Hmm, corporate media still not very interested in Fukushima in spite of three compromised reactor cores? Still fronting for TEPCO and the Japanese government running news briefs about clean-up timeframes as if TEPCO was essentially doing a mop up operation? How about that ho-hum three paragraph AP story run by the the Independent about the Olympic pool-size spill under Unit 1 resulting from the meltdown.
And then, still can't find suitable photos to run?
What about the ludicrous photos distributed by TEPCO last week pitching how workers had accessed the notorious Unit 1, as if finally turning things around. Yes, that's before we learned that the meltdown actually occurred just sixteen hours after the earthquake. The conventional wisdom, by the way? Because we're not facing an uncontrolled chain reaction or "China Syndrome," even though the fuel melted through the reactor and permeates that "Olympic swimming pool," nothing to worry about. (Yeah, tell the neighbors.)
And what about photos from the town of Iitate, having been "swathed in high radiation." The town was just outside the newly extended 30km exclusion zone.
What about images offering seaweed samples collected up to 40 miles from the Fukushima plant
offering high levels of radiation, and just as fisherman begin harvesting this Japanese staple -- that after sales spiked last month in the belief that seaweed prevented radiation poisoning?
What about video of Japanese protesters getting dragged off by police in Tokyo?
No, I guess there's still nothing to see.
More takes on the Japan disaster here and at Tumblr. For the latest in visual politics, visit BagNewsNotes (and follow us on Twitter).
(photo: TEPCO caption: Northwest side of the first floor, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit1 - guy walking toward us.)
(photo: TEPCO caption: North side of the second floor, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit1 (pictured on May 9th, 2011) - guy walking away)
(photo: REUTERS/Kyodo caption: A woman evacuee from Iitate village carries a baby, as she arrives at a evacuation center in Fukushima, located about 40 kilometres (24 miles) from the tsunami-crippled Daiichi nuclear power plant and is included in an expanded evacuation zone, May 15, 2011. Japan expanded the evacuation zone around the plant taking into account the high levels of radiation that have accumulated in some areas after the powerful earthquake and tsunami on March 11 caused the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.)
(photo: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Retuers/Greenpeace/Handout caption: Crew members from the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, including radiation safety advisor Jacob Namminga, collect seaweed samples to monitor for radiation contamination levels as the Greenpeace ship sails up the eastern coast of Japan, in the vicinity of Fukushima prefecture May 5, 2011. Seaweed collected from the coast near Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and sewage in Tokyo have shown elevated levels of radiation, according to data released by an environmental group and officials on Friday. Picture taken May 5, 2011.)
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David Wagner: Report From Tokyo: My Final Report
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/warn/
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop_640.asp?product=tropical_mtsat_4km_visir2_floater
Commented 10 hours ago in World
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“building safer more modern nuclear plants will help as well
I am tired to see people think that the modern nuclear power plant is the same as a 40 year technology
We dont characterize our safest cars by the Corvair, our safest planes by the DC-3?”
http://tinyurl.com/4xrqcju
= = = = = = = = =
I completely agree with DrStrangelov.
The Corvair was banned for being "unsafe at any speed," and all of the antiquated nuclear power plants now in operation in the United States are deserving of exactly the same fate.
"nothing to see, move along"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/in-japan-reactor-failings_n_863482.html
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/index-e.html
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/05/16/was-fukushima-a-china-syndrome/
Yep.
and RE: Huge Mess:
I'd add RADIOACTIVE GLOBALLY POLLUTING (before) huge mess!
May 15th, 2011 at 01:11 PM
http://enenews.com/highly-radioactive-substances-detected-in-tokyo-higher-than-what-was-found-near-fukushima-plant
...] highly radioactive substances were detected in parts of Tokyo.
Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reports about 3,200 and nearly 2-thousand becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram were found in the soil of Tokyo districts of Koto and Chiyoda, respectively, from testing conducted between April 10th and the 20th.
This amount is higher than what was found in the prefectures near the Fukushima plant and experts warn that other areas may be subject to radiation contamination as clusters of clouds containing radioactive material remain in the atmosphere. [...]
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/53939/radiation-exposure
The LNT model predicts higher cancer risks than the threshold model. However, there is little evidence that the LNT model applies in case of cumulative doses totaling less than 100 mSv/yr, i.e., a healthy adult body can repair the damage of these doses. However, this may not be the case for the fetus of pregnant women, newborn infants, young children, sickly/weak/old people, etc. At doses totaling more than 100 mSv/yr, a healthy adult body may not be able to cope with the damage; cancer risks may increase as the dose increases.
For comparison:
Carrots: 126 Bq/kg from potassium-40; half life 1.3 billion years, decay energy 1.3 MeV
Banana: 130 Bq/kg from potassium-40
Brazil nuts: 207 Bq/kg from potassium-40, plus 37-259 Bq/kg from radium-226; half-life 1,620 years, decay energy 4.9 MeV
US tobacco: 19.1 Bq/kg from polonium-210; half-life 138 days, decay energy 5.3 MeV
You do seem to know your rays, but what about the differences in biochemistry?
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/05/91625.html
he operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Tuesday it has started transferring highly radioactive water at the No. 3 reactor's turbine building and its vicinity to a waste-disposing facility to prevent it from leaking into the environment.
The tainted water, whose level has been rising by around 2 centimeters a day at the turbine building, may be leaking from the reactor vessel damaged by the March 11 devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami as well as could pollute the sea, prodding Tokyo Electric Power Co. to try to remove it promptly.
The utility, known as TEPCO, also said it continued setting up equipment at the water-disposal facility to decontaminate the radioactive water so it can be reused to cool fuel in the vessel in the near future.
9 months from 3/11 when babies are being born with horrendous birth defects, maybe this story will be back on the front page.
No other news story, aside from this one, really matters anymore.
Great (but Sad) state of affairs at HP/AOL
Please keep posting, if folks stop then THEY win...
Geez you really are dense chica.
The cold hard reality is that the US Government is great at dealing with phony crisis they make up, like global warming, the war on drugs, the war on terror, but when it comes to real disasters like Deepwater Horizon, record flooding (from the record snow), and radiation from those exploded General Electric reactors showering the northern hemisphere, the government is pretty much useless.
So, given that they cannot do anything about Fukushima, cannot use Fukushima to start a war, or use Fukushima to talk the American people out of even more tax money, it simple is not important, which is why the US Government and most corporate media (Huffington Post being a notable exception) pretend it is just not a problem, while over at CNBC (owned by General Electric) Jim Cramer insisted Fukushima was not going to be like Chernobyl. For the record, Jim Cramer was equally wrong about Bear Sterns. Ann Coulter, ever the presstitute, is out there trying to tell you radiation is actually good for you (it isn't).
Hey, these are the people told you Saddam had nuclear weapons. If you can;t trust them who can you trust?
I am not a conspiracy theorist, nor buy into conspiracy theories.
What are you suggesting? You are not making any solutions and just are all over the map with government conspiracies.
The good that will come out of Fukushima is that the nuclear technology which has evolved since that early 60s vintage reactors will be highlighted
People also have a better understanding of risk
risk = likelihood * consequences and since neither of the terms on the right hand side of the equation is zero, zero risk can never be attainable (and not realistic)
nuclear energy entails risk, but in comparison with all other risks in this world, is quite acceptable
Risk aversion is a psychological disorder.
You cannot possibly compare eating radiactive materials with i.e. inhaling them.
So what is the risk of inhaling harmful materials in Fukushima?
Radioactive water is likely to be flowing out from the containment vessel to the basement.
TEPCO says it suspects a similar situation is happening in the No. 2 and 3 reactors.
Thank you Michael Shaw!
It is profoundly disturbing to watch as this story is being disappeared right before our eyes. I see I am the fifth post to this article that is buried in the bowels of HPo somewhere that no one could find except someone like myself who is actually digging. What Shaw is touching on is the stuff of banned content and filtered content on almost every media hub and news outlet in the realm. Dare speak of any form of corporate collusion or intentional acts of disinformation by large trans-national corporations, and you are quietly escorted to the door at any forum.
This is just a glimpse into what is happening at the editorial level at all the various media outlets, and also at hubs like HPo. I think we are witnessing the effectiveness of media hub filtering and editorial decision making to shape and control the public narrative.
If there was any evidence of collusion between the media outlets, this would be a very big story if written properly. It would also be a huge story to uncover some sort of filter biasing being employed by Yahoo and Google news hubs.
FTM: Follow The Money
Great Post yourself...
Thanks
I was initially encouraged by HPo's coverage during the first week of the event, and then alternately perplexed at how quickly it was subsumed by news threads that were hard to imagine as having anywhere near the traction that a nuclear catastrophe would have. Also my unique perspective on this is I am the father of three small children and we live in Southern California, directly in the path of a cloud of radioactive fallout of indeterminate proportions. Sounds pretty newsworthy to me.
But then, with headlining threads running with 15,000 + comments per story and growing, just at the first landfall of this cloud was being picked up by RadNet and other sources, suddenly, inexplicably, the topic was superseded by the news of Lindsay Lohan's bail hearing and who was going to get cut from American Idol that night. It was surreal.
But what really made me stop an take notice was when I did go out in search of the news on Fukushima after seeing it get buried at Huffpo, it was essentially off the page at every portal I usually hit, including Google. That's when I started thinking about the filtering and editorial influence.
When I read your post, I thought -
1) investigate topic using FTM protocol
2) broadcast compelling and verifiable evidence
3) inspire
Fanned and Fav'd!