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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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Here in Ontario Canada , we have a very nuclearized Lake Ontario. How long before we have a world ending "accident". Give me windmills and solar panals on every roof any day.
The current human evolution path has deadended into an unsustainable financial and environmental blackhole. A good dose of DNA splintering radiaion to goose the evolutionary shake and bake is required to put the human train back on the sustainability track.
The tree of life will soon resemble a stump.
the tree of knowledge of good and EVIL has green shoots.
Do you mean accounting, black hole?
Independent off the grid energy is not part of 'their' plan unless they own the wind and sun.
The solution is not to subsidize wind and solar, but rather, to remove the subsidies on oil, coal, nuclear and biofuels and let the market sort things out.
EDIT: which is impossible at this point, since interest rate manipulation is a part of the subsidies, and without interest rates being manipulated, we have rampant insolvency.
I don't know if the market can sort things out as you say, but I'm definitely in favor of getting rid of oil and gas subsidies. Good grief. Why the hell are we still doing this? Actually I can answer my own question. The Energy subcomittee is the second largest committee in the house. Lots of greased palms and under the table corruption. Sorry, I couldn't feign my own ignorance on this one.
Tragically, you summarized the situation, Matt: "... let the market sort things out. EDIT: which is impossible at this point ..."
Many who followed this story had a good idea from the start that it was going to kill tens of millions of people, and other living things, if not considerably more.
That illustrates my basic point, that money is backed by murder. Since we have a fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system, everything we are doing is increasingly insane, because we are measuring everything with a bent rubber ruler, which is being more and more stretched out of shape all the time. The deeper problem with respect to all possible alternative energy production systems is the central problem with the energy system that we call "civilization." Our society is ruled by its death controls, and those who are the best at doing that are also the best at lying about that. Therefore, we end up with a world almost totally dominated by legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, everywhere one looks!
Atomic power becomes the most manifest display of the social insanity of civilization being controlled by the people who are the best at deceits, backed up by destruction. Indeed, there would be no atomic power production without the history of atomic bombs, that massively subsidized the development of atomic technologies, including the horrible experiments to discover the dangers of various forms of radiation. Fukushima is another one of those horrible experiments, which looks like it is at least several hundred times worse than anything that was ever done before. The eventual deaths and destruction caused by that are going to become orders of magnitude worse than what was caused by the deliberate atomic bombing of Japan at the end of World War II.
Since our mass media are dominated by the same ruling classes that have their social position and power because they were selected by history to be the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, serving organized systems of fraud and robbery, that benefit those ruling classes, our mass media have been misrepresenting the Fukushima story more than any other story, since the mass media lie about everything, and the more important something is, the more that the mass media lie about that. The mass media particularly specialize in "lying by omission," and the degree to which they are doing that here is greater than almost anything else, (except perhaps with respect to other forms of covert geoengineering, that are even harder to get a handle on.)
NATURAL SELECTION COMMENSURATES THE INCOMMESURABLES. The only "markets" that are still standing to "sort things out" are the ones that are beyond human control, and therefore, those which human beings can not effectively lie about, nor effectively back up their lies with coercion.
Within the parameters of our current civilization, we are terminally screwed. The people who are the most wealthy and powerful have almost totally sewed everything up, by being the best at dishonesty, backed with violence. Therefore, everything our civilization is doing is based on the runaway triumph of huge lies, backed by lots of violence, spinning around faster, to become automatically more insane. However, there is nothing practical and realistic within that system which other human beings can actually to to change that. The ruling classes rule on the basis of lies, backed by violence, and therefore, they do not care about better evidence or logical arguments. They will simply continue to deliberately ignore that, and continue to use dirty tricks to discredit or destroy anybody who gets in their way, by presenting more of the radical truth about our reality, IF doing that becomes significant enough for those ruling classes to notice.
As far as I can tell, it seems politically impossible to resolve our real problems, due to the paradoxes that surround the history of warfare creating situations where success was based on deceit. Thus, our governments are organized crime on the highest level, and they are covertly controlled by the biggest gangsters, the banksters, through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems. Furthermore, to appreciate that human civilization is an energy system more deeply is to understand WHY that has ended up to be our REALITY. Not only is money backed by murder, but it must be! The consequences of being able to get away with lying about that means that those murders will happen through the tragic social insanities, which will tend to become suicidal, and then almost omnicidal.
There are plenty of creative alternatives with respect to ways to produce and distribute energy! However the BASIC political problems can not be avoided regarding Alternative Energies & Society Adapted to Them
Given that there is any life at all, which is able to grow and reproduce, then the death controls upon that life are the central issues. Thus, the death controls that operate through human civilizations are the most important things to care about. Therefore, warfare was the oldest and best developed of social sciences. BUT, success in war was based on deceit. That was the process that made the War Kings, than created the powers of sovereign states, which were then covertly taken over by the Fraud Kings, the central banks, being able to completely corrupt governments to legalize frauds, and yet, employ the force of governments to make everyone else have to accept those frauds.
Thus, there was a direct line from atomic bombs to atomic power. Atomic bombs were the supreme manifestation of death control power, and atomic energy production was developed inside of that context, where every decision made to do that took place through a fraudulent accounting system, in which a bent rubber ruler was used to measure every risk and benefit there.
The deeper and deeper political problems we encounter with science and technology becoming trillions of times more powerful is that we do NOT escape from the paradoxes of "success through deceits."
There are profound reasons WHY the death controls are actually operated by the people who are the best at lying about what they are doing, while operating their real systems as covertly as possible, to the extent that they themselves, after lying about that for generation after generation, might even tend to believe their own lies! Those reasons WHY then drove the rest of the reasons why the debt controls are also the result of triumphant frauds. Thus, the development of atomic power production followed the general pattern regarding how everything else is done in the social pyramid system, which has been growing since Neolithic civilization began! When people did a risk/benefit analysis of developing atomic power production plants, their calculations were done using "money" made out of nothing, as debts, backed by the powers of governments to rob and to kill. Their economic calculations were deliberately as short-term as possible, to a ridiculous degree. They deliberately did not think about the ways that atomic energy production was subsidized by atomic bomb production. They promoted false fundamental dichotomies between those two activities.
However, all of those kinds of triumphant lies now results in events like Fukushima, being way worse than we can possibly imagine, with no known way to stop that from happening. The deeper problems that the human experiment faces is how can the progress in science and technology ever come to terms with the political problems with respect to the death control factors, whereby the energy system of human civilization is controlled by the people who are the best at being deceitful.
Fukushima is the currently manifesting most extreme particular example of that problem of the results of controlling what society does through the process of the prolonged triumphs of the most deceitful people, directing what happens. Fukushima was the result of what happens when the combined human ecology & political economy systems are almost totally dominated by force backed frauds. Fukushima is what happens when a fraudulent money/murder system fucks up!
However, as but one more example, that still does not comprehend the whole pattern of these kinds of profound political problems, that human beings MUST have some ecology, in which the death controls are the central features that control everything else, including the debt controls, which then provide the facts and figures that our political economy employs to do risk/benefit analyses of what kind of developments we should invest in for the future.
The central problem is that money is backed by murder, and it must be. However, those who did that the most were the best at lying about that. Therefore, those are the most taboo social topics, (Those taboos surrounding money are now even more than surrounding sex, although sex and death were always biologically related.) The development of atomic power is the leading example of what happens when technologies make human beings many orders of magnitude more powerful, but the central controls of human civilization are still directed deceitfully.
However, there must still be, IF human being survive, some kind of money/murder system. That imperative will become greater and greater, as more science and technology advances, and gives rise to an industrial ecology. There are infinitely deeper levels to these problems! Every possible altnative energy production system will still be inside of the death control systems, which will be the keystone, lynch pin, and central core of any other possible set of alternative technologies, and the alternative life styles that go with those alternative technologies. Right now, we have an established system where the ruling classes rule with almost no trouble at all. They are pretty well able to cruise on autopilot, lying about everything to the lower classes, who have been reduced to being not much more than Zombie Sheeple, who have already been almost totally brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' social stories.
Therefore, despite the long-term insanities with respect to the way that atomic energy production was developed, the previous history of militarism, which made the previous War Kings, and then the Fraud Kings, had set up the social systems whereby those insane decisions could be made.
Somehow, it seems symbolically appropriate that Japan, which is one of the countries which was the most famous for the social status of committing suicide, and one of the countries that most eagerly embraced the development of science and technology, has also apparently led the way towards somewhat committing collective suicide. In horrible ways, there appears some poetic justice, operating far beyond the "markets" which can "no longer sort things out."
The free market in militarism made the free market money system, and both of those together made the decisions to build and operate the Fukushima atomic power plants in the ways which they were, with their predictable eventual consequences. The errors in those decisions are apparently now being corrected, resulting in murdering many millions of people, and other living things.
In theory, surely we should be able to operate some better murder system than that!
Why do you think Japan doubled its' money supply?
There will be trillions of yen and no country to back them up.
The island is poisoned.
#DPRK doesn't need to strike the US to cause a nuclear disaster on the West Coast. All they need to do is destroy reactor 4 at Fukishima.
Thanks for staying on this story, GW. I have a grandson who was born in Aug 2011 and is displaying symptoms of hyperthyroidism. He is deaf and isn't walking yet. Such a bright little guy; breaks my heart to think these greedy bastards at Tepco could be the cause.
You are just blaming the greedy Tepco bastards? How about the Japanese government for covering it up too? Or the US government? Or the media? Theres more going on than just "greed". Is it because you are a liberal and don't want to cast any blame on your beloved government and media institutions that you hold so dear? Its just evil corporations right?
Maybe it wasn't West's intention to exhaustively list all who brought us this disaster. His point was what they did to his grandson.
Take a chill pill.
Your hardwarming reaction overflows with feelings of sympathy.
Yes the problem is ... wait for it...LIBERALS.
There we've fixed the blame...now lets get on with the nuking of North Korea and/or Iran.
Besides, the environment asked for it by earthquaking Fukishima.
Environmentalism and anti-nuclear activism is libtard hoakum.
I wasn't blaming just liberals. I was making sure he wasn't going to leave out the other people. You know, the ones who love their big government institutions, because they are protecting us from everything bad? The bigger governments get, the shittier our lives become. But hey, thats just MY opinion.
And you believe only liberals make the government larger? Or happen to be the only party that fails to report on things that would make them look bad or cause the sheep to be alarmed?
The libtard vs conservitard argument, it's like watching two feral dogs fight over week old cat shit.
Where did I give republicans a pass? Westcoastliberal was hoisting the "blame" for Fukishima on Tepco (as if it was solely "big" corporate greed that caused it). I was simply pointing out, because most "liberals" tend to only blame corporations for the worlds ills, and not government, that he shouldn't forget about the government's involvement in the whole thing too. I personally think, that the government is the biggest problem we face. They are the ones who let the corporations cut corners while the "regulators" are off watching tranny porn.
So no shit Sherlock, I realize there are plenty of big government conservatives too. Are you happy now?
Maybe everybody should blame more on the liberals.
I had to spend about 4 hours with a buncha neo-con fucking lunatics yesterday... deranged people... and in my humble opinion, if there were no libtards than the neo-cons would have nothing to rail on about, and I wouldn't have to listen problem solved.
The today I spent about 4 hours with soem raving lunatic liberals... in which case if there were no neo-cons I'd not have to laisten to their shit, either.
Say, maybe we buy and island out near the Bikini Atoll and....
Thank you GE.
Solution is simple, build a fucking cofferdam around the fucking reactors.
You get some pile-drivers and put them to work. It should have been started immediately after 3-11 with the dam finished by the end of that summer.
http://www.skylinesteel.com/globalnav/products/steel-sheet-piling
The same water is run through the reactor over and over, nothing leaks outside the cofferdam.
Good fucking grief! Goddamned people are all fucking incompetent.
I suspect you have no practical experience with cofferdams. One engineering source-
"In construction of cofferdams maintaining close tolerances is difficult since cofferdams are usually constructed offshore and sometimes under severe weather conditions".
Three generations of my family specialized in cofferdams (and other underwater and underground civil construction).
All cofferdams are designed with massive 24 hour pumping(with constant "leaking" of outside water into the cofferdam), which gives a relatively dry, but quite damp, area to work in.
I do however share your exasperation at what little has been done some two years and counting since 311 occurred.
What work, if any, was performed with the specialized very large concrete pumps flown in from Germany? It is long since past the time that a design was completed, and construction having been begun.
I suspect that neither TEPCO nor the Japanese Gov't know where to find the many billion $ necessary for the fix, or the many brave souls to die of radiation poisoning from doing the work.
SHoulda used the blunt SOviet approach.
Encase the fucker in concrete, declare wictory and trink more Wodka!
Yeah - great suggestion. Next time a volcano blows somewhere on planet earth, why not suggest they try that approach to contain it. Just use bigger pile drivers, right? Did someone forget to mention that automated equipment and electronics break down in a few hours due to the radiation? Those radiation hardened robots they send in to look around have a useful life of under an hour. So, bring a sledge hammer with you to drive those pilings - they'd only need to be driven about 1/2 mile deep...
If it was easy, they would have started already. Radiation in Japan reactor disaster probably much worse than Chernobyl reactor disaster radiation. Those Japanese General Electric reactors are completely different in design compared to the Russian/Ukrainian Chernobyl reactors, which I believe were solid carbon moderator cores, which solid carbon does not leak out, and not GE light water moderator cores, which water can and did leak out.
One major difference...according to the CNN weatherman of course...is that Chernobyl had no containment to "breach." they say the gamma ray burst really was a sight to behold actually. Fukushima unfortunately DID have containment...causing not one but two EXPLOSIONS (caused by pure hydrogen gas bubbles which ignited.) "now you have a mess." good luck cleaning it up. Interestingly "they just started letting seawater in to cool the thing down." hmmmm. Word on that was "no one of any reason to do that." don't worry...Physics Today has all the info...stuff like "you'll get more radiation from eating a banana that from catching the rays at Fukushima" and other profound "we careology" stuff. Sorry but Tim can't fix this one I'm afraid. The Navy is apparently still scrubbing down that Aircraft Carrier that "at first was sent to help but then found itself 200 miles offshore helping." move along! Move along!
The cores are underneath; your dome will need to go underground as well. Maybe out into the ocean, too, if the cores are directly contacting ocean water. Oh, and BTW, it is too radioactive for robots to function, so you're going to need to volunteer to operate the machinery manually, mmkay?
Obviously you know nothing about cost-benefit analysis as related to large-scale construction projects. Why build a relatively small cofferdam that will likely not be large enough, but cost a lot of money, when you can temporarily store all the radiactive water from the plant in the ocean? Once it decays the radioactivity will be gone and you will not have a useless coffer dam sitting around.
how much radiation gets airborne?
http://agora.ex.nii.ac.jp/earthquake/201103-eastjapan/weather/gpv/wind/index.html.en
http://enenews.com/fukushima-nuclear-materials-reported-off-china-coast-official-the-authority-will-publish-relevant-information-in-a-timely-manner-once-any-threat-is-detected
Short half-life isotope = high radiation dose in a short time.
Long half-life isotope = low radiation dose in a short time.
Therefore a long half-life isotope is less dangerous as radiation source per unit of isotope weight, per amount of short time span.
The shorter the half-life, the sooner the radiation disappears from that isotope, so the trick is to avoid short-half-life isotopes at the beginning of the isotope existence, when it is still "hot".
That is why radiation fallout shelters are meant for short time protection against short half-life isotopes, after the initial blast protection.
Type of radiation is also important to danger, difference between alpha, beta, gamma radiation.
Carbon-14 is radioactive with a long half-life, yet is everywhere in small amounts, with little harm.
Chemical toxicity is a different problem. Heavy elements from nuclear fuel materials are often chemically toxic, in addition to radiation toxicity. Chemical toxicity continues forever, at a constant risk rate.
However, I agree, Fukushima is currently a major problem, and could become very much more dangerous, such as core meltdown breaching containment, and spent fuel rods burning in atmosphere if spent fuel rods storage containers lose cooling water.
131I is the classic short-lived isotope. Which is why taking potassium iodine tablets is recommended as a radiation prophylactic. It works by loading up the thyroid with the stable 127I thus preventing uptake of the carcinogenic 131I and other dangerous isotopes. Radioactive iodine has a half-life of 7 days so this treatment is universally regarded by health professionals as being effective.
Long life isotopes like Cesium (137Cs) with a half-life of more than 30 years are harder to deal with. Curiously the biological halflife of 137Cs is only about 70 days so loading up on potassium will help prevent uptake and dispersion throughout the body. Colloidal treaments with Russian Blue have also been shown to be effective in dogs, increasing the lifespan after exposure by more than 2X. Similarly, you can counteract the effects of Strontium (90Sr) with calcium-magnesium supplements, since Strontium is a calcium analog.
Alpha emitters are only a problem if inhaled or if they enter the blood stream. You can hold an alpha emitter like Plutonium in your hand with no problem--the skin will stop the alpha particles. But if you were to inhale Pu dust you would be in serious trouble. Pu tends to lodge in the testicles and ovaries where the short range high energy alpha particles do tremendous damage to the DNA.
Anyway, the bottom line is we need to shut these nuclear plants down. We've proven that we don't know how to operate them safely and they are more trouble to the human race than they are worth.
Really? "Strontium in small quantities really is quite harmless"? When last I checked "fish are bony." and "sushi has been dirt cheap going on two years now."
The reactions going on are usually occurring in deep space and not in a viable biosphere that has taken billions of years to develop - humanity has screwed the pooch on this one.....
Yup...with chalk dust.
Oh, we are all FUKd. Not to mention that the reactors failed PRIOR to the quake, which many [myself included] assert was the direct result of weather warfare using scalar weaponry such as HAARP in Gakona, AL. This is all Agenda21 crap, intended to be sold to the public as "natural disasters" while the purpetrators of these heinous genocidal crimes hide behind "plausible deniability".
Megapuke.
http://www.enenews.com
Amazing that so many people ignore the weight of the evidence......
I guess we need these wide differences of opinion, otherwise it just wouldn't be fight club.
Here's some sites where you and your batshit will feel more at home: infowars.com, davidicke.com, heavensgate.com. Have fun!
the news media has really dialed this one down, but the hyperthyroidism story is out. one article made the yahoo news, (but not google) and this makes you laugh or cry, the story warns parents to take their children to the doctor within a week of exposure, while we are well past that time now, because with early treatment the problem can be prevented. too bad our government (whose leaders should have their heads hoisted on picards if this is true) failed to moblize the national health service probably out of fear thet it might take the dow jones off a few points.
Maybe forcing those lazy Yahoo swine to show up for work is generating some results after all...
Not to be too pedantic. but I believe that is "pitards".
"petards".
Oh my...
Fukushima (n) - what one gets when an incredibly corrupt and incompetent corporation operates antique reactors in an earthquake/tsunami zone.
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Japan has always been plotting revenge, the plant is a joke on the world, cannot anyone see this!!
Proof you say?..how about THIS>>"Fukushima" FUC US HI MA or Fuck the U.S. Hawaii to Massachusetts...ok, it's just me
Japan is have Nukushima... America is have Fubama.
Oh, and Russia is have Putin - pure alpha male rule!
Canadia friend is tell me also have putin, but is more like julienne potato with gravy and goat cheese. But okay.