The news from Japan isn’t good. There is a contamination disaster unfolding at Fukushima that even the best efforts at spin can’t disguise.
They may have secured the 2020 Summer Olympics for Tokyo, but even that bit of good news may fall under a shadow if resolution to the radiation leaks does not soon come about.
Now, seventeen international experts have come together as signators of a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that pleads with him to intercede on behalf of the world so as to remove TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Country) from control of the Fukushima site. TEPCO has proven hopelessly inadequate for the job of remediating the worst industrial accident in history.
According to Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates:
TEPCO…has no expertise in engineering and dismantlement. The wrong skills are being used by the wrong people to attempt the present Fukushima cleanup. In order for true progress to be made, TEPCO must be replaced and the Japanese people must be informed that their national liability from the accident exceeds a half a trillion US dollars.
The letter goes on to cite the wholly inadequate and fundamentally flawed guidelines that are currently in use regarding “safe” levels of radiation. The false assumptions in those guidelines mean that women and children in particular are at risk.
Fifty-leven comments on gun control and a similar number on open meeting laws in Bennington.
Consider: We are one moderate earthquake away from Japan becoming a failed state.
127 million people. To quote Wikipedia: “Japan has the world’s third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the world’s fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the world’s fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer.”
A quake of 7 or so on the Richter scale would crack open (and perhaps topple) the shaky spent fuel pool at reactor #4, exposing the fuel rods, which would light up like sparklers. That’s 8 Chernobyls. Not even suicidal people could get near the site after that, meaning that the other jury rigged fuel pools would eventually dry up and burn. 80 Chernobyls.
So, half the quantity of radiation ever released into the atmosphere since 1945 released all in a few weeks. Japan gone. World economic collapse. A plume of radiation equivalent to a small nuclear war.
Look up a USGS seismic plot of Japan over the past month. It looks like someone has been throwing darts at the place. Last Thursday there was a 5.3 quake 32 miles SW of Fukushima.
And the world is dicking around. The US congress is flailing and tottering around like a half squashed bug. The UN performs its annual kabuki show.
When there is a ticking time bomb with an unknown detonation time stuffed down your trousers, you deal with that first, and then tend to other important matters.
shakes head in remorse, facepalms self in mirror.
In actuality I made a comment shortly (hours or less) after this was posted & it ‘poofed’ into cyberspace & is now drifting through the blogosphere perhaps in a black cyber-hole somewhere…
Thanks Sue once again for your committment to keeping this front & center. And, you have some company in MSM. Wow! Every 10 days or so I hear something from BBC or NPR, occasionally from cable news CNN or Fox, sometimes repeating stories you have broken here on GMD w/a little help from Arnie, Maggie & Enformable.
It is difficult to think about this for long as the sheer magnitude is incomprehensible on many levels as well as the creepy implications of some side-stories:
http://news.msn.com/us/us-japa…
Mmm! Just what I always wanted, radioactive contaminated food.
just wanted to get that up before the evil poofing-spirits got a hold of it.
*all emphasis in posts are added
http://www.washingtonsblog.com…
Location of molten reactor fuel still unknown at this time unless there has been a new finding.
Difficult to quantify which present the greatest threat — this ranks high in my mind and it is not even a new one but worsening with each drop they spray onto this mess:
http://enenews.com/japan-profe…
Includes litany of new reports of the spreading contamination of the Pacific:
http://the-tap.blogspot.ro/201…
Updates from Gregory Jaczko – very long but worth it:
Comments to National Geographic Q & A:
Typical banana bullshit from the nuclear numbskulls:
Aagghh! * Facepalm *
http://news.nationalgeographic…
Inside Fukushima’s Evacuation Zone — small but recent slideshow:
http://www.nytimes.com/slidesh…
Lots of video links on same page:
The Times’s
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