The F(N)ukushima Thread .... and Related Nooklear Concerns

[newworldafro]

Last thing I want to do is bum folks out, but I can't even remember anybody mentioning this rolling disaster up here yet...

Long story short, we are being hit with this shiit (particles from the plant) for the last year, northern hemisphere more so than the southern........censorship of the issue has kept it off the chatterbox and just the depressive nature of the subject matter, knowing what we know about this stuff...........doesn't mean its going away, we still gotta live.....awareness will help

I listen to various broadcasts and read articles, so I'm no expert, just sharing....

Recent events occurring for this thread:

1) Building 4 is considered to be the main issue right now, b/se its leaning and has a fuel pool that is actually hanging in the air (if that makes sense).....if it falls with that fuel waste, it going to be a serious problem....
New "bulge" in wall of Fukushima reactor building 4 worries public - Democratic Underground

2) Japan shutdown most of their 50+ nook plants, but I'm hearing that the govenment may cut a few back on, b/se hey its 120 million people and they have no natural readily available domestic energy sources
Japan shuts down last working nuclear reactor | World news | guardian.co.uk


3) Tuna was caught in the Pacific and every last one of them were radioactive, but it was argued that the level was below levels considered unsafe Fukushima Radiation Found in Pacific Ocean Tuna - National - The Atlantic Wire

4) Stateside....the NRC approved 2 new plants for GA I believe in 2012.....the first time since Three Mile Island Disaster in the 1970s.....one NRC boardmembers, actually the only person to vote against some of the new plants, did so b/se he said the safety standards were off
First new nuclear reactors OK'd in over 30 years - Feb. 9, 2012


GREAT 4 Part radio broadcast on the subject matter....very understandable and concise
Coast to Coast AM - "9.6.2012 - 1/4 - Fukushima Special"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=PL8FF01E7D7FDE77AD&v=ta4YQMdx58E#!

 

[jdubnyce]

 

[NuclearBomb]

as unfortunate as this was, nuclear power is still the way forward

 

[newworldafro]

as unfortunate as this was, nuclear power is still the way forward

maybe............... Though, when you get down to it, its not about development or better standards of living, its about money period. The same money that gave scientists and engineers the virtual balls to think it would a good idea to put nook plants in the most earthquake prone place on the planet, they basically shielded the moneyed interests from common sense and data. Thus, all the developing countries aiming for nook power, aren't doing it for better quality of life, its money. There are other safer options, why take a chance like that.....how much evidence or how many situations is it going to take for folks to say ''I'll pass", give me another option..... .......I don't think folks really get it..............Cherynobl it's not habitable.......Fukushima, you can not live there safely.........yet, India which has some crazy earthquakes itself wants to build more of them.......just crazy

 

[NuclearBomb]

yea its dirty and the chaos it can cause is terrible, but as more accidents happen, people can only learn from it. you are right in what your sayin tho dont get me wrong, i just think its the only real alternative. they just need to get right the safety precautions and account for every dangerous scenario. thats what fukked fukushima. and dodgey soviet corner cutting is why chernobyl happened

 

[88m3]

we're all going to die, deal with it.

 

[FaTaL]

building 4 is fuked up, theres nothing they can do about it either

when it rains it pours

 

[newworldafro]

"Me and my wife's decision to leave Japan"

 

[newworldafro]

South Korea banned import of additional 35 types of marine products | Fukushima Diary

South Korea banned import of additional 35 types of marine products
Posted by Mochizuki on August 1st, 2012 ·

Regardless of radioactive contamination, Fukushima’s agricultural industry is trying to push their products to all around in Japan. Now that other countries are banning import of more and more products from Japan, which one is facing the truth and which one is not..

North Pacific giant octopus from Fukushima offshore was dealt at Tsukiji market on 8/2/2012. It was landed on 7/30/2012. (cf. Fukushima is going to start selling marine products)
The winning price was 120% of average to celebrate their restart.

On the other hand, on 7/27/2012, South Korean government decided to ban the import of 35 more sorts of fishery products (including flounder, Manila clam, and urchin) for the possible radioactive contamination.
They explain it was preventive measures. Though this is supposed to be a temporary measures, South Korea has not imported these 35 kinds of fishery products since 311 happened actually.
These 35 kinds of fishery products are banned to sell by Japanese government as well.

So far, 64 kinds of marine products are in their banning list.

This article (Deformed fish is served at Sushi bar) makes me think South Korea is the rational one.

 

[Dirty_Jerz]

hopefully some ufo's fly over and neutralize everything like they have done before

 

[tru_m.a.c]

yea its dirty and the chaos it can cause is terrible, but as more accidents happen, people can only learn from it.

 

[newworldafro]

So China says fuuck it........???? ???

If they are even saying themselves that this form of energy is only going to represent 5% of their future power supply.........WHY EVEN INVEST IN THIS STUFF???.... knowing that right across the waters, your neighbor Japan is having some major..... ..... issues........

Is it worth that 5%??? ... ................. a world of idiocracy knows no bounds....

China to approve new nuclear plants, ending moratorium after Fukushima | World news | guardian.co.uk

China to approve new nuclear plants, ending moratorium after FukushimaChinese government says it hopes to generate 30% of energy from renewable sources and nuclear by 2015

Associated Press in Beijing guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 October 2012 03.43 EDT

China is ready to approve new nuclear power plants as part of ambitious plans to reduce reliance on oil and coal, ending a moratorium it imposed because of Japan's Fukushima disaster last year.

The government said it hoped to generate 30% of China's power from solar, wind and other renewable sources as well as from nuclear energy by the end of 2015, up from an earlier target of 15% from renewables plus 5% from nuclear by 2020.

The communist government is aggressively promoting wind, solar, hydro and other alternative energy sources to reduce pollution from coal plants and curb surging reliance on imported oil, which it sees as a national security risk.On Wednesday the cabinet passed plans on nuclear power safety and development that said construction of nuclear power plants would resume "steadily".

Only a small number of plants will be built, and only in coastal areas, according to a cabinet announcement. The plants will meet the most stringent safety standards, it said.

No date was given for resuming construction of nuclear plants. Despite widespread public concern over possible radiation contamination from the Fukushima disaster and calls for improved safety precautions and emergency preparedness, China remains committed to building up nuclear power to help reduce emissions from coal-fired plants and curb its reliance on costly oil imports.

China suspended approvals of new nuclear plants after a tsunami triggered by the massive earthquake on 11 March 2011 crippled the Fukushima plant's cooling and backup power systems, causing partial meltdowns in the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.

China's leaders ordered safety checks for existing nuclear facilities, a review of projects under construction and improved safety standards.

"The inspection results show that nuclear security is guaranteed in China," according to a government report on its energy policy released on Wednesday. "China implements the principle of 'safety first' in the whole process of nuclear power station planning."

China currently has 15 nuclear reactors that provide about 12.5 gigawatts of generating capacity, and another 26 reactors are under construction that will add 30 gigawatts, the report said. Nuclear power accounts for only 1.8% of power in China, it said.

The government report said China was now 90% energy self-sufficient, but acknowledged high demand would continue to put a strain on resources.

It warned of "grave challenges" to its energy security in its growing dependence on imported petroleum. Imports accounted for a third of total petroleum consumption in the early 2000s and have jumped to nearly 60% now, the report said.

China will encourage private companies to participate in exploration and development of energy resources, it said.

 

[newworldafro]

Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA | Oliver Tickell | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk


Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA

Oliver Tickell
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 May 2009 03.00 EDT

A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation

Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation's assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations "Atoms for Peace" organisation, founded just two years before in 1957. The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.

The WHO's objective is to promote "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health", while the IAEA's mission is to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA's main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in which the other may have an interest, it "shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement". The two agencies must "keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all programs of work which may be of interest to both parties". And in the realm of statistics – a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk – the two undertake "to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest".

The language appears to be evenhanded, but the effect has been one-sided. For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995, and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain unpublished – despite claims to the contrary by a senior WHO spokesman reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.

Meanwhile, the 2005 report of the IAEA-dominated Chernobyl Forum, which estimates a total death toll from the accident of only several thousand, is widely regarded as a whitewash as it ignores a host of peer-reviewed epidemiological studies indicating far higher mortality and widespread genomic damage. Many of these studies were presented at the Geneva and Kiev conferences but they, and the ensuing learned discussions, have yet to see the light of day thanks to the non-publication of the proceedings.

The British radiation biologist Keith Baverstock is another casualty of the agreement, and of the mindset it has created in the WHO. He served as a radiation scientist and regional adviser at the WHO's European Office from 1991 to 2003, when he was sacked after expressing concern to his senior managers that new epidemiological evidence from nuclear test veterans and from soldiers exposed to depleted uranium indicated that current risk models for nuclear radiation were understating the real hazards.

Now a professor at the University of Kuopio, Finland, Baverstock finally published his paper in the peer-reviewed journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival in April 2005. He concluded by calling for "reform from within the profession" and stressing "the political imperative for freely independent scientific institutions" – a clear reference to the non-independence of his former employer, the WHO, which had so long ignored his concerns.

Since the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in April 2007, a daily "Hippocratic vigil" has taken place at the WHO's offices in Geneva, organised by Independent WHO to persuade the WHO to abandon its the WHO-IAEA Agreement. The protest has continued through the WHO's 62nd World Health Assembly, which ended yesterday, and will endure through the executive board meeting that begins today. The group has struggled to win support from WHO's member states. But the scientific case against the agreement is building up, most recently when the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) called for its abandonment at its conference earlier this month in Lesvos, Greece.

At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times – consistent with the ECRR's own 2003 model of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators' Edition). According to Chris Busby, the ECRR's scientific secretary and visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical sciences:

"The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima, the agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO's independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and publish its findings."

Some birthdays deserve celebration – but not this one. After five decades, it is time the WHO regained the freedom to impart independent, objective advice on the health risks of radiation.

 

[Orbital-Fetus]

aren't they just pouring ocean water over the nuclear material to keep it cool?
and the radioactive water is just flowing into the ocean...all day, every day for over a year.

shyt is terrible.

 

[newworldafro]

Update:

Half of article

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/b...ter-a-nuclear-accident-is-denounced.html?_r=0

Bags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

In Japan, a Painfully Slow Sweep


By HIROKO TABUCHI

Published: January 7, 2013

NARAHA, Japan — The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe

But much of the work at the Naraha-Minami Elementary School, about 12 miles away from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, tells another story. For eight hours a day, construction workers blast buildings with water, cut grass and shovel dirt and foliage into big black plastic bags — which, with nowhere to go, dot Naraha’s landscape like funeral mounds.

More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.

Local businesses that responded to a government call to research and develop decontamination methods have found themselves largely left out. American and other foreign companies with proven expertise in environmental remediation, invited to Japan in June to show off their technologies, have similarly found little scope to participate.

Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers have focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.

“What’s happening on the ground is a disgrace,” said Masafumi Shiga, president of Shiga Toso, a refurbishing company based in Iwaki, Fukushima. The company developed a more effective and safer way to remove cesium from concrete without using water, which could repollute the environment. “We’ve been ready to help for ages, but they say they’ve got their own way of cleaning up,” he said.

Shiga Toso’s technology was tested and identified by government scientists as “fit to deploy immediately,” but it has been used only at two small locations, including a concrete drain at the Naraha-Minami school.

Instead, both the central and local governments have handed over much of the 1 trillion yen decontamination effort to Japan’s largest construction companies. The politically connected companies have little radiological cleanup expertise and critics say they have cut corners to employ primitive — even potentially hazardous — techniques.

The construction companies have the great advantage of available manpower. Here in Naraha, about 1,500 cleanup workers are deployed every day to power-spray buildings, scrape soil off fields, and remove fallen leaves and undergrowth from forests and mountains, according to an official at the Maeda Corporation, which is in charge of the cleanup.

That number, the official said, will soon rise to 2,000, a large deployment rarely seen on even large-sale projects like dams and bridges.

The construction companies suggest new technologies may work, but are not necessarily cost-effective.

“In such a big undertaking, cost-effectiveness becomes very important,” said Takeshi Nishikawa, an executive based in Fukushima for the Kajima Corporation, Japan’s largest construction company. The company is in charge of the cleanup in the city of Tamura, a part of which lies within the 12-mile exclusion zone. “We bring skills and expertise to the project,” Mr. Nishikawa said.

Kajima also built the reactor buildings for all six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, leading some critics to question why control of the cleanup effort has been left to companies with deep ties to the nuclear industry.

Also worrying, industry experts say, are cleanup methods used by the construction companies that create loose contamination that can become airborne or enter the water.

At many sites, contaminated runoff from cleanup projects is not fully recovered and is being released into the environment, multiple people involved in the decontamination work said.

Cover for Fukushima Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 — Tepco starts installing giant steel frame (PHOTOS)

Cover for Fukushima Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 — Tepco starts installing giant steel frame (PHOTOS)

Navy sailor says clumps of hair fell out after Fukushima plume exposure — “A lot of us knew people were getting sick… bad headaches, some threw up a bit”

Navy sailor says clumps of hair fell out after Fukushima plume exposure — “A lot of us knew people were getting sick… bad headaches, some threw up a bit”

Subscription Only) Title: Sailors sue for alleged radiation exposure
Source: Navy Times
Author: Gidget Fuentes
Date: Jan 8, 2013 9:40:27 EST

Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Equipment) 3rd Class Kim Gieseking

“A lot of us knew people were getting sick. … Some were starting to get bad headaches, some threw up a bit.”
She said she’s also battled exhaustion and poor health
At one point, she lost clumps of hair
Last June, severe back pain revealed a bulge in her spine
“I was a healthy, healthy person. I’m not the same person I used to be.”

Attorney: U.S. Marine may join Fukushima lawsuit — Navy clients have bladder problems not normally seen in younger people

Attorney: U.S. Marine may join Fukushima lawsuit — Navy clients have bladder problems not normally seen in younger people

Subscription Only) Title: Sailors sue for alleged radiation exposure
Source: Navy Times
Author: Gidget Fuentes
Date: Jan 8, 2013 9:40:27 EST

[...] Their lawyer [Paul C. Garner, a trial attorney of 40 years] said he also is talking with at least one Marine who could join the suit, and concerns have been raised among other U.S. troops who were based in Japan or located offshore at the time. [...]

Garner said his clients so far suffer from assorted health issues, including bladder problems normally not seen in younger people. [...]
Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Equipment) 3rd Class Lindsay Cooper

She said her health took a dive [after Summer 2011]
She put on weight and found little energy to work
She has struggled with sleep, headaches and digestive problems.
“I’ve never felt like this before. It’s constant”