[Edited]
Lets See Always lead with a Joke;
and here's a cool youtube link to the joke but I can't embed it
http://youtu.be/...
A fellow calls up his friend and says, "Hey, your cat died." The friend says, "Geez, you didn't have to hit me with that so harshly, you should break it to me gently. You should have called me up and said, 'Hey, your cat's up on the roof.' Then a week later, you call me up and say, 'Hey, your cat fell off the roof and injured himself, we had to take him to the hospital.' The next week, you call me up and say, 'Hey, your cat isn't doing too well.' Then a few weeks later, you can let me know that he died." So a month later, this fellow calls up his friend and says, "Hey, your mom's up on the roof."
Well
"Tokyo is up on the roof"...
Japanese Prime Ministers Appointed Expert on Radiation Safety quits in tears
saying the Government has no basis for Raising radiation limits. The senior
Nuclear Power expert in Japan who is one of the big advocates for Nuclear power,
states "Full Meltdown and Breach Probable", and The Japanese PM is studying
creating plans for an Alternative Capital in the event of Disaster. Japan Arts
community protesting Fukushima. Japanese arts community stages protest of
Fukushima, compares it to Hiroshima.
More after the Jump.
I didn't want to report this without something solid to go on.
http://www.infiniteunknown.net/...
Kan said measures were not taken despite previous accidents and warnings, and that he must admit that the utility and the government failed to fully deal with the situation.
He also suggested that he will study the possibility of setting up an alternative capital to take over Tokyo’s role in an emergency, saying that measures must be taken to secure the continuity of the capital’s central functions.
Ok Folks. That's NHK. That's the Big Japanese News Station, it's not some little
UHF station, this is big national media. I wanted to get a video clip or something
to report a story of this level. We don't want to be accused of Hype or Drama or
something like that.
Now the Japanese culture prefers to dribble out bad news a bit at a time and to be understated. Stoicisism, fortitude, determination. It's all very british.
So, they've been leaking out this story a bit at a time, now the story is
Well
"Tokyo is up on the roof"...
At some point, they will move key functions out of Tokyo.
Other media had reported this story several weeks back but it's hard to cite
Sofia News in Bulgaria as a source on a Japan story of this level.
Pity... Because in a crisis of this magnitude you have to ask fast.
The Russians evacuated their top people out of chernobyl, Pripyat and even kiev
right away and they started the population evacuation within 72 hours and they had
the army in there liquidating the plant within a week. The Japanese are moving way too slowly. People are dying as a result of this.
Japanese Arts Community installs Guerila Protest Mural in train station.
http://www.tokyotimes.jp/...
This protest mural was installed in front of the Okamoto "Myth of Tomorrow" mural
which had been done to protest the bombing of Hiroshima.
The mural, which is 30 meters wide and 5.5 meters tall, symbolizes the moment of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945, and was created in Mexico City between 1968 and 1969.
--------------------
Senior Nuclear Power advocate argues for complete meltdown in Fukushima.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/...
Now this guy Ishikawa is a complete industry guy, he's arguing that the failure is
a "Act of God", is beyond anyone's purview, that other plants are safe and it's
perfectly okay to Raise the radiation limits. So he's a hard core Industry Apologist
and what's he saying
「政府の発表は間違い。燃料棒は全部溶け落ちてしまっていると思う」
The government announcement is wrong. I think all the fuel rods have been melted down.
「水棺などといってモタモタしてないで、炉心を早く冷やすことに一心になれ」
Don't bother with water entombment. Focus on cooling the core as soon as possible.
Now it's Asahi TV, but feel free to provide your own translation, or
go along with the EX-SKF translation i cited above.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/...
About TEPCO's "roadmap:
"I believe what they are trying to achieve after 9 months is to cool the reactor cores and solidify them so that no radioactive materials can escape. But they are just doing peripheral tricks like water entombment and nitrogen gas injection. Nitrogen gas, it's dangerous, by the way.
"What they must do is to cool the reactor cores, and there's no way around it. It has to be done somehow."
About the condition of the reactor cores:
"I believe the fuel rods are completely melted. They may already have escaped the pressure vessel. Yes, they say 55% or 30%, but I believe they are all melted down. When the fuel rods melt, they melt from the middle part on down.
(Showing the diagram) "I think the temperature inside the melted core is 2000 degrees to 2000 and several hundred degrees Celsius. A crust has formed on the surface where the water hits. Decay heat is 2000 to 3000 kilowatts, and through the cracks on the crust the radioactive materials (mostly noble gas and iodine) are escaping into the air.
"Volatile gas has almost all escaped from the reactor by now.
"The water [inside the pressure vessel] is highly contaminated with uranium, plutonium, cesium, cobalt, in the concentration we've never seen before.
"My old colleague contacted me and shared his calculation with me. At the decay heat of 2000 kilowatt... There's a substance called cobalt 60. Highly radioactive, needs 1 to 1.5 meter thick shields. It kills people at 1000 curies. He calculated that there are 10 million curies of cobalt-60 in the reactor core. If 10% of cobalt-60 in the core dissolve into water, it's 1 million curies."
[He's an old-timer so he's used to curie instead of becquerel as a unit. 1 curie equals 3.7 x 10^10 becquerels (37,000,000,000 becquerels or 37 gigabecquerels).
10 million curies equals 370,000 terabecquerels, and 1 million curies equals 37,000 terabecquerels. I used this conversion table. Tell me I'm wrong! Cobalt-60 alone would make a Level 7 disaster...]
"They (TEPCO) want to circulate this highly contaminated water to cool the reactor core. Even if they are able to set up the circulation system, it will be a very difficult task to shield the radiation. It will be a very difficult work to build the system, but it has to be done.
"It is imperative to know the current condition of the reactor cores. It is my assumption [that the cores have melted], but wait one day, and we have water more contaminated with radioactive materials. This is a war, and we need to build a "bridgehead" at the reactor itself instead of fooling around with the turbine buildings or transporting contaminated water."
Now Ishikawa is saying the same thing i've been saying and Jaczko from NRC has been saying. The Japanese need to go to war and fill the breach with bodies...
"Take the debris clean-up job for example. They are picking up the debris and putting them in containers, as if this is the peacetime normal operation. This is a war. They should dig a hole somewhere and bury the radioactive debris and clean up later. What's important is to clear the site, using the emergency measures. Build a bridgehead to the reactor.
"The line of command is not clear, whether it is the government, TEPCO, or Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
"Look squarely at the reactors and find out the true situation. [Trying to do something with] the turbine buildings is nothing but a caricature [a joke, a manga, a diversion]."
The show's host says "But wait a minute, Mr. Ishikawa, you are a proponent of nuclear power and we expected to hear from you that everything is going well at Fukushima..."
Mr. Ishikawa answers, "Well, if I'm allowed to tell a lie..."
Now, Mr. Tetsunari Iida speaks, agreeing to Mr. Ishikawa's "war" analogy:
"I totally agree with Mr. Ishikawa's assessment of the plant, and that this is a war. The government simply orders TEPCO to "do it". But it is like the Imperial General Headquarters (大本営) on the eve of the Sea of Japan Naval Battle during the Russo-Japanese War [in 1905] ordering merchant ship TEPCO to attack [the imperial Russian navy].
"The government should appoint a commander. TEPCO has a limit as a private business. No one knows what to do. We have to seek the advice from the best and the brightest in the world."
Mr. Hasegawa of Chunichi Shinbun jumps in, and says "We took the numbers from the government like 30% core melt as true, and went from there. But then Mr. Ishikawa says it's a total melt."
Then, Kohei Otsuka, the Vice Minister of Health and Welfare and politician from the ruling party (DPJ), sitting right next to Mr. Ishikawa, butts in, and warns everyone:
"Since none of us knows for sure the condition of the reactor cores, we shouldn't speculate on a national TV."
Mr. Hasegawa overrides the politician, and says "The real problem is that what no one knows is presented to us every day as if it is a fact, like 30% core melt in the chart."
Now Ishikawa is arguing that the radiation levels are safe and that
people should return home.
Here is what the Governments top Rad safety guy is saying
http://www.nytimes.com/...
after an adviser resigned during a tearful news conference in which he charged that the government was not adequately protecting the population from radiation.
,,,,,
In one of his most damaging charges, the adviser, Toshiso Kosako, drew attention to a recent government decision to allow children living near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to receive doses of radiation equal to the international standard for nuclear power plant workers. That level is far higher than international standards set for the public. “I cannot allow this as a scholar,” said Mr. Kosako, an expert on radiation safety at the University of Tokyo.
He also blasted the government for what he said was a lack of transparency in releasing radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and for setting an overly high limit on radiation exposure for workers who have spent weeks struggling to keep the plant under control.
Government advisory positions are considered prestigious, and it is highly unusual for an academic to quit one in protest. The prime minister brought Mr. Kosako on as an adviser after the powerful March 11 earthquake and
So, when I've been citing Gunderson, and saying they need to evacuate the women
and children, it does appear i have a little company on this issue.
The Education and Science Ministry made its announcement about permissible exposure on April 19, when it said that schools in Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is located, could be used if radiation levels were below 3.8 microsieverts per hour. That exposure level is too low to cause immediate health effects, but may raise the probability of developing cancer.
Environmental groups and local parents have called for lowering the limit, pointing out that children are more vulnerable to radiation than most adults. They have not addressed a perhaps more worrisome problem: if the schools have high levels of contamination, the rest of the towns and cities they are in are likely to also show high readings.
I called the cleanup efforts ongoing now as Criminal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
The japanese people are getting pissed.
Furious parents in Fukushima have delivered a bag of radioactive playground earth to education officials in protest at moves to weaken nuclear safety standards in schools.
Children can now be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously permissible. The new regulations have prompted outcry. A senior adviser resigned and the prime minister, Naoto Kan, was criticised by politicians from his own party.
Ministers have defended the increase in the acceptable safety level from 1 to 20 millisieverts per year as a necessary measure to guarantee the education of hundreds of thousands of children in Fukushima prefecture,
,,,,,
It is estimated that 75% of Fukushima's schools may have radiation levels above the old safety level of 1 millisievert.
,,,,
This is not the first time the government has shifted safety baselines since the start of the crisis. Permissible levels of radiation exposure for nuclear workers were amended soon after the disaster struck to allow emergency operations at the stricken Fukushima reactor. Several weeks later the cabinet allowed the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric, to violate regulations by dumping 11,500 tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific. The radioactivity of the discharge was 100 times higher than the acceptable limit.
Rules are set in place for a reason, waiving them at will is a mistake,
It may not be possible to control everything that is happening, but,
there is no excuse for leaving this and letting people get exposed.
The Japanese need to evacuate a much larger zone for women and children,
they need an army of volunteers to go in and forcibly clean and shut down the
reactor complex.
Otherwise, it's just a matter of when, things get worse.
In Comments various people have said the casualties are light.
This is the casualties. This is the future of the children of northern Japan.
End the Madness.