please let me into an alternative universe

[click image]

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I promise to be good.

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<— Note here a visual on why I keep insisting there are no cooling ponds to fill where they say they have been filling. For comparison's sake, HERE is an image of the Daiichi complex from over two weeks ago, when the place was still in relatively good shape. You may have noticed lately the green elongated large hunks of junk in the wreckage, especially if you've been following my links. Those correspond to that orange gizzy above the cooling pond in the diagram. If you know people still confused about this, you should ask them to compare the image with the reactor building diagrams, maybe include a little coaching on the effect of a quake of such magnitude on concrete structures, and maybe a little arm waving toward illustration of blast mechanics and see if they don't have an aha moment.


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LENDMAN NAILS IT....

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love, 99
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real world use for our thought experimenting exercises

[click image]

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I give you this link because I think the guy is good at giving visuals that help people get an idea of what might actually be taking place while confronted with information we know is bogus. He seems to be downplaying it all, but not in the same way as most of the liars and instapundits. He seems to be addressing the seriousness of it. He discusses some of the mechanisms of the plutonium popping up in soil samples, and why monitors can't monitor it. He does NOT, so far as I have seen here yet, mention the Sacred MOX. He's used by the Maddow fascist on MSNBC, and that would be because he won't step over the line. So you MUST bear in mind the guy isn't telling the whole truth, is steering clear of it, or you will be fooled by him. The one good reason to risk tainting your understanding is the chance to enhance it, and if you've been practicing that special kind of attention I keep mentioning around here, maybe you can do this.

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I mean, how long can you read shit like this:

Fukushima nuclear complex has been found to have radioactive water leaking into the sea from a cracked concrete pit.

In a discovery regulators said might explain the radioactive water that has hobbled efforts to quell Japan's nuclear crisis, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said the radiation in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour.

"With radiation levels rising in the seawater near the plant, we have been trying to confirm the reason why, and in that context, this could be one source," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

He cautioned, however, "We can't really say for certain until we've studied the results."

TEPCO is preparing to pour concrete into the pit to stop the leak, added Nishiyama.

before you start tearing your hair out in clumps in advance of the radiation doing it for you? Monster quake? Cracked cement? Who knew?

Maybe that soft-pedaling engineer isn't mentioning there is no pool to cool at Unit 3 because that's obvious, or mentioning that the MOX in it has anything to do with the plutonium readings in the soil because that too is obvious, and maybe he's not mentioning the decimated reactor and cement under it because that, too, is obvious. That might be stuff he covered before I bothered to listen to some of his explaining on his website. It seems to me they've all been threatened with death if they speak of Unit 3. Say what you will about any other reactor, but mention Number 3 and you're a dead person.

The AP, however, the one that gets everyone by one means or another, says they've discovered a crack in the cement under Unit 4... three weeks into the meltdown. Oh, oh! No wonder all these half-assed measures have only let the problem worsen. The concrete is cracked! So, darn, all that work that would have been righteous has been foiled by this entirely unforeseeable nuance... that now must be studied.

I think, possibly, the power companies have fired all their scientists and engineers in favor of minimum wage workers, and the management of all of them couldn't add up to one brain between them. All that operates at any of them are the receivables departments and the stockholders' automatic deposits. Anyone who would know what to do has been paid not to even think it, and deaf, dumb and blind capitalism will out.

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And Fascists Love Ineffective Protest....

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love, 99
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blatant green bias

[click image]

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I thought for purposes of steadying our nerves over the determined effort to downplay the nukequake effects that I would focus in a jot on Christopher Busby, since he seems to be the only one out there with a willingness to sound lucid and keep it up.

And in any case, this external irradiation is not the problem. The problem is internal irradiation. The Iodine-131 is not in the whole body, it is in the thyroid gland and attached to the blood cells: hence the thyroid cancer and the leukaemia. And there is a whole list of internal radioactive elements that bind chemically to DNA, from Strontium-90 to Uranium. These give massive local doses to the DNA and to the tissues where they end up. The human body is not a piece of wire that you can apply physics to. The concept of dose which Wade uses cannot be used for internal exposures. This has been conceded by the ICRP itself in its publications. And in an interview with me in Stockholm in 2009, Dr Jack Valentin, the ex-Scientific Secretary of the ICRP conceded this, and also made the statement that the ICRP risk model, the one used by all governments to assess the outcome of accidents like Fukushima, was unsafe and could not be used.

The guy is obviously a shill for Gaia, and something of a maniac for plain speech....

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love, 99
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for your consideration

[click image]

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Old Uncle Dave brought this up in comments, and I think it merits attention and consideration. I mean, I don't know if it would have to be nukes, but the critical material hitting groundwater is not a pretty concept.

Fukushima is going to dwarf Chenobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.

The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

If reactor 3 is in meltdown,  the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down. It will explode – not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.

Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense – it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different – a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That’s probably a bad solution.

A nuclear meltdown is a self-sustaining reaction. Nothing can stop it except stopping the reaction. And that would require a nuclear weapon. In fact, it would require one in each containment vessel to merely stop what is going on now. But it will be messy.

Fukushima was waiting to happen because of the placement of the emergency generators. If they had not all failed at once by being inundated by a tsunami, Fukushima would not have happened as it did – although it WOULD still have been a nuclear disaster. Every containment in the world is built to withstand a Magnitude 6.9 earthquake; the Japanese chose to ignore the fact that a similar earthquake had hit that same general area in 1896.

Anyway, here is the information that the US doesn’t seem to want released. And here is a chart that might help with perspective.

Making matters worse is the MOX in reactor 3. MOX is the street name for ‘mixed oxide fuel’ which uses ~9% plutonium along with a uranium compound to fuel reactors. This is why it can be used.

The problem is that you don’t want to play with this stuff. A nuclear reactor means bring fissile material to a point at which it is hot enough to boil water (in a light-water reactor) and not enough to melt and go supercritical (China syndrome or a Chernobyl incident). You simply cannot let it get away from you because if it does, you can’t stop it.

The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.

This was from the 27th, when they hadn't yet admitted they couldn't clean it up, but the problem has not been mitigated or averted and can only get worse if there is nothing done to halt it... if anything can halt it....

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love, 99
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got brains?

[click image]

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I could just edit the snot outta this piece and you'd die laughing.

There is no health risk from consuming milk with extremely low levels of radiation, like those found in Washington state and California, experts said Thursday, echoing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"When we have a disaster like we've had with a nuclear power plant in Japan, we're probably going to find things that are truly not a public health risk [right along with those that truly are], but I think it's very difficult for the public to assimilate this information and understand the risks [so please don't explain them in public]," said Dr. Wally Curran, a radiation oncologist and head of Emory University's Winship Cancer Center.

The federal agency said Wednesday it was increasing its nationwide monitoring of radiation in milk, precipitation, drinking water, and other outlets. It already tracks radiation in those potential exposure routes through an existing network of stations across the country.

Results from screening samples of milk taken in the past week in Spokane, Washington, and in San Luis Obispo County, California, detected radioactive iodine, or iodine-131, at a level 5,000 times lower than the limit set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, officials said.

At that level, a person would have to drink 1,000 liters of milk to receive the same amount of radiation as a chest X-ray, said Dr. James Cox, radiation oncologist at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center. [Except the radiation from the milk stays in the body well over a thousand times longer than that from a chest X-ray and they stopped giving regular chest X-rays decades ago because the accumulation was very hazardous to your health.]

The I-131 isotope has a very short half-life of about eight days, the EPA said, so the level detected in milk and milk products is expected to drop relatively quickly. [Except if nobody caps it off in Japan, otherwise it just keeps coming.]

"The good news about iodine is, it has a short half-life," said Curran. "It doesn't dwell in any biologic system [except if you want to nitpick about your thyroid], be it an adult, a child, a cow, for any significant period of time, and at those levels there's no evidence that there's any medical significance."

Radiation gets into the milk because it falls on grass eaten by cows. The milk does not itself absorb radiation. [So when we measure the iodine in it, we go measure it in the cow paddies on that glowing green grass and extrapolate from that.]

FDA senior scientist Patricia Hansen also said the findings are "minuscule" compared to what people experience every day.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said tests confirmed the milk is safe to drink.

"This morning I spoke with the chief advisers for both the EPA and the FDA and they confirmed that these levels are minuscule and are far below levels of public health concern, including for infants and children," Gregoire said in a statement.

"According to them, a pint of milk at these levels would expose an individual to less radiation than would a five-hour airplane flight." [And yer kid rides in airplanes for five hours radically more often than he drinks milk, right?]

Similarly, the California Department of Public Health reassured residents that the levels do not pose a threat. [Go back to sleep.]

"When radioactive material is spread through the atmosphere, it drops to the ground and gets in the environment. When cows consume grass, hay, feed, and water, radioactivity will be processed and become part of the milk we drink. However, the amounts are so small they pose no threat to public health," the department said. [We checked the paddies.]

At least 15 states have reported radioisotopes from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in air or water or both. No states have recommended that residents take potassium iodide, a salt that protects the thyroid gland from radioactive iodine.

Iodine-131 has been found in Eastern states from Florida to Massachusetts as well as in Western states like Oregon, Colorado, and California, according to sensors and officials in those states.

None of the levels poses a risk to public health, they said.

At high levels [at ANY levels], the isotope focuses on and accumulates in a person's thyroid gland, Curran said. A medical test for thyroid health involves a person ingesting iodine-131 and undergoing a nuclear scan to examine the gland. [Congratulations! You no longer have to drink the iodine first!]

The Japanese plant has been leaking radiation since it was damaged in a tsunami that followed a massive earthquake March 11 [and so has been here sliming Californians for approximately two weeks and yer still not dead so shaddap.]

I could.

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love, 99
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here's yer sign

[click image]

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Ya think?

In a sign that radiation is continuing to leak from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration of 4,385 times the maximum level permitted under law has been detected in seawater near the plant, according to the latest data made available Thursday morning.

Japanese authorities were also urged to consider taking action over radioactive contamination outside the 20-kilometer evacuation zone around the plant, as the International Atomic Energy Agency said readings from soil samples collected in the village of Iitate, about 40 km from the plant, exceeded its criteria for evacuation.

The authorities denied that either situation posed an immediate threat to human health, but the government said it plans to enhance radiation data monitoring around the plant on the Pacific coast, about 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.

According to the government's nuclear safety agency, the concentration level of radioactive iodine-131 in a seawater sample collected Wednesday afternoon around 330 meters south of the plant exceeded the previous high recorded the day before. In Tuesday's sample, the concentration level was 3,355 times the maximum legal limit.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, acknowledged there is a possibility that radiation is continuing to leak into the sea, adding, ''We must check that (possibility) well.''

...

The No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors at the plant are believed to have suffered damage to their cores, possibly releasing radioactive substances, while the fuel rods of the No. 4 reactor kept in a spent fuel pool are also believed to have been exposed at one point, as the reactors lost cooling functions after the March 11 quake and tsunami.

But it gets better. This state of affairs has pushed the prime minister to new heights of statesmanship.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Thursday he will look into reviewing from scratch the existing plan to build at least 14 more nuclear reactors by 2030, as a result of the ongoing nuclear crisis.

I really may be forced to subscribe to Hoagland's nutty space wars theory now. No. Really. WHAT could explain this shit short of vicious space invaders holding world leaders hostage to the awesomeness of their weaponry?

I can't think of a thing.

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The gloves are coming off....

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love, 99
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the other shoe drops

[click image]

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You will recall the blather early on about needing to change "Fukushima I and Fukushima II" to "Daiichi and Daini"... and then not hearing anything about Daini after the first couple days. Well:

Smoke was spotted at another nuclear plant in northeastern Japan on Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The company said smoke was detected in the turbine building of reactor No. 1 at the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant around 6 p.m.

Smoke could no longer be seen by around 7 p.m., a company spokesman told reporters.

The Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant is about 6 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where workers have been scrambling to stave off a meltdown since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems there.

After the dual disasters, Japanese authorities also detected cooling-system problems at the Fukushima Daini plant, and those living within a 10-kilometer radius (6 miles) of Fukushima Daini were ordered to evacuate as a precaution.

Maybe they should try the Chernobyl Option on the entire prefecture?

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love, 99
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good-ish news at last

[click image]

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Somewhat internally inconsistent, but I will take it.

The Japanese government has decided to decommission all six reactors at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. TEPCO is also considering the construction of a containment shell at some of its reactors.

Earlier on Wednesday, Tsunehisa Katsumata, a chairman of TEPCO, said the company saw scrapping its four most troubled reactors as inevitable, Kyodo News reports.

However, Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary and top spokesman in the Kan government, went further and suggested that all of the reactors at the Fukushima plant should be scrapped.

"It is very clear looking at the social circumstances. That is my perception," Edano said to a news conference, as quoted by Kyodo News.

In addition, TEPCO is planning to cover the damaged units with a special containment shell made of a high-tech fabric. This cover is aimed at preventing radioactive particles from escaping into the atmosphere, Asahi Shimbun newspaper reports.

Specialists will first apply a unique compound onto all four reactors, to prevent radioactive particles from escaping into the atmosphere, and then will cover units 1, 3 and 4 with the fabric, to enforce the protection.

This decision echoes the steps that Soviet specialists had to undertake in the case of the Chernobyl reactor. It was eventually sealed off within a massive concrete tomb called the sarcophagus. The catastrophe provided valuable lessons in how to deal with a reactor disaster, but also stern warnings about the dangers of nuclear energy.

Japanese workers have been unsuccessfully trying to restore the cooling system at the Fukushima facility, in what is now the worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl. The level of radiation measured in seawater near the site, is now said to be around 3,500 times higher than normal.

I had to double check this, and finally found China chiming in with Russia, so I think things are looking uppish.

Here's a more conservative report, but generally flowing in the same direction, from Japan.

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More from Japan.

The government plans to spray a water-soluble resin over debris at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to prevent radiation leaks from spreading further, officials said Wednesday.

An unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle will spray the solution in order to affix radioactive substances onto the debris, the officials said.

...

Spraying resin over the debris at the plant is a temporary measure before fundamental measures are taken to contain radioactive substances, the officials added.

I'm going to guess that the arrival of the French experts is beginning to have an impact.

Anne Lauvergeon, president of Areva SA, has arrived in Japan to offer help in resolving the crisis at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, officials at the French nuclear fuel company said Wednesday.

Accompanied by five French nuclear experts, Lauvergeon's visit appears to underline France's full-fledged commitment to assist Japan, which has sought French help in tackling the crisis.

...

Areva is commissioned by Japanese power companies to process uranium-plutonium mixed-oxide fuel, so-called MOX fuel. MOX fuel used at the No. 3 reactor unit at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was manufactured by Areva and was shipped from France.

I don't know if the French will be arguing against burying it all, or for it. The company announced scrapping the four units, and the Japanese government added the other two, and then the French arrived... and the resin spraying shot into the headlines... but at least it's out there on the table for real.

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love, 99
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thanks to old uncle dave

[click image]

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I was able to drill through the crap to get us that link.

By measuring the energy of the gamma rays from the filters, [people at University of Washington] have identified exactly which fission products have made their way across the Pacific. And this in turn allows them to make a number of interesting inferences about what has gone wrong at Fukushima. Today, they post the results of the first five days of monitoring on the arXiv.

What they found was small amounts of iodine-131, iodine-132, tellurium-132, iodine-133, cesium-134 and cesium 137.

...

The first comes from the amount of iodine-131 and tellurium-132 which are both short-lived with half lives of 8 and 3 days respectively. That indicates that they must have come from fuel rods that were recently active rather than from spent fuel.

...

[T]hese guys speculate that what they're seeing is the result of contaminated steam being released into the atmosphere.

I recommend you go to the image link and battle it out for yourself, since the assurances of radiation levels being well below what the EPA deems alarming has always been highly suspect, and is about to reach critical mass.

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At length, we have come to the point where there is some indication of the claptrap Secretary Chu was on about at least a week ago, and seemed psychedelic at the time. This might mean No. 2, the unit that appears, from the outside, to be in the best shape, had already melted down when he was talking about it and we just didn't get to hear about it for all these days, OR, and you MUST consider this, it's an attempt at misdirection, a bid to get us to take our eyes off their sacred MOX in No. 3, which is now so mangled that it no longer resembles a former building.

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love, 99
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i want you to take another look at this

[click image, left to right, four, three, two, one]

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I am upset that Digital Globe has not published any more recent images than this, but, really, all you need to do is study this image carefully, put it together with what you know about radiation, and what you know about physical reality, and you can tell for sure the crap coming over the news wires is balderdash. This is every bit as egregious as the Gulf Blowout, and more. WHAT is really going on?

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This image is from two days ago. Note that No. 3 looks considerably worse even than the horrifying it was ten days ago.




<—— No. 1





<—— No. 2




<—— No.3





<—— No. 4



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As Americans focus on March Madness and Dancing With the Stars instead of the radioactive plume spreading all across the country, the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is attempting to make the mainstream media cover up of the Fukushima cloud a bit easier.

The agency now notorious for its infamous claim that the air was safe to breathe after 9/11 is now seeking to raise the PAGs (Protective Action Guides) to levels vastly higher than those at which they are currently set allowing for more radioactive contamination of the environment and the general public in the event of a radioactive disaster.

PAGs are policies established by the EPA that guide the agency in enforcing the various environmental laws such as the Clean Air and Water Act in the invent of a radioactive emergency such as a nuclear/dirty bomb or factory meltdown like that occurring in Japan.

Hey, it's like the debt ceiling, get it?

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love, 99
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subliminals

[click image]

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Pfeh.

Not looking for sympathy here, but the life of a political reporter isn’t all champagne and canapes. Consider our man Scott Powers, who was sent over to the Winter Park home of Alan Ginsburg this morning as the designated “pool reporter” — aka scribe — for the fundraiser where Vice President Joe Biden is appearing on behalf of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

Turns out the veep hadn’t arrived, but about 150 guests (minimum donation $500) were already in the house. So to prevent Scott from mingling with the crowd, a member of Biden’s advance team consigned him to a storage closet — and then stood outside the door to make sure he didn’t walk out without permission.

An aide has apologized.

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Corbett Report podcast on cause of nukequake....

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All protestors and all riot cops are police....

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Don't watch this....

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Selected paragraphs:

Radiation levels that can prove fatal were detected outside reactor buildings at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, signaling a partial fuel meltdown and complicating efforts to contain the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

...

Plutonium-239, a byproduct of fission used in nuclear weapons, was found in soil samples taken on the plant site March 21 and March 22, Tokyo Electric said in a statement today. Two of the five samples contained more plutonium than known to have been deposited by atmospheric nuclear-bomb fallout and probably came from the damaged plant, according to the statement.

...

Plutonium was part of the fuel mix in reactor No. 3. Used fuel rods from other reactors may also have been a source of the material, Edwin Lyman, a radiological specialist for the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists, said on a conference call with reporters. Plutonium inhalation causes lung, liver and bone cancer, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

I object strenuously to the term "partial meltdown". Obviously, it is meant to convey that not all the fuel in a reactor has melted and gone walkabout, but it very blatantly downplays the seriousness of any walkabout nuclear fuels... and, in this case, the worst of them.

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You are letting them

Five of the six biggest container shippers are maintaining routes to Tokyo and Yokohama after the U.S. Navy said radiation on vessels from the leaking Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant can be scrubbed off with soap and water.

A.P Moeller-Maersk A/S, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and CMA CGM SA, the top three, are still serving Japan’s two busiest container ports, 2 1/2 weeks after an earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima plant, 220 kilometers (135 miles) to the north. Among the top six shippers, only Hapag-Lloyd AG, the No. 4, is diverting vessels to docks in the south of the country.

The Japanese government is allowing ships to sail as close as 30 kilometers to the stricken reactors, and the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, says operations in and out of Japan can continue as normal, with levels of radiation presenting no medical basis for imposing restrictions.

“These are extremely low levels and are easily cleaned off,” Commander Jeff Davis, a spokesman for Seventh Fleet, which is helping with recovery efforts, said by yesterday by telephone. “Even if they weren’t, they still wouldn’t rise to the level where they would cause any harm to human health.”

kill us.

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love, 99
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a view from the washing machine

[click image]

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I do not recommend reading entire news wire articles.

Officials say they still don't know where the radioactive water is coming from, though government spokesman Yukio Edano earlier said some is "almost certainly" seeping from a damaged reactor core in one of the units.

...

A top TEPCO official acknowledged it could take a long time to clean up the complex.

"We cannot say at this time how many months or years it will take," Muto said, insisting the main goal now is to keep the reactors cool.

Workers have been scrambling to remove the radioactive water from the four units and find a place to safely store it. Each unit may hold tens of thousands of gallons of radioactive water, said Minoru Ogoda of Japan's nuclear safety agency.

Safety agency officials had been hoping to pump the water into huge, partly empty tanks inside the reactor that are designed to hold condensed water.

Those tanks, though, turned out to be completely full, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Meanwhile, plans to use regular power to restart the cooling system hit a roadblock when it turned out that cables had to be laid through turbine buildings flooded with the contaminated water.

"The problem is that right now nobody can reach the turbine houses where key electrical work must be done," Nishiyama said. "There is a possibility that we may have to give up on that plan."

Despite Sunday's troubles, officials continued to insist the situation had at least partially stabilized.

It's bad enough when you go in for the snippets. Only snippets seem to correlate with something distantly connected to actual.

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I took the "geiger counter" link off my sidebar, not just because it was better labeled "radiation monitor", but because the radiation monitors are not registering anything quantifiable except in the very widest sense. The government [which includes universities because of funding considerations] and the nukes plants are the only ones with equipment up to the job, and they're not telling... even where they still have functioning monitoring equipment. If you want to put yourself through it, here's the citizens' network and here's the feds'....

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love, 99
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today in nukequake

[click image, try here if those videos don't act right]

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Still desperate to make it sound non-meltdownish....

Mr. Nishiyama [of NISA] on Friday linked the radioactive puddles in plant No. 3 to a possible breach in pipes or ventilators leading to, but not inside, the vessels that surround the core at plant No. 3. Plant officials said later Friday that puddles at Nos. 1 and 2 also contained high levels of radiation.

The precise source of the radiation in the seawater—by air or by water—could yield clues about whether there is new, unanticipated damage in the complex.

Mr. Nishiyama on Saturday said officials weren't sure what caused the latest surge. "Radioactive substances may have been transmitted through the air, or contaminated water could have drained from the plant somehow," he said. "I don't have further ideas."

He also said officials were crafting a plan to deal with the poisonous puddles. "I have heard that [TEPCO] has an idea about a place to store water and is preparing" for drainage, he said.

Yes, in the CEO's swimming pool.

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An mp3 from out there... including neutron beams... and—I hate to tell you—vastly more serious and helpful than you're getting on the news wires and from your government....

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love, 99
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preposterous — it just keeps getting more preposterous

[click image]

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I keep trying to look at it with an eye to post something you might want to know about, but [1] it just struck me today that I have to go to some ancient reading glasses to replace my faltering computer glasses so I can actually see what is on my screen; and [2] this has not made any of it seem less preposterous to me. This, you will agree, is saying something. I'm up for the preposterous. I'm going for a doctorate in it, in fact. But I don't care how out there I've ever managed to follow in this whole endeavor, it doesn't come up to the preposterousness of the news wires over the last few weeks. It didn't before, but they threw us in a cosmic washing machine two weeks ago, and we have gotten nowhere near the rinse cycle yet.

I used to dye stained old white things some pleasing color instead of immediately consigning them to the dustbin of history. When there was a lot of it, I'd use the washing machine for this task. It involved continually resetting the agitate cycle so that it kept agitating for an hour before letting it proceed through it's normal cycles. This is like that.

Maybe this doesn't make as much sense to you as I think it should because I've noticed over the course of my life that my brain activity assumes patterns, patterns of motion. I could feel my brain working like a crossword grid while in my crossword puzzle compulsion phase. Klondike. My brain loves the Klondike solitaire pattern, and it's big on mahjongg too. Its most preferred mode is definitely ocean, but the worst, the one that bullhorns T-R-O-U-B-L-E is the washing machine agitate cycle motion. Everybody run when that happens.

And if you don't, I can make you, without even touching you.

This is the motion the news wires are causing in my brain right now.

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love, 99
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the argument for haarp on japan

[click image, video, fifty minutes, via Phil]

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And lots of other apocalyptic stuff. It doesn't take him the whole video to get his points across. The actual talking is about 35 minutes' worth, and he covers all kinds of amazing things in it... with graphs and maps and visuals. It isn't as though he's working off thin air, but he's also darn heavy to the fundamentalist Christian ilk and so you want to bear that in mind as you watch.

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love, 99
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the super orwellian spin cycle

[click image]

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Excuse me?

Neutron beam observed 13 times at crippled Fukushima nuke plant

TOKYO, March 23, Kyodo

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was crippled by the massive March 11 quake-tsunami disaster.

TEPCO, the operator of the nuclear plant, said the neutron beam measured about 1.5 kilometers southwest of the plant's No. 1 and 2 reactors over three days from March 13 and is equivalent to 0.01 to 0.02 microsieverts per hour and that this is not a dangerous level.

The utility firm said it will measure uranium and plutonium, which could emit a neutron beam, as well.

In the 1999 criticality accident at a nuclear fuel processing plant run by JCO Co. in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, uranium broke apart continually in nuclear fission, causing a massive amount of neutron beams.

In the latest case at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, such a criticality accident has yet to happen.

But the measured neutron beam may be evidence that uranium and plutonium leaked from the plant's nuclear reactors and spent nuclear fuels have discharged a small amount of neutron beams through nuclear fission.

A what?

How many times?

And this isn't the first?

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Oh, so someone is measuring the radioactivity....

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Are you properly mindful that this is completely out of control?

China found two Japanese travellers arriving with high radiation levels Friday in the latest consequence of contamination from a crippled nuclear plant two weeks after the Asian nation's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

China's customs body said the pair had medical treatment for radiation levels "seriously" over the limit, but they did not present a risk to others after flying to Wuxi in the east.

I don't see much of it out there, no matter how many images and hints like this one are slid under our noses.

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Unit three is beginning to show its true colors.

Japanese nuclear safety officials said Friday that they suspect that the reactor core at one unit of the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant may have breached, raising the possibility of more severe contamination to the environment.

"It is possible that somewhere at the reactor may have been damaged," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the nuclear safety agency. But he added that "our data suggest the reactor retains certain containment functions," implying that the damage may have occurred in Unit 3's reactor core but that it was limited.

Officials say the damage could instead have happened in other equipment, including piping or the spent fuel pool.

Operators have been struggling to keep cool water around radioactive fuel rods in the reactor's core after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami cut off power supply to the plant and its cooling system.

Damage could have been done to the core when a March 14 hydrogen explosion blew apart Unit 3's outer containment building.

This reactor, perhaps the most troubled at the six-unit site, holds 170 tons of radioactive fuel in its core. Previous radioactive emissions have come from intentional efforts to vent small amounts of steam through valves to prevent the core from bursting. However, releases from a breach could allow uncontrolled quantities of radioactive contaminants to escape into the surrounding ground or air.

Operators stopped work Friday at units 1 through 3 to check on radiation levels.

Or, more accurately, the officials are becoming less able to conceal theirs.

I mean, uhm, I think you can BET China had a couple thousand things to say about the seriously irradiated couple who showed up on their doorstep... but that's just me imputing humanity to foreigners again.

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love, 99
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the good news and the bad news

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We've had a couple days off on the jet stream thing, but, that's so about to change on us.

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I am pretty damn frustrated with some of the sites I've been relying on. My bullshit detector has gone off the charts there, and have NO faith they are still trying to stick to the truth. I was going to remain silent on it for a while because these people tend to intermittently recover their integrity, but...

Given the large amount of radioactivity that could be released from the damaged reactors and spent-fuel pools at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi facility, the Japanese government was wise to evacuate residents within a 12 mile (20 kilometer) radius of the reactor site.

Unfortunately, the crisis in not over. Given the uncertainty over future releases, we believe Japan should extend that evacuation zone.

On March 16, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission advised US citizens within a 50 mile radius around the site to evacuate. Despite the US advisory, the Japanese government is still maintaining its current order, which is evacuation only to a distance of 12 miles, and “shelter in place” for those between 12 and about 18 miles from the reactor site. “Shelter in place” means that people are directed to stay indoors and seal their windows and doors.

Our assessment is that the Japanese government is squandering the opportunity to initiate an orderly evacuation from larger areas around the site — especially of sensitive populations, like children and pregnant women. It is potentially wasting valuable time by not undertaking a larger scale evacuation at this time.

when even people given to cut them all the slack in the world say this stuff, I guess I better spit it out myself.

I keep looking for fresh satellite images, but those don't seem to be happening just now.

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I mean, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum's "helpful" color coded charts now tell us #3's core containment vessel is "Not Damaged" even as they are saying on TV that they have been cooling it with seawater but hope to switch to fresh, except, of course, when it is smoking or steaming, which is practically all the time, and between blasts of raised radiation from it, and two more workers at #3 were rushed to the hospital today...yadda yadda yadda....

Oh, oh, and Tokyo can give their kids tap water again today. It was unsafe for babies yesterday, but today's readings are lower and so, knock yerseff out kids. Now, is that because a million freaked parents are scratching each other's eyes out to get to the bottled water or is that a fact? And even if it is a fact, is what they call "safe" safe for real? Are you going to bathe your baby in it now?

Well?

ARE YOU?

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love, 99
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wednesday nukequake

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Trying to find the least bullshitty news and information sources is a damn headache, but here:

Fukushima workers managed to connect the first and the fourth reactors of the plant to an external power source to help restore the cooling system at the units. Five of six units of the Fukushima plant have now been connected to emergency diesel generators, Kyodo news agency reported.

However, the electricity supply to the problematic third unit has yet to be switched back on.

It seems some are dreaming these reactors can be cooled all the way down before they cement them over. With how much more loss of life? With how much more radiation damage? People keep speaking as though there's enough of unit three left to fashion some kind of cooling mechanism that won't involve horrific release of radiation. They are relying, of course, on the word of experts in the field, experts whose livelihood depends on keeping us optimistic about nuclear power, just like all the jackasses relying on professional foresters to give it to them straight about sustainable logging. Fuck. Delusion coats people like repeated dips in vats of tar.

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Or repeated dips in vats of Tokyo tapwater:

Tokyo Water Bureau officials say levels of radioactive iodine in some city tap water is two times the recommended limit for infants.

The officials told reporters Wednesday that a water treatment center in downtown Tokyo that supplies much of the city's tap water found that some water contained 210 becquerels per liter of iodine 131.

They said the limit for consumption of iodine 131 for infants is 100 becquerels per liter. They recommended that babies not be given tap water, although they said the water is not an immediate health risk for adults.

Indeed it is not immediate. The baby might get sick pretty fast but you won't get sick until yer thyroid is pau... which is pretty much the end of you without a lot of drastic medical intervention and some good genes.

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From a Japanese TV interview nearly a week ago:

This is the butt end of the reactor. Take a look. It’s a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes. On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors. Only the engineers know. This is where water has been poured in. This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy. Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there. And it’s salt water, right? You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens? You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze. They won’t move. This will be happening everywhere. So I can’t believe that it’s just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate. I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this. You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter – maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can’t understand it.

It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools that contain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4. This morning 30 tons. Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons from five trucks. That’s nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up. Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?

In principle, it can’t. Because even when a reactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperature down to where it is barely safe. Now it’s a complete mess inside, and when I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes. I assume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and that they have accepted that they face death by staying there. And how long can they last? I mean, physically. That’s what the situation has come to now. When I see these accounts on television, I want to tell them, “If that’s what you say, then go there and do it yourself!” Really, they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoid panic. What we need now is a proper panic. Because the situation has come to the point where the danger is real.

It hasn't gotten any better since.

And, the workers committing suicide to try to get this under control have NOT been wearing the really heavy suits to protect better from radiation because they can't get anything done while wearing them. They are working with far less protection than would be needed to call what they're doing merely "extremely dangerous". There is NO way they can stay alive long enough to accomplish the impossible things we keep hearing about from the "experts". Nor a succession of suicide missions to save Japan. With the exception of Hoagland's little input about there being the technology to remove all that radiation, there is NO hope, if things continue as they have been.

WHAT IS GOING ON?

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Old news that merits a fresh look....

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love, 99
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tuesday nervous nukequake complex

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Good morning.

Radiation 1,600 times higher than normal levels has been detected in an area about 20 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, International Atomic Energy Agency officials said Monday.

Data collected by an IAEA team show that radiation levels of 161 microsievert per hour have been detected in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, the officials said.

The government has set an exclusion zone covering areas within a 20-km radius of the plant and has urged people within 20 to 30 km to stay indoors.

More coffee.

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I go for a gaze at my morning radiation data, and most people go here to check, but they are vastly scarier numbers—sending people quaking off to naturopaths—that the EPA continues to tell us are "far below levels of concern" and that is the extent of the description of what's normal and how far above normal we really are, not a bit of any sort of information on which to judge for ourselves. The citizen network page at least has a guy working behind there to address our concerns. It's not what I'd want, but neither did I think of it before the Daiichi reactors began melting down, so... so I'm grateful for it.

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Partially?

Following the magnitude 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunami, the cooling functions failed at the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant and their cores are believed to have partially melted, releasing radioactive materials into the atmosphere, observers said.

At least they're coming up on spitting it out, but have they started dumping sand and concrete on these reactors yet? I don't think so, and I don't know how it would do any good to kill someone over it.

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Current jet stream map shows it running below Northern California, down into Southern California and Mexico and then arching up to nail Eastern Manitoba and the entire northeast of the continent. Doesn't look as though any of us will be spared.

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We should not forget to consult the leading lights of Out There in our attempts to process this mess.

I recommend you listen... just in light of the fact that the physics under discussion is no longer in doubt by any genuine humans. It merits our attention.

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I felt compelled to answer someone wondering why #3 was getting more attention than #4, and then had difficulty getting my comment to post. I finally got it to post, but now I want to put it here too because it took me so long to make clear.

...prioritizing work at the no.3 spent fuel pool over no. 4 is still a mystery.

Only about the bottom third of the No. 3 reactor building is in any condition to be called "still standing" and, really, that is a stretch. If you've seen any of the graphics showing the design of these reactors, you will immediately realize that means the cooling pond isn't there anymore. This is probably true of all four Daiichi reactors, but the most blaringly obviously true at No. 3. The thing that would prioritize it, even if this were not the case, is the fact that they were using MOX fuel in No. 3, while No. 4 was using "mere" uranium.

MOX [mixed oxide] fuel rods are made of uranium laced with the PLUTONIUM from decommissioned nukes. This has been hailed as the great anti-terrorism solution to dismantle nuclear warheads such that they will be safe from falling into the wrong hands. Plutonium is THE most deadly substance on the planet. I've heard it said that a few cups of plutonium dust dispersed in the atmosphere would kill every living thing on earth. "Luckily" it is the heaviest element on earth and less inclined to stay airborne, but it's more inclined to blow and burn things up, which then increases the release of its alpha radiation into the air. Breathing it kills you like Alexander Litvinenko. You stand a chance with plain uranium.

I imagine No. 3 is getting the most attention because it is unquestionably the most urgent to keep from any more-explosive release. The PTB are the most likely to keep everyone as confused as possible — including having Chu state on TV that No. 2 was the most urgent — because their imperative is that we not kick up a fuss over their sacred MOX nuclear terrorism solution. The only way to accomplish that is to assist us in our sacred disinclination to LOOK at what's staring us in the face. No. 3 is blatantly, undeniably, in meltdown... doing the China Syndrome thing. Whatever was released from it in the explosion there and the days of it steaming is going to be exponentially more deadly even than the lethal emissions from No. 4.

There are Daiichi plant workers giving their lives to save the rest of us. THEY ARE KNOWLY GOING TO THEIR EARLY GRAVES FOR US, WHEN WHAT THEY'RE DYING FOR IS THE MONSTERS IN CHARGE DRAGGING THIS OUT TO KEEP THEIR MOX FROM BECOMING NIXED. If you ever had any thoughts that the Soviets were actually more humane than we are, here's your sign. The images released of those reactors over a WEEK ago were enough to show they needed the sand and concrete treatment — the Chernobyl option — immediately. This trying to pull it out with the cooling thing is psychotic/sociopathic... pick. The evidence is blindingly-obvious in the images released to the press. You don't have to be a nuclear physicist to put it together.

You know, everything online could be SO much easier if the programming on the various platforms were not so flippy over the possibility of spammers and maniacs. No wonder so many people are coming to long for the supervolcano....

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love, 99
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sunday in nukequake

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This post will likely be updating all day. There was a scare late last night that #3's pressure was so high they were going to release some of it into the atmosphere. Then they backed off. Personally, I think it was a feint to make it appear they have any notion of pressure, any measure of containment, but that's just me.

At Fukushima, around 300 engineers were working round-the-clock inside an evacuation zone to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986.

They have been spraying the coastal complex with sea-water so fuel rods will not overheat and emit radiation. But hopes for a more permanent solution depend on connecting electricity cables to reactivate on-site water pumps at each of the reactors.

"I think the situation is improving step by step," Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama said amid news workers, in suits sealed by duct tape, had managed to connect power cables to the No. 2 and 5 reactors.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said engineers aimed to extend power to No. 1 reactor, which is linked to No. 2, and then test systems later on Monday.

The U.N. atomic watchdog said there had been some positive developments but the situation remained very serious.

If the pumps cannot restart, drastic and lengthy measures may be needed like burying the plant in sand and concrete.

Even if the situation is contained, cases of contaminated vegetables, dust, milk and water are already stoking anxiety despite Japanese officials' assurances levels are not dangerous.

The government prohibited the sale of raw milk from Fukushima prefecture and spinach from another nearby area, and said more restrictions on food may be announced later on Monday.

The health ministry asked residents of one village about 40 km (25 miles) from the plant to stop drinking tap water after levels of radioactive iodine three times above the regulated limit were found, Kyodo news agency said.

Much smaller traces of radioactive iodine have also been found in Tokyo, 240 km (150 miles) south of the plant.

Many expatriates and local residents have left the capital. Those who remain are subdued but not panicked.

"There's no way I can check if those radioactive particles are in my tap water or the food I eat, so there isn't much I can really do about it," said Setsuko Kuroi, an 87-year-old woman shopping in a supermarket with a white gauze mask over her face.

Where's my coffee?

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We see HERE the execrable Rachel Maddow doing a fairly decent job of explaining the problem at Daiichi. She has omitted mention of the meltdown consequences with the hotter spent fuel rods in cooling ponds that are CLEARLY only still called that in the HISTORIC sense. I recognize that this was not as clear at the time she aired this, and possibly it was not known at the time that #3 was full of MOX, while it seems clear they knew #4 was full of really hot spent fuel rods. I revile that she and her expert—the immortal and de rigueur expert—steered all the way clear of any discussion of the behavior of radioactive heavy metals such as uranium and plutonium once they are in meltdown mode.

Look at the reactor design. It's been pointed out all over the place. Any meltdown in the cooling pond is going to be dripping, POURING, molten waste onto the reactor core containment vessel and WILL breach it. Look at the plant buildings. There is thin air where those cooling ponds once resided.

So, dig it, no matter how helpful you found Rachel's careful explanation, it amounts to a BIG FAT LIE. She might not even KNOW it, but that is what it is. The uranium and plutonium, except as interrupted momentarily by some explosion, are going straight down into the earth. The radioactive iodine everyone is so worried about will already be way less hazardous as it reaches us because its half life is only eight days, but it's going to kill many in the area. The cesium and whatever other particles that have been blown into the atmosphere don't degrade down into harmlessness for millennia. Every single day they have been dithering with their squirt guns since #3 blew has been PREMEDITATED MURDER. At least today they are MENTIONING the Chernobyl Option as a real possibility, but how many more days until they DO it?

And how much could all that bullshit over Libya have been better directed at an effort to hasten the mountains of sand and concrete this is going to take? So. Do not question my "murderating fucks of the world" label, here. Do not question it for a moment.

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Sure wish these heroes were not being sacrificed to the nukes industry's sacred MOX cow....

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To think I was once pleased by the appointment of Steven Chu. My esophagus has twisted in shame and remorse. He is a killer, a whore and should be lined up with the rest of them and shot.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the Obama administration believes the worst of the crisis is over. Unit 2, where Tepco connected a 1.5-kilometer (1 mile) power cable March 18 as it tried to revive cooling systems knocked out by the magnitude-9 temblor and tsunami, is the main source of concern, [!!! OMFG OMFG OMFG !!!] Chu said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

“Because of the higher levels of radiation there, we take that as evidence that there might be a breach in that containment vessel,” he said. “But they’re not extraordinarily high, so it appears if there is a breach, it would be a limited breach. But, again, we don’t really know.”

I mean, HERE... check! A third-grader could read that chart! No? YES. And the damn chart is underplaying it.

Pardon me while I go screaming naked down the middle of Highway 101....

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It seems there are other considerations compounding Japan's problems....

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love, 99
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