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I've cut back on canned tuna consumption since the event. Occasionally I hear a snippet here and there about how radiation is still leaking into the sea. I wouldn't say I WORRY about it but I think about it on the same level as thousands of other things that are gonna get you. "No one here gets out alive" don't you know!
 
let's have the credentials, then. you can't make the statement that we're all going to die, supported by the above quote, and not qualify yourself.

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i actually don't care what credentials you'll say you have (though i doubt you have any to be making and spreading the single most over-dramatic statement i've ever seen posted on an internet gun forum)- the fukushima disaster doesn't even begin to the scratch the surface in relation to all the CONUS and Pacific nuclear testing we did with SIGNIFICANTLY more radioactive, significantly more harmful, and with exponentially longer half-life (anyone ever heard of plutonium?) material.

i suggest reading more peer-review, and less tin-foil hat publications.
Stop suggesting that you have FACTS!. that only means that you're a part of the illuminati conspiracy!
 
I've cut back on canned tuna consumption since the event. Occasionally I hear a snippet here and there about how radiation is still leaking into the sea. I wouldn't say I WORRY about it but I think about it on the same level as thousands of other things that are gonna get you. "No one here gets out alive" don't you know!

I have doubled down on my Japanese tuna consumption. Mark my words; I WILL have super powers.
 
Two of my uncle's are in charge of safety at Hanford and El Diablo Canyon nuclear plants in WA and CA, respectively. These two are IN CHARGE of safety and paid along the lines of at least a quarter mil a year. I stress their position because if anybody in this country can compute the risk, it is them. They both regularly receive updates on Fukushima and have even sat in on discussions as to what to do about it.

What is happening at Fukushima is not good. However, it I also not the end of the world. At least at this point. I rest easy knowing that if something there went very bad, I would know about it soon enough.
 
I know a guy who is at USNS Yokosuka. He says their rad monitors are still going "bleep". Most aren't feeling very warm and fuzzy...especially when they keep getting tests onboard from med techs who tell them "don't worry about it".
 
This is the latest plan cooked up by TEPCO;

TEPCO has proposed setting up a subterranean barrier around the plant by freezing the ground around it, preventing groundwater from leaking into the damaged plant and carrying radioactive particles with it as it seeps out.

"The public has a strong concern over the contaminated water problem, and this is an urgent issue to solve," Abe said. "We will not leave it only to TEPCO, but will lay out firm measures."

That will mean a still-undetermined amount of direct government spending to aid the ailing utility, Yoshihide Suga, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, told reporters. Building a frozen wall around the plant is "unprecedented," he said.

"To build such a wall, the government should take the lead to promote this kind of project," Suga said. "We have to provide the support to do so."

The plan to freeze the ground presents significant technical challenges. It could involve plunging thousands of tubes carrying a powerful coolant liquid deep into the ground surrounding the stricken reactor buildings.
 
Why Fukushima is worse than you think ? Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs

Why Fukushima is worse than you think
By Mycle Schneider, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Mycle Schneider is an independent international consultant on energy and nuclear policy based in Paris. He is the coordinator and lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report. The views expressed are his own.

"Careless" was how Toyoshi Fuketa, commissioner of the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority, reportedly described the inspection quality of hundreds of water tanks at the crippled Fukushima plant following the recent discovery of a serious radioactive spill. China's Foreign Ministry went further, saying it was "shocking" that radioactive water was still leaking into the Pacific Ocean two years after the Fukushima incident.

Both comments are to the point, and although many inside and outside Japan surely did not realize how bad the March 11, 2011 disaster was – and how bad it could get – it seems clear now that we have been misled about the scale of the problem confronting Japan. The country needs international help – and quickly.

While the amount of radioactivity released into the environment in March 2011 has been estimated as between 10 percent and 50 percent of the fallout from the Chernobyl accident, the 400,000 tons of contaminated water stored on the Fukushima site contain more than 2.5 times the amount of radioactive cesium dispersed during the 1986 catastrophe in Ukraine.

So, where has this huge amount of highly contaminated water – enough to fill 160 Olympic-size swimming pools – come from? In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the reactor cores of units 1, 2 and 3 melted through the reactor vessels into the concrete. Nobody knows how far the molten fuel went through the containment – radiation levels in the reactor buildings are lethal, while robots got stuck in the rubble and some never came back out.

The molten fuel still needs to be cooled constantly and the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), injects about 400 tons of water into the perforated reactor vessels every day. That water washes out radioactive elements and runs straight through into the basements that were flooded during the tsunami. By 2015, over 600,000 tons of highly radioactive liquid are expected to have accumulated in temporary tanks, some underground, many bolted rather than welded together, and none ever conceived to hold this kind of liquid over the long term. The dangerous fluid is pumped around in four kilometer long makeshift tubes, many of them made of vinyl rather than steel, and plagued with numerous leaks in the winter when the above ground lines get hit by frost.

TEPCO's account of the discovery this month of the leak of 300 tons of highly radioactive water showed a frightening level of amateurism:

"We found water spread at the bottom level of tanks near the tank No.5... Therefore, we checked the water level of this tank, and... confirmed that the current water level is lower by approximately 3 meters than the normal level."

TEPCO reportedly admitted that only 60 of 350 tanks in that area are equipped with volume gauges. "Inspection" is done visually by a worker with a radiation detector. Meanwhile, the soil around the leaking tank delivered a dose per hour equivalent to the legal limit for nuclear workers for five years. No remote radiation measuring devices, no remote handling.

The tank leak is just the latest in a long list of signs that things are going fundamentally wrong at the site of what could still turn out to be the most serious radiological event in history. And the situation could still get a lot worse. A massive spent fuel fire would likely dwarf the current dimensions of the catastrophe and could exceed the radioactivity releases of Chernobyl dozens of times. First, the pool walls could leak beyond the capacity to deliver cooling water or a reactor building could collapse following one of the hundreds of aftershocks. Then, the fuel cladding could ignite spontaneously releasing its entire radioactive inventory.

TEPCO's inability to stabilize the site, and the dramatic failure of the Japanese government, now majority owner of TEPCO, should come as no surprise. Indeed, so far, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has seemed too busy trying to help restart the country's stranded reactors to put adequate attention on stabilizing the Fukushima site.

The fact is that the Fukushima Daiichi site represents challenges of unprecedented complexity. Maintaining the cooling of three molten reactor cores and five spent fuel pools in a disaster zone is a job of titanic proportions. That is why two weeks after the crisis first erupted I suggested the creation of an International Task Force Fukushima (ITFF) that would pull together the world's experts in key areas of concern: nuclear physics and engineering, core cooling, water management, spent fuel and radioactive waste storage, building integrity and radiation protection.

Two and a half years on, the need for such a taskforce has only grown.

An ITFF would need to be established for at least two years to be effective, and could have two co-chairpersons – one Japanese, one from abroad. A core group of about a dozen experts would work full-time on the project and could draw at will on the expertise of several dozen corresponding experts that are carefully selected by the core group. A significant share of the core group should be independent experts (i.e. with no link to corporate or state interests). In addition, the ITFF would work in an open expert network, free to draw on any expertise in any field that it judges pertinent. It could openly invite feedback to its recommendations and would do its utmost to assess comments and suggestions.

Of course, such a taskforce would not "supervise" or "control" – the responsibility for this would remain with the Japanese government and the regulator. But the ITFF could provide recommendations on short-, medium- and long-term strategies for site stabilization.

Will the call for such a taskforce gain any traction? I have presented the basic concept to safety authorities of several countries, acting and former ambassadors, ministers and the European Commission. But while some officials have pointed to some ongoing limited bilateral assistance, so far, the main stumbling block appears to be the "pattern of denial" in Japan, a problem that has affected not only TEPCO, but apparently the Japanese government and the safety authorities as well.

Thankfully, there have been some small signs in official declarations by TEPCO and the Japanese government in recent days that offer hope for a change in attitudes. And Japan's image in the world – and the Japanese people's trust in their institutions – would greatly profit from an explicit and concrete international project. The question is whether members of the international community can muster the will to put their own interests aside, and help Japan conquer the denial that is risking catastrophe.
 
Fukushima open air fission? Radiation surge can?t be blamed just on random leaks ? RT Op-Edge

Fukushima open air fission? Radiation surge can't be blamed just on random leaks
Published time: September 02, 2013 08:09

Christopher Busby is an expert on the health effects of ionizing radiation and Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

The latest surge in radiation at Fukushima nuclear plant may suggest not only additional water leaks at the site, but could also mean fission is occurring outside the crippled reactor, explains Chris Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

The increase in radiation reading is too significant to be blamed on random water leaks, believes Busby.

RT: Just how serious is the situation now in Japan?

Chris Busby: I think this is an indication that it has actually deteriorated significantly, very suddenly in the last week. What they are not saying and what is the missing piece of evidence here is that radiation suddenly cannot increase unless something happens and that something cannot be leakage from a tank, because gamma radiation goes straight through a tank. The tank has got very thin metal walls. These walls will only attenuate gamma radiation by 5 per cent, even when it is 1 cm thick.

Several new high radiation readings were detected during the daily inspection on Saturday near the tanks storing the radioactive water, forcing the operator to admit there might be even more leaks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Earlier Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority raised the rating of the radioactive water leak at the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant to Level 3 – a "serious incident" on an international scale of radioactivity.

Although they may think this is a leak from the tank, and there may well be leaks from the tank, this sudden increase of 1.8 Sieverts per hour is an enormously big doze that can probably kill somebody in 2 to 4 hours.

Today there was another leak found at 1.7 Sieverts per hour in more or less the same place. This huge radiation increase, in my mind means something going on outside the tanks, some radioactive fission is occurring, like an open air reactor, if you like, under the ground.

RT: What impact will this have on the clean-up operation and those who are involved in that operation?

CB: First of all it is clearly out of control and secondly no one can go anywhere near it. Nobody can go in to measure where these leaks are or do anything about them, because anybody who is to approach that sort of area would be dead quite quickly. They would be seriously harmed.

RT: Then presumably, someone who was there earlier, not knowing that the radiation levels were so high, are at risk now?

CB: I think many people are going to die as a result of this just like liquidators died after Chernobyl. They were dying over the next ten years or so.

RT: Why has TEPCO failed to contain the radiation?

CB: I think no one has actually realized how bad this is, because the international nuclear industries have tried to play it down so much, that they sort of came to the idea that somehow it can be controlled. Whereas all along, it could never be controlled.

I've seen a photograph taken from the air recently, in which the water in the Pacific Ocean is actually appearing to boil. Well, it is not boiling. You can see that it's hot. Steam is coming off the surface. There is a fog condensing over the area of the ocean close to the reactors, which means that hot water is getting into the Pacific that means something is fissioning very close to the Pacific and it is not inside the reactors, it must be outside the reactors in my opinion.

RT: Surely international nuclear industry should have come to TEPCO's help before this?

CB: Yes. They should have done that. This is not a local affair. This is an international affair. I could not say why it has not. I think they are all hoping that nothing will happen, hoping that this will all go away and keeping their fingers crossed. But from the beginning it was quite clear that it was very serious and that there is no way in which this going not going to go very bad.

And now it seem to have suddenly got very bad. If that photograph I've seen is true, they should start evacuating people up to a 100 kilometer zone.

RT: So not only those that live in the vicinity but also those that live within 100 km could be at risk?

CB: I say that this might be a faked dubbed photograph, but if that is real and these levels of 1.8 Sieverts per hour are real, than something is very serious has happened and I think people should start to get away.

RT: Since the radiation is leaking into the ocean, will it not have a major ecological impact elsewhere?

CB: Of course. What happens there is that it moves all the radioactivity up and down the coast right down to Tokyo. I've seen a statement made by Tokyo's mayor saying this will not affect the application of Tokyo to be considered for the Olympic Games. I actually thought they ought to consider evacuating Tokyo. It is very, very serious.
 
motherbubblegumers! They knew this was happening, but in some anal retentive part of their mind that tells them to "save face" they deciced to keep it secret.
 

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