News You Won't See On Your TeeVee
This past weekend there were mass protests worldwide, once again demanding an immediate end to the SuperMegaton dirty bombs known as "commercial nuclear reactors" originally designed and deployed for the purpose of producing the fuel for Weapons of Mass Destruction and electricity for consumers. Seems the erstwhile consumers are no longer so enamored of the technology...
On March 11, 2011 a monstrous earthquake off the northeastern coast of Japan generated a tsunami twice as large as anybody had previously estimated could be produced, which hit the coast to wipe out farms, villages, towns, and about 20,000 people. It also caused the total meltdown of 3 out of 6 power reactors at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, catastrophic explosions and spent fuel fires at 4 of the 6 plants, and the release of at least 260% MORE cesium-137 than was released in 1986 by the last big nuclear dirty bomb that went off at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.
At Fukushima Daiichi, workers have been unable to locate any of the three melted cores, and as of March 2013, there are still over 10 million becquerels per hour, or 240 million becquerels per day, of radioactive cesium being released from the reactors.
Now, TEPCO attempts to minimize these numbers by pointing out that the cesium release from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi reactors was about 800 trillion becquerels per hour right after the disaster, but the fact remains, that a 10 million becquerel release would be a nuclear disaster in itself at any nuclear facility not named Fukushima Daiichi or operated by TEPCO.
The photo at the top of this diary is of the protest in Taipei, Taiwan, estimated to have drawn more than 200,000 protesters. Here are some links to more coverage of protests across the world, for those who may be laboring under the misapprehension that the disaster has magically stopped being a disaster at some point in the past two years, or that the disaster is well on its way to being "cleaned up" at this point in time. Fukushima Daiichi in no danger of that, as TEPCO officials just this past week reported that they're running out of places to store grossly contaminated water leaking from the destroyed plants, and is
seeking permission to release stored water into the ocean.
Two years have passed since Japan nuked the rest of the world
Anti-Nuclear rallies mark run-up to Fukushima anniversary
Fukushima anniversary sees UK's largest anti-nuclear protest in decades
On Fukushima anniversary, blackflag protests at Kudankulam
200,000 take part in Taiwan's anti-nuclear protest
Thousands protest in Japan on eve of Fukushima nuclear disaster anniversary
Anti-nuke protests fill streets around world before 3/11 anniversary
Fukushima anniversary protest in Toronto