California Slammed By Fukushima Radiation Science Confirms

Fukushima Radiation Plume Hit Southern and Central California

The Journal Environmental Science and Technology reports in a new study that the Fukushima radiation plume contacted North America at California “with greatest exposure in central and southern California”, and that Southern California’s seaweed tested over 500% higher for radioactive  iodine-131 than anywhere else in the U.S. and Canada:

Projected paths of the radioactive atmospheric plume emanating from the Fukushima reactors, best described as airborne particles or aerosols for 131I, 137Cs, and 35S, and subsequent atmospheric monitoring showed it coming in contact with the North American continent at California, with greatest exposure in central and southern California. Government monitoring sites in Anaheim (southern California) recorded peak airborne concentrations of 131I at 1.9 pCi m−3

Anaheim is where Disneyland is located.
EneNews summarizes the data:

Corona Del Mar (Highest in Southern California)

• 2.5 Bq/gdwt (gram dry weight)= 2,500 Bq/kg of dry seaweed
  

Santa Cruz (Highest in Central California)

• 2.0 Bq/gdwt = 2,000 Bq/kg of dry seaweed

Simon Fraser University in Canada also tested North American seaweed after Fukushima:

• “In samples of dehydrated seaweed taken on March 15 near the North Vancouver SeaBus terminal, the count was zero; on March 22 it was 310 Bq per kilogram; and by March 28 it was 380 Bq/kg.” -Vancouver Sun
• Seaweed in Seattle also tested positive for iodine-131; levels were not reported -KIRO
• No results after March 28 were reported

In addition, radioactive debris is starting to wash up on the Pacific Coast. And because the Japanese are burning radioactive materials instead of disposing of them, radioactive rain-outs will continue for some time … even on the Pacific Coast.
Of course, the government is doing everything it can to help citizens cover up what’s occurring. We pointed out in January:

Instead of doing much to try to protect their citizens from Fukushima, Japan, the U.S. and the EU all just raised the radiation levels they deem “safe”.
Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that high-level friends in the State Department told him that Hillary Clinton signed a pact with her counterpart in Japan agreeing that the U.S. will continue buying seafood from Japan, despite that food not being tested for radioactive materials [see this].

And the Department of Energy is trying to replace the scientifically accepted model of the dangers of low dose radiation based on voodoo science. Specifically, DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley Labs used a mutant line of human cells in a petri dish which was able to repair damage from low doses of radiation, and extrapolated to the unsupported conclusion that everyone is immune to low doses of radiation….

Indeed:

American and Canadian authorities have virtually stopped monitoring airborne radiation, and are not testing fish for radiation. (Indeed, the EPA reacted to Fukushima by raising “acceptable” radiation levels.)

So – as in Japan – radiation is usually discovered by citizens and the handful of research scientists with funding to check, and not the government. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

The Japanese government’s entire strategy from day one has been to cover up the severity of the Fukushima accident. This has likely led to unnecessary, additional deaths.

Indeed, the core problem is that all of the world’s nuclear agencies are wholly captured by the nuclear industry … as are virtually all of the supposedly independent health agencies.

So the failure of the American, Canadian and other governments to test for and share results is making it difficult to hold an open scientific debate about what is happening.

And it’s not just radiation from Japan.  An effort by the Southern California Edison power company to secretly ramp up production to avoid public disclosure may have led to a leak at the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

And see these articles on California radiation exposure courtesy of EneNews:

• Anaheim, CA has highest amount of radioactive fallout of any EPA air monitoring station in Continental U.S. for iodine-131
• Over EPA limit: Cesium levels in San Francisco area milk now higher than 6 months ago
• USGS: Los Angeles area had highest cesium deposition in US after Fukushima
• “Tends to concentrate in the testicles”: 360+ atoms of radioactive sulfur per day may have been inhaled by Californians after Fukushima
• Unprecedented Spike: 1501 atoms of radioactive sulfur per meter³ was detected in California air
• Radioactive sulfur in California spiked to highest levels ever detected: University researchers
• Controversy after US gov’t estimate showed 40,000 microsievert thyroid dose for California infants from Fukushima — Data not released to public — “Very high doses to children”
• Spike in radiation levels for West Coast? “Abnormal” readings on 8 of 18 EPA monitors for California, Oregon, Washington — Devices now “undergoing quality review”
• Nuclear policy expert: “Striking” that radioactive iodine-131 in California rainwater is so far above level permitted in drinking water
• Uranium-234 detected in Hawaii, Southern California, and Seattle

See No Evil Hear No Evil When It Comes To Radiation Contamination

A reader forwarded me an excellent essay about a small town in western Pennsylvania contaminated with uranium. What struck me the most was the last paragraph, in which the author relates the reaction of people to his facebook page: Men, women, and children were poisoned by that uranium fuel plant and that glass plant. Yet, for the most part, they ignore this, content to contemplate instead their “warm and fuzzy” memories, as one person put it on my hometown facebook page. The town seems to be dying because of radiation contamination from decades of uranium fuel processing, but people would rather dwell on warm and fuzzy feelings. That's very similar to what may be happening in Fukushima. Or for that matter, in Japan. What a wonderful place it was. What a wonderful place it will be. Forget the present. (Fukushima I Nuke Plant's official mascot was an ostrich, after all.) From "Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate" blog: Poisoning People in Apollo: All in a Day’s Work May 18, 2012 Michael D. Yates Apollo is a small town in western Pennsylvania, part of the old coal and steel belt that surrounds Pittsburgh. The shallow Kiskiminitas River, a tributary of the Allegheny, flows through the borough. Although it is close to my hometown, I never knew much about it, except that my artist uncle once made a glass carving for the town to commemorate the Apollo astronauts the community had embraced. I remember passing through Apollo and noticing a large industrial complex at the edge of town. Years later, I learned that this plant was owned by the Babcock & Wilcox Corporation, and it produced uranium fuel. Babcock & Wilcox, a global conglomerate, has been involved in nuclear-related industrial production ever since the Manhattan Project, designing, fabricating, and supplying components for nuclear power plants, ships, submarines, and weapons. The facility in Apollo and another one in nearby Parks Township, initially built by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in 1957 and later bought by the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and then by Babcock & Wilcox, closed in 1986. Left behind were contaminated land and water and sick and dead residents. Victims and their families sued the companies in the mid-1990s for damages suffered, and ARCO and Babcock & Wilcox were forced to pay $80 million to compensate victims for cancers and loss of property value. Sadly, by the time the lawsuits were settled, in 2008 and 2009, 40 percent of the claimants had died. Meanwhile, Babcock & Wilcox declared bankruptcy in 2000 to avoid liability in thousands of lawsuits by employees subjected to asbestos, a substance that businesses have known since the 1930s causes cancer. As a condition of exiting bankruptcy, it set up a trust fund to pay asbestos claimants; the amount of money put aside was far less than the company would very likely have had to pay if it had faced those lawsuits. Recently, nearly one hundred new lawsuits against ARCO and Babcock & Wilcox were filed by scores of people claiming that they got cancer as a result of exposure to radiation. A report to the federal court by an expert witness stated that the two companies “knew about worst-in-the-nation releases of radioactive materials that spanned decades, but opted not to do enough to protect neighbors from cancer-causing dust.” NUMEC showed an almost wanton disregard for safety. “In the first few years, the company lost so much uranium—enough to build several nuclear bombs—that the FBI investigated whether someone was actually stealing the material and selling it to a foreign country!” At the Parks Township facility, which produced plutonium and enriched uranium, NUMEC buried radioactive waste in an open unfenced field close to where children played. It is implausible that Babcock Wilcox, with its many nuclear projects over a long period of time, did not know about the problems with the entities it was buying. Yet, it did nothing to protect its workers or the community. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, A top official in 1974 viewed memos on the facility [which Babcock Wilcox bought in 1971] and wrote that if they were accurate, ‘we are guilty of gross irresponsibility in continuing to operate our uranium facilities.’ He threatened to shut them down, but the company didn’t stop making highly enriched uranium there until 1978, and it ended all production in 1984. The actions of these corporations helped to destroy a town and its people, and it appears they knew what they were doing. They not only located a nuclear plant in a town, but then failed to shut it down when they knew that workers and residents were being poisoned. “ ‘A lot of people have lost not only their entire savings but their homes,’ due to the health effects and loss of property value caused by the plants, said Patricia Ameno, of Leechburg, who sued the companies in a previous round of litigation . . . . ‘Their families have been torn apart by illnesses and deaths.’” Ms. Ameno, whose body has been wracked by cancer and brain tumors, added, “I saw the town I grew up in … disintegrating, just like the bricks on that plant.” One of the persons who posted a comment on the Post-Gazette article noted that a 1999 piece in the same newspaper showed that one-sixth of Apollo’s population had some type of cancer! I posted the Post-Gazette story on a facebook page dedicated to men and women who grew up in my hometown in the 1950s and 1960s. Most know about the Apollo plant. And they all lived in a town dominated by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, which poisoned its own employees with asbestos and silica dust and whose now abandoned property is so full of harmful chemicals that it cannot even donate it to the town. Outside town, near the company-owned fields on which I used to play baseball, “waste lagoons” built by the company and fed by pipes that went under the river have been leaking “arsenic, chromium, lead, manganese, copper, zinc, mercury and other toxic compounds into the river.” Despite this, only two persons commented on what I posted. If a post concerns some ancient bit of trivia or the local hoagie shop, members of the group fall all over themselves to make some meaningless remark. But something so important is met with silence. Sadly, a family member is a manager at Babcock Wilcox. I have always wondered how he could do this. The division of the company in which he works is knee-deep in the bowels of the military-industrial system. It “manages complex, high-consequence nuclear and national security operations, including nuclear production facilities and the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.” In others words, it is part of the U.S. war machine, making money by helping the government kill people, just like it killed people more directly in Apollo. Thousands of people grew up in and near Apollo. They have learned what harm the corporations who employed them and their relatives and friends have done and continue to do. Men, women, and children were poisoned by that uranium fuel plant and that glass plant. Yet, for the most part, they ignore this, content to contemplate instead their “warm and fuzzy” memories, as one person put it on my hometown facebook page. And many hundreds of thousands of men and women work as managers for horrendous corporate criminals like Babcock Wilcox without ever questioning their actions. Perhaps this tells us something about what those who raise their voices in protest are up against. Including the plaintiffs challenging Babcock Wilcox. I wish them success.

Visit Sunny Chernobyl

Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, author and environmentalist Andrew Blackwell heralded the beauty of Chernobyl, a man-made disaster, now a wasteland, where he found a shining desolate place that humans had vacated, and now returned to nature.

Part of a ‘love letter to pollution,’ Blackwell discusses his book Visit Sunny Chernobyl, sounding off in poetic language “Paradoxically, perversely, the accident may actually have been good for this environment.”

“Because it’s [a] quarantined, radioactive zone, everyone has left a long time ago, and very few people spend any time there,” he tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. “You’ve got to go in spring, obviously, and it’s just full of trees and birds and insects. And it’s sort of become this huge, accidental wilderness preserve.”

In a way, nature has taken over.

“The birds and the bees and the animals and the wolves are not aware, and/or don’t care about radioactive contamination the way we do,” Blackwell says. “There’s nothing like it, and it’s an absolutely unique place, and most of it is just flat-out beautiful.”

Blackwell observes a synergy between nature and the radioactive contamination: “So it’s not just a place that has been contaminated with radiation and radioactive particles. They are sort of in it, which is another thing that makes it so incredibly fascinating … the ecosystem itself has sort of incorporated that pollution.”

Yes, with Fukushima still falling out, we are again witnessing the celebration of harmful and destructive nuclear disasters– now salvaged as an environmentalist’s ironic, symbolic victory-from-disaster. For all hopes of scaling back the scourge of civilization, Nature seems at peace with nuclear dead zones, if this author’s account is any indication.

Like Ann Coulter, Blackwell tries to convince the world that nuclear radiation has actually helped us and the environment. In the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, Coulter claimed that “radiation is good for you,” adding the Orwellian claim that “excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.” Other Fox News contributors have boldly stated that Fukushima has caused zero deaths.

Ann Coulter’s “Glowing” Report on Radiation

Nuclear expert Dr. Christopher Busby accused Guardian columnist George Monbiot of being “criminally irresponsible” for downplaying the effects of Japan’s disaster, in part for his article, “Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power,” which cited global warming as a bigger threat than nuclear fallout. The corporate media have similarly tried to convince the mindless public that mercury is good for you! Incredibly, this “news” report claims that mercury based preservatives in vaccines may help not harm neurological behavior.

Silence, cover-ups and lies about the extent of the effects of the radiation have cost untold millions of deaths. The partial meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory nuclear salt reactors in 1959 went undisclosed to the public for decades, with total effects unknown. A recent survey found 48 of 65 nuclear reactors in the U.S. are leaking, with many of them introducing tritium, the radioactive element of hydrogen, to the environment. Our recent investigation into Austin’s nuclear secrets raises further questions about illegal dumping of waste and the lack of disclosure to the public on nuclear issues.

Of course, Blackwell is NOT overtly saying that radiation is good for living humans or that he’d like to see people die (at least, I presume not; it could be in the book). However, his book’s iconic title Visit Sunny Chernobyl is attempting to create an association of doom with beauty; inverting the darkness of disaster with the image-wording of ‘sunny.’ Thus creating at least a few positive connotations with meltdown and annihilation. The author’s only agenda may well be to use a little irony to cut through the saturated market for book sales and media influence.

But his poetry on the landscape of apocalypse speaks the language of nihilistic technocrats, eugenicist legacy causes, environmentalist-bankers, UN controllers and climate change fanatics alike. When Blackwell finds solace in the pristine remains of an act that drove out humans through immense dark power, he resonates with those pursuing the cause of rewilding and depopulating the earth. Bleak but beautiful. Extreme measures for extreme times. The end justifies the means.

Agenda 21 For Dummies NWO depopulation

This author plays into the imagery of what amounts to the ultimate fantasy of your average upper eschelon eco-terrorist from the ranks of international policy bodies, finance, government or private eugenics sector: rewriting the earth via revolutionary causes (think 12 Monkeys) laced with Agenda 21 undertones. Blaming humanity for ruining the planet, all while hoping to someday toast a scorched earth with scant a person around. A sort of Logan’s Run wash over in balance with humanity’s greatest excesses.

Whether intentional or not, the coined phrase “Visit Sunny Chernobyl” repeats a subtle propaganda meme that joins in concert with a wide campaign working to sell the public on the idea that humanity itself is bad for the planet (see Humanity’s Ultimate Secret below). Therefore, since humans are bad, extermination is necessary, and somehow, even a brilliant control mechanism and balancing act for the earth. Rather than actually recognizing who is repeatedly wrecking things, or addressing why nuclear meltdowns are happening, and stopping them, the population turns its head and creates an internal fiction to train themselves to accept and, finally, love their servitude, even in the depths of austere bleakness of apocalyptic proportions.

Just as Aldous Huxley predicted that the Brave New World would be a future of people who “love their servitude,” there is an attempt going on to persuade the public into “loving their radiation”– by raising the “safe” limits, downplaying effects, by talking little about it, all part of an attempt to create a false memory about all the ‘good’ that nuclear has done for us, now not in spite of, but because of its disasters.

Blackwell’s smug embrace of beauty in all things is signing a willing surrender of mankind’s future, and embracing the post-human world they say is to come. Because a corrupt elite have hijacked the mechanisms of social control, and have given into maniacal urges to implode development, and kill and destroy, many well-meaning people give into a severe Stockholm syndrome and nihilistically cheer on those designing a world without humans.

If we allow ourselves to believe we are trash, we accept a great evil perpetrated upon the planet. Instead, we must create awareness and reset the global course and chart our future to steer away from the rocks of dehumanization, depopulation and death.

Sun Fun & Radioactive Tuna For Next 300-600 Years

Migrating bliefin tuna that spawn off the coast of Japan and feed off the coast of California, where they’re also part of a commercial fishing operation, each time they go back and forth across [the ocean] they pick up more and more cesium-137 and this will go on for 300 to 600 years.

NOTE: As much as I adored sea food from the Northern Pacific, I stopped eating it for the rest of my life.

Tracking Fukushima Debris

Using historical weather patterns, NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory developed this model of how debris will circulate across the Pacific Ocean.

Although a year has passed since Japan's tsunami sucked tons of wood, nets and other debris into the Pacific Ocean, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continues to track the rubble and urges others to do so to help focus cleanup efforts.

The total amount of debris is unknown -- the Japanese government is fine-tuning its estimate of the amount that was generated and sank initially, said Ruth Yender, NOAA's Japan tsunami marine debris coordinator. And immediately after the event, satellite imagery showed large swaths of floating junk, which dispersed a few months later.

So NOAA is using other means, including higher resolution satellite imagery and the public's participation, to collect information for planning and cleanup purposes.

NOAA developed a model (above) and a map (below) to track where debris likely will circulate in the Pacific Ocean. It launched a marine debris tracker app, which people can use to log rubble they find along coastlines and in waterways. They also can email the agency with their finds.

It doesn't matter if the trash is from the tsunami or other sources. "Debris is not a new thing. It washes ashore everyday, and it can be a hazard to marine life," Yender said. Whales, sea lions and other creatures can ingest it or become entangled, and it also can do damage to coral reefs and boat propellers, she said.

So by gauging any changes in volume and composition, NOAA and other state, local and federal agencies can know where to ramp up their cleanup efforts.

Since nuclear reactors, including those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, were damaged in the earthquake, there was a concern of radioactive contamination. But agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Emergency Management Agency have examined tests of nearby damaged vessels and other tsunami remnants, and determined it was "very highly unlikely" the spreading debris would be radioactive, Yender said

NOTE: All Tuna tested in California are radioactive, they swam through radioactive water, yet you are to believe that somehow all of the contamination somehow skipped over the debris that has been simmering in radioactive waste for 15 months?

Fukushima Radiation Is Killing The Pacific Ocean

Just prior to the Supermoon of March 18th, 2011, the world witnessed a natural and manmade disaster of epic proportions. What transpired off the coast of Honshu Island, Japan on March 11 has forever altered the planet and irremediably affected the global environment. Whereas the earthquake and tsunami proved to be truly apocalyptic events for the people of Japan, the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima is proving to be cataclysmic for the entire world.

Most of the world community is still unaware of the extremely profound and far-reaching effects that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has had. If the nations of the world really understood the implications of the actual ‘fallout’ – past, current and future – the current nuclear energy paradigm would be systematically shut down. For those of us who are in the know, it is incumbent upon each of us to disseminate the relevant information/data necessary to forever close down the nuclear power industry around the globe.

There is now general agreement that the state of the art of nuclear power generation is such that it was deeply flawed and fundamentally dangerous from the very beginning. This fact was completely understood to be the case by the industry insiders and original financiers of every nuclear power plant ever built. Nuclear engineers had a very good understanding of just how vulnerable the design, engineering and architecture was at the startup of this industry. Nevertheless, they proceeded with this ill-fated enterprise at the behest of who?

Therefore, this begs the question, “Why would such an inherently unsafe technology and unstable design be implemented worldwide in the first place?”

More importantly, “Who ought to be responsible for mitigating this ongoing planetary nuclear disaster?” And, is there any practical way this predicament can be fixed? Is there technology available which can address this situation in any meaningful way?

With the increasing energy needs of the global economy pushing energy-poor nations like Japan into nuclear power, the economic incentive has always overridden good judgment. Especially in Japan do we see a nation that was literally set up to be a poster child for the nuclear power industry. This, in a place that is known to be the most seismically active region in the world!

“Does anyone in their right mind believe that nuclear power plants can ever be designed, engineered or constructed to withstand 9.0 earthquakes followed by 15 meter high tsunamis? Sorry if we offend, but such a display of so deadly a combination of ignorance and arrogance must represent the very height of hubris. Particularly in view of the inevitable consequences which have manifested at Fukushima, how is it that so few saw this pre-ordained and disastrous outcome, except by willful blindness?”
— Japan: A Nation Consigned To Nuclear Armageddon

Numerous headlines over the past few weeks have been relentless in trumpeting Japan’s begrudging response to this global wakeup call. For the first time since nuclear power has been used in the land of Nippon, all 55 nuclear power plants now sit idle. This is of course very good news for the people of Japan. The question now remains how to go about remediating all of these vulnerable and unsafe nuclear reactors. Particularly because of those nuclear plants that are located anywhere along the Japanese coastline is this remediation imperative an existential necessity.

Japan nuclear power-free as last reactor shuts

Japan switches off last nuclear power plant; will it cope?

International Forces Are Responsible For Fukushima;
An Immediate Global Response Ought To Formulated

Since the very first news about the Fukushima nuclear disaster came to light, many industry researchers and various investigations have unveiled the multi-decade plot to foist nuclear power onto the islands of Japan. The many forces arrayed against the Japanese people were so formidable that this ill-fated enterprise could only come to such an unfortunate outcome. Just as humankind learned from the folly of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fukushima has served as an example of how not to implement nuclear power generation.

“Quite purposefully, no one ever stopped to consider the obvious and far-reaching ramifications of constructing 55 nuclear reactors on the most seismically active piece of property on planet Earth! And, that doesn’t count another 12 reactors in various stages of planning or development.”
— An Open Letter to the People of Japan

If Japan is to remain habitable for future generations, there are certain (nuclear) matters confronting every corner of this island nation which must be addressed post haste. We know the people of Japan are up to it. The real question is whether the powers who have controlled their destiny are willing to back off for once since WWII.

Can the USA, the UK, Israel and France completely let go of their control of the Japanese economy, energy infrastructure and political process? Not only does the very existence of Japan rely on this relinquishment of control, the futures of the USA, UK and France do as well.

“Tokyo has the largest greater metro population in the world at about 34.3 million. Tokyo has the largest GDP of all major cities in the world – larger than both New York City and London. Tokyo is the economic/financial capital of the world’s 3rd largest national economy, as well as the primary economic engine of East Asia.”
– As Fukushima Goes, So Goes Japan

Most are not aware, even at the very highest levels of the Global Control Matrix, but as Fukushima goes, so goes Japan. Taken to its logical conclusion we can say with absolute certainty that as Japan goes, so goes the entire planet. In reality, Japan is not only a super-charged trigger point in the Pacific Ring of Fire, it is also a lynchpin for the world economy as the previous article well explains. Therefore, we would highly advise the Anglo-American power structure to take proper responsibility for this unprecedented global catastrophe and show up in great force on the Honshu coastline to remediate and de-activate wherever still possible.

Global “Manhattan Project” Required

It is quite quizzical that those who run the Global Control Matrix have not yet seized the day. What is clearly at stake is the Pacific Ocean, its shorelines, numerous national economies, as well as myriad ecosystems and aquatic environments.
If they persist in this display of passivity and willful neglect, the planet may never recover. Surely, we can offer the observation that as the Pacific becomes exposed to massive volumes of radioactive water being dumped from the Fukushima site, eventually this radiation will find its way to the four corners of that ocean and beyond.

There has been a steady barrage of headlines lately aimed at those who can respond to this global catastrophe with some degree of cogency. A uniquely cohesive international response is urgently required if there is to be any hope of a successful remediation. Only a fully represented international think tank and implementation team has any chance of formulating a strategy that might be successful at fixing Fukushima.

We’re thinking of a Manhattan Project type of gravity. After all, if such a serious project was established in the interest of creating an atomic bomb, surely a similar endeavor can be initiated in the interest of saving the same country, that was ravaged by nuclear war, from Fukushima-generated radiation.

Japan has clearly shown that this disaster is way beyond their ability to manage and capacity to address in any meaningful way. Their entire culture seems to ensure that the real problems will be constantly swept under the rug. The problem this time around is that there may be no rug soon to sweep it under.

As Fukushima Goes, So Goes Japan

The preceding article clearly sets forth the thesis that if Tokyo requires evacuation in the future, the Japanese economy will immediately collapse. This eventuality would merely be the first domino to fall toward the collapse of the entire global economy. The prospect at this point is so real that those decision-makers at the top of the Global Control Matrix can’t afford not to inaugurate a worldwide effort to remediate Fukushima.

The Pacific Ocean Is Dying

How about the rest of the Pacific Ocean? What does the future hold in store for the largest body of water on Earth. One that circulates more water than any other ocean and possesses more coastline than all the others put together. The following headlines portend the future health of the Pacific, so all are encouraged to take serious notice.

Fukushima Daiichi Worker: Nothing can be done except to leak radioactive water! — Honestly feel that we are dumping massive amounts into ocean — Will spread all over world, reaching Hawaii and US soon

Nuclear Professor: 5,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 in spent fuel pool No. 4 — “Low estimate”

Doomsday scenarios spread about No. 4 reactor at Fukushima plant

Former Ambassador: No. 4 reactor a top national security issue for entire world — Could start “the ultimate catastrophe”

Japan Nuclear Expert: Humanity as a whole has literally never experienced something like Fukushima — “We will be fighting this radiation on the order of tens or hundreds of years”

The upshot of each of these articles is that the Pacific Ocean is extremely vulnerable to the radioactive waste being dumped into her waters at Fukushima. Should another catastrophic earthquake occur, it could create a new and more complicated nuclear disaster scenario that is truly irreparable. Even without any seismic activity affecting the nuclear sites, the current state of affairs has taken for granted that the Pacific Ocean will become a nuclear dumping ground for decades to come. It has not been lost on us that such an inevitability appears to be the only practical expedient available.

We are truly saddened by the great loss of marine life and harm to myriad aquatic and shoreline ecosystems. As the nuclear radiation is exported around the Asian Ring of Fire, genetic mutation will begin to affect every form of life — from phytoplankton to whales, from seabirds to mangroves, from dolphins to krill. Everything that lives near the Pacific will be at risk to some degree. Anyone who lives, works or plays in or around the Pacific will be compelled to evaluate their relationship to this great ocean.

What have we done to Mother Earth by siting nuclear power plants in the most seismically active region of the world?!

What in God’s Creation can possibly be done to fix it?

Never in the history of humankind has the planet been confronted with such a grave set of circumstances. Fukushima represents all that can go wrong when scientific applications and technological advancement within a crude industrial context have gone awry. Unfortunately, given the many trajectories that numerous fields of technological innovation are currently on, Fukushima and the BP Gulf oil spill of 2012 may only be the beginning of an accelerating period of technospheric breakdown which will plague the Earth.

Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown Converge to Create Global Perfect Storm

Cosmic Convergence Research Group
Submitted: May 5, 2012
cosmicconvergence2012@gmail.com

Author’s Note:
NuclearReader.info has provided an invaluable service to the worldwide internet community by giving away their ebook currently linked here: http://www.nuclearreader.info/
The first chapter entitled “Hazards of Low Level Radioactivity” ought to be a must read for anyone impacted by Fukushima.

Also of critical significance, there is a phenomenon known as the Photoelectric Effect which weighs heavily throughout the entire contamination zone associated with the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The following article gives an important overview for those who want to know what we are really dealing with as a planetary civilization.
Photoelectron Induction in Uranium Particles by Chris Busby, PhD

Addendum:
There has been no mention in this essay of the massive amount of debris pollution brought about by the Japan earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011. We have chosen a photo-documentary instead to portray this state of affairs in the following addendum.

Fukushima Radioactive Ocean Contamination On Steroids

I wish everything I am reporting on were not true, or at least were less true than it appears. It does seem that Japan is in the process of contaminating the entire Pacific Ocean via continued uncontrolled releases of radioactivity at Fukushima.

After low-balling initial estimates of radiation releases, the Japanese authorities now acknowledge that substantial amounts of radioactive material leaked from the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors.[1]

The nuclear disaster in Japan has released radioactive isotopes that have poisoned the country’s soil, food, and water.

The fallout is being rapidly taken up by living things and passed up the food chain with airborne radioactive isotopes reaching around the world but especially in the northern hemisphere where most of the radioactive particles will settle.

Most Americans have no idea what is happening. But within days of the accident at Fukushima radioactive contaminants were detected at monitoring stations in the Pacific Coast states.

Nearly 1% of the “hot” sulfur released from the plant is estimated to have traversed the Pacific to reach southern California beaches.[2]

I don’t think anyone was really ever that happy about nuclear power and nuclear weapons but a lot of money and power were concentrated in the nuclear industry.

Many of these people are riding around in limos today very happy with their luxurious lifestyle as the planet quickly becomes more contaminated.

Private companies are abandoning ship from the nuclear industry because the nuclear news is bad no matter how you look at it. And worse, others still in are headed for bad financial doom.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, the operators of 20 U.S. nuclear reactors—including some with licenses that expire soon—do not have sufficient funding for prompt dismantling.

If these reactors can’t keep working, their owners “intend to let them sit like industrial relics for 20 to 60 years or even longer while interest accrues in the reactors’ retirement accounts.”

Within the next 15 years as many as 100 industry-standard 900 MW nuclear reactors, concentrated in the “old nuclear” countries will have to be decommissioned, dismantled and made safe, which is impossible when it comes to nuclear plants and their dirty waste products.

Human stupidity and arrogance has really boomeranged on us in the arena of nuclear power.

It is extremely difficult and painful to entertain the thought that the future of the northern hemisphere—and perhaps even the habitability of the entire planet—is being brought into question. I am not a lone wolf saying this anymore for the story has touched the edge of the mainstream.

The story of the nuclear waste pools was just published in the Huffington Post. I imagine many do read that publication and what they read there should shake people up pretty good.

Pools are 100 feet above the ground and are completely
open to the atmosphere because the reactor buildings were
demolished by explosions. The pools could possibly topple or collapse
from structural damage coupled with another powerful earthquake.
Huffington Post

“The urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity where 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0-5.7 have occurred off the northeast coast of Japan between April 14 and 17.

This has been the norm since the first quake and tsunami hit the Dai-Ichi site on March 11 of last year. Larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant,” continues the Huffington Post.

If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain, this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire that could wipe out most of the northern hemisphere; certainly it would be a massive civilization-breaking event some are suggesting.

Amazingly this is not the only nuclear situation going on. There is a new scare:

Tons Of Fukushima Tsunami Debris Washing Up On Miles Of Alaskan Beaches

Tons of debris suspected to have washed into the Pacific Ocean during the March 2011 Japan tsunami, are showing up on Alaska’s coastline.

On Kayak Island, roughly 60 miles southeast of Cordova, hundreds of buoys, thousands of bottles, countless fuel cans, shoes, chunks of building insulation, and other household items litter the beach for miles.

It’s even worse on Montague Island, according to Chris Pallister, president of Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a non-profit group which cleans up beaches each spring and summer.

“It’s a staggering mess,” he said during a visit to Kayak Island last Friday, “the magnitude of this is just hard to comprehend and I’ve been looking at this stuff a long time.”

Junk has been washing ashore on Kayak Island for as long as anyone can remember. The coastline there is the final resting place for a lot of buoys, nets, and trash which are cast overboard in the Pacific Ocean each year.

But this spring the debris field is different, say people who know the area well.

“We’re definitely seeing a lot of new stuff that wasn’t here in the past,” said Mike Collins, a pilot who lives in Cordova and has been visiting nearby beaches almost his entire life.

For example, chunks of pink and blue insulation, which appear to be from buildings, are everywhere on Kayak Island. Also, white and black floats the size of oil barrels are showing up.

“There are literally hundreds of these things,” said Collins, holding one up.

Much of the debris has Japanese writing on it. The items are generally clean, not covered in algae or barnacles, and are not buried in the sand.

“The first time that I noticed it was when I came back up the coast from Sitka, which would’ve been probably 3 weeks ago,” said Collins.

Peter Murphy, Alaska coordinator for NOAA's Marine Debris Monitoring Program, said that the agency is receiving an increased number of reports of debris on Kayak Island and Montague Island.

He said that while they have not been able to confirm specific objects are from the Japan tsunami, "certainly the unusual quantity is a clue."

NOAA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation flew to Montague Island on Saturday to document the large amount of debris, Murphy said.

According to NOAA, several variables affect when and where Japanese tsunami debris will make landfall in North America.

Winds and ocean currents are constantly changing, making it difficult to come up with a reliable forecast.

But according to NOAA’s Marine Debris Monitoring Program, “some buoyant items may have reached the Pacific Northwest coast during winter 2011-2012.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. Coast Guard sank an abandoned Japanese fishing boat, which was floating toward Alaska's coast.

The vessel was believed to have been set adrift by the tsunami.

A KTUU reporter visited the beach on Kayak Island last Friday with a personal radiation monitor, which picked up very low, routine, background levels of radiation. The levels were not harmful and were no different from levels detected in Anchorage.

Several plastic containers contained gasoline and other unknown substances. Bottles of toilet bowl cleaner, detergents and a variety of other household products were also spotted on the beach.

"We could pick this up in a summer but it would be an all summer effort," said Pallister.

Chernobyl 26 Year Anniversay Marks Cleanup Abandonment

April 26 will mark the 26th anniversary of the worst case of nuclear contamination in history: the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Since the meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in March last year, the Japanese government has shown interest in decontamination and other projects around Chernobyl as a reference point for efforts to deal with its own nuclear disaster.

However in northern Ukraine, where the radioactive husk of the former Soviet power station lies, large-scale decontamination work has been abandoned as largely ineffective, and disaster refugees are no closer to going home.

I am a little less than 10 kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear plant, in a warehouse-like building with a long, narrow trough for waste water cut into the floor. This is where workers clad in protective suits scrub down vehicles and heavy machinery that have gone into high-radiation areas. The scrubbing is done by hand, until the radiation emissions from the truck or the bulldozer drops below 0.5 microsieverts per hour.

Just after the 1986 disaster -- in which one of the Chernobyl plant's reactors exploded, blowing off the reactor housing roof and spewing radioactive material into the air -- Soviet authorities swung into a full-scale decontamination effort, including burying contaminated soil, and washing and then melting down contaminated machinery. However, in the 14 years between the disaster and the year 2000 -- when the last operating reactor at the plant was finally shut down -- authorities apparently judged that there had been "little improvement" in soil conditions, and they decided to halt soil decontamination.

The only decontamination operations going on now are for workers doing safety work in and around the dead plant, including decommissioning the reactors and preventing forest fires. There are currently about 3,700 people who work inside the 30-kilometer radius no-go area around the plant -- referred to simply as "the Zone" -- and they must have their clothes decontaminated periodically. During seasons when humidity is low, vehicles are typically washed one or two times a week, and roads near the plant are also scrubbed.

More than 110,000 people once lived in the Zone, all of whom were evacuated right after the accident. The Soviet authorities apparently attempted to decontaminate the town of Prypiat -- where Chernobyl plant workers and their families had lived -- soon after, but with no success.

Mr. Zolotoverkh, 58, who is in charge of managing the Zone, says there is no chance that decontamination will be resumed, adding, "No one will be allowed to return, not after decades, not after centuries."

About 110 kilometers southwest of the plant is the city of Korostyshiv, which the former Soviet government labeled an "evacuation advisory area" -- one of 440 residential communities given the designation. The Soviet Union established four categories for irradiated areas: forced evacuation areas, forced migration areas, evacuation advisory areas, and radiation management areas. Serious decontamination work in the advisory areas such as Korostyshiv did not begin until 1990, four years after the accident.

The municipal government, meanwhile, replaced the local top soil as well as the roof of every home and school in its jurisdiction. The city also paved over land that had been exposed to the Chernobyl fallout, including the front yard of 53-year-old housewife Ms. Valentina.

The municipal official in charge of the project emphasizes that the efforts resulted in a 50 percent drop in radiation in the 20 years after the accident. This has not, however, staunched a steady flow of people out of the city. Since 1990, Korostyshiv's population has dropped from about 80,000 to 67,000, though the city stresses that this is beginning to turn around.

Valentina's husband passed away from cancer in 2000 at just 48-years-old, and she says that many other members of her family have suffered damage to their health.

Regarding decontamination of homes, Ukrainian government radiation expert Mr. Tabachnyi says, "I can't say it's had any effect but to calm the fears of the residents," adding, "About $1 million was thrown into reducing radiation levels in Korostyshiv to 1 sievert or less per year. It was definitely not a cost-effective effort."

In June 1986, the Soviet government decided to allow residents back to parts of the forced migration areas that were relatively uncontaminated on a trial basis. Decontamination work was done, and the project drew up indices that would show whether the efforts could be applied to the clean-up of other areas. However, the authorities recognized that dangerous radioactive materials remained, and revoked permission for residents to return two years later.

Now, with buildings and infrastructure decaying, "there's almost no chance that permission to return will ever be given," says Tabachnyi, meaning the more than 10,000 Ukrainian "forced migrants" will probably never go home again.

On April 18 this year, Japan and the Ukraine finalized an agreement to share information on the countries' respective nuclear disasters, and the Japanese government is looking to learn "the lessons of Chernobyl" as it implements policy to contain the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdowns.

The scale of the two disasters, however, is different. The Chernobyl accident is thought to have released several times the radioactive material of the Fukushima disaster. The decontamination of agricultural lands -- a process that Japan has put so much faith into -- has been essentially abandoned around the Chernobyl plant, and there is increasing criticism that there is "no way Chernobyl can give any insight into the Japanese situation."

Small Scale Chernobyl Legacy Prelude To Fukushima

Warning – Graphic* Photographer's video: “My first reaction was I was looking at a different race of people” — Brain outside of skull, kidneys outside of torso, legs resembling elephant — Some doctors feel strongly there will be no more Belarus people in future

To get a sense of just what those tens of millions live at risk of, take a look at these photographs by award winning photographer Paul Fusco. Earlier this month I had a the honor of participating in the fourth Schuneman Symposium held at the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. Among the speakers was Fusco, an extraordinary MAGNUM photographer who traveled to the Ukraine to see the legacy of Chernobyl after twenty years. Fusco expected to stay two weeks. He stayed for two months, following parents, children, nurses and cancer patients.

“It changed my life. I couldn’t leave. It was so immense in its implications. There is so much damage to so many people in so many ways…” says Fusco.

Was Fukushima A Nuclear War?

The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.

The crisis in Japan has been described as "a nuclear war without a war". In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:

"This time no one dropped a bomb on us ... We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives."

Nuclear radiation --which threatens life on planet earth-- is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes - Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)

Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO's (Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.

The realties, however, are otherwise. Fukushima 3 was leaking unconfirmed amounts of plutonium. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, "one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer".

An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government's information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan's Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)

The Impacts in Japan

The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that "the severity rating of its nuclear crisis ... matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster". In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:

"While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl."

Worldwide Contamination

The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:

"Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements - called internal emitters - migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer". (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011)

While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) "quoting diplomatic sources" stated that only "tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health."

"According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations’ Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. ...

... Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts “don’t see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories”.

Public Health Disaster. Economic Impacts

What prevails is a well organized camouflage. The public health disaster in Japan, the contamination of water, agricultural land and the food chain, not to mention the broader economic and social implications, have neither been fully acknowledged nor addressed in a comprehensive and meaningful fashion by the Japanese authorities.

Japan as a nation state has been destroyed. Its landmass and territorial waters are contaminated. Part of the country is uninhabitable. High levels of radiation have been recorded in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has a population of 39 million (2010) (more than the population of Canada, circa 34 million (2010)) There are indications that the food chain is contaminated throughout Japan:

Radioactive cesium exceeding the legal limit was detected in tea made in a factory in Shizuoka City, more than 300 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Shizuoka Prefecture is one of the most famous tea producing areas in Japan.

A tea distributor in Tokyo reported to the prefecture that it detected high levels of radioactivity in the tea shipped from the city. The prefecture ordered the factory to refrain from shipping out the product. After the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive contamination of tea leaves and processed tea has been found over a wide area around Tokyo. (See 5 More Companies Detect Radiation In Their Tea Above Legal Limits Over 300 KM From Fukushima, June 15, 2011)

Japan's industrial and manufacturing base is prostrate. Japan is no longer a leading industrial power. The country's exports have plummeted. The Tokyo government has announced its first trade deficit since 1980.

While the business media has narrowly centered on the impacts of power outages and energy shortages on the pace of productive activity, the broader issue pertaining to the outright radioactive contamination of the country's infrastructure and industrial base is a "scientific taboo" (i.e the radiation of industrial plants, machinery and equipment, buildings, roads, etc). A report released in January 2012 points to the nuclear contamination of building materials used in the construction industry, in cluding roads and residential buildings throughout Japan.(See FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies, January 2012)

A "coverup report" by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (May 2011), entitled "Economic Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery" presents "Economic Recovery" as a fait accompli. It also brushes aside the issue of radiation. The impacts of nuclear radiation on the work force and the country's industrial base are not mentioned.

The report states that the distance between Tokyo -Fukushima Dai-ichi is of the order of 230 km (about 144 miles) and that the levels of radiation in Tokyo are lower than in Hong Kong and New York City.(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery, p.15). This statement is made without corroborating evidence and in overt contradiction with independent radiation readings in Tokyo (se map below). In recent developments, Sohgo Security Services Co. is launching a lucrative "radiation measurement service targeting households in Tokyo and four surrounding prefectures".

The fundamental question is whether the vast array of industrial goods and components "Made in Japan" -- including hi tech components, machinery, electronics, motor vehicles, etc -- and exported Worldwide are contaminated? Were this to be the case, the entire East and Southeast Asian industrial base --which depends heavily on Japanese components and industrial technology-- would be affected. The potential impacts on international trade would be farreaching. In this regard, in January, Russian officials confiscated irradiated Japanese automobiles and autoparts in the port of Vladivostok for sale in the Russian Federation. Needless to say, incidents of this nature in a global competitive environment, could lead to the demise of the Japanese automobile industry which is already in crisis.

While most of the automotive industry is in central Japan, Nissan's engine factory in Iwaki city is 42 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Is the Nissan work force affected? Is the engine plant contaminated? The plant is within about 10 to 20 km of the government's "evacuation zone" from which some 200,000 people were evacuated (see map below).

Nuclear Energy and Nuclear War

The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war.

Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.

In Japan at the height of the disaster, "the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants".1 (See Yoichi Shimatsu, Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research, April 12, 2011)

It should be noted that the complacency of both the media and the governments to the hazards of nuclear radiation pertains to the nuclear energy industry as well as to to use of nuclear weapons. In both cases, the devastating health impacts of nuclear radiation are casually denied. Tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb are labelled by the Pentagon as "safe for the surrounding civilian population".

No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using "safe for civilians" tactical nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.

Such an action would result in "the unthinkable": a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East and Central Asia. A nuclear nightmare, however, would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing another Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout.

Japan Struggles With Nuclear Decontamination

Over a year after the nuclear accident triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami contaminated large swathes of land in northeastern Japan, the future of the largely agricultural area and those who have been evacuated from it remain uncertain.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported on Monday that residents will not be able to return to at least seven of the municipalities around the damaged Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima for at least five years.

According to a government report released on Sunday, it is estimated that six of the seven municipalities will have dangerous levels of radiation - above 20 millisieverts of radiation (mSv) per year - for a decade.

Experts have told Al Jazeera that this level is considered too high.

Radiation too high

The national government has yet to articulate a decontamination plan for the the areas around the plant, which has continuted to leak contaminated water and experience surges in radiation - so high that even robots could not function inside it at the end of March.

Indeed, a February Greenpeace report showed that in many of the contaminated areas, there was hardly anything in the way of decontamination, and farmers told Al Jazeera in March that their fields were laid to waste with highly contaminated soil and no cleanup plan in place.
In-depth coverage one year after triple disaster

"It's been a year already, and nothing," organic farmer Muneo Kano, 61, said when asked if the government had made any effort to remove the layer of radioactive soil that blanketed his seven-hectare farm.

"The Japanese government at last recognises that the return to contaminated zones will be far more complex than they originally stated," Jan Vande Putte, radiation expert at Greenpeace International, told Al Jazeera on Monday.

"For about a year, they have been creating false expectations to the evacuated population. However, they still miss the point. Tens of thousands of people are still living today in highly contaminated areas...This population gets no help and by giving priority to the return of population to evacuated zones, the government has effectively abandoned this critical group."

He said the government had now admitted that decontamination would be "far more complex that [it] originally said".

Contamination levels

Asahi also reported that Japan's ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries has asked food shops to begin following government standards for radioactivity in food, allowing for higher levels of contamination in what they sold.

In the wake of the nuclear disaster, many co-operatives and shops have purchased their own becquerel counters [a piece of equipment that measures radiation in food] as a means of assuring customers that what they are eating is safe.

Hiroshi Tsuchida, head of the body overseeing a group of 33 such co-operatives, told Asahi Shimbun that forcing the shops to adopt higher levels of contamination in what they sold would damage the government's credibility because "consumers don't trust the national standards".

Voter support for Yoshihiko Noda, Japan's prime minister, has dropped to the lowest level since he took office in 2011, a newspaper survey showed on Monday, with the majority of Japanese opposing his plan to restart nuclear reactors.

New taxes unpopular

The Nikkei survey also found that 50 per cent of Japanese oppose Noda's plan to raise the sales tax to 10 per cent by October 2015 to pay for welfare costs and fix public finances.

Support for the government fell to 29 per cent in the survey from 34 per cent a month ago, the lowest since Noda took office in September last year.

The government earlier this month declared two reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co's Ohi nuclear plant safe and said they needed to be restarted to avoid a summer power crunch.

But the Nikkei survey found 54 per cent of people oppose the nuclear restart decision and only 30 per cent support it.

Japan will in coming weeks have no nuclear power for the first time in more than 40 years after last year's Fukushima
nuclear crisis, triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami, has hammered public faith in nuclear power.

Herbal Tea Loaded With Radioactive Cesium

Miyagi Prefecture: 20,000 Bq/kg from the herbal tea

　宮城県蔵王町の業者が製造したヤーコン茶から高濃度の放射性セシウムが検出された問題で、県は１４日、セシウム濃度は国の基準値（１キロ当たり１００ベクレル）の２００倍超の２万２９０ベクレルだったと発表した。

Miyagi Prefecture announced on April 14 that 20,290 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected from the herbal tea produced by a manufacturer in Zao-machi in Miyagi Prefecture, more than 200 times the national safety limit (100 becquerels/kg).

　業者の自主検査では１万７２００ベクレルだった。県によると、出荷済みの１１００セットのうち、同日までに約４０セットが回収された。

It was 17,200 becquerels/kg according to the manufacturer's own testing. By April 14, about 40 sets of 1,100 sets of the tea already shipped had been recalled.

The herbal tea is in the powder form. About 1.5 grams of the tea powder is used to make one cup of tea, making each drink with 30 becquerels of radioactive cesium. Nothing to worry about, the prefectural government says, as if all the radioactive cesium people ingest is from this tea alone.

I suppose the prefectural government doesn't test unless they are told by the national government to test, and the national government probably didn't know about this tea. Just like they (claim they) didn't know about rice hay fed to the cows. Or leaf compost. Or shiitake cultivation substrate. Or crushed stones. Or firewood to smoke bonito. Or ...

Radioactive Wave From Japan Headed Your Way With Enormous Amounts of Deadly Debris

Over the last year the threat of radiation hitting the United States from the Fukushima nuclear disaster has gone from a conspiracy theory, to a possibility, to a flat out fact.

Now, scientists with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute have confirmed that a wave of highly radioactive waste is headed directly for the US west coast.



In a segment on the Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, Kevin Kamps, of the group Beyond Nuclear, joined the show to discuss the dangers of radiation in Japan, the United States, and the world.

Last year, at the behest of the United States, TEPCO intentionally released 3 million gallons of radioactive waste into the Pacific ocean and now the world is set to experience the consequences of this disastrous decision.

Here in the United States, the EPA and other corrupt federal agencies, are literally ignoring the danger posed by the radioactive waste.

In fact, during the first few months of the multiple Fukushima meltdowns, the NRC intentionally mislead the public by covering up the dangers posed by radiation released from Japan.

Sadly, corporate interests and nuclear apologists in Japan and the United States continue to push for more nuclear power plants while ignoring the dangers to the entire world.

In Florida, Progress Energy is pushing forward with a plan to build two new nuclear power plants at a time when the public is largely against this dangerous, possible civilization ending technology.

“Progress Energy, like a giant stone juggernaut, is trying to steamroll over Florida residents by building two new nuclear power plants in Levy County despite the recent Fukushima disaster, warnings from environmentalists that the strain on the aquifer and the environment will be too great, and local residents who are ‘ just saying no’, wrote Tony Muga.

What leaves many Floridians scratching their heads is the fact that after the Three Mile Island meltdown,the Simi Valley meltdown, the Chernobyl meltdown, the ongoing Fukushima meltdown, the ‘effluents’ (radioactive discharge) that ALL plants are allowed, the countless tritium leaks at plants across the nation, anyone would even consider building another nuclear plant ever again.”

The people of the world must stand up in mass and DEMAND the immediate suspension of any new nuclear power plants as well as full scale independent tests of all operational nuclear plants worldwide.

Beware Of Bucky Balls - Fukushima ONGOING Radiation Is Forever

On this one year anniversary of the six reactors damaged at the Fukushima Daiichi complex, three of which are in ongoing meltdown, the crisis has not resolved. Early on, physics Professor Michio Kaku warned, “Meltdown is forever”. As the entire biosphere is being contaminated with radioactive isotopes in the air, food and water, information crucial to public health has been withheld, distorted and minimized by corporate controlled international media outlets.

Their reasons are all some variation of “we don’t want to create panic” and therefore the most accurate and useful information has been taken up by alternative media and the blogosphere. From Japan one finds valuable postings at http://fukushima-diary.com and http://ex-skf.blogspot.com, and here in the USA www.rense.com has provided ongoing, in- depth coverage including frequent interviews with Japanese environmental reporter Yoichi Shimatsu and Michael Collins of www.enviroreporter.com.

We are learning more on a daily basis and the news is not good. With various half-lives the following are some of the radioactive components of the venomous vapors spewing forth from Fukushima:

Iodine 131 (8 days)
Cesium 137 (30 years)
Strontium 90 (29 years)
Plutonium 239 (24,000 years)
Uranium 235 (700 million years)

And it gets worse. A January 27, 2012 U.C. Davis report, “Uranyl peroxide enhanced nuclear fuel corrosion in seawater” spells out a heretofore unseen danger:

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident brought together compromised irradiated fuel and large amounts of seawater in a high radiation field. Based on newly acquired thermochemical data for a series of uranyl peroxide compounds containing charge-balancing alkali cations, here we show that nanoscale cage clusters containing as many as 60 uranyl ions, bonded through peroxide and hydroxide bridges, are likely to form in fuel and being thermodynamically stable and kinesthetically persistent in the absence of peroxide, they can potentially transport over long distances.

This report was a joint project of U.C. Davis, Sandia National Laboratories Department of Civil engineering and Geological Sciences, The University of Notre Dame and its Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and published in January 23, 2012 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science ,journal.

These nanoscale cage clusters of Buckminsterfullerenes are also known as “bucky balls” due their spherical shape with multiple flat sides similar to the trademark geodesic domes designed by inventor and futurist, Buckminster Fuller. Radioactive bucky balls were formed as seawater was poured over the molten cores of the damaged reactors, turning water into peroxide – creating bucky ball broth which can exist independent of peroxide.

Although uranium is heavier than water, uranyl filled, fused-ring bucky balls are lighter and more mobile in water. Thus they are able to quickly transport Fukushima contaminated ocean water all along the Pacific Rim and infuse the marine food chain. These hot particles are virtually indestructible, radiate and are potentially carcinogenic if inhaled. Ocean borne bucky balls are also transported through the winds, sea spray and mists which can be carried as far as 300 km inland.

The discovery of these silent killing bucky balls carries dire implications for the 44 nations of the Pacific Rim. At present, the US Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are not testing for Fukushima melt-down radiation

Fukushima Has Potential To Destroy Civilization

Experts are now coming forward with their opinions on the real implications of the Fukushima disaster. More and more scientists continue to report that Fukushima has the potential to make Chernobyl look like a drop of water compared to a massive lake.

For starters, experts are admitting that the nuclear fallout is already near or above Chernobyl levels.

Then there is the acknowledgement that the levels of cesium at the plant is 85 time more than that contained at Chernobyl. On top of that, there is the major problem of the plutonium Mox fuel.

Now, a former UN Adviser, has come forward to warn that Fukushima has the potential to “destroy the world, the environment, and our civilization.

Cryptogon reports:

Situation at Fukushima Has Potential to, “Destroy the World Environment and Our Civilization”

Via: Akio Matsumura:

Japan’s former Ambassador to Switzerland, Mr. Mitsuhei Murata, was invited to speak at the Public Hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22, 2012, on the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident. Before the Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air. This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced. He stressed that the responsibility of Japan to the rest of the world is immeasurable. Such a catastrophe would affect us all for centuries. Ambassador Murata informed us that the total numbers of the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site excluding the rods in the pressure vessel is 11,421 (396+615+566+1,535+994+940+6375).

I asked top spent-fuel pools expert Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy, for an explanation of the potential impact of the 11,421 rods.

I received an astounding response from Mr. Alvarez [updated 4/5/12]:

In recent times, more information about the spent fuel situation at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site has become known. It is my understanding that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 304 assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231 irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4, which contain roughly 37 million curies (~1.4E+18 Becquerel) of long-lived radioactivity. The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.

The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters. Despite the enormous destruction cased at the Da–Ichi site, dry casks holding a smaller amount of spent fuel appear to be unscathed.

Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all, which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2 E+19 Bq) of long-lived radioactivity. About 134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).

It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.

Radioactive Sea Water, Fish Anyone?

What About Fukushima Spent Fuel Rods From Reactor 4?

The crisis at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plants has not ended. While the first three reactors contained fuel and presented a serious threat since March 11, 2011, they have largely been contained. Reactor 4 contained no fuel when the earthquake hit. Instead, the spent fuel rods had been moved to a cooling pool on the second floor of the containment unit. [...] If another high level earthquake hits the area, the building will certainly collapse. Japanese and American meteorologists have predicted that such a strong earthquake is indeed likely to hit this year.

The meltdown and unprecedented release of radiation that would ensue is the worst case scenario that then-Prime Minister Kan and other former officials have discussed in the past months. He warned during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos that such an accident would force the evacuation of the 35 million people in Tokyo, close half of Japan and compromise the nation’s sovereignty. Such a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe is unimaginable

Evacuation Of Tokyo? Or Did You Think All Was A-OK With Radiation?

While it has for the most part disappeared from mainstream view, the Fukushima nuclear disaster is anything but over. In fact, the situation in Japan has gone from bad to worse.

Bottom line: There is no way to contain the radiation.

Even more alarming is that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and other agencies have warned that the nuclear storage pools (the containment units that are being used to cool the nuclear fuel) have been damaged and may collapse under their own weight.

Such an event would cause widespread nuclear fallout throughout the region and force the government to evacuate the nearly 10 million residents of Tokyo and surrounding areas, a scenario which government emergency planners are now taking into serious consideration.

Leading Japanese newspaper The Mainichi Daily News reports:

One of the biggest issues that we face is the possibility that the spent nuclear fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant will collapse. This is something that experts from both within and outside Japan have pointed out since the massive quake struck. TEPCO, meanwhile, says that the situation is under control. However, not only independent experts, but also sources within the government say that it’s a grave concern.

The storage pool in the No. 4 reactor building has a total of 1,535 fuel rods, or 460 tons of nuclear fuel, in it. The 7-story building itself has suffered great damage, with the storage pool barely intact on the building’s third and fourth floors. The roof has been blown away. If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will overheat and explode, causing a massive amount of radioactive substances to spread over a wide area. Both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and French nuclear energy company Areva have warned about this risk.

A report released in February by the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident stated that the storage pool of the plant’s No. 4 reactor has clearly been shown to be “the weakest link” in the parallel, chain-reaction crises of the nuclear disaster. The worse-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. If this were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.

Former Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Sumio Mabuchi, who was appointed to the post of then Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s advisor on the nuclear disaster immediately after its outbreak, proposed the injection of concrete from below the No. 4 reactor to the bottom of the storage pool, Chernobyl-style. An inspection of the pool floor, however, led TEPCO to conclude that the pool was strong enough without additional concrete. The plans were scrapped, and antiseismic reinforcements were made to the reactor building instead.

There was a chance early on that a storage pool collapse could be prevented, but according to the report Tokyo Electric Power Co. refused to take the necessary steps as a cost-cutting measure.

Now, as radiation fallout envelops the entire northern hemisphere, there is a distinct possibility that the crisis will move into an even more critical and dangerous phase.

When news of the disaster first emerged we warned, contrary to mainstream experts, that it could be much worse than the Chernobyl accident of the 1980's, that no containment would be possible for at least a few years, and radiation levels across North America would sky rocket. A year on, we are seeing adverse impacts on ocean water throughout the Pacific, and ground levels of radioactive contaminants are well beyond safety thresholds for potable water, food, and soil.

With the Japanese economy already on the brink of meltdown and the rest of the world drowning in debt, an escalation in the severity of the disaster in Japan could be the last nail in the coffin for world financial markets and economic growth.

Even worse, if storage pools in the No. 4 reactor collapse and disintegrate as the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has warned could happen, we will see a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented scale as millions of refugees will have no choice but to flee Tokyo. They’ll have no possessions, no money, no food, no water, no shelter, and a very fragile safety net.

This is what SHTF looks like. The government lies. The corporate cover ups. Downplaying of the severity of the crisis. And then… panic.

Dr Helen Caldicott Reveals Radiation Levels Hundreds Of Thousands Times Higher Than Normal

Few people know that the Pacific Northwest got whacked hard by fallout from the Fukushima disaster with radiation rates hundreds of thousands of times higher than normal background radiation.

The damage from this is not something that the corporate media or the government is talking about. It mysteriously disappeared from the radar almost immediately. Dr. Caldicott referred to this as a process of “cover-up and psychic numbing.” Looks like it may be working. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission just approved two new nuclear power plants this week (4/2/12) in South Carolina in addition to the two approved earlier this year in Georgia.

Dr. Caldicott talks about the dangers and hidden costs of nuclear power then tells the awful truth in minute detail about the actual scale of the Fukushima disaster and compares it to the nuclear disasters of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Recent studies estimated that a million people have died so far from Chernobyl. Dr. Helen Caldicott is a physician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, noted author, anti-nuclear power advocate and has founded numerous national and international groups which oppose nuclear power & weapons, including Physicians for Social Responsibility.