Ten Years Of Fukushima Radiation In The Pacific Ocean (See description at video)
This isn't going away anytime soon. And yet, not a peep about it from the US government.
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Addition:
Please sign this petition to call on the world community to take charge at Fukushima
China Syndrome at Fukushima plant? We are seeing information withheld, misinformation and media black out. The global nuclear industry is covering this up. No other excuse.
I will continue to post about this crisis as the Pacific Ocean is irradiated with no urgency displayed on the part of the world community which is truly chilling.
Please refer to link for Fukushima Diary on the side of this website for updated information.
NO NUKES
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Also see:
Risky Repair Of Fukushima Could Spill 15,000 Times The Radiation Of Hiroshima
Fukushima Reactor 4 today.
Notice that it has no roof. The spent fuel rods (and about 200 “fully loaded” unspent rods — remember that “reactor 4 had been de-fueled” prior to the accident) are stored in a water-containing chamber high off the ground in a crumbling room and building without a roof.
How will “they” get the damaged fuel rods out of that crumbling room?
This is the problem today. There are about 1300 fuel rods stored in that room, packed together vertically in racks. Think of a pack of cigarettes standing upright with the top of the pack removed. Normally, the movement of fuel rods is done by a computer-driven machine that reaches into the room from above and removes or replaces a fuel rod by drawing it upward or lowering it downward.
The machine knows to the millimeter where each fuel rod is located. Also, the rods are undamaged — perfectly straight.
The problem is that this pack of cigarettes is crumpled, and the process must done manually. Therefore, the likelihood that some of the fuel rods will break is high. If that happens and fuel rods are exposed to the air — BOOM. What does “boom” look like?
Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own. Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.
Meanwhile, at the rest of the site:
More than 6,000 fuel assemblies now sit in a common pool just 50 meters from Unit Four. Some contain plutonium. The pool has no containment over it. It’s vulnerable to loss of coolant, the collapse of a nearby building, another earthquake, another tsunami and more.
Overall, more than 11,000 fuel assemblies are scattered around the Fukushima site. According to long-time expert and former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal cesium on site as was released at Chernobyl.
If the whole site blows, “boom” could mean the release of 85 times as much radioactive cesium into the air as was released at Chernobyl. Into the air. Into a stiff cross-Pacific breeze.
There are a number of people warning of this danger; none are getting much play. For example, this from the Japan Times (quoted here):
In November, Tepco plans to begin the delicate operation of removing spent fuel from Reactor No. 4 [with] radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. …. It remains vulnerable to any further shocks, and is also at risk from ground liquefaction. Removing its spent fuel, which contains deadly plutonium, is an urgent task….
The consequences could be far more severe than any nuclear accident the world has ever seen. If a fuel rod is dropped, breaks or becomes entangled while being removed, possible worst case scenarios include a big explosion, a meltdown in the pool, or a large fire. Any of these situations could lead to massive releases of deadly radionuclides into the atmosphere, putting much of Japan — including Tokyo and Yokohama — and even neighboring countries at serious risk.
A lot depends on what blows up, if anything. If only Unit 4 blows up, Japan is at risk, including Tokyo, and the nuclear dust will pass across the Pacific to the U.S. People on the West Coast will be warned to keep their windows closed for a while.
If the whole facility blows up, one scientist is talking about moving her family to the southern hemisphere. From the article quoted above: Chernobyl’s first 1986 fallout reached California within ten days. Fukushima’s in 2011 arrived in less than a week. A new fuel fire at Unit 4 would pour out a continuous stream of lethal radioactive poisons for centuries.
We’re in very apocalyptic territory, with a wide and unknown range of outcomes. Take that for what it’s worth — little could go wrong, or much.
Should TEPCO be allowed to attempt this on its own?
Should Japan be allowed to attempt this on its own?
This is the heart of today’s problem. In reality, the events that are about to unfold at Fukushima in the next 60 days will affect much of the world. They could in fact change life in the northern hemisphere, if the worst of the worst occurs.
The Japanese government has ceded control of the next phrase — removing more than 1300 fuel rods from Reactor 4 — to TEPCO. (Seems that Japan has a “corporate capture of government” problem similar to our own.)
End of excerpt.
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I am stunned that the world community is sitting idly by allowing this. I suppose at this point all we can do is pray and hope these rods are removed with nothing going wrong. How certain do you feel about that though with TEPCO in charge?
Rossi et al. / Deep-Sea Research I
This computer projection shows the estimated extent of the Fukushima spill's plume of radioactive water in 2014. The extent of U.S. coastal waters is indicated by a black line, with a black box enclosing Hawaii.
Reports claim that cesium-137 has been "diluted" to fall below dangerous limits for humans. Personally, I'm not thrilled about ANY cesium-137 in my body at ANY limit contrived to get corporations off the hook for irresponsible actions.
It also shows a blatant disrespect for our waters, oceans and other species.
Pacific Currents
Looks perfectly safe to me...
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Also see:
Fukushima Leak Is Much Worse Than We Were Led To Believe
Fukushima Radiation Spiking Suddenly
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