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Fukushima: Massive Leaks Continuing On a Daily Basis … For Years On End
You may have heard that Tepco - the operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plants - announced a large leak of radioactive water.
You may have heard that the cooling system in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima has failed for a second time in a month.
This is newsworthy stuff ... but completely misses the big picture.
Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day.
How much radiation is this?
A quick calculation shows that it is about ten thousand times less than the amounts released by Chernobyl during the actual fire at the Russian nuclear plant. But the Chernobyl fire only last 10 days ... and the Fukushima release has been ongoing for more than 2 years so far.
Indeed, Fukushima has already spewed much more radioactive cesium and iodine than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher than initially admitted.
Fukushima also pumped out huge amounts of radioactive iodine 129 – which has a half-life of 15.7 million years. Fukushima has also dumped up to 900 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium-90 – which is a powerful internal emitter which mimics calcium and collects in our bones – into the ocean.
And the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl ... and so could keep leaking for decades, centuries or millenia.
Tepco graphics of the Fukushima plants even appear to show water directly flowing from the plant to the ocean. And see this.
The bottom line is that the reactors have lost containment. There are not "some leaks" at Fukushima. "Leaks" imply that the reactor cores are safely in their containment buildings, and there is a small hole or two which need to be plugged. But scientists don't even know where the cores of the reactors are. That's not leaking. That's even worse than a total meltdown.
So what are the consequences for people living outside of Fukushima itself?
They could be quite severe, indeed.
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I feel so sad I cannot Even get angry at this shit, that thermal map pushed me over the edge.
Remember back on 3/11/11 when so many of us who were here and following Fuku were shitting ourselves in disbelief that it could possibly be that bad? Jesus fucking christ.
It has turned out worse than all the pollyannas of that time combined claimed that it would. Further, it seems that any pallatable resolution to the problem... predicament... whatever ... will not be forthcoming for another 50 million years or so.
Sea Lions dying en masse down in San Diego, 28% increase in babies born with thyroid issues... and this shit is just beginning really. All of which leads me to a question for anyone who gives a shit:
Is anyone else here starting to get the feeling that TPTB actually do have every intention of wiping out goddamned near everyone on the planet in the next few years? I mean, fuck it right? They got theirs, and now there are too many eaters, right?
Georgia guidstones. Dwindling resources. Broken economies. Passive and suicidally stupid citizenry.
Btw, hello again to any who might remember me. I still lurk every night and follow you guys who have your shit straight. I've just been busy with a new project. (also I still love you Mr. knukles, you funny motherfucker... haha)
Regards
I have to wonder how well they'll do when they own all the farms, but have killed off all the farmers....
TPTB have planned to allow for enough peasants to survive
the coming Mass Extinction Event.
They donT want to kill off their "help".
TPTB are even recruiting:
good article George. Thanks for keeping us updated.
For once I am glad to be an old man. By the time this gives me cancer, I will have lived a fairly normal lifespan. I should go out and buy one of those "old guys rule" shirts and celebrate how this might be the only disaster I will get a free pass on.
Get it in an eerie glow in the dark green....
Time to send in a mini drone and a mini submrine to see what is hppening.
Perhaps the mini drone can also drop off the mini submarine. Or have they done that already and are not game enough to show us the footage?
california real estate will become very affordable in a few short years......someone may well give it away for nothing...
I'm already seeing the results of it in my tests grades at college. Or maybe that is ZeroHedge. The point is that when things get this uncertain I feel like I'm falling.
profit/(loss) year 1: $100 (retained)
profit/(loss) year 2: ($100) (carried forward)
change in equity: -200% ie a decrease of 200%
That is the single case - switching from profit to loss - where > 100% decrease could be argued for, but that is not a correct calculation, it uses the fallacy of division by zero.
Anything relating to physical objects can only decrease by 100%, unless you would try to argue that changing from having an electron to having an anti-matter positron is a "200% decrease" in electrons. Actually you have 100% fewer electrons and 1 positron since they are two different and distinct physical objects and the initial starting count of the positrons was zero.
The same applies to the financial case - you have 100% less profit followed by a $100 liability. This is not a 100% increase in liabilities from the starting point of zero liabilities, nor is it a 200% decrease in profits.
Any % change must be from a non-zero starting quantity to be considered a % change. The reason being, you must divide by the starting quantity to calculate the change and division by zero is not defined. There is no number X you can start with such that X/0 = 1 (or 100%), for example.
Differential calculus - derivatives - allows you to divide by increasingly smaller numbers approaching, but never reaching, zero. It shows that an increase from 0 to 1 approaches infinity as the % change divisor approaches zero, as does an increase of 0 to 2, or 0 to 17 trillion. Any increase starting from 0 to any other quantity approaches an infinite % change and is, therefore, an undefined value - not a 100% change.
An increase from 1 to 3 is a 200% increase: % change = ((ending value - starting value) / starting value)*100 -> 3-1=2, 2/1 = 2, 2*100 = 200%. Note that you must be able to divide by the starting value.
Any change in quantity using a starting value of 0 cannot be expressed as a % change. Division by zero introduces a fallacy into an equation.
re those radiated Japanese cows/beef. No problem apparently , as it says in the article that authorities say no health issues if one eats contaminated meat sensibly. Now, move along, nothing to see here.
FUBAR and FUKUSHIMA= synonyms
"no health issues if one eats contaminated meat sensibly."
Yes, but remember, radiation alone will not kill e-coli. Cook the meat until it is brown in the middle, wash your hands and enjoy.
WTF does it mean to eat radioactive meat sensibly? The sensible thing to do would be to NOT EAT IT.
Just rinse the steaks under cold water for 30,000 years, get a broiling pan and broil for 4 minutes a side.
Remember to catch the water run off in steel barrels to be stored on site or if you are near a river just let it run off there.
Garnish with fresh parsley and serve.
For Fucks sake. At least I'm smart enough to find the best in the business! Arnie Gunderson
Arnie is awesome!
Fukushima is warming the ocean? That's global warming! Just double the carbon tax: BANG, SOLVED! Al Gore saves the world.
Down arrows?!?!?
Let me explain to you how it all works. Right now Al Gore is standing on the top of a mountain. He has two tablets in his hands. On these tablets are the answers to all your problems. All your prayers. But the thing is this. You must send the golden calf up the mountain to Al. Or Al is going to stay up there and drink herbal tea. And he can see the promised land from there, BTW. Al insists that you "whack it up", as he likes to put it. Only then can you hope to get his wisdom and hope to save yourself from yourself.
Whack.It.Up.
The way things are going NK will finish off Japan as far as radiation goes.
If it has a half-life of 15.7 million years then very little radiation is actually being released into the environment.
Anybody who wants to study Chernobyl should go to youtube and watch "Radioactive Wolves", a PBS program about the wildlife in Chernobyl that's doing just fine despite all the radioactivity. We were told nothing would be able to live there for centuries but that's obviously wrong.
You should visit Bikini Atoll. I have. No fauna topside. Zero. Not even a fly.
It is always a good idea to get a balanced view but I worry about the tendency to to look for any glimmer of evidence that "all is well" at the expense of realistic assessment. This is bad, this must be addressed. Many organisms can "look okay" but that tells you nothing about the danger. Every incident adds to the problem. Ignoring this is the same as a simmering frog too comfy to realize his goose is getting cooked, make no mistake about it.
WATCH THIS:
How bad is it? Hard to say. Let’s ask that guy living a mile from the reactor who now has seven heads and three arms. He’s really smart, an economist too. They say he’s like a savior, who’s going to single handedly negotiate a consensus among the G-7 nations to create a single shared monetary unit and the first central bank of the world. He’s calling his plan PAYBACK. I guess it must be an acronym for something.
-The final solution.
-On another note, i came up a new corporate slogan, "Screw everyone, then, annihilate yourself", thanks tepco for the inspiration!
Rosta
Ten thousand times less??! What a fucking idiot.
Math lesson; What is one times less than C? Zero?
So ten thousand times less means that FU is some sort of radiation Black Hole sucking up 9,999 times the radiation from C.
Whatever moron that wrote this obviously skipped fifth grade math!
Dog
Of course a phrase such as "produced one ten thousandth the radiation" is incomprehensible to most college graduates because many if them only read at the 5th grade level. Perhaps even a well-trained mathmetician would use a colloquialism when the other important word in the phrase is RADIATION. Just sayin...
Dear Troll,
Scientific papers often use the expression "x times less". See this, for example:
And see this.
Indeed, Isaac Newton - who INVENTED calculus - said:
Sir William Herschel said:
Erasmus Darwin, Robert Boyle, John Locke, and many others also used ths expression.
More importantly, Trolley Boy, that is how most Americans speak. So whether or not it is the Queen's Perfect English, most Americans (other than - apparently - you) will know exactly what I'm saying.
Go work on your game in the minor leagues before you try to stink up ZH again ...
I maintain that those scientific minds are incorrect. (Regular use or not.)
The name is Gold Dog and this type of misuse has become a regular bugaboo of mine in the media over the past several years.
Please excuse the intensity of my words.
Dog
EDIT- Trolley Boy??? As info: a) when I posted my flame your name was not posted, it just showed TD, b) I am equally outraged about having Blinky come to dinner because of the behavior and/or lack of same by the bastards who put us in this pickle, and C) I probably have read every word you have posted on the subject and thank you for your work.
Best,
TB
Sorry, Gold Dog. I retract the label.
Ditto- Sorry I wasted your time finding examples to cite.
On to the next thing........
Dog
Fucking double post...Sorry!
Sorry??? SORRY??? THere's no fucking sorry in the fight club!! We truly are doomed..
O.K.. Carry on...
I'll assume he meant "one-ten-thousandth as much". You are correct - people that don't understand basic math talk about things like "decrease of 500%" when in fact a "100% decrease" is zero, zip, as much as something can be reduced....
Where's the beef?
http://radiationnetwork.com/
Here it is ...
Thanks GW for following up on this. I followed the aftermath for one year and then stopped, realizing that everything was FUBAR and covered up. I am not a conspiracy freak. But, if the status quo continues, Tokyo may be threatened. It is only 150 miles away as the crow flies. Everything depends on airborne and groundwater pollution and the poisoning of seafood and agriculture. The USA would benefit from the relocation of wealthy Japanese to Hawaii and California. Relocation of manufacturing plants and research centers to other parts of the US would also be consistent.
it appears the cores have melted their way completely down through all structure and far enough into the ground to interact with the water table. This can't be resolved with anything even remotely on the horizon of current atomic technology. Bottom line - it basically means game over for the entire island of Japan over the next ten or so years - the entirety of what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is taking place each and every day.
And, by the way, I'd think about using a geiger counter if shopping for property anywhere on the US West coast. At a guess, in five years or so from now things will start exceeding maximum safe radiation levels and finally exceed what can be covered up. Buying California wines? Might want to think about checking the radiation levels yourself...
This shouldn't have happened given what I've been told about the structure of the reactors and the fuel being used. Really. This just seems too hot. Maybe there were a few little side projects taking place under cover of the reactor radiation? Nahh - couldn't be. Japan wouldn't have been building nukes. Right?
People aren't getting just how serious this is- serious enough that it could prove to be an ELE for life on planet Earth. Fish and aquatic mammals will be the first to go, followed by anything that feeds on them....
What's your source on this? I hadn't heard that the corium was more than a blob on the concrete containment. BTW, corium hitting the water table would result in an explosion and we haven't seen that....yet.
It's already affecting babies born in California; the radiation is showing up in the thyroid gland.
And we're doubly screwed because the lying fucks who builts Fukushima have been hired to build the reactor outside of Atlanta.
Awesome news. Atlanta. Wonder where the politicians who made THAT sweet little deal live. Nowhere to run people. Btw, sticking our heads in the sand, not too bright either.
"Maybe there were a few little side projects taking place under cover of the reactor radiation? Nahh - couldn't be. Japan wouldn't have been building nukes. Right?"
What was the MOX all about? You don't need that to boil water.
Yeah, move the Japs to the West Coast, and let China have *all*the*islands*, if they really want them. The Japs would be further away from Fat Kim too.
Give Abe a job at the Fed.
This could have a Happy End after all.
All this shit to just boil water?
How smart we are....
It was never about boiling water, it was about money and lots of it, bombs and doomsday fuel pools, hundreds of feet off the ground.
Rosta
Severity of this event was knowable from day 1 as evidenced by the speed and volume of hydrogen evolution from the destruction of the cladding on the fuel rods. The rate of the corium penetration of the concrete floor of the containments depends on the composition of the concrete (that research was done done in Usbekistan, of all places-go figure). I never could determine from any accessable literature what composition of concrete was used in Fukusuma, but now we know.
Westinghouse has upped the PSI on the concrete for Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors from 4000 PSI to 5000 PSI, but this was not for increased margin of error. It was because the rebar used in the base mats was found to have insufficient hook lengths, so to compensate they upped the PSI. This really isn't my specialty but I know that there is a huge difference in strength in concrete that has and additional 1000 PSI. Is this all there is to it, or is the material science more complicated?
+1
you know your shit dud, give thanks!