Fuku could escalate rapidly if the lava melts through+Tokyo hit w/ massive radiation(vid)+much more

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/partial-meltdown-hits-fukushima-nuclear-plant-2283234.html

‘Situation’ at No. 1 reactor “could escalate rapidly if the lava melts through the reactor vessel” Fears that Reactor No. 3 “which contains MOX plutonium fuel, may have also suffered a meltdown”


snip

Tepco general manager Junichi Matsumoto told reporters in Tokyo that the discovery means its timetable to entomb the containment reactor vessel in water may have to be scrapped. "We can't deny the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to leak," Mr Matsumoto said.

Observers fear that Reactor 3, which contains MOX plutonium fuel, may have also suffered a meltdown, and the situation inside Reactor 2 is still shrouded in mystery.

"The situation is clearly far more serious than previously reported, and could escalate rapidly if the lava melts through the reactor vessel," warned Jan Beránek of Greenpeace.

snip

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http://www.lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/tokyo-japan-being-hit-massive-radiation-may-13th-2011

Tokyo Japan Being Hit With MASSIVE Radiation May 13th 2011 (video plus charts)

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http://mainichi.jp/select/today/news/20110511k0000e040059000c.html

Off the Scale: Radiation in No. 1 reactor building exceeds 1,000 millisieverts per hour — Levels too high for Geiger counter to measure

translated:


経済産業省原子力安全・保安院は１１日、東京電力福島第１原発１号機の原子炉建屋２階で、１時間当たり１０００ミリシーベルトを超える高濃度の放射 性物質を測定したと発表した。１号機は冷却装置の設置に向けた準備を進めている。この数値は短時間での作業すら難しくする高い線量で、保安院の西山英彦審 議官は「冷却のための配管のつなぎこみ作業に影響するかもしれない」との見方を示した。

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) announced on May 11 that the radiation level exceeded 1,000 millisieverts/hour on the 2nd floor of the Reactor 1's reactor building at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. TEPCO has been preparing for the work to install the external cooling system inside the reactor building. This radiation level may be too high for workers to enter and work even for a short period of time. NISA's spokesman Nishiyama said the high radiation "may affect the work to connect the pipes for the cooling system."


　高かったのは、炉心を緊急に冷却するための装置の弁付近。１０日午後０時４５分から５分間計測したところ、床から１．６メートルの高さ付近では、計測器が振り切れたという。

The location that registered the high radiation level was near the valve of the emergency core cooling system. Measurement was done for 5 minutes starting 12:45PM on May 10 (JST), and at 1.6 meters from the floor the Geiger counter went overscale .


　１号機では９日にも同建屋１階で１時間当たり６００～７００ミリシーベルトが検出されている。

The radiation level of 600 to 700 millisieverts/hour was detected on the 1st floor of the same reactor building on May 9.


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Top DOE official: US “had difficulty grasping what was actually happening” at Fukushima (VIDEO)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_20.html

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http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/05/from-tepco-presser-on-may-12-part-3.html


TEPCO: Reactor No. 2 and 3 water level gauges “not very trustworthy” — Likely malfunctioning as No. 1 did

The water gauges for the Reactors 2 and 3 are not to be trusted, said TEPCO's Matsumoto in the press conference on May 12 (I watched the live-recorded video) when the company officially acknowledged the meltdown of the Reactor 1. If the water gauges for the Reactors 2 and 3 have been overstating the water levels, just like in the Reactor 1, it is very likely that all three reactors have hardly any water inside the Reactor Pressure Vessels (RPV), and the reactor cores are likely to have been melted. Just like Michio Ishikawa of Japan Nuclear Technology Institute said on April 29.

About the water gauges for the Reactors 2 and 3: "They are probably in the same condition as that of the Reactor 1. The numbers the gauges are currently showing are not very trustworthy. We need to monitor carefully with other parameters like pressure."

Weak points in the RPV and Containment Vessel: "The RPV has more than 100 small pipes running through the bottom. Any one of them could have been damaged. We cannot completely deny that the fuel itself damaged the RPV. The Containment Vessel also has pipes, and it is possible that they got damaged when the pressure rose or when there was a hydrogen explosion."

To confirm, TEPCO does not deny that the fuels have all melted and went down? "We don't deny that. How much of the fuels have melted we cannot say for certain, but our understanding is that they melted, and didn't retain the original shapes, and moved downward."


"We don't deny that part of the melted fuels may have damaged the RPV and escaped the RPV."

snip

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http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110513005828.htm

“Highly dangerous” levels of radiation detected in No. 3 MOX reactor building — Double amount from April


A robot has detected highly dangerous levels of radiation in the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's No. 3 reactor building, it has been learned, indicating further safety measures will be needed before workers can enter the structure.

According to plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., the remote-controlled PackBot robot on Tuesday found radiation levels in the northwestern section of the building of 49 to 120 millisieverts per hour, which would pose a threat to human workers. Time must be spent, therefore, removing or sealing up the radiation-contaminated debris in the building, before TEPCO starts work to stabilize the damaged reactors. When similar measurements were conducted around doors in the southern section of the building on April 17, the radiation levels were 28 to 57 millisieverts per hour.

snip

"Until around June, we'll make it our priority to remove debris with robots. We'll then check how radiation levels change," a TEPCO employee said. The company currently has no plans to send workers into the No. 3 reactor building, the employee said. When the PackBot examined the power plant's No. 1 reactor building in April, it found radiation levels had reached 1,000 millisieverts per hour at some pumps. Levels at the other pumps were 10 to 49 millisieverts per hour.

snip
===

Water leaks from No. 1 reactor

Meanwhile, TEPCO has announced that water has been leaking through small openings in the bottom of the No. 1 reactor's pressure vessel.

Combined, the openings would be equivalent to a hole several centimeters in diameter, and according to TEPCO, were made when melted nuclear fuel damaged the bottom.

The melted fuel likely has accumulated in the bottom of the vessel. TEPCO has admitted the situation is a meltdown, in which melted nuclear fuel cannot maintain its shape and drops down to lower parts of a reactor core. TEPCO had previously said fuel was just partially damaged.
snip

(May. 14, 2011)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqs-fh79suI&feature=player_embedded


Real severe problem cooling Unit No. 3 reactor — Hydrogen explosion possible (VIDEO)

Transcript Summary (Faire Winds Energy)

3:45 Real severe problem cooling Unit No. 3 reactor — Hydrogen explosion possible
6:00 TEPCO acknowledges Unit No. 4 is leaning, tilting at the top — could collapse with aftershock
8:30 All 3 nuclear containments are leaking
9:45 Site has sunk by at least a foot, means concrete has cracked

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http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/connectasia/stories/201105/s3216189.htm

Japanese nuclear expert says meltdown has now made cooling “very difficult” (AUDIO)

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http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/05/will-fukushimas-next-earthquake-start-a-global-extinction-event/

Will Fukushima’s Next Earthquake Start A Global Extinction Event? (Hawaii News Daily)

snip

The reactors can NEVER be placed in ‘cold shutdown‘ because the cores are partially melted together. We are talking about hundreds of tons of fissile material inside reinforced concrete containment vessels. The containment vessels are cracked. They are releasing radiation. Fission excursions are still occurring and no one can go inside those containments for hundreds of years – even if they could get to the fuel.

They continue to pour water on them and drain it off into the ocean because there is nothing else they can do. If they stop pumping water, the genie comes out. If they keep pumping water, it has to go somewhere and that somewhere is the ocean. It is still a stop gap. Those reactor cores cannot be put into ‘cold shutdown’ or dismantled or entombed. Ever.

They cannot treat as much radioactive water as they have to keep pumping in. No one can. So the radiation is going to come across the Pacific and impact the US and, certainly, Hawaii. Yes, I read that they are going to start treating it or storing it, but the task is impossible. Reactor cores have to be maintained in a ‘clean room’ environment or the water picks up particles – which then become radioactive – which then irradiate the reactor plumbing – and, eventually, become fuel. That’s why they have to keep pumping fresh water in and dumping it out. They cannot recirculate it, even if they manage to get new plumbing installed. The next major earthquake there will begin an extinction event.

snip

is like a rabbit shot on the run: it will keep moving for a while in the same direction before it falls over, but it is already dead.

I just sort of thought (hoped) it would most like happen after I died--or perhaps close to when I would die. I didn't actually expect the end of everything to come before I was in the last few years of life, but now I wonder whether I might see it all happen frighteningly soon.

'I remember the year that man destroyed the world'

death doesn't scare me. the suffeirng of people does and the fact that children have no future. I am just sick about the world for them. Can you imagie what would happen to Japan if it had happened in the middle rather than out on the fringes of their country? Its terrifying.

scenario from the beginning yet we didn't want to see it.

There were lots of folks around here trying to raise the alarm, but a lot of folks, for various reasons, didn't want to listen.

Thank you for keeping me and my brother (in Japan) informed. The DU has been a great help.

and there were plenty of other people that were made fun of as conspiracy theorists, paranoid and everything else.

This has been horrible from the get-go, and the fact that they are finally admitting it tells me it's probably even worse than that. They let the bad news out a little bit at a time, kind of like boiling the frog so that by the time you get the full story, you don't jump right out of the pot.

I'm waiting for most of those who said this wasn't so bad - and aggressively attacked/ridiculed/chastised those who plainly stated it was bad, and gave evidence for that opinion - to come in and admit that it really is that bad, but that would require admitting they are wrong.

thanks for the funniest post of the year...

Here...have a banana in a stone house!!!

:shrug: :hide: :scared: x(

present the potential outcome of this? What if the worse case scenerio does happen? What is the result, how far reaching, how impacting, for how long?

Thanks,
Annette

talk about hyperbole.

even if they unleashed all the water in the plant into the ocean in one shot the radiation would be so diluted in the ocean to be all but unmeasurable by the time it hit hawaii or the mainland

but dont let hyperbole get in the way

Deep sea fish species found in the north Pacific Ocean have mysteriously been caught in the southwest Atlantic, on the other side of the world.

"(From BBC News) -- It is unclear how the animals, a giant rattail grenadier, pelagic eelpout and deep sea squid, travelled so far.

Their discovery 15,000km from their usual home raises the possibility that deep sea currents can transport animals from one polar region to another.

Details are published in the journal Deep Sea Research part I.

"These findings were completely unexpected," says Dr Alexander Arkhipkin of the Falkland Islands Fisheries Department, based in Stanley, on the Falkland Islands in the southwest Atlantic Ocean..."

http://www.oceanleadership.org/2010/deep-sea-fish-mystery-migration-across-pacific-ocean/

Unmeasurable? Really?

for keeping up on this.

Radioactive particles from the Fukushima disaster continue to fall on North America and around the world.
Fallout levels of radiation are quite low in North America, compared to the normal background count of radiation. However what you have to understand about radiation -- and what is rarely ever addressed in the media -- is that the primary danger from fallout is taking it directly into the body, through ingestion or inhalation. For human health, inhalation or ingestion is an entirely different situation than exposure to radiation without taking radioactive fallout particles into the body.

The nuclear industry and mainstream media almost always make the same false analogies about fallout radiation levels being equal to (or less than) background radiation sources, such as radiation from under the Earth (decay of natural uranium deposits underground) or from regular air travel (cosmic radiation.) This is terribly misleading, since the health effects from free radioactive particles in fallout being breathed in or eaten in food is extremely more dangerous than external, sequestered radioactive emitters like underground granite. Despite the complete lack of comparability for human health between background radiation and inhaled/ingested radioactive fallout, the “big lie” of implying the two are completely identical biologically is repeated without question or comment by virtually every major news organization.

A level of fallout that would barely register on a geiger counter (and in some cases not register at all, except in the most expensive advanced detectors) could still cause cancer if the radioactive particles are ingested or inhaled. There is no ‘safe dose’ of inhaled or ingested radioactive materials: their effect varies from person to person, what will kill one person will not kill another (this is the source of the standard toxicology concept of “LD50”; LD50 is Lethal Dose 50, meaning the specific dose of a toxin that will kill 50% of those exposed to it while the other 50% survive.) If you are one of the people who inhale or ingest these fallout particles, even at levels the government and nuclear industry say are of ‘absolutely no concern’, it is important to learn specific detoxification methods to get these substances out of the body as soon as possible.

For a more complete explanation of why the idea of “safe dose” and the harmlessness of “low-level” radiation asserted by the nuclear industry and media is highly misleading, see: http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/radcombined.htm (See Q & A number 5 at the bottom of the page.)

http://www.llrc.org/

http://vesica.org/main/holistic-health/articles/1160-update-on-the-worldwide-nuclear-fallout-situation

...is that our government and these "industry experts" were laughing off the Fukushima radiation and suggesting
the levels were comparable to flying in an airplane or getting a dental x-ray. As your post communicates so
well--we are INGESTING THIS STUFF AND IT IS NOT THE SAME!

However, that was the meme for the first month of this disaster. The meme was a lie. We were deliberately marketed
a buffet of bullshit and this was a concerted effort to keep us in the dark.

We've been off milk since Fukushima happened. I have my kids on iodine and vitamins--and husband and I are as well. We
avoid leafy greens, strawberries, dairy and going outside in the rain. However, we're just decreasing our liability
a bit. We can never avoid it. However, AT LEAST we were able to make decisions for our family--in order to protect our
health and lessen the chances that my children will get thyroid cancer.

Most people didn't see the need to make choices. Some of those people will get cancer. That's a statistical certainty.
Exposure to radioactive isotopes increases the incidence of cancers. No doubt about it.

The government had NO RIGHT to decide that darkness was the answer for everyone. Sick bastards.

was interviewed by Arne Gunderson at a couple of weeks ago and really helped define what the radiation consequences are, even for those of us that are across the Pacific from Japan, a couple thousand miles in some cases. Check it out, it will help define some of these risks from a professional.

Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen


It is an 11:29 interview from April 21, and it is the 6th one down on the Fairewinds.com page of Arne interviews there.

http://www.fairewinds.com/updates

Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing and nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discuss the consequences of the Fukushima radioactive fallout on Japan, the USA, and the world. What are the long-term health effects? What should the government(s) do to protect citizens?



Essentially, he first off asserts how much worse it is for people in the immediate area over there and the single most important they can do is change their location. Severity of dose is one big factor for making people sick, etc. The issues are different the further away from the site you are. For one, there is no move we here can make to change the radiation amounts exposed to from air, rain, ocean, etc. (shipping containers too). The amount of radiation particles released will cause the same amount of cancer over time, whether it is 1 million in Japan or 5 million on the west coast. It will be a real danger for however long it continues to be uncontained. They did discuss the urgent need to do more monitoring here in the US, and in the Pacific Ocean fishery, that is not being done at this time. There is no current danger from eating a trout caught in Idaho right now, but ther could very well be from eating a tuna or salmon that migrates from the irradiated area of the sea over there. The other things we at a distance can do is to not allow this crisis to let us ingore other sources of radiation. The single most effective thing we at this distance can do is to act globally to get the politicians and utility companies that are responsible for this to stop developing and promoting this deadly form of energy generation. We need more monitoring. We cannot rely on Japan's government or TEPCO to consider our safety here. It is more or less bigger than they can deal with and now it is all up to us in how we react to this untenable situation.

It is a good interview, very informative.


Just my Extreme Enviroweenie Biased Claptrap message for Saturday evening. It is getting ready to rain here tonight, tomorrow and Tuesday. I have the tarps ready to drape over my raised bed garden and side plots.


rdb

The independent watchdog Nuclear Information and Resource Service has the best regularly updated information about the Fukushima disaster:
http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/crisis.htm It also has an excellent general site with vital, up-to-date info about nuclear issues in North America:
http://www.nirs.org/

The Low Level Radiation Campaign offers good updates on the Fukushima situation, with helpful resources to understand why official claims of the safety of “low-level’ nuclear fallout is a sham. Also has good information on the distortions in recent documentaries and news accounts claiming that the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents were not really as bad as people think they were. On their home page there is a link to two important videos debunking this claim, and a recent book from original Russian sources documenting how much worse the Chernobyl disaster was (and continues to be with ongoing health effects) than claimed by the revisionist history now offered by the nuclear industry: http://www.llrc.org/

European Committee on Radiation Risk has an excellent website with valuable information and downloads, such as a free downloadable copy of the book Chernobyl: 20 Years On which is a comprehensive rebuttal of recent documentaries claiming that the health toll of Chernobyl was much less than the public thinks. It also has an important transcript of a debate in which a spokesperson for the ICRP (regulatory body which sets radiation limits and policies) admits that the model it uses (and promotes in the media to support predictions of no health effects from fallout) is highly inaccurate and its recommendations cannot be applied to post-accident situations (although the public is told they do.) http://www.euradcom.org/

The Union of Concerned Scientists has excellent information about North American nuclear issues. Despite the extremely strong scientific accreditation of those in this organization, you will rarely ever hear an interview with them in the mainstream media due to the media’s preference for government/nuclear industry spokespeople.
http://www.ucsusa.org/

We have found that BBC News is the mainstream outlet with the best reporting on the nuclear crisis in Japan (not that it has much competition.) Although it carries the same misleading official statements broadcast by other mainstream media, it is much more willing to expose problems and ask hard questions of some guests, in addition to interviewing independent nuclear experts to give a counterpoint to the government/industry spin on the news.
Some Public Radio stations carry BBC radio news at particular times of day, and most Cable/Satellite television companies carry the BBC television evening news. However at any time you can stream its video and audio world news from links at its website: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/


INDEPENDENT INFORMATION SOURCES: Better coverage in the U.S. is found in independent news outlets rather than corporate owned outlets. For example, DEMOCRACY NOW has had some good reporting, including two interviews with Philip White of Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo:
http://fukushima.greenaction-japan.org/2011/03/19/recommended-resources-democracy-now/


http://vesica.org/main/holistic-health/articles/1160-update-on-the-worldwide-nuclear-fallout-situation




Ignore the shills, they have not been right yet.

I haven't watched any news on this, nor have I spent a great deal of time studying the event because my gut has told me this is going to be catastrophic for our times. Simply, utterly, terribly catastrophic. I have believed every worst case scenario and take it as fact that our planet is going to suffer horribly for this.

So now, reading yet another "worst case" theory, I simply believe it will happen. I don't think the "experts" know or understand what has been unleashed and since nobody can get close enough to figure it out, it's going to run it's course in the worst way. I feel completely futile in the face of it. I grieve for my earth and all it's inhabitants.

clue you in about the accuracy of the translation.

"Lucas Whitfield Hixson" = preppie "information architect" whose writing reveals he has trouble composing sentences that provides any information whatsoever or are not regurgitated business-speak:

I learned that how to overcome diversity, and how to properly analyze and interpret data to minimize future risks. I was also trained how to manage large teams and inter-department communications, and to identify and track issues. After my service, I worked hard to get a career that allowed me to use my talents of enhancing systems and data management. I moved to Chicago in 2006 to pursue a career in Business Operations, and have since enjoyed working in a thriving global market.

http://www.lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/about-me

if he can't write worth a damn, he can't interpret writing worth a damn either.

he presents no evidence that tokyo is being "hit by massive radiation"