Friday, January 31, 2014
Fukushima: Why It Matters and Why We Don't Need to Panic
Did you know that Sellafield has dumped more cesium-137 into the sea than Fukushima? Irish Sea is 5x worse than worst case for West coast ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-devan
Fukushima Watch: New Technology to Stop Deadly Strontium
Fukushima Watch: New Technology to Stop Deadly Strontium ... sea using American technology will start in February at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear .. ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/0
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Fukushima Operator Building Frozen Wall to Prevent Radioactive ...
The Japanese firm in charge of the Fukushima nuclear plant has started building a frozen wall to prevent radioactive waste from contaminating the sea .. ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fukushima-operat
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Japan tests drone to measure radiation at nuke plant
... designed to measure radiation levels more accurately has been used for the first time around the Fukushima nuclear power plant in northern Japan, .. ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.menafn.com/16cd2239-9986-4994-
Friday, January 24, 2014
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Monday, January 13, 2014
Radioactive Fukushima claims live on despite scientific findings
The gist of the arguments is that the spill of radioactive cooling water at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor following the 2011 earthquake and .. ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Are 4300 TEPCO workers DEAD while Fukushima radiation spreads around the world starting a mutant world apocalypse?
With reports that TEPCO hired incompetent workers to build water storage tanks, could TEPCO have also caused thousands of deaths of cleanup workers?
This idea came up in my news reader, so I want to check its validity. It talked about 4,300 TEPCO workers dead. It's pretty outrageous that TEPCO would use subpar workers to build the water tanks that are supposed to be keeping radioactive water out of the ocean. But it would really be extremely outrageous if TEPCO's inadequacy had let thousands of workers die.
This idea came up in my news reader, so I want to check its validity. It talked about 4,300 TEPCO workers dead. It's pretty outrageous that TEPCO would use subpar workers to build the water tanks that are supposed to be keeping radioactive water out of the ocean. But it would really be extremely outrageous if TEPCO's inadequacy had let thousands of workers die.
Unless you want to spin these workers as hero's who sacrificed themselves to clean up something that was going to harm the rest of us. The cleanup workers are Chernobyl were presented as hero's.
Anyway, here's the title:
The red type, bold face, and CAPSLOCK, are all from their site. Another claim on the site is this:4300 TEPCO WORKERS DEAD AS FUKUSHIMA RADIATION STRETCHES WORLDWIDE & BRINGS NEW MUTANT DAYS OF NOAH
4300 tepco worker deaths have been covered upThis gives us some supposed evidence to try and validate. By the way, the site this is on is full of raving lunatic conspiracy theory gunk such as the "MILITARY AND CIA STATED THEIR SUPPORT FOR THE REPUBLIC" and we should expect MASSIVE ARRESTS starting any day now. So we can't expect too much in the way of accuracy.
By the way, the U.S. form of Government is a Republic - as in
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.So if the Military & CIA are in support of the Republic, well, that's their constitutional duty, and if they hadn't done so they would be derelict of duty and perhaps treasonous.
But, we can't get distracted, what about these TEPCO workers?
I did some yahoogling and -- actually -- there were dozens of blogs, all with raving lunatic conspiracy theory blog names -- with very similar titles. One wonders whether there's some black hat SEO tricks going on here? Anyway, I did finally get to some real news.
Japan earthquake: Anger over Fukushima evacuation plan - 16 March 2011
This was a news report published in the couple days after the earthquake and tsunami. Engineers were in the middle of their mad dash to avoid nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. There had already been large radiation releases into the vicinity. The Japanese government had declared a 20 kilometer evacuation zone around the power plant.
About 140,000 people living in the 20-30 kilometer zone were told to stay in their homes. At the same time, the U.S. Government ordered all Americans to stay at least 80 kilometers from the Fukushima plant.
That is one of the side controversies to the whole thing - why did the U.S. government order such a large evacuation zone, and the Japanese order a smaller one. Well, there is an issue of where would they find the space to store another 140,000 refugees.
There is this:
"They are leaving us to die," says the mayor of Minamasoma inside the exclusion zoneAs for the claim of 4,300 dead workers? The article says this:
More than 4,300 people are listed as dead but it is feared the total death toll from the catastrophe, which pulverised the country's north-east coast, will rise substantially.That's "people" not "workers"... There's a difference between those two words, people.
The claim of 4,300 dead workers implies something like - lots of people sent in to the site to do cleanup work, got radiation poisoning, died.
But this - 4,300 people - that's just the casualties, and probably aren't radiation casualties at all but from the earthquake and subsequent flooding.
Human Rights Watch: Syrian planes have killed 4,300 civilians since July - April 2013
Here's an actual tragedy, published by a regular news outlet, involving 4,300 people that actually died at the hands of their own government. This is something actual and real to be actually outraged about.
Fukushima Nuclear Plant Worker Dies - October 2011
An actual news report of an actual worker death at the site ... At that time there had been three deaths of workers at the site. According to TEPCO none were due to radiation, and weren't due to over-work. Instead
TEPCO said a male worker in his 50s became ill during a meeting Wednesday morning, before his shift started. He was taken to a hospital immediately, and died the next morning.I'm not satisfied by that explanation. However, 3 workers dead is a far cry from 4,300. We have 4,297 worker deaths to go.
"We can't disclose what was cited as the cause on his death certificate because it would amount to violation of privacy," a TEPCO spokesman said.
Japan nuclear plant workers in hospital after radiation exposure - 24 March 2011
Three cable-layers at Fukushima power plant exposed to high levels of radiation after stepping into contaminated water
Tests on the workers, who are all in their 20s and 30s, showed they were exposed to between 170 millisieverts (mSv) and 180 mSv of radiation while laying cable in the basement of the No 3 reactor's turbine building. That is above the usual legal limit of 100 mSv per year for nuclear power workers in Japan, but below a new limit of 250 mSv, introduced soon after the nuclear crisis began to enable them to spend more time inside the crippled facility.
That's three workers -- two of whom were hospitalized with radiation burns. Those two were wearing regular shoes, while the third was wearing boots and didn't get burned by radiation. The three were standing in a pool of radioactive water, and the water seeped through their protective clothing.
More than 20 workers have been injured at the Fukushima plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo, since it was badly damaged in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. They include 11 who were hurt when the No 3 reactor building exploded.
To date, 17 have been exposed to radiation exceeding 100 mSv at the plant, though none has been exposed to contamination exceeding the accumulative 250 mSv limit.
Fukushima evacuation has killed more than earthquake and tsunami, survey says - September 2013
More people have now died because of the Fukushima evacuation process than were killed in the region by the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami which caused the displacement, a survey said.
Some 300,000 people evacuated their homes in the prefecture after the disaster caused multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to Red Cross figures.
A survey by popular Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun said Monday that deaths relating to this displacement – around 1,600 – have surpassed the number killed in the region in the original disaster.
Close to 16,000 people were killed across Japan as a direct result of the earthquake and tsunami in 2011. According to the Mainichi report, 1,599 of these deaths were in the Fukushima Prefecture.
jobsanger: Green Party Calls For International Control At Fukushima
Although it's not in the news much anymore, the danger at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant is not over. On January 3rd, Harvey Wasserman .. ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2014/01/gre
Pacific bluefin tuna transport Fukushima-derived radionuclides from Japan to California
Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Pacific Grove, CA 93950; and b
School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook,
NY 11794
Daniel J. Madigana, Zofia Baumann, and Nicholas S. Fisher - approved April 25, 2012 (received for review March 22, 2012)
This paper goes into more detail, but that measurement of radiation is key. The amount, 6.3 Bq per Kg is significantly higher than pre-Fukushima levels, yes. HOWEVER, it is an insignificant amount of radiation.
It means that, yes, Bluefin Tuna is carrying radiation from Japan to the West Coast faster than ocean currents do the job. But the resulting Cesium content is miniscule.
These fish were caught off San Diego in August 2011.
http://micheli.stanford.edu/pdf/Madiganetal_PNAS_2012.pdf
School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook,
NY 11794
Daniel J. Madigana, Zofia Baumann, and Nicholas S. Fisher - approved April 25, 2012 (received for review March 22, 2012)
The Fukushima Dai-ichi release of radionuclides into ocean waters caused significant local and global concern regarding the spread of radioactive material. We report unequivocal evidence that Pacific bluefin tuna, Thunnus orientalis, transported Fukushima-derived radionuclides across the entire North Pacific Ocean. We measured γ-emitting radionuclides in California-caught tunas and found 134Cs
(4.0± 1.4 Bq kg−1) and elevated137Cs (6.3± 1.5 Bq kg-1) in 15 Pacific bluefin tuna sampled in August 2011.
This paper goes into more detail, but that measurement of radiation is key. The amount, 6.3 Bq per Kg is significantly higher than pre-Fukushima levels, yes. HOWEVER, it is an insignificant amount of radiation.
It means that, yes, Bluefin Tuna is carrying radiation from Japan to the West Coast faster than ocean currents do the job. But the resulting Cesium content is miniscule.
These fish were caught off San Diego in August 2011.
http://micheli.stanford.edu/pdf/Madiganetal_PNAS_2012.pdf
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Chernobyl Uncensored - Documentary
The Chernobyl disaster (Ukrainian: Чорнобильська катастрофа, Chornobylska Katastrofa -- Chornobyl Catastrophe) was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then officially Ukrainian SSR), which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe.
The Chernobyl disaster is widely considered to have been the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011). The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles. The official Soviet casualty count of 31 deaths has been disputed, and long-term effects such as cancers and deformities are still being accounted for.
Inside Chernobyl - Documentary
What's it like inside the zone around the Chernobyl accident? This documentary takes a trip to the actual sites, and shows radiation readings using a geiger counter. Trips are fairly easy to arrange, through a company called Solo-East, and travelers don't even have to wear special equipment.
The film-maker even meets with some "resettlers" who have moved back to land near the Chernobyl reactor complex. They also take a trip to Pripyat, the city near the reactor site that was primarily for workers at the plant. It is an abandoned city where nature is taking it back.
Inside Chernobyl - Directors Cut (2012) from Adrian Musto on Vimeo.
Sea floor littered with dead animals? No. Starfish Wasting due to radiation? No.
One of the ideas being floated around is that the "Sea Floor is Littered with the Carcasses of Dead Sea Animals" who died from radiation from the Fukushima disaster. The stories have all looked to be too far gone into la-la-land for me to even note them here. A related story is about Starfish Wasting Syndrome, where lots of starfish are dying on both the East and West coasts of the US, which many are also blaming on radiation from Fukushima, but the only evidence I could find was that it's some kind of disease and that large scale starfish die-off's have occurred in the past.
Over on Deap Sea News they've written up debunkings of both stories.
Is the sea floor littered with dead animals due to radiation? No. - According to DSN - the author of the DSN post had formerly worked at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), the institution which supposedly published the source paper behind the story - MBARI has published no paper describing anything of the sort.
MBARI did publish a study titled Energetics of life on the deep seafloor studying the patterns of phytoplankton blooms near Monterey Bay. Another paper is Smith, K. L., H. A. Ruhl, M. Kahru, C. L. Huffard, and A. D. Sherman. (2013). Deep ocean communities impacted by changing climate over 24 y in the abyssal northeast Pacific Ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1315447110.
Between them DSN says the research focuses on phytoplankton and diatom (tiny sea animals) that have been blooming since 2002, who live then die and their bodies sink to the ocean floor. In the deep ocean other animals exist to eat those dead bodies. It's described as "marine snow" and is a naturally occurring thing, that began well before the Fukushima event.
Now, DSN also discounts the idea that the Ocean Is Dying (because of Fukushima). I wonder what DSN would say to this presentation by Jeremy Jackson, Ocean Apocalypse, he gave recently at the Naval War College in which he said the Ocean is Dying. In Jackson's telling, rising ocean temperatures, overfishing, pollution, and other effects are causing massive shifts in the mix of animals and plants in the oceans. The big sea animals are almost all gone, and what's taking place of the once vibrant sea life is slime. In other words, a half billion years of evolution of sealife is being erased from the ocean.
The kicker? It has nothing to do with Fukushima and has everything to do with other poisons.
Three Reasons Why Fukushima Radiation Has Nothing to Do with Starfish Wasting Syndrome - DSN has a guest blog post from Chris Mah, a Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History researcher, who "broke" the story of a large-scale die-off of starfish in the Pacific and Atlantic. He goes over why this has nothing to do with radiation:
Here's how he put it:
Over on Deap Sea News they've written up debunkings of both stories.
Is the sea floor littered with dead animals due to radiation? No. - According to DSN - the author of the DSN post had formerly worked at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), the institution which supposedly published the source paper behind the story - MBARI has published no paper describing anything of the sort.
MBARI did publish a study titled Energetics of life on the deep seafloor studying the patterns of phytoplankton blooms near Monterey Bay. Another paper is Smith, K. L., H. A. Ruhl, M. Kahru, C. L. Huffard, and A. D. Sherman. (2013). Deep ocean communities impacted by changing climate over 24 y in the abyssal northeast Pacific Ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1315447110.
Between them DSN says the research focuses on phytoplankton and diatom (tiny sea animals) that have been blooming since 2002, who live then die and their bodies sink to the ocean floor. In the deep ocean other animals exist to eat those dead bodies. It's described as "marine snow" and is a naturally occurring thing, that began well before the Fukushima event.
Now, DSN also discounts the idea that the Ocean Is Dying (because of Fukushima). I wonder what DSN would say to this presentation by Jeremy Jackson, Ocean Apocalypse, he gave recently at the Naval War College in which he said the Ocean is Dying. In Jackson's telling, rising ocean temperatures, overfishing, pollution, and other effects are causing massive shifts in the mix of animals and plants in the oceans. The big sea animals are almost all gone, and what's taking place of the once vibrant sea life is slime. In other words, a half billion years of evolution of sealife is being erased from the ocean.
The kicker? It has nothing to do with Fukushima and has everything to do with other poisons.
Three Reasons Why Fukushima Radiation Has Nothing to Do with Starfish Wasting Syndrome - DSN has a guest blog post from Chris Mah, a Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History researcher, who "broke" the story of a large-scale die-off of starfish in the Pacific and Atlantic. He goes over why this has nothing to do with radiation:
Here's how he put it:
- Starfish Wasting Disease/Syndrome (SWD/SWS) pre-Dates Fukushima by 3 to 15 years. This is probably the most self-evident of reasons. One of the earliest accounts of starfish wasting disease was recorded from Southern California (Channel Islands) in 1997 (pdf). The account of SWS in British Columbia was first documented by Bates et al. in 2009, and their data was collected in 2008. Fukushima? March 2011.
- Starfish Wasting Syndrome Occurs on the East Coast as well as the Pacific. Many of the accounts alleging a Fukushima connection to Starfish Wasting Syndrome forget that there are also accounts of SWS on the east coast of the United States affecting the asteriid Asterias rubens. There is no evidence (or apparent mechanism) for Fukushima radiation to have reached the east coast and therefore the Fukushima idea is again not supported.
- No other life in these regions seems to have been affected. If we watch the original British Columbia Pycnopodia die-off videos, and the later Washington state die-off vidoes, one cannot help but notice that other than the starfish, EVERYTHING else remains alive. Fish. Seaweed, encrusting animals. etc.
Supposedly radioactive beaches near San Francisco tested clean of Fukushima, radiation is naturally occurring
This is a followup to an earlier post where I went over a video showing elevated radioactivity at a beach near San Francisco. New information now available is showing that the radiation came from naturally occurring thorium and radon.
This video reads through an article posted on the Half Moon Bay Patch.
Basically, the person who did the earlier video didn't do any analysis. He walked around and noted some numbers - but the numbers could be any kind of radiation.
That is - a Count on a Geiger Counter is simply the thingy noting a radioactive particle was picked up by the Counter. It doesn't tell you the source of that particle. And it's the source of the particle which determines how risky it is. At least that's my half-assed understanding at this time.
One of the links below was written by Dan Sythe, CEO for International Medcom, the maker of the Inspector geiger counter shown in the video. He got some samples from the beach and used not only a geiger counter but a multichannel analyzer, and found that the samples contain naturally occurring Radium 226 and Thorium 232
He provided this screen capture:
Note that all the peaks are different isotopes of Thorium and Radium. This is a clear sign the material is naturally occurring.
This image is a sample taken from a "deck" in Fukushima Prefecture, and clearly shows peaks for Cesium-137.
Remember that Cesium-137 is not naturally occurring, and is wholly a byproduct of the Nuclear Age.
This video was recorded by someone who was more careful in reporting radiation readings on beaches between Half Moon Bay and San Francisco.
He clearly correlated the radiation readings to the presence (or not) of "dark sand", and concludes that this is naturally occurring radiation.
http://halfmoonbay.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/half-moon-bay-beach-radiation-not-from-fukushima-officials-say
http://blog.safecast.org/2014/01/radiation-on-california-beaches/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturally_occurring_radioactive_material
Radioactivity of sand from several renowned public beaches and assessment of the corresponding environmental risks
Tracing Coastal Sediment Movement By Naturally Radioactive Minerals
California Beach Radiation Not From Fukushima
This video reads through an article posted on the Half Moon Bay Patch.
Basically, the person who did the earlier video didn't do any analysis. He walked around and noted some numbers - but the numbers could be any kind of radiation.
That is - a Count on a Geiger Counter is simply the thingy noting a radioactive particle was picked up by the Counter. It doesn't tell you the source of that particle. And it's the source of the particle which determines how risky it is. At least that's my half-assed understanding at this time.
One of the links below was written by Dan Sythe, CEO for International Medcom, the maker of the Inspector geiger counter shown in the video. He got some samples from the beach and used not only a geiger counter but a multichannel analyzer, and found that the samples contain naturally occurring Radium 226 and Thorium 232
He provided this screen capture:
Remember that Cesium-137 is not naturally occurring, and is wholly a byproduct of the Nuclear Age.
This video was recorded by someone who was more careful in reporting radiation readings on beaches between Half Moon Bay and San Francisco.
He clearly correlated the radiation readings to the presence (or not) of "dark sand", and concludes that this is naturally occurring radiation.
http://halfmoonbay.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/half-moon-bay-beach-radiation-not-from-fukushima-officials-say
http://blog.safecast.org/2014/01/radiation-on-california-beaches/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturally_occurring_radioactive_material
Radioactivity of sand from several renowned public beaches and assessment of the corresponding environmental risks
Tracing Coastal Sediment Movement By Naturally Radioactive Minerals
California Beach Radiation Not From Fukushima
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Activists preparing to sue Fukushima nuclear plant suppliers
Taipei, Jan. 7 (CNA) Anti-nuclear activists from Taiwan and Japan are calling for participation in a proposed international group lawsuit against the .. ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201401070
Pesek on Asia: Fukushima Fears Spread
That's especially so now that the people of San Francisco are fretting over the nuclear leak at Fukushima. Health officials there are investigating .. ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-07/
Friday, January 3, 2014
Health officials respond to beach radiation scare
Past computer simulations had indicated that radioactive cesium-137 from the Fukushima reactors could begin appearing on West Coast shores by .. ...
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.hmbreview.com/news/health-offi
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