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Fukushima Radiation To Reach West Coast Next Month | Zero Hedge

Fukushima Radiation To Reach West Coast Next Month | Zero Hedge.

Over the past three years there has been endless debate over whether the Fukushima radioactive fallout is hitting the US west coast, or if, as the media spin would have it, it is largely isolated, and best to just take their word for it for the simple reason that no federal agency currently samples Pacific Coast seawater for radiation. The answer may finally be in sight, and it is not a pleasant one: USA Today reports that “very low levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster likely will reach ocean waters along the U.S. West Coast next month, scientists are reporting. Current models predict that the radiation will be at extremely low levels that won’t harm humans or the environment, said Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who presented research on the issue last week.

Hopefully these “models” are better at forecasting than the Fed’s (which are operated by three supercomputers), and the definition of “minimum” hasn’t undergone the same material revisions as did “maximum” in the context of the maximum permitted radiation dose falling on Tepco workers in the days when Japan desperately was lying every day about the magnitude of the radioactive disaster. Obviously, it is one thing to make up predictions for the sake of avoiding a panic, it is something entirely different to have empirical data: “I’m not trying to be alarmist,” Buesseler said. “We can make predictions, we can do models. But unless you have results, how will we know it’s safe?”

As if Buesseler doesn’t know that any actual data that reveals alarming results will be seasonally adjusted, and then all excess radiation will be blamed on the “harsh winter weather.”

Mockery of economists and other idiots aside, here are the facts on the prevailing models:

There are three competing models of the Fukushima radiation plume, differing in amount and timing. But all predict that the plume will reach the West Coast this summer, and the most commonly cited one estimates an April arrival, Buesseler said.

 

A report presented last week at a conference of the American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences Section showed that some Cesium 134 has already has arrived in Canada, in the Gulf of Alaska area.

 

Cesium 134 serves as a fingerprint for Fukushima, Buesseler said.

 

“The models show it will reach north of Seattle first, then move down the coast,” Buesseler said.

The good news:

By the time it gets here, the material will be so diluted as to be almost negligible, the models predict. Radiation also decays. Cesium 134, for example, has a half-life of two years, meaning it will have half its original intensity after that period.

Or rather, make that the spin: after all as the paper notes, West Coast states are winding down their tsunami debris response efforts. “Oregon’s coastline is seeing less debris from the tsunami this winter than in the past two years, Oregon State Parks spokesman Chris Havel said. If that doesn’t change, officials likely will disband a task force that was mobilized to deal with the debris. Last year, Washington suspended its marine debris reporting hotline.”

One can be certain that no amount of reality, or radioactivity, will be allowed to spoil the budgeted plans that involve a return to normalcy even as the Fukushima power plant is nowhere near contained today, than it was the day after the historic catastrophe from March 2011.

And in case that is not yet clear, here is exhibit A: aReuters report on Fukushima children that assigns increasingly abnormal pathologies not on the fallout from the Fukushima explosion but, get this, on their staying indoors!

Some of the smallest children in Koriyama, a short drive from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, barely know what it’s like to play outside — fear of radiation has kept them in doors for much of their short lives.  Though the strict safety limits for outdoor activity set after multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in 2011 have now been eased, parental worries and ingrained habit mean many children still stay inside.

 

And the impact is now starting to show, with children experiencing falling strength, lack of coordination, some cannot even ride a bicycle, and emotional issues like shorter tempers, officials and educators say.

 

“There are children who are very fearful. They ask before they eat anything, ‘does this have radiation in it?’ and we have to tell them it’s okay to eat,” said Mitsuhiro Hiraguri, director of the Emporium Kindergarten in Koriyama, some 55 km (35 miles) west of the Fukushima nuclear plant. “But some really, really want to play outside. They say they want to play in the sandbox and make mud pies. We have to tell them no, I’m sorry. Play in the sandbox inside instead.”

You see, the falling strength, the lack of coordination, and the behavioral changes three years after the explosion, are all due to children not being allowed to play in Fukushima’s spilling over radioactive cooling water, where as of a month ago, record amounts of Cesium were recorded. Nothing to do at all with slightly “abnormal” levels of alpha, beta and gamma radiation in the air.

This continues:

“Compared to before the disaster, you can certainly see a fall in the results of physical strength and ability tests – things like grip strength, running and throwing balls,” said Toshiaki Yabe, an official with the Koriyama city government.

 

Hiraguri said that stress was showing up in an increase of scuffles, arguments and even sudden nosebleeds among the children, as well as more subtle effects.

 

“There’s a lot more children who aren’t all that alert in their response to things. They aren’t motivated to do anything,” he said.

Yes: the nosebleeds and the lack of alertness too are not due to the radiation, but all entirely due to being keptaway from it. We suppose the proper advice here is: to avoid sudden nosebleeds, short tempers, and falling strength, let you children run like the wind, if possible into the Third reactor’s cooling tanks.

One really can’t make this pathetic, deadly BS up.

So keeping in the theme of this lunacy, and coming soon to a Orwellian banana dictatorship near you: the poor will be taxed more, because it is their fault they did not invest the money they don’t have, in Glorious Bernank’s attempt to make everything better for everyone. Remember: the Chairsatan was just paid in one hour more than in one full year at the Fed to reveal that “his natural inclination would be to try to help the average person.”

Fukushima Radiation To Reach West Coast Next Month | Zero Hedge

Fukushima Radiation To Reach West Coast Next Month | Zero Hedge.

Over the past three years there has been endless debate over whether the Fukushima radioactive fallout is hitting the US west coast, or if, as the media spin would have it, it is largely isolated, and best to just take their word for it for the simple reason that no federal agency currently samples Pacific Coast seawater for radiation. The answer may finally be in sight, and it is not a pleasant one: USA Today reports that “very low levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster likely will reach ocean waters along the U.S. West Coast next month, scientists are reporting. Current models predict that the radiation will be at extremely low levels that won’t harm humans or the environment, said Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who presented research on the issue last week.

Hopefully these “models” are better at forecasting than the Fed’s (which are operated by three supercomputers), and the definition of “minimum” hasn’t undergone the same material revisions as did “maximum” in the context of the maximum permitted radiation dose falling on Tepco workers in the days when Japan desperately was lying every day about the magnitude of the radioactive disaster. Obviously, it is one thing to make up predictions for the sake of avoiding a panic, it is something entirely different to have empirical data: “I’m not trying to be alarmist,” Buesseler said. “We can make predictions, we can do models. But unless you have results, how will we know it’s safe?”

As if Buesseler doesn’t know that any actual data that reveals alarming results will be seasonally adjusted, and then all excess radiation will be blamed on the “harsh winter weather.”

Mockery of economists and other idiots aside, here are the facts on the prevailing models:

There are three competing models of the Fukushima radiation plume, differing in amount and timing. But all predict that the plume will reach the West Coast this summer, and the most commonly cited one estimates an April arrival, Buesseler said.

 

A report presented last week at a conference of the American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences Section showed that some Cesium 134 has already has arrived in Canada, in the Gulf of Alaska area.

 

Cesium 134 serves as a fingerprint for Fukushima, Buesseler said.

 

“The models show it will reach north of Seattle first, then move down the coast,” Buesseler said.

The good news:

By the time it gets here, the material will be so diluted as to be almost negligible, the models predict. Radiation also decays. Cesium 134, for example, has a half-life of two years, meaning it will have half its original intensity after that period.

Or rather, make that the spin: after all as the paper notes, West Coast states are winding down their tsunami debris response efforts. “Oregon’s coastline is seeing less debris from the tsunami this winter than in the past two years, Oregon State Parks spokesman Chris Havel said. If that doesn’t change, officials likely will disband a task force that was mobilized to deal with the debris. Last year, Washington suspended its marine debris reporting hotline.”

One can be certain that no amount of reality, or radioactivity, will be allowed to spoil the budgeted plans that involve a return to normalcy even as the Fukushima power plant is nowhere near contained today, than it was the day after the historic catastrophe from March 2011.

And in case that is not yet clear, here is exhibit A: aReuters report on Fukushima children that assigns increasingly abnormal pathologies not on the fallout from the Fukushima explosion but, get this, on their staying indoors!

Some of the smallest children in Koriyama, a short drive from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, barely know what it’s like to play outside — fear of radiation has kept them in doors for much of their short lives.  Though the strict safety limits for outdoor activity set after multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in 2011 have now been eased, parental worries and ingrained habit mean many children still stay inside.

 

And the impact is now starting to show, with children experiencing falling strength, lack of coordination, some cannot even ride a bicycle, and emotional issues like shorter tempers, officials and educators say.

 

“There are children who are very fearful. They ask before they eat anything, ‘does this have radiation in it?’ and we have to tell them it’s okay to eat,” said Mitsuhiro Hiraguri, director of the Emporium Kindergarten in Koriyama, some 55 km (35 miles) west of the Fukushima nuclear plant. “But some really, really want to play outside. They say they want to play in the sandbox and make mud pies. We have to tell them no, I’m sorry. Play in the sandbox inside instead.”

You see, the falling strength, the lack of coordination, and the behavioral changes three years after the explosion, are all due to children not being allowed to play in Fukushima’s spilling over radioactive cooling water, where as of a month ago, record amounts of Cesium were recorded. Nothing to do at all with slightly “abnormal” levels of alpha, beta and gamma radiation in the air.

This continues:

“Compared to before the disaster, you can certainly see a fall in the results of physical strength and ability tests – things like grip strength, running and throwing balls,” said Toshiaki Yabe, an official with the Koriyama city government.

 

Hiraguri said that stress was showing up in an increase of scuffles, arguments and even sudden nosebleeds among the children, as well as more subtle effects.

 

“There’s a lot more children who aren’t all that alert in their response to things. They aren’t motivated to do anything,” he said.

Yes: the nosebleeds and the lack of alertness too are not due to the radiation, but all entirely due to being keptaway from it. We suppose the proper advice here is: to avoid sudden nosebleeds, short tempers, and falling strength, let you children run like the wind, if possible into the Third reactor’s cooling tanks.

One really can’t make this pathetic, deadly BS up.

So keeping in the theme of this lunacy, and coming soon to a Orwellian banana dictatorship near you: the poor will be taxed more, because it is their fault they did not invest the money they don’t have, in Glorious Bernank’s attempt to make everything better for everyone. Remember: the Chairsatan was just paid in one hour more than in one full year at the Fed to reveal that “his natural inclination would be to try to help the average person.”

Nuclear Expert: “Half of the Reactors Operating Today In The United States Do Not Meet The NRC’s Fire Protection Regulations … a Third Of The Reactors In The United States Aren’t Protected Against Flooding If An Upstream Dam Were To Fail … Another 27 Reactors Are Not Protected Against Earthquake Hazards” Washington’s Blog

Nuclear Expert: “Half of the Reactors Operating Today In The United States Do Not Meet The NRC’s Fire Protection Regulations … a Third Of The Reactors In The United States Aren’t Protected Against Flooding If An Upstream Dam Were To Fail … Another 27 Reactors Are Not Protected Against Earthquake Hazards” Washington’s Blog.

American Nuclear Plants Are In Danger of Melting Down

The risk of a nuclear meltdown in the United States is even greater than it was at Fukushima.

Yet the U.S. Nuclear regulatory Commission (NRC) has weakened safety standards for U.S. nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster.

David Lochbaum – Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who worked as a nuclear engineer for nearly two decades, and has written numerous articles and reports on various aspects of nuclear safety and published two books – explained today:

There are a lot of safety regulation shortcomings that we think need to be rectified to provide a solid foundation for the existing nuclear power plants and any new nuclear power plants we build in the United States. For example, half of the reactors operating today in the United States do not meet the NRC’s fire protection regulations, even though the fire hazard represents the same threat of reactor core meltdown as all other threats combined. And that’s when you meet the regulations. In addition, about a third of the reactors in the United States aren’t protected against flooding if an upstream dam were to fail. So another 25, 27 reactors are not protected against earthquake hazards. And we’ve known this for years, and we’ve tolerated that rather than fixing it.

The proper foundation for nuclear power new and existing would be a nuclear regulator that enforces federal safety regulations, rather than in just setting them and watching plants live well beneath them year after year.

See this and this for interviews of Lochbaum by Washington’s Blog.

 

Nuclear Expert: “Half of the Reactors Operating Today In The United States Do Not Meet The NRC's Fire Protection Regulations … a Third Of The Reactors In The United States Aren't Protected Against Flooding If An Upstream Dam Were To Fail … Another 27 Reactors Are Not Protected Against Earthquake Hazards” Washington's Blog

Nuclear Expert: “Half of the Reactors Operating Today In The United States Do Not Meet The NRC’s Fire Protection Regulations … a Third Of The Reactors In The United States Aren’t Protected Against Flooding If An Upstream Dam Were To Fail … Another 27 Reactors Are Not Protected Against Earthquake Hazards” Washington’s Blog.

American Nuclear Plants Are In Danger of Melting Down

The risk of a nuclear meltdown in the United States is even greater than it was at Fukushima.

Yet the U.S. Nuclear regulatory Commission (NRC) has weakened safety standards for U.S. nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster.

David Lochbaum – Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who worked as a nuclear engineer for nearly two decades, and has written numerous articles and reports on various aspects of nuclear safety and published two books – explained today:

There are a lot of safety regulation shortcomings that we think need to be rectified to provide a solid foundation for the existing nuclear power plants and any new nuclear power plants we build in the United States. For example, half of the reactors operating today in the United States do not meet the NRC’s fire protection regulations, even though the fire hazard represents the same threat of reactor core meltdown as all other threats combined. And that’s when you meet the regulations. In addition, about a third of the reactors in the United States aren’t protected against flooding if an upstream dam were to fail. So another 25, 27 reactors are not protected against earthquake hazards. And we’ve known this for years, and we’ve tolerated that rather than fixing it.

The proper foundation for nuclear power new and existing would be a nuclear regulator that enforces federal safety regulations, rather than in just setting them and watching plants live well beneath them year after year.

See this and this for interviews of Lochbaum by Washington’s Blog.

 

Fukushima Cover Up: a Play In 2 Acts | Zero Hedge

Fukushima Cover Up: a Play In 2 Acts | Zero Hedge.

Act 1:  Japanese Prime Minister Had to Fly In to Fukushima In the Middle of the Night to Get the Scoop from Low-Level Nuclear Workers … Because Tepco Wouldn’t Tell Him the Truth

In this 27-second video, Amy Goodman summarizes her interview with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan:

We just came from Tokyo. We broadcast for three days from Japan. And we’re going to play the interview I did with the former prime minister, the one in charge at the time [of the Fukushima disaster], Naoto Kan. He said it was extremely difficult to get a straight answer from TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, that ran the plants, and he had to fly in. He figured the only place he could get a straight, nonpolitical answer—he flew in the middle of the night to the plant to talk to the workers to figure out whether he had to evacuate 50 million people in Tokyo.

This is not the first time Tepco has been less than honest:

  • Tepco admitted that it’s known for 2 years that massive amounts of radioactive water are leaking into the groundwater and Pacific Ocean, but covered it up
  • Tepco falsely claimed that all of the radiation was somehow contained in the harbor right outside the nuclear plants

Act 2: U.S.Nuclear Authorities Were Extremely Worried About West Coast Getting Hit By Fukushima Radiation … But Publicly Said It Was Safe

Nuclear expert Ed Lyman – chief scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists – said:

While the U.S. government was telling the American people there was nothing to fear from Fukushima and that U.S. plants aren’t vulnerable to the same problems, internally, they were—there was a much different story. So we’ve learned from a lot of Freedom of Information Act documents that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the White House were actually very concerned about the potential impact of radiation from Fukushima affecting not only Americans in Tokyo, which was more than a hundred miles away from the plant, but also Americans on the West Coast. And they were furiously running calculations to try to figure out how bad it could get. But there was no sense of this in what they were telling the public.

Indeed, Seattle residents were exposed to dangerous radioactive “hot particles” because the government didn’t warn residents:

This is similar to the Japanese government withholding radiation plume data from evacuating Fukushima residents … which caused them to evacuate to areas of very high radiation.

EneNews rounds up details on the freedom of information act information.

 

Nuclear Disasters and Displacement – Our World

Nuclear Disasters and Displacement – Our World.

2014•02•26 Silva Meybatyan University of the District of Columbia
Nuclear Disasters and Displacement

Hospital, Chernobyl. Photo: Michael Kötter. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The lessons of the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 seem to be the same as those from Chernobyl 25 years earlier, despite the different political settings. Apparently not much had been learned.

The two worst nuclear accidents to date — Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and Fukushima-Daiichi in Japan — occurred as the forces of nature combined with human error to bring about a complicated cluster of human problems that displaced much of the affected populations and left millions more trapped in contaminated areas.

On 26 April 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine caused a fire that lasted for ten days and radioactive debris to spread over thousands of square kilometres. At the time of the incident, about 230,000 people in 640 settlements in the European parts of the USSR were thought to be exposed to external gamma radiation and/or internal exposure through the consumption of contaminated water and locally produced or gathered food. In the following 20 years, numerous assessments revealed an increasing number of people affected in the USSR, including people evacuated from the exclusion zone, and residents who remained trapped in radioactive ‘hot spots’.

On 11 March 2011, tsunami floods damaged four of the six power units of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan resulting in contamination of as much as 1,800 km² of land with particular ‘hot spots’.

Managing the crisis

By all accounts, the authoritarian style of governance associated with the Soviet regime and the fact that the immediate area surrounding the plant was not densely populated were beneficial in the early stages of the crisis. The relative success of an immediate response, however, was hindered somewhat by the lack of information disseminated to the public as the weeks, months and years passed.

Prior to the disaster, the USSR had policies in place for measures that should be undertaken in the event of radioactive contamination, which included instructions from medical experts on when local and central government should evacuate affected populations, depending on their level of exposure. Hours after the event, preliminary radiation readings prompted the authorities to draw a 10 km radius around the plant, from which everyone was to be evacuated within a few days. One week later, as more information was uncovered as to the scale of the disaster, a government commission established to deal with the aftermath extended the exclusion zone to 30 km.

The same day as the tsunami occurred the Japanese government instructed residents living within a 2 km radius to evacuate. As with Chernobyl, over the following weeks the zone was extended outwards to 30 km.

Around Chernobyl, roadblocks were established to prevent privately owned cars from leaving without authorisation, and buses were chartered from outside the contaminated zone. This limited the spread of contamination from inside the exclusion zone and facilitated the evacuations which started the next day, beginning with some 50,000 residents of Pripyat where power plant employees lived. Local government officials and Communist party leaders were told that people would be evacuated for only three days. The official announcement was very short, with no information about the dangers of exposure to radiation. The absence of clear instructions on evacuation led to numerous problems about belongings left behind, including personal documents. Close to 5,000 people remained in Pripyat after the evacuation. Some were left there to assist with clean-up activities, while others refused to evacuate without their farm animals, tools and equipment.

In order to reduce panic, the government increased the level of the permissible annual dose of absorbed radiation in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, avoiding mandatory evacuation of millions. However, children between 8 and 15 years old were sent to summer camps, and pregnant women and mothers with young children and infants were sent to hotels, rest houses, sanatoria and tourist facilities, dividing many families with little consideration for the lasting social effects.

In early June 1986, ‘hot spots’ were discovered outside the 30 km zone, leading to the evacuation of a further 20,000 people. By the end of 1986, some 116,000 inhabitants from 188 settlements had been evacuated, as well as 60,000 cattle and other farm animals. Thousands of apartments were made available in urban centres, and 21,000 new buildings were constructed in rural areas to house evacuees, although people were spread throughout the USSR. The upheaval induced by the break-up of the USSR five years after the disaster cannot be underestimated, both in terms of migration implications and the impact on responding to the lingering effects of the crisis.

Following Chernobyl, the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information Network System (SPEEDI) computer system was designed in Japan to predict the spread of radioactive particles in order to effectively assess the situation and guide evacuations. However, most radiation dose-monitoring equipment and meteorological monitors were either damaged by the tsunami or were out of service because of the loss of power. In addition, the models did not incorporate all the variables needed to accurately calculate human external exposure and inhalation so the local authorities were reluctant to rely heavily on them in their decision-making process. There were also reports that initially the authorities did not know about SPEEDI, and later on played down the data to dismiss the severity of the accident for fear of having to significantly expand the evacuation zone, and to avoid compensation payments to still more evacuees.

In Fukushima, on 25 March approximately 62,000 residents were advised to evacuate voluntarily or to stay indoors. Orders to ‘shelter in place’ or to voluntarily evacuate were unclear and long-winded, leading some people to move into areas with high levels of radiation and eventually being evacuated multiple times. According to the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC), the Japanese government was slow in informing the municipal governments and the public about the accident and its severity. Many people were unaware of the crisis and did not take essential items when they were evacuated. For those being evacuated the greatest advantage was their level of connectedness to outside areas such as employment or relatives and friends outside the region. Others were at a disadvantage because their only recourse was to follow government-organised evacuation and be placed in temporary housing.

Radiation is invisible, and at first no obvious factors force people away or hinder migration into these regions. Migration back to contaminated areas of the Ukraine was reported as early as the end of 1986, only eight months later. The demographic composition of the returned population consisted mostly of the elderly who had had difficulty adapting to the new places and wanted to live out their remaining years in their homeland, and those who thought of Chernobyl-related financial benefits as their only means of survival. Poverty caused by resettlement, restrictions on agriculture, lack of rehabilitation and livelihood restoration programmes, and the effects of the collapse of the USSR, led to ever more people claiming such benefits.

Lessons

Although the immediate evacuation after the Chernobyl disaster was carried out swiftly and effectively, there was no clear understanding of the far-reaching consequences, and no structured resettlement plan to deal with these consequences in the medium or long term. Determining obligations and responsibilities for offering protection to those moving is not simple, especially in the context of post-Soviet emigration where it is difficult to distinguish between migrants seeking economic opportunities and those fleeing because of health risks. The disintegration of the USSR and the difficult transition process intensified the consequences of the Chernobyl accident and the complexities around responsibilities for those affected.

Some 25 years later, the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident raised questions over lessons learned and lessons yet to be learned from Chernobyl in terms of preparedness and mitigation of nuclear disasters but also in terms of normative and implementation gaps in dealing with the consequences of these crises. In the context of both crises, tens of thousands were permanently displaced from the immediate vicinities; thousands made the decision to move because of health concerns, environmental degradation and collapsed infrastructure; and millions remained in contaminated areas due to an absence of resources and/or opportunities, financial constraints and special attachment to their home.

In both the Chernobyl and Fukushima cases, strong governments responded with a heavy-handed approach that proved effective, to a certain extent, in evacuating immediate areas in the short term. Interestingly, the governments of Japan and the USSR both adopted top-down governance approaches too in how they communicated to their populations in the context of humanitarian crises triggered by nuclear disasters. However, a lack of information relayed to affected populations exacerbated long-term effects of the crisis on these populations. Indeed, one of the major, and unanticipated, consequences of these disasters has been the psychological effects that have resulted from unreliable and contradictory information, along with the anxiety induced by ill-planned medium- and long-term relocation efforts, the disruption of social ties, and lingering health concerns. An estimated 1,539 stress-related deaths occurred in the context of evacuation from Fukushima, which arguably could have been prevented by more active consultation and communication by the government with affected populations.

Creative Commons License
Nuclear Disasters and Displacement by Silva Meybatyan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at Forced Migration Review.

» Confirmed: Fukushima Radiation Reaches West Coast of Canada Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!

» Confirmed: Fukushima Radiation Reaches West Coast of Canada Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

Researchers discover cesium near Vancouver

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 26, 2014

Researchers have announced that radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima nuclear disaster have been discovered in seawater west of Vancouver off the coast of Canada, confirming predictions that the radiation would reach the west coast by early 2014.

Image: Daiichi Nuclear Plant (YouTube).

The findings were announced at the annual American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu yesterday.

“John Smith, a research scientist at Canada’s Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, told the AGU meeting that since 2011 he and colleagues had measured a radioactive plume from nuclear complex at ocean monitoring stations west of Vancouver. Fukushima’s radiation reached Canada before the US on the powerful Kuroshio Current. It’s predicted to flow south and then circle back to Hawaii,” reports Planet Save.

Samples of cesium-134 and cesium-137, which has a half-life of more than 30 years, were found by the researchers. The good news is that the samples are well below safety limits, although these were massively increased by authorities in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. The full scale of the danger will not be known until 2016, which is when the cesium radiation is expected to peak.

Senior scientist Ken Buesseler said that the radiation has not yet reached Washington, California, or Hawaii, although researchers are still awaiting tests on samples collected earlier this month. Some have suggested April as the time when Fukushima radiation will begin to hit the Pacific coast.

Yesterday, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) admitted that levels of radiation measured in seawater from around the destroyed nuclear reactor were “significantly undercounted,” just the latest in a long history of officials deceptively downplaying the threat.

Using ocean simulations, experts concluded last summer that the radioactive plume from the nuclear accident in March 2011 would reach U.S. coastal waters by early 2014.

While publicly scoffing at independent researchers concerned about Fukushima radiation, public health authorities have been making preparations which many see as being connected to the ongoing crisis at the Daiichi nuclear plant.

The Department of Health and Human Services recently ordered 14 million doses of potassium iodide, the compound that protects the body from radioactive poisoning in the aftermath of severe nuclear accidents, but a DHHS official denied that the purchase was connected to the Fukushima crisis.

High levels of radioactivity have already been detected on beaches in San Francisco, although officials were quick to assert that the findings had no connection to Fukushima.

In January it was announced that 19 academic and government institutions would begin monitoring kelp forests across the entire state of California for signs of contamination from the crippled nuclear power plant.

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*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

This article was posted: Wednesday, February 26, 2014 at 9:54 am

TEPCO Admits Fukushima Radiation “Significantly” Undercounted | Zero Hedge

TEPCO Admits Fukushima Radiation “Significantly” Undercounted | Zero Hedge.

From April to September of 2013, as Bloomberg reports, TEPCO admits that levels of radiation measured from water samples around the destroyed Fukushima nuclear reactor were “significantly undercounted.”  We assume it was mere coincidence that during this very time Shinzo Abe proclaimed the 2020 Olympics would be safe and used many of these readings as evidence. In addition to this debacle, The BBC reports, the likely scale of the radioactive plume of water from Fukushima due to hit the west coast of North America should be known in the next two months; and rather stunningly, The Japan Times reports a new study finds the lifetime risk of developing cancer has risen among 1-year-old girls in an area affected by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant. But apart from that, everything’s great.

TEPCO admits radiation levels were “signicantly” undercounted… (Bloomberg)

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is re-analyzing 164 water samples collected last year at the wrecked Fukushima atomic plant because previous readings “significantly undercounted” radiation levels.

The utility known as Tepco said the levels were undercounted due to errors in its testing of beta radiation, which includes strontium-90, an isotope linked to bone cancer. None of the samples were taken from seawater, the company said today in an e-mailed statement.

These errors occurred during a time when the number of the samplings rapidly increased as the result of a series of events since last April, including groundwater reservoir leakage and a major leak from a storage tank,” according to the statement.

And this…

Earlier today, Tepco suspended the removal of spent nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima plant after a cooling system failed due to a damaged power cable, the company said in a separate e-mailed statement. Work resumed at the reactor No. 4 spent fuel pool after activation of a backup system.

And then there’s the plume coming California’s way… (BBC)

The likely scale of the radioactive plume of water from Fukushima due to hit the west coast of North America should be known in the next two months.

Only minute traces of pollution from the beleaguered Japanese power plant have so far been recorded in Canadian continental waters.

This will increase as contaminants disperse eastwards on Pacific currents.

And this dismal study.. (The Japan Times)

The lifetime risk of developing cancer has risen slightly among 1-year-old girls in an area affected by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, according to a study published online in a U.S. science journal Monday.

The assessment was based on a two-month study by Japanese researchers conducted about a year and a half after the March 2011 nuclear disaster. The study checked the radiation exposure of around 460 residents living near the crippled plant Fukushima Prefecture.

Health risk assessment indicates that post-2012 doses will increase the lifetime solid cancer incidence rate among 1-year-old girls by 1.06 percentage points in the Tamano area of Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, from the average rate of 31.76 percent, the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said.

It is the first time projections have been made regarding the probability of cancer risk related to the nuclear disaster, according to the team.

Akio Koizumi, a team member and Kyoto University professor of environmental health, acknowledged that lifetime cancer incidence likely rose slightly due to radiation exposurebut said he sees the impact of radiation exposure on health as “small.”

But apart from that, the clean-up is going great…

Oh wait…

  • *TEPCO SAYS PLANNED RESTART OF NUCLEAR PLANT DIFFICULT: MAINICHI

But this should make everyone feel better…

  • *TEPCO TO GIVE CONDO RESIDENTS 5% DISCOUNT ON POWER: NIKKEI

Tepco Finds New Leak of Radioactive Water at Fukushima Site – Bloomberg

Tepco Finds New Leak of Radioactive Water at Fukushima Site – Bloomberg.

By Masumi Suga, Yuji Okada and Jacob Adelman  Feb 20, 2014 2:28 AM ET

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501), operator of the crisis-ridden Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant, said it found a new leak near the tanks holding contaminated water at the disaster site.

The utility, which serves 29 million customers in the Tokyo metropolitan area, is collecting soil where the leak occurred and doesn’t believe any water reached the ocean, company executives said at a briefing in Tokyo. About 100 metric tons (26,400 gallons) of water may have escaped a concrete barrier, the company said.

“Such a water leak was found despite a variety of measures taken by the company,” Masayuki Ono, an official at the utility’s nuclear power and plant division, said. “We are sorry to have caused concern,” he said.

The finding is a reminder of the task still facing Tokyo Electric as the utility, known as Tepco, battles to manage the plant almost three years since the earthquake and tsunami.

Beta radiation readings of 230 million becquerels per liter were taken in a sample collected from a gutter on top of the leaked tank at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, according to a statement from the Tokyo-based utility. Japan’s safety limit for radioactive materials in drinking water is 10 becquerels per liter, according to the health ministry.

Radioactive water overflowed from the 10-meter long tank after two valves — which were supposed to be closed — had been opened, Ono said today. The leak was found 700 meters (0.4 miles) from the ocean in an area isolated from any drainage ditch, he said.

Setback to Decommissioning

Japan’s nuclear regulator, which is planning to check the utility’s probe of the leak and planned preventative measures, said today that it has asked Tepco to ensure no more leaks from the same type of water storage tanks occur.

The leak highlights difficulties for the regulator as it seeks to force Tepco to limit radiation at the site without slowing down its decommissioning.

“We need a balance of the best regulation and also the quickest decommissioning at Fukushima Dai-Ichi because we really want to have the reduction of the risk at the site,” Nuclear Regulation Authority commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa said today in Tokyo.

Tepco has installed about a thousand tanks at Fukushima to store hundreds of thousands of tons of water used to cool fuel after the nuclear accident in March 2011.

Some 300 tons of contaminated groundwater seep into the ocean each day at the Dai-Ichi station 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Tokyo, Japan’s government has said.

Between May 2011 and August 2013, as many as 20 trillion becquerels of cesium-137, 10 trillion becquerels of strontium-90 and 40 trillion becquerels of tritium entered the ocean via groundwater, according to past statements from Tepco.

Tepco’s shares closed down 7 yen, or 2.4 percent, at 455 yen in Tokyo trading after earlier declining as much as 2.8 percent. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped 2.2 percent.

To contact the reporters on this story: Masumi Suga in Tokyo at msuga@bloomberg.net; Yuji Okada in Tokyo at yokada6@bloomberg.net; Jacob Adelman in Tokyo atjadelman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jason Rogers at jrogers73@bloomberg.net

Why the Obama Administration Will Not Admit that Fukushima Radiation is Poisoning Americans | Global Research

Why the Obama Administration Will Not Admit that Fukushima Radiation is Poisoning Americans | Global Research.

Why isn’t GE being held accountable?

Global Research, February 15, 2014
Activist Post 21 January 2014
Region: 
Theme: 
radiation5

 by Chris Carrington

We all know that the radiation from the stricken Fukushima plant has spread around the globe and is poisoning people worldwide. We all know that the West Coast of the United States is being polluted with radioactive debris and that the oceans, the beaches that border them, and even the air is becoming more polluted by radioactivity as time goes on.

You have to ask yourself why the government won’t admit this. It’s not like a disaster half a world away is their fault, is it?

Or is it? Could the United States government have done something to prevent the situation getting to this point?

Nothing in this article is a state secret, everything is in the public domain, but the information is so disseminated that it appears disconnected.

  • the US government knows only too well that the West Coast is polluted with radiation and that the situation is getting worse by the day.
  • the US government and General Electric knew that Fukushima was a disaster waiting to happen, and they did nothing to prevent it.
  • they also know that the many nuclear reactors in the United States are also prone to catastrophic meltdown, and they are doing nothing about it.
  • research by doctors and scientists is being suppressed, and research by private citizens is being written off purely because they have no scientific background.

 All the warnings were ignored

The narrative that leads us to the state we are in today starts in 1972.

Stephen Hanauer, an official at the atomic Energy Commission recommended that General Electric’s Mark 1 design be discontinued as it presented unacceptable safety risks.

The New York Times reported:

In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen — a situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Later that same year, Joseph Hendrie, who would later become chairman of theNuclear Regulatory Commission, a successor agency to the atomic commission,said the idea of a ban on such systems was attractive. But the technology had been so widely accepted by the industry and regulatory officials, he said, that “reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power.” (source)

Then, three years later in 1975, Dale Bridenbaugh and two colleagues were asked to review the GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor (BWR). They were convinced that the reactor was inherently unsafe and so flawed in its design that it could catastrophically fail under certain circumstances. There were two main issues. First was the possible failure of the Mark 1 to deal with the huge pressures created if the unit lost cooling power. Secondly, the spent fuel ponds were situated 100 feet in the air near the top of the reactor.

They voiced their opinions, which were promptly pushed aside, and after realizing that they were not going to be allowed to make their opinions public all three resigned.

Over the years numerous other experts voiced concerns over the GE Mark 1 BWR. All have gone unheeded.

Five of the six reactors at Fukushima were GE Mark 1 BWR. The first reactor, unit one, was commissioned in 1971, prior to the first concerns about the design being raised. The other reactors came on line in 1973, 1974, 1977, 1978 and 1979 respectively. Although all six reactors were the GE Mark 1 design only three were built and supplied by GE. Units 1, 2 and 6 were supplied by GE, 3 and 5 by Toshiba and unit 4 by Hitachi. (Now Hitachi-GE)

Why isn’t GE being held accountable?

Why wouldn’t GE be held accountable? Here’s one possibility: Jeffery Immelt is the head of GE. He is also the head of the United States Economic Advisory Board. He was invited to join the board personally by President Obama in 2009 and took over as head in 2011 when Paul Volcker stepped down in February 2011, just a month before the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Fukushima.

Paul Volcker was often seen as being at odds with the administration, and many of his ideas were not embraced by the government. The appointment of Immelt, a self-described Republican, was seen as a move to give Obama a leg up when dealing with the Republican majority in the House.

There have been calls from many organizations for GE to be held accountable for the design faults in the reactors that powered the Fukushima plant. The fact that they had been known for so long does seem to indicate that the company ignored and over-ruled advice from nuclear experts.

GE ran Fukushima alongside TEPCO, but it isn’t liable for the clean-up costs.

A year after the disaster, Tepco was taken over by the Japanese government because it couldn’t afford the costs to get the damaged reactors under control. By June of 2012, Tepco had received nearly 50 billion dollars from the government.

The six reactors were designed by the U.S. company General Electric (GE). GE supplied the actual reactors for units one, two and six, while two Japanese companies Toshiba provided units three and five, and Hitachi unit four. These companies as well as other suppliers are exempted from liability or costs under Japanese law.

Many of them, including GE, Toshiba and Hitachi, are actually making money on the disaster by being involved in the decontamination and decommissioning, according to a report by Greenpeace International.

“The nuclear industry and governments have designed a nuclear liability system that protects the industry, and forces people to pick up the bill for its mistakes and disasters,” says the report, “Fukushima Fallout.”

“If nuclear power is as safe as the industry always claims, then why do they insist on liability limits and exemptions?” asked Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear analyst with Greenpeace Canada.

Nuclear plant owner/operators in many countries have liability caps on how much they would be forced to pay in case of an accident. In Canada, this liability cap is only 75 million dollars. In the United Kingdom, it is 220 million dollars. In the U.S., each reactor owner puts around 100 million dollars into a no-fault insurance pool. This pool is worth about 10 billion dollars.

“Suppliers are indemnified even if they are negligent,” Stensil told IPS. (source)

GE will not have put anything into this ‘pot’ to cover Fukushima, as it is not in the United States. They have walked away, even though they knew their reactors have design faults.

Wait! There’s more!

It’s not that simple, though; and here’s where keeping quiet and denying what’s happening comes into its own.

So far I have not explained why Obama is keeping quiet about the radiation contamination. Well, that’s the easy part.

There are 23 nuclear plants in the United States that use the GE Mark 1 BWR.23.

There are 23 nuclear plants in the United States where the used fuel rods are suspended, in a pond, 100 feet above the ground. (source)

Any admission that radiation has spread across the Pacific Ocean and contaminated American soil is an admission that the technology was flawed, and that same flawed technology is being used in the United States. The government does not want anyone looking closer at the situation. They don’t want people poking around asking questions about why the radiation got out in the first place…it’s too close to home.

Better to say that the radiation is within safe levels, and then if such a disaster happens here they can mourn those in the immediate fallout zone and maintain that the rest of the country is okay, just as it was after Fukushima.

The fact that the CEO of GE works for Obama just highlights the facts. There is no way that Immelt doesn’t know about all the warning his company was given about the design flaws of the Mark 1; and if he knows, the government knows.

Ask yourself this, why after such a monumental event are all the scientific papers regarding the disaster singing the same song?

It is impossible to have so many scientists and doctors agreeing to this level. Nothing has been published regarding the increased rates of miscarriage and childhood thyroid cancers. Why is that?

After Chernobyl there was a plethora of papers announcing to the world the increased cancer risks, the risks to pregnant women and young children. I suggest that because Chernobyl was in Russia, a place where no American technology was used, that there was no suppression of the facts.

GE cannot afford a corporate law suit, and neither can the Obama administration. It wouldn’t be pretty if a senior advisor to the president was hauled through the courts. There’s a chance it would not just be GE that went down in the wake of such a case.

The President of the United States knows that the radiation from Fukushima is worse than it would have been had the reactors used at the plant been of a different design.

Know to the US government, the delicate and hazardous task of removing and storing the spent fuel rods is going to take years, and that one mistake can exacerbate the problems ten-fold.

23 sites in America are using the same flawed reactors and the government is doing nothing about it.

The President of the United States is holding the lives of tens of millions of Americans in his hands and he refuses to even admit there is a problem. He needs to understand that the people of the West Coast are not just pawns in his political game. Moreover he should be explaining what is causing all the fish die-offs if it is unconnected to radiation.

Obama knows that millions of American citizens are being poisoned due, in part, to a failure of American technology. I recognize that the earthquake and tsunami were forces of nature, but the damage sustained could have been reduced considerably by not using the Mark 1.

I understand that these reactors were not installed on his watch, but he’s there now. He’s the one that can make the difference now. It is he who can look into the nuclear power stations on American soil in the hope of preventing a meltdown here.

Our nuclear power stations are old, past their sell by date in some cases. It’s not just the reactors that are the problem either. Hanford, right on the Columbia River in Washington state, as one example, constantly leaks radioactive liquid into the ground, and possibly the groundwater.

The situation at Fukushima is still far from stable, and it will be years before stability is even on the horizon.

Something has to be done before one of our aging power stations starts Fukushima Part ll.

Chris Carrington is a writer, researcher and lecturer with a background in science, technology and environmental studies. Chris is an editor for The Daily Sheeple, where this first appeared. Wake the flock up!

 http://www.activistpost.com/2014/01/why-obama-wont-admit-fukushima.html

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