Fukushima - The Elephant in the Room - Look at the map at link

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Fukushima--The-Elephant-i-by-lila-york-110611-262.html

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 6/11/11

Remember Chandra Levy? Her disappearance following an affair with her congressman was the national obsession in the summer of 2001 - until we awoke one Tuesday morning to see the World Trade Center towers on fire In the summer of 2011 the nation, or at least the nation's media, seems similarly obsessed with the murder trial of Casey Anthony and the twitter account of a New York congressman. Meanwhile, the crisis at the Fukushima Daichi plant rages on with no resolution in sight and a cold shutdown now projected to be years away.

Until last week there was an apparent media blackout on the crisis, although some Americans, this writer included, have followed the status of the reactors daily at Energy News and Fairewinds, the website of nuclear energy expert, Arnie Gundersen. The Fukushima reactors were built by General Electric, which also owns Comcast, NBC, CNBC and MSNBC, so the absence of timely information is not surprising. One article early on in the crisis suggested that the reinsurance on Fukushima was held in part by AIG and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, a supposition I cannot substantiate, but that may be true. There is no doubt that we live in a time when corporate profits trump human safety and well-being, and we are seeing that manifest in this current crisis. The best MSM sources for information over these last months have been Bloomberg, online and on television, and The Wall Street Journal, which have tracked the crisis primarily because it affects investment in Japanese companies.

Last week the Japanese government made the startling announcement that it had been withholding key information. In fact three of the five reactors experienced total meltdowns on March 11th, the day of the initial earthquake, and all three reactors have "melted through" leaky containment vessels, molten masses of melted fuel rods now fissioning on the basement floors of those reactors. The statement further confessed that levels of radiation released from the explosions were actually twice as high as initially reported, blaming the miscalculation on bad math. (Indeed in the days after the March explosions plutonium was discovered on the ground in northern California and tritium in Vermont.) In light of these revelations Arnie Gundersen did an interview on CNN last week, recommending that Americans wash produce thoroughly and stop drinking milk and eating dairy products. He also suggested that any Americans wealthy enough to relocate to the southern hemisphere consider doing so, adding that Seattle residents were inhaling 10 hot particles per day in the weeks following the explosions. Democracy Now, Amy Goodman's radio and television news program, which has not ignored the story over these months, did an extensive update on yesterday's broadcast.

[Bonobo]

1. I don't think they were withholding information. I think they did not know.

No one was able to see the inside of the containment vessels clearly enough to say whether they had melted down or melted through.

[aquart]

2. Yeah, they've been upright and honest all through this.

So it doesn't matter that they failed to evacuate the pregnant women and children.

See, THIS IS A LIE THAT MATTERS.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Yet, since the first emergencies, TEPCP has repeatedly admitted to withholding information.

Just the other day there were headlines that TEPCO knew bad news in March but had not told the public.

[iemitsu]

4. they were withholding the info.

don't give them a pass on this. they want you to think they are not responsible.

[pscot]

They knew and they know

[ElsewheresDaughter]

59. you need another think....they have ALWAYS KNOWN

[ElsewheresDaughter]

61. ..

[tblue37]

5. Maybe it's not such a bad thing that I don't have any grandchildren yet. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. The blogger says fission is still happening; is that correct?

I haven't seen any report saying that. Can anyone point to one?

[Poll_Blind]

8. Muriel, I don't have a link for you- and I'm being up front about that- but I want to....

...explain that the situaiton in the Fukushima plants right now, at the absolute best, is speculation.

Our robots don't work well in such high radiation and we (humans) are the only machines which can operate in such an environment. After a very short period of time (an hour or less), however, the exposure level is certainly fatal to our level of organic life- which is about 4+ sieverts.

I don't mean to be patronizing but, if you will, please read the above sentence again.

An accurate picture of the situation has been intentionally obscured by TEPCO and the Japanese government. However, enough has come out by their admission to indicate that at least one of the cores have melted completely and at least one of the cores appears to have entirely melted through the containment vessel in which it is normally contained. I'm saying all that to set up why I think what I do and, arguably, this is the "short form"- none of this should take the place of your own research.

Ever since the disaster, or I should say sometime shortly after the disaster (a matter of days, possibly a week or two), there have been recordings of neutron bursts from the plant. Neutron radiation is extremely dangerous to organics, like us. Very bad for machines too, but fuck machines. Anyway, those neutron bursts are a result of criticality. Criticality is the result of enough nuclear fuel being close enough together to sustain very short out-of-control chain reactions and that results in the fission which you ask about. Not chain reactions which result in nuclear explosions (though some types of explosions can happen in a criticality) like we think of them.

Those, those criticalities are extremely serious. As in, their danger cannot be overstated.

However, your question is about fission still occurring. Because of the detection of fissile elements (Strontium-90, one day ago), it is a safe bet that fission is still occurring. It is how this material is eating its way to the groundwater table, at least in one case.

There is no clear answer. We have created an environment on a very small part of our planet which is so dangerous and disruptive that we cannot acurately check exactly what is going on.

We can only look at what comes out of the area, or resides near the area, and try to make educated guesses about the state of things inside.

PB

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Your link points out strontium-90 has a half life of 29 years

and strontium-89 50 days. So their detection does not mean fission is still occurring. The neutron bursts do seem a good indicator of fission, to me, but again, are these still happening?

[Poll_Blind]

11. Muriel, nobody knows. Nobody's saying whether neutron bursts are still...

...being detected or not. I agree that neutron bursts are the best way to get a hold on what may or may not be happening at that moment inside the damaged reactors, but there is only the thinnest news coming out of Japan of any real pith.

So I fall back on fissile byproducts, but it doesn't give a clear idea if those were created yesterday as opposed to today, or last week, etc.

Nobody knows. Or I should say, those who would be in a position to know are not talking.

PB

[localroger]

51. Re-Criticality is likely not continuous

Neutron bursts mean the pile is critical right now. Various isotopes which should have decayed to nothing being found in the environment mean it was critical within the last few days or weeks. There are several signs that the pile has been critical long after it melted in the first couple of days.

One thing that was discovered at the first production reactor in Hanford is that fission products can poison the criticality of the pile by absorbing neutrons. These fission products have to decay according to their own radioactive half-life in order to leave enough neutrons flying around for the pile to go critical again. The original Hanford reactor had to have extra fuel rods added to stop this "heavy breathing."

Since the remains of Fukushima 1-3 are not in a configuration that was designed to be a reactor, if they are going critical it's very likely a close thing that is subject to this heavy breathing. There may also be remelting, which could cause the entire pile of corium to become either more or less reactive as it changes shape.

A few things should be noted. Nuclear fuel is always fissioning, but normally at a low rate. Radioactive decay of fission products will induce extra fissions, which is why spent rods are much more dangerous than new ones. Criticality means that more neutrons are produced by fissioning than are being absorbed to induce fissioning, which means the pile will get hotter and hotter and more and more radioactive until something stops it -- most likely fission product poisoning, since we have not seen the classic China Syndrome steam geyser.

It has been clear since the first few days that containment is toast. The proof of this is the hydrogen explosions. The hydrogen comes from the cooling water inside the core, when the very hot zircalloy cladding oxidizes by taking the oxygen from a water molecule, leaving the two hydrogens standing around like men with no date at the prom. It is important to understand that these hydrogens are released from the interaction of water with the fuel rod cladding -- inside the innermost inside of the reactor. In order to blow the roof off the building that hydrogen, building up inside the reactor, had to get OUTSIDE the reactor. The whole purpose of containment is supposed to make that impossible. This is why so much attention was being paid to pressure -- containment is supposed to contain even gaseous fission products that might build up pressure. But it's been too late for that since the first few days; gases that were in close proximity to the core were reaching the outside world. That is never, ever supposed to happen. Containment is designed from soup to nuts to prevent that very thing.

Also, a little thought about those "totally non-nuclear" hydrogen explosions: The oxidization of Zirconium is an endothermic reaction; it only happens because the reactor core is supplying a lot of energy to get it very, very hot. It takes a lot of energy to separate those hydrogens from their oxygen friend. The hydrogen explosion occurs when the hydrogens find another oxygen and join it exothermically. So in a technical sense, the explosion energy really is nuclear energy; it's just been transferred from inside the reactor to outside the reactor by using the reactor heat to generate hydrogen, which releases the energy used to release them on the outside.

TEPCO is only now admitting that the cores have likely melted out of the steel can into the cement secondary containment. What they still aren't admitting is that the secondary containment is also full of holes. If it isn't, what blew the roofs off those buildings?

[mn9driver]

9. It's unlikely.

In the event of a meltdown, the floor of the containment is designed to allow the molten fuel to spread out, thereby preventing it from going recritical. That being said, there are a lot of fission byproducts in the now (hopefully) solid glob that themselves produce tremendous heat as they decay. The fuel mass is going to stay very hot for a very long time.

It's always possible that the fuel could melt and pool in such a way as to restart the fission process but if this had happened it would have continued to burn through the bottom of the outer containment and we would be seeing large radioactive steam geysers coming from the plant right now. The situation is really, really bad, but at least that's not happening.

[Poll_Blind]

13. One point about the radioactive steam guysers you mentioned:

I had heard (and it makes sense) that one of the reasons that we're not seeing the same sort of steam coming out of the reactors is because the ambient temperature is higher than when this began and, and this is an important one, reports from inside one of the buildings (I believe No. 1, where the material is believed to have eaten through core containment and be somewhere under the building) is that machines observed steam coming up through the floor.

Normally we'd think of the steam coming out like a guyser but depending on how the material is situatied, any gasses coming up may actually be coming through parts of the building (subfloor) as was indicated, potentially cooling the gasses down to the point where they are diffused among the ambient air by the time they leave the building and could otherwise could be visually inspected.

But the steam coming out of the floorplates, this is not conjecture and was reported sometime within the last week by an official source and I believe the viewing instrument was a robot or probe of some type which discovered it.

PB

[quaker bill]

23. Fission happens

with the fuel and byproducts, this is why it is radioactive. Some of this is invariably the product of a chain reaction. The only real question is the rate. Criticality means the rate self feeds and can accelerate geometrically on its own.

This is unlikely for a number of reasons, the design of the building being only one. Another reason is simply dilution of the fuel. As it melts through barriers, it will become increasingly contaminated with the substances it is melting, concrete and steel for instance. Over time this will reduce the percent concentration of fissile material in the mass of corium to the point where recriticality becomes very unlikely. None of this is a good thing, just a slightly less bad thing than the worst case scenario. At some point its internal temperature drops below the level needed to melt that which it is in contact with and the motion stops. It will be quite hot physically and very radioactive for a very long time.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. No, fission is not 'why it is radioactive'

Alpha and beta radiation are not fission. Fission happens only with certain isotopes, and spontaneous fission - without a neutron to initiate it - is exceedingly rare:

Property of very heavy atomic nuclei to fission without external excitation; mostly superimposed by other decay types. The half-life for spontaneous fission in the case of U-238 amounts to 8·1015 years, i.e. one nucleus per gram U-238 converts by spontaneous fission about every 2.5 minutes . (The half-life of U-238 for alpha decay, in comparison, amounts to „only“ 4.5·109 years, therefore about 750,000 uranium atoms per gram U-238 convert by alpha decay per minute.) Cf-254 and Fm-256 convert almost exclusively by spontaneous fission.

http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/f/fissionspontaneous.htm

Yes, there may be a minute amount of fission happening all the time, as there would be in any lump of uranium, but the relevant question here is whether it's anywhere near critical.

[Sirveri]

33. Fission creates radioactive fission fragments. So Fission is what made it radioactive.

Also criticality refers to rate, basically any time the rate of fission increases it has become a super critical mass. That's not to say that the fission rate is very high, probably not even high enough to register on the IR level nuclear instrumentation (which if on the floor would be useless anyways). That said, source rate still generates neutrons which makes objects radioactive, even at 10^-5 power levels.

[liberation]

49. Not necessarily, natural decay produces radioactivity too.

Not that any of this picking of nits makes that much difference, when there may be a pool of melted nuclear fuel sitting at the bottom of some containment structures battered by one of the largest earthquake/tsunami combos in recorded history.


Without the control rods, we're left with the chance of dilution as the main controller of the criticality. And given the aforementioned possibility of the last resort containment vessels being structurally compromised. That is not a very good place to be. Alas, here is as usual hoping for the best.

[Sirveri]

52. Well we still have borated water and the preloaded poisons.

There is also a chance that if the fuel melted that the rods went with it. That depends more on control rod type and construction though. But the poison pins and plates likely took a ride if the rest of the assembly melted. The big issue is that we might have localized criticality events, but if they flooded the drywell (which I wouldn't be surprised if they did), then it's highly improbable for any molten mass to escape from the containment because it wouldn't be able to generate enough heat to erode the floor.

Big thing is to get under the drywell, look for leaks, set up drapes, and then send that water back to filtration and shoot it back into the well as CPW. Only question is if they have enough exposure remaining to do it. Of course that's balanced by the reduced contamination levels after the fact. I'd really love to go over there and get into it myself. Guess I'll have to settle for shop talk here...

[liberation]

53. "I'd really love to go over there and get into it myself"

They already passed 4000 millisieverts, in the reactor vicinity, so unless you have a death wish...

Also the rods don't technically melt, zirconium explodes at those temperatures. So hopefully the lack of "bang" means the fuel never reached too high of a temperature.

As I said, my biggest fear is that if the fuel did melt through now it is up to a building that just endured a massive earthquake/tsunami combo to be up to the task. Not a good place to be.

[Sirveri]

54. The assemblies aren't pure zirconium, they're zircalloy. Probably 4.

Also 4000 millisieverts isn't a rate, that would require a per hour afterwards. That said, I doubt you have access to the radiological survey maps. In any event, zircalloy 4 won't explode, it'll just melt. The issue with pure zirconium is that it's naturally corroded, and so it would spontaneously combust at those temperatures. Hence why they created zircalloy 4, neutron neutral with good structural capacity. Either way the fuel is still seeded with poisons depending on core life, and then the other parts of the nuclear geometry like the poison pins and plates to minimize neutron spikes towards the core edge. Unless there was significant damage to the assembly I doubt that the fuel would be on the deck since it would get caught up in the recirculation system and likely end up in the filters or the IX. So if it was hot enough to go, it would probably take most of that geometry with it. Not to mention the borated water that would coat the resulting pile. As for structural damage, if the fuel is on the floor it should gum up the cracks since it supposedly has the consistency of sand.

Still wanna go though. Maybe I'll get lucky and Diablo Canyon will pop its lid.

[liberation]

62. Sigh, yes... "sieverts per hour" what else could I be referring to in that context?

"In any event, zircalloy 4 won't explode, it'll just melt. The issue with pure zirconium is that it's naturally corroded, and so it would spontaneously combust at those temperatures. Hence why they created zircalloy 4, neutron neutral with good structural capacity. "

Huh? what do you mean by "neutron neutral" exactly? The point is that the melting of zircaloy generates hydrogen, which then goes BOOM.

"Maybe I'll get lucky and Diablo Canyon will pop its lid."

Wow. OK then...

[Sirveri]

70. zircalloy isn't what generates hydrogen, it's heat electrolysis.

Any hot surface can flash generate hydrogen at the proper temperature. zircalloy can undergo hydrogen embrittlement, but that doesn't make it explosive. In addition in a typical system lineup hydrogen is added to the primary as an oxygen scavenger. Without oxygen there can be no explosion, which is why the hydrogen exploded after they started venting from the discharge system.
Neutron neutral refers to zircalloys neutron properties. It has a low barns, so it's unlikely to interact with neutrons as either a poison or reflector.
The last bit was sarcasm. That and I have a bit of a dramatic streak.

[liberation]

72. Which is why I said that "the melting of zircaloy generates hydrogen"

not that "zircaloy generates hydrogen" sigh...

We can play the pick nits game all you want... ;-)

[Sirveri]

76. Melting zircalloy doesn't generate hydrogen. It's generated from the steam blanket.

You can call it picking nits if you want, but nits matter when discussing technical items. Besides, if I really wanted to pick nits I would be telling you to call it zircalloy 4 since it's the fourth alloy in the series (probably, different plants might use different alloys). But that bit of obscure metallurgy is what I really call picking nits. In any event any metal is capable of generating hydrogen provided it is covered in water, pressurized, and has sufficient heat. So you can understand the obvious confusion when you say that melting zirconium causes explosions since that's not true. Nor is it true that 'melting of zircaloy generates hydrogen'. The water surrounding it undergoes electrolysis which generates hydrogen, the zircalloy isn't actually generating anything, it's merely a catalyst (also it doesn't actually have to melt to perform the task). So since literally every part of your statement isn't accurate, that's not picking nits, it's correcting a false statement. Just be more clear in the future with your statements, otherwise they don't make any sense.

[AtheistCrusader]

90. It was my understanding that the Zircalloy was undergoing embrittlement

because it was robbing Oxygen from the water at high temps (thus freeing the hydrogen) in some significant quantity.

Full-on melting of the zircalloy not required.

[Sirveri]

91. Not quite, it's hydrogen embrittlement (not oxygen), but this process is totally different.

During normal operations they add hydrogen to the primary coolant as an oxygen scavenger to reduce corrosion. This hydrogen over time creeps into the cladding and embeds in it making the cladding more brittle. This is one of the reasons why during cool down and heat up they have temperature rate limits depending on what temperature they're operating at. At really low temperatures the rate can go as low as like 20F/hr cool down limit. Heat up limit is generally more lenient. But all of this is to prevent brittle fracture, and there really isn't enough hydrogen inside the metal to cause an explosion of note. So the embrittlement is from hydrogen, not oxygen (which is too big to makes its way into the metal, well other than as a corrosive agent).

Heat electrolysis is basically the same as normal electrolysis, except instead of an electric current they use really high heat. During TMI a similar thing happened (warning, long detailed story, skip if disinterested), basically improper maintenance practice left a pressure gauge offline. They swapped feed pumps to the one with the off service pressure gauge, this made the system freak out because it couldn't sense the pump so it thought the steam generator had no feed water, so it shut the turbines off. Loss of heat sink causes the primary coolant loop to spike in temperature, more temperature means more pressure, this plant was designed to scram on high pressure. Plant shuts down, steam reliefs lift to vent excess pressure, all this takes about a minute. Plant blows down excess coolant, but then the valves get stuck open. Long story short they blow most of the coolant out of the primary and the morons shut the coolant pumps off because they want to protect them (pumps pump water not steam and they were becoming steam bound). Since the core is now covered in steam, but is still generating about 1% power due to decay heat (1% of 3000Mw is still 30Mw of heat), and steam doesn't remove heat all that good, the fuel assemblies heat up a lot. They hit the magic temperature and start splitting water from the steam. However since they lost a ton of coolant they spent most of their time shooting water into the core instead of venting, so any hydrogen generated didn't manage to escape other than during the four hours they sat around with thumbs up their butts blowing the plant down and over riding all the safety features that kept engaging automatically to protect the plant.

Now in an accident like fukushima they would have done something called feed and bleed, basically dump hot steam and add feed water back in to remove heat. Basically the core heated up enough to start splitting water (it's around 1300F if memory serves me), then they discharged it and the vent was located above containment, hydrogen levels built up and then hit the magic 4-8% and went boom. In the future I'm expecting them to install more complicated air monitoring systems and work on improving ventilation. That's a bit more complicated with BWR's since they like to keep all the air in the building inside the building, PWR's since they have a separate loop for the steam turbines there is much less risk of venting radioactive gasses. Basically Steam turbines have something called a gland seal system to keep steam from blowing out from around the shaft. Since in a BWR the steam all is generated by the reactor so they treat it as radioactive, hence they keep the rest of the plant sealed up.

Most of this comes from my repeated reading of the T-7 Nuclear Reactor Safety manual that I would read instead of studying for ships quals. Had awesome descriptions of nuclear accidents. My favorite was SL-1 though. Ran that little 3Mw trash can at 7000% power.

[quaker bill]

84. and U 235 is a bit hotter

that is why they concentrate it. A sub critical mass will chain react at some level, just at a level that does not geometrically increase, that is the essence of the definition of "critical mass". A critical mass cooks off on its own, unless you control it. In real life, I am a scientist.

[muriel_volestrangler]

89. U-235 has a spontaneous fission rate even lower than U-238

However, detected neutrons are a mixture of fission chain neutrons and cosmic-ray spallation neutrons because of the low 238U and 235U spontaneous fission rates (6.77 fissions/s-kg and 0.16 fissions/s-kg, respectively).

http://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/files/Pub24874.docx

But because U-235 will absorb a slow neutron, split, and produce 2 or 3 more neutrons, it's important in a chain reaction.

[Sirveri]

92. This is correct.

Decay Modes (U235)
α : 100.00 %
SF : 7.0E-9 %
Ne ≈ 8.E-10 %
28Mg : 8.E-10 %

Decay Modes (U238)
α : 100.00 %
SF : 5.5E-5 %

Kinda cool actually, never really looked at U235 decay scheme before, didn't know it would occasionally shoot out magnesium and neon.

[Melissa G]

18. If you go to the Fairewinds site, Gundersen talks about recriticality there.

http://www.fairewinds.com/search/node/recriticality

[Poll_Blind]

25. Thank you! I went over there and forgot to thank you earlier.

:thumbsup:

PB

[quaker bill]

22. Of course it is

Fission is a natural property of the nuclear fuel, it just does that all by itself. It cannot be stopped, it can only be slowed down a bit and contained.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. There was a natural disaster. All reactors were within a stone's throw of one another.

The natural disaster was able to hammer all of the reactors since they were close to one another. Anyone who can't see the problem here is either blind to the facts or willfully ignorant of them. Putting dangerous stuff all in one place is DUMB. Spreading it out would lessen the likelihood of them all being hit at the same time by whatever disaster arises natural or otherwise.

[nc4bo]

12. MOX was used illegally?

:wow:

Fukushima's reactor number 3 illegally used MOX fuel, which is a mixture of uranium, depleted uranium, and plutonium. (The MOX fuel was sold to Japan by the United States during the Reagan administration).

Then again I have no idea how many international or domestic reactors use MOX.

I don't even post to Fukushima threads anymore because there's nothing I can possibly say that has been thought of or typed already. All I can do is "Rec" the hell of every single nuke plant post I come across.

God help us.

[AtheistCrusader]

38. So many errors.

The plant went ahead with MOX in Reactor three about October 2010, after receiving approval. Nothing illegal about it. In fact there was a long drawn out legal process to get it approved.

Nor is there evidence the cores have burned through the containment into the building basement. There is a layer of containment called the Reactor Pressure Vessel, where the work of heating the water, and containing the core is done. That is not the CONTAINMENT. The containment is several feet of concrete and steel, and the core is sitting in the bottom of THAT. To the best of our knowledge, it has not burned through yet, and may never.

[SpiralHawk]

14. Wow - no wonder the corporate media (R) is holding back on key news for Americans

They are bought and sold and in bed with this whole freaking nuclear travesty.

The corporate media (R) is betraying America and Americans in favor of their own fat, tax-free profiteering (R).

[AndyTiedye]

15. k/r

We are Fuku'ed.

[malaise]

16. K & R

Fuck these corporations

[laundry_queen]

17. K&R

No surprise there is a media blackout on this.

[lovuian]

19. they used Mox Fuel !@#$%^&*

and are we proud to be Americans

Reagan Rumsfeld Bush Kissinger

you notice the same culprits over and over again

[HCE SuiGeneris]

20. Mum's the word...

when covering up corporate malfeasance.

[slay]

21. K&R - The MSM news is keeping us UN-informed

great article - huge K&R for real news.

[annabanana]

24. k&r. . . . .n/t

[madokie]

27. The thing of it is many of us just knew something like this was only waiting to happen

and it happening just as we feared, the media, the owners, all of them misleading us, lying to us if you will. I've been against nuclear energy from since the beginning. When I joined the Navy in august of '67 they wanted to train me and put me on a nuclear sub and I would have gone except they didn't tell me until I was almost through boot camp that that would require me to extend my tour of duty by two years of which by then I knew I couldn't do two more years of. In some ways I wish I had so I could comment today on what is going on a little better than saying 'I told you so' but in the same vein I'm happy I didn't because of the dangers involved. I chose to go to Vietnam where I was sprayed with herbicide that is giving me hell today, health wise. Bastards all of them who are in control of our lives, bastards, bastards, bastards!

Rec and thanks for the post and the link.
For those who believe please be praying and praying hard, praying your asses off that they get this under control before this kills us all.

[NNN0LHI]

28. Oddly, I did some research and was reading about the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam just yesterday

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange

Weird, huh?

I could hardly believe what I was reading. Hope you come out of it alright.

Don

[madokie]

30. Thanks Don

Today my worries is my 4 year old grand daughter, its her I hope who comes out of this alright. Its looking more and more like none of us will escape this. I worry for you and your family and everyone else who live in the northern USA as the plume of radiation is stronger up north. This morning it is raining softly here a rain we so badly need and for the first time in my 63 years I'm afraid to go out in that rain. What has GREED brought down upon us. I never got that greed gene as I was raised by parents who were poor who came through the depression, the dust bowl days and they learned to live with what they had and appreciate it. I've been building my own toys since I was old enough to hold a hammer or pair of pliers and continue to do so so there is not much I can't do although living with what greed has done to us as a civilization is the toughest thing I've had to do. I see it all around me, luckily my wife isn't a greedy person either or I'd be, well no telling, probably in the street or in the ground by now. I've tried my best to teach my step sons that greed is one of the biggest sins, if I can use that word, me being a non-believer and all. Its greed thats got us where we are today, I'm convinced of that, well greed and Lies.
Please take care, that map shows the highest concentration is right over you all right now. At some point the jet stream will shift further down south but today I feel it is you folks up north that I will worry about.

All of this that is happening is not right, shouldn't have been allowed to happen in the first place. The building of the 440 nuclear power plants through out the world, the un-necessary wars, the uses of DU munitions now, the use of poisons such as my/our generation were subjected to when we were lied into a war years ago with a people who were no threat to us as the Iraqi nor Afghanis is or were.

The Vietnamese people I have the most respect for because after all we did to them from using white phosphorus, willy pete, agent orange and the many other atrocities that we rained down on them and somehow they've learned to forgive us.

Please take care and stay out of the rain, today it can lead to ones death. Doesn't seem right that something so innocuous as rain could be so dangerous but here we are and I feel greed and lies got us to this point. :cry:

[Pooka Fey]

29. K&R

:cry:

[felix_numinous]

31. WE are called doom and gloomers by apologists

who roll their eyes If the environment is brought up. I just got in a fight over the spraying of roundup around where I live, and people look at me like I am nuts. But it has been linked with lymphoma-which is the cancer I have. This stuff is sprayed eveywhere, no one weeds by hand around here anymore.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/roundup.cfm

http://www.chem-tox.com/pesticides/

I know this post is about Fukishima, but it is also about the elephant that is being enabled into stealing and polluting this country--and we will have to take a stand.

[femrap]

57. I have the same arguments that you do

about Round-up. Finally, I came up with a 'reason' for people to stop....for the boyz: attacks the balls and kills their sperm. for the girlz: makes orgasms very difficult.

Try it! It's something that the Willfully Ignorant can understand.

I'm sorry about your cancer...I hate what these greedy corporations have done to our environment and our health.

Regarding the damned radiation, a friend said: "We're all dying. We just don't know it yet."

Mother Nature will get even with these greedy pricks!

[felix_numinous]

63. LOL,

I love your 'reasoning'--and for the older folks I saw practically bathing in the stuff, (it was all over them......ugh)--that it is linked with birth defects in kids. Hello, grandchildren anyone?

I've envisioned about writing in the neighborhood newspaper, and that may happen yet.

[Hubert Flottz]

32. K&R

[NJCher]

34. We Need to Begin Mass Consumption/Production of Micro-Alga Immediately

And yes, "alga" is spelled correctly in the subject line.

Algae has healing properties. A Russian scientist by the name of Michael Kiriac formulated a blend of micro-algae in the 70s that stopped existing cancer in 20+ animal species.

After Chernobyl, Kiriac was able to give his formula to people who had advanced radiation sickness. The heavy metals in the urine of these people was reduced by 50 per cent in only 20 days.

Many Russian children are alive today because they took his algae formulations.

If you want to know more, there's a free e-book:

http://www.bioage.com/atgw.pdf


Cher

[felix_numinous]

37. Thanks NJCher

What an excellent link. :)

[femrap]

60. I downloaded the book....and

scanned it. Can I buy this stuff at a health food store??? I suppose I should go google it.

[NJCher]

86. yes, you can

PM me and I'll send the link.


Cher

[Poll_Blind]

35. K&R!

:kick:

PB

[Parker CA]

36. That's a pretty scary article. Kick and Rec for info!!'

[AtheistCrusader]

39. For bad info.

No evidence at all that the cores melted through the containment. The RPV is a form of containment, but it is a steel bottle only. It is not the Containment(TM).

The Containment is several feet of concrete and steel. Zero confirmation that that has been breached by core material, even though water is escaping somehow.

[grahamhgreen]

40. We need to be the party of NO NUKES. Wind is cheaper and safer and unlimited.

Other renewable sources are too.

Obamas pro nuke policy is foolhardy in the extreme.

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

[Vinee]

43. wind power is killing golden eagles and other birds (and bats)

and not just a few here and there:

California Wind Farms Impact Golden Eagle Population

At the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, wind turbines provide clean, renewable energy to thousands of homes in California's Bay Area. Unfortunately, these same turbines have killed an average of 67 golden eagles per year since the wind farm was constructed in the 1980s.

http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/California-Wind-Farms-Impact-Golden-Eagle-Population/

[NNN0LHI]

47. Wind turbines installed recently installed around here go real slow

They look slow enough that a bird could use it as a a perch for a few seconds. Seems hard to believe the blades are slamming into birds unless the timing was just perfect. I am going to go out and look around some and see if I find a bunch of dead birds under them or not. Real slow. They barely turn. Even on the windiest days.

Don

[Vinee]

55. It's an optical illusion. The blades are typically spinning in excess of 100 mph.

and they do seem to be killing an alarming number of golden eagles as well as bats and other birds. I understand condors are also at risk

[NNN0LHI]

79. I did some research and you are correct. The tips of some exceed 200 MPH

Thank you for that information.

Don

[femrap]

65. And you don't want to live

close to one....horrid 'humming' from what I hear.

You'd think we could do something that those new fans that cost $300....they're just circles w/ no blades.

[liberation]

69. Have you been anywhere near a wind park?

[femrap]

71. The altamont pass in

CA....have driven by that.

People have been leasing their land to the wind industry here in rural northwestern Ohio. Of course they lease the land far from their house, but close to their neighbor's house. And it has caused lots of fights due to the humming.


Do you have a wind machine outside your bedroom window?

[liberation]

75. .... and were you able to hear those wind mills while driving by?

What exactly is a "wind machine?"

[femrap]

80. google it.

[grahamhgreen]

93. This is a lie perpetrated by the nuke lobby. link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD0v9_zV2uk

[liberation]

48. The Altamont Pass seems to be an statistical oddity, however.

No doubt better research needs to be carried out (esp. in regards of location/distribution of wind farms) in order to limit the impact on specific avian populations.

But if bird fatalities are of such concern, the cooling towers for nuclear reactors, for example, are also responsible for "large" amounts of avian fatalities per year too.

Almost any human activity is going to have some sort of affect on our environment, I comes down to decide what is acceptable/sustainable and what is not.

[Vinee]

56. Nationwide, about 440,000 birds are said to be accidentally killed at wind farms each year, as well

Nationwide, about 440,000 birds are said to be accidentally killed at wind farms each year, as well as thousands more bats

Read more:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394945/The-green-killer-Scores-protected-golden-eagles-dying-colliding-wind-turbines.html

we can't be killing golden eagles. There is no excuse or justification. period.

[liberation]

68. And orders of magnitude more birds are killed by other man-made causes in the US alone

Which is why I said that there needs to be an intellectually hones cost analysis between what is sustainable/acceptable and what it is not.

I recommend you get better sources for selective concern than the Daily Mail, BTW.

Cheers.

[Vinee]

77. dead sparrows and starlings are one thing, dead Golden Eagles are another thing entirely.

I seriously doubt you would know anything about intellectual honesty if you won't even make that distinction and; furthermore, attacking the source is what people do when they're trying to defend an indefensible position which is exactly what you are doing here.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/06/local/la-me-adv-wind-eagles-20110606

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/06/06/Wind-farms-taking-toll-on-golden-eagles/UPI-94681307410170/

http://www.naturalnews.com/032636_wind_turbines_golden_eagles.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009237912_apwawindturbineeagle1stldwritethru.html

http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/California-Wind-Farms-Impact-Golden-Eagle-Population/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/13/ap-enterprise-eagle-conce_n_796096.html

http://ecotrope.opb.org/2010/09/pge-wind-farm-deal-breaker-golden-eagles/http://naturalhistorywanderings.com/2011/06/08/altamont-wind-turbines-continue-to-kill-golden-eagles/

are all these sources questionable too?

[uppityperson]

85. you call Liberation dishonest and complain about having to provide a legitimate source?

Huh. Providing a legitimate source to back up a claim is the responsibility of the claimant. Attacking a questionable source is common and good sense. Why not simply give other sources without insulting?

[grahamhgreen]

88. A slim fraction of what are killed by vehicle strikes, industrial pollution, and other means.

[DreamSmoker]

41. OMG this is worse than you can imagine Folks

It only take one particle in your body to get cancer down the road...
The U.S. Government has failed BIG TIME informing the public..

[Atman]

42. The map sucks.

It uses virtually the same shades of violet and purple for the low end of the spectrum as it does for the highest end of the spectrum. It's impossible to know what the hell you're looking at. I'm either currently being bathed in high levels of radiation, or I'm in the lower end of spectrum.

[Taft_Bathtub]

44. GE doesn't own Comcast

This author is pretty bad, so is the horrible map that doesn't explain anything. And Lol at Arnie Gunderson, I saw his stuff on lettuce in Seattle on CNN. Hard to claim there's a media blackout when you have Gunderson on a major news network spreading panic.

[femrap]

66. I believe GE sold NBC to

Comcast, right?

I guess the only solution is to purchase a geiger counter and test my own front yard. I bet they have gone up in price of late.

[loveable liberal]

45. And here I quit smoking..... n/t.

[JackInGreen]

46. You know

I share these things to facebook, distribute them to friends and family on email, and the most common response I get is 'What are you worried about, it's not that bad, quit being a doom sayer.'....and no play in the media.
Truly, our end as a country will be because of our incredulity.

[femrap]

67. I get the same response....

Willful Ignorance is rampant in this country.

[AtheistCrusader]

81. Actually, the article cited in the OP is willfully ignorant.

The author doesn't even understand the difference between the Reactor Pressure Vessel, and the containment.

[femrap]

83. opednews

doesn't provide the best information. You're right.

[Rex]

50. "Dam, picked a bad day to stop snorting glue!"

We will only respond if millions die, that is how sorry the govt is when it comes to caring about the 'little people' that create their salary. Expect it the world over (Germany need not apply).


EDIT - looked at the map...what can I say? Will we be getting 'plumes' of radiation for the next 29 years in the States? I'm sure the M$M is in full 'lockdown' mode about this topic. Sorry excuses for journalists...they are waiting for the bodycount to start. That is their favorite topic! Death sells!

[madrchsod]

58. oh well...just when my levels finally went down after all these years

those dam japanese go and release more stuff into the air...

now all you kids who were born after the above ground nuke ban can enjoy all the shit i grew up with......oh wait..

did`t effect me...at least i don`t think it did.


op ed news is not one of the creditable sites in the world...

[PhillySane]

74. are those mermaids lounging on octopus

next to Mr. Natural?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

64. STAY OUT OF THE RAIN!!!...DO NOT LET THE RAIN TOUCH YOUR SKIN

[AtheistCrusader]

82. Damn, I just ran 10 miles in the rain.

I mean, are you serious, this is Seattle. Good luck with that.

[They_Live]

73. What the hell am I looking at?

Some of the resources (such as the map at the link) are confusing or do not provide all the information one would need for scientific evaluation. As someone else pointed out the "low reading" colors are almost identical to "high reading" colors. Don't get me wrong, I am very concerned about the radioactivity from Fukushima and it's impact on all of us. I have a young child, and I have family in Seattle. There are some other animated gifs from the same source (NILU Zardoz files) as the map provided with this story and one appears to be the volcanic clouds from the recent Iceland activity. Those maps use the same color scheme. Are volcanoes radioactive as well?

[NNN0LHI]

78. Real similar to the map the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization released in March

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/science/plume-graphic.html?ref=science

Intercactive map at link.

Published: March 16, 2011

A forecast by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization shows how weather patterns this week might disperse radiation from a continuous source in Fukushima, Japan. The forecast does not show actual levels of radiation, but it does allow the organization to estimate when different monitoring stations, marked with small dots, might be able to detect extremely low levels of radiation. Health and nuclear experts emphasize that any plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States.

------------------------------

Keep in mind that the health and nuclear experts quoted above who emphasized that any plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, weren't aware that a triple meltdown was in progress at the time when this was written. They were assuming the worst was over. Now it appears that isn't the case.

[marions ghost]

87. excellent article

News blackout going on for sure. Some people know the worst. It is up to the few who know the truth to pay attention.