FUKUSHIMA UPDATE 5.18.11

Two months later, whereabouts of 9,500 still unknown

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A Fukushima Update

“The fact that reactor three used MOX fuel has prompted a Russian Chernobyl expert to even assert that ‘(the) release of plutonium will contaminate that area forever and…is impossible to clean up.”  [emphasis mine - RB] 

via reddit

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Japanese Officials Ignored or Concealed Dangers

[Surely officials of other nations would never do the same??]

   "Although the predictions sound eerily like the sequence of events at the Fukushima Daiichi plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the lawsuit was filed nearly a decade ago to shut down another plant, long considered the most dangerous in Japan...

   The lawsuits reveal a disturbing pattern in which operators underestimated or hid seismic dangers to avoid costly upgrades and keep operating." 

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

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Jinzaburo Takagi

(In case you thought that this was all so unexpected:)
   In 1995 Jinzaburo Takagi (1938~1995), who received the Right Livelihood Award "...for serving to alert the world to the unparalleled dangers of plutonium to human life,”
“blasted the government and power companies for ‘refusing to consider emergency measures in the event of an earthquake because they assume nuclear power plants will not break down in an earthquake and have stopped taking further steps at all.’
   He also argued that the Great Hanshin Earthquake was a wakeup call for getting nuclear power facilities ready for emergencies, such as being ‘attacked by a tsunami along with a quake.’
   ‘Discussions on the safety of nuclear power plants or disaster preparedness measures on the assumption of those situations occurring have been shunned, on the grounds that it is inappropriate to make such assumptions or such discussions have some ulterior motive,’ he said.
   The paper [Nuclear Facilities and Emergencies - with Focus on Measures against Earthquakes, 1995] cited Fukushima Prefecture's Hamadori coastal region as one of the areas with a concentration of nuclear facilities that could face a situation ‘beyond what has been imagined’ if a major earthquake strikes. The region is home to the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants run by Tokyo Electric Power Co.
   Tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 is also referred to in the paper as an ‘obsolete [in 1995! - RB] nuclear power plant that raises the greatest concerns’ and requires holding concrete discussions on its decommissioning.”
[emphasis mine - RB]

Stated by an expert almost 20 years ago!

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Reactor Vents That Failed in Japan Are Used in U.S.

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I wonder if anyone else

thinks of this

profound infliction

from earth and sea

as partly a matter of

whale and dolphin

karma...

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But there are new-old paths emerging...

(via Ken Elwood)

THE END OF JAPANESE WHALING?

YIPPEEE!

As the new J government has been reviewing every budgetary nook and cranny for ingrained spending boondoggles, they have discovered that whaling is one of the doggliest, having basically been subsidized into zombie existence for decades now. Sordidly unsurprising details here.

"A major review of Japanese government spending could spell the end to whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

Commissioned to cut wasteful programmes by Japan's new government, a review committee has proposed massive cuts in subsidies to a body which funds the so-called whaling research programme.

Without government subsidies, the whaling programme would be doomed."

A big hooray of that happens... Maybe they'll do it for tuna too, before they run out...

And all along the whalers have been saying that there was consumer demand...

SMITH AND JONES

Ya gotta wonder sometimes about the PR capabilities of certain organizations, like Japan's "Institute of Cetacean Research." It brings to mind an early seafarers' "Institute for Dodo Research." They think it's a slick name that gets them the respect they deserve while pulling the wool over the public eye, which seems to have worked well in Japan, where the public eye is pretty used to wool, but because of the ballpeen way the "Institute*" thinks, i.e., that they are so right they can't go wrong, they never realize they're a laughingstock to the rest of the world.

This same hammer-edged perception is evident in ICU's response to recent photographs and video footage of two harpooned minke whales being hauled up the stern ramp of the Nisshin Maru, the media claiming that they were a mother and calf: it was "emotional propaganda," there was no proof two were mother and baby, i.e., the two whales were unrelated. One was named Smith, the other Jones. Oh. Well. So that's ok then.

Moby Dick saw this day coming.

*"They bring along the stats for the number of calf, pregnant mothers, males, females, how big their eyeballs were - whatever - but there is never any analysis." [Excerpted from linked article]