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.
This is one of those lurking issues that is a slow motion disasters. How soon, and it is a when, not if, will commercial fishing be stopped in the Pacific? 2 years, 5 years? There is already reported elevation in Pacific fisheries and waters along west coast and up to Alaska. This is very scary and more effort should be put in stopping the drainage into the Pacific. I bet 99% of Americans don’t realize the reactors are still dumping radiation into the ocean.
Embrittlement of metal generally requires displacement damage and gamma radiation is not terribly efficient for doing that. You generally need high-energy neutrons, and you aren’t going to have those in any kind of fuel residue, at least not in significant quantities. Gammas cause ionization and eventually heat, and can damage junction devices, but the metal itself is not likely to be degraded by exposure to gamma sources.
Oh yeah no harm could come from setting off a nuke. doofus
“IATDS (In after the doomsayers) who believe everything put out by the NOAA agendanistas.”
i’m guessing NOAA wanted to promote the idea that climate change and global warming were responsible for the below average fish catch. now that the Fukushima disaster may be related this may upset their plea for more money to offset the catastrophic effects of climate change.
let’s hope that Wilbur Ross, Dept of Commerce Secretary Designate, becomes informed about the data manipulation that NOAA has been caught doing in order to support Obama’s climate change agenda.
I remember from training that 200-300 roentgens would be 50% deadly and 400 was 90-100%...
The oceans mix fairly well over time, but how the radiating isotopes would sort out is hard to tell.
We do not know if they are dissolved, or in particulates.
There is a tremendous amount that is not known.
We do know that the radioactive increase on the west coast is quite small.
“Out of the 110 new contaminated samples detected off the US west coast, the most radioactive was collected around 2,500 km off the coast of San Francisco. It contained 11 Becquerel’s per cubic metre of seawater – which is equivalent to 50 percent higher cesium levels than other samples collected in this part of the ocean so far.
Buesseler’s research has also shown that Fukushima is still leaking radioactive material into the ocean in Japan, with the levels off the Japanese coast between 10 to 100 times higher than the levels off the US West Coast today.
“Levels today off Japan are thousands of times lower than during the peak releases in 2011,” said Buesseler. “That said, finding values that are still elevated off Fukushima confirms that there is continued release from the plant.”
Isotopes with short half-lives give off lots of radiation, but drop off very quickly, so the danger passes quickly.
Isotopes with long half-lives give off tiny amounts of radiation, but last for a long time. That is most of background radiation.
Researchers find high cesium in some Pacific plankton
KYODO
MAY 22, 2013
ARTICLE HISTORY
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Scientists said Tuesday they have detected radioactive cesium from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in plankton collected from all 10 points in the Pacific they checked, with the highest levels at around 25 degrees north latitude and 150 degrees west longitude.
This dispersion model only shows radiation levels in seawater.
What is there to be said about radiation in the rain water as a result of evaporation?
“The oceans mix fairly well over time, but how the radiating isotopes would sort out is hard to tell.
We do not know if they are dissolved, or in particulates.”
If in particulate form, then it could be deadly eating seafood contaminated by it.
Yes, and no level was safe. I was a reactor operator in the Navy and remember the training very clearly.i am not anti-nuclear power but if they cannot handle disasters then they should shut them down. I don’t trust the government to tell the truth. Bothersome and curiously worrying that most of the US monitoring went offline, publicly, when the radiation was initially due here. Lots of US Navy personnel got cancer from Japanese area deployment, rescue, and recovery. Wonder what over stats are for cancers since?
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/handouts/2017/images/handouts_170130_02-e.pdf
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/handouts/2017/images/handouts_170202_01-e.pdf
with the highest levels at around 25 degrees north latitude and 150 degrees west longitude.
What the article does not say is that the “highest levels” are only 50% higher than the background radiation.
We haven’t been able to detect ill effects at 10 times that level of background radiation on the continents, and from Cesium 134, that level drops in half every two years.
Sorry dude, that is one stupid-butt solution, and you have no concept of what you speak.
What was the MPD (max permissible dosage)?
Wasn’t it 10 rems??? Something like that...
A fine piece of journalism. Comparing Fukushima to TMI and Chernobyl is a scare tactic. Typical. Dishonest writing like this is not to be believed. It is merely advocacy journalism.
Is this "writer" actually surprised that an accident in a reactor 50 feet from the ocean puts more radiation into the ocean than ones dozens or hundreds of miles from salt water?
I remember we had to wear those pocket dosimeters any time we were in a nuke space....
They will also need very clever mechanical designs that allow field replacement of major working elements by remote-controlled repair robots.
Think of a remote-controlled earth mover or front loader that is fueled, maintained and serviced by remote-controlled mechanics.
None of these machines will ever leave their work areas until they are removed by remote-controlled disposal vehicles, and transported to a dump zone.
It will be a very complex mechanical ecosystem requiring very smart people to build and operate it over many decades.
One of the world’s most popular dive sites is Bikini Atoll, for all the sunken warships there. They were once highly radioactive. Not any more; the radioactivity has been washed away in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
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