"And Trump!"
Posted on 02/08/2017 5:55:27 PM PST by Tours
Radiation inside one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power facility has reached an “unimaginable” level according to experts. Because so much nuclear material from Fukushima escaped into the Pacific Ocean, there are many scientists that believe that it was the worst environmental disaster in human history, but most people in the general population seem to think that since the mainstream media really doesn’t talk about it anymore that everything must be under control. Unfortunately, that is not true at all. In fact, PBS reported just last year that “it is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks“. And now we have just learned that the radiation level inside reactor 2 is so high that no human could possibly survive being exposed to it.
According to the Japan Times, the level of radiation inside the containment vessel of reactor 2 is now estimated to be “530 sieverts per hour”…
The radiation level in the containment vessel of reactor 2 at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, the highest since the triple core meltdown in March 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. said.
Tepco said on Thursday that the blazing radiation reading was taken near the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the reactor core.
The high figure indicates that some of the melted fuel that escaped the pressure vessel is nearby.
It is hard to find the words to convey how serious this is.
If you were exposed to a radiation level of just 10 sieverts per hour, that would mean almost certain death. So 530 sieverts per hour is simply off the charts. According to the Guardian, this recent measurement is being described by scientists as “unimaginable”…
The recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour in that part of the reactor.
A single dose of one sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness and nausea; 5 sieverts would kill half those exposed to it within a month, and a single dose of 10 sieverts would prove fatal within weeks.
And the really bad news is that there appears to be a 2 meter hole that was created by melted nuclear fuel “in the metal grating under the pressure vessel in the reactor’s primary containment vessel”. The following comes from Bloomberg…
New photographs show what may be melted nuclear fuel sitting under one of Japan’s wrecked Fukushima reactors, a potential milestone in the search and retrieval of the fuel almost six years after it was lost in one of the worst atomic disasters in history.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc., Japan’s biggest utility, released images on Monday showing a grate under the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 2 reactor covered in black residue. The company, better known as Tepco, may send in a scorpion-like robot as soon as February to determine the temperature and radioactivity of the residue.
If that isn’t frightening enough, one Japanese news source is reporting that this melted nuclear fuel “has since come in contact with underground water flowing from the mountain side”…
The melted fuel has since come in contact with underground water flowing from the mountain side, generating radioactively contaminated water every day. In order to dismantle the reactor, it is necessary to take out the melted fuel, but high radiation levels inside the reactor had hampered work to locate the melted debris.
If this disaster was just limited to Japan, the entire northern hemisphere would not be at risk.
But that is not the case.
Most of the nuclear contamination from Fukushima ended up in the Pacific Ocean, and from there it was literally taken around the rest of the planet. The following was reported by PBS…
More than 80 percent of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific — far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Of this, a small fraction is currently on the seafloor — the rest was swept up by the Kuroshio current, a western Pacific version of the Gulf Stream, and carried out to sea where it mixed with (and was diluted by) the vast volume of the North Pacific.
We don’t know if there is a connection, but it is extremely interesting to note that fisheries up and down the west coast of the United States are failing because of a dramatic decrease in fish populations. Just check out the following excerpt from a story that was posted on January 18th…
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker today determined there are commercial fishery failures for nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska, California and Washington.
In recent years, each of these fisheries experienced sudden and unexpected large decreases in fish stock biomass or loss of access due to unusual ocean and climate conditions. This decision enables fishing communities to seek disaster relief assistance from Congress.
Things are particularly bad up in Alaska, and biologists are “stumped” as to why this could be happening…
In 2016, the pink salmon harvests in Kodiak, Prince William Sounds, Chignik and lower Cook Inlet came in woefully under forecast and stumped biologists as to why.
The estimated value of Kodiak’s 2016 haul was $2.21 million, compared to a five-year average of $14.64 million, and in Prince William Sound the ex-vessel value was $6.6 million, far less that the $44 million five-year average. The total state harvest was the smallest since the late 1970s.
Although state biologists weren’t ready to declare a cause for the poor pink salmon performance, the Commerce Department press release attributed the disasters to “unusual ocean and climate conditions.”
Further south, it was being reported last month that millions of dead sardines are washing up on the shores of Chile.
I could go on and on with a lot more examples like this, but hopefully you get the point.
Something really strange is happening in the Pacific, and a lot of people believe that there is a link to Fukushima.
Not too long ago, I wrote about how the elite of Silicon Valley are “feverishly prepping“, but the truth is that all of us should be. If you need some tips on how to get started, you can find my prepping book right here. Our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster is just one piece of the puzzle.
But it is definitely a very important piece. The nuclear material from Fukushima is continuously entering the food chain, and once that nuclear material gets into our bodies it will slowly irradiate our organs for years to come. The following is an excerpt from an absolutely outstanding opinion piece by Helen Caldicott that was published in the Guardian…
Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate 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). After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.
Are you starting to understand the gravity of the situation?
Sadly, this crisis is going to be with us for a very, very long time.
According to Bloomberg, they are not even going to start removing melted nuclear fuel from these reactors until 2021, and it is being projected that the overall cleanup “may take as long as 40 years”…
Decommissioning the reactors will cost 8 trillion yen ($70.4 billion), according to an estimate in December from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Removing the fuel is one of the most important steps in a cleanup that may take as long as 40 years.
The unprecedented nature of the Fukushima disaster means that Tepco is pinning its efforts on technology not yet invented to get the melted fuel out of the reactors.
The company aims to decide on a fuel removal procedure for the first reactor during the fiscal year ending March 2019, and to begin removing fuel in 2021.
A lot of people that end up dying as a result of this crisis may never even know that it was Fukushima that caused their deaths.
Personally, I am convinced that this is the greatest environmental crisis that humanity has ever experienced, and if the latest reading from reactor 2 is any indication, things just took a very serious turn for the worse.
No leakage thru Panama Canal into the Caribbean?
[Fukushima doesn’t mean “wormwood,” does it?]
It means “good-fortune island”
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110317081239AAKtm1v
Methane gas from cowfarts will do us in, every time.
Helen Caldicott? What has the eminent Dr. Bill Wattenberg say about this? I’d trust his science over hers.
I’m not surprised radiation levels are high INSIDE a nuclear reactor. It’s a nuclear reactor, for heaven’s sake.
If underground water is getting into the reactor, then build an underground dam upstream in the water table to hold it back and pave over the nearby dirt to prevent rain water from getting in
Or run around like Chicken Little, saying, “The sky is falling. The sky is falling.”
This is one of those days i’m glad I don’t have grandchildren.
I blame the us dept of energy who had the govt head so far up GE’S crony ass that they nixxed a far safer reactor design the oak ridge boys developed in the 60s because it would have ruined GE’s reactor rod reprocessing monopoly.
Google: oak ridge molten salt reactor
The us standard ( shitty 50’s era boiling water mess ) then became the international standard that led to 3 mile island, etc etc... fukushima....
There are a few made by various manufacturers. Here is one for gaseous effluent monitoring:
Airborne Contamination Monitor
Here is one for containment area monitoring:
One source I read stated that the dose rate estimated by the robot surveying the F. Daiichi containment was based on the "flicker rate" of the TV image. The assumption was that the effect was caused by gamma exposure. While that may be true, flicker rate is a non-standard method of measuring exposure rate.
I went on some U.S. radiation monitoring website that monitors air all around the country. Clicked on the Seattle station and it had a chart of gamma radiation - it bounced around a bit but seemed pretty low on the chart. (I don’t recall numbers or units).
Then I clicked on the link that had “Filtered Air Results” for other stuff (Plutonium, Strontium, Cesium, etc.)
YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED FOR THIS INFORMATION.
I thought that was a bit odd. So, I guess I will just take comfort in the low gamma levels and know that our government is watching over me and the radiation levels above my house.
https://www.epa.gov/radnet/near-real-time-and-laboratory-data-state
Above is the link to the radiation data by state.
This time they may be correct. The situation is very dire and not to be underestimated.
Yup, I groaned when I saw the “unimaginable” in almost every headline about this problem. That said I am concerned about the situation. FUD is not helpful and TEPCO appears to be slow and not very effective in their response.
I have written extensively on the hyperbole and obfuscation in regards to ingested radionuclides. The problem is that we’ve all been fed a line of BS for 70 years and most of the country was exposed to bomb test fallout from the 50s. Between that, veteran exposure to DU dust, tritiated water and now fresh Cesium 137 in the Pacific, the government cannot acknowledge the effects of low-dose/ingested radiation. Look up the denied claims of Veterans who worked on cleaning up the Pacific test sites. The DNA damage which results from ingested radiation can cause cancer in both the subject and their offspring, not necessarily “signature cancers” either.
This is the hyperbole of both government and nuclear defenders who believe in hormesis and prosyletize dilution.
Horsehockey.
Strange, I was able to get the air filter results when I tried the website. For “Event E” (F Daiichi) the numbers seem exceedingly small. When I have done air filtering for low concentration effluents in this range, the data tend to get noisy. The gamma count rates look like background levels.
This is all still within containment and there is no indication that the integrity of the containment is compromised or likely to be challenged by credible scenarios going forward. The main thing to do now is reliably characterize the extent of the contamination because without that it is impossible to devise an effective strategy for removal of the material. TEPCO seems to be taking a "slow and steady" approach, which is probably the smart move at this time.
1 SV = 100 RADS
The problem with cables is migration of conductor atoms into insulating materials in things like coax and triax cables. A typical copper-based coax cable with LDPE or HDPE insulator will exhibit degraded insulation because the copper atoms tend to drift into the surrounding insulator after high cumulative exposure to gamma radiation. There are ways around it. You can use a steel central conductor, where migration is less, but you trade off galvanic resistance (steel is higher). You can also use something other than polyethylene as the insulator, something like alumina or MgO. But the cable stiffness becomes a problem.
Mechanical wear of things like cutting tools is an issue but it can be managed. Lifetime of things like cutting tools is always a function of hardness, and there are some pretty wear-resistant materials out there that can be formed into cutting surfaces. The trick is making those, which generally requires a casting process, since sharpening the surface of a hard-faced cutting tool is problematic.
To get to biological dose, you apply the weighting factor to account for biological effects of different types of radiation to get the biological equivalent dose:
1 Sievert = 100 rem
The gray is the only actual physical dose, that is, absorbed energy:
1 gray = 1 joule/kg
But as we all know different materials (kg) have different interactions with incident radiation, and different types of radiation deposit different amounts of energy. So for biological effects, we usually deal with the equivalent dose (Sievert).
Prepper alarmism. Yawn.
Oh and this stuff has been published in the media who is almost as eager to hype it as these people. Interesting stuff really. First I’ve heard it tied to fish populations, even though they’ve been talking about fish populations dwindling for decades before Fukushima melted down.
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