Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The following diary reports and comments on reports that many will consider 'unsubstantiated' because they have not yet been picked up by the corporate media cartel. For those who only trust information if it is published by the NYT, WaPo, or a Murdoch orifice, click elsewhere now. Judge the sources by their record, from Fukushima and Macondo, to Wall St. and Iraq rumors and marginalized reports have proven more accurate than established mainstream, for-profit infotainment outlets.
You have been warned. If you are not timid, and are willing to see yesterday's worst case scenarios become todays hopeful outcomes, join me over the fold.
The ground is literally cracking around the site of the multiple-meltdown at Fukushima, releasing sporadic gouts of steam.
It was early August, around 9PM. A worker at Fukushima I Nuke Plant sent an email to his local contact, saying “Steam gushing out of cracks on the ground. The area is foggy with steam, and the workers evacuated temporarily. Some kind of reaction may be occurring underground. Watch out for radiation level depending on the wind direction”.
From the information source within the government, “I’ve heard about the steam coming out from the ground, and I am concerned”.
The casual observer might consider this, in light of the recent earthquakes in the area, to be evidence that some of the molten cores have finally burned through the various containments of steel and concrete and are making their way straight to hell (or the water table, whichever comes first). Naturally the pseudo-cautious among you will want to wait to draw conclusions until the nuclear magma is actually visible in glowing color on your boob tube, and Tepco admits that there may be some swamp gas coming from the ground. But conclusions are not necessary, we are just gathering observations and batting about hypotheses.
Meanwhile, closer to home, reports of fresh oil besmirching the once abundant Gulf of Mexico are emerging from cracks in BP's bulwark of media and mercenary control of the Gulf Coast. The suggestion is that the oil is emerging, not surprisingly, from cracks in the ocean floor near the site of the repeated botched operations on the gushing wound BP stabbed into the earth:
Reliable sources tell us that BP has hired 40 boats from Venice to Grand Isle to lay boom around the Deepwater Horizon site – located just 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. The fleet rushed to the scene late last week and worked through the weekend to contain what was becoming a massive slick at the site of the Macondo wellhead, which was officially “killed” back in September 2010.
The truly frightening part of this development, as reported in a previous post (see below), is the oil may be coming from cracks and fissures in the seafloor caused by the work BP did during its failed attempts to cap the runaway Macondo Well – and that type of leakage can’t be stopped, ever.
And did I mention that Global-Finance Capitalism is crumblingunder the weight of its inherent contradictions, and taking our democratic societies with it? Oh, yeah, I guess I did.
There are some dots to connect, or leave unconnected, as you prefer.
As an exercise in assumption checking, answer the following questions to yourself, and see if you guess right:
How much wealth was destroyed by the 'financial crisis' of 2008?
Sorry, trick question, while trillions of dollars of apparent value disappeared from stock and real estate markets, much of that was illusory to begin with. The Bush/Greenspan bubble inflated with a combination of very low interest rates, the gutting of all forms of regulation, and an insane surge of credit dumped on the uncreditworthy (from NINJA house flippers, to rightwing governments in Europe) created an illusion of wealth, while those in the know gathered hard assets. When the bubble popped, we were left holding hollow 401Ks, underwater condos, and worthless cash and equities, while the real value had been quietly transferred to the oligarchs who ran the whole fatten and slaughter cycle.
What caused the Meltdowns in Fukushima, when did governments know about them?
If you answered Tsunami and loss of power leading to loss of cooling, then score 1 for the industry/regulatory cabal and 0 for yourself. The meltdowns were caused by an earthquake breaking cooling pipes that had been made brittle over the course of the plant's design lifetime. This vulnerability exists around the globe, and is being actively covered up by the governments and plant owners who 'can't afford' to repair or close them.
Where did the nuclear fuel fragments found scattered over a mile away from the Fukushima (pronounced fuk-yu-shima) come from?
If you knew that chunks of fuel had been blown out of the reactor so far, score 1, if you knew that they came not from the spent fuel pool fire that were open to the air, but from the explosions at unit 3, which was secretly melting down, but has been called a hydrogen explosion, score 3:
Nuclear fuel fragments found over a mile away were “ejected from the reactor cores in those explosions” not spent fuel pools, according to NRC
When did Tepco get the nuclear reactions at Fukushima under control and stop major releases of radioactive materials?
Ok, this is a trick question. The reactions are still going at unknowable levels, and massive amounts of radioactive materials are still being released.
I was told by somebody who heard this from a TEPCO official who was talking to the Prime Minister of Japan who said that the releases from the plant are now at the order of 10¹³ [10 trillion] Becquerels every hour. We’re talking about something that is absolutely ongoing and is just being ignored, it’s not being adequately reported by the authorities in Japan or indeed in the IAEA.
In fact, the releases may be worse now than earlier since contaminated wastes are apparently being openly incinerated. In addition, contaminated beef is once more being sold in Japan, spreading the radioisotopes through the efficient commercial distribution channels usually reserved for perishable foodstuffs. One result is the accumulation of radioactive sludge from the human waste of people eating and drinking contaminated meals.
On the bright side, the mixing of seawater with a core meltdown produced a 'spike' of radioactive sulfur that enterprising scientists used to measure the life cycle of SO2 in the atmosphere, since they had an exact point source with a reasonable estimate of when and how much was produced, and they measured its arrival in Cali. One cannot mention this story without noting that these isotopes will concentrate in the testicles, so for those Californians considering castration for themselves or the men in their lives, please take appropriate caution when handling and disposing of said former family jewels.
Here's a little more about the cracks around FuckYouShima:
I await your flames and plaudits. I surely have missed some gaping cracks growing in the foundations of our happy little world, so please add your own below.
For those who feel the need to remind us about how dangerous coal is, as if that were relevant, or how many people get cancer from smoking, or how Potassium in bananas can contains radioisotopes, i say bring it. Your specious deceptive cheerleading for the fallout industry will be dismantled through simple reason, your motives and feigned ignorance exposed as manipulation, and the immorality of shouting 'Be Calm, Sit Down' in a burning theatre, castigated. And if you still insist that the weapons making and imperialist looting spree currently referred to as civilian nuclear power is really a better alternative to a little catastrophic climate crisis, you will be required to show how the majority of species on the planet will fare better with global contamination by 137Cs and 90Sr than with relatively abrupt changes in temperature and water levels.
7:34 AM PT: UPDATE: an 8.6 earthquake has struck northern Japan, with epicenter in Fukushima prefecture. The government has issued a Tsunami warning, though according to some reports the warning has been withdrawn.