Fukushima - in my heart O yeah! On the advice of a friend, here's the short version; just 2 action items. For the long version, read on. The spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi Reactor No. 4 is ready to collapse; one more major earthquake and the pool might drain and 262 tons of nuclear fuel melt down, forever altering our world; perhaps leading to the end of life on earth. Tepco, the utility in charge, is not up to the task of dealing with this. Take action:
Email the President and tell him to intervene personally in this crisis; it's a matter of national security http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments Email the Secretary of State and tell her the same http://contact-us.state.gov/app/ask * * * To rephrase our conundrum: The spent fuel pool above Reactor No. 4 contains 1,533 nuclear fuel rod assemblies, each assembly containing 63 fuel rods, for a total of 262 tons of uranium-238. Of that, 1%, or 2.6 tons, was converted to plutonium-239 during the fission process. 202 of those fuel rod assemblies are brand new, unused. The building is falling apart. It leans to one side. The pool was cracked during the earthquake, and it's leaking. And now, TEPCO has placed 60 ton metal covers over the pool. A word about TEPCO: They have close business ties to the Yakuza, who sometimes dictate policy, as well as provide contractors. It’s estimated that 33% of the workers at Fukushima Daiichi are either Yakuza, or their debtors. Others are mentally ill, developmentally disabled, homeless or minors; now TEPCO is advertising in foreign countries for workers, offering $378 a day for two hours' work -and to live in the 20km zone. Native Japanese have earned from $38 up to $2,000 a day depending on the scarcity of labor, the progress at the plant, and the radiation risks of that day's work. The original staff is long gone. TEPCO, by the way, asked permission from the prime minister to abandon Fukushima Daiichi, and Daini (another nuclear plant 7.1 miles away), when the reactors first started melting down. The PM demanded they stay. If they had abandoned the plants, you and I and everyone would likely be dead right now. At this moment, your life is in their hands. Scientists say that there is a 70% chance of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hitting Fukushima this year, and a 98% chance within the next 3 years. Others are predicting another M.9 earthquake within this year. Fukushima has been experiencing earthquakes from magnitude 4.1 up to 6.2, almost every day for months. If an M.7 earthquake strikes, the building collapses and the pool ruptures and drains, a meltdown will occur releasing at least 10 times, and as much as 50 times the Cesium-137 as Chernobyl. The molten cores of three of the reactors are now burrowing down into the earth; when they reach groundwater, there will likely be a huge hydrovolcanic explosion. Same result: collapse of the building and fuel pool, and a spent fuel meltdown. There are also the consequences of something disrupting the electrical systems and shutting off power. A hurricane, flood, X-class solar flare or even a rat chewing through a wire could cause the cooling systems to shut down. As the pool heats up, water will boil off and the fuel will melt down. A major loss of electricity would affect each one of the reactors and spent fuel pools. TEPCO plans to start moving the fuel rods out of the pool in 2014. They expect the entire process will take at the very least 10 years, though they admit it could take up to 30. TEPCO has so far refused all offers of outside help. **************************************** No one knows how much radiation has already been released. One of the reactors is open all the way to the core, and several fuel pools also, having already caught fire several times. The ground has huge cracks in it, constantly emitting steam. By now millions of tons of contaminated water have been poured into the ocean, and just as much radioactive waste has been incinerated in ordinary furnaces all over Japan, the ashes dumped into Tokyo Harbor. Highly radioactive black soot is showing up all over Tokyo. People all over Japan are getting sick. Some are dying. In all the world, two politicians have come forward to help - The Honorable Ron Wyden; thank you Senator, and His Excellency Mitsuhei Murata; thank you Ambassador. TEPCO themselves have admitted this is already four times worse than Chernobyl -with their gift for disinformation, we can conclude that it is much worse than that. And the radiation continually pours out of the reactors, and the fuel pools, and the ground, and into the ocean, and the sky, and will never stop, not for centuries, not for millennia. ********************************************* This is only the start. If the fuel pool at no. 4 melts down, the radioactivity will be so intense, everyone will have to leave the plant. If they stay, no matter how courageous, they will die, too quickly to do anything. No one there. Abandoned nuclear plant. That night, the power shuts down. No one to keep it running, it's a makeshift system at this point anyway. The cooling systems, for reactors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 all shut down. Silence. The cooling systems for the fuel pools 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 and Main fuel pool all shut down. No one there to inject Nitrogen in the reactors at risk of hydrogen explosion. No one to vent steam. Even robots cannot operate in such high radioactivity, the circuits fail. Next morning, the sound of explosions; reactors blowing up. More explosions, fuel pools reaching criticality, or just hydrogen explosions. Meltdown has begun. Level of radioactivity now at least 10 times worse, or unmeasurable. Lots of steam. In a few hours, cores melting down into the earth. Evacuation ordered for 40 Km around the nuclear plant. This includes Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant, 12 Km distant. Fukushima Daini shut off, abandoned in haste. 4 reactors, 4 spent fuel pools. Day turns to night. In two days, power shuts off. That night, cooling systems shut down. Next morning, again, explosions occur, some in reactors, some in spent fuel pools. This goes on all day, lessening at the day wears on. At night, sky seems brilliant above the plant. This is caused by Gamma ray shine, visible in ultra-radioactive events. By now the release of radiation equals about 147 times that of Chernobyl; a conservative estimate. No one can go near either of these two plants for years, not even for one half hour. Japan's 126 million population begins migrating to other parts of the globe; many die in the interim. It is hard to convince anyone to stay working at one of the 52 remaining nuclear plants in Japan; it is hard to convince anyone to stay for any reason. Automated remote systems are considered unfeasible. Over the next two six months international efforts are made to shore up the operational staffs at these plants. Finally it is decided that Japan is too "hot" to risk the lives of nuclear engineers, and the plants are hastily "decommissioned" by filling the reactors and fuel pools with a concrete mixture of zeolite, boron, and other radio-absorbent materials. They are then "entombed," as was done with Chernoblyl. The concrete, improperly set, cracks and steam escapes; the temperatures rise and explosions are noted at some plants. ************************************** This is the better of the case scenarios, if spent fuel pool 4 fails. The worst case: Individual workers abandon nuclear plants all over Japan, as skeleton crews try to maintain basic safety; accidents soon happen despite their best efforts. The plants are finally abandoned when all the workers die of radiation poisoning or are ordered to leave by the government, now only a ceremonial remnant. No containment or decommissioning efforts are made. http://fukushima-diary.com/ http://enenews.com/ http://dissensus-japan.blogspot.com/ http://www.fukushimafacts.com/ * * * The state of things: Not good. I've been writing about Fukushima Daiichi Reactor No. 4's spent fuel pool for months, passing along vital information on Facebook, Tweeting and messaging everyone I can think of, more celebrities than politicians, on the theory that everyone listens to Lady Gaga; no one cares (or even knows) what some Senator says. If by some chance Lady Gaga gets exercised over the immanent destruction of life on earth, well, she's got a podium to pound on. She will get heard. And she will mobilize 6 billion people where I can't even mobilize a fly to get off of my coffee cup. But Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Bono, Jon Stewart, George Clooney and so many other stars who I thought of as activists, yes your “rotten Hollywood L.A. liberals” haven't even bothered to acknowledge my pleas, let alone hold a press conference decrying the dangers of nuclear power in general, and this nuclear nightmare going down now. So the situation is not good. My petition had 92 signatures, and the other petitions I've seen and signed are doing about as well; one reached, if memory serves, about 12,578; it was to the White House and it was rejected: not enough signatures. I've seen about 15 petitions in all, for a total of what, about 22,628 signers, tops? Out of 6 billion? Who are the other people -do they sleepwalk? I shouldn't complain. I should ask myself what I'm doing wrong. I am not getting through to people. They are not understanding me. They don’t understand when I say their life is at stake. I don't mean someone else's life; I don't mean an abstraction of life. I mean their own life. Is it so hard to imagine the end of one's life, of all life? Not anymore; not for me. I've read about it, and I’ve thought about it. To where I've wrapped my head around the concept, and I understand it. I even, sad to say, accept it. 'Cause I realize that even though my efforts and those of many others were made in sincerity, and in enough time to make the difference, it doesn't matter. No comprehension was gained, no understanding reached. I have a vision of our galaxy, glowing silently in the deep night of space, crowded, massive. Around the galaxy, tiny lights go on, then off, at intervals; ceaselessly, throughout planetary aeons. Warm lights, appearing and extinguishing, again and again. These lights are planets, planets like ours that support sentient, self-aware life; that rise, develop lethal weaponry, and disappear. Perhaps in the universe, planets like ours come and go a dozen times in a day. It seems perfectly ordinary to me now, that this planet, peopled with the sort of endearing, confused, perfectly imperfect, lovable, slightly mad, and sometimes bad primates we call human should go lights out pretty soon. And that it would happen not with a bang but in eternal silence, of radiation pouring out of a seedy industrial plant on a far shore, as one by one we go to sleep, not waking. And that the final sound will be waves lapping on the shore for 900 million years, uninterrupted, unobserved. Did I say we were charming? We are. We have divine properties, unacknowledged properties, far too unused, far too rare. We are magnificient creatures -let’s help ourselves to a hand of applause; we've done so much for ourselves and for each other, and come so far, in spite of politicians. We should be charmed. We are beautiful. So why would we off ourselves? Is self-awareness that hard to bear, an anguished state requiring self-extinction? It's hard being human, it's such a complicated burden, being so complex, and it's very hard to make the crawl, to hike the drill up the hill from instinct ...to intuition. But there's more; We can be the winners here. What is so hard to understand? I'm asking you to be more selfish, more instinctual, more self-centered, more coldly survivalist, more ruthlessly looking out for No. 1, more of everything that's good for you -hold back nothing for me, I want you to be happy! I want you to thrive. I want you to be at peace -or gloriously undone, cramming whiskey ice cream sundaes into your face! I want you to survive, to go wild, to sprout, blossom, send out new shoots; to live the life of Riley. Live the dreams of Walter Mitty if you dare. But first, you have to take action. If you don't want to, okay; If you don’t mind, we can go. But I wonder, where do we go? With no human bodies to inhabit, where will we stay? For the next 800 million years, where will we hang out? There will be no suitable primate bodies re-arising for at least that long. Our extracorporeal spirits may find new “life” as intergalactic vagrants, ceaselessly wandering the dark depth, aimlessly traversing cosmic corridors while yearning for a thing we’ll never find. Or more likely that we’ll adapt to the peaceful, frozen existence of bacteria in a sort of suspended animation for most of a billion years, then protozoa, successively inhabiting more complex life forms as they become available-and I assure you they will be in a very mutated state. Do you want to know what the next Homo Habilis will look like? No, you don't. It's too complicated. We don't want to go there. We can stop it but we have to act now, it won't wait. Should I continue writing? Is anyone listening? I'll let you carry the ball if you wish. It's not over, yet; it's not finished. There is still one more day. Pangs, Nick Thabit the face of Life: invincible protester Masunaga Sumiko PS: There isn't a lot any one person can do, but together, we have a chance. Sign this: http://www.avaaz.org/fr/petition/Appel_urgent_pour_eviter_une_nouvelle_catastrophe_nucleaire_mondiale/ And in the U.S., this: http://www.change.org/petitions/senators-boxer-and-feinstein-investigate-the-ongoing-danger-from-the-fukushima-nuclear-reactors Email the President and tell him to intervene personally in this matter; it's a matter of national security, as well as a humanitarian and ecological crisis: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments And tell the Secretary of State the same: http://contact-us.state.gov/app/ask Send a message to your President or Prime Minister or Monarch wherever you are, asking them to intervene directly, and swiftly, to avoid such a disaster. If you're in Japan, take to the streets. But you already know that! If you come up with a better idea, an action, please tell me so I can do it too. Tell as many people as you can, let them know the truth; there’s a mainstream media blackout on this. Peace Posted by Nick Thabit at 5:32 PM http://fukushimawatch.blogspot.com/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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