Weekend Economists: "So much to do, so little done, such things to be." April 20-22, 2012

[Demeter]

32. Is Fukushima's Doomsday Machine About to Blow? By Mike Whitney

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31123.htm

...a real threat to human survival. If the area in which Unit 4 is struck by another 7.0 magnitude earthquake, there's a 70 percent chance that "the entire fuel pool structure will collapse" and massive doses of lethal nuclear radiation will be released into the atmosphere. The disaster would release approximately "134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at Chernobyl as estimated by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP)." Experts believe that the amounts are sufficient to "destroy the world environment and our civilization", which makes containment "an issue of human survival." ("The Greatest Single Threat to Humanity: Fuel Pool Number 4", Washington's blog) http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/04/the-largest-short-term-threat-to-humanity-the-fuel-pools-of-fukushima.html

...If such a disaster were to occur, "people should get out of Japan, and residents of the West Coast of America and Canada should shut all of their windows and stay inside," says nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen...

On March 8, 2012, Dr. Hiroaki Koide, Research Associate at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University, gave his bleak assessment of the situation on the Japanese a news program called, “Morning Bird”. Koide explained how 1,500 rods are presently located in a "fuel pool" that has been severely damaged. The rods have to be cooled constantly or a "huge amount of radiation contained in the spent fuel will be released outside". If an earthquake hits and undermines the pool, the coolant will exit the pool, the rods will melt and radioactive plumes will rise into the atmosphere. Koide explained that the rods could not be safely removed from the existing pool because "if you hoist them up in the air, huge amount of radiation will come out from the spent fuel and people nearby will die."

...concerns have been brought to the attention of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, to high-ranking officials in the Obama administration and EU, and to leaders around the world. The reaction has basically been the same everywhere, which is, "It's Japan's problem. Let them deal with it."...There is no way to overstate the media's complicity in concealing critical information about the tragedy that is presently unfolding at Fukushima. If there is another earthquake, the media will certainly be every bit as responsible as the government officials who saw the danger, but chose to do nothing.

I'M SPEECHLESS