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Previously-Secret 1955 Government Report Concluded that Ocean May Not Adequately Dilute Radiation from Nuclear Accidents
The operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has been dumping something like a thousand tons per day of radioactive water into the Pacific ocean.
Remember, the reactors are “riddled with meltdown holes”, building 4 – with more radiation than all nuclear bombs ever dropped or tested – is missing entire walls, and building 3 is a pile of rubble.
The whole complex is leaking like a sieve, and the rivers of water pumped into the reactors every day are just pouring into the ocean (with only a slight delay).
Most people assume that the ocean will dilute the radiation from Fukushima enough that any radiation reaching the West Coast of the U.S. will be low.
For example, the Congressional Research Service wrote in April:
Scientists have stated that radiation in the ocean very quickly becomes diluted and would not be a problem beyond the coast of Japan.
***
U.S. fisheries are unlikely to be affected because radioactive material that enters the marine environment would be greatly diluted before reaching U.S. fishing grounds.
And a Woods Hole oceanographer said:
“The Kuroshio current is considered like the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, a very large current that can rapidly carry the radioactivity into the interior” of the ocean, Buesseler said.
“But it also dilutes along the way, causing a lot of mixing and decreasing radioactivity as it moves offshore.”
But – just as we noted 2 days after the earthquake hit that the jet stream might carry radiation to the U.S. by wind – we are now warning that ocean currents might carry more radiation to the at least some portions of the West Coast of North America than is assumed.
Specifically, we noted more than a year ago:
The ocean currents head from Japan to the West Coast of the U.S.
As AP notes:
The floating debris will likely be carried by currents off of Japan toward Washington, Oregon and California before turning toward Hawaii and back again toward Asia, circulating in what is known as the North Pacific gyre, said Curt Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle oceanographer who has spent decades tracking flotsam.
***
“All this debris will find a way to reach the West coast or stop in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” a swirling mass of concentrated marine litter in the Pacific Ocean, said Luca Centurioni, a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
Here is what the North Pacific Gyre looks like:
NPR reports:
CNN said that “the Hawaiian islands may get a new and unwelcome addition in coming months — a giant new island of debris floating in from Japan.” It relied in part on work done by the University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center, which predicts that:
“In three years, the [debris] plume will reach the U.S. West Coast, dumping debris on Californian beaches and the beaches of British Columbia, Alaska, and Baja California. The debris will then drift into the famous North Pacific Garbage Patch, where it will wander around and break into smaller and smaller pieces. In five years, Hawaii shores can expect to see another barrage of debris that is stronger and longer lastingthan the first one. Much of the debris leaving the North Pacific Garbage Patch ends up on Hawaii’s reefs and beaches.”
Indeed, CNN notes:
The debris mass, which appears as an island from the air, contains cars, trucks, tractors, boats and entire houses floating in the current heading toward the U.S. and Canada, according to ABC News.
The bulk of the debris will likely not be radioactive, as it was presumably washed out to sea during the initial tsunami – before much radioactivity had leaked. But this shows the power of the currents from Japan to the West Coast.
An animated graphic from the University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center shows the projected dispersion of debris from Japan:
Indeed, an island of Japanese debris the size of California is hitting the West Coast of North America … and some of it is radioactive.
In addition to radioactive debris, MIT says that seawater which is itself radioactive may begin hitting the West Coast within 5 years. Given that the debris is hitting faster than predicted, it is possible that the radioactive seawater will as well.
And the Congressional Research Service admitted:
However, there remains the slight potential for a relatively narrow corridor of highly contaminated water leading away from Japan …
***
Transport by ocean currents is much slower, and additional radiation from this source might eventually also be detected in North Pacific waters under U.S. jurisdiction, even months after its release. Regardless of slow ocean transport, the long half-life of radioactive cesium isotopes means that radioactive contaminants could remain a valid concern for
ears.
Indeed, nuclear expert Robert Alvarez – senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999 – wrote yesterday:
According to a previously secret 1955 memo from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission regarding concerns of the British government over contaminated tuna, “dissipation of radioactive fall-out in ocean waters is not a gradual spreading out of the activity from the region with the highest concentration to uncontaminated regions, but that in all probability the process results in scattered pockets and streams of higher radioactive materials in the Pacific. We can speculate that tuna which now show radioactivity from ingested materials [this is in 1955, not today] have been living, in or have passed through, such pockets; or have been feeding on plant and animal life which has been exposed in those areas.”
Because of the huge amounts of radioactive water Tepco is dumping into the Pacific Ocean, and the fact that the current pushes waters from Japan to the West Coast of America, at least some of these radioactive “streams” will likely end up impacting the West Coast.
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"“But it also dilutes along the way, causing a lot of mixing and decreasing radioactivity as it moves offshore.” said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Buesseler is a damn liar.
"Honey, I think we better cancel that trip to the West Coast this summer. How about sight seeing Oklahoma?"
nope- fracking poison
Nothing here to site see but a bunch of crappy roads. Do your car a favor and avoid Oklahoma.
Amen to that.
Who would have thunk it that OK has the "Center of the Universe!"
http://onlyinoklahoma.wordpress.com/2008/01/03/journey-to-the-center-of-the-universe-in-oklahoma/
Well, good luck getting there. There is nary a major highway or surface street in Tulsa that isn't under repair or construction. The detours have detours. I've seen how long it takes ODOT to lay down a simple 4-lane divided state or country road on relatively level grade. They're rebuilding a major section of elevated interestate through town. Cluster. Fuck.
I left AZ after 30+ years for a lot of reasons, including the traffic, but ADOT knew how to throw down some interestate, and they did it 24x7, under the lights.
There's a universal constant that I have found when it comes to our national and state highways and that is;
The shortest distance between to locations is always under contruction.
GW, sorry to be OT but this is something I thought to be important.
A bit of sad news.
While many of us have been following the cast and crew of the film BAILOUT, it is with a heavy heart that I have learned of the passing of John Fox. I wish to extend my deepest sympathies to the friends and family of John, and the cast and crew of BAILOUT who were fortunate enough to work with him.
John Fox's Black Swan Song
http://usabailout.com/content/john-foxs-black-swan-song
[snip]
Legendary stand-up comic John Fox has died of cancer at age 59. Fox was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in October 2011 while working on what may be the last thing his fellow comedians would have expected—narrating a documentary about the financial crisis.
Fox’s entertainment career began in the 1970s and included stints as a writer for TV shows such as “Laverne and Shirley” and “Happy Days.”
In the 1980s, Fox mastered his stand-up act and became a favorite of Rodney Dangerfield, whose Las Vegas Tropicana show featured Fox as the opening act for eight years. In addition to appearing in two Dangerfield comedy specials, Fox made roughly 10 appearances on the “Tonight Show.” Over the decades, Fox was also a reliable personality on "The Bob and Tom Show," on which he appeared innumerably as a guest.
As Fox’s stand-up career continued in the 1990s and beyond, his reputation for wild road antics spread to the point of inspiring fellow comedian Pat Godwin to write a song, “The Legend of John Fox." In the song, Godwin knows his notorious counterpart only by the lurid array of detritus strewn across comedy club condos freshly vacated by Fox, much like Jack McGee's futile efforts to directly witness the Incredible Hulk in action.
Seemingly every comedian has a John Fox story.
“Foxy and I had adjacent motel rooms one gig,” actor Jeff Garlin recalled at Zanies Comedy Club in Chicago not long ago. “Sunday morning I hear Fox snoring, so I tip-toe out. Then someone yells ‘Garlin!’ and I turn around and there’s John Fox waving at me in the parking lot, completely naked.”
“I didn’t want to be rude and not say goodbye,” Fox said.
Cancer rates will go up 75% by 2030, but only because of the western way of life ... like "modern" healthcare.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-world-cancer-in...
Nah they won't. Not because cancer won't actually go up, but we all forget part of the cost savings and bending of the cost curve for healthcare includes fewer screenings, leading to fewer diagnoses.
In other words our cancer data will be as reliable and accurate as the unemployment BLS data. If you don't diagnose it as cancer, you don't treat it. By the time it's obvious, it'll be mostly too late, and they'll say your 'outcome' is too assured to pay for treatment in an 'outcome based payment' system. Their comparative effectiveness research has shown that such treatment doesn't work (even if it does) and of course, many people will have too few QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) to justify the cost. (even though it's the banksters system that really sets the cost)
Fewer tests, fewer self-tests, fewer diagnoses, lower cost, fewer occurences within the statistics. If cancer actually goes up, it'll remain muted or even. If it actually remains stable, the stats will show a decrease. Assuming of course this bankster bullshit gets implemented.
Remember women, Uncle Sam NOW tells you to not check your breasts for lumps. Us men the same for nuts.
Glass-Steagall
JM I spent 5 years in the pacific sailing around. I to this day wonder...how come more people in the US die from cancer then anywhere else. Is it because we have more cases of cancer? No. It's because we have western medicine...and they freak out when they find some on you. (then they see dollar signs $$$).
We in America are convinced that cancer will kill us...so it does.
In most cases it isn't the cancer but the cure for cancer that kills us.
In other cultures they either don't know they've got it or if they do...just live with it.
I've had cancer for 9 years. The docs said cut it out and get poisoned and irradiated and maybe you can beat it.
I replied "thank you very much" but no.
I expect to die from bullets or hunger first!
Chances are more people will survive cancer when they can't afford to see doctors anymore.
"JM I spent 5 years in the pacific sailing around. I to this day wonder...how come more people in the US die from cancer then anywhere else. Is it because we have more cases of cancer? No. It's because we have western medicine...and they freak out when they find some on you. (then they see dollar signs $$$)."
You're right in a way. Western medecine does a fine job at preventing mortality from The AIDS or bacterial infection. Dying of tetnus in Somalia doesn't mean the Somalis have the inside track in curing cancer with positive thoughts.
All part of the bilderberger plan to reduce the population to a reasonable size...... <sarc off>
20 minutes before the Fukushima plant’s nuclear meltdown, Israel was so upset with Japanese support for a Palestinian declaration of statehood that it double-crossed Japan by unleashing the Stuxnet virus on the plant’s computers. The virus hampered the shutdown, leading to fallout from a section of the plant housing uranium and plutonium retrieved from the warheads supplied in 2007.
http://en.trend.az/news/nuclearp/1647863.html
2 March 2010, 15:53 (GMT+04:00)
Japan submitted a new proposal to Iran for 20-percent enriched uranium, Iranian Parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee member Zohra Ilahiyan was quoted as saying by the Iklna news agency.
Tokyo expressed its intention to mediate the issue of Iran's nuclear program and proposed to sell enriched uranium to Iran, which was discussed at a meeting with Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani during his Japan visit.
She said Larijani welcomed Japan's proposal and invited the leaders of Japan's Atomic Energy Organization and representatives of Japanese Parliament to visit the country to see the nuclear facilities.
During Larijani's meting with Japanese officials, the building of several nuclear plants in Iran by Japanese specialists was discussed.
The Iranian parliamentary speaker paid a four-day visit to Japan Feb.22.
They use the term 'journalist' pretty loosely I see. How many radio stations do you get with that TFH?
wha??? It couldn't just be criminal corner cutting by TEPCO execs in a crappy old geezer nuke plant past its prime built on one of the earth's most seismically active and tsunami prone coastlines. Yeah, it was the virus. Jesus Christ nailed to a stick.
never mind...........
America has been helping Japan develop nuclear weapons since the early 1980s.
"helping" huh? ...that's sweet.
...with friends like these who needs enemas
The japs main concern has always to make Godzilla rise up and take over the world.
They r now half way there
What about Gamara and Mothra?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7gFlSGXt_k
With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down
Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them
He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town
Oh no, they say hes got to go
Go go Godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes Tokyo
Go go Godzilla, yeah
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Godzilla ga ginza hoomen e mukatte imasu!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!
Oh no, they say hes got to go
Go go Godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes Tokyo
Go go Godzilla, yeah
History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of men
Godzilla!
Crux of the biscuit.
“In three years, the [debris] plume will reach the U.S. West Coast, dumping debris on Californian beaches and the beaches of British Columbia, Alaska, and Baja California.
Boy, a third grader must have written that,as there already is over 150,000- tons of this crap, all the way from Kali, to Alaskan coastal beaches.
WITH much more coming.
Yep,
As of the reports last week, I and my families will NEVER touch another salt water species of food.
Fresh water only, from here out.As there NO way scientists have a clue what the MAX dose is, or a MIN, for humans.
It is rather stunning & ironic, that the Japanese who pay TREMENDOUS amounts of dollars, Yen, for Blue Fins, are the ones who have thus far single handedly poisoned the Pacific ocean, and no telling where else it will go (even if there is no more that gets into the Pacific).
They cannot help the Tsunami that caused this, but I DO question WTF were the reactors built near the worlds Pacific ocean?.
Anyone want Tuna best get it asap.
This will kill our Salmon industry,and all the worlds ocean fishing/shrimping/crabs,lobsters,etc,etc,etc,etc. before its done,since this crap suspends itself, every thing in the oceans that swim will get into it at some point,esp the migratory species.
Which will, in turn contaminate the other seas food chains.
IMHO & FWIW
I agree if noones going to stop the corporations from major fuck ups that poison sea
.
then they fuck all the time and we dont even know about it
"but I DO question WTF were the reactors built near the worlds Pacific ocean?."
Haven't you heard? Nuclear power is clean and safe.
It's a bit more complicated than that, but oh yeah there is a stunning amount of truth in that.
The sad thing is, the newer types of Nuclear power, are far, far safer. But the banksters need their 'money' for bailouts, wars, and derivatives.
Every nuclear plant should of been upgraded after Chernobyl, instead we roll with the dirty early generation's of reactors. Then we pile decades worth of material on top/near them, because gov'ts can't come up with one shithole spot per continent to repose it. Fukushima is another clarion call to retrofit every nuclear plant on the planet. But of course we won't do it.
It's not that nuclear energy risks can't be mitigated, it's that the money interests have no reason to do it. Old nuclear power can have significant problems, and coupled with a mega earthquake and tsunami the SHTF and can again.
Every day we continue this asinine response of closing nuclear reactors with no plans to reopen them in some areas and meanwhile keeping others open without retrofitting them. So the world gets BOTH less power and continued risk for more accidents. Especially in the arena of spent fuel pools, most pressing the Fukushima stockpile.
We need energy, and nuclear power is a stop gap until fusion. But not THEIR nuclear power. Pellets, thorium, there are lots of alternatives where it IS still nuclear power, but isn't a disaster waiting to happen through idiocy or natural disaster.
Nuclear power CAN be safe, and without energy welcome to WWIII, so the proper response is to not be asinine of the realities of the need and potential safety of newer nuclear power or ignorant/downplaying of the risks of old nuclear power. Sadly both sides seem stuck on these idiot positions, which progresses nothing and continues to risk everything (both consequences from lack of energy and radiologically exposed).
But no way in hell are we going about this based on science applied towards need. We're going off of bankster conrolled monetarism which says there is no money to retrofit, and have been saying it for decades. It's all about saving money that the banksters don't want to fund. Not for safe nuclear power. Not for fusion. Not for anything real or in the physical economy, just their fake fraud.
We need nuclear power, just not THAT style of nuclear power. Yet all we get are either 'continue on' or 'end it all'. Neither are correct. It's build/retrofit nuclear power plants that ARE safe, that use pellets (or even other materials like thorium) to power the reactions.
There's plenty of possible money, we just let the banksters and their monetarism control money, who tell us there isn't enough. So we risk having a lower energy supply around the world AND more idiocy/natural disaster/sabotage risk with current mostly 2nd generation reactors. This was the position of many people even before Fukushima. The retrofitting of nuclear plants must occur.
Glass-Steagall
The Japanese wasted and waste insane amounts of money on public projects like hugh bridges and other things. Billions funneled to the Yakuza. There was a reactor complex of I think two nuke reactors north of Fukushima. They built the ocean breakwater about two feet higher and had no problems. If FukaShima had maybe two seats of breakwaters then this might not have happened. What a nightmare.
This is one of the keywords they trawl for ... the walls have ears mate.
"the newer types of Nuclear power, are far, far safer."
Safer? Safer than the potential destruction of the Pacific Ocean and the Northern Hemisphere? I feel safer already.
"Nuclear power CAN be safe"
Nuclear power can be about as safe in the care of the world's governments as a child can be safe in the care of a pedophile.
"We need nuclear power"
No. We don't.
Thorium is not an alternative, dude. A molten salt reactor is highly dangerous and cannot be used commercially. I wish people would stop parroting the "thorium is the way to go" cock and bull story. Imagine the stupid corner cutting fucks at TEPCO running a MSReactor and the useless fucks in the NRC overseeing it---God Help Us.
At least Godzilla's happy. We might even turn into superheroes and supervillains at this rate.
This is how Godzilla was concieved.
Nothing like a gov report to build confidence in any claim.
Seems like the internal ones have a better track record than the ones meant for public dissemination
Like the oil ones they fight like hell in the Supreme Court to keep internal or those military ones where they try to extradite australians for not wearing a condom
Great, southwestern coast of Oregon. Can't wait for those three-eyed tuna already pre-cooked and ready to serve... Damn Idiots... I wonder if this was factored in in the last Bilderberger meeting? You know, population control and all... F.U. Globalists!... I'm a COCKROACH YOU BASTARDS!!!
Well, I was going to cancel the trip down to Bandon, but what the hell. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? sarc>
Just don't fish any errant golf balls out of the surf and it'll all be OK.
Back to work, serfs.
And BTW, for all the additional work we've put in keeping you safe, we're gonna have to raise your taxes.
That model is based on a single slug of radioactive material tossed into the ocean. Things would look worse with continuous feed.
No, it's the debris field from the tsunami, which is a one-time event.
No, it's the debris field from the tsunami, which is a one-time event.
If thats directed at my post, w/more coming..........you need to do your homework,many fisherman are reporting vast swathes of more of this crap headed OUR way.
So ONE time event or not, the effects are going to last longer than we live.
was this secret report before or after the one that said the ocean would not adequately dilute the human accident?
How is continious leakage a "one time event"? I may consider this article of GW quite weak, but so is your argument in response to the post you replied to.
The "big thing" in terms of fuckupshima, has never been the origin of the desaster itself, but accumulation over a timespan.
You don't seem to be paying attention. The graphic is for the physical debris of the tsunami, not the radiation, which might well be a different pattern since it mixes with the water rather than floating.
Mea culpa, my apologies NA.
Nice graphic. I'd like to see one where the effluent doesn't stop.
Thanks George - once again - for keeping this topic alive.