The resolution is so bad on that video I have no idea what I am looking it. It could even be some sort of yellow caution light.

Cesium in Baby Milk Powder Shows Nuclear Risk for Japan’s Food

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12....

https://twitter.com/#!/search/Happy20790

http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/12/every....

Translation:
Even though they “declare” the cold shut down, no risk of hydrogen explosion, massive decrease of radiation, nobody can actually measure the temperature of dropped nuclear fuel, and hydrogen level is not stable. Radiation is still emit by 60 million Bq/h, sea contamination is ongoing..

The situation is totally out of control. Government has been stating they were going to make the best to settle it down, but it doesn’t seem to be their “best”. Tepco requested 1 trillion yen of financial support from government. Now that government is a sponsor of Tepco, they should take more lead of them.

Quote:

After yesterday's House hearing about management practices at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, all five commissioners are again on Capitol Hill, this time before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The subject of the hearing is the NRC's recommendations in the wake of the Fukushima accident, but it's likely Senators will ask about the management issues as well.

10 am ET on C-SPAN3

http://www.c-span.org/Events/Nuclear-Reg....

'Absolutely no progress being made' at Fukushima nuke plant, undercover reporter says

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/2011....
----------------------------------------------
First debris from Japanese earthquake/tsunami reaches Olympic Peninsula

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/articl....

No worries. They have a plan.

Quote:

It will begin with the removal of nuclear fuel in spent fuel pools within two years. That task is scheduled to be completed within 10 years. The plan also calls for commencing the removal of fuel debris within 10 years with the goal of completing that work in 20 to 25 years.

The reactors will be completely decommissioned in 30 to 40 years, according to the plan.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/21/world/asia....

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/2011....

AEC chairman warned people within 170 km of Fukushima plant might need to relocate

Wait until the result(s) test(s) are in...


Scientists test sick Alaska seals for radiation

Experts not sure if woes, from hair loss to bloody lesions, tied to Fukushima nuclear plant

Scientists in Alaska are investigating whether local seals are being sickened by radiation from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

Scores of ring seals have washed up on Alaska's Arctic coastline since July, suffering or killed by a mysterious disease marked by bleeding lesions on the hind flippers, irritated skin around the nose and eyes and patchy hair loss on the animals' fur coats.

Biologists at first thought the seals were suffering from a virus, but they have so far been unable to identify one, and tests are now underway to find out if radiation is a factor.

"We recently received samples of seal tissue from diseased animals captured near St. Lawrence Island with a request to examine the material for radioactivity," said John Kelley, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"There is concern expressed by some members of the local communities that there may be some relationship to the Fukushima nuclear reactor's damage," he said.

The results of the tests would not be available for "several weeks," Kelley said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45800485/ns/....

Dated....
Dec..12th

IAEA Implements Technical Cooperation Project on Marine Environment After Fukushima Accident

As a result of the releases of radioactive substances into the Pacific Ocean resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, the IAEA is implementing a Technical Cooperation (TC) Project for countries throughout the Pacific Ocean region to monitor radioactive substances in the marine environment. Twenty-one IAEA Member States and three non-member States are participating in the project.

The first project meeting was held in Australia in August followed by a workshop on quality management in data handling and analytical procedures, conducted at the IAEA Environment Laboratories in Monaco from 21-25 November 2011.

Considerable volumes of radioactively contaminated water entered and contaminated the Pacific Ocean, following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Although the contaminated water will be significantly diluted with time, ocean currents have and will continue to transport and circulate the contaminated water through the wider Pacific Ocean for the foreseeable future. The contaminated water may impact the marine environment. The spread of contaminated water raised concern among countries in the Pacific region that radiation releases may reach and damage coastal zones with possible consequences for communities and economies.

In response, countries throughout the region initiated a project to harmonize measurements of various radioisotopes in marine waters, biota, sediments and suspended matter. The uniform measurement of the radioisotopes in the ocean will ensure that any impact assessment is comparable and verifiable across the enormous volume of the Pacific Ocean. The IAEA TC project will enhance national capacities, which in turn will improve the exchange of data gathered from the ocean measurements, and the information about the potential impact of these radioisotopes and risks to marine biota, as well as to humans through marine food consumption.

"It is expected that the enormous dilution capacity of the Pacific Ocean will lead to low residual concentrations of radionuclides in ocean waters such that any significant contamination of marine food in coastal waters outside of Japan will not occur," said Hartmut Nies, Head of the IAEA's Radiometrics Laboratory and Technical Officer for the project. "To date, only Cs-134 and Cs-137 were detected far offshore from the Japanese coast in the prevailing Kuroshio Ocean current at levels of less concern."
more---> http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011....


DEC 19th 10
Hundreds of trillions of becquerels of radioactive strontium leaked into sea
At least 462 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium have leaked to the Pacific Ocean since the March disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, making it one of the world's most severe such cases of marine pollution, according to calculations by The Asahi Shimbun.

The Fisheries Agency is doing its own sampling survey to assess the accumulation of radioactive materials in marine life.

The newspaper based its calculations on data released by the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., and other sources.

With regard to leakages of radioactive-contaminated water from the No. 2 and No. 3 reactor buildings in April and May, respectively, The Asahi Shimbun relied on two sets of figures.

One was the volume of water that leaked from each reactor building. The other concerned the concentration of radioactive strontium in water that accumulated in each reactor building.

By multiplying the volume of leaked water by the concentration of radioactive strontium, the newspaper calculated the total amount of strontium that leaked from the two reactors.

Besides, the volume of strontium apparently contained in treated water used for cooling purposes that was confirmed to have leaked to the ocean on Dec. 4 was added to that from the No. 2 and No. 3 rectors.

In what is regarded as the world's worst case of marine pollution from a nuclear facility, some 500 trillion becquerels of strontium were discharged to the Irish Sea from the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Cumbria, Britain, per year in the 1970s.

The volume of strontium that leaked from the Fukushima plant is close to that annual amount.

Strontium accumulates in bones and can cause bone cancer and leukemia.

For this reason, health experts have called for extensive surveys on the amount of leaked strontium so that measures can be drawn up to deal with the problem.

It takes two to three weeks to measure the extent of strontium contamination. Because strontium exists with cesium, and its volume is estimated to be less than 10 percent of that of cesium, few surveys have been done to gauge the volume of strontium in marine life.

The Fisheries Agency has performed surveys only on six kinds of fish through its affiliated organization, the Fisheries Research Agency. The fish, including Pacific cod, were caught in the period from April to July.

The fish were caught about 50 kilometers off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture. According to a Fisheries Agency's announcement on Aug. 30, the amount of strontium detected in Pacific cod came to 0.03 becquerel.

However, a different government survey detected 0.094 becquerel of strontium in fish caught in nearby waters before the disaster at the Fukushima plant.

For this reason, it is unclear whether strontium that had accumulated in the Pacific cod resulted from the crisis in Fukushima.

According to Satoshi Katayama, a professor of marine resources ecology at Tohoku University, detailed studies should be carried out on the accumulation of strontium in fish, such as young Japanese sand lance and white bait, as people generally eat every bit.

"Strontium easily accumulates in creatures, even if its concentration level is low," Katayama said.

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaste....

Dec, 22, 2010
MDA Artical..

Medical journal article: 14,000 U.S. deaths tied to Fukushima reactor disaster fallout

Impact seen as roughly comparable to radiation-related deaths after Chernobyl; infants are hardest hit, with continuing research showing even higher possible death count

Dec. 19 press conference on the release of the study
Washington, PRNewswire-USNewswire – An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.

Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.

(EDIT) Don't know the "authencity of this source")


link--> http://sfbayview.com/2011/medical-journa....


2012 NEWS

Japan to Test Possible Radioactivity in Fukushima Rice
Japan announced on Thursday that it will test the rice harvested in the region around the tsunami-hit nuclear plant in Fukushima to guarantee it is safe for human consumption and prevent sales of radioactive rice.

According to an official press release, agricultural cooperatives and distributors will receive subsidies through a special fund in order to buy high-precision equipment to measure radiation levels in rice.

The measure was taken after high levels of radioactive contamination, exceeding the legal limit, were found in rice harvested in the region in 2011.

The crisis at Fukushima's nuclear plant caused by last March 11 earthquake and tsunami is the worst accident in 25 years, and its radiation currently affects local agriculture, cattle raising and fishing.

In 2011, samples of rice harvested some kilometers from the Fukushima nuclear plant contained more than the 1,000 becquerels of cesium allowed per kilogram.

That is why, the government banned sales of rice grown near the tsunami-hit nuclear power plant.
http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?optio....

Fukushima's animals abandoned and left to die

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/26/world/asia....

Time to update..
TOKYO February 3, 2012
Leaks of radioactive water have become more frequent at Japan's crippled nuclear power plant less than two months after it was declared basically stable.

The problem underlines the continuing challenges facing Tokyo Electric Power Co. as it attempts to keep the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant under control. A massive earthquake and tsunami badly damaged the plant last March, resulting in the melting of three reactor cores.

Workers spotted a leak Friday at a water reprocessing unit which released enough beta rays to cause radiation sickness, TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said. He said no one was injured and the leak stopped after bolts were tightened on a tank.

Matsumoto said TEPCO also found that 8.5 tons of radioactive water had leaked earlier in the week after a pipe became detached at Unit 4, one of the plant's six reactors. The company earlier had estimated that only a few gallons (liters) had leaked.
He said officials are investigating the cause of that leak, but that it was unlikely the pipe had been loosened by the many aftershocks that have hit the plant.

The structural integrity of the damaged Unit 4 reactor building has long been a major concern among experts because a collapse of its spent fuel cooling pool could cause a disaster worse than the three reactor meltdowns.

Cold winter weather has also caused water inside pipes to freeze elsewhere at the plant, resulting in leaks in at least 30 locations since late January, Matsumoto said.

Officials have not detected any signs of radioactive water from the leaks reaching the surrounding ocean. Sandbag walls have been built around problem areas as a precaution.

More than 100,000 people around the plant fled their homes after the disaster due to radiation fears.

The government announced in December that the plant had reached "a cold shutdown condition" and is now essentially stable.

On Monday, six inspectors from the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency will begin an inspection of the plant to ensure its continued stability. They will study the reactors' cooling functions and measures to prevent explosions and nuclear chain reactions, among other steps to keep the plant under control, officials said.
*********************************************

Radioactive Concrete Is Latest Scare for Fukushima Survivors

The Japanese government is investigating how radioactive concrete ended up in a new apartment complex in the Fukushima Prefecture, housing evacuees from a town near the crippled nuclear plant.



The contamination was first discovered when dosimeter readings of children in the city of Nihonmatsu, roughly 40 miles from the reactors at Fuksuhima Dai-ichi, revealed a high school student had been exposed to 1.62 millisieverts in a span of three months, well above the annual 1 millisievert limit the government has established for safety reasons. Further investigation traced the radiation back to the student’s three-story apartment building, where officials detected radioactive cesium inside the concrete.



Radiation levels at the 6-month-old apartment were higher inside the building than outside. A dozen families live in the new apartment complex.



The gravel used in the cement came from a quarry in the town of Namie, located just miles from the Fukushima plant. While Namie sits inside the government mandated 12-mile “no-go” zone because of radiation concerns, it wasn’t completely closed off until the end of April, meaning the gravel was exposed to radiation spewing from the Fukushima plant during that time.



The owner of the quarry said he shipped 5,200 tons of gravel to 19 different companies, two of which now say they sold the material to 200 construction firms. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has launched an investigation to determine where the gravel was used.



The contaminated concrete is the latest radiation scare that has plagued Japan more than 10 months after a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami triggered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. 80,000 people have been displaced by the Fukushima disaster, many of whom may never return home.



“We thought we could finally settle here. I have no words,” said a resident, who told broadcaster NHK she moved to the apartment with her husband and young children, to escape radiation. “I just feel so awful for my kids. I feel like I’ve failed as a parent.”



NHK reports government officials brushed off initial inquiries about the contaminated concrete in December, saying they had conducted thorough checks.
*******************************************

NAMIE, Japan Feb. 6, 2012

What's most striking about Japan's nuclear exclusion zone, is what you don't see. There are no people, few cars, no sign of life, aside from the occasional livestock wandering empty roads.

Areas once home to 80,000 people are now ghost towns, frozen in time. Homes ravaged from the powerful earthquake that shook this region nearly a year ago, remain virtually untouched. Collapsed roofs still block narrow streets. Cracked roads, make for a bumpy ride.

In seaside communities, large fishing boats line the side of the road, next to piles of debris. Abandoned cars, dot otherwise empty fields. It's a scene reminiscent of tsunami-battered prefectures Miyagi and Iwate, last March – except those communities have cleaned up a significant amount of the debris since, in preparation for rebuilding efforts.

We had been trying to get our cameras inside here for months, eager to document the fallout from the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, 11 months on.

While workers of the Fukushima plant are bused in daily, the government has maintained a 12-mile no-go zone around the area for everyone else, only allowing for brief, supervised visits home for residents who still have homes here.

Few Signs of Life in Fukushima Exclusion Zone

"There are police cars patrolling every corner," we were warned. "As soon as they spot your camera, you will be arrested."

On Saturday, a local driver with a special permit agreed to sneak my cameraman and I in, so long as we didn't reveal his identity.
We put on thin, white hazmat suits and masks as a precaution, grabbed a Geiger counter and dosimeter to monitor radiation levels, then slipped past police guarding the exclusion zone entrance, onto the main road running through Japan's nuclear wasteland.

That road, Highway 6, seemed remarkably, unremarkable. We drove past miles of empty parking lots, barren land, closed storefronts. Something you'd expect in any small town, early on a Saturday morning.

Then, the Geiger counter quickly reminded us of where we were. As we approached the road to the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, the numbers ticked up. Less than a mile out, the counter read "27.62 microsieverts an hour" – not a dangerous dose in the short amount of time we were there, but nearly five times the acceptable limit for U.S. nuclear workers, if consumed over a year.

We passed a bus full of Fukushima plant workers, as we drove further away from the reactors. The numbers started to tick down again.

In the the town of Namie, we met Masami Yoshizawa, a rancher who has defied government orders to euthanize more than 200 of his cows. His cattle, raised for premium wagyu beef, used to fetch $13,000 a head. Now they are contaminated with cesium.

Yoshizawa witnessed the reactor explosions from his farm, located just 9 miles from the plant. Radiation concerns forced he and fellow ranchers to evacuate soon after – his, boss opting to unleash all of the cows, thinking he would never return.

Yoshizawa said he couldn't abandon the cattle, completely. He obtained a permit to re-enter the exclusion zone, so he could feed the animals. He's been driving an hour and a half from his temporary home every day since, to look after them.

"The government didn't even try to save the animals," he told me. "They just wanted to kill them. I am filled with rage."

He displays the rage outside his ranch, where he's handwritten angry messages on large, pieces of plywood. One sign placed near a cow's remains reads "Stop killing our animals."

The government has said it will take at least 30 years to decommission the crippled reactors. While Yoshizawa insists he isn't going anywhere, the reality is, this nuclear wasteland may not be livable for decades.

As we hopped back in our car, to drive out of the exclusion zone, our driver asked if he could take us to the town center in Futaba. There was something he wanted to show us.

We drove past the main train station, past small office buildings, and retail stores, until we saw a sign marking the entrance to the main shopping district.

It read, "Nuclear power – the bright future of energy."

Japan: False thermometer may be behind high readings?
CNN
A faulty thermometer is likely to blame for rising temperatures inside a stricken nuclear reactor at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant, authorities said Monday, as Japan prepares to mark one year since a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown.

The plant's operators, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said temperatures inside the Reactor Pressure Vessel of Unit 2 have been gradually increasing since February 2 and on Monday hit a high of 89.2 degrees Celsius.

The reading is significant because an error margin of 20 degrees Celsius for the gauges takes the temperature well above 100 degrees Celsius, one of the pre-conditions for a "cold shutdown."

Japan declared the shattered plant was in "cold shutdown" last December, a welcome milestone in a fraught battle to contain one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.

Should we be concerned?

A nuclear expert agreed that a faulty temperature gauge inside the Unit 2 reactor is the most likely cause for the higher heat reading.
Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at U.S. nuclear power plants, told CNN that the prospect of another catastrophic explosion at the Fukushima-Daiichi is "virtually zero."

"If the reactor was going to become critical it would have become critical in March of last year, not now," he said.

Another possible, though less likely, explanation, according to Friedlander, is that re-routing of pipe work in the last month or so has inadvertently taken cooling water away from where it was needed.

How has TEPCO responded?

Under Japanese nuclear safety regulations, operators are obliged to begin cooling methods when temperatures rise above 80 degrees Celsius.

Authorities at the Fukushima plant have been pumping more water and boric acid into the feed water system and into the core spray system in attempt to bring the temperature down. Boric acid is included in the water to mop up stray neutrons.

TEPCO said the higher reading is at odds with temperatures taken at other points within the reactor which indicates that it's probably faulty.

"Following our cooling efforts temperatures at the two other locations are declining steadily while that at the location in question keeps rising. This leads us to think that the thermometer at the location in question is not functioning properly, rather than the actual temperature rising," Junichi Matsumoto, TEPCO spokesman, said Monday.

The company said it has also been analyzing gas levels within the building and says there's been no increase in radiation, or any other reading that would indicate that the reactor is heating up.

TEPCO said it was continuing to monitor the situation.

What happens if the temperature gauge is correct and the reactor is heating up?

According to Friedland, one year on from the accident the amount of residual heat and radioactivity inside all three stricken reactors is relatively low.

"In the worst case scenario, if they were to completely lose injection and lose the cooling impact, the water in there would heat up and at some point it would begin to boil. And at some point they would have to get rid of that heat, but we're talking about something that would transpire in a matter of days and weeks, not in a matter of minutes and hours," he said.

He said the greatest risks the reactors now pose are to the environment, and that any threats to the surrounding area pale in comparison to the devastation already delivered.

"The biggest real risk is that a pipe breaks and that hundreds of thousands of gallons of highly radioactive water ends up underground or ends up leeching back into the ocean or something like that. That's the real bottom line."

What is the state of the stricken reactors?

It's been almost one year since an 8.9-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami on a collision course with the Japanese coast killing more than 15,000 people, wiping out whole villages and industries and threatening nuclear mayhem.

A hydrogen explosion then fire at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant triggered a nuclear emergency on a scale not seen since the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine in 1986.

Amid criticism that it was acting too slowly and indecisively in the face of disaster, TEPCO flooded three of its unstable reactors with water. It continues to do so while efforts continue towards long-term recovery.

"The reactors are no more or no less stable than they were in April of last year. They fundamentally continue to be reliant on a feed-and-bleed cooling mechanism," Friedland said.

The other three reactors at the plant weren't operational at the time of the disaster but they've since been shutdown, as have nuclear installations across the country.

Where to now?

It's a long road ahead, and one that the Japanese have acknowledged could take decades to navigate.

"They have to get the spent fuel pools stabilized and that's largely done," Friedland said. "The next issue is going to be getting the fuel out of the reactors, the fuel that was in the reactors when the accident occurred. That's probably going to be four or five years in the making, maybe even longer," he said.

The disaster displaced more than 100,000 people as far away as 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the plant. The levels of radiation in the area closest to the plant are still dangerously high.

TEPCO faces a staggering clean-up and compensation bill and has been forced to accept public funding to stay afloat.

On Monday, the Japanese government approved an extra injection of 690 billion yen ($8.9 billion) for the troubled utility.

Tokyo threatens to withhold TEPCO aid

However, trade minister Yukio Edano has threatened to block TEPCO's access to extra funds if the company doesn't grant the government sufficient voting rights.
**********************************************************
Fukushima radiation could be ocean risk


Seawater used to cool nuclear fuel at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant after the 2011 tsunami could have corroded the fuel and spread radiation, scientists say.

Although probably the best action to take at the time, U.S. researchers said, they've discovered a new way in which seawater can corrode nuclear fuel, forming uranium compounds capable of traveling long distances either in solution or as very small particles.

"This is a phenomenon that has not been considered before," said chemistry professor Alexandra Navrotsky at the University of California, Davis.

"We don't know how much this will increase the rate of corrosion, but it is something that will have to be considered in the future."

Uranium in nuclear fuel rods is in a chemical form that is "pretty insoluble" in water, Navrotsky said, but when radiation converts water into peroxide, a powerful oxidizing agent, uranium can be converted into uranium-VI, which in seawater is stable enough to persist in solution or as small particles.

The uranium-VI could form on the surface of a fuel rod exposed to seawater and then be transported away, surviving in the environment for months or years before reverting to more common forms of uranium and settling to the bottom of the ocean, researchers said.

There is no data yet on how fast it would break down in the environment, Navrotsky said in a university release Thursday.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/01/....
*************************************************
Report: Japan kept secret about scary nuclear scenario
The Japanese government kept secret for months a worst-case scenario report predicting a massive release of radioactive materials for a year at the earthquake-crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant, goverment sources told the Kyodo news agency.

The report, shown first to just a small group of policy makers in late March, said a hydrogen explosion would tear through the No. 1 reactor's containment vessel and force all workers to flee lethal radiation levels. It said residents within 105 miles of the plant would be forced to evacuate. A voluntary evacuation zone would have included Tokyo, about 140 miles away.

There would be no time to carry out needed evacuations, sources said, and officials did not want to spur anxiety, according to the Kyodo article published by the Japan Times.
"The content was so shocking that we decided to treat it as if it didn't exist," a senior government official said.

Then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan decided to quietly bury the report, the sources said. His successor, Yoshihiko Noda, changed the document's status after it leaked so it would become public late last year.

Three of six reactors at the Fukushima plant melted down after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling systems and set off the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/201....

Kyodo article:
"Tsunami alert softened days before 3/11"
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/print/nn2012....

My summary: On March 3, 2011 just a week before the 3.11 earthquake, TEPCO and other companies asked a government panel to stop suggesting in its report that a repeat of the tsunami that followed the Jogan quake of the year 869 (M8.3 quake, 1,000 dead) was possible off Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.

If anyone missed the recent stories explaining how precarious the situation really was last year, here are a few articles that might interest you:

(1) Tokyo faced evacuation scenario: Kan (Exodus eyed early in nuke crisis)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110....

Brief summary of the first interview Naoto Kan gave after stepping down from the Prime Ministership. Old but informative, and this interview that Naoto Kan gave was the first that the Japanese public heard any of this.


(2) Conflict over handling nuclear crisis revealed
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111....

Includes comments by Masao Yoshida, general manager of Fukushima Dai-ichi, about how he anticipated China Syndrome occurring. Makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.


(3) Tokyo exodus nuke report's worst scenario ('Migration' plan mulled at height of atomic crisis)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120....

Overviews the worst-case scenario drawn up by experts as the nuclear situation was developing. It notes that the scenario drawn up was based entirely on extremes and not "expected" to happen, but it is still an interesting read.

bilge

Japan's disaster as bad as or worse than Chernobyl
Updated: 2012-03-12 14:30(Xinhua)
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2012-....

VANCOUVER - The severity of Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster may be as bad as or worse than Chernobyl, an American nuclear expert warned Sunday.

Arnold ........., a former nuclear power industry executive, said it was clear to him within two days of the Japan earthquake and tsunami that "Fukushima was as bad as or worse than Chernobyl."

"We call that a level 7, which is as high as the scale goes," he said from his Vermont base via teleconference to delegates of a seminar entitled "The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster -- One Year Later."

......... has publicly questioned the safety in a number of nuclear reactors around the globe and was an expert witness in the investigation of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor disaster in the US state of Pennsylvania in 1979.

........., now chief engineer of the energy consulting company Fairewinds Associates, said he believed that Fukushima was 10 times worse than the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in the former Soviet Union. Now it is in Ukraine.

Chernobyl was a single reactor running at about 7 percent capacity when ruptured, while Fukushima, about 275 km north of Tokyo, had three reactors running at 100 percent capacity and seven other reactors with spent fuel pools that were crippled, said ..........

In addition, the battery-powered diesel generators along the ocean that cooled the reactors and were supposed to kick in during an emergency were destroyed, he added.

"Even if the diesels had survived (the quake and tsunami), there was no way to keep the (reactor) core cool. This is known as Loss of Ultimate Heat Sync (UHS), the most serious global issue relating to this incident, he said.

UHS is effectively the unlimited amount of water that is needed by nuclear power plants to cool down vital systems to contain them in the worst accidents.

Chernobyl stopped releasing radioactive material after about two weeks, said ........., but this is not the case at Fukushima one year on.

If there were any positives to the Fukushima disaster, he said, the wind was mostly blowing out to sea at the time of the accident.

The bad news is large quantities of cesium 137, a radioactive material, has been found in abnormal amounts in the cedar trees of the surrounding mountains of the plant and "revolatalized into the atmosphere".

"Also, the cesium is being washed into rivers and the rivers, of course, are heading toward the ocean. But we are seeing contamination in freshwater fish as well as ocean fish as a result of all the run-off," he said.

"Large cesium deposits (are also being found) on the bottom of the river bed that gets picked up by weeds and seaweed in the ocean that then gets eaten by other fish and mollusks and work their way up the food chain," ......... added.

Although there have been no deaths related to the Fukushima meltdown to date, over the next 20 years there would be about 1 million additional cancers and other health problems from the accident, said ..........

"The further you get away from Fukushima, the less people think their lives are affected," he said.

"But even in Tokyo most people think it is over and they survived it. But with the latency periods of these cancers it's going to pop up 20 years out and people will wonder where it came from," said ..........

Pray that oceanic dilution works folks

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/remember-f....

Praying is generally an ineffective strategy...

Fishing boat washed away by Japan's tsunami is spotted off Canadian coast

A 150-foot fishing boat that washed away last March following Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami has been spotted off the coast of British Columbia, NBC station KING 5 of Seattle reported Friday.

The boat was found floating right side up about 120 nautical miles off the Queen Charlotte Islands, the office of U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told KING 5 News.
KING 5 said that Japanese officials had confirmed that the boat was lost after the tsunami. It is estimated the boat would make landfall in about 50 days, but it will likely be removed by then because it is a hazard to navigation, KING 5 reported.

This is the first large piece of debris found off the North American coast confirmed to have been washed from Japan by the tsunami, KING 5 said.

just bumping the tread, I wonder whrn the other stuff starts to be exposed...