Thursday, June 23, 2011

Radioactive Dust From Japan Hit North America Days After Disaster ... But Governments "Lied" About Meltdowns and Radiation


I started warning the day after the Japanese earthquake that radiation from Fukushima could reach North America. See this, this and this.

Mainichi Daily reports today:

Radioactive materials spewed out from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant reached North America soon after the meltdown and were carried all the way to Europe, according to a simulation by university researchers.

The computer simulation by researchers at Kyushu University and the University of Tokyo, among other institutions, calculated dispersal of radioactive dust from the Fukushima plant beginning at 9 p.m. on March 14, when radiation levels around the plant spiked.

The team found that radioactive dust was likely caught by the jet stream and carried across the Pacific Ocean, its concentration dropping as it spread. According to the computer model, radioactive materials at a concentration just one-one hundred millionth of that found around the Fukushima plant hit the west coast of North America three days later, and reached the skies over much of Europe about a week later.

According to the research team, updrafts in a low-pressure system passing over the disaster-stricken Tohoku region on March 14-15 carried some of the radioactive dust that had collected about 1.5 kilometers above the plant to an altitude of about 5 kilometers. The jet stream then caught the dust and diffused it over the Pacific Ocean and beyond.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen notes that Seattle residents breathed in an average of 5 "hot particles" a day in April:

Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

(No, the levels of radiation are not safe.)

I also have repeatedly pointed out that Tepco, the Japanese government and governments around the world covered up the extent of the Fukushima crisis. See this, this, this and this.

Now even the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Meteorological Organization are complaining that they were unable to obtain necessary information from Japan about Fukushima, which led to difficulties projecting how radioactive materials would spread around world.

However, this is somewhat disingenuous given that the IAEA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission knew within weeks that there had been meltdowns.

Indeed, as the prestigious scientific journal Nature notes:

Shortly after a massive tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 11 March, an unmanned monitoring station on the outskirts of Takasaki, Japan, logged a rise in radiation levels. Within 72 hours, scientists had analysed samples taken from the air and transmitted their analysis to Vienna, Austria — the headquarters of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), an international body set up to monitor nuclear weapons tests.

It was just the start of a flood of data collected about the accident by the CTBTO's global network of 63 radiation monitoring stations. In the following weeks, the data were shared with governments around the world, but not with academics or the public.
The attempted cover up of the severity of the Fukushima disaster is nothing new. Governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for 50 years, and the basic design for nuclear reactors was not chosen for safety, but because it worked on Navy submarines ... and produced plutonium for the military.

(Indeed, the government's response to every crisis appears to be to try to cover it up; and see this.)

Finally, I've previously noted that the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernyobyl.

Arnie Gundersen has said that Fukushima is the worst industrial accident in history, and has 20 times more radiation than Chernobyl.

Well-known physicist Michio Kaku just confirmed all of the above in a CNN interview:
In the last two weeks, everything we knew about that accident has been turned upside down. We were told three partial melt downs, don’t worry about it. Now we know it was 100 percent core melt in all three reactors. Radiation minimal that was released. Now we know it was comparable to radiation at Chernobyl.

***

We knew it was much more severe than they were saying, because radiation was coming out left and right. So in other words, they lied to us.

***

In New York City, you can actually see it in the milk. You can actually see it has iodine, 131, actually spiked a little bit in our milk in New York City, but it is very small.

***

Realize Chernobyl was one core’s worth radiation causing a $200 billion accident and it is still on- going. Here we have 20 cores worth of radiation. Three totally melted, one damaged and the [rest in] spent fuel pumps, 20 cores worth of highly radioactive materials.

7 comments:

  1. They know that they will not allow clean ups that cost too much and that they will lose their nuclear bombs if the public realize how stupid and ignorant they are.

    A world governed by stupid greedy thieves yet you ban
    -- Comments that explicitly call for violence

    Does that include Revolution, George old chap? You do not appear to have much of an audience?

    Gandhi, Mao, Castro and MLK all suffered and had to act to achieve their goals!

    Or are you just vaccinating your readers?

    ReplyDelete
  2. its hard to keep up with all the news that is not main stream, so we have put up www.radiationalerts.blogspot.com which originates from www.RadiationAlert.org

    If you have news for this site, send a note from radiationalerts.org's comment section.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Between the oil contamination in the Gulf to the radiation in Japan, there are very real man-made affects to our food supply. But add to that the flooding and droughts occurring in the U.S. and Europe this year and it looks like food may not only be more expensive but actually scarce.

    People to need to start putting away their own stores of food for several months and even up to a year to weather the dire conditions due coming in 2012:
    http://www.familysurvivalcenter.com/fwb.htm

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've said from when I first heard about it that frozen helium should have been used on the fuel rods, & that a hardened steel aircraft hanger should be built large enough to cover all 4 reactors, with the outside heavily lead-plated. Since workers have been inside each of the reactor buildings & taken pics the ambient air isn't too hot for this; the building would at least prevent hot particles from taking to the wind & spreading. Also xeolite-or however it's spelled-should be spread at the base of the steel shielding.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is more a note to Washington staff as a source of anecdotal radiation information than a comment specifically on this news item.

    Do some research on the effects of high-energy radiation on electronic cameras, then compare what is visible on the TEPCO Fukushima cameras now with what you see in the past / future.

    At the present time, there is clear evidence of radiation-induced camera anomalies. Look for fleeting white streaks on the realtime TEPCO camera (the one mounted close to the reactors). Those white streaks are caused by high energy radiation (gamma rays, most likely) impacting the sensitive electronic "eye" and depositing energy.

    You can see such energy deposition very easily on space-based cameras such as on the SOHO spacecraft, particularly during strong solar proton storms. High energy protons are the source of the white streaks that are observed on those cameras. Look at the LASCO camera during strong solar proton events and then compare what you see there (the streaking) with what is now visible in the Fukushima camera photo's. Although far less frequent than the LASCO cameras show, the simple presence of such streaking is not a good sign.

    I've been following the video from TEPCO off and on now for some time. Today (with the fog present), the streaking seems more frequent than usual, which is a good anecdotal indicator of higher high-energy radiation levels.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Cowpip, clever you!

    Just assume the worst and you won't go far wrong, sadly.

    Stay safe!

    ReplyDelete

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