On Fukushima

1.- It is the biggest environmental story of this century. I know, she's young... but it is so far, the biggest story. And our media, as usual, is asleep at the job. I might add, with good reason. I mean there is a nuclear industry to protect... you would not want to disturb that. The only thing at this point that will get their attention back to it, I fear... is a missing blonde in Unit One... then watch Nancy Grace. Of course the sieverts will not matter at that point, just the missing blonde...

2.- I don't know how many times it will take for people to realize this.. GOVERNMENTS LIE. They lie for many reasons, when it comes to the nuclear industry... multiple governments really want to protect us from those monsters under the bed... and behind the closet door. You really are not old enough to comprehend what is going on... so they lie... NOT just to protect their bodies, but as well intentioned as they are... to protect YOU from your own fears. That's the way it is.

3.- Yes it is approaching FAST... the worst case scenario that many of us feared, and did not want to see. For Reactor one, we are pretty much there. TEPCO has all but admitted a meltdown and a core breach. Two and three... well on their way... watch... gauges that start to fail is not a good a thing... did I mention FOUR... having some issues with structural integrity issues?

4.- The talking points that we are hearing now are just that... and getting more ridiculous by the moment. BUT IT IS NOT as bad as Chernobyl... that is all you have left... and lord knows for how long.

It is time to wake up and smell the cesium... or is it Plutonium? the time for any happy talk is over. Been over for about three weeks. but it should be pretty official by now.

Oh and one last point.

5.- Watch what they do, not what they say. Neato Kan going... we need to move away from Nuclear and to renewables by 2050, with 50% of our energy capacity tells me they KNOW how bad this is... and actions... speak louder than any pretty words.

Some things to expect... (Assuming absolute worst case)

a.- The EXCLUSION ZONE will grow... (which is all but good news, given this is the bread basket of the country)

b.- Japan will have more than a few issues with exports... customs control all over the world are breaking out the geiger counters... justified or not... Japan will have issues, which will only impact the economy.

c.- See Exclusion zone, they are related... Japan has lost it's food independence.

d.- Ocean food sources are going to show up more and more contaminated... (Sea weed up to 40 km from the plant is now compromised)

e.- At this point the absolute worst case will not be pretty.

Finally, next time anybody says we are alarmists... well... at this point I will do this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOkuHo

The time to try to shut down people calling them ignorant and all is well past over.

Oh and edit. the NOBODY has died Talking Point is now pining up in the fjords... RIP to the unknown worker who died today

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1099268

of course if we demand they follow Naval Reactors, they will pack and go home...

$ from those interests for his research..

he'll change his mind about nuclear..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu

Someone on DU yelled at me the other day because I said that Japan would have problems marketing its products, and I mentioned Mikasa which is nowhere near Fukushima I was told. But that won't matter. The Japan label will matter.

Right now it seems to me a whole lot of Americans think Fukushima is old news. That's going to change.

But you know what? It's still only a tiny bit of the change that's coming on us faster than I ever imagined. Today the news talked of the huge cost of the catastrophes here in America. But they talked as if they were dealing with a single bad year. American agricultural land is being flooded as we speak. We haven't lost our food independence but we are going to feel it in the prices.

The world is beginning to make panicky, nervous changes, the kind you make when you don't feel safe anymore. And this is only the beginning.

I pointed this out today to our local global change denier...

And this year in the midwest was predicted...by the pesky science.

Well then, there is the 21st... WHOOPEEE... so we won't have to worry.

:sarcasm:

Yes, he DID go there.

...that so abruptly, TEPCO is issuing the truth about how bad things are.

Until now, it's been a horrendous, ridiclous cover up--with our media downplaying
and blacking out the entire story. Hell, our EPA even decided to stop testing our
milk, produce and water supplies AFTER we frickin' found Cesium and Radioactive
Iodine-131 in ALL of those items.

I think Japan just threw their cards on the table and said, "We're out!"

Game over. I'm guessing that the situation is horrendously dire and they
know that this disaster will affect the entire world--and that it's so bad
that they're no longer hiding it.

Please remember that Fukushima contains ten times more radioactive material
than Chernobyl ever did.

The potential for unprecedented worldwide disaster--is being realized.

Sorry... just trying to save some typing for some people.

I am nice that way.

:hi:

...are no longer needed.

They were needed when the operation was in "containment phase".

There's no containing this now. No way to hide how bad it is.

Can you imagine anyone *actually* trying to say that Chernobyl line, at this point? OMG...

Would be similar to the character in "Animal House" who screamed, "Remin calm! All is well!" as mayhem
broke out around him.

That IS the current talking point

I do notice that my own government seems to be checking on the safety of OUR reactors and the news sucks.

Energy is too important to both the economy and national security to be left in greedy, private hands.

But right now, I don't think there is a single government ready to deal with this.

Although wealthy people are making bunker-building the growth industry.

...the other day. I asked them if they sold kelp tablets. The clerk
said that they were out. I began a discussion with him about my interest
in kelp and radiation. He was also concerned and he said that many other
people are as well.

He also said that he gets phone calls like mine every day.

Despite the media blackout, people are doing their own research
and attempting to protect themselves.

I found that incredibly interesting.

People aren't sitting around waiting for the MSM to tell them what to do, it seems.

1. You are wrong here. The environmental story of the century is going to be the melting of the polar ice-caps as well as many glaciers.

2. I agree.

3. I agree.

4, More or less in agreement. This will ultimately be worse than Chernobyl.

5 a. Yes it will grow.
b. Yes, Japan will have problems, unless the government of other countries are so corrupt that they gives radioactive imports a pass (See 2)
c. Japan lost its food independence some time before 1941. This is not new, it is perhaps more extreme, although domestic Japanese food production has been a drop in the bucket since Japan's population exploded and it became a 1st world economy.
d. I agree.
e.Well duh. It's already not pretty.

We all saw what happened after Katrina hit a city below sea level. Imagine levees too short to hold back the sea at normal tides.

Every university needs large fat grants for creative solutions. Especially the agricultural and architectural schools.

the century is STILL YOUNG... as in very young.

We got time for this to become a bad story, but not worst.

Global Weather Change. while obvious to those really paying attention... is NOT YET in the mainstream... IN THE UNITED STATES... your neighbors to the south are fully aware.

And those storms in the midwest, those Cat 5 hurricanes and the 100 year floods every five years... are still being treated as isolated events. Read what I wrote what I said about Nance Grace and missing blondes. It applies to this too.

you mean like this? Some cat is out of some bag on this. Are the Japanese not checking things shipped out for radiation?

Chile finds low-level radioactivity in cars from Japan

Chris Woodyard,
USA TODAY
May 4, 2011

Customs agents in Chile have detected low levels of radioactivity in cars shipped from the Japanese port of Yokohama.

Chile says the radioactivity was found in 21 of nearly 2,500 cars that arrived in Iquique, Chile, aboard the Hyundai 106 cargo ship, the Associated Press reports.

After the March 11 quake and tsunami, Drive On reported that some automakers were having workers prowling storage lots with Geiger counters, looking for trace radiation. Sure enough, sounds like some are turning up.

About a hundred port workers have protested, saying their health is at risk, the AP says, but the Chilean government says the radiation levels are too low to put people at risk. The radiation will be lessened by simply hosing off the cars.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/chile-finds-low-level-radioactivity-in-cars-from-japan.html



Japanese Containers Test Positive for Radiation on Arrival in Rotterdam

By Maud van Gaal and Alaric Nightingale - May 10, 2011 10:34 AM PT

Dutch authorities have found traces of radiation on 19 containers originating from Japan, two months after an earthquake and tsunami there caused leaks from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.

Five of the containers, scanned on arrival at the Port of Rotterdam, were quarantined because the level of contamination was above the permissible threshold, the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority said on its website today. The other 14 boxes were cleared after further inspection, it said.

“Whether this is an exceptional incident with a low impact is difficult to say,” said Philip Damas, an analyst at Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd. in London. “You can get a bit carried away into a panic mode when really it’s a one-off.”

Scans of the ship’s superstructure at sea failed to reveal contamination, which was detected when the containers were screened in Rotterdam, Europe’s biggest port, before being offloaded, said Marian Bestelink, a spokeswoman for the Dutch food authority. Further checks showed goods inside one of the five irradiated containers to be untainted, and they were released, while the other four are undergoing checks, she said...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-10/radiation-found-in-19-japanese-containers-in-rotterdam-five-quarantined.html



So, this stuff went out, how much else has gone out to destinations around the globe? How many ports are checking Japanese container ships for radiation? Will we ever know?


Just you local Extreme Enviroweenie spouting Biased Claptrap, as I am known to do.


rdb

:hi::hug:

but being open about a disaster... nuclear are just worst, but it happens in industrial accidents a lot, it helps to get the necessary response rolling EARLIER.

Let's just say that so far we have had THREE major incidents and they all share shoddy government response... and the consequences are not funny.

For those keeping tract...

TMI and the United States
Chernobyl and the USSR
And now this.

The reason why it happens is simple... we need to protect industry (insert industry here) from an informed population.

heart is broken for the people of Japan and the world. Sorry it pisses you off. It hurt to be so insulted here.

I know you are in Japan. :hug:

You're right. It hurts. Sorry I lashed out in a moment of weakness.

thoughts every day. I cannot begin to imagine how frightening it must be to be so close to such a catastrophe. Please take good care. :hug::loveya:

over 60, second day of work, complained of feeling bad when he started that morning, keeled over wearing full radiation gear.

not radiation-linked.

but keep hyping the story, nadin.

But they have too much to lose so they are hiring people so compromised they expect to drop dead any second anyway.

But that has nothing to do with deadly radiation. Right.

wearing a hot suit & carrying things on his second day on the job, he was slated for a heart attack pretty soon regardless.

he didn't die from radiation poisoning, sorry to spoil your party.

Yep. Thanks for agreeing with me.

But they have too much to lose so they are hiring people so compromised they expect to drop dead any second anyway.

But that has nothing to do with deadly radiation. Right.

Cancer would likely take decades to develop and furthermore would grow more aggressively (as cancer does) in a younger person.

If the winds start blowing the wrong way, I guess I can kiss my ass goodbye. They need to contain that shit pronto and shut the whole thing down. We have nuclear power plants here. Thankfully Korea is a huge earthquake zone (though it could happen). The plants could be a soft target for terrorists though.

Excellent post :hi:

Governments lie all the time, about absolutely everything. They are in the power business after all, so it comes with the territory.

Whether they lie to allay our fears (as they are doing in this case) or stimulate them (as they did with the War on Terra) depends on whether they think can direct our resulting behaviour.

Fear makes people irrational. This makes them much easier to herd if TPTB are in control of the fear generation and have a direction they want to herd us in (as in, "Look over there - Al Qaeda! Quick, give us your liberties and we'll protect you..."). On the other hand, if the fear is spontaneous, as in this situation, the irrationality it generates makes people much less predictable ("I think I'll quit my job today and go burn down TEPCO headquarters...")

If they feel in control of the situation, they lie to create fear. If they don't, they lie to allay it.

Bottom line: To a first approximation, governments lie every time they speak.

ETA: Governments understand their mandate to be manipulation. This is a fundamental problem with top-down hierarchic government as opposed to bottom-up, emergent self-government.

including the five minutes of hate... and also rewriting history.

Can we stop pretending that any of this isn't basic behavior? Government has always been the process of the squeaky wheel. It makes a noise, you grease it, it runs better, eventually the grease builds up and impedes the running at which point you clean the grease off the wheel and start the process all over again. In real life terms, cleaning the grease means putting lots of people in jail or lopping off their heads or whatever restores confidence in the wheel.

We need to put a lot of people in jail. Or lop off their heads. Japan used to have suicide but they seem to have abandoned it for the CEO class.

LOL!

On edit: Your analysis reminds me of the joke about the man stranded by a flood praying to his Lord. Boat comes by and he turns it down saying "The Lord will provide." Also turns down a helicopter, friends with waders, waiting for God. Pretty soon the water is over his head and he drowns. At his intake interview he meets God and bitterly complains. God is astonished. "I sent you a boat, a helicopter, friends with waders...wtf were you waiting for?"

You are so determined to believe Reagan's premise that government is the problem that you can't see that the problem is HOW TO HELP YOU.

I'm innately suspicious of all power hierarchies, however well-intentioned they claim to be.

:evilgrin:

The man who died was not new to work. He was around 60, IIRC, and had just started working at Fukushima, where the working conditions are brutal. Apart from the new pay scale, the benefits aren't all that great, either.

Regarding the disaster: We had better hope these guys start thinking smart, hard and fast about finding a fix. So far, they've done nothing to protect the public and everything to protect TEPCO and GOJ -- meaning METI.

Great analysis of the situation -- now and way back in March, Deenita. The truth hurts, but lies kill.