According to some experts, it is possible that nuclear fuel that melted through the reactor’s pressure vessel and accumulated on the bottom of the containment vessel in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami may not be completely covered in the water.
TEPCO said the water temperature in the vessel remained relatively low within a range of 48.5 C to 50 C. The discovery of the unexpectedly shallow water level will not affect TEPCO’s judgment that the reactor is in a state of “cold shutdown.”
It is beyond sad watching Japan go under. This can happen to any nation and is a process happening to our nation. But Japan is the saddest fall from sitting on top of the world in 1989 to falling off the cliff today. Like with the former Soviet Union, it is one catastrophe after another. And like with the Soviet Union, nuclear power is one of the biggest deal breakers. It will wipe out the nation and leave significant parts toxic.
So, in the news this week is the bad news about Fukushima No. 2 reactor which has seen radiation level rise up to 73 sieverts per hour. The above graph shows the true water level of the lower containment vessel. The upper vessel is unknown and unknowable. The big drops in the graph illustrate an unknown crack in the vessel. There is definitely a sizable crack in the lower torus vessel.
For the last year, one earthquake after another has followed in the wake of the 3/11 quakes. Thousands of smaller quakes with fairly big ones every month or so. Recently, several 6.0+ quakes has shaken the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. Each quake dislocates things more and more, bit by bit. Instead of settling into a new status quo, the land is like jelly, in movement nearly all the time.
The political machinery which has driven Japan off the cliff remains paralyzed. Nothing is being done except to slip into catatonia. The ongoing public paralysis started when the housing and stock market bubbles both blew up in the early 1990’s. Like the US, Japan is run by its industrial/banking elites and they worked to save themselves, not the public or the nation. So, instead of fixing anything, they piled on the world’s biggest pile of debt compared to GDP.
The insanity of the Japanese nuclear energy/nuclear bomb position mirrors the US in both matters. Japan pretends to be anti-nuclear bomb while secretly having the US military park illegal nuclear missiles inside Japan as well as Okinawa. The Japanese cynically used the US nuclear umbrella while arguing with China over possession of various tiny uninhabited islands, for example, then would go off to international venues to talk about how they don’t use nuclear bombs.
The US goes on and on about nuclear bombs while allowing Israel’s Jews to accumulate a frightful arsenal of the same. Hypocrisy and lies pervade all discussions of nuclear things in general at the top. Nukes make elites powerful. They know this and love this. They use this all the time, too. Here is today’s Editorial in Mainichi news: Japan must take more active role in nuclear security
Japan barely left an impression at the Nuclear Security Summit held in Seoul on March 26 and 27. This is despite a major debate on the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, as well as a lively exchange about North Korea’s plans to launch a “satellite.”
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda arrived in Seoul on the night of the 26th and left less than 24 hours later. Perhaps distracted by the consumption tax issue back in Japan, he merely engaged in short “meetings” with other heads of state, including U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao.
How bizarre is that? True, Noda is just the latest of a rapidly spinning fraternity that moves in and out again from office as the door spins faster and faster. Soon, it will be ‘PM For The Day’ in Tokyo! North Korea is to not be allowed to defend itself. This is the general rule: all countries the US/Japan/NATO nations don’t want armed will be disarmed. Those they want to control will get ‘military aid’ which will lead to coups and military dictatorships of nations the imperialists want to control.
There’s a theory that the kidnappings of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents were conducted in preparation for attacks on Japanese nuclear power plants. The chance of Japanese nuclear plants being attacked by North Korean missiles, or of Japanese nuclear plants near the Sea of Japan — and therefore close to North Korea — being commandeered by North Korea must be anticipated and prepared for. North Korea is a threat not only for its nuclear program and missiles, but as a possible instigator of nuclear terrorism.
Who, pray tell, is polluting the air, land and sea of the Pacific Ocean area as well as the entire planet earth? JAPAN! Who is totally unable to stop doing this horror? JAPAN. Who is endangering everyone? JAPAN. So of course, the US and Japan try to get everyone hysterical about North Korea. This is insane, of course. If the US and Japan ceased threatening North Korea, they would back down. Like Iran, they must arm themselves because they are being threatened with a ‘Libya Solution’.
Here is more Fukushima news we don’t see much of in the US anymore: ‘Fukushima reactor in crisis again’ – The Times of India
Plant workers also reported fresh leaks of contaminated water from a water treatment unit.
So, not only is #2 about to blow up, everything is leaking like a sieve due to the many earthquakes and the degradation of all systems since nothing can really be fixed or repaired unless workers want seriously shorter lives. And where does this highly contaminated water go? Into the water table and the Pacific Ocean, naturally. The lack of interest of all international bodies to take Japan by the hand and punish it for doing this pollution is notable. Nothing is happening. We all get to stand around and gape. Worse, in the West, the media is keeping mum about all this or pretending it is under control.
Thank goodness for a man who is not in demand in NYC for news stories, he continues to talk about all this online: Tokyo Soil Samples Would Be Considered Nuclear Waste In The US on Vimeo
§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§
While traveling in Japan several weeks ago, Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen took soil samples in Tokyo public parks, playgrounds, and rooftop gardens. All the samples would be considered nuclear waste if found here in the US. This level of contamination is currently being discovered throughout Japan. At the US NRC Regulatory Information Conference in Washington, DC March 13 to March 15, the NRC’s Chairman, Dr. Gregory Jaczko emphasized his concern that the NRC and the nuclear industry presently do not consider the costs of mass evacuations and radioactive contamination in their cost benefit analysis used to license nuclear power plants. Furthermore, Fairewinds believes that evacuation costs near a US nuclear plant could easily exceed one trillion dollars and contaminated land would be uninhabitable for generations.
Arnie is definitely one of my heroes. He should get a Nobel prize! He should get a Presidential prize. Oh, he hasn’t murdered millions of people. Rats. All of Japan is being heavily polluted by Fukushima, the closer to the plant, the worse it is. Since radioactive waste is being shipped all over Japan and burned in a push to make all of Japan equally polluted…yes, this IS a government goal!!!! I kid you not!!!
Sigh…the government saw that people didn’t want to buy food made in the eastern half of the main island so they decided to make it all equally bad…this way, they can keep their trade surplus for the big export powers there by not importing food. This way, everyone is equally fucked in Japan. Then, they all are together in this matter. This suicidal solution is similar to WWII when the government decreed that everyone including children should die fighting or commit mass suicide. This mental conditioning is still there.
And they are using US to do this, too. US-Japan plan reportedly would spread Marines across Pacific – Pacific base relocation – Stripes: yes, the Japanese overlords want us to pour our military into Asia to fight their imperialist wars. This is much better than WWII when we fought them. Now we fight for the Japanese elites. Like Israel, they have a lot of power in DC which is why the US screams about China doing what Japanese elites have done to us for years while at the same time, protecting the interests of our Japanese rulers who are busy wrecking Japan.
The US citizens are in the same boat as the Japanese citizens yet both think they are sovereign people and both are very touchy and proud of being ‘superior’ while being ripped to shreds by internationalist elites. In Japan, they are fleeing. They are moving more and more industries offshore and their children go to foreign schools and they are now increasingly scared of even visiting Japan even as they work to spread the pollution everywhere, there.
Many things are coming to a head this decade. Our way out of this maze is difficult to find. Knowledge of who is doing what and why they are doing this is important but understanding how systems work (infinity is evil!) is important, too.
Email:
emeinel@fairpoint.net
MAILING ADDRESS:
EMS NEWS
P.O. BOX 483
BERLIN, NY 12022
Make checks out to ‘Elaine Supkis’
Click on the Pegasus icon on the right sidebar to donate via Paypal.
Culture of Life News 
Elaine,
Thank you for keeping up with the invisible black death…
I was disappointed that there was not better discussion and coverage at the one year anniversary of the Fukushima melt-down. It takes a constant vigilance on our part to keep up with the continuing tragic destruction of this small country.
It continues and the inability for the civilized world to cope with this. There is no reassessment of how we are dealing with our own potential disasters. The former can-do country is stymied over every issue that we need to address.
Oh, yeah, let’s keep doing the war thing…works every time.
73 sieverts is lethal-right-now radiation. An electronics-frying level of radiation. Standing-next-to-a-dying-neutron-star level of radiation.
But the good news is, it’s stable, in cold shutdown. … … …
The reactor vessel is cold, because there’s nothing in it any more, and it’s a worst-case scenario. A year ago it was also a worst-case scenario. So, you see, they’re the same: stable!
WHY IS THE OUTER CONTAINMENT VESSEL NOT FULL OF SAND AND BORAX BY NOW???
Ahem. Excuse the caps.
Sigh. The handling of this disaster is beyond mindboggling, the minds of the leaders of this mess have flatlined completely. Talk about kicking cans down the road instead of making genuine difficult decisions.
Yes, Christian
Remember, the adults are in charge.
In a way the Japanese handling of this affair reminds me of 9/11. The US KNEW that they were about to be hit yet they allowed the attack to take place. If they had been serious about stopping the attack, they would simply have grounded all air flights for a while, the cost may have been a billion or so in economic losses, but compare that to the trillions of dollars lost now.
The Japanese are making all kinds of decisions, except the ones they actually need to take.
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: Mossad certainly knew and probably the CIA, too. The Zionists running DC wanted a ‘Pearl Harbor’ moment and Bush Jr, when told it was happening, smiled and then blandly continued to read to school children. Later, when the buildings fell, he was shocked (so much for the ‘bombs in the building’ garbage) and suddenly got up and fled to his secure hiding hold and more importantly, remained in hiding not even appearing in the news, for DAYS.
They were scared they went too far! That is, he would be blamed for 9/11 and the concept of Mossad knowing about it would come out. This is the main reason why the 9/11 commission originally was going to be run by Kissinger but the uproar forced him out. None the less, most of the truth was classified and never revealed to this day by the 9/11 Commission.
So this information sits like a time bomb in DC. It won’t go away and they dare not look at it or talk about it and I mean the media which is owned by Zionists. Like the USS Liberty matter, the elites have to pretend nothing is there while conspiracy theories drown anyone who goes looking for the naked truth.
The truth is, way too many rulers here want ethnic/religious warfare to get worse, not better and this is infecting our election process in profound ways. Not to mention, destroying our society.
“…everyone is equally fucked…”
Over the years I don’t think I have heard, Elaine, use such emotion laden language. This deteriorating Fukushima disaster will do it and move the most harden cynics amongst us.
While the nation obsesses on how hoodies are ruining the youth, and just how rich Romney is making Obama look like a poor progressive – the insidious radiation spreads across the Pacific. One by one a few hundred thousands contract cancer over the years and no one will notice.
@Being there
“Remember, the adults are in charge.”
Thought you might appreciate this one, in case you haven’t seen it before. Anyway it is always a good read and eerily accurate:
You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars and now this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same?
One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were already all these games going on when I got here. … An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its state seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel, who was addressing a team of losing professional athletes: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself—as does George W. Bush, himself a kid—an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism and on and on.
What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.
Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?
That they are nonsense.
My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!
And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.
What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
etc.
—–
Gotta love that rant! ❤
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: The ‘intelligent’ people have trapped themselves. They are often scared of rocking the boat so bullies can order them around. Remember school? I hated school because bullies abounded and they didn’t hesitate to be sadistic. They uniformly hated smart kids and we see this in our culture: smart kids are mocked!
To survive this, many intelligent people bury themselves and let bullies run things so they work for bosses while the bullies are the bosses due to enjoying fighting, being cruel and abusing people! See? One thing about bullies: they don’t care about living things or being nice, they get whatever they want by force or guile.
Oops forgot the link.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/44/kurt_vonnegut_vs_the/
haha, brilliant! 😀
Any country that can produce Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegurt is worth saving.
What’s the difference? We’re all going to die anyway.
Today’s Headlines……”Japanese retail sales rise more than expected”
Is the Japanese economy recovering? Or are the statistics, like those in the US indicating another factor?
The end of the article reveals……
“Based on this evidence, I would not say the household sector is improving, because labour union negotiations for higher pay are not going well,” said Toshihiro Nagahama from Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.
“The move in February is more about government subsidies.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17545235
As in the US – Private company seeks bailout
TEPCO to seek capital boost
Tokyo Electric Power Company will seek public funds to boost its capital base and help compensate the victims of the accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120329_23.html
I’m not sure that Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegurt would agree.
Well, I guess it depends what you mean by “country”.
(Same goes for the Southern Branch Office)
Christian W.
I do love the rant. (Iran, we’ve already reduced Iraq with shock and awe)
What makes our present situation so pernicious is added to your PP (personality disorder) is that the culture itself has been distorted. Thanks to Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman greed is sanctioned by their “theories” and has been inculcated with the notion that this is the natural order of things. Nothing is against the law if your lobbyists can change the laws.
As market fundamentalists, they don’t want to pay taxes or have any regulations=laws. Their ill-gotten insane gains are used as a cudgel of power to bend the function of government to their will, so the whole system is running like an organized crime syndicate.
From inside that world, everything seems normal. That’s a good deal why they can act with impunity. It’s been a long time coming, so Murder Inc. is the new order and the untouchables run it. This is now what is running the global theater in finance and war.
Yep, that interveiw with KV was from 2003. Now, about 10 years later, nothing has changed, In fact we are sliding down hill ever faster.
If Japanese officials are really ordering people to spread contaminants over the whole country, that’s well beyond psychopathic. A psychopath would figure out what work needed to be done to contain the radioactive waste, then round up a group of clean-up workers and tell them to start cleaning or be executed. Intentionally contaminating everything would take a whole other level of madness.
“Intentionally contaminating everything would take a whole other level of madness.”
The elites in Japan would rather the whole country die than admit to being wrong or non-superior. They almost succeeded in doing the same during WW2.
Meanwhile they are all leaving Japan and allow the plebes to soak up the radioactivity. I say no rich person from Japan should be allowed to settle anywhere else in the world. They should be forced back to their country and forced to take responsibility for the disaster.
I recently read that Bill Gates said ‘Nuclear energy is [gasp] the Safest’.
Also I read that the Japanese Mafia has people working at Fukashima.
They owe Mafia $ and work for minimum wage, while Mafia gets good $ from Govt.
Found this elsewhere, cant vouch for accuracy but did websearch and it seems accurate:
HigginsBlog) – Fukushima citizens are no longer able to purchase foreign Geiger counters because the Japanese government has banned claiming they are inaccurate and may cause panic.
Japanese citizens are reporting businesses in Japan no longer allowed to sell foreign Geiger counters under orders from the government of Japan.
The report comes from the The Fukushima Diary:
kazukazu721 (@kazukazu721) March 19, 2012
My Geiger counter got out of order, went to the shop to repair. They said, they can no longer sell foreign Geiger counters from the order of Japanese government. Government says, foreign Geiger counters are not accurate, may cause panic. I wonder what they will do for the Geiger counters that have already been bought by normal people. They also said it was ordered backstage. I’m scared of Japan, feel like I’m being killed quietly.
When I was a child, we had nuclear war drills. This, in turn, fed anti-nuclear bomb efforts and propelled the disarmament movement which was very much opposed by our rulers. So what did they do?
They stopped the drills! Once the Vietnam war began roaring along, the war drills at home vanished. I was amazed by this because the DANGER WAS GROWING but the government decided to make things appear less war-like.
To this day, we have no drills for nuclear war.
The insanity of yelling about Iran causing nuclear war while at the same time making zero moves to prepare the US public for nuclear war with Russia and China while at the same time causing rising tensions with both shows us that they are going to do what I said they were doing back in 1968 when I gave speeches about this at various campuses in the US and Europe: they will NEVER warn a population about a nuclear bomb coming.
Why?
They want us all at work. They don’t want an excess, homeless population alive and strong who can revolt or cause other systems to collapse, they would rather the population die on the spot.
This dark fact is carefully hidden from view and they dare not talk about this but when I was a child, when my CIA parents would be in a total panic about nukes falling, we were forbidden to warn anyone about this and at the same time, we were to hide from the nukes!
I would turn on the news to see our beloved newscasters like Walter Cronkite assuring everyone we were in no danger as my parents would be madly packing to flee!