressure from the UK and US governments and in contravention of its mandate in denying the risk from DU, the WHO delayed the release of its own commissioned report (2004) which cautions that inhalation of dust containing DU would affect the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population in the form of birth defects, congenital malformations and cancers.36 The publication of a joint WHO-Iraqi Ministry of Health Report covering 10,800 households to measure the rate of congenital defects in Iraq due for release in November 2012 was also delayed, and only the first ‘provisional’ part of its three parts has so far been made public. The anonymous authors conclude that there is no evidence for an unusually high rate of congenital defects in Iraq.37 The former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations Hans von Sponeck also stated that the ‘US government restricted WHO surveys from southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers’.38

http://www.doam.org/index.php/component/content/article/125-blog/2066-fukushima-life-and-the-transnationality

[NuclearDem]

212. Oh, there's a straw man if I ever saw it.

No, I don't back the use of depleted uranium, and my position on it has absolutely no bearing on whether Octafish's claims are accurate or not.

[questionseverything]

213. i was just pointing out

it appears the us govt has covered up concerns about the effects of du weapons so it is possible they are doing same now

[NuclearDem]

214. What bearing does that have on this?

This was a university source, not government.

[questionseverything]

215. you have been telling me for days how safe things are

In July 2013, the groundwater flowing beneath the NPP recorded the highest readings yet measured, a rise of 9000% since the beginning of the disaster (900 million Bq/m3 of all ?particles- Sr, Cs, Tr, Pu). On 22 July, one day after the LDP and New Komeito won the national election, TEPCO operators admitted to a daily discharge of 300 tonnes of irradiated water into the sea (since upgraded to 400 tonnes),54 and the leak of an additional 24 billion Bq of tritiated water from storage tanks into the ocean.55 Aoyama Michio, Japan Meteorological Agency scientist, at the IAEA 2013 Scientific Forum reported 60 billion Bq of Cs137 and Sr-90 being released directly into the Pacific ocean from the NPP on a daily basis (900 billion Bq respectively per month). This was even greater than a recent estimate by Kanda Jōta, an oceanographer at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, who calculated that the NPP is leaking 0.3 Tbq (300 billion Bq) of Cs137 per month.56 Aoyama included the amount of water vacuumed from the port by Units 5 and 6 to cool the reactors, subsequently discharged north of the site.57
Contrary to assurances from the nuclear industry, tritiated water (3H2O, or ‘heavy water’) binds to the DNA and can cause great damage to life. There is no method yet discovered to remove Tritium once it has bonded with water.58 In addition the total release from the reactors into the permeated basements has been revised upward to 276 PetaBq Cs-137 (40 percent of the reactor core inventory), and Strontium-90 from 23 to 33 PBq (4.4 to 6.3 percent of the reactor core inventory). This is roughly triple the total amount released into the air from the Chernobyl accident.59

//////////////////////

which reminded me how the us and nato said du weapons were safe, which started me searching and I thought you might be interested

[NuclearDem]

216. There's a big difference between depleted uranium and the nearly-undetectable cesium in tuna.

Not all levels of all types of radiation are toxic. PET scans are not the same as fallout from a nuclear weapons test, and depleted uranium is not the same as trace amounts of tellurium.

[longship]

200. Sure they did.

I believe it. Possibly near Los Alamos, or maybe near Alamagordo.

Yup! Fukushima!!

[Octafish]

201. No wonder all you got is ridicule.

You can't accept anything that goes outside your experience.

In the article, Russell Hardy explained how his organization -- charged with monitoring radiation from a federal facility -- knew the plutonium was from Fukushima.

NMSU research center in Carlsbad monitors environmental effects of nuclear facility

By Emily C. Kelley
Las Cruces News, Dec. 8, 2013

LAS CRUCES >> New Mexico State University's College of Engineering has a unit in Carlsbad whose mission is to conduct an independent program to monitor people and the environment for exposure to radioactive materials.

The facility, called the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center, also studies the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, commonly know as the WIPP site or WIPP facility, which is a low-level nuclear repository operated by the Department of Energy.

SNIP...

"It took roughly three days (for radioactive material) to come 10,000 miles," Hardy said. "It was low-level activity, below any environmental concern, but we started seeing iodine-131, tellurium and cesium. We know that it came from Fukushima because of when it happened and because each of the nuclear incidents -- whether it's Chernobyl, Fukushima or Three Mile Island -- they each use different mixtures in their fuel rods and they have different types of reactors. When they have an incident, they create their own signature. Looking at these ratios of plutonium, americium and cesium, you can determine which event it was tied to."

"The four times that we've seen plutonium out in the desert (from a 1960 Atomic Energy Commission underground explosion 12 miles from Carlsbad), as well as the Fukushima incident, just validates that what we're doing works," Hardy said. "Most of the time we see zero, and that's a good thing, but if there ever were a release, we would be able see it and with the data that we have, be able to determine where it came from."

CONTINUED...

http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_24682250/nmsu-research-center-carlsbad-monitors-environmental-effects-nuclear

Try information. It beats ridicule.

[NM_Birder]

210. The article itself..........

says "below environmental concern". Read up on Russel Hardy, the man quoted in this article, his role at NMSU is pretty easy to find.

Underground storage at KAFB, Los Alamos Labs, White Sands Laboratory, White Sands Missile Training, Trinity -and beyond-, the "WIPP", Cannon and Holloman are all within 100-300 miles of Carlsbad.

There is a LOT of nuclear materials monitoring going on in NM, there always has been. The level of monitoring that goes on here, ......I would EXPECT them to be able to detect any fluctuation in recorded levels, NMSU is NOT the only authority recording contamination levels, it is however the only one that comes out every now and then to say, "Hey, we recorded contamination level change attributed to Fukushima", but only enough to bring up "WIPP".....and usually around the time federal funding for "WIPP" monitoring is up for renewal. Fukushima is not a "global catastrophe", Fukushima was a terrible disaster, but it will no more affect the world than the gravel roads in the Jemez Mountains which were stabilized with Uranium mine spoils.

The article essentially says nothing, it just reminds everyone that NMSU is still monitoring the "Whip" for contamination, but has yet to detect anything of concern. The Trinitie I grabbed off the ground at Trinity when I was a kid is more dangerous, much like a butter knife IS capable of killing a person..............it is hardly worth alarming the population to the threat of murders that are possibly committed using butter knives.

Correct information is the only information that matters, this constant fear-mongering every time a disaster occurs is disheartening.

[MindMover]

203. Doesn't the US military use plutonium missiles ...

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0709-07.htm

[Octafish]

217. May explain the birth defects...

How the World Health Organisation covered up Iraq's nuclear nightmare

Ex-UN, WHO officials reveal political interference to suppress scientific evidence of postwar environmental health catastrophe

The Guardian, Sunday 13 October 2013 11.38 EDT

Last month, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a long awaited document summarising the findings of an in-depth investigation into the prevalence of congenital birth defects (CBD) in Iraq, which many experts believe is linked to the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by Allied forces. According to the 'summary report':

"The rates for spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and congenital birth defects found in the study are consistent with or even lower than international estimates. The study provides no clear evidence to suggest an unusually high rate of congenital birth defects in Iraq.".

Jaffar Hussain, WHO's Head of Mission in Iraq, said that the report is based on survey techniques that are "renowned worldwide" and that the study was peer reviewed "extensively" by international experts.

Backtrack

But the conclusions contrasted dramatically from previous statements about the research findings from Iraqi Ministry of Health (MOH) officials involved in the study. Earlier this year, BBC News spoke to MOH researchers who confirmed the joint report would furnish "damning evidence" that rates of birth defects are higher in areas experiencing heavy fighting in the 2003 war. In an early press release, WHO similarly acknowledged "existing MOH statistics showing high number of CBD cases" in the "high risk" areas selected for study.

The publication of this 'summary document' on the World Health Organisation's website has raised questions from independent experts and former United Nations and WHO officials, who question the validity of its findings and its anonymous authorship. They highlight the existence of abundant research demonstrating not only significant rates of congenital birth defects in many areas of Iraq, but also a plausible link to the impact of depleted uranium.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/oct/13/world-health-organisation-iraq-war-depleted-uranium

Thanks for the heads-up, MindMover. I don't believe many knew about plutonium in the DU. I knoe I didn't.

[ryan_cats]

218. Yes, plutonium is bad. Any amount in your lungs causes cancer but...

Yes, plutonium is bad. Any amount in your lungs causes cancer but one of the bombs dropped, the implosion one had several kilograms of Plutonium yet the amount of plutonium converted to energy was the amount of a single dime. The rest of the plutonium was dispersed.
We have dropped an incredible amount of plutonium in the atmosphere so while this is not in any way good news, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

[Octafish]

223. An Admirable Ability. Here's what Physicians for Social Responsibility said back in March, 2011...

Health risks of the releases of radioactivity from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors:

Are they a concern for residents of the United States?

EXCERPT...

To date the claims from US and Canadian authorities that there are very low to no risks to
North American populations from the Daiichi releases are probably true. This is not to
belittle the concerns that people might have about the risks of nuclear power (or spent fuel
stored in pools) and the broad range of health, social, and economic consequences of events
like those unfolding in Japan – but in regard to the health effects of exposures in the US the
public health risks are low. It is more probable that the risks to people in Japan will be
greater. The potential for harm is certainly greater to the emergency responders working
on or near the site, and we will no doubt hear much more about the consequences of their
exposures as first responders.23

PDF: http://www.psr.org/resources/health-risks-releases-radioactivity.pdf

That was in March, 2011, using the available information, much of which came from TEPCO. Seeing how much more complicated things have gotten, I hope to give a heads-up to those who may not know how serious the situation is, even if separated by oceans and continents, from Fukushima.

[lonestarnot]

220. I saw about a three minute report last night.

[Octafish]

221. Did they ask: 'What if the Fukushima nuclear fallout crisis had happened here?'

Here's a nice interactive experience for those wondering about the wisdom of using an atomic pile to boil water so close to the nation's major metro areas:

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/fallout/default.asp

What did the report say, lonestarnot? Did they report anything new? What channel was it on?

One thing I would BET THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES on: The report you saw did not mention how the U.S. taxpayer is on the hook should a nuclear disaster happen here -- NOT the power companies and rich folks who own them.

Nuclear Accident in U.S. Would Cost Taxpayers a Fortune

Noel Brinkerhoff
AllGov.com, Thursday, March 17, 2011

Nearly half a trillion dollars. That’s how much a nuclear accident, similar to what’s occurring in Japan, could cost the United States if it happens here, with most of the expense being borne by taxpayers.

A 2009 study by two university professors, Geoffrey Heal of Columbia and Howard Kunreuther if the University of Pennsylvania, calculated that a nuclear power plant meltdown would cause $384 billion in damages, and produce up to another $100 billion in economic costs. Their calculations were based on an accident taking place at the Indian Point nuclear-power station located 25 miles north of New York City. The death toll of such an accident was estimated to be 64,000 people.

Thanks to [font color="red"]the Price-Anderson Act[/font color], first passed in 1957, federal law limits the liability of individual power companies to $375 million, and an industry liability pool would be limited to paying $12.6 billion, leaving taxpayers to cover the remainder of any nuclear accident expense.

SOURCE: http://www.allgov.com/news/where-is-the-money-going/nuclear-accident-in-us-would-cost-taxpayers-a-fortune?news=842366

Vice President Dan Quayle, left, holds up a pumpkin at a state fair. (actual AP cutline paraphrase)