Fukushima’s Children are Dying

I have said all that I have to say on previous posts, (Japan tag) no point in reiterating it all. But I shall leave just the one link to our very own nuclear industry shill and denier, Jim Al-Khalili. And goodness knows, when you have read the article, you know he's in good company.

The one highlight in the article is mine, and I pick that out, because personally, and I do reiterate, I would put the Japanese Government against a wall, and I would shoot the fuckers.

Fukushima’s Children are Dying
by Harvey Wasserman
15 June 2014

Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times (40x) normal.

More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000 kids—tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.

More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three would be expected, says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.

The nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public health tragedy. Some have actually asserted that “not one person” has been affected by Fukushima’s massive radiation releases, which for some isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30.

But the deadly epidemic at Fukushima is consistent with impacts suffered among children near the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island and the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, as well as findings at other commercial reactors.

The likelihood that atomic power could cause such epidemics has been confirmed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which says that “an increase in the risk of childhood thyroid cancer” would accompany a reactor disaster.

In evaluating the prospects of new reactor construction in Canada, the Commission says the rate “would rise by 0.3 percent at a distance of 12 kilometers” from the accident. But that assumes the distribution of protective potassium iodide pills and a successful emergency evacuation, neither of which happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima.

The numbers have been analyzed by Mangano. He has studied the impacts of reactor-created radiation on human health since the 1980s, beginning his work with the legendary radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass and statistician Jay Gould.

Speaking on the Green Power & Wellness Show, Mangano also confirms that the general health among downwind human populations improves when atomic reactors are shut down, and goes into decline when they open or re-open.

Nearby children are not the only casualties at Fukushima. Plant operator Masao Yoshida has died at age 58 of esophogeal cancer. Masao heroically refused to abandon Fukushima at the worst of the crisis, probably saving millions of lives. Workers at the site who are employed by independent contractors—many dominated by organized crime—are often not being monitored for radiation exposure at all. Public anger is rising over government plans to force families—many with small children—back into the heavily contaminated region around the plant.

Following its 1979 accident, Three Mile Island’s owners denied the reactor had melted. But a robotic camera later confirmed otherwise.

The state of Pennsylvania mysteriously killed its tumor registry, then said there was “no evidence” that anyone had been killed.

But a wide range of independent studies confirm heightened infant death rates and excessive cancers among the general population. Excessive death, mutation and disease rates among local animals were confirmed by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and local journalists.

In the 1980s federal Judge Sylvia Rambo blocked a class action suit by some 2,400 central Pennsylvania downwinders, claiming not enough radiation had escaped to harm anyone. But after 35 years, no one knows how much radiation escaped or where it went. Three Mile Island’s owners have quietly paid millions to downwind victims in exchange for gag orders.

At Chernobyl, a compendium of more than 5,000 studies has yielded an estimated death toll of more than 1,000,000 people.

The radiation effects on youngsters in downwind Belarus and Ukraine have been horrific. According to Mangano, some 80 percent of the “Children of Chernobyl” born downwind since the accident have been harmed by a wide range of impacts ranging from birth defects and thyroid cancer to long-term heart, respiratory and mental illnesses. The findings mean that just one in five young downwinders can be termed healthy.

Physicians for Social Responsibility and the German chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have warned of parallel problems near Fukushima.

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) has recently issued reports downplaying the disaster’s human impacts. UNSCEAR is interlocked with the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, whose mandate is to promote atomic power. The IAEA has a long-term controlling gag order on UN findings about reactor health impacts. For decades UNSCEAR and the World Health Organization have run protective cover for the nuclear industry’s widespread health impacts. Fukushima has proven no exception.

In response, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the German International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have issued a ten-point rebuttal, warning the public of the UN’s compromised credibility. The disaster is “ongoing” say the groups, and must be monitored for decades. “Things could have turned for the worse” if winds had been blowing toward Tokyo rather than out to sea (and towards America).

There is on-going risk from irradiated produce, and among site workers whose doses and health impacts are not being monitored. Current dose estimates among workers as well as downwinders are unreliable, and special notice must be taken of radiation’s severe impacts on the human embryo.

UNSCEAR’s studies on background radiation are also “misleading,” say the groups, and there must be further study of genetic radiation effects as well as “non-cancer diseases.” The UN assertion that “no discernible radiation-related health effects are expected among exposed members” is “cynical,” say the groups. They add that things were made worse by the official refusal to distribute potassium iodide, which might have protected the public from thyroid impacts from massive releases of radioactive I-131.

Overall, the horrific news from Fukushima can only get worse. Radiation from three lost cores is still being carried into the Pacific. Management of spent fuel rods in pools suspended in the air and scattered around the site remains fraught with danger.

The pro-nuclear Shinzo Abe regime wants to reopen Japan’s remaining 48 reactors. It has pushed hard for families who fled the disaster to re-occupy irradiated homes and villages.

But Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the plague of death and disease now surfacing near Fukushima make it all too clear that the human cost of such decisions continues to escalate—with our children suffering first and worst. Common Dreams

Our Planet Our Future?

What you see writ below, is not in fact a post per say. Rather a comment in reply to two of my readers. The one highlight apart, which is the very crux of the thing, reproduced verbatim.

Read as a stand alone, or in conjunction with the post below.

Good morning Su, good morning Maren, yes it's all of those things.

And as far as keeping anybody informed, although I might write a few words of introduction and opine occasionally, by nature of the beast, there is little more I can do for the situation, than cut and paste information here.

That in itself though is quite telling. It tells us everything we need to know about the Main Stream Media's role in society. It is not our friend, nor is it a force for good. Not when you can source ten times the information from obscure blogs, than you can from the media.

I have though, written much in the past about the criminality of the Japanese Government, particularly in regard to the welfare of kids in the immediate area.

But as much as the actions, or more precisely, the inactions, and the deliberate withholding of information from the populace; as much as these things will turn out to be major crimes against humanity, it is to far greater things that my mind turns.

On a more philosophical level, I am more annoyed than I am worried, more angry than I am annoyed.

I don't think you need to be a soothsayer to forecast, where we as a species are headed. All we face is decline; civilisations don't last forever, they self destruct, history has taught us that much, and that is without the pollution and over-population that we witness today.

But when, on a global scale, societies start collapsing, when the money runs out or becomes valueless, when faced with the next catastrophic mass extinction, and there will be one, rest assured; who is going keep safe all the nuclear fuel and junk that will have been produced from the hundreds of nuclear installations that are dotted around the globe?

Out of the billions and billions of planets throughout the cosmos, this planet is totally and utterly unique in the universe, and it is as wonderful, with all its beauty and all its diversity of life as it is unique. But we for all our intelligence as top primate, for all our advances and staggering technical achievements, fail miserably in so many areas. But no greater failure have we, than our failure in our role, as temporary custodians of this unique, precious, but most fragile earth.

What does it say of us as a species, when as we speak, the world already being past its tipping point, we continue to rape and pillage and pollute our only home? Where greed has become god? Where ignorance and superstition take precedence over learning and enlightenment? Where powerful nations slaughter innocents in their millions, and do so to a cacophony of silence? Where we inflict unspeakable cruelties on each other because the followers of one outdated superstition disagrees with followers of an equally outdated, but different superstition?

I think it might say, that we, in spite of all our intelligence, are fundamentally flawed, we have become our own worst enemy, our cerebral evolution serving only to pander to those flaws, of selfishness, of greed, and the here and now.

Such a pity though, as we head inexorably to a fate that we are undoubtedly most deserving, such a pity then, that we shall take this unparalleled world, this pale blue dot, and all its creatures, with us in the process.

Original post.

As a Species We Are Insane

Originally published under the title:

Best read in conjunction with the post above.

A Short Conversation With Paul Watson or, Mankind Is a Bollocks

The more I get to know this fellow, Paul Watson, the more he is my kind of bloke. I particularly like his take on the Jesoids, if they worried about this life a bit more and not the next, the world might be a better place.

And the auld feller, Farley Mowat, he ain't too far behind the door either.

And Teddy is back.

A short conversation between Farley Mowat and Paul Watson at Cape Breton Island Nona Scotia.

From the documentary A Pirate For The Sea.

Transcript by Teddy.

FM: I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen, I’m convinced of this. I don’t like to be convinced of it because I’m a living organism, I’m full of optimism of life, but I see the next great extinction which will then be the sixth in line since life appeared on this planet. We will be the cause and the recipient of this extinction. But in the process of course, everything else is probably going to get screwed up. How do you feel?


PW: No, I agree with that completely, that we are the last surviving species of hominid and we haven’t done too well so far, and now we are about to take down hundreds of thousands of species with us. We have created this mythology where everything revolves around us. That we are the centre of creation, that it doesn’t really matter what we do to the rest of the world. The other problem of course is, a large percentage of humanity is living this pie in the sky fantasy where they believe real life begins when they die and they go to some afterlife somewhere so that….


FM: It doesn’t matter a hell of a lot what you do here.


PW: Yeah, the planet’s expendable.


FM: Yep yep.


PW: In fact I’ve actually had some Christians come to me and say, you know you’re interfering with God’s plan. That God has ordained that these resources are here to be used while we’re here, and Jesus is going to be upset if we don’t use these resources he’s provided for us.











FM: Individuals must be relatively selfish, err in order that their species will survive, and the species must be selfish, but these things are very very relative and must be coordinated, must be taken into context with all other forms of life. If you separate them out as we have done and say, we are the only animal, the only form of life that is entitled to this self interest, we may pursue it as far as we choose, we must pursue it as far as we choose, then that is the recipe for suicide.


PW: As a species we are insane we’ve…


FM: We’re not insane a political? sense, we are out of control; in my opinion. Our whole structure is out of control, we don’t know what the hell we’re doing but we’re doing it as fast as we bloody well can.


PW: Right.


FM: Ah well, perhaps there’s hope for us in heaven.


PW: Laughs

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Unedited

Is it the Onion I'm reading here? Is someone really trying to take the proverbial?*

Even if  you knew me, as the cynical old git that I am, you wouldn't blame me; not with a story like this you wouldn't. But then I got to thinking, thinking about things past, thinking about past experiences that we encounter, along this road we call life. That road, as it happens, being a cul-de-sac on this occasion.  

Let me tell you a little story. Are you sitting comfortably, then I'll begin?**

Whenever I go foreign, and providing I have the time, I do like to get off the beaten track and explore a wee bit. Be that, searching out goat stew in the hinterland of Teneriffe, stumbling around the woods in the wilds of Canada, or just diverting through previous unseen parts of the Netherlands.

But it is none of those places that feature in my little story today, but rather that most beautiful of Mediterranean Islands, Mallorca. Shame about the tourists.

On no day in particular, and after a perusal of the map, Cap Blanc, says I, I wonder what's at Cap Blanc?   So true to form, it's in the car I sit, and off we go.

Now as you can see from the photo immediately below, Cap Blanc is a pretty isolated spot. And given the time of year, of which I haven't a clue, but it wouldn't be high season, one does not holiday in high season if one has any sense. But given the time of year, it was quiet, deathly quiet, so quite in fact, the place almost had an ethereal feel to it,  if you will.

Now Cap Blanc might not be the Cliffs of Moher, but still pretty impressive nonetheless. And where you find cliffs, invariably you find a bloke, me on this occasion, having a gander over the edge; as one does. So there I am, soaked in the quiet and the isolation of the place, doing a bit of gandering, oh, and philosophising, you can't can't stand on top of a cliff and not philosophise, can you?

And it is in this atmosphere that I hear a door open and close. I don't have to turn around, the sound could only have come from the keeper's cottage, the place wasn't exactly a metropolis as you night have noticed.

Oh shit! Oh fuck! Oh my giddy aunt! as my mother might exclaim on occasion. There it it stood, with hate in its eyes; I'm convinced it was hate. I'm on its turf, a three hundred foot drop on one side of me, and the biggest fuck off dog I have ever seen in my life, stood between me survival, between me and my car.

Oh! and it had hate in its eyes, did I mention that? Pure fucking evil in fact, for want of a better expression.

I tell you, the son of a bitch was enormous, so big in fact, it made this bugger below, look like a puppy. Although I must say, they shared many of the facial characteristics, those normally associated with something that is going to take great delight in ripping your throat out.

Nice doggy, nice doggy.
   

Giant Fukushima Mutant Dog Wows Social Media

Picture of a giant Fukushima mutant dog has wowed social media. According to various sources, the dog was bred in Japan using in-vitro techniques. The gametic maternal cells were infused with Fukushima irradiated male DNA, then the eggs were grown in vitro. The result of the experimentation resulted in the giant dog above, which Japanese scientists are calling 巨大な犬, which translates to Kyodaina inu or Inukyodaina, ‘giant dog’ in English. No kidding. More

And I still need to be convinced the story ain't via the Onion.
 

As best I remember the situation, but I don't remember the wall.

Irrespective, wall or no, the beast would have stepped over it.

For readers not familiar.

* With it being the opening of the article,I chose to choose the proverbial, rather than the usual technical term of: Taking the piss

** Are you sitting comfortably, then I'll begin. Listen with Mother

Lighthouses of Spain: Balearic Islands

The World Fiddles While The Planet Burns: Fukushima

Update: Depleted Uranium, Diabetes, Cancer And You


A short video delivering an even shorter sharper shock. Do I think it's doom-mongering, not a bit?

A couple of short podcasts below that report on what, due to the criminal conspiracy between TEPCO and the Japanese Government, was inevitable, the massive rise in Thyroid cysts, particularly in the most vulnerable segment of the population, the young girls of Fukushima Prefecture.

And it is this collusion between TEPCO and the Japanese Government in playing down the dangers faced by that same vulnerable group, the children, that has from day one, stuck in my craw.

There is much in the sidebar under the Japan tag, but if only to exercise the point, I'm sure, criminal japanese government in the search bar will render a few results. 




With thanks to the compiler, but on a first search I could find little, other than the Youtube account of, Rosy Heart

Terribly alarming what’s happening in Japan — Signs of radiation sickness reported in children after 3/11 — Lies are being fed to the people

Dr. Helen Caldicott: It’s terribly alarming what’s happening, and the ignorance of the population, and the lies that are being fed to the people.

I’ve just been in Japan for 10 days doing a speaking tour and I had audiences of 400 people and I’d give them the medical data and statistics about radiation and then it’d turn into a medical consultation. […]

Indeed many children were reported to have had nose bleeds which means their platelets are low which is a sign of radiation sickness.

And there have been a lot of viral illnesses as well. Of course your immune system is depleted by radiation.

There’s little being done to collect the medical data. short podcast

“Continually, radioactive elements are being flushed into the Pacific” — “The Fukushima accident will never end, they have no idea how to clean it up”

Dr. Helen Caldicott: The Fukushima accident will never end. They have no idea how to clean it up because there’s never been three nuclear meltdowns in history.

Continually, radioactive elements are being flushed into the Pacific Ocean.

. . . the accident never ends because the food will continue to be radioactive as the plants suck up the radioactive elements from the soil, concentrate it, and then people will eat it — and that will go on for generations and generations. So nuclear accidents never end. short podcast

There's not much that surprises me about TEPCO, but even for them, the last sentence in this grim bit of reading, really takes the biscuit.

Tepco plans to dump ‘cleaned’ Fukushima No. 1 water

Kyodo
Jan 25, 2013

Tokyo Electric Power Co. plans to dump contaminated water from its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean after removing radioactive substances to reduce contamination to legally permissible levels.

Tepco said Thursday the measure is necessary because the utility fears it will eventually run out of capacity to store radioactive water that continues to accumulate at the plant due to water being injected to help cool the three reactors that experienced core meltdowns in March 2011.

Despite the plan, the utility acknowledged it needs the approval of local governments and other parties before it actually discharges the water into the ocean. “Nothing specific has been decided at this moment,” one Tepco official said.

Water that has been used to cool the damaged reactors is recycled and used as coolant after radioactive levels in it have been lowered in a water-processing facility. But the total amount of contaminated water is increasing because the existing water flow allows an influx of about 400 tons of groundwater a day.

Tepco is increasing the number of storage tanks to deal with the situation, but warns they will eventually reach full capacity.

As a key step in the water release, Tepco will operate a new facility that can remove about different 60 types of radioactive substances, more than the existing water processing facility that has mainly worked to reduce the concentration of cesium. But as the new facility is not capable of removing radioactive tritium, an official said Tepco will consider diluting the processed water before releasing it to the sea. The Japan Times

Probably the most informative site around for all things nuclear is that of Maggie and Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Energy Education. http://www.fairewinds.com/video

I normally, on post like this, recommend another site, that of Alexander Higgins. Tragically however, it appears that the fellow has lost everything. Alexander Higgins House, Blog Destroyed by Sandy Flooding.

Much sympathy, I couldn't begin to imagine a disaster of such scale.

Fukushima 4 Still a Threat to Humanity on a Global Scale

 The report below is but a short version the state of things at Fukushima Daiichi, for a more comprehensive and more scary report, follow the Natural News link. The featured video has embedding disabled, so you will have to follow the link for that one too.

Ground under Fukushima Unit 4 sinking, structure on verge of complete collapse 
ByAdonai

October 16, 2012

Though the mainstream media has long since abandoned the issue, the precarious situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan is only continuing to worsen, according to a prominent Japanese official. During a recent interview, Mitsuhei Murata, the former Japanese Ambassador to both Switzerland and Senegal, explained that the ground beneath the plant’s Unit 4 is gradually sinking, and that the entire structure is very likely on the verge of complete collapse.

This is highly concerning, as Unit 4 currently holds more than 1,500 spent nuclear fuel rods, and a collective 37 million curies of deadly radiation that, if released, could make much of the world completely uninhabitable. As some Natural News readers will recall, Unit 4 contains the infamous elevated cooling pool that was severely damaged following the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that struck on March 11, 2011.

According to the Secretary of former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the ground beneath Unit 4 has already sunk by about 31.5 inches since the disaster, and this sinking has taken place unevenly. If the ground continues to sink, which it is expected to, or if another earthquake of even as low as a magnitude six occurs in the region, the entire structure could collapse, which would fully drain the cooling pool and cause a catastrophic meltdown.

“If Unit 4 collapses, the worse case scenario will be a meltdown, and a resultant fire in the atmosphere. That will be the most unprecedented crisis that man has ever experienced. Nobody will be able to approach the plants … as all will have melted down and caused a big fire,” said Murata during the interview. “Many scientists say if Unit 4 collapses, not only will Japan lie in ruin, but the entire world will also face serious damages.”

Because there are 31 nuclear units of a similar type to Unit 4 in the U.S., the American government has been downplaying the disaster to protect its own reputation, alleges Murata. This is, in fact, the primary reason why so little has been reported on the severity of Fukushima following the disaster. The American empire, in other words, does not want the world, nor the American people, to know that there is the possibility of literally dozens of Fukushima situations occurring on American soil, should the right disaster situations arise.

You can watch the full 3:51 minute translated interview with Murata at the following link:
http://youtu.be/-LCTv65aqgA
Sources for this article include:
http://enenews.com
http://www.naturalnews.com/035789_Fukushima_Cesium-137_Plume-Gate.html
NaturalNews
By Ethan A. Huff

The Watchers

TEPCO Fukushima You Cannot Be Serious Man!

If this is really the view and not just the rhetoric of Naomi Hirose, the new President of Tepco, then I seriously have to question his judgement. If not his sanity.

Japan's Tepco baffled by criticism of its role in nuclear disaster

By Aaron Sheldrick and Linda Sieg
TOKYO July 19, 2012


(Reuters) - The new head of the company at the centre of Japan's nuclear disaster said on Thursday he was baffled by fierce criticism of the firm where he has worked nearly 40 years and hoped to rebuild public trust but offered no clear idea how to do so.

In a scathing report issued this month, an investigative panel appointed by parliament concluded that the last year's Fukushima disaster was preventable and resulted from "collusion" among Tokyo Electric Power Co, its regulators and the government.

"You can destroy trust in a single day but to rebuild it takes time," the 59-year-old Yale-educated president of Tepco, Naomi Hirose, told a packed news conference of foreign and Japanese reporters.

"Of course, it is a question whether we can regain trust," said Hirose, who joined the company in 1976.

He has taken over Tepco's key post at a time when anti-nuclear protests are growing, ruling party lawmakers are bolting over a decision to restart idled reactors despite safety fears and the government is nationalizing the struggling utility.

The nuclear issue has increasingly taken centre-stage in political debate ahead of parliamentary elections which could come later this year. On Monday, an estimated 100,000 anti-nuclear protesters took to the streets in Tokyo, adding to pressure on the government which is under fire over its handling of nuclear policy issues.

Wearing a grey suit and blue tie, the diminutive, grey-haired Hirose spoke in fluent English for 15 minutes before responding to questions in his native Japanese.

The once well-respected utility has been widely castigated for its failure to prepare for the massive tsunami that devastated its Fukushima plant last year, lampooned for its inept response to the reactor meltdowns, and denigrated for its perceived arrogance.

Lampooned you say?

Asked about that panel report's conclusion, Hirose initially responded that the report was one of three investigations including the company's own and they had all arrived at different conclusions.

When pressed, he added:

"We have read the report and seen this word 'collusion'. However, on what basis, or for what reason, this word is being used we have not been able to fully grasp," he said.

"We will go back and read the report again more carefully and if it turns out the facts are different to the facts we have presented then we might adjust our conclusions."

Hirose was also grilled over what critics say is Tepco's tendency to cover things up, a common charge against a company that admitted in 2007 that it had faked safety reports and hidden defects at its reactors for decades.

He acknowledged that there was a "a very large perception gap" between the company's view of itself and the way the public sees it. "We have to close that gap," he said.

By his own account, doing so won't be easy.




One of Hirose's first acts as president was to talk to evacuees at a high school who had fled from the radiation plume that spouted from the company's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after an earthquake and tsunami caused meltdowns in March 201l.

At one of the meetings, a moderate earthquake struck and he was quickly peppered with questions about the safety of a badly damaged building at Fukushima full of spent fuel rods.

That was "quite a shock for us," Hirose said, because the company assumed its reinforcement work has been sufficient.

Fukushima's spent fuel pool No. 4 has been a source of international concern because they are exposed to the atmosphere after one of the explosions that hit the station tore the reactor building roof off and caused its walls to tilt.

"It gave me renewed resolve that we should make more efforts to remove people's anxieties and concerns," he said. Reuters

One for fun.

Fukushima 4 Spent Fuel Pool No Removal Until December 2013

Take your time, no hurry.

TEPCO removes unused fuel rods from pool
July 18, 2012

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun removing two unused fuel rods from a storage pool in the No. 4 reactor.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, began the work on Wednesday as a test for eventually removing all 1,535 fuel rods stored in the pool, including 204 unused ones.

Workers are carefully monitoring radiation levels and footage from underwater cameras to make sure they remove unused fuel rods, instead of a highly radioactive spent one.

This is the first time fuel rods are being removed from the storage pool since the plant was damaged in the earthquake and tsunami last March 11th.

In late August, TEPCO will check if there's any damage and corrosion to the metal container used to store the fuel rods.

If workers can successfully remove the 2 fuel rods, the utility plans to extract the remaining rods beginning in December 2013, as the first step in decommissioning four of the reactors at the Daiichi plant.

The building housing the reactor was heavily damaged by a hydrogen explosion following the earthquake and tsunami. This has raised concerns that fuel rods in the pool on the fifth floor of the building could pose a threat in the event of another earthquake. NHK World

See previous spent fuel pool related posts under Japan tag.

36% of Fukushima Children Have Thyroid Cysts or Nodules

And so it starts.

There is a little information at the link, but I'm posting this as much as a reminder to myself, in order that I might track down something more comprehensive.

From the very beginning, the health concerns regarding children of the area, is something I have been most vocal about.

Now 35.8% of Fukushima children have thyroid cysts or nodules — 13,646 do and 24,468 don’t

Problems At Fukushima 4 Not Going Away Anytime Soon

For greater understanding of the problems surrounding Fukushima 4, and the potential for a catastrophe of global proportions, see the preceding four posts under the Japan tag.

Radioactive waste at Fukushima threatens second nuclear catastrophe
Hiroko Tabuchi, Matthew Wald
May 28, 2012

TOKYO: What passes for normal at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant today would have caused shudders among even the most sanguine of experts before an earthquake and tsunami set off the world's second most serious nuclear crisis after Chernobyl.

Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive caesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged building, covered only with plastic.

The public's fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe. The three nuclear reactors that suffered meltdowns are in a more stable state, but frequent quakes continue to rattle the region.

The worries gained new traction in recent days after the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, said it had found a slight bulge in one of the walls of the reactor building, stoking fears over the building's safety.

To try to quell such worries, the government sent the Environment and Nuclear Minister to the plant on Saturday, where he climbed a makeshift staircase in protective garb to look at the structure supporting the pool, which he said appeared sound. The minister, Goshi Hosono, added that although the government accepted TEPCO's assurances that reinforcement work had shored up the building, it had ordered further studies because of the bulge.

Some outside experts have also worked to allay fears, saying that the fuel in the pool is now so old that it cannot generate enough heat to start the kind of accident that would allow radioactive material to escape.

But many Japanese have scoffed at those assurances and point out that even if the building is able to withstand further quakes, a claim that they question, the jury-rigged cooling system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April. Had the failures continued, they would have left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating.

Government critics are especially concerned, since TEPCO has said the soonest it could begin emptying the pool is late next year, dashing hopes for earlier action. ''The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,'' said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University's research reactor institute and one of the experts raising concerns. ''Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.''

The fears over the pool at reactor No. 4, amplified over the web, are helping to undermine assurances by TEPCO and the Japanese government that the Fukushima plant has been brought to a stable condition and are highlighting how complicated the clean-up of the site, expected to take decades, will be. The concerns are also raising questions about whether Japan's all-out effort to convince its citizens that nuclear power is safe kept the authorities from exploring other - and some say safer - options for storing used fuel rods.

''It was taboo to raise questions about the spent fuel that was piling up,'' said Hideo Kimura, who worked as a nuclear fuel engineer at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the 1990s. ''But it was clear that there was nowhere for the spent fuel to go.''

The worst-case situations for reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or that fission restarts if the metal panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad because the pools, unlike reactors, lack containment vessels to hold in radioactive material.

Attention has focused on No. 4's spent fuel pool because of the large number of assemblies filled with rods that are stored at the reactor building.

According to TEPCO, the pool at the No. 4 reactor, which was not operating at the time of the accident, holds 1331 spent fuel assemblies, which each contain dozens of rods.

Professor Koide and others warn that TEPCO must move more quickly to transfer the fuel rods to a safer location. But such transfers have been greatly complicated by the accident. Ordinarily the rods are lifted by cranes, but at Fukushima those cranes collapsed during the series of disasters that started with the earthquake and included explosions that destroyed portions of several reactor buildings.

TEPCO has said it will build a separate structure next to reactor No. 4 to support a new crane. But under the plan, released last month, the fuel removal will begin late next year. WAToday

More in the sidebar, tagged Japan.

As Fukushima Goes, So Goes Japan; So Too Goes The World

It wasn't for just any old reason that a year ago now, I composed the graphic below. Befitting then, befitting now, and befitting for the foreseeable future. Unless of course, the spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi Number 4 catches fire, and then I suppose, it won't matter much what kind of graphic I create.

But I think I can safely guarantee one thing, it won't be the rapture and the hand of God that takes centre stage in the final act of this little play called, The Arrogance of Man, no Sir, it will be those among us that have tried to play God.

I only mention this in passing, because I sourced the picture at the end of this post from just one of the ubiquitous sites that testify to their own puerility, the god worshippers. Of every ilk I add.



Between this post and the associated links, I suppose it's just about all there, but you will find further, including videos, under the Japan tag. The previous three posts all being relative to the spent fuel pool at Fukushima 4.

As Fukushima Goes, So Goes Japan

By The Fukushima Five

February 21, 2012

Tokyo has the largest “greater metro” population in the world at about 34.3 million. Tokyo has the largest GDP of all major cities in the world – larger than both New York City and London. Tokyo is the economic/financial capital of the world’s 3^rd largest national economy, as well as the primary economic engine of East Asia.

Tokyo station is contaminated as much as the mandatory evacuation zone in Fukushima

Tokyo is contaminated as much as the worst place in Chernobyl

Fukushima, the location of the greatest nuclear power plant disaster in our age, is located a mere 238 kilometers or 148 miles from Tokyo. Unlike the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe which occurred in a landlocked area north of Kiev Ukraine, Fukushima is located directly on the coastline of the Pacific Ocean.

Whereas Chernobyl was entombed in order to contain the environmental radiation, Fukushima is still out of control. Completely out of control, and no one yet has publicly offered a viable solution either short or long term.

Why Underground Entombment At Fukushima Daiichi Won’t Succeed

Because of the inherent dangers associated with properly diagnosing and assessing the true state of affairs at Fukushima, the on-site nuclear authorities do not even know what they don’t know!

Because of the extraordinary and ongoing level of misinformation, disinformation and false information routinely disseminated from the inception of this global environmental cataclysm, many educated onlookers believe that much of what is known with certainty has not, and will not, be shared with the public-at-large. And especially not with those unfortunate souls living within reach of proven emitted radiation whether it is carried by air, water or land.

The Japanese Government has been AWOL throughout this entire planetary ordeal. TEPCO, the responsible ‘power’ company, has been continuously out to lunch since March 11, 2011. As for the Mainstrean Media (MSM), there’s clearly nobody home. Many within the alternative media, however, have done their level best to get to the truth and publish whatever facts can be substantiated.

What’s really going on here … or rather there at FUKUSHIMA?

Why such a blackout on good info? What is so serious that a complete data lockdown was put into place from day one? Who is really calling the shots and why? Do we really want to know?! If so, then read on.

First, let us reiterate the sentiments of many deep contacts, whistleblowers and insiders within the nuclear power industry. These same strongly held convictions are also shared by many outsiders, experts who are quite competent in the related scientific and academic disciplines. We have likewise heard from the many investigative journalists and nuclear researchers who have simply applied common sense and the faculty of reason to evaluate this tragic predicament

Their collective verdict can be summed up as follows: Fukushima is, by far, the greatest technological challenge facing humanity today. Because of it’s resistance to being resolved in any meaningful way, it continues to do awesome and incalculable damage – globally – much of which is very difficult, if not impossible, to estimate or even identify.

Among the cognoscenti the following quotes represents the consensus around this whole matter:

“Does anyone in their right mind believe that nuclear power plants can ever be designed, engineered or constructed to withstand 9.0 earthquakes followed by 15 meter high tsunamis? Sorry if we offend, but such a display of so deadly a combination of ignorance and arrogance must represent the very height of hubris. Particularly in view of the inevitable consequences which have manifested at Fukushima, how is it that so few saw this pre-ordained and disastrous outcome, except by willful blindness?” ~ An Open Letter to the People of Japan

Here’s another one to boot:

“Quite purposefully, no one ever stopped to consider the obvious and far-reaching ramifications of constructing 55 nuclear reactors on the most seismically active piece of property on planet Earth! And, that doesn’t count another 12 reactors in various stages of planning or development.” ~ Japan: A Nation Consigned To Nuclear Armageddon

And then there’s this one which speaks directly to the title of this essay:

“When the actual costs are tallied, because of the proximity to the most populated metro area in the world, this disaster will be the most expensive in history. The amount required from the Japanese treasury to properly and safely remediate Fukushima are so staggering that they should have understood the true risks beforehand. However, once they sited so many nuclear reactors on the most earthquake-prone stretch of real estate in the Ring of Fire ….” ~ Japanese Nuclear Disaster: Health Watch (on Facebook)

How many truly get it yet?! Given the state of the art, which predominates throughout the entire global nuclear power industry, those nuclear reactors should never have been built anywhere in Japan. Actually, they shouldn’t have been built anywhere on Planet Earth, but that’s another story.

Moral of this story: Grossly Unsound and Extremely Dangerous Nuclear Technology is an Obvious Mismatch for a Planet Undergoing Unprecedented and Unpredictable Flux

All the seismological data indicates a dramatic uptick in earthquakes (on both land and undersea), volcanoes, and other geological phenomenon, which can profoundly affect the workings of a nuclear power plant. One hundred year, five hundred year and thousand year floods also have a way of wreaking havoc with nuclear reactors, especially when the loss of power (due to flooding) shuts down the cooling systems!

Japan Earthquakes in 2011: Visualization Map

Let’s bear in mind that Mother Nature can strike at any time throughout this earthly scenario, as she often does. Given that Japan has consistently experienced some of the highest levels of earthquake activity throughout the planet ever since such monitoring was possible, is it likely that the 9.0 was a natural event? All the seismologists seem to think so. Is there any evidence to the contrary? And if so, what cause a 50 foot tsumani that destroyed an entire coastline?

If there is credible evidence that a subsea nuclear blast caused this 15-meter wall of water, then let’s see it. Such explosions have very unique signatures and distinguishing sound features which can be easily traced and confirmed. There has been no scientific evidence that substantiates a nuclear origin of the tsunami to date.

There is also the massive amount of evidence that it currently making a trans-Pacific journey to the West Coast of America. Not sure how they plan to conceal the inevitable radioactivity associated with a deliberate nuke blast that would cling to at least some of the 25 million tons of waterborne debris. With the Twin Towers they were at least able to convey much of the most damning evidence to China by the shipload. Let’s see what shows up on Malibu before we close the book on this inquiry. Waterlogged mattresses that glow in the dark would definitely get our attention.

Japan Tsunami Debris May Soon Hit California Coast

Critical question for those who advance the theory of a nuclear blast-driven tsunami even in the absence of evidence (*Please see list of theories below):

Why would those who are at the peak of the global control matrix deliberately poison the Pacific Ocean, contaminate its sea life, and open up the myriad possibilities for a planetary contamination by radiation through sea currents and air dispersal? Who, or “What” would ever permanently poison their nest to such a self-destructive degree?!

Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

By the way we are not suggesting that nuclear weapons are not involved in this whole saga. Evidence has been introduced into the public domain which clearly indicates the likelihood that a full blown weapons program had been hiding within Japanese nuclear plants. This is a serious allegation which would probably only have come to light by an Act of God. We’re thinking about something like a mega-quake followed by a massive tsunami.

Is Japan’s Elite Hiding A Weapons Program Inside Nuclear Plants?

As for the blasts that occurred at the actual nuke plants at Fukushima, these too may be explained away by the following expose:

Secret US-Israeli Nuke Transfers Led To Fukushima Blasts

Now, back our central thesis, As Fukushima Goes, So Goes Japan. If and when this ongoing nuclear calamity starts to grow legs and decides to take a trip south – to Tokyo, for instance – we can all agree that this will be the beginning of the end. Were Tokyo to be evacuated by governmental fiat, the world’s third largest economy would immediately tank. Bear in mind that the next three largest cities in Japan are truly a stone’s throw from Tokyo (Someone really liked the view!) In order of size, the metro areas of Yokohama, Osaka and Nagoya, in the aggregate, contribute quite substantially to Japan’s GNP and, therefore, to the world economy.

Just in case you thought we were fear-mongering, the following headline appeared last September in one of the largest English newspapers in Japan:

Tokyo faced evacuation scenario: Kan

Evacuation revelations shocking

This begs the questions about why the same world controllers would conspicuously wreck the third largest economy on earth … right in the middle of the Greatest Global Depression of all time! We know they (TPTW) terribly dislike uncontrollable chaos and panic-ridden pandemonium. Would they risk a genuine global economic and financial breakdown in the midst of all the rest of their troubles?!

Not saying it’s not possible, but why in the name of Beelzebub would the Power Elite totally destroy the third largest economy on the planet, while they attempt to re-make EUROPE as the European Union disintegrates (literally) and the Euro collapses, take over an extremely unruly and unmanageable Middle East one oil-rich country at a time, and make mischief everywhere else the real Axis of Evil initiates a CIA/MI6/MOSSAD commandeered pick-your-color revolution.

Another question remains: Why would they (TPTW) forever ruin an aquatic economy known as the Pacific Ocean – the largest body of water on earth, which is also inextricably connected to all the other oceans? Don’t they eat the seafood, too? Certainly, the Pacific currents will ensure that what goes around, comes around.

There are many prophecies which speak specifically to the future of the four largest islands which comprise the nation of Japan. Might we be seeing a fulfillment of those predictions? If so, we might take consolation in the notion that whatever brought about the uniquely formidable, demanding and overwhelming challenge known as Fukushima, there is a much higher power in charge. This same “Higher Power” is behind the newly emerging and ever-evolving reality show known as 2012 on Planet Earth.

Maybe we should re-word our headline to read:

As Fukushima Goes, So Goes Japan; So, Too, Goes The World

fukushimafive

Update: From February 2012 : Gundersen: 1/3 of Fukushima kids tested positive for lumps on thyroid -- Forebodes some real issues in future -- We're only 10 months into the accident here (Audio)

Long version below, short version here.

The Greatest Singular Threat We Face Today is The Spent Fuel Pool at Fukushima Daiichi

It was only yesterday that I was explaining to my mother, that the greatest global threat facing us today, is not the posturing of America/Israel/Iran and any subsequent fallout which might occur from that testament to mankind's inanity. But rather our biggest threat is the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear installation; more specifically, the spent fuel pool above the number 4 reactor.

The result of this little chat with Ma'ma, was to remind me that it was time once again to check the latest offerings from Fairewinds Energy Education, formally Fairewinds Associates. Lo and behold, purely by coincidence, as does happen on occasion, Arnie Gundersen discusses the very thing in this thirty five minute presentation.

Fortunately, for those of you with limited bandwidth, Gundersen addresses the problem right from the off. And in doing so must be said, saves me having to elaborate further on this very real threat facing, not just ourselves as a species, but Mother Earth herself.

Up first then, is Gundersen's opening statement, the full transcript being available at the link. You might also find of interest, this previous post: Tokyo Soil Samples Would Be Considered Nuclear Waste In The US This and others available under the Japan tag.

Fukushima Daiichi: The Truth and the Future
05/12/2012

Arnie Gundersen: Unit 4 has always been my biggest concern. If you watched our website on the very first week of the accident I was saying that if Unit 4 were to catch fire, you would have to evacuate Tokyo. As a matter of fact the book that we wrote talks about that a lot. It is really important and it remains the biggest concern that I have about the Fukushima site. Unit 4 has more fuel in it than any of the other units in the complex, but more importantly it has the most recently used nuclear fuel. And all of that fuel is outside of the containment. So that would make it dangerous enough. Except that also, of course, Unit 4 has had a series of explosions and is weakened structurally. Before it might have withstood a 7.5 earthquake. I believe that the structural damage to Unit 4 is so great that if there is a 7.5 earthquake, it will not withstand it.

Here is what would happen if Unit 4 were to crack and the water were to drain out of the nuclear fuel pool. The fuel is hot enough that it needs to be water-cooled. If air is all there is cooling the fuel, it will burn. It will burn the zircaloy cladding on the fuel, (and) will react with the oxygen to create a fire. And it is a fire that once it starts, cannot be put out by water. Water would make it worse. So the nuclear fuel would have to burn completely before the fire would ever go out.

In the process, all that radiation would go up into the atmosphere and blow all over Japan and all over the world.

There is as much cesium in the fuel pool at Unit 4 as there was in all of the atomic bombs dropped in all of the tests in the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, and into the 1970's. All of the above ground testing has less cesium in it than is in the reactor pool at Fukushima 4 right now. So it is a grave situation. I don't believe that the Japanese Government is moving fast enough. If there is no earthquake, the plan to remove the fuel slowly is going to be adequate. But we cannot wait on Mother Nature. We have to quickly move that fuel out of that pool and onto the ground. The key here is quickly. The Japanese Government finally just this month came up with a plan to build a building around the fuel pool building and begin removing the fuel in 2013 or 2014.

I said that that is what they needed to do on the Fairewinds site in an interview with Chris Martenson a year ago. These things have been evident, but TEPCO is not moving fast enough and the Japanese Government is not pushing TEPCO to move fast enough either. I think the top priority of TEPCO and the top priority of the Japanese Government should be to move the fuel out of that pool just as quickly as possible. And in the meantime, they need to strengthen that pool to make sure that it can withstand an earthquake. Remember, that pool is not in a containment. You can look down in a satellite and see the nuclear fuel. The roof is blown off. And that is what makes it dangerous.

In America, we had the Brookhaven National Laboratory do a study to examine what would happen in a fuel pool fire. Brookhaven National Labs determined that there would be 187,000 people who would develop cancer from a fuel pool fire. It is a serious concern and I do not believe that Tokyo Electric and I do not believe that the Japanese Government is taking it seriously enough. For the last year I have been working with Akio Matsumora and finally it appears that the world community is listening to Akio Matsumora's concerns about the pool. We need to tackle this as a concerned world community and encourage the Japanese Government and encourage Tokyo Electric to solve it quickly. More transcript.

Tokyo Soil Samples Would Be Considered Nuclear Waste In The US

Please also see previous post.

About this video

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.

About this video

Is the Japanese government and the IAEA protecting the nuclear industry and not the people of Japan by claiming that Fukushima is stable when it is not? Fairewinds’ chief engineer Arnie Gundersen outlines major inconsistencies and double-speak by the IAEA, Japanese Government, and TEPCO claiming that the Fukushima accident is over. Dynamic versus static equilibrium, escalated dose exposures to the Japanese children and nuclear workers, and the blending of radioactive materials with non-contaminated material and spreading this contaminated ash throughout Japan are only a small part of this ongoing nuclear tragedy.

About this video

Fairewinds analyzes cancer rates for young children near Fukushima using the National Academy of Science's BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) VII Report. Based on BEIR VII, Fairewinds determines that at least one in every 100 young girls will develop cancer for every year they are exposed to 20 millisieverts [millisievert (1 mSv = 0.001 Sv)] of radiation. The 20-millisievert/ year figure is what the Japanese government is currently calculating as the legal limit of radiological exposure to allow habitation of contaminated areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In this video, Fairewinds introduces additional analysis by Ian Goddard showing that the BEIR VII report underestimates the true cancer rates to young children living near Fukushima Daiichi. Looking at the scientific data presented by Mr. Goddard, Fairewinds has determined that at least one out of every 20 young girls (5%) living in an area where the radiological exposure is 20 millisieverts for five years will develop cancer in their lifetime.

Fairewinds.com

Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb

It's hard to believe the coincidence, that it was only ten minutes before coming across this article, I had this to say:

Fukushima is still a huge global problem and isn't going to go away anytime soon. I think a worse case scenario is another tsunami/earthquake, then it's curtains for vast swathes of the planet.

I wonder if they will take the opportunity to remove the hundreds/thousands of tons of spent fuel that sits in tanks above all GE Mark 1 type reactors, moving it to facilities independent of susceptible shore sited installations? source

~

Please also see above post.

The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb

Experts say acknowledging the threat would call into question the safety of dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants in the U.S.
By Brad Jacobson
May 4, 2012

More than a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) present similar assurances of the site's current state: challenges remain but everything is under control. The worst is over.

But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel -- 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. These experts also charge that the NRC is letting this threat fester because acknowledging it would call into question safety at dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants around the U.S., which contain exceedingly higher volumes of spent fuel in similar elevated pools outside of reinforced containment.

Reactor 4: The Most Imminent Threat

The spent fuel in the hobbled unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi not only sits in an elevated pool outside the reactor core's reinforced containment, in a high-consequence earthquake zone adjacent to the ocean -- just as nearly all the spent fuel at the nuclear site is stored -- but it's also open to the elements because a hydrogen explosion blew off the roof during the early days of the accident and sent the building into a list.

Alarmed by the precarious nature of spent fuel storage during his recent tour of the Fukushima Daiichi site, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon subsequently fired off letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko and Japanese ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki. He implored all parties to work together and with the international community to address this situation as swiftly as possible.

A press release issued after his visit said that Wyden, a senior member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources who is highly experienced with nuclear waste storage issues, believes the situation is "worse than reported," with "spent fuel rods currently being stored in unsound structures immediately adjacent to the ocean." The press release also noted the structures' high susceptibility to earthquakes and that "the only protection from a future tsunami, Wyden observed, is a small, makeshift sea wall erected out of bags of rock."

As opposed to units 1-3 at Fukushima Daiichi, where the meltdowns occurred, unit 4's reactor core, like units 5 and 6, was not in operation when the earthquake struck last year. But unlike units 5 and 6, it had recently uploaded highly radioactive spent fuel into its storage pool before the disaster struck.

Robert Alvarez, a nuclear waste expert and former senior adviser to the Secretary of Energy during the Clinton administration, has crunched the numbers pertaining to the spent fuel pool threat based on information he obtained from sources such as Tepco, the U.S. Department of Energy, Japanese academic presentations and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), the U.S. organization created by the nuclear power industry in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

What he found, which has been corroborated by other experts interviewed by AlterNet, is an astounding amount of vulnerably stored spent fuel, also known as irradiated fuel, at the Fukushima Daiichi site. His immediate focus is on the fuel stored in the damaged unit 4's pool, which contains the single largest inventory of highly radioactive spent fuel of any of the pools in the damaged reactors.

Alvarez warns that if there is another large earthquake or event that causes this pool to drain of water, which keeps the fuel rods from overheating and igniting, it could cause a catastrophic fire releasing 10 times more cesium-137 than was released at Chernobyl.

That scenario alone would cause an unprecedented spread of radioactivity, far greater than what occurred last year, depositing enormous amounts of radioactive materials over thousands of miles and causing the evacuation of Tokyo.

Nuclear experts noted that other lethal radioactive isotopes would also be released in such a fire, but that the focus is on cesium-137 because it easily volatilizes and spreads pervasively, as it did during the Chernobyl accident and again after the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi last year.

With a half-life of 30 years, it gives off penetrating radiation as it decays and can remain dangerous for hundreds of years. Once in the environment, it mimics potassium as it accumulates in the food chain; when it enters the human body, about 75 percent lodges in muscle tissue, including the heart.

The Threat Not Just to Japan But to the U.S. and the World

An even more catastrophic worst-case scenario follows that a fire in the pool at unit 4 could then spread, igniting the irradiated fuel throughout the nuclear site and releasing an amount of cesium-137 equaling a doomsday-like load, roughly 85 times more than the release at Chernobyl.

It's a scenario that would literally threaten Japan's annihilation and civilization at large, with widespread worldwide environmental radioactive contamination.

"Japan would suffer the worst, but it would be a global catastrophe," said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste expert at the watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. "It already is, it already has been, but it would dwarf what's already happened."

Kamps noted that these pool fires were the beginning of the worst-case analysis envisioned by the Japanese government in the early days of the disaster, as reported by the New York Times in February.

"Not only three reactor meltdowns but seven pool fires at Fukushima Daiichi," Kamps said. "If the site had to be abandoned by all workers, then everything would come loose. The end result of that was the evacuation of Tokyo."

In an interview with AlterNet, Alvarez, who is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, said that the Japanese government, Tepco and the U.S. NRC are reluctant to say anything publicly about the spent fuel threat because "there is a tendency to want to provide reassurance that everything is fine."

He was quick to note, "The cores are still a problem, make no mistake, and there will be some very bad things happening if they don't maintain their temperatures at some sort of stable level and make sure this stuff doesn't eat down through the concrete mats."

But he said that privately "they're probably more scared shitless about the pools than they are about the cores. They know they're really risky and dangerous."

AlterNet asked the NRC if it is concerned about the vulnerability of the spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi and what, if anything, it had expressed to the Japanese government and Tepco on the matter.

"All the available information continues to show the situation at Fukushima Dai-ichi is stable, both for the reactors and the spent fuel pools," NRC spokesman Scott Burnell replied via email. "The available information indicates that Spent Fuel Pool #4 has been reinforced."

But nuclear experts, including Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president who coordinated projects at 70 U.S. nuclear power plants, warned days after the disaster at Fukushima last year of a "Chernobyl on steroids" if the spent fuel pools were to ignite, strongly disagreed with this assessment.

"It is true that in May and June the floor of the U4 SFP [spent fuel pool] was 'reinforced,' but not as strong as it was originally," Gundersen noted in an email to AlterNet. "The entire building however has not been reinforced and is damaged by the explosion in both 4 and 3. So structurally U4 is not as strong as its original design required."

Gundersen, who is chief engineer at the consulting firm Fairewinds Associates, added that the spent fuel pool at unit 4 "remains the single biggest concern since about the second week of the accident. It can still create 'Chernobyl on steroids.'"

Alvarez said that even if the unit 4 structure has been tentatively stabilized, it doesn't change the fact "it sits in a structurally damaged building, is about 100 feet above the ground and is exposed to the atmosphere, in a high-consequence earthquake zone."

He also said that the urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around northeast Japan, in which 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 to 5.7 have occurred off the northeast coast of Honshu between April 14 and April 17.

"This has been the norm since 3/11/11 and larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant," Alvarez added.

A recent study published in the journal Solid Earth, which used data from over 6,000 earthquakes, confirms the expectation of larger quakes in closer proximity to the Fukushima Daiichi site. In part, this conclusion is predicated on the discovery that the earthquake that initiated last year's disaster caused a seismic fault close to the nuclear plant to reactivate.

"There are a few active faults in the nuclear power plant area, and our results show the existence of similar structural anomalies under both the Iwaki and the Fukushima Daiichi areas," lead researcher Dapeng Zhao, a geophysics professor at Japan's Tohoku University, said in a press release. "Given that a large earthquake occurred in Iwaki not long ago, we think it is possible for a similarly strong earthquake to happen in Fukushima."

AlterNet asked Sen. Wyden if he considers the spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi a national security threat.

In a statement released by his office, Wyden replied, "The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States."

Alvarez agrees, saying, "My major concern is that this effort to get that spent fuel out of there is not something you should be doing casually and taking your time on."

Yet Tepco's current plans are to hold the majority of this spent fuel onsite for years in the same elevated, uncontained storage pools, only transferring some of the fuel into more secure, hardened dry casks when the common pool reaches capacity.

For the moment, though, and for the foreseeable future -- unless the international community substantively comes to Japan's aid -- Tepco couldn't transfer the irradiated fuel from the damaged reactor units into dry cask storage even if it wanted to because the equipment to do so, such as the crane support infrastructure, was destroyed during the initial disaster.

"That's kind of shocking," said Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. "But that's why we're still sitting on this gamble that there won't be another earthquake that could topple a very precarious unit 4."

Gunter is concerned that even a minor earthquake or a subsidence in the earth under unit 4 could cause its collapse.

"I think we're all on pins and needles every day with regard to unit 4," he said. "I mean there's any number of things that could happen. Nobody really knows."

Gunter added, "Right now its seismic rating should be zero."

Alvarez echoed Wyden's letters to the Japanese ambassador and U.S. officials.

"It really requires a major effort," he said. "The United States and other countries should begin to get involved and try to help the Japanese government to expedite the removal of that spent fuel and to put it into dry, hardened storage as soon as possible."

Same Spent Fuel Pool Designs at Dozens of U.S. Nuclear Sites

So why isn't the NRC and the Obama administration doing more to shed light on the extreme vulnerability of these irradiated fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi, which threaten not only Japan but the U.S. and the world?

Nuclear waste experts say it would expose the fact that the same design flaw lies in wait -- and has been for decades -- at dozens of U.S. nuclear facilities. And that's not something the NRC, which is routinely accused of promoting the nuclear industry rather than adequately regulating it, nor the pro-nuclear Obama administration, want to broadcast to the American public.

"The U.S. government right now is engaged in its own kabuki theatre to protect the U.S. industry from the real costs of the lessons at Fukushima," Gunter said. "The NRC and its champions in the White House and on Capitol Hill are looking to obfuscate the real threats and the necessary policy changes to address the risk."

There are 31 G.E. Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors (BRWs) in the U.S., the type used at Fukushima. All of these reactors, which comprise just under a third of all nuclear reactors in the U.S., store their spent fuel in elevated pools located outside the primary, or reinforced, containment that protects the reactor core. Thus, the outside structure, the building ostensibly protecting the storage pools, is much weaker, in most cases about as sturdy, experts describe in interviews with AlterNet, as a structure one would find housing a car dealership or a Wal-Mart.

Not what Americans might expect to find safeguarding nuclear material that is more highly radioactive than what resides in the reactor core.

The outer containments surrounding these spent fuel pools in these U.S. reactors patently fail to meet the NRC's own "defense in-depth" nuclear safety requirements.

But these reactors don't merely suffer from the same storage design flaw as those at Fukushima Daiichi.

In the U.S., the nuclear industry has been allowed to store incredible volumes of spent fuel for decades in high-density pools that were not only originally designed to retain about one-fourth or one-fifth of what they now hold but were intended to be temporary storage facilities. No more than five years. That was before the idea of reprocessing irradiated fuel in this country failed to gain a foothold over 30 years ago. Once that happened, starting in the early 1980s, the NRC allowed high-density storage in fuel pools on the false assumption that a high-level waste repository would be opened by 1998. But subsequent efforts to gain support for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have also been scrapped.

More recently, the NRC arbitrarily concluded these pools could store this spent fuel safely for 120 years.

"Our pools are more crammed to the gills than the unit 4 pool at Fukushima Daiichi, much more so," noted Kamps of Beyond Nuclear. "It's kind of like a very thick forest that's waiting for a wildfire. It would take extraordinary measures to prevent nuclear chain reactions in our pools because the waste is so closely packed in there."

Experts say the only near-term answer to better protect our nation's existing spent nuclear fuel is dry cask storage. But there's one catch: the nuclear industry doesn't want to incur the expense, which is about $1 million per cask.

"So now they're stuck," said Alvarez, "The NRC has made this policy decision, which the industry is very violently opposed to changing because it saves them a ton of money. And if they have to go to dry hardened storage onsite, they're going to have to fork over several hundred million dollars per reactor to do this."

He also pointed out that the contents of the nine dry casks at the Fukushima Daiichi site were undamaged by the disaster.

"Nobody paid much attention to that fact," Alvarez said. "I've never seen anybody at Tepco or anyone [at the NRC or in the nuclear industry] saying, 'Well, thank god for the dry casks. They were untouched.' They don't say a word about it."

The NRC declined to comment directly to accusations it's reluctant to draw attention to the spent fuel vulnerability at Fukushima Daiichi because it would bring more awareness to the dangers of irradiated storage here in the U.S. But the agency did respond to a question about what it has done to address the vulnerability of spent nuclear fuel storage at U.S. nuclear sites with the Mark I and II designs.

"All U.S. spent nuclear fuel is stored safely and securely, regardless of reactor type," NRC spokesman Burnell replied in an email. "Every spent fuel pool is an inherently robust combination of reinforced concrete and steel, capable of safely withstanding the same type and variety of severe events that reactors are designed for."

He continued, "After 9/11, the NRC required U.S. nuclear power plants to obtain additional equipment for maintaining reactor and spent fuel pool safety in the event of any situation that could disable large areas of the plant. This 'B5b' equipment and related procedures include ensuring spent fuel pools have adequate water levels. The B5b measures are in place at every U.S. plant and have been inspected multiple times, including shortly after the accident at Fukushima.

"The NRC continues to conclude the combination of installed safety equipment and B5b measures can protect the public if extreme events impact a U.S. nuclear power plant."

But nuclear experts told AlterNet that the majority of Burnell's response could've been made prior to the disaster at Fukushima. In fact, Ed Lyman, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, investigated these so-called "B5b" safety measures the NRC ordered post-9/11 and published his findings in a May 2011 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article.

Directly reflecting Burnell's response to AlterNet, Lyman wrote that after the Fukushima disaster, "the NRC and the industry invoked the mysterious requirements known as 'B5b' as a cure-all for the kinds of problems that led to the Fukushima crisis.

"Even though the B5b strategies were specifically developed to cope with fires and explosions, the NRC now argues that they could be used for any event that causes severe damage to equipment and infrastructure, including Fukushima-scale earthquakes and floods."

But contrary to these NRC assurances, then and now, Lyman's report found B5b requirements inadequate, containing flaws in safety assumptions that suggest the NRC has not applied the major lessons learned from the Fukushima disaster. Additionally, he revealed emails showing that the NRC's own staff members questioned the plausibility of these procedures to effectively respond to extreme weather events like floods, earthquakes and concomitant blackouts.

Burnell sent a follow-up email, noting, "I also should have mentioned the NRC issued an order in March to all U.S. plants to install enhanced spent fuel pool instrumentation, so that plant operators will have a clearer understanding of SFP status during a severe event."

This is a curiously roundabout way of saying that spent fuel pools at U.S. reactors currently have no built-in instrumentation to gauge radiation, temperature or pressure levels.

Kamps also pointed out that the NRC commissioners voted 4 to 1, with Chairman Gregory Jaczko in dissent, to not require requested such safety upgrades to U.S. reactors until the end of 2016.

He added, "Burnell's flippant, false assurances prove that pool risks, despite being potentially catastrophic, are largely ignored by not only industry, but even NRC itself, even in the aftermath of Fukushima." AlterNet