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Scientists Warn of Extreme Risk We’ve long said that the greatest short-term threat to humanity is from the fuel pools at Fukushima. The Japanese nuclear agency recently green-lighted the removal of the spent fuel rods from Fukushima reactor 4′s spent fuel pool. The operation is scheduled to begin this month. The head of the U.S. Department of Energy correctly notes: "The success of the cleanup also has global significance. So we all have a direct interest in seeing that the next steps are taken well, efficiently and safely."

Video @ link...A 66ft long floating dock that was ripped from the shores of Japan during last year's tsunami has arrived on a beach 5,000 miles away in Oregon.

First debris from Japanese earthquake/tsunami reaches Olympic Peninsula By Arwyn Rice  Peninsula Daily News    Oceanographer Jim Ingraham answers questions about the islands of debris from the March 11 Japan tsunami that are slowly floating toward the Pacific Northwest. Behind him is a float, found east of Neah Bay, that is believed to be the first identified piece of wreckage to arrive via ocean currents. -- Photo by Arwyn Rice/Peninsula Daily News  PORT ANGELES — The first piece of debris that could be identified as washing up on the West Coast from the March 11 tsunami in Japan —...

I noted in June that debris carried out to sea in the Japanese tsunami would hit the Western U.S. and Canada within a year or so, and that nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen urged us to demand testing of radioactivity from the American government. It turns out that scientists underestimated the speed with which the debris would reach the Western coast of North America.

Some 5 to 20 million tons of debris--furniture, fishing boats, refrigerators--sucked into the Pacific Ocean in the wake of Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami are moving rapidly across the Pacific. Researchers from the University of Hawaii tracking the wreckage estimate it could approach the U.S. West Coast in the next three years, the UK Daily Mail reports. "We have a rough estimate of 5 to 20 million tons of debris coming from Japan,"