Nuclear Power Madness

[Anders]

There has been a lot of talk and a couple of documentaries in recent times pertaining to show the valeur of Nuclear Power as the saviour for energy-hungry people around the world and with the apparent benefit of stopping Green house gasses and thus slow global warming. There are currently about 440 nuclear reactors operating around the world.

As I mentioned at the end of thread http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=1027

The nuclear industry for energy production today relies on a stable society where the whole infrastructure is functioning. In case of a slight accident, emergency procedures and contingency plans are activated, yet these plans rely on
1) Power supply
2) People to implement the emergency procedures and contingency plans
3) Helicopter and aircraft to encapsulate the reactor as seen with Chernobyl
4) Normal infrastructure such as roads, communications network etc.

My attention got caught on SOTT article from the 10th of May where it reads:

Earthquake leaves 10 million Philippines residents without power
Manila Standard
10/05/2006
An earthquake that damaged a transmission tower and shut down four power plants left more than 10 million people in Cebu without electricity yesterday, officials and residents said.

The relatively mild quake, measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale, struck Leyte at 10:02 a.m, the seismology office in Manila said, triggering a chain reaction of power generation units shutting down.

So we see that a small quake by normal standards can severely unstabilise an infrastructure in a region.

Indonesia is one of these countries looking to nuclear energy. One article in Jakarta Post (http://e.sinchew-i.com/content.phtml?sec=2&artid=200604280000) says:

A nuclear power plant for Indonesia is now on the front burner. Soedyartomo Soentoro, head of the National Nuclear Energy Agency (Batan), says the nation needs 100 gigawatts of electric power by 2025. Four nuclear power plants would provide a total of 4 gigawatts.

He gave a nuclear plant timetable: in 2006 the site permit is procured, 2008 bidding opens, 2016 plant in operation, 2017 commercial use begins.

The most probable site is 7km from the Tanjung Jati B power plant on Muria Peninsula on the north coast of Central Java. The site is in Jepara regency near Mount Muria, an inactive 1,602m volcano. The Muria area is chosen because of the relatively low probability of an earthquake occurring there.

Geologists say Kalimantan would be a better site as it is less vulnerable to quakes. But as more than 60% of Indonesia's electricity needs are in Java, Bali and Madura, a future chain of nuclear plants will be built on and for these three islands.

In the last few days we have heard that one of the volcanoes in Indonesia is on red alert. So apart from earthquake risk which is mentioned in the Jakarta Post article there is also a volcano. As a matter of fact there are at least 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia according to this site http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Krakatau.html which also mentions the eruption in 1883 of Krakatau. Location of the some of the volcanoes are shown on a map for those interested.

For general info, Indonesia sits on the "Pacific rim of fire", a map with earthquake epicentre for activity >5 between 1980-1990 is found here http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/images/RIM_of_FIRE_gif_image.html&edu=high

So without even taking into account cyclical comet showers, global warming with resulting rising sealevels, likely increased hurricane activity and intensity (with the probable flow on effect of stimulating earthquakes) this appears to me to be globally irresponsible.

In regard to the known case of a limited nuclear disaster namely Chernobyl then the effects were and still are widespread. Reports on our own Forum here from Turkiye and Greece attest to that http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=1298

This article in Pravda http://english.pravda.ru/topic/Chernobyl-119/ which commemorates the 20th anniversary says:

The explosion of the nuclear reactor of the Chernobyl power plant contaminated a vast territory of the European continent
A serious catastrophe is likely to occur on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2006. The disaster may become even more serious than the world-known blast of the station, which occurred on April 26th 1986. Specialists installed a sarcophagus around the nuclear reactor that year – the sarcophagus was supposed to protect the world from the harmful influence of radiation coming from the remnants of the hazardous production for 20 years. The warranty period has already elapsed

It just makes me wonder what happened to common sense...

 

[Yossarian]

Excellent point, I think.

I just read an article in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC about Chernobyl, that was really a dishonest and deceptive plug for Nuclear Power in thinly veiled disguise. [Chernobyl wasn't really that bad. We do things so much better in the West] I recommend "Chernobyl, Insight from the Inside" by Vladimir Chemousenko, an excerpt can be found here: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/ChernobylIftI.html

After having read Chemousenko's book, and other research, I was able to spot the inconsistencies, the shaded emphasis, and outright lies that powered this article that really touts our "last great hope" for an alternative energy source.

The major cause of the disaster was the well known by the bureaucracy design fault in the reactor and their refusal to pay for necessary modifications. The instability in the design meant that the instability could neither be accurately predicted or prevented. To the pathocrats it was an acceptable risk.

Chernobyl is the result of a pathocratic bureaucracy like the one that is rapidly entrenching itself in the U.S. Chernobyl can and could easily happen again--given the current trajectory. Ironically, the Nuclear Power Industry and their tax payed lobby organization, the AEC (Atomic Enery Commission), had a bill before Congress that would provide those would be mass murderers with UNLIMITED protection from liability for whatever they do wrong and the accidents that result. Fortunately, (in a sick way) Chernobyl stopped that particular Pathocratic attempt to create "Law." (I say "Law" because the Declaration of Independence clearly states that when a government no longer serves the interest of "the people," that it is in fact illigitimate and illegal, hence any laws that it propagates are morally and ethically non-binding.)

 

[Aeneas]

...
As I mentioned at the end of thread http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=1027

The nuclear industry for energy production today relies on a stable society where the whole infrastructure is functioning. In case of a slight accident, emergency procedures and contingency plans are activated, yet these plans rely on
1) Power supply
2) People to implement the emergency procedures and contingency plans
3) Helicopter and aircraft to encapsulate the reactor as seen with Chernobyl
4) Normal infrastructure such as roads, communications network etc.

The earthquakes in Japan at the moment just highlighted this issue as one can read in todays news:
Emergencies declared at 5 Japan nuclear reactors

Japan's nuclear safety agency said the situation was most dire at Fukushima Daiichi's Unit 1, where pressure had risen to twice what is consider the normal level. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that diesel generators that normally would have kept cooling systems running at Fukushima Daiichi had been disabled by tsunami flooding.

And as Anders mentions:

So without even taking into account cyclical comet showers, global warming with resulting rising sealevels, likely increased hurricane activity and intensity (with the probable flow on effect of stimulating earthquakes) this appears to me to be globally irresponsible.

We now know that global warming is not relevant, but global cooling and cometary showers along with electrical alignments in our solar system are to be reckoned with. If a Tunguska type event happened around a nuclear power station, then there would be no emergency workers close by and all infrastructure would be wiped out, not to mention the damage to the plant itself.

Will the safety of nuclear plants be reconsidered in light of the earthquake? The general amnesia of history, which leans heavily on the idea of gradual changes as opposed to catastrophic changes to planet earth, doesn't help the situation.


edit: mod fixed quotes

 

[Nević Nenad]

While I think there is good reason to be worried about nuclear plants in Japan, I also think that we must be very cautious with reaction on news about those plants. I would say that there is big chance that global "masters of fear" will potentiate and use it in the coming days.

 

[Aeneas]

While I think there is good reason to be worried about nuclear plants in Japan, I also think that we must be very cautious with reaction on news about those plants. I would say that there is big chance that global "masters of fear" will potentiate and use it in the coming days.

I think we can safely say now a year later that the real catastrophe that happened in Fukushima and which is ongoing got underreported. And that is even an understatement. The estimate is that it will take 40 years to decontaminate the area and that is under the assumption that it will not get worse.

 

[Aeneas]

As I mentioned at the end of thread http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=1027 (no longer active)

The nuclear industry for energy production today relies on a stable society where the whole infrastructure is functioning. In case of a slight accident, emergency procedures and contingency plans are activated, yet these plans rely on
1) Power supply
2) People to implement the emergency procedures and contingency plans
3) Helicopter and aircraft to encapsulate the reactor as seen with Chernobyl
4) Normal infrastructure such as roads, communications network etc.

and

So without even taking into account cyclical comet showers, global warming with resulting rising sealevels, likely increased hurricane activity and intensity (with the probable flow on effect of stimulating earthquakes) this appears to me to be globally irresponsible.

It took Fukushima for the world to wake up to the danger of Nuclear power, while they could just have read signs of the times in 2006. The reason for saying this was the article called Meteor Strike Hazard: All US Nuclear Plants Facing Upgrades in todays Sott, which reads:

Progress Energy's chief nuclear officer announced this week that every U.S. nuclear plant will add an extra layer of emergency equipment this year to deal with unforeseen natural disasters - such as earthquakes, tornadoes and even meteor strikes.

The announcement comes just ahead of the one-year anniversary of Japan's Fukushima disaster.

But nuclear watchdogs immediately expressed skepticism that the industry effort would do much good. Critics warned instead that unless the new machinery and equipment were safeguarded, the costly upgrades would likely be disabled by the same catastrophe if it obliterated a nuclear plant's primary emergency equipment.

Jim Scarola, Progress Energy's chief nuclear officer, said Friday that nuclear plants in this country will be adding pumps, generators and other safety equipment to deal with a total loss of onsite power, which led to Japan's nuclear crisis.

Scarola is the special liaison for the U.S. nuclear industry's Fukushima response, which was set up to improve nuclear plant safety in the past year. The U.S. effort was formed just a day after a 50-foot tsunami disabled coastal reactors in Japan on March 11, 2011, washing away diesel generators and other emergency equipment, and claiming 19,000 lives by drowning in the inundated region.

"One of the things we set out to do is not to take the stance that it can't happen here," Scarola said of the nation's nuclear officials. "What we're really concerned about is being able to provide water and energy" to keep safety equipment running during a catastrophic event that causes high death rates and wipes out roads and other infrastructure.

Efforts criticized

Electric utilities are upgrading the 104 commercial operating nuclear reactors in this country in anticipation of stricter federal rules. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to issue its first round of recommendations next week to make the reactors safer during earthquakes, flooding and other disasters.

But in a report issued this week, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a 43-year-old nuclear watchdog organization, criticized the industry effort as misguided.

"Plant owners are dispersing (extra equipment) in numerous locations on and near reactor sites but are not planning to harden it against natural disasters," the group said. "The industry is banking on there being enough equipment available so that at least some of it would be usable in the event of a catastrophe."

Getting ahead of NRC

Furthermore, the group chided the NRC for taking so long to create tougher standards.

"The industry has already purchased more than 300 pieces of ... equipment without waiting for NRC guidelines, which will make it difficult for the agency to later institute standards that could force the industry to replace the equipment," the scientist organization said.

Chief nuclear officers at U.S. nuclear plants agreed three weeks ago to purchase the extra equipment, Scarola said. The cooling systems would override disabled pumps to prevent the reactor fuel from overheating, melting down and releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere.

Raleigh-based Progress Energy has already ordered the equipment for its four nuclear plants in the Carolinas and Florida, he said. This first phase of upgrades will cost each nuclear plant between $500,000 and $1.5 million for portable pumps, generators, lights, fans, direct-current supplies, satellite phones and other equipment.

The equipment would be just the beginning of upgrades that could take several years to implement, however.

Regional centers

Scarola also said Friday that the nuclear industry is developing regional response centers that could airlift emergency equipment, fuel and water to operate emergency cooling equipment in the event that a nuclear plant is severely disabled by a meteor or some other catastrophe.

But isn't that just windowdressing and wishful thinking? In the original post on this thread (http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=1027 ) that is no longer available it was pointed out how ridiculous this notion of regional response centers is in the event of a meteor strike, as the infrastructure is likely gone in whole regions. Tunguska, which was not a big meteor as far as meteors are concerned, still flattened 2000 squarekilometers. As it says on wikipedia on Tunguska:

Although the meteoroid or comet burst in the air rather than hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 to as high as 30 megatons of TNT (21–130 PJ),[6][7] with 10–15 megatons of TNT (42–63 PJ) the most likely[7] – roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb tested on March 1, 1954, about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and about one-third the power of the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated on October 30, 1961.[8] The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees covering 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi). It is estimated that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.

Equivalent to about 1000 Hiroshima bombs! And flattening the area of 2150 square kilometres. To give an idea of how big that is, Worchestershire in England covers 1741 square kilometers. Here is how the Tunguska area looks in comparison with Washington BC:

If a meteor strikes then a regional center, (if it isn't destroyed in the blast) with let us say 10-20 helicopters will be of litte use in stopping a nuclear meltdown. Most of the people of those still standing will be left in a complete shock having lost everything and in little capacity to actively help. Not to mention that they most likely will be most occupied with their own injuries and looking after their own dead and wounded.

Here is a description of the Tunguska event that highlights the impact that such an event can have on a region/regions:

7.14 am. Pine trees glow in the summer light. The morning is blue and cloudless.

Then a blinding ball of light rips across the sky, trailing a column of fire.

Some eye-witnesses say the light was red. Others claim it was blue, and cylindrical in shape.

It races down towards the Tunguska River, and explodes.

A spear of fire splits the sky. Explosions boom across the land.

A dark mushroom cloud begins rolling upwards. It will reach a height of 80km: ten times higher than Mt Everest.

Over 70km away, a farmer is in his yard when the sky to the north bursts into fire.

A wall of heat strikes him; his shirt is almost burned off. A blast of air hurls him across the yard, and noise bellows all around.

House windows shatter; the building rocks.

Nearly 200km from the explosion, another farmer in a field hears several deafening bangs.

The pine forest thrashes. He and his horse are almost knocked off their feet. Soil flies into the air.

A wall of water is blown up the nearby river.

Elsewhere, herdsmen's tents are whipped from the ground by shock waves.

Only two people die, but near the explosion site, thousands of reindeer are burned to death.

But back to the original article from today:

Industry officials are looking at creating anywhere from one to five such response centers around the country that would support nuclear plants indefinitely in the event that roads as well as phone links were wiped out.

Nuclear plants typically have a seven-day capacity to operate emergency cooling pumps with backup generators, with the assumption that roads would be passable so that more fuel could be trucked in.

The NRC will issue its recommendations in three phases in the coming years. Other changes the NRC could consider - which have been proposed by the UCS and as recently as this week by the American Nuclear Society - would expand the 10-mile emergency evacuation zones around each reactor to account for large population centers nearby.

The Shearon Harris evacuation zone includes about 122,000 people, mostly in Wake County. The Harris plant's evacuation plan doesn't include contingencies for Raleigh, a city of more than 400,000 residents, which sits just outside the evacuation zone.

I suggest reading Laura's compilation of meteor events over the last 10000 years to get an idea about the prevalence: Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls

 

[Esote]

"Nasa scientists are predicting that a solar storm will knock out most of the electrical power grid in many countries worldwide, perhaps for months...
What would happen to nuclear power plants world wide if their power – and most of the surrounding modern infrastructure – is knocked out?
...
To do nothing is to behave like ostriches with our heads in the sand, blindly believing that “everything will be okay” as our world drifts towards the next natural, inevitable super solar storm and resultant extreme GMD. Such a storm would end the industrialized world as we know it, creating almost incalculable suffering, death and environmental destruction on a scale not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago."

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/03/the-government-spends-trillions-on-unnecessary-things-but-wont-spend-one-billion-dollars-to-prevent-the-very-real-possibility-of-global-nuclear-catastrophe.html

 

[Voyageur]

Here is an April 10th video, featuring Chiho Kaneko, who briefly focuses on the detonation, under Castle Bravo, of the hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll. It tells the story by a witness, Mr. Oishi, who was caught up under is toxic particles and struggled with illness that was never acknowledged. This further moves to Japan's acceptance of nuclear plants, which has now culminated in the disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Still further, other aspects of nuclear toxins are discussed, along with their coverup.

Further discussion of the reality in Japan (and elsewhere) is looked at.

The Fukushima Daiichi disaster opened the door to see how this is not merely a Japanese crisis. It is a crisis that transcends geography and time. We traced the roots of this crisis back 60-years to the fishing boat Daigo Fukuryumaru, or #5 Lucky Dragon, and American efforts to force nuclear power upon the Japanese people.

_http://www.fairewinds.org/bringing-focus-back-life/

Transcript: April 10th, 2014

Bringing The Focus Back On Life

Three Years After The Fukushima Dai-Ichi Disaster:
Bringing The Focus Back On Life

Hi I am Chiho Kaneko, a member of the Board of Directors of Fairewinds Energy Education

Whenever I return from Japan, people in the United States ask me, “So, how is Japan now?”

The Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster opened the door for me to see how this is not a mere Japanese crisis. It is a crisis that transcends geography and time.

The situation at Fukushima Dai-ichi continues to be dire. Every so often, we hear the news of “yet the highest level of radioactivity detected in the monitoring well,” or “there was another breach in the tanks that are holding contaminated water.” But an average person in Japan seems to be paying less and less attention to the news. People do get used to things, even when they are extremely abnormal.

On this third anniversary of the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster, I would like to talk about an event that took place 60 years ago.

A covert US military operation called Castle Bravo, the experimental detonation of a hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands took place March 1, 1954. The power of this H-bomb turned out to be much, much, more powerful than the US military had calculated, so many people ended up being negatively impacted by the considerable fallout, including the residents of downwind islands. This fallout also hit the 23 crewmembers of a Japanese tuna-fishing vessel, named the Daigo Fukuryumaru, or “#5 Lucky Dragon” when translated into English, that happened to be located 100 miles from the test site.

I have read interviews given by one of the surviving fishermen, Matashichi Oishi, who was 20 years old at the time.

Mr. Oishi witnessed brilliant lights on the horizon early on the morning of March 1, 1954, and a little later, a deep rumbling sound came up from underneath. Then a huge mushroom cloud was seen on the horizon, but no one on the ship knew what it was. In a couple of hours the mushroom cloud came rushing toward the ship, and pure white ash descended on him and the other crewmembers. They still didn’t know what it was – the ash was neither hot nor cold.

Soon, the fishermen experienced nausea and dizziness. Two or three days later, any skin that had been exposed to the ash (which really was blown up coral reef) developed burns. Ten days later their hair started to fall out. The vessel managed to come back to the shore of Japan on March 14. It’s speculated that they intentionally didn’t send SOS signals because they feared the possibility of being sunk by the US military.

One of the crewmembers died six months later triggering a massive anti-nuclear movement in Japan. The Japanese government also tested and found tuna that was radioactive, contrary to the assurance by the US government that the ocean would dilute the radioactive pollutant to a negligible level. By the end of the year 1955, more than 30 million Japanese people signed a petition calling for a ban on nuclear weapons.

The rising anti-nuclear and anti-US sentiments were just what the US did not want in the aftermath of WWII. Soon the US government implemented measures to protect its interests. In April 1954, Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) – an Executive committee created by President Eisenhower the previous year – issued an internal document titled: Outline Check List of US Actions to Offset Unfavorable Japanese Attitudes to the H-Bomb and Related Developments.

An OCB report also recommended that the US should offer to build an experimental nuclear reactor in Japan. President Eisenhower had founded the US Atoms for Peace program as part of the US effort to spin the image of nuclear technology in the minds of the Japanese people from that of a lethal war technology to the symbol of stability and prosperity. To meet this goal, the US government offered Japan, practically a US colony after WWII, an opportunity to share the economic and strategic benefit of the burgeoning nuclear industry.

The Japanese government willingly accepted the deal for its own ambitions, and it soon became the one of the most aggressive champions of nuclear power.

In 1955, the Atomic Energy Basic Law was enacted in Japan, and by mid 1960s, Japan had its first commercial nuclear power plant.

This is but one tiny example of how nuclear power has been forced upon the people of Japan and the people of the world.

I mentioned the name of one Daigo Fukuryumaru crewmember – Matashichi Oishi. But there are many, many, people whose names we don’t even know, who nevertheless were exposed, got sick, and probably died from their exposure to fallout. The residents of the Marshall Islands were forced to evacuate in the aftermath of this test, only to be returned in a couple of years to their contaminated homeland, where they were further exposed to radioactive contamination through water they drank and the food they harvested.

Mr. Oishi received 2 million yen — worth about $5,500 at the time — from the US government. Some Japanese people called him all kinds of names and berated him for accepting this money. He also experienced discrimination for being the Hibakuksha – “the exposed.” Mr. Oishi was forced to relocate, and hide his true identify for many years, just as some people from Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to do, and just as some people from Fukushima must do today. The money Mr. Oishi received from the US government stripped him of the right to complain forever, even when his child was stillborn, and when he subsequently developed liver cancer.

For all these decades, each one of us has been forced to allow more and more radiation into our environment and into our bodies. The radiation that we cannot see, smell, or taste contaminates our environments from the nuclear disasters, including Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, through all those nuclear weapons tests, from all those depleted uranium arsenals still being dropped in Iraq and elsewhere, from all the abandoned uranium mines that are contaminating the waters and the soil in the upper Great Plains and compromising the health of not only the residents of the Plains but everybody in this country who eats the food that comes from there, and from all the smoke that comes out of operating coal plants that use coal from the Plains that is naturally laced with uranium.

Radiation exposure is difficult to quantify. Data regarding the effects of radiation on the human body has been collected since WWII, but covered up by the nuclear industry and governments that want the power of weapons and nuclear energy. Much of the real information from the past disasters is classified and often manipulated by world governments. What Mr. Oishi experienced on the ship in 1954 was an acute form of radiation exposure; but even for him any connection between his illness and the incident has continued to be denied.

The same pattern is repeated over and over throughout the world.

The end of this month will mark the 35th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident. There are anecdotes of human illnesses and mutations in the local population, substantiated by the epidemiology studies of Dr. Steve Wing from the University of North Carolina. However, officially the US government has refused to recognize the abnormalities in the health of the affected residents.

Then, I think about what’s unfolding in Japan today. I sense something grave is happening. I have heard many Fukushima people’s personal accounts of their family members or friends dying suddenly. In one case, a baby suddenly died. And, these illnesses and sudden deaths are not happening only in Fukushima Prefecture. People are sicker in Tokyo. And it’s not just people who are sicker. I met a home gardener who lives in Kawamata, Fukushima, 30-miles from Fukushima Dai-ichi, and she grows luffas whose fruit is often dried to make bath sponges. Last year, with some trepidation, she used the seeds saved from the year before; she found flower buds directly growing out of the fruit. And some of her pole beans were abnormally gigantic. Near Fukushima city, another person saw a frog so severely deformed that at first it was difficult to tell that it was a frog save for its hopping. These are true events described by people I met, who took notes and photographs of these environmental anomalies.

During my month-long stay in Japan in December and January, I, too, experienced unusual symptoms. I developed a skin rash that doesn’t heal. When I was in Fukushima I developed a scratchy throat and pain in my eyes.

Something is happening, and yet we cannot prove anything.

The IAEA and Fukushima Medical University are working together to collect and collate the health data of Fukushima residents. Many residents fear that this effort is just a show, or worse yet, just for the sake of collecting secret data. Many people fear that “the experts” already have a forgone conclusion: The conclusion that if people get ill, it is not because of the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster.

As of December last year, of the 254, 280 young Fukushima people who were 18 years old or younger at the time of the power plant catastrophe, 74 were found to either have thyroid cancer or are suspected of having thyroid cancer. Thirty-three of these children have already needed and gone through surgery. There are different statistics for the rate of thyroid cancer among children prior to the Fukushima Dai-ichi; some say 1~2 in 1 million, others say 17 in 1 million. Compared to either of them, the current number in Fukushima is staggering.

Disturbingly, the Japanese and the international radiation experts continue to maintain that these thyroid cancers are NOT related to the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster.

The same pattern is repeated over and over.

How long will this pattern continue?

Many Japanese people are confronted by different choices they must make each day:

Whether or not to wear a mask.

Whether or not to move with their children from their home to a less contaminated area.

Whether or not to buy this spinach that may contain cesium.

Whether or not to eat fish because now it’s known that huge amounts of strontium-90 are pouring into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima Dai-ichi.
But the most important choice of our lives was never available to any of us. We were not allowed to choose whether or not we wanted to accept all the unearthed uranium and the resulting radionuclides in our lives.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster opened the door for me to see how this is not a mere Japanese crisis. It’s a crisis that transcends geography and time.

What can we do now?

Sometimes a big part of me feels the situation is too late to remedy.

This is a situation mired with the world politics and economy – the struggle for power and money. It’s hard to stop the march of heavily armed people with a prayer.

But, I dare say this: Every life is sacred, no matter how small it is.

If we care about life, we must try to find ways to at least slow the pace of nuclear contamination. And we must focus on what’s actually happening to humans and animals and birds and everything else on this planet, instead of keeping consigning the interpretation of radiation’s effects to the so-called experts.

The truth is that once we have lost everything that sustains us from our soil to air to water, our home, our community, and our family, no amount of money can restore them.

Thank you for being here today to listen, and for having expressed your concerns for this Japanese tragedy during the past three years.

Your compassion has given me so much strength.

I am also grateful to the courageously committed people in Japan:

The mothers in their twenties and thirties and forties who tirelessly petition the local government and schools to do more to protect the children;

The citizen scientists who are testing soil and food on their own and sharing it with others;

The labor advocates who are shining a light on the abominable treatment of the Fukushima Dai-ichi workers who are jeopardizing their lives every moment;

The doctors who express alarm after having seen the jump in health abnormalities among children in the Tokyo area.

These people are the real heroes, especially given the environment in Japan today, which is getting more and more hostile to those who criticize the government policies.

I hope to keep witnessing what’s happening, and to seek truth.

And, I pray for all the souls of this planet.

 

[Aeneas]

Here is an April 10th video, featuring Chiho Kaneko, who briefly focuses on the detonation, under Castle Bravo, of the hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll. It tells the story by a witness, Mr. Oishi, who was caught up under is toxic particles and struggled with illness that was never acknowledged. This further moves to Japan's acceptance of nuclear plants, which has now culminated in the disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Still further, other aspects of nuclear toxins are discussed, along with their coverup.

I just saw your post now and in the 2 years since the situation has not gotten any better.

With the earthquake hitting the southern island of Kyushu in Japan with numerous aftershocks, there is some concern that the island is splitting in half as voiced by Michael Snyder: _http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-18/dozens-large-earthquakes-strike-speculation-mounts-japans-southern-island-may-split

The mainstream media in the United States is using the term “landslides” to describe what has happened all over Kyushu, but the truth is that in many instances it would be far more accurate to say that “giant cracks” or “vast chasms” have formed. The geography of Japan’s southern island has been fundamentally transformed, and this is beginning to cause huge concerns. Here is more from the Guardian…

One major landslide tore open a mountainside in Minamiaso village in Kumamoto prefecture, destroying a key bridge that could cut off food and other relief transport to the worst-hit area.

Another landslide hit a road, collapsing a house that fell down a ravine. In another part of the village, houses were left hanging precariously at the edge of a huge hole.

I want to show you a map which comes directly from the U.S. Geological Survey. This map shows all of the earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater that have hit Japan’s southern island over the past week. As you look at this map, do you see a pattern?…

It could be that Michael Snyder is a little alarmist but another thing that is disconcerning about the island of Kyushu is that it is also the island with the only nuclear power station in operation in Japan, namely the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendai_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Below is another map of the Island of Kyushu with the latest earthquakes from the last 3 days and with Sendai located south of the area in the city of Satsumasendai. The picture is a screenshot taken from: http://earthquaketrack.com/p/japan/recent

With the present opening up of the earth and all the volcanic and earthquake activity, I think Japan could well be poised for even more disasters that could have been avoided. Especially as the experts employed by the nuclear industry have their heads in the sands or are willlingly not wanting to look at the dangers. How often have we not heard from "experts" AFTER a disaster, that it was "unexpected", "unimaginable", "unprecedented" or "that no-one could have foreseen that"?

 

[Aeneas]

Regarding the Sensai nuclear plant mentioned above, there has articles written on Sott about this danger as it is next to an active volcano, which might even get more active given the current activity on the island. Here are links to some of the articles:


As predicted, Sendai nuclear plant threatened by active volcano:

Now it appears that some of those fears have been validated, though not in the way most people were expecting. The Sendai nuclear power plant was the first of those reactors to be restarted on Tuesday, an event which couldn't have come at a worse time. A volcano near the plant appears ready to blow its top.

Japan's weather agency on Saturday told thousands of residents near a southern city to prepare for a possible evacuation as it upgraded a volcanic eruption warning.

Officials raised their alert to its second-highest level after picking up increasing seismic activity around the volcano Sakurajima, which sits just off the coast of Kagoshima, a city of more than 600,000 people.

The volcano is about 50 kilometres (31 miles) from a nuclear reactor that was switched on this week, as Japan restarted its nuclear power programme following the 2011 Fukushima crisis when a quake-sparked tsunami set off reactor meltdowns at the now-crippled site.

Critics have said the restarted reactor at Sendai was still at risk from natural disasters.

"The possibility for a large-scale eruption has become extremely high for Sakurajima," the agency said, warning residents to exercise "strict caution" and prepare for a possible evacuation. The warning applies to a part of the island, which is home to more than 4,000 people.

The above article is from August 2015.

Other links are:
Surrounding volcanoes pose threat to Sendai nuclear plant, yet Japan plans to restart the reactor
Earthquake and Tsunami near Sendai, Japan

 

[Aeneas]

But back to the original article from today:

Industry officials are looking at creating anywhere from one to five such response centers around the country that would support nuclear plants indefinitely in the event that roads as well as phone links were wiped out.

Nuclear plants typically have a seven-day capacity to operate emergency cooling pumps with backup generators, with the assumption that roads would be passable so that more fuel could be trucked in.

The NRC will issue its recommendations in three phases in the coming years. Other changes the NRC could consider - which have been proposed by the UCS and as recently as this week by the American Nuclear Society - would expand the 10-mile emergency evacuation zones around each reactor to account for large population centers nearby.

The above article was from Marts 2012 and time has shown this to be just talk and no action.

In light of the recent earthquakes, then the question is how well prepared is California? Here is an article from Zerohedge a few days ago:

The Quake To Make Los Angeles A Radioactive Dead Zone

Sat, 07/13/2019 - 21:30

Authored by Harvey Wasserman via CommonDreams.org
Had the previous Friday’s 7.1 earthquake and other ongoing seismic shocks hit less than 200 miles northwest of Ridgecrest/China Lake, ten million people in Los Angeles would now be under an apocalyptic cloud, their lives and those of the state and nation in radioactive ruin.
The likely human death toll would be in the millions. The likely property loss would be in the trillions. The forever damage to our species’ food supply, ecological support systems, and longterm economy would be very far beyond any meaningful calculation. The threat to the ability of the human race to survive on this planet would be extremely significant. The two cracked, embrittled, under-maintained, unregulated, uninsured, and un-inspected atomic reactors at Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, would be a seething radioactive ruin.
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. Image source: Wikimedia

Their cores would be melting into the ground. Hydrogen explosions would be blasting the site to deadly dust. One or both melted cores would have burned into the earth and hit ground or ocean water, causing massive steam explosions with physical impacts in the range of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The huge clouds would send murderous radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere that would permanently poison the land, the oceans, the air… and circle the globe again and again, and yet again, filling the lungs of billions of living things with the most potent poisons humans have ever created.
In 2010, badly maintained gas pipes run by Pacific Gas & Electric blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno, killing eight people. PG&E’s badly maintained power lines have helped torch much of northern California, killing 80 people and incinerating more than 10,000 structures.
Now in bankruptcy, with its third president in two years, PG&E is utterly unqualified to run two large, old, obsolete, crumbling atomic reactors which are surrounded by earthquake faults. At least a dozen faults have been identified within a small radius around the reactors. The reactor cores are less than fifty miles from the San Andreas fault, less than half the distance that Fukushima Daiichi was from the epicenter that destroyed four reactors there.

Diablo cannot withstand an earthquake of the magnitude now hitting less than 200 miles away. In 2014, the Associated Press reported that Dr. Michael Peck, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s site inspector at Diablo, had warned that the two reactors should be shut because they can’t withstand a seismic shock like the one that has just hit so close. The NRC tried to bury Peck’s report. They attacked his findings, then shipped him to Tennessee. He’s no longer with the Commission.

All major reactor disasters have come with early warnings. A 1978 accident at Ohio’s Davis-Besse reactor presaged the 1979 disaster at Three Mile Island. The realities were hidden, and TMI spewed radiation that killed local people and animals in droves.
Soviet officials knew the emergency shut-down mechanism at Chernobyl could cause an explosion — but kept it secret. Unit Four exploded the instant the rods meant to shut it down were deployed.
Decades before disaster struck at Fukushima Daiichi, millions of Japanese citizens marched to demand atomic reactors NOT be built in a zone riddled by fault lines, washed by tsunamis.

In California, ten thousand citizens were arrested demanding the same. Diablo’s owners hid the existence of the Hosgri Fault just three miles from the site. A dozen more nearby fault lines have since been found, capable in tandem of delivering shocks like the ones shaking Ridgecrest. No significant structural improvements have been made to deal with the newfound fault lines.
The truly horrifying HBO series on Chernobyl currently topping all historic viewership charts shows just a small sample of the ghastly death and destruction that can be caused by official corruption and neglect.

Like Soviet apparatchiks, the state of California has refused to conduct independent investigations on the physical status of the two Diablo reactors. It has refused to hold public hearings on Dr. Peck’s warnings that they can’t withstand seismic shocks like the ones now being experienced so dangerously nearby. If there are realistic plans to evacuate Los Angeles and other downwind areas during reactor melt-downs/explosions, hearings on them have yet to be held.

In the wake of the 2011 explosions at Fukushima, the NRC staff compiled critical reforms for American reactors, including Diablo. But the Commission killed the proposed regulations. So nothing significant has been done to improve safety at two coastal reactors upwind of ten million people that are surrounded by earthquake faults in a tsunami zone like the one where the four Fukushima reactors have already exploded.
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant is due to stay operational till the mid-2020's. Image via LA Times
There are no excuses. These seismic shocks will never stop. Diablo is scheduled to shut in 2024 and 2025. But massive advances in wind, solar, batteries and efficiency have already rendered the nukes’ power unnecessary. A petition demanding Governor Newsom and the state independently investigate Diablo’s ability to operate safely is at www.solartopia.org.
That petition began circulating before these latest quakes. The continued operation of these two reactors has now gone to a whole new level of apocalyptic insanity.

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I don't agree with the last paragraph about solar power and wind power, which have been shown to be greatly underperforming. Yet the rest of the article outlines how ill prepared California truly is and how it could soon be a living hell. The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant has two units, unit 1 constructed in 1968 (commissioned in 1985) and Unit 2 constructed in 1970(commissioned in 1986). There are modern nuclear plants being built by Russia and China with modern technology, vastly different from these old plants operating in the US. That these plants are close to fault lines does really help the security.

The big earthquake will happen, whether it be tomorrow or in 10 or 30 years time and nothing is being done to prepare for it. Lessons are not being learned and it appears as if willful ignorance rules the day. An unlucky meteor bombardment could also have the same effect or worse than a big earthquake. From a cosmic perspective it is about balancing, so the silver lining could be that the US would have other things to do than bully the rest of the world. Countries such as Israel which is totally relying on the US military strength and support to fight their wars might suffer the consequences of not having made any attempts ever of making friends.

Edit: Added commission dates for clarity.

 

[Gruchaa]

I don't agree with the last paragraph about solar power and wind power, which have been shown to be greatly underperforming. Yet the rest of the article outlines how ill prepared California truly is and how it could soon be a living hell. The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant has two units, unit 1 constructed in 1968 (commissioned in 1985) and Unit 2 constructed in 1970(commissioned in 1986). There are modern nuclear plants being built by Russia and China with modern technology, vastly different from these old plants operating in the US. That these plants are close to fault lines does really help the security.

Agreed. I was studying the Power Engineering at University. And Solar power and wind power are a nice and renewable energy, however every MW of wind energy requires MW energy support (sitting in a corner) from Gas Turbines (only ones which can start within minutes after the wind stop blowing. Nuclear or coal's need days or weeks to startup, so need to work all the time). The best renewable energy at this point is water (as in Norway), however not all countries have this natural fortune. Solars could work in the California area, however it still depended on the weather changes (less than wind power fortunately).

Modern Nuclear plants have lots of multidimensional security like additional generators (oil, gas), gravitational pumps (not require electricity), support pumps, etc. Are much more safe than the old ones from 50's,60's,70's.

Regarding the power sources - one thing hits me very much -> from over 80 years we haven't invented anything new. Nuclear, coal, oil, gas, renewables are known for over 80 years and some of them even from centuries. Why we could not invent something new? I do not believe we have hit the roof of possibilities yet. Maybe someone has interest to have this status quo?