April 12, 2011 — sent in by Carol Van Strum — from earthlink.net
TOKYO (AP) — Japan ranked its nuclear crisis at the highest possible severity on an international scale — the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — even as it insisted Tuesday that radiation leaks are declining at its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant.
The higher rating is an open acknowledgement of what was widely understood already: The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is the second-worst in history. It does not signal a worsening of the plant’s status in recent days or any new health dangers.
Still, people living nearby who have endured a month of spewing radiation and frequent earthquakes said the change in status added to their unease despite government efforts to play down any notion that the crisis poses immediate health risks.
Miyuki Ichisawa closed her coffee shop this week when the government added her community, Iitate village, and four others to places people should leave to avoid long-term radiation exposure. The additions expanded the 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone where people had already been ordered to evacuate soon after the March 11 tsunami swamped the plant.
“And now the government is officially telling us this accident is at the same level of Chernobyl,” Ichisawa said. “It’s very shocking to me.”
Japanese nuclear regulators said the severity rating was raised from 5 to 7 on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency due to new assessments of the overall radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.
According to the Vienna-based atomic energy agency, the new ranking signifies a major accident that includes widespread effects on the environment and people’s health. The scale, designed by experts convened by the IAEA and other groups in 1989, is meant to help the public, the technical community and the media understand the public safety implications of nuclear events.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Japan’s decision did not mean the disaster had been downplayed previously.
Early actions by Japanese authorities — evacuations, radiation warnings and the work at the plant to contain leaks — showed they realized the gravity of the situation, Denis Flory, an IAEA deputy director general, said.
The upgraded status did not mean radiation from the plant was worsening, but rather reflected concern about long-term health risks as it continues to spew into the air, soil and seawater. Most radiation exposures around the region haven’t been high enough yet to raise significant health concerns.
Workers are still trying to restore disabled cooling systems at the plant, and radioactive isotopes have been detected in tap water, fish and vegetables.
Iitate’s town government decided Tuesday to ban planting of all farm products, including rice and vegetables, expanding the national government’s prohibition on growing rice there.
Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, went on national television and urged people not to panic.
“Right now, the situation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant has been stabilizing step by step. The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline,” he said. “But we are not at the stage yet where we can let our guard down.”
Japanese officials said the leaks from the Fukushima plant so far amount to a tenth of the radiation emitted from Chernobyl, but about 10 times the amount needed to reach the level 7 threshold. They acknowledged the emissions could eventually exceed Chernobyl’s, but said the chance that will happen is very small. However, regulators have also acknowledged that a more severe nuclear accident is a distinct possibility until regular cooling systems are restored — a process likely to take months.
“Although the Fukushima accident is now at the equal level as Chernobyl, we should not consider the two incidents as the same,” said Hiroshi Horiike, professor of nuclear engineering at Osaka University. “Fukushima is not a Chernobyl.”
In Chernobyl, in what is now the Ukraine, a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing a cloud of radiation over much of the Northern Hemisphere. A zone about 19 miles (30 kilometers) around the plant was declared uninhabitable.
Thirty-one men died mostly from being exposed to very high levels of radiation trying to contain the accident. But there is no agreement on how many people are likely to die of cancers caused by its radiation.
No radiation exposure deaths have been blamed on the leaks at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Two plant workers were treated for burns after walking in heavily contaminated water in a building there.
The tsunami, spawned by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, knocked out cooling systems and backup diesel generators, leading to hydrogen explosions at three reactors and a fire at a fourth that was undergoing regular maintenance and was empty of fuel. Workers have been improvising for weeks with everything from helicopter drops to fire hoses to supply cooling water to the plant.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, noted that unlike in Chernobyl there have been no explosions of reactor cores, which are more serious than hydrogen explosions.
“In that sense, this situation is totally different from Chernobyl,” he said.
NISA officials said they raised the incident level because of the cumulative amount of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere. Other factors included damage to the plant’s buildings and accumulated radiation levels for its workers.
The revision was based on cross-checking and assessments of data on leaks of radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-137. Officials did not say why they skipped level 6 or when exactly the radiation level exceeded the level 7 threshold.
Based on government estimates, the equivalent of 500,000 terabecquerels of radiation from iodine-131 has been released into the atmosphere since the crisis began, well above the several tens of thousands of terabecquerels needed to reach level 7. A terabecquerel equals a trillion becquerels, a measure of radiation emissions. The Chernobyl incident released 5.2 million terabecquerels into the air.
“We have refrained from making announcements until we have reliable data,” Nishiyama said. He also emphasized that no more major leaks are expected from the reactors, though he acknowledged more work is needed to keep the reactors stable.
Work to stabilize the plant has been impeded by continued aftershocks, the latest a 6.3-magnitude quake Tuesday that prompted plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, to temporarily pull back workers. Work removing highly radioactive water, a necessary step before cooling systems can be restored, finally resumed around 7:30 p.m.
In his televised address, Kan gave the nation a pep talk, telling people to focus on recovering from the disasters that are believed to have killed 25,000 people.
“Let’s live normally without falling into excessive self-restraint,” he said. “We should eat and drink products from the quake-hit areas as a form of support.”
Many of the more than 14,500 people still listed as missing from the quake and tsunami are thought to have been swept out to sea. A month after the disaster, more than 145,000 people are still living in shelters.
Among them is Kenichi Yomogita, a plumbing contract worker at Fukushima Dai-ichi who was off work the day of the tsunami and has not returned. His hometown of Tomioka is in the evacuation zone, and he thinks it will be at least three years before he can return. For now he is living at a shelter in Koriyama, and said the upgraded crisis level has not improved his hopes.
“At first the reality of this situation didn’t sink in,” he said, “but this news shows how serious it is.”
___
Associated Press writers Yuri Kageyama, Mari Yamaguchi, Mayumi Saito and Malcolm J. Foster and Noriko Kitano in Tokyo, George Jahn in Vienna and photographer Hiro Komae contributed to this report.
Hey ya’ll, Thanks! While I’m/we’re plotting/planning the next action you are figuring out for me/us what to eat and drink. Love you all!
..And this is pretty much the ‘long’ list of herbs I take, specifically catered for my own body, but worth a looking into by others’.
Red clover, licorice, nettles, pau d’arco, sassafras, marshmallow, chapparal, burdock, yellow dock, lycium berries, bupleurum, dandelion, black cohosh, suma, dong quai, ginseng, sarsaparilla, ashwagandha, echinacea, aastragalus, and horsetail.
I generally separate them into two categories: the night time mellower’s, and the daytime actives, though there is some overlapping.
Those are pretty much the staples, different ‘specifics’ come and go as required. Also I have a ‘long’ list of culinary herbs and spices that I use, some of which are staples and some of which are used as complimentary to the food I’m preparing in order to help facilitate certain functions of my processing system.
..I hope this, if not directly being useful, helps to encourage anyone to play with their systems more, and to utilize more diverse forms of botanical life.
Humanity will never dominate Mother Nature, she will always put them in their place. But, humanity will find the solutions to their fuck-ups through working respectfully with Her.
Peace,
Jere
..This may take me a few lifetimes to process, but that’s part of what evolution’s about, right?! 🙂
Let me just jump into the specific substances, and then work from there to the more subtle shades of living. Remember always though everything in moderation, even transition. (Unless of course you don’t mind the g force and accept that you could get flattened any time..)
I think we’ve already stated our seaweeds, miso’s, algae’s, and cereal grasses. In fact, chlorophyll in general is a good idea (the light collector molecule). Sugars, real whole sugars (not the shit you find in a package), the stuff you find in whole grains, especially buckwheat, as well as the pectin from fruits such as apples, and seeds such as sunflower. Sugars get your body breathing. (Remember, this is an active process, not a bitter pill). Fats, lecithin and fatty acids. Soy and flax. (They get the current flowing). Edible clays such as bentonite and french green (they have that whole absorbing astringency action goin’ for them. There should be a commercial, “Clay, the maleable concrete. Will seal off all your radioactive isotopes!”). Ginseng specifically and astragalus generally I would recommend.
..As far as all of this goes, it could be totally useless, or worse, destructive. Each one of us has to get in touch with our own bodies to be able to reckognize the pieces, in order to be able to cure/evolve/transform/mutate ourselves to ‘keep on truckin’. I think the above is generally pretty safe, although at this time I’d pick a supplier as far away from the nukes as possible (the japanese people seriously need some external supplies..). Personally, I’m in california and have just started planting my garden this past week. I planted some bloomsdale long standing spinach (I’m gonna see if I can’t absorb some of those particles.. maybe transform them into flowers 😉 ). Some plants/animals will be more prone to absorbing higher levels of radiation.. familiarize yourself with the data if you choose. I’m hip to experimenting on myself at this time, so I’ll chance it (also, when you work with your own space/garden, you can filter the energy, or at least feel it out to be able to work with it in a more direct way).
..I think that’s as far as my energy can stretch right now. Since it’s here, I’ll continue working on it, but for now..
catch ya all later, good night,
Jere
Thanks, Amanda… that was grounding. I really loved Kacie’s “Catch a Glimpse” page, too.
Thanks, Amanda… that was grounding. I really loved Kacie’s “Catch a Glimpse” page, too. http://www.shesellsseaweed.com/catch-a-glimpse Mouthwatering.
The whole idea of ‘excreting’ ‘eliminating’ ‘expelling’ radioactivity has an interesting challenge built into it. Some –iodine and cesium, for example– do deteriorate at a helpful rate. Many more do not. So taking them out of one body simply leaves them lying around for other, ready to hit the circuit in some other creature’s system. Naughtynaughty.
(Jere, I’m not really going to go comatose, babe. That would violate the terms of my contract here and I would miss the payoff. But occasionally I flirt with the idea. . .)
But maybe stuffing diapers, mud, silicone really has sealed the leak in Reactor no. 2 (hmmm… shades of Deepwater. Remember when they tried the ‘junk shot?’) and I can quit saying good-bye to every green and breathing thing I see. It’s the *involuntary* waves of compassionate that have me a little worried. They won’t stop coming. . .
Hey Jere, I understand, and don’t stress it! I totally get the principle and make my own attempts in that direction. I would love your sense of what foods do that carrier thing, though.
Be well all.
Eric-
Yes it is your chart for Saturday March 12, 3:36 PM. I’m just using the ephemeris for April 26, 1986, no chart at the moment.
I would mention also that for the Chenobyl date Atlantis was at 12 Gemini + and Damocles was at 11 Pisces +.
be
ya. i experience life from an ultra sensitive place so unexpected reactions are expected (?!) but wow, this has affected my ulta-sensitized son like no-how no-way. I’m focused more on working (with him on) the emotional side of all this because I think our bodies can adjust – if we help them in more ways than one.
Thanks for the posts/info/support-system All.
xo
Kyla, I’ll do the best I can. My body/I’m an integrated system: I function through realizing the balance of the whole of my reality (as much as I can). With others’ health, I can’t feel out all the factors, so it’s difficult for me to ‘prescribe’. But, there are integrative generalities, and I’ll go searching for them. Wish me luck man, I’m gonna need it.
Myst, ‘diffusion’. This shit aint goin’ away, so we’re gonna have to deal with it. Eventually.. (long pause).. this shit will break down. Yeah, we will be standing on it, for sure but, remember, these particles were ‘enriched’, and they can be broken down. Oh, our conciousness of the damage they produce can never be as ignorant again as it has been, but this is a brand new game. We have to play.
Going Forward,
Jere
a link to a post with tips & recipes:
http://www.shesellsseaweed.com/archives/395
the seaweed harvester whose blog that post is on lives on the maine coast, and yes, you can still buy last season’s seaweed from her (she has not begun this season’s harvest yet). her name is kacie. she mentions that many seaweed companies are limiting how much people can buy, because there is such a run on seaweed right now. so be cool & don’t buy more than you can reasonably use in the next several months (or plan to share).
she also learned the trade from a guy named larch hanson, who has a pretty groovy world view:
http://www.alcasoft.com/seaweed/index.html
Well, it looks like we have two primary issues from radiation exposure & isotopes: free radical damage and crazyfree radical damage in the form of heavy metals. Antioxidizing the one and purging the other.
Problem is, most of what I rely on to do either of these is likely to be contaminated. My kelp, nori and miso all come from Japan. Algae grows in open pools under the irradiated winds. Oops. Water will need to be not just filtered, but purified. Alrighty.
And yes, you can wash off particles, where do they go? (Hint: you’re standing on it). Breathing somewhat non-irradiated air will require a $300 filter in each room, but then, what do you do with the accumulated particles? Wash them out? See earlier parentheses. Or you can buy a nebulizer to vehiculate glutathione or some other neutralizer for the particles in your lungs.
Epson salts baths are recommended to change your pH (and lower free radical damage) and vector heavy metals. But again, where does it go?
This is why people go into denial. Hell, I may join them soon.
In short, how you design your response to this will depend on your own immune profile. My kidneys are my Achilles heel, so I have to find a way to get non-irradiated water into a kidney-supporting herb blend and protect dem puppies.
But then there’s the rest of the eco-system. While I am trying to prop up one fleshy, carbon-based life form, my brethren on land, in sea and air are entirely vulnerable.
***
Am I going to post this? It is rather unremittingly glum, no? Well, it’s only half a thought, the rest is in there somewhere.
I feel like my own response to this has to scale *up* somehow. Personal ‘protection’ has to be continuous with planetary. I just haven’t twigged it yet.
Jere, I would be very interested in anything you come up with to say about this, even if it isn’t all that organized verbally or you don’t feel it’s integrated with other folks’ biosystems or whatever:
“There are foods that will help move radioactive particles out of your body. Some substances/matter act as carriers, due to their molecular (loose terminology) configuration, and will actually grab onto another molecule, and transport it out of the body.”
Would you be willing to email me? kylaluaz at yahoo dot com
only if you feel like it though. 🙂
I am like totally not willing to even for a minute believe I am better off not eating my green leafies.
Here’s a link to an article reporting what Amanda (via Carol) mentioned about Europe warning people away from their spinach:
http://www.euractiv.com/en/health/radiation-risks-fukushima-longer-negligible-news-503947
Radiation risks from Fukushima ‘no longer negligible’ [fr]
Published: 11 April 2011 | Updated: 12 April 2011
The risks associated with iodine-131 contamination in Europe are no longer “negligible,” according to CRIIRAD, a French research body on radioactivity. The NGO is advising pregnant women and infants against “risky behaviour,” such as consuming fresh milk or vegetables with large leaves.””””
says the levels are some 8 to 10 whatsits higher in the US….. but we get no such warnings here.
Hmm. Vegetables with large leaves — maybe my dandelion greens are okay then. phooey.
Oh, I get it… it’s the *cancer patients* who are causing the fallout…
(Gentlemen, begin your Spin Engines)
Radioactive iodine in city water spurs enhanced testing
April 12, 2011|By WILLIAM BENDER, benderw@phillynews.com 215-854-5255
“Perhaps more disturbing: Nobody knows exactly how the Iodine-131 – which can cause thyroid cancer if consumed in large quantities or over a prolonged period of time – is getting into Philly’s drinking water.
“At this point, that is not really known,” said EPA spokesman David Sternberg. “We’re investigating.”
Kathryn Higley, a health physicist at Oregon State University, said the most likely source is a nearby or upstream medical facility that treats cancer patients with Iodine-131, which can enter the water supply when patients go to the bathroom.”
http://articles.philly.com/2011-04-12/news/29410076_1_drinking-water-iodine-levels-radioactive-iodine
Michio Kaku today on Dem Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/13/expert_despite_japanese_govt_claims_of
(i’m just including an excerpt here; even goes on to make an analogy between the nuclear industry & Faust.)
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about this raising of the category level to 7, on a par with Chernobyl.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, Tokyo Electric has been in denial, trying to downplay the full impact of this nuclear accident. However, there’s a formula, a mathematical formula, by which you can determine what level this accident is. This accident has already released something on the order of 50,000 trillion becquerels of radiation. You do the math. That puts it right smack in the middle of a level 7 nuclear accident. Still, less than Chernobyl. However, radiation is continuing to leak out of the reactors. The situation is not stable at all. So, you’re looking at basically a ticking time bomb. It appears stable, but the slightest disturbance—a secondary earthquake, a pipe break, evacuation of the crew at Fukushima—could set off a full-scale meltdown at three nuclear power stations, far beyond what we saw at Chernobyl.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about exactly—I mean, as a physicist, to explain to people—exactly what has taken place in Japan at these nuclear power plants.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Think of driving a car, and the car all of a sudden lunges out of control. You hit the brakes. The brakes don’t work. That’s because the earthquake wiped out the safety systems in the first minute of the earthquake and tsunami. Then your radiator starts to heat up and explodes. That’s the hydrogen gas explosion. And then, to make it worse, the gas tank is heating up, and all of a sudden your whole car is going to be in flames. That’s the full-scale meltdown.
So what do you do? You drive the car into a river. That’s what the utility did by putting seawater, seawater from the Pacific Ocean, in a desperate attempt to keep water on top of the core. But then, seawater has salt in it, and that gums up your radiator. And so, what do you do? You call out the local firemen. And so, now you have these Japanese samurai warriors. They know that this is potentially a suicide mission. They’re coming in with hose water—hose water—trying to keep water over the melted nuclear reactor cores. So that’s the situation now. So, when the utility says that things are stable, it’s only stable in the sense that you’re dangling from a cliff hanging by your fingernails. And as the time goes by, each fingernail starts to crack. That’s the situation now.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the food, the level of contamination of the food? They are increasingly banning food exports.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: The tragedy is, this accident has released enormous quantities of iodine, radioactive iodine-131, into the atmosphere, like what happened at Chernobyl, about 10 percent the level of Chernobyl. Iodine is water soluble. When it rains, it gets into the soil. Cows then eat the vegetation, create milk, and then it winds up in the milk. Farmers are now dumping milk right on their farms, because it’s too radioactive. Foods have to be impounded in the area.
And let’s be blunt about this: would you buy food that says “Made in Chernobyl”? And the Japanese people are also saying, “Should I buy food that says ‘Made in Fukushima’?” We’re talking about the collapse of the local economy. Just because the government tries to lowball all the numbers, downplay the severity of the accident, and that’s making it much worse.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to be done now? I mean, one of the biggest problems is secrecy, both with the Tokyo company that runs the plants and also the government, the constant downplaying from the beginning. And yet, there are so many people who have been evacuated, who are demanding compensation. There was just a major protest at TEPCO with the people in the area who have been evaluated—no jobs, no money—saying, “We demand compensation.”
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, TEPCO is like the little Dutch boy. All of a sudden we have cracks in the dike. You put a finger here, you put a finger there. And all of a sudden, new leaks start to occur, and they’re overwhelmed.
I suggest that they be removed from leadership entirely and be put as consultants. An international team of top physicists and engineers should take over, with the authority to use the Japanese military. I think the Japanese military is the only organization capable of bringing this raging accident under control. And that’s what Gorbachev did in 1986. He saw this flaming nuclear power station in Chernobyl. He called out the Red Air Force. He called out helicopters, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and buried the Chernobyl reactor in 5,000 tons of cement, sand and boric acid. That’s, of course, a last ditch effort. But I think the Japanese military should be called out.
AMY GOODMAN: To do…?
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Because of the fact that the radiation levels are so great, workers can only go in for perhaps 10 minutes, 15 minutes at a time, and they get their year’s dose of radiation. You’re there for one hour, and you have radiation sickness. You vomit. Your white corpuscle count goes down. Your hair falls out. You’re there for a day, and you get a lethal amount of radiation. At Chernobyl, there were 600,000 people mobilized, each one going in for just a few minutes, dumping sand, concrete, boric acid onto the reactor site. Each one got a medal. That’s what it took to bring one raging nuclear accident under control. And I think the utility here is simply outclassed and overwhelmed.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, these workers are in for much longer periods of time.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: That’s right. And we don’t even know how much radiation levels they’re getting, because many areas around the site have no monitors. So we don’t even know how much radiation many of these workers are getting. And that’s why I’m saying, if you have access to the military, you can have the option of sandbagging the reactor, encasing it in concrete, or at least have a reserve of troops that can go in for brief periods of times and bring this monster under control.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the evacuation zone? Is it big enough?
DR. MICHIO KAKU: It’s pathetic. The United States government has already stated 50 miles for evacuating U.S. personnel. The French government has stated that all French people should consider leaving the entire islands. And here we are with a government talking about six miles, 10 miles, 12 miles. And the people there are wondering, “What’s going on with the government? I mean, why aren’t they telling us the truth?” Radiation levels are now rising 25 miles from the site, far beyond the evacuation zone. And remember that we could see an increase in leukemia. We could see an increase in thyroid cancers. That’s the inevitable consequence of releasing enormous quantities of iodine into the environment.
read, watch or listen to the whole interview here: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/13/expert_despite_japanese_govt_claims_of
That degree is a nuclear axis event. I’ve lost track a bit — was this the first one to blow up, on Saturday? That was a true blue nuclear axis chart. That range of approx 6 to 14 mutable, particularly Gemini-Sag, is the hot zone.
I wonder if there is a a message for us about the ‘why’ of this disaster to be found in the degree symbol of 12+ Gemini, (or the 13 Gemini Sabian symbol). It is the degree where Chiron was at the time of the Chernobyl accident and where the Moon was at the time of the Fukushima plant explosion. The picture is of a famous pianist giving a concert performance. A line in Dane Rudhyer’s explanation of this symbol makes me think it might:
“His role (the pianist) is to mobilize emotions, to present to others an image of what for most people is beyond their mediocre and lukewarm responses to the challenge of becoming “more-than-man” –to experience more intensely and to see farther.”
If Chiron is the teacher and seeks to make aware, and the Moon is the masses or ‘ordinary citizens’ and their emotional response, might this beyond-belief-horror in Japan be (one of) the motivaters or wake-up calls-of-global-dimension that will propel the human race on its journey to enlightenment? Small comfort I know.
be
Amanda, the last bit of what you said had me thinking. The part about veggies. I’m gonna have to do a bit of research to figure out how to even integrate my personal knowlege/understanding with other folks biosystems (I have an easy time working on myself and a difficult time working on others.. I know, I see the words I just wrote and am quite aware that there is a glitch??)
There are foods that will help move radioactive particles out of your body. Some substances/matter act as carriers, due to their molecular (loose terminology) configuration, and will actually grab onto another molecule, and transport it out of the body.
This is a mentality that needs to be understood, looked into,.. (It’s reality, now)..
I saw Michio Kaku on Tavis Smiley the other night. He talked about the developments through physics to the year 2100. A lot of star trek shit! 🙂
I’m hella stoked! The tech world’s exploding!
Oh yeah, the food thing.. I guess avoid the higher radioactive-concentration foods!? (..three eyed fish anyone??)
We’re screwed dude. can’t change the fuck-up, but we can work through it.
Anyway, I’ll attempt to put together some general knowlege pieces for radioactive transportation.
If this weren’t all so fucked up it would be comical.
Jere
Hey KatLyons . . .
Thank you.
***
Yeah, it does taste a little like the Powell Show. I was sick that day and stayed home from work, so I had a chance to watch the whole presentation. It was surreal. It was OBVIOUS he was lying, and doing so very uncomfortably. So. Very. Weird. I just kept thinking he was going to throw down the laser-pointer any minute and shout: Punked!
But no.
Well, pardon me for being a Taurus, but what the fuck are they talking about in these news reports? Hasn’t anyone read the emporer has no clothes recently? Geez, – let’s see – explosions, six reactors in various degress of destruction, radioactive water being poured into the ocean, nuclear plants that were built on the ocean and on fault lines in the first place, raising the standards for safe levels of radiation in food, as if that were a rational response, now ridiculous new Chernobyl facts, and on and on and on. Justification, rationalization, minimization, denial – all the symptoms of lying, plain and simple.
This reminds me of watching Colin Powell justify the war in Iraq to the UN. The arguments so weak, the evidence for weapons of mass destruction so tranparently fabricated as to be clearly non-existent, Powell himself so obviously dutiful and conflicted, the illogical link between 9/11 and Iraq in the first place. Remember that? To this day I hear people describe what a surprise it was when SEVERAL YEARS LATER it dawned on them they had been mislead. I had a friend whose five year old daughter could tell he was lying – I was an adult, and even I could tell.
I know I am preaching to the converted here, but I felt like putting in my two cents.
i know mystes —
that “31” number is supposedly the number of people who died immediately of acute radiation poisoning; i think the article here even says the number does not take into account the untold hundreds or thousands who are developing cancer (and the things you mention) over time. that anyone could be so brazen as to only cite “31” when everyone knows that death from radiation’s effects is not an immediate thing for most people blows my mind.
but i guess that’s the politics of science — or the science of politics? as long as they can argue that there may be “other factors” involved, ‘they’ are all too happy not to state direct causality.
as for whether fukushima is “bigger” than chernobyl now or ten days ago or a month from now seems to have something to do with comparing an acute, relatively short-term disaster with a likely longer-term disaster that may not have been as acute initially, but cumulatively may turn out to be much worse. at least, that’s the idea i’m getting from what i’m reading.
which, i realize, may not be the whole story. or rather, almost definitely is not. i’m not trying to make excuses for the reporting of the radiation levels or the lack of charts and graphs (which i find very disturbing, also). i’m just trying to keep track of the stated reasons for why this is being reported as it is.
this was carol’s reply to me on this earlier today:
“Yes. And as a number of writers have pointed out, the duration is important. Chernobyl released a huge amount of radiation into the atmosphere all at once (relatively) before they dumped concrete over it; Fukushima has been releasing lesser but still large amounts of radiation continuously for a month now with no end in sight. Europe is now warning people not to drink surface or rain water or eat leafy vegetables because of the levels reaching there; but in the U.S. where levels are 8-10 times higher than Europe, no warnings, no worries, more lies.”
that last bit has me wondering. i mean….. should i stop eating locally-grown spinach and kale now here in maine? should i have stopped a couple weeks ago? why haven’t i heard anything about it in local media? is it possible the jet stream dumps most of the radiation in the middle of the country? if so, how is the wind blowing it into europe substantially enough to cause alarm there?
too many questions.
31 people died from Chernobyl? Are you *kidding* me? I was combing through a photo journal of the Children’s Asylum in Vesnova (Belarus) yesterday, stunned by what had happened to kids (or their pregnant mothers) who did nothing more than walk through the yellow rain. Children with no immunogens, with blown vestibular systems whose bodies don’t know the meaning of the word ‘up,’ with cancer after cancer after cancer, with scrambled DNA sequences that inverted where bone grows, where soft tissue belongs.
The number declared in that report was more than 945,000. Almost a million.
As for these numbers released by AP, I find them extremely dubious. Just as I find most curious the sudden disappearance of EPA graphics on radiation levels (one minute they’re there, the next, not so much). NILU, the Norwegian Air Research had been providing flow charts for probable fallout patterns, now suddenly *they’re* gone.
I’m getting my information from nuclear experts from beyond the IAEA-EPA-TEPCO continuum. Such as this report by Natalia Mironova *from ten days ago* who said Fukushima was a Level Seven disaster. If TEPCO has upgraded it to 7 now, anybody want to guess what it *really* is?
Fukushima ‘much bigger than Chernobyl’, says Russian nuclear activist
[The Australian]
* From correspondents in Washington
* From: AFP
* April 02, 2011 6:46AM
“JAPAN’S unfolding nuclear disaster is “much bigger than Chernobyl” and could rewrite the international scale used to measure the severity of atomic accidents, a Russian expert says.
“Chernobyl was a dirty bomb explosion. The next dirty bomb is Fukushima and it will cost much more” in economic and human terms, Natalia Mironova said.
Ms Mironova is thermodynamic engineer who became a leading anti-nuclear activist in Russia in the wake of the accident at the Soviet-built reactor in Ukraine in 1986.
“Fukushima is much bigger than Chernobyl,” she said, adding that the Japanese nuclear crisis was likely to eclipse Chernobyl on the seven-point international scale used to rate nuclear disasters.
Chernobyl, which a 2005 report by UN bodies including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called “the most severe in the history of the nuclear power industry”, was ranked a seven on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).
But Japan’s ongoing crisis, triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami three weeks ago which took down the main electricity and back-up power supplies needed to power cooling systems at several reactors at Fukushima, could be “even higher” on the INES scale, she said.
“Chernobyl was level seven and it had only one reactor and lasted only two weeks. We have now three weeks (at Fukushima) and we have four reactors which we know are in very dangerous situations,” she said.
Japan’s nuclear safety agency has maintained its rating of the Fukushima accident at four, while a French watchdog has upgraded it to six.
Ms Mironova is touring the United States with other Russian anti-nuclear activists, including Tatiana Muchamedyarova and Natalia Manzurova, who worked as a “liquidator”, or emergency clean-up and recovery worker, at Chernobyl.
Their visit was originally planned to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown, which occurred on April 26, 1986.
But in the wake of the disaster in Japan, Ms Mironova and her colleagues rewrote their presentations to compare the accident at Chernobyl with Fukushima.”
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I am not trying to be alarmist, I am simply trying to wrap my head around the ramifications of gushing 50 Olympic swimming pools of highly radioactive water daily into the Pacific for 3, 4, 5 months. There are other experts who are of the opinion that TEPCO has not started the entombing process because criticality has been reached adn a chain reaction is underway. One expert said that the plutonium rods in one reactor have simply disappeared. Disappeared? Um, what?
It really is impossible to think that this is happening. I go toward the thought and find myself twisting around and saying ~ No, kiddo, this isn’t possible; you must be having a little nightmare in broad daylight.
We have to be able to see it. Really look right into the wild face of it. Otherwise we’ll have no commensurate strength, clarity, resolve.
This is the door to 2013. I’m walking, walking. . .
Yes, we are now a big 7 instead of the previously puny 5. And they don’t want to seal it up til they “retrieve” whatever is in there, either:
http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2011/04/ex-tepco-exec-no-concrete-for-nuke.html
(the pronoun “mine” below refers to the blogger. I ran across this a couple of days ago. It would support the theory posed by someone quoted here whose name I don’t recall at the moment, that Fukushima conceals a weapons manufactory or the like. Clearly something in there is too “valuable” to be concreted up.)
“From the Mainichi Daily News, Mainichi, Japan. Human translated, summary by T. Marks, subsequent editing & emphasis mine.
TEPCO won’t take Chernobyl approach to resolving nuclear power plant crisis Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) adviser Toshiaki Enomoto is pictured at the company’s Tokyo head office. It may take 10 years to start removing damaged nuclear fuel from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but the plant’s operator is adamant not to bury the damaged reactors while fuel remains in them, a company official has said: “We will definitely remove the fuel.” Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) adviser Toshiaki Enomoto stressed that the company would not bury the reactors in concrete in a “stone tomb” approach like the one adopted at Chernobyl.
TEPCO chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata has announced plans to decommission the plant’s No. 1 through 4 reactors. Normally it takes 20 to 30 years to decommission a reactor, but the process at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is expected to take even longer as workers must start by developing specialized equipment to remove damaged fuel….”
A friend mentioned last night that she saw street demonstrations in Japan. The Japanese people starting to protest any nuclear energy whatsoever. Did any one else catch that? I have continued to send the prayers to the water and the planet as wordedgewise had alerted us to. I just can’t stop. I am called to it periodically. I am mainly concentrating on the water within those dear people. Not only the water around them and drifting to us. But the tidal wave with in them rising up: Enough. No more. They can and must say it. They can do it.