Fukushima Uncontained: Nuclear Plant Continuosly Releasing 93 Billion Becquerels Of Radiation A DAY Into Pacific Ocean For Years

Oldspeak: “The bottom line is that the reactors have lost containment. There are not “some leaks” at Fukushima. “Leaks” imply that the reactor cores are safely in their containment buildings, and there is a small hole or two which need to be plugged. But scientists don’t even know where the cores of the reactors are. That’s not leaking. That’s even worse than a total meltdown.” This is a daily, ongoing ecological catastrophe. Being ignored and denied  by American and by proxy Japanese goverments to preserve and proliferate pro-nuclear energy policy. Why is this profoundly dangerous, toxic and perpetually contaminating energy source being propped up as viable? Our ecosystem is continuously being contaminated by deadly radiation. It’s being transported around the planet via water and air. How is this part of American environmental policy? It is destroying the environment!? Tell your elected officials you want to your food, air and environment tested for radiation.  You want to know what’s being done to protect the public and environment from this ongoing catastrophe.  I, for the first time in two years, heard a 1 minute mention of the conditions at the plant just now on Free Speech TV on the Thom Hartman Show. Zero coverage in corporate controlled media. “

 By Washington’s Blog:

You may have heard that Tepco – the operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plants – announced a large leak of radioactive water.

You may have heard that the cooling system in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima has failed for a second time in a month.

This is newsworthy stuff … but completely misses the big picture.

Associated Press notes:

Experts suspect a continuous leak into the ocean through an underground water system, citing high levels of contamination in fish caught in waters just off the plant.

(Tepco graphics of the Fukushima plants even appear to show water directly flowing from the plant to the ocean. And see this.)

In fact, Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day.

How much radiation is that?

A quick calculation shows that Chernobyl released around ten thousand times more radioactive cesium each day during the reactor fire. But the Chernobyl fire only lasted 10 days … and the Fukushima release has been ongoing for more than 2 years so far.

Indeed, Fukushima has already spewed much more radioactive cesium and iodine 131 than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher than initially admitted.

Fukushima also pumped out huge amounts of radioactive iodine 129 – which has a half-life of 15.7 million years. Fukushima has also dumped up to 900 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium-90 – which is a powerful internal emitter which mimics calcium and collects in our bones – into the ocean.

And the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl … and so could keep leaking for decades, centuries or millenia.

The bottom line is that the reactors have lost containment. There are not “some leaks” at Fukushima. “Leaks” imply that the reactor cores are safely in their containment buildings, and there is a small hole or two which need to be plugged. But scientists don’t even know where the cores of the reactors are. That’s not leaking. That’s even worse than a total meltdown.

So what are the consequences for people living outside of Fukushima itself?

They could be quite severe, indeed.

Fukushima Reactor Meltdowns Driving Increased Abnormalities Among U.S. Infants; Mass Die Offs & Sickness In Sea Life

Oldspeak: “Congenital hypothyroidism results from a build up of radioactive iodine in our thyroids and can result in stunted growth, lowered intelligence, deafness, and neurological abnormalities—though can be treated if detected early. Because their small bodies are more vulnerable and their cells grow faster than adults’, infants serve as the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’ for injurious environmental effects. According to researchers from the Radiation and Public Health Project who performed the study, “Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the US, and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation.” This is an ongoing environmental disaster. There has been no effective containment of the radiation constantly spewing from this reactor. The Pacific ocean is contaminated with radiation, as the Japanese had the brilliant idea of dumping untold millions of gallons of highly radioactive water into it . Fallout has affected all areas of the U.S. There have been repeated mass die offs, sickness and  irradiation among plant and animal life. Now the devastating effects are showing up in children on the west coast.  Expect these effects to keep showing up. Nonetheless, there is no coverage, testing or analysis of this ongoing ecological calamity. There is no effort to inform or protect the population. It will be really interesting to see what effects manifest in 8 years when Fukushima radiation levels on the west coast are expected to reach their peak. WOW.

By Lauren McCauley @ Common Dreams:

Infants on the West Coast of the United States are showing increased incidents of thyroid abnormalities, which researchers are attributing to radiation released following the March 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

According to a new study (.pdf) published in the Open Journal of Pediatrics, children born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the meltdown began are 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism (CH) than were kids born in those states during the same period one year earlier.

CH results from a build up of radioactive iodine in our thyroids and can result in stunted growth, lowered intelligence, deafness, and neurological abnormalities—though can be treated if detected early.

Because their small bodies are more vulnerable and their cells grow faster than adults’, infants serve as the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’ for injurious environmental effects.

“With the embryo and fetus, there can never be a ‘safe’ dose of radiation,” writes nukefree.org founder Harvey Wasserman. “NO dose of radiation is too small to have a human impact.”

According to researchers from the Radiation and Public Health Project who performed the study, “Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the US, and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation.” They add that CH can provide an early measure to “assess any potential changes in US fetal and infant health status after Fukushima because official data was available relatively promptly.”

Health researcher Joe Mangano similarly cautioned, “Reports of rising numbers of West Coast infants with under-active thyroid glands after Fukushima suggest that Americans may have been harmed by Fukushima fallout. Studies, especially of the youngest, must proceed immediately.”

Earlier this year, the Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey found that more than 40 percent of the Japanese children studied showed evidence of thyroid abnormalities, which Wasserman says signifies a “horrifying plague.” He continues:

The ultimate death toll among Fukushima’s victims may be inescapable. But the industry that’s harming them is not. Those thyroid-damaged children bring us yet another tragic warning: There’s just one atomic reactor from which our energy can safely come. Two years after Fukushima, it is still 93 million miles away—but more ready than ever to safely, cleanly and cheaply power our planet.

Is Fukushima Radiation Causing the Epidemic of Dead and Starving Sea Lions In California?

By Washington’s Blog:

What’s Causing the Mass Die-Off and Starvation of California Sea Lions?

Associated Press reports:

At island rookeries off the Southern California coast, 45 percent of the pups born in June have died, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service based in Seattle. Normally, less than one-third of the pups would die.

It’s gotten so bad in the past two weeks that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared an “unusual mortality event.” That will allow more scientists to join the search for the cause, Melin said.

***

Even the pups that are making it are markedly underweight ….

***

Rescuers have had to leave the worst of them in an effort to save the strongest ones, she said.

***

Routine testing of seafood is being done by state and federal agencies  and consumer safety experts are working with NOAA to find the problem.”No link has been established at this time between these sea lion strandings and any potential seafood safety issues,” NOAA said in a statement.

Given that the FDA has refused to test seafood for radiation, we’re not that confident that the government is looking that hard to see if Fukushima fallout is the cause.

Reuters notes:

From the beginning of this year through last Sunday, 948 sea lion pups came ashore in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, according to figures from NOAA.

“There really isn’t an oceanographic explanation for what we’re seeing,” Melin said. “We’re looking at disease as a possibility and also at the food supply, and it could be some combination.”

CNN reports:

This is an unprecedented crisis for the species in this state says the Pacific Marine Mammal Center.

***

“So we are seeing exponentially higher numbers” [Keith Matassa, who runs the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach said].

***

When you say off the charts, this is what you’re talking about.

CBS News reported last week:

”They’re very sick,” said Keith Matassa, who runs the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach. His team is nursing 115 sea lions back to health. “A normal sea lion at this age — 8 to 9 months old — should be around 60, 70 pounds,” said Matassa. “We’re seeing them come into our center at 20 to 25 pounds, and really they look like walking skeletons.”

AP notes:

Biologists knew last spring that this year’s supply of anchovies and sardines could be limited, Boehm said.

“These two species of fish are an extremely important part of California sea lions’ diets, and females simply may not have been able to nurse their young sufficiently, resulting in abandonment, premature weaning and subsequent strandings,” he said.

Besides anchovies and sardines, sea lions also eat squid and other ocean creatures.

Time reported in April 2011:

Few people want to see the ocean’s anchovy stocks wiped out by radiation either. That’s just the scenario that seemed to be developing, however, when reports coming out of Japan revealed that elevated levels of cesium-137 had been found in anchovies in the waters off Chiba, near Toky0—a direct result of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

***

In the big-fish-eats-little-fish way of the ocean, the radioactive contamination eventually gets passed up the food chain, concentrating in fats which get consumed and stored, until the isotopes finally come to rest in the very largest creature at the top of the food chain ….

Huge die-offs of sardines were also reported in the Chiba area of Japan after Fukushima.

Moreover, the Vancouver Sun reported in January 2012 that 94 per cent of the anchovies and 92 per cent of the sardines sold by the Japanese to Canada contained radioactive cesium. Some of the fish were caught in Japanese coastal waters; but others were made many hundreds of miles away in the open ocean.

(Note: there may be additional reasons for fluctuations in the numbers of anchovies and sardines other than radiation.)

Moreover, radiation from Fukushima was directly deposited into the kelp off the Western coast of North America … especially in Southern California.

Fish that eat the kelp have also gotten exposed to the radiation … as have the animals that eat those fish.

NOAA reports:

Sea lions … feed on the fish that live in kelp forests.

(Images here.)

There are numerous other routes in which the Fukushima radiation could be getting to the sea lion pups.  We noted last year:

A 1955 U.S. government report concluded that the ocean may not adequately dilute radiation from nuclear accidents.

MIT says that seawater which is itself radioactive may begin hitting the West Coast within 5 years.

In 10 years, peak radioactive cesium levels off of the West Coast of North America could be 10 times higher than at the coast of Japan.

As we’ve previously noted, Reuters reports that Alaskan seals are suffering mysterious lesions and hair loss:

Scientists in Alaska are investigating whether local seals are being sickened by radiation from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

Scores of ring seals have washed up on Alaska’s Arctic coastline since July, suffering or killed by a mysterious disease marked by bleeding lesions on the hind flippers, irritated skin around the nose and eyes and patchy hair loss on the animals’ fur coats.

***

“We recently received samples of seal tissue from diseased animals captured near St. Lawrence Island with a request to examine the material for radioactivity,” said John Kelley, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“There is concern expressed by some members of the local communities that there may be some relationship to the Fukushima nuclear reactor’s damage,” he said.

Here’s a picture of one of the injured seals:

We reported yesterday that a new scientific paper shows that the Fukushima radioactive plume contaminated the entire Northern hemisphere during a relatively short period of time ….

Radioactive fish are also being found off the West Coast.

A California-sized island of debris from Japan is also hitting the West Coast.

And West Coast residents have also been exposed to Fukushima radiation from the air.  See this, this and this.

Unfortunately, the nuclear accident is nowhere near contained.  Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day, the reactors have lost containment, and groundwater is flooding into the stricken reactors (delaying clean-up).

And things may get worse for California, instead of better .

 

High Radiation Levels Detected In Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Pacific Seawater/Seafood Radioactive; Media & Government Turn Blind Eye

Oldspeak:“Southern California is still getting hit by Fukushima radiation at alarmingly high levels that will inevitably increase as the main bulk of radioactive  Pacific Ocean water reaches North America over the next two years. High radiation readings in Santa Monica and Los Angeles air during a 42-day period from late December to late January strongly suggest that radiation is increasing in the region including along the coast in Ventura County. Even with government, University of California and this reporter’s tests showing high radiation in the air, water, food and dairy products in this state, the state and federal governments cut off special testing for Fukushima radionuclides more than half a year ago.” -Michael Collins This ongoing disaster is an existential threat. Untold millions of tons of radioactive water has been continuously dumped into the Pacific Ocean, radiation has been detected in rain, snow, air, water &  food in a number of places far away from the west coast. Why has the level of concern of state and federal governments been so low? Why has radioactivity testing been stopped? Why is the Ventura County Reporter the only news outlet reporting on this acute threat to the lives of millions of Americans? It’s become clear that this ongoing catastrophe will be ignored until it is no longer possible to do so. By then it will be too late to do anything about it. WHY?! In the mean time people living in pacific coast bordering regions should take steps to protect themselves. Avoid seafood. Stay inside during rainstorms. Avoid the beach. Limit your time outdoors. “

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“Planetary Genocide”: Fukushima One Year Later : The Poisoning Of Planet Earth Continues

Read more By Michael Collins @ The Ventura County Reporter:

Japan Is Poisoning The U.S., Canada, Other Countries By Burning Highly Radioactive Debris

Oldspeak:“Radioactivity from the burnt debris will end up not only in neighboring prefectures in Japan, but in Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California. Burning radioactive debris is basically re-creating the Fukushima disaster all over again, as it is releasing a huge amount of radioactivity which had settled on the ground back into the air. -Arnie Gundersen, Nuclear Expert Burning radioactive debris will only serve to further randomly spread radiation across Japan, as well as the rest of the world. -Steven Starr – Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility

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“Planetary Genocide”: Fukushima One Year Later : The Poisoning Of Planet Earth Continues

California Slammed With Radiation: Fukushima Radiation Plume Hit Southern & Central California

By Washington’s Blog:

Fukushima to Burn Highly-Radioactive Debris

Fukushima will start burning radioactive debris containing up to 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. As Mainchi notes:

The state will start building storage facilities for debris generated by the March 2011 tsunami as early as May at two locations in a coastal area of Naraha town, Fukushima Prefecture, Environment Ministry and town officials said Saturday.

***

About 25,000 tons of debris are expected to be brought into the facilities beginning in the summer, according to the officials.

***

If more than 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium are found per kilogram of debris, the debris will be transferred to a medium-term storage facility to be built by the state. But if burnable debris contains 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium or less, it may be disposed of at a temporary incinerator to be built within the prefecture, according to the officials.

Within the 20-km-radius no-go zone spanning across Naraha and five other municipalities along the coast, debris caused by the magnitude 9.0 quake and the subsequent tsunami has amounted to an estimated 474,000 tons, much of remaining where it is.

How much radiation is that?

It is a lot.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen has said that much lower levels of cesium – 5,000-8,000 bq/kg (20 times lower than what will be allowed to be burned at Fukushima) – would be sent to a special facility in the United States and buried underground for thousands of year. See this and this.

It is comparable to the levels of radioactivity found within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. See this and this.

And even the Japanese – who have raised acceptable levels of radiation to absurd levels – would normally demand that material with this radioactivity be encased in cement and buried:

According to plans by the Ministry of Environment, if the radioactive cesium concentration is less than 8,000 Bq/kg, then it is possible to dispose of it by burying it. Rubble that has 8,000 ~ 100,000 Bq must be encased in cement in order to prevent contact with water before being dumped. For rubble that exceeds 100,000 Bq, it must be encased in concrete walls and stored temporarily. The disposal place must be approved of by the Prefectural Governor.

In addition, some allege that debris surpassing 100,000 bq/kg of cesium will be burned, after being mixed with less-radioactive materials.

And many of the incinerators are located smack dab in the middle of crowded cities, and are not equipped to contain radiation.

Other Parts of Japan Are Also Burning Radioactive Debris

And it’s not just Fukushima.

Tokyo and many other areas in Japan are burning radioactive debris as well. And see this.

Burning to Continue for for Years

Mainichi reports that the radioactive debris will be burned for years … through at least March 2014.

Poisoning Other Countries

Burning radioactive debris does not destroy the radioactivity. It merely spreads it.

Gundersen says that radioactivity from the burnt debris will end up not only in neighboring prefectures, but in Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California. Gundersen said that burning radioactive debris is basically re-creating the Fukushima disaster all over again, as it is releasing a huge amount of radioactivity which had settled on the ground back into the air.

Steven Starr – Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who has advised numerous countries on issues of nuclear non-proliferation – writes:

Burning radioactive debris will only serve to further randomly spread radiation across Japan, as well as the rest of the world. Not only will this lead to more morbidity and mortality within Japan, but it will further complicate epidemiological studies of the Fukushima disaster. Raising “acceptable” levels of radioactive fallout is a false solution to a serious problem. It is possible for the government authorities to do this because radiation is invisible to us, and at lower doses, the consequences of exposure do not manifest themselves for some time . . . thus it is a poison that is easy to hide and ignore. Sadly, the children of Japan will be those most seriously affected by this man-made environmental catastrophe.

It is bad enough that radiation from Fukushima is spreading across the Pacific to the United States through air and water, that the Japanese are underplaying the enormous threat posed by the spent fuel pools, and that the Japanese have engaged in a massive cover-up of the severity of the Fukushima crisis. But intentionally burning radioactive debris to try to cover up the problem – and spreading radiation worldwide in the process – is an entirely separate affront.

Postscript:  In addition to burning radioactive debris, Japan intends to build tents over the leaking Fukushima reactors. While this sounds like a way to contain the radiation, it would actually funnel it straight up and spread it globally:

My reaction [to the announcement that the Fukushima nuclear operator would build giant tents over the reactors] was hope that the tents would at least keep radiation from spreading worldwide through the air, even if they didn’t do anything to prevent contamination of Japan’s groundwater or the Pacific Ocean.

But nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that the tents – while helping to protect workers at Fukushima – will actually increase the dispersion of radioactive gases. Specifically, Tepco will pump radiation out through stacks, which will push radiation up to a higher elevation, dispersing it even further around the world.

The Top Short-Term Threat To Humanity: The Spent Fuel Pools Of Fukushima

Oldspeak:”It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on NO.4 reactor – Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata. The U.S. started 2 wars, created new government agencies and has hemorrhaged trillions in military and surveillance spending in response to 9/11 and the deaths of 2,996 people. As many as 18,000 deaths in the U.S. have been attributed to exposure to Fukushima radioactivity. The Pacific Ocean is contaminated with radioactive waste water. The response?  Radiation detectors have been turned off, ‘acceptable limits’ of radiation exposure have been raised, reports of contaminated seaweed, rainwater, milk, seafood products have been largely ignored. This is any existential threat. Why is so little attention being paid to it? Another earthquake in the vicinity of Fukushima could spell the end of civilization as we know it. More energy needs to be put into containing this disaster and preparing for the worst.

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By Washington’s Blog:

The Greatest Single Threat to Humanity: Fuel Pool Number 4

We noted days after the Japanese earthquake that the biggest threat was from the spent fuel rods in the fuel pool at Fukushima unit number 4, and not from the reactors themselves. See this and this.

We noted in February:

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.

Given that nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that an earthquake of 7.0 or larger could cause the entire fuel pool structure collapse, it is urgent that everything humanly possible is done to stabilize the structure housing the fuel pools at reactor number 4.

Tepco is doing some construction at the building … it is a race against time under very difficult circumstances, and hopefully Tepco will win.

As AP points out:

The structural integrity of the damaged Unit 4 reactor building has long been a major concern among experts because a collapse of its spent fuel cooling pool could cause a disaster worse than the three reactor meltdowns.

***

Gundersen (who used to build spent fuel pools) explains that there is no protection surrounding the radioactive fuel in the pools. He warns that – if the fuel pools at reactor 4 collapse due to an earthquake – people should get out of Japan, and residents of the West Coast of America and Canada should shut all of their windows and stay inside for a while.

The fuel pool number 4 is apparently not in great shape, and there have already been countless earthquakes near the Fukushima region since the 9.0 earthquake last March.

Germany’s ZDF tv quotes nuclear engineer Yukitero Naka as saying:

If another earthquake occurs then the building [number 4] could collapse and another chain reaction could very likely occur.

(Unit 4 contains plutonium as well as other radioactive wastes.)

Mainchi reported on Monday:

The storage pool in the No. 4 reactor building has a total of 1,535 fuel rods, or 460 tons of nuclear fuel, in it. The 7-story building itself has suffered great damage, with the storage pool barely intact on the building’s third and fourth floors. The roof has been blown away. If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will overheat and explode, causing a massive amount of radioactive substances to spread over a wide area. Both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and French nuclear energy company Areva have warned about this risk.

A report released in February by the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident stated that the storage pool of the plant’s No. 4 reactor has clearly been shown to be “the weakest link” in the parallel, chain-reaction crises of the nuclear disaster. The worse-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. If this were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.

Former Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Sumio Mabuchi, who was appointed to the post of then Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s advisor on the nuclear disaster immediately after its outbreak, proposed the injection of concrete from below the No. 4 reactor to the bottom of the storage pool, Chernobyl-style.

***

“Because sea water was being pumped into the reactor, the soundness of the structure (concrete corrosion and deterioration) was questionable. There also were doubts about the calculations made on earthquake resistance as well,” said one government source familiar with what took place at the time. “[F]uel rod removal will take three years. Will the structure remain standing for that long?

Asahi noted last month that – if Unit 4 pool gets a crack from an earthquake and leaks, it would be the end for Tokyo.

Kevin Kamps said last month:

Unit 4 storage pool… The entire building is listing including the pool. What they have is steel jacks underneath the pool to try to keep the floor from falling out or the pool from flipping over.

If that cooling water supply is lost, it will be just a few hours at most before that waste is on fire. 135 tons outside of any radioactive containment. They would be direct releases into the environment. 100% of cesium-137 could be released to the environment.

Former U.N. adviser Akio Matsumura – whose praises have been sung by Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. Ambassadors Stephen Bosworth and Glenn Olds, and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and Goldman Sachs co-chair John C. Whitehead – notes:

The unit suffered enormous damage during the tsunami—a hydrogen explosion blew the roof off, leaving the highly radioactive fuel pool exposed to the open air. If another high level earthquake hits the area, the building will certainly collapse. Japanese and American meteorologists have predicted that such a strong earthquake is indeed likely to hit this year.

The meltdown and unprecedented release of radiation that would ensue is the worst case scenario that then-Prime Minister Kan and other former officials have discussed in the past months. He warned during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos that such an accident would force the evacuation of the 35 million people in Tokyo, close half of Japan and compromise the nation’s sovereignty. Such a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe is unimaginable. Hiroshi Tasaka, a nuclear engineer and special adviser to Prime Minister Kan immediately following the crisis, said the crisis “just opened Pandora’s Box.”

The current Japanese government has not yet mentioned the looming disaster, ostensibly to not incite panic in the public. Nevertheless, action must be taken quickly. This website over the last year has published a running commentary from scientists explaining why Reactor 4 must be stabilized immediately, who might be able to accomplish such a task, and why the situation has largely gone unnoticed. We believe an independent, international team of structural engineers and other advisers must be assembled and deployed immediately. Mounting public pressure would force the Japanese government to take action. We hope these resources are helpful in educating the public about the crisis that we face.

As the eminent German physicist Dr. Hans-Peter Durr said ten months ago, if the spent fuel pool spills, we will be in a situation where science never imagined we could be.

Matsumura was told that if the fuel pool at unit 4 collapses or the water spills out, so much radiation will spew out for 50 years that no one will be able to approach Fukushima:

Even more dramatically, Matsumura writes:

Japan’s former Ambassador to Switzerland, Mr. Mitsuhei Murata, was invited to speak at the Public Hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22, 2012, on the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident. Before the Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air. This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced. He stressed that the responsibility of Japan to the rest of the world is immeasurable. Such a catastrophe would affect us all for centuries. Ambassador Murata informed us that the total numbers of the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site excluding the rods in the pressure vessel is 11,421 (396+615+566+1,535+994+940+6375).

I asked top spent-fuel pools expert Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy, for an explanation of the potential impact of the 11,421 rods.

I received an astounding response from Mr. Alvarez [updated 4/5/12]:

In recent times, more information about the spent fuel situation at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site has become known. It is my understanding that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 304 assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231 irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4, which contain roughly 37 million curies (~1.4E+18 Becquerel) of long-lived radioactivity. The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.

The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters. Despite the enormous destruction cased at the Da–Ichi site, dry casks holding a smaller amount of spent fuel appear to be unscathed.

Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all, which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2 E+19 Bq) of long-lived radioactivity. About 134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).

It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.

Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 85 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.

There was a Nuclear Security Summit Conference in Seoul on March 26 and 27, and Ambassador Murata and I made a concerted effort to find someone to inform the participants from 54 nations of the potential global catastrophe of reactor unit 4. We asked several participants to share the idea of an Independent Assessment team comprised of a broad group of international experts to deal with this urgent issue.

I would like to introduce Ambassador Murata’s letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to convey this urgent message and also his letter to Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda for Japanese readers. He emphasized in the statement that we should bring human wisdom to tackle this unprecedented challenge.

Ambassador Murata’s letter says:

It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on NO.4 reactor. This is confirmed by most reliable experts like Dr. Arnie Gundersen or Dr. Fumiaki Koide.

Anti-nuclear physician Dr. Helen Caldicott says that if fuel pool 4 collapses, she will evacuate her family from Boston and move them to the Southern Hemisphere. This is an especially dramatic statement given that the West Coast is much more directly in the path of Fukushima radiation than the East Coast.

Will humanity rise to the occasion, and figure out how to stabilize fuel pool number 4 before catastrophe strikes?

Or will modern civilization win a Darwin award for failing to pay attention to the real threats?

“Planetary Genocide”: Fukushima One Year Later : The Poisoning Of Planet Earth Continues

Oldspeak:” While hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions?) will develop various radiation-related illnesses (cancers and diabetes, as well as radiation-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and birth deformities) over the next decades, the coffers of the medical profession, pharmaceutical companies, and nuclear industry will be bursting with profits. The 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl continues its deathly impact –and that was only one reactor. Fukushima had six reactors. As long as profits trump safety, and as long as the entire nuclear industry has ties to the military, we will never be safe. Valid citizens’ and medical concerns continue to be ignored. We are all expendable.-Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri “Profit Is Paramount” We’re all being continuously and systemically poisoned by toxic radioactivity. Why has there been so little coverage of this existential threat in corporate media?

 

by Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri @ Center For Research On Globalization:

“The most difficult thing of all is to see is what is right in front of your eyes.”  Goethe.

 

As we approach the tragic one-year anniversary of Fukushima’s multiple nuclear reactors’ accident on March 11, that initially affected the entire Japanese population, we now know that this nightmare has engulfed all of us. Let us also not forget that this is the third nuclear attack on the Japanese (the first two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Given what has not been done to ensure public safety, we cannot think of it any other way. From the very first day, there were lies and a massive cover-up of the extent of the destruction and the inherent radioactive dangers –not just from Japanese officials and TEPCO corporate reports, but also from the US. The Mark 1 reactors, built by General Electric, have design flaws. There are many of these same-designed reactors in the US.

 

A year later, much of the corruption, deceit, and careless practices have been documented extensively here at Global Research –while mainstream news continues Orwellian doublespeak. Last month, in a rare but very belated mainstream account, CBS News reported that after the tsunami and nuclear accident: “The normal lines of [government] authority completely collapsed in Japan.” See:

 

www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57386266/report-govt-collapsed-during-japan-nuke-crisis

 

Early on, even essential radioactive monitoring was shut down. In May 2011, the prestigious Norsk Institute’s online site was blocked from the US. They had been monitoring on a daily basis the worldwide radioactive contamination to which we were all –and continue to be– exposed. Conveniently, any early radiation monitoring in the US was inconsistent, with numerous sites supposedly not working for one or another reason. Then the so-called “acceptable” radiation levels in food were raised in the US and EU:

www.activistpost.com/2011/04/eu-follows-epa-raises-acceptable.html

 

As Dr. Helen Caldicott and Dr. Chris Busby have repeatedly reported: “There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water, or other sources. Period.” See:

www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=23902

and

 

www.helencaldicott.com/2011/05/unsafe-at-any-dose/#more-285

 

So, what is not monitored, or where the radiation rates are manipulated, then no one –government officials and corporations– can ever be held accountable, nor can increased death rates, diabetes, stillbirths, birth defects ever be attributed to this catastrophic planetary event.

 

When have we ever been told the truth about our life-long systemic radiation poisoning? For decades, we have been uninformed experimental laboratory rats since before the Manhattan Project. There never were any ethical or precautionary considerations. Greed and secret agendas trumped everything else.

 

With various half-lives –some eons-long– of numerous radioactive components, the human race and every other living creature on our planet is on its way to extinction, due to the known sterilization effects of radiation. Here is a short list of the half-life of five of the radioactive isotopes that are and will continue to poison all of our children, and us, ad infinitum, in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink and in which we bathe:

• 
  ·         Cesium 137: 30 years

 

• ·         Plutonium 239: 24,000 years

 

• ·         Strontium 90: 29 years [mimics calcium in the body]

 

• ·         Uranium 235: 700-million years

 

• ·         Iodine 131: 8 days [absorbed into the thyroid and gives heavy radiation dose. Also goes into the soil, passed onto us through cow’s milk.]

 

In a report released just a few week’s ago, the milk tested in the San Francisco area still had radioactive levels of Cesium 134 and Cesium 137. According to even a compromised EPA, these are now at “150 percent of their maximum contaminant level.” Here’s the chart:

http://enenews.com/highest-level-radioactive-cesium-san-francisco-area-milk-august-2011-150-epas-maximum-contaminant-limit-chart

 

In addition, Fukushima’s Unit 3 reactor also used MOX [mixed oxide], a plutonium-uranium fuel mixture that is deadly. A single milligram of MOX is 2-million times more deadly than enriched uranium.

 

Current radiation levels reported on Feb. 25 in Tokyo, 100 miles from Fukushima and an international hub, are “25 times the Fukushima mandatory evacuation zone.” The eminent physicist Dr. Paolo Scampa has reported in detail his latest calculations on deadly radiation exposure here (see page 2):

www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/25/evacuate-tokyo-and-all-us-forces-from-japan

For 30-million Japanese this is an epic tragedy.

 

Any reasonable safety precautions or realistic evacuations never took place at Fukushima or elsewhere. In addition, a collection of 40-years worth of 600,000 spent fuel rods posed an immediate HazMat threat that never went away. The water poured over them evaporated into radioactive steam to go directly into our planet’s atmosphere and the tons of sea water sprayed on the entire nuclear conflagration were criminally dumped into the Pacific Ocean. Again, because it was not monitored, we will never know how many millions of tons of radioactive water were dumped into the Pacific Ocean. The entire web of ocean life then was irreversibly contaminated with radioactive nuclear waste and detritus, as the ocean currents carried this nightmare to the west coast shores of North America (California, Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver). As with other major planetary bodies of water, the Pacific Ocean has become an enormous radioactive garbage dump of incalculable proportions that are beyond any remediation currently known to science. This majestic body of water has become one of our planet’s toilets.(1)

 

What about the entire web of ocean life? From the great and magnificent whales to the variety of microscopic life, this entire vast ecosystem has been poisoned. Yet, we will never know the immense extent of death and destruction that Fukushima caused to it. Even knowing that the ocean food chain is contaminated with radioactivity, this was not reported by mainstream media. So, the fishing industry is catching and selling various fish and crustaceans that are radioactive. How many tons of these have gone up through the entire food chain, and then sold to uninformed consumers who eat these HazMat foods? Profits always trump our safety and well-being. This is the massive global poisoning of our only home –Mother Earth. We are fortunate, however, that the alternative internet media has reported on these dangers.

 

While hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions?) will develop various radiation-related illnesses (cancers and diabetes, as well as radiation-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and birth deformities) over the next decades, the coffers of the medical profession, pharmaceutical companies, and nuclear industry will be bursting with profits. The 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl continues its deathly impact –and that was only one reactor.(2) Fukushima had six reactors.

 

Medical reports are already showing a significant rise in deaths due to Fukushima’s radioactive fallout. Noted toxicologist and internist Dr. Janet Sherman recently said:” Based on our continuing research, the actual death count here [in the US] may be as high as 18,000…but we continue to find that infants are hardest hit because their tissues are rapidly multiplying, they have undeveloped immune systems, and the doses of radioisotopes are proportionally greater than for adults.” See:

www.radiation.org/press/pressrelease111219FukushimaReactorFallout.html

 

This massive and frightening crisis is the result of no precaution, no prevention, and no care or concern for human or any other kind of life on our planet. None of this is mainstream news. E.O. Wilson (“The Future of Life” and “Biodiversity”) and Bill McKibben (“The End of Nature”) were writing about these issues decades ago. The dangers of the nuclear age continue to mount with off-the-scale disastrous results to all of us.

 

How much longer can we be deceived about the extreme dangers of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons? Everything that encompasses nuclear energy is unsafe. It is hazardous in the extreme. Further, nuclear waste has been accumulating for six decades. There is NO LONG-TERM SAFE WAY TO STORE ANY NUCLEAR WASTE. For example, countless drums of nuclear waste have been dumped into the ocean, and have been found to be leaking radioactive poisons.

 

Everything on our planet has been contaminated with life-long and long-term radiation. I continue to write: “Invisible does not mean safe.” With many nuclear facilities in the US old and having numerous problems, the core issue of it as a hazardous endeavor remains. Two nuclear plants with serious troubles are Vermont Yankee, and just last month San Onofre (built right on a fault line). They are just the tips of the proverbial radioactive iceberg.

 

So, as long as profits trump safety, and as long as the entire nuclear industry has ties to the military, we will never be safe. Valid citizens’ and medical concerns continue to be ignored. We are all expendable.

 

This is not a one-issue health and/or environmental crisis. We MUST think of the bigger picture, across many disciplines. We are in the midst of a long-planned and multi-pronged assault on our health and our planet’s. The destruction of real and long-term good health has been replaced by multiple and chronic diseases (often caused by enormous toxic pollution that envelops all of us). Our entire biology has been battered for a century. The blood-brain barrier has been breached. Nano-technology and invisible stealth-created micro-organisms –both unregulated– are our modern-day plagues. Many were created in some bio-hazard lab. To add to this is the poisoning of our water, air and food supply. In 1998, the print-edition of London’s “The Ecologist” (perhaps the earliest environmental magazine, first published in the 1970s), devoted their entire issue to “The Monsanto Files. Can we survive genetic engineering?”(3) For many years, F. William Engdahl (“Seed of Destruction”) and Dr. Mae Wan-Ho both have written about the abundant and well-documented dangers of genetic engineering and the GM poisoned foods.

 

Add to that:, we have an illegal but on-going geo-engineered aerosol 24/7/365 stealth assault overhead that has completely changed our air and poisoned our health. In numerous lectures and research papers, Clifford Carnicom has documented that our air has been transformed to a plasma state; and with it is the associated tragedy of Morgellons syndrome that was created from some synthetic self-replicating nano-organism. There is no “off switch” for this; but the media ridicules sufferers. Time magazine recently published an article noting that these very real and documented symptoms were “delusional.” Into this synergistic nightmare are also 100,000 chemicals –90 percent of which are untested– that surround our every move.

 

Last, but by no means the least, of these hazards is the hidden dangers of the EMF/RF spectrum [Electromagnetic Frequency/Radiation Frequency]. The proliferation of this deadly technology encompasses: cell phones and Wi-Fi and their towers that poison our landscapes. With more than 5-billion cell phones sold, consumers were never told how dangerous they were. Outdated data and reports do not include the now constant barrage of these higher frequencies that wreck our health. There is also newly reported research demonstrating that this also includes impairment of cognitive function and brain damage.(4)

 

The latest release of this hazardous technology is the so-called “Smart” Meters that are being installed all over North America and Europe without any mandate and without any preliminary research that the utility [electric, gas, and water] companies did on the numerous biological threats they are already causing people who have had a meter installed.(5)

 

With 8,000 complaints, California leads the US in the most vocal concerns about these meters. Several cities, including Santa Cruz, CA, have banned them with year-long moratoria. There was never any mandate to force these meters on anyone; the utility companies did not warn customers of the extreme risks of constantly pulsing EMF, nor did they warn customers about breakage to our DNA or brain damage. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (founded in 1965) has called for a moratorium on these dangerous meters.(6) It is conceivable that the unfolding EMF crisis will be far worse than the asbestos and tobacco hazards combined. Scientist Prof. Olle Johansson of Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute, has been warning about these invisible biological dangers for decades. See:

1. 
   1.    www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS7YIZ1x0r8

and

1. 2.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJZumEgSblQ

 

Corporations have personhood and have the same legal standing as any real humans. They have the financial means to block any real justice for the environmental and health damage their products continue to cause. They are rarely held accountable. Add to that the destruction of 30-years of environmental laws meant to protect us, this is another part of the disaster recipe in which we live out our days. The nuclear industry has never told us the truth about the permanent level of radiation dangers to which we are all exposed. The plunder of our planet and the destruction of vast ecosystems have been documented for decades. These poisons, mostly invisible, envelop our every move, contaminate our DNA, and wreck our health and ability to reproduce safely. The past 10 years this destruction has been accelerated at a phenomenal rate, while mainstream media continues to report lies.

 

Nevertheless, more and more millions of people are waking up and connecting many of the dots of these epidemics of serious illnesses, loss of millions of jobs, theft of millions of homes, stealing of trillions of dollars of wealth to pay off banksters, CEOs and insiders, while the middle class around the globe is in extremis. Evidence continues to mount of what insider trading and printing of fiat money has done to destroy people’s lives and economies around the globe. We cannot minimize or discount a situation that is totally out of control; and we cannot think of each of these HazMats as separate problems. They are all inter-related and they are destroying out health. Connecting the dots of this multi-pronged assault on all of us as well as our entire biosphere is ESSENTIAL. It is not sustainable. It is up to all of us to become well-informed and educated about what is happening, join together, and to paraphrase Dr. Rosalie Bertell “refuse to co-operate in our own destruction.” We still have that choice.

 

Remember: What we don’t look for, we can’t find. If those in charge decide NOT to monitor or report the dangers, then no one is ever held accountable –that includes those in charge. We all suffer the consequences.

 

NOTES:

1. Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri. “The Pacific Ocean: A Radioactive Garbage Dump.” May 14, 2011:

http://consciouslifenews.com/pacific-ocean-radioactive-garbage-dump/116277

 

2. Mittica, Pierpaolo, et al. “Chernobyl. The Hidden Legacy.” London: Trolley, Ltd., 2007; and Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri. “Chernobyl: The Horrific Legacy. 25 Years and Counting.” April 25, 2009:

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13349

 

3. “The Monsanto Files. Can we survive genetic engineering?” London. The Ecologist. Vol. 28, No. 5: Sept./Oct. 1998.

 

4. Adamantia Fragopoulou et al. “Brain proteome response following whole body exposure of mice to mobile phone or wireless DECT base radiation.” Jan. 25, 2012.There is an abstract at:

 

http://electromagnetichealth.org/electromagnetic-health-blog/mice-proteome

 

5. See: “The Invisible Hazards of ‘Smart’ Meters.” August 19, 2011:

 www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26082; and ‘”Smart’ Meter Dangers Update: Scientific Proof of These Hazards.” Feb. 10, 2012:

http://consciouslifenews.com/smart-meter-dangers-update-scientific-proof-hazards/1124466

 

6. “American Academy of Environmental Medicine calls for a halt to wireless smart meters.” Jan. 23, 2012:

http://emfsafetynetwork.org/?p=6985

 

Educator and environmental writer Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri is the author of the highly acclaimed book, “The Uterine Crisis.” London’s “The Ecologist” calls this book “an inspiration.”

 

Fukushima Is Continually Blasting All Of Us With High Levels Of Radioactive Elements

Oldspeak:”Most people do not have any concept of just how dangerous nuclear contamination can be. At this point, the vast majority of people living in the northern hemisphere have been exposed to radioactive material from Fukushima. As the years go by, many Americans will get sick and die and they will never even know that it was Fukushima radiation that caused it. Deadly radioactive elements that are being released at high levels at Fukushima include iodine, cesium, uranium and plutonium.  Large amounts of these radioactive particles have already been absorbed in the soil and in the water in the United States. Large amounts of these radioactive particles have also entered our food chain. Also, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tons of highly radioactive water has been released into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima. All of this radioactive water is going to circulate all over the globe.  It is going to be a nightmare that is never going to end. Right now there is no viable solution to what is going on at Fukushima, so it will continue to blast all of us with high levels of radiation and will slowly kill millions of people around the globe for years to come” -The American Dream. That last sentence is the most likely reason governments and media worldwide have declined to inform people of the definitive extistential threat this disaster is and will continue to pose to the global ecosystem in perpetuity. Why bother telling people the air, everything they eat and drink is contaminated with radioactive toxic material that will never go away, and there’s nothing that can be done about it?” “Ignorance is Strength”.

By The American Dream:

Fukushima is now far and away the worst nuclear disaster in all of human history.  Chernobyl was a Sunday picnic compared to Fukushima and the amount of cesium-137 released at Fukushima this year so far is equivalent to 168 Hiroshima bombs.  The crisis at Fukushima is far, far worse than you have been told.  We are talking about multiple self-sustaining nuclear meltdowns that will not be fully contained for years.  In an attempt to keep people calm, authorities in Japan (and around the rest of the world as well) have lied and lied and lied.  Over the months that have passed since the disaster began, small bits of the truth have slowly started to come out.  Authorities are finally admitting that the area immediately surrounding Fukushima will be uninhabitable indefinitely, and they are finally admitting that the amount of radioactive material that has been released is far higher than initially reported.  It is going to take the Japanese years to fully contain this problem.  Meanwhile, Fukushima will continue to blast all of us with high levels of cesium, strontium and plutonium and will slowly kill millions of people around the globe for years to come.

These days, the mainstream media does not talk about Fukushima much.  The reality is that there have been a whole lot of other disasters for them to talk about.

But just because Fukushima is a nightmare that is playing out in very slow motion does not mean that it does not deserve our full attention.

To get an idea of just how nightmarish Fukushima has turned out to be, just consider the words of nuclear expert Steven C. Jones….

1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Meltdown

By way of comparison, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that occured in 1986 in the Ukraine, Russia- heretofore the worst nuclear disaster on record- burned for 10 days and cumulatively killed an estimated 1 million people worldwide. The Fukushima, Japan nuclear disaster has 5 nuclear reactors burning, 2 in partial meltdown and 3 in full meltdown- and they’ve ALL been uncontrollably burning since March

Fukushima Diiachi Nuclear Power Plant

11th. Its been over 3 months and this nuclear disaster remains completely out of control. In fact, some industry estimates cite the possibility that these meltdowns will be contained (optimistically) in 1-3 years, at the very earliest.

The amount and intensity of the radioactive fallout from this particular nuclear disaster will assuredly kill hundreds of millions of people worldwide over time. Japan itself is, of course, the epicenter of this radioactive contamination that has spread out from these reactors.

Keep in mind that radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster deeply contaminated77,000 square miles.

So if Fukushima is many times worse, what does that mean for us?

Just recently, authorities in Japan confessed that the amount of cesium-137 released by Fukushima is equivalent to 168 of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article inthe Telegraph….

Japan’s government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs.

I am no nuclear expert, but shortly after the Fukushima disaster began I postulated that much of northern Japan would be rendered uninhabitable by all of this radiation.

Well, it turns out that authorities in Japan have finally reached the same conclusion.  According to the New York Times, the Japanese government is acknowledging that large areas around the Fukushima nuclear facility may be uninhabitable for decades….

Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.

So what is the big deal?

Unfortunately, most people do not have any concept of just how dangerous nuclear contamination can be.

At this point, the vast majority of people living in the northern hemisphere have been exposed to radioactive material from Fukushima.

External vs. Internal Radiation

We can’t see them, but radioactive particles can do an insane amount of damage.  We can breathe them in, we can eat them in our food and we can even absorb them through our skin.  Once trapped inside our bodies, these particles can slowly “bake” us for years and years.  The following is from an opinion piece by Helen Caldicott in the Guardian….

Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). [2] After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.

One of the most dangerous radioactive elements being released at Fukushima is strontium.  Strontium accumulates in the bones and in the teeth.  It is also known to cause cancer in humans.

It has been estimated that approximately 80 percent of the strontium that was released during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster entered the food cycle.

Considering the vast amount of strontium that has been released at Fukushima, that is a very frightening statistic.

The following is what NHK World recently had to say about the levels of strontium that are being found around Fukushima….

The utility detected up to 480 becquerels of radioactive strontium 90 per kilogram of soil. That’s about 100 times higher than the maximum reading recorded in Fukushima Prefecture following atmospheric nuclear tests carried out by foreign countries during the Cold War era.

TEPCO reported detecting 2,800 becquerels of strontium 89 per kilogram of soil at the same location.

Once you absorb strontium, it will stay in your bones for the rest of your life.  Just consider what Dr. Russell Blaylock recently told Newsmax….

When we look at Chernobyl, most of West Germany was heavily contaminated. Norway, Sweden. Hungary was terribly contaminated. The radiation was taken up into the plants. The food was radioactive. They took the milk and turned it into cheese. The cheese was radioactive.

That’s the big danger, the crops in this country being contaminated, the milk in particular, with Strontium 90. That radiation is incorporated into the bones and stays for a lifetime.

So would you like to have radioactive material in your bones that affects your health for the rest of your life?

It may have already happened to you and you wouldn’t even know it.

Other deadly radioactive elements that are being released at high levels at Fukushima include iodine, cesium, uranium and plutonium.  Large amounts of these radioactive particles have already been absorbed in the soil and in the water in the United States.

Large amounts of these radioactive particles have also entered our food chain.

As the years go by, a whole lot of Americans are going to get sick and die and they will never even know that it was Fukushima that caused it.

Remember, just because you cannot see these radioactive particles does not mean that they aren’t incredibly deadly.  Just check out what nuclear expertSteven C. Jones recently had to say about plutonium….

To give one an example of how lethal radiation is, one pound of plutonium evenly distributed into everyone’s lungs would kill every man, woman and child on Earth. There are literally “tons” of radioactive plutonium (among other radioactive elements) that have been released into the air and ocean environments since March 11th. Another critical fact to remember is that radioactive plutonium, for example, remains lethal (killing life) for thousands years as it has a half-life of 24,000 years. Some other radioactive elements such as uranium have a half-life of 4.47 billion years.

That is the scary thing with many of these radioactive elements.  Now that they have been released, many of them will be with us for as long as we live, for as long as our children live and for as long as our grandchildren live.

Yes, things are much worse than you have been told.

Up until now, the Japanese government has insisted that those living outside the 20 kilometer exclusion zone are safe.

But is that really the case?

According to Reuters, Greenpeace has found incredibly high levels of radiation at schools up to 60 km away…..

Greenpeace said on Monday that schools and surrounding areas located 60 km (38 miles) from Japan’s tsunami-hit nuclear power plant were unsafe for children, showing radiation readings as much as 70 times internationally accepted levels.

In addition, a recent Japan Times article noted that high levels of cesium have been discovered at 42 incineration plants in seven different prefectures in Japan….

High levels of cesium isotopes are cropping up in dust at 42 incineration plants in seven prefectures, including Chiba and Iwate, an Environment Ministry survey of the Kanto and Tohoku regions shows.

Also, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal stated that incredibly high levels of cesium-137 have been found up to 100 km away from the Fukushima nuclear facility….

The first comprehensive survey of soil contamination from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant showed that 33 locations spread over a wide area have been contaminated with long-lasting radioactive cesium, the government said Tuesday.

The survey of 2,200 locations within a 100-kilometer (62-mile) radius of the crippled plant found that those locations had cesium-137 in excess of 1.48 million becquerels per square meter, the level set by the Soviet Union for forced resettlement after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Japanese authorities said.

Remember that Tokyo is only about 250 km away from the Fukushima nuclear facility.

So what happens if high levels of cesium start showing up in Tokyo?

According to some sources, things have already gotten very serious in Tokyo.

Dr. Chris Busby recently traveled to Japan with some very sophisticated testing equipment and found one sample in Tokyo that had levels of radioactivity that were higher than the exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl during that nuclear disaster.

But things are much worse for those living much closer to Fukushima.  High levels of cesium have been detected in the urine and in the breast milk of those living in the region surrounding the facility.  All over the area there are reports of people coming down with the symptoms of radiation sickness.

The truth is that the “evacuation area” should be far, far larger than it is now.  Just consider what Mike Adams of Natural News recently had to say about what recent tests have shown….

One soil sample taking 25 kilometers away from Fukushima showed Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter. This level, of course, makes it uninhabitable by humans, yet both the Japanese and U.S. governments continue to downplay the whole event, assuring their sheeple that there’s nothing to worry about. By their logic, since all the people are sheeple anyway, as long as the area is safe enough for sheep, it’s also safe enough for the human population.

A lot of people in Japan are going to die, and frustrations are rising.  According to an article in The Independent, a lot of Japanese feel totally abandoned by their government at this point….

It is the fate of people outside the evacuation zones, however, that causes the most bitter controversy. Parents in Fukushima City, 63km from the plant, have banded together to demand that the government do more to protect about 100,000 children. Schools have banned soccer and other outdoor sports. Windows are kept closed. “We’ve just been left to fend for ourselves,” says Machiko Sato, a grandmother who lives in the city. “It makes me so angry.”

But just because you don’t live in Japan does not mean that you are not in danger.  The Fukushima nuclear facility sits right on the Pacific Ocean.  When nuclear material gets released into the air at Fukushima, the first time much of it will encounter land is when it reaches the United States.

Also, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tons of highly radioactive water has been released into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima.

What this is going to do to our oceans nobody knows for sure.  But according to the Los Angeles Times, the seawater near Fukushima has been found to be incredibly radioactive….

Tokyo Electric Power Co. had said Tuesday that it had found iodine-131 at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials instituted a health limit for radioactivity in fish. Other samples were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.

All of this radioactive water is going to circulate all over the globe.  It is going to be a nightmare that is never going to end.

Just because the mainstream media is not talking much about all of this radiation does not mean that it is not affecting the United States….

*Radiation from Fukushima has been detected in seaweed in Puget Sound.

*Radiation from Fukushima has been detected in the drinking water in numerous states.

*Radiation from Fukushima has been discovered in milk in numerous states.

*Very high levels of radiation continue to be detected in rainwater in the northwest United States.

This is a slow motion nightmare that is going to play out for years and years.

Some nuclear experts claim that it could be up to 50 or 100 years before any of the nuclear material at the Fukushima complex will cool down enough to be removed from the facility.

Right now there is no viable solution to what is going on at Fukushima, so it will continue to blast all of us with high levels of radiation and will slowly kill millions of people around the globe for years to come.

Former nuclear industry insider Arnold Gundersen recently put it this way….

“With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started,” he said, “But they never end.”

This is a nightmare that will be with us for the rest of our lives.  Millions are going to get sick and untold numbers of people are going to slowly die.

“The Whole World Will Be Exposed From The Radiation From Fukushima”: Huge Quantities Of Radiation Are Still Being Released By Fukushima Nuclear Plant

Oldspeak:” Radiation expert Dr. Chris Busby says that huge quantities of radiation - 10¹³ or 10 trillion becquerels per hour – are right now,  being released from Fukushima. And former Nasa photo analyst Michael Rivero – who has been measuring radiation levels in Oahu, Hawaii, every day since the Japanese earthquake – reports the highest radiation readings yet are occurring right now. Radioactive material is being burned and dumped into the ocean by the Japanese, exponentially increasing the distribution of radiation around the globe. So basically the whole planet is bathed in toxic radiation, no serious efforts are being made to contain it, and there is no mention of it in corporate media, it is literally being ignored and un-reported. It’s just gonna keep spewing into the atmosphere unabated, indefinitely. Why?

By Washington’s  Blog:

Physicist Michio Kaku appeared on 60 Minutes (the Australian edition), and said:

• The whole world will be exposed from the radiation from Fukushima.

• [The Japanese people] are guinea pigs, absolute human guinea pigs.

In fact, radiation experts say that huge quantities of radiation are currently being released by Fukushima.

In addition to direct releases, the Japanese are burning radioactive material, putting much more radioactivity into the air.

Japanese doctors are warning about the dangers of radiation for the Japanese people … especially kids.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that radioactive rain-outs were documented recently in British Columbia and Oklahoma with geiger counters.

And former Nasa photo analyst Michael Rivero – who has been measuring radiation levels in Oahu, Hawaii, every day since the Japanese earthquake – reports the highest radiation readings yet are occurring right now.

Huge Quantities of Radiation Are Still Being Released By Fukushima

Radiation expert Dr. Chris Busby says that huge quantities of radiation - 10¹³ or 10 trillionbecquerels per hour – are still being released from Fukushima.

This is down slightly from some of the radiation levels observed in March, which – as noted in April – exceeded levels pumped out at Chernobyl during the week-long fire.

But given that the Fukushima crisis has continued for months, Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl in terms of radiation released. See this and this.

Very High Radiation Levels Found in Tokyo

Busby brought sophisticated radiation testing equipment to Japan, and says that the radiation from one sample from Tokyo was higher than existed inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Postscript: No, the levels of radiation we’re being exposed to are not safe. And see this. 

Fukishima Reactors A Raging Nuclear Inferno Vast Amounts Of Radiation Still Being Released Into Atmosphere

Oldspeak: “The deafening silence continues with next to no coverage of this ongoing environmental catastrophe. More than 2 months later we learn that 3 of the 4 reactors have melted down. Crickets from corporate media. The Russians having gone through Chernobyl are rightfully concerned and are reporting on it. With recently raised ‘acceptable’ radiation limits at 1000 times that which is safe for the human body, and radiation detectors turned off, apparently there is nothing to be concerned about here. “Ignorance is Strength”.

By Kurt Nimmo @ Infowars:

Professor Christopher Busby, who sits on the European Committee on Radiation Risks, told RT yesterday that the reactors at Fukushima are a raging nuclear inferno and he believes at least one of the reactors is now outside its containment structure and emitting vast amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.

The Japanese newspaper Asahi reports today that data reveals meltdowns occurred at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors. Goshi Hosono, special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, acknowledged the likelihood of meltdowns. “We have to assume that meltdowns have taken place,” Hosono said at a news conference May 16.

Infowars.com and other alternative news sources reported the probability of a nuclear meltdown at the plant, but this was virtually ignored by the corporate media.

Soon after an earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant, nuclear experts said meltdowns occurred at all three reactors. TEPCO and the corporate media downplayed the possibility of nuclear meltdown. On April 17, TEPCO released a schedule to reach a cold shutdown at the Fukushima plant within six to nine months, but eventually had to revise the schedule.

Nuclear experts indicate more than a decade will be required to remove the melted fuel, eliminate the contamination, and dismantle the reactors.

Public release of data on the situation at the plant, which had been kept at the central control room, was delayed because it took time to restore power and remove radioactive materials attached to the papers, according to TEPCO. According to the data, the pressure in the pressure vessel of the No. 2 reactor dropped at 6:43 p.m. on March 15. A similar drop in pressure also took place at the No. 3 reactor at 11:50 p.m. on March 16.

“We have yet to be able to grasp the entire situation at the plant,” a TEPCO official said on May 16.

Radioactive technetium was discovered in water in the No. 3 reactor building. The discovery raised speculation that the melted nuclear fuel has breached the pressure vessel and landed in the containment vessel. Technetium is produced when nuclear fuel rods are damaged.

Related articles

• TEPCO admits nuclear meltdown occurred at Fukushima reactor 16 hours after quake(tipggita32.wordpress.com)
• TEPCO now confirms nuclear meltdown in Fukushima reactor No. 1(theboldcorsicanflame.wordpress.com)

Fukushima Reactor 1 melted down, 2 and 3 may have too

By John Timmer @ Ars Technica:

Yesterday, TEPCO, the company responsible for running the Fukushima nuclear reactors, released a provisional analysis of the events that occurred in Unit 1, one of the reactors that was active when the tsunami struck. In five stark pages, the report lays out the impact of the tsunami on the facility: water levels that plunged below the bottom of the fuel, a complete meltdown of the nuclear fuel, and extensive damage to the reactor vessel.

The new analysis was enabled by the recent installation of air purifiers that let personnel reenter the reactor control room for the first time. Once inside, they were able to recalibrate some of the instruments that have been monitoring the reactor core; the revised numbers have enabled TEPCO to better understand what happened in the wake of the tsunami.

Things moved fairly quickly: by four hours after the tsunami hit, the levels of cooling water had dropped enough that the top of the fuel stack was exposed to the air. Shortly after that happened, the temperature in the core reached nearly 3,000°C, and the cooling water boiled off the bottom of the fuel stack. Melting of fuel rods started at 4.8 hours after the earthquake hit, and a partial meltdown had already occurred by 5.1 hours. According to TEPCO, any residual integrity in the fuel rods was gone by 15 hours after the quake, and the reactor core was emptied of fuel by 16 hours.

If there’s a bright side here, it’s that, by melting to the floor of the reactor, most of the fuel was resubmerged in cooling water. Temperatures there are now in the area of 100-120°C. The temperatures still fluctuate based on the rate of cooling water injection, suggesting the majority of the fuel is still inside the reactor vessel. The temperature and pressure readings indicate that the vessel is generally intact, as well. But the continued loss of cooling water indicates that it almost certainly has been leaking water that is heavily contaminated with radioactive isotopes (though not necessarily reactor fuel).

As Nature’s Geoff Brumfiel puts it, “Nobody really knows where all the water is going—but it can’t be anywhere good.” The best hope is that it largely leaked into the basement areas of the reactor building but we currently don’t know for certain where the water escaped to or how far it has spread. Complicating matters further arereports that TEPCO thinks that the two other reactors that were active at the time of the quake suffered similar damage. Confirmation will have to wait for access to their control rooms.

All of this will make the cleanup efforts extraordinarily complex, as the fuel can no longer be lifted out using the structure it was incorporated into, since all that supporting material has melted away. Workers will also have to contend with leaks of highly radioactive water during the process; that water will have to be removed or contained before it leaches into the surrounding soil. There are positives here—temperatures are relatively low now, and the fuel appears to have remained in the reactor vessel—but Fukushima is likely to be a long-term worry.

Further reading

• The TEPCO report (tepco.co.jp)

As Media Ignores Fire At Fukishima Nuclear Plant, Radiation Threat Persists

Oldspeak: “While Corporate Media has moved on to The Royal Wedding, Donald Trump, Obama’s Birth Certificate and Osama’s death pronouncement, A nuclear collapse looms, as Fukushima No. 4 reactor  is ‘leaning and in danger of collapse.’. 2 months later, unreported is the unknown and significant amounts of toxic radiation still spewing from all four reactors in this massive & uncontrolled nuclear disaster. Why was the camera that recorded these images shut down shortly after the images appeared on the internet?  What fresh hell is being hidden? “

By Kurt Nimmo @ InfoWars:

Image captures of video footage from the Fukushima nuclear plant appear to show a fire. According to Alexander Higgins and other bloggers, the Japanese shut down the webcam after the images below appeared on the internet. Lucas White Field Hixson posted the images last night, according to Higgins. There is also an animation of the images posted on YouTube.

Fukushima is now almost entirely off the corporate media radar screen. If the photos below are accurate, the situation at the plant is out of control and still emitting dangerous levels of radiation. There is no mention of the fire or a possible explosion at the plant by the corporate media.