Fukushima : simulation of dispersed radiation throughout the northern hemisphere (via canadanewslibre)

This is nice. I love pictures and this one is beautiful. Unfortunately, it is similar to the beauty of organisms on a microscopic slide that might very well be killing you.

This dispersed radiation on this graph is certainly doing you no good.

I recommend you look at the graph full size and get a grasp of the seriousness of the matter.

James Pilant

Radioactive Materials Dispersion Model by Kyushu University Researchers Friday, September 2, 2011 Using the supercomputer program called SPRINTARS, researchers at Kyushu University and Tokyo University created the simulation of how radioactive materials from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant may have dispersed throughout the northern hemisphere. The researcher say their simulation fit the actual measurements. It was published in the Scientific Onli … Read More

via canadanewslibre

Japan to fire top nuclear officials in wake of disaster (via 1 Real News)

This disaster happened in March. Virtually everything you can think of went wrong and now, they fire people. I’m not impressed. Once it became obvious that the people in charge were grossly incompetent, it might have been better to fire them immediately than waiting for months for what is apparently a better political climate.

James Pilant

ReutersAugust 4, 2011Japan will replace three senior bureaucrats in charge of nuclear power policy, the minister overseeing energy policy said on Thursday, five months after the world’s worst atomic crisis in 25 years erupted at Fukushima.The move comes as Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls for enhanced nuclear safety accountability and an overhaul of Japan’s energy policy, with the aim of gradually weaning it off its dependence on nuclear power as p … Read More

via 1 Real News

High radiation found at Japan’s Fukushima plant (via National Post | News)

Just when you think the Fukushima crisis had finally been scrubbed from the news by various interest groups and the Japanese government, it comes roaring right back at you.

James Pilant

TOKYO — Pockets of lethal levels of radiation have been detected at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in a fresh reminder of the risks faced by workers battling to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) reported on Monday that radiation exceeding 10,000 millisieverts per hour was found at the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between two reactors. On Tuesday Tepco said i … Read More

via National Post | News

5-day forecast shows cyclone approaching Japan (MAP) (via The Crisis Jones Report)

Just in case you thought nothing new could happen at the Fukushima plant.

James Pilant

ENE July 28th, 2011 at 02:04 PM Tropical Cyclone Information, Japan Meteorological Agency, July 28, 2011: … Read More

via The Crisis Jones Report

Japan considers stress tests for nuclear reactors (via Financial Post | Business)

This is certainly a classic case of closing the barn door after the animal has fled. Yet, the measure is probably no going to pass, even in the face of solid evidence that the plant was already in partial meltdown from the earthquake before the tsunami hit.

James Pilant

TOKYO – Japan’s government is considering conducting stress tests on nuclear reactors to ease safety concerns which have blocked the restart of idled reactors since the March quake and tsunami, including several that have completed maintenance and complied with new, stiffer safety standards. Japan is struggling with a drawn-out crisis after meltdowns at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi atomic plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear incident in 25 … Read More

via Financial Post | Business

Shareholders hammer Tepco over nuclear fiasco (via MY VOICE)

My favorite sentence -

Another investor shouted that Tepco’s executives should jump into their stricken reactors and die to take the blame for the fiasco.

Enjoy the article and remember that TEPCO has paid out more than 19 billion dollars in damages but that if this happened in America, the responsible utility company would be out less than a hundred million dollars due to our government protecting them from losses.

James Pilant

By KAZUAKI NAGATA Staff writer Tokyo Electric Power Co. faced a six-hour barrage of heavy flak from shareholders Tuesday at their annual meeting, with management blasted over how it has handled the world’s worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Demonstrators gather outside Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Fukuoka Prefecture. KYODO Many investors demanded to know why Tepco failed to foresee the tsunami … Read More

via MY VOICE

Nuclear Plant, Left for Dead, Shows a Pulse (via Energy)

You cannot kill these things.

Christopher Lee as Dracula in a mid-sixties Hammer film has the life span of a mayfly by comparison.

This nuclear plant, little more than a pile of looted wreckage is under consideration for construction.

I call upon anyone and every one for a little respect for the facts of the situation. Surely, we can think better than this?

James Pilant

By MATTHEW L. WALD/NYT HOLLYWOOD, Ala. — Spider webs line the 50-story cooling towers, parts have been amputated for the scrap value of their nickel or copper, and the control room still has analog dials at Bellefonte 1, a half-built nuclear plant here that was shelved 23 years ago. This does not seem like a particularly opportune moment to breathe life back into a reactor that was designed before the computer age. But its owner, the … Read More

via Energy

Holding Nuclear Power Plants to Strict Standards (via U.S. NRC Blog)

I hope the NRC is serious about that. The willingness here to refer to earlier enforcement efforts I find encouraging.

Since, nuclear power seems to be beyond any effect of public opinion, in fact, immune to all expressions of human intelligence and judgment, the NRC is our major line of defense.

Nuclear plants are built in America because the industry pays out a lot of money in political contributions and has superb lobbyists. No public concerns can carry such weight. All other issues are not worth consideration.

James Pilant

It’s not uncommon for regulatory agencies to be accused of being too cozy with whatever industry they regulate. It happens to the FDA, the SEC, the FAA and other federal regulators. And it’s happening to the NRC with some vigor recently, especially since the public’s attention to the Japanese nuclear emergency. As an independent regulatory agency, the NRC has a robust and comprehensive approach to holding U.S. nuclear power plants to strict safet … Read More

via U.S. NRC Blog

Russia finds nuclear safety faults after Fukushima (via Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

This is the state of affairs we can expect in every part of the world. The upkeep and safety precautions necessary for the use of nuclear power are expensive, time-consuming and require technical expertise and competence. In a world where corporate profit is the number one concern and where government secrecy is a primary defense against catching wrong doing ahead of time, we can expect these expensive, high maintenance, time bombs to be under protected, under maintained and overly dangerous.

It is likely that nuclear plants can be made safe and that nuclear power can be part of a nation’s energy plan. But can we trust the industry and the government after so many lies, so many deceptions and so many disasters that were not supposed to be possible? Nuclear energy is surrounded not by science but by a shield of lies.

James Pilant

From Radio Netherlands Worldwide -

Russia’s nuclear power plants are dangerously under-prepared for earthquakes and other disasters, said a state review conducted after Japan’s Fukushima accident and obtained Thursday by AFP.

The unusually candid survey was presented to a council chaired by President Dmitry Medvedev on June 9 and initially reported on its website by the Oslo-based Bellona environmental organisation.

Russia has until now steadfastly defended its 10 nuclear power plants and 32 reactors against criticism.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on April 30 pronounced the country’s nuclear safety system “the best in the world”.

But the State Council review revealed more than 30 weaknesses including reduced disaster safety standards and a lack of a clear strategy for securing spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste at many plants.

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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.
In the article above I am including the first part of a quite long and well written article. As I have written many times the crisis at the Fukushima plants does not stop no matter how little coverage it gets in the media of the United States.  James Pilant

This next article is from a writer who I very much admire. He writes from the web site: Rogue Columnist, A Pen Warmed Up In Hell. I like it. Please read it. James Pilant (P.S. If you are wondering why this is indented like the article above. It just is. WordPress offers me no button to fix it but it will let me indent it some more!)

Rules of engagement

Last night, I finished the late Alan Bullock’s magnificent book, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. It’s a reminder that no matter how much one has studied a topic, he or she can have vast new landscapes opened by the best historians as tour-guides. The book was completed just as the Soviet empire that Stalin built was falling apart, and the moment was marked by the greatest hope. Yet Bullock also reminded us of the bloody paths that contingency can create, particularly when broad social, economic and cultural forces and destabilization (“history from below”) are harnessed by evil genius (“history from above”). The book ends with a deeply moving coda of promise. But that comes after a thousand pages examining the two greatest mass murderers in history; worse, men who could move nations to do their killing.