Beyond the novelty that Fukushima was back in the news at all, two things characterize Thursday's BBC update. One is how shockingly brief it is, like a dashed of summary. The other is the almost casual tone it takes in listing through the nightmarish situations throughout the plant, especially the acknowledged meltdown in Unit 1.
It is often noted that the Fukushima story remains invisible because radiation is invisible, and/or the plant photos and video being released by TEPCO are also too abstract or technical. That begs the question, then, just how much is the danger hard to visualize as opposed to how much does the world (especially traditional media) have its eyes closed?
One piece of visible information that has floating to the surface in the past few days, by way of indy media and the blogosphere, regards the structural integrity of Unit 4. Dr. Robert Jacobs, a Nuclear Historian at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, offered the diagram above in an interview on Tuesday with Russia Today. According to Jacobs (which he says has been confirmed by the Japanese Government) , Unit 4 is starting to lean, a collapse certain to expose the fuel rod pools at the top of the building.
(It's not like there isn't a trail of additional images in the 'sphere, as well, by the way -- all available for vetting by a more curious media. Following the de-evolution of Unit 4, for example, blogger Andrew Higgins offers screen shots of the building reduced to a shell over the first week in May. Higgins, using screen shots purportedly from Japanese television, also reports a fire at the plant on May 8th associated with a radiation spike, both of which, he claims, went unreported on the same day big media cited a Government-touted drop in radiation levels.)
Certainly, TEPCO did not neglect Unit 4 as a visual subject, at least in the early weeks after the disaster.
Here is a view of southwest side of Unit 4 on April 11th.
And there was this shot from a helicopter of Unit 4 taken on March 16th.
Since April 11 th, however, the only pictures TEPCO has released of Unit 4 have been video downloads, taken underwater of the fuel rod pools, one released on April 29th and the other on May 8th.
So, I guess -- and Dr. Jacob's fuzzy and disturbing illustration drives this home -- what we're sadly lacking from Fukushima (the vagaries of science and radiation as much an excuse as a reason) is a bigger and much better picture of this still-boiling disaster.
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photos: TEPCO
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A powerful earthquake, a Tsunami described by witnessess as moving like a jetliner and the height of three story building hits the island of Japan killing tens of thousands of people, triggering a crisis at a large nuclear power plant. The world looks on in horror as the corporation that owns the facility reveals a shocking lack of preparedness, footage of plant workers spraying garden hoses on smoldering reactor buildings, civilian helicopters darting past tossing little buckets of water stand out in vivid almost comic impotence as one reactor building after another explodes in a massive fireball.
In the ensuing aftermath it is revealed that one of the more spectacular explosions, an olympic sized swimming pool on the top floor of one of the reactor buildings full of weapons grade plutonium is instantly vaporized and catapulted into the upper atmosphere, where it was promptly picked up by the prevailing 150 mph winds of the jet stream and on it's way across the Pacific to the west coast of the US.
The crisis is compounded when it is revealed that the reactors are archaic designs that were plagued with problems even forty years ago, which is further complicated by the fact that the company,is in fact the same company that owns many of the media outlets around the world that are reporting this event.
Suddenly, the screen goes black.
Meantime, the U.S. gov needs to enhance, rather than turn a blind eye to radiation monitoring. We deserve honesty and protection.
The potential for one of these monsters to take out a city is astounding. The probability is low, but given the nature of nature, probabilities can very often take the hindmost. The important thing to consider is POTENTIAL for DISASTER. If a nuclear power plant meltdown has the potential to kill millions, we need to stop using them, regardless of low operating costs (vs insanely high building costs) for nuclear power. Spew all the stats you like about how unlikely this or that is, but there can be no argument about absolute potential of these systems if humans lose control of them. These potentials are nightmares beyond the imagining of most people, seemingly especially the people who operate and defend these chained dragons.
But the Bonnet Carre spillway is just on the other side of the river, so it should be ok. Don't know much about the Baton Rouge facility.
I was reading about the reactor damages at the NEI (Nuclear Energy Institute) website several days, sometimes several *weeks* before HuffPo turned them into high-octane F.U.D.
But it's not enough to report what is actually going on. Now, of course, bad amateur photography is being claimed to show horrible damages.
Nobody died of irradiation, but HuffPo has claimed that no fewer than FOUR workers have died from The Devil's Lightning. They've also had to walk it back three times already, and since the newest claim is only a few hours old, I'm sure the 4th retraction will soon be coming.
Amazing that at least twice a week, Madame H. prints a story lecturing us on the value of Good Science -- and four times a week on how NUKKKULAR POWERZ WILL KIL US ALLLLL!
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=141
We won't know the full impact of the Fukushima meltdown for years, but the people who should know are looking at large numbers of casualties and permanent bans on eating food from downwind areas.
Speaking of "worse", check out this examination of why Fukushima's reactor 3 explosion was sooo different from reactor 1's - there had to be a reason that bits of fuel rods were found up to 2 miles away... It's not info the industry wants out there
And if his deductions are correct (I wonder if we'll ever find out) Fukushima will certainly have a first!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNUpeODOEU&feature=related
I dare anyone to prove it.
Sure, fuel rod material got 2 miles away, but that's about it.
Gunderson gets paid to do this.
Let's start with a website run by one of your own- a nuke industry funded research facility Berkely radiological, look past the apologist swill and the pathetic attempt to reframe the results as "harmless" Data establishes a variety pack of radioactive isotopes has been delivered and have poisoned the water supply and entered the food chain. By implication we can logically surmise that the rest of the world is also being contaminated in a similar way based on relative conditions and proximity to delivery mechanism.
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/2174
this is just to establish a second source for confirming local presence of isotopes- especially interesting that household HVAC air filters are testing radioactive in Los Angeles. Think about that for more than 2 seconds I think you will catch my drift;
http://www.enviroreporter.com/2011/03/enviroreporter-coms-radiation-station/
http://zardoz.nilu.no/%7Eflexpart/fpinteractive/plots/tracer_h_2557.gif
irrefutable proof that the industry hacks have been lying;
http://enenews.com/email-from-japanese-govt-officials-says-high-density-radiation-will-be-released-on-may-8-if-current-situation-continues
Just in case you are illiterate and need to watch it in a movie ;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-3Kf4JakWI&feature=player_embedded
Remember, reactor 4 was cold when the fuel pool explosion occurred, therefore the foundations of the hugely heavy concrete building are intact. If the underwater photos are from that reactor's fuel pool - which is difficult to believe since there is plenty of light and no debris - then the walls are intact.
Read the pictures.
Wide angle distortion might be a factor if the photographs hosted at theintelhub.com are cropped down from a larger original. Another possible factor is perhaps the earthquake changed the angle of the ground underneath the nuclear plant.
That does not mean that TEPCO or the IAEA acknowledges the lean or that the building is at risk of imminent collapse.
iodine131 has been detected in milk all throughout the western us and most of canada, cesium 137 is showing up in drinking water on the west coast. there has even been small amounts of plutonium detected as far away as new england. every bit of rain that has fallen in the us and canada since the crisis began has shown hundreds of times the allowable limits for drinking water. that rain grows our food too by the way....
there is NO safe level of radioactive iodine in milk, rainwater or anything else. cesium is even worse. we're poisoning our kids because people arent being told the truth.
google "chernobyl babies" if you want to see what those radioactive isotopes will be doing to our children in the near future.
step up and demand the information we need to have a chance to protect ourselves and our children
I like milk, but that's a lot of milk.
UCB stopped testing tap water on 4/20 because levels of radioactives had fallen below what their equipment was capable of detecting.
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling
The information is right there, you just have to believe it.
http://enenews.com/raw-milk-near-san-francisco-shows-158-8-pcil-of-iodine-132-uc-berekeley-says-result-is-due-to-background-interference
http://enenews.com/local-newspaper-editorial-blasts-uc-berkeley-professor-radiation-comments
http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-americium-found-new-england-video
http://enenews.com/wikileaks-representative-climate-scientist-studying-radiation-fukushima-worse-disclosed
ucb is just doing what its told by the government. they are trying to keep a lid on all the news of contamination because they dont want to spread panic. unfortunately this will lead to many many needless deaths.
for REAL info on the disaster ignore berkley, www.enenews.com is an excellent source for up to minute RELIABLE, UNBIASED info. also www.fairewinds.com is also very very good with a nuclear scientitst who is not afraid to tell it like it is.
ucb stopped testing tap water when the levels INCREASED. they only tested for iodine131, they never tested for cesium137. get your facts straight unless you like cancer...
There is absolutely NO direct comparison between environmental exposure and what happens when you actually ingest radioactive material. Think of a piece of radioactive material that is absorbed into your fatty tissue, and stays there, emitting lethal radiation that will far outlive you by literally thousands of years.
In your previous post you issued a challenged, so you seem to like games. Why don't we play a game? You get to pick- 1) take your 2 year old daughter on 10 cross country airplane flights over this next year or 2) you can give your little baby a single particle of plutonium in her bottle of milk to drink for breakfast tomorrow.
Your choice, shill.
As I pointed out in my previous post to you and the other nuke apologists here, Berkely is a nuke industry funded research facility. You have to do a little better than to cut and paste their corporate funded shill on the data.
If you are internally consistent, I assume you don't drive or fly or live in an area with radon in the soil or get CAT scans or X rays. You could also believe that somehow, mystically, the radiation from iodine is different than radiation of the same energy from cosmic rays. However, mystical thinking is inappropriate for the modern world.
and comparing eating a banana or flying in a plane to ingesting radiactive fallout directly into your thyroid gland is laughable if not irresponsible.
you can go ahead and believe the government rhetoric , the rest of us will believe reality.
With radiation, one or two ionizing particles (atoms), when taken into the body (and we really need to talk about that 'taken in' part), can alter a chromosomal structure - that the stage is set for birth defects, proclivity for disease causation, or cancer
Stay with me here as I go through the basic physical chemistry of
Avogadro's number = 6.0221415 × 10 to the 23 rd. That's number of atoms in a mole-a mole is the gram equivalency taken from the atomic number *----so
On mole of Cesium 137 weighs 136.907 gram and has 6.0221415 × 10 to the 23 rd atoms -some of which have a potential-given enough time -to ionize by emitting high energy electron -this could zap a cell or chromosome and be the cause of cancer. Do the math-a nanaogram-one billionth of a gram of Cesium would contain how many atoms?
Possible explanations are any combination of:
*wide angle lens distortion
*camera tilt
*units 3 and/or 4 leaning due to structural weakness
*units 3 and/or 4 leaning due to ground shift from the earthquake
If reactor 4 is indeed leaning, another question is whether that lean is increasing. Comparing the photographs taken April 7 and May 7 at 900% blowup, I was unable to confirm any increase. It is difficult to compare because of differences in lighting and low resolution.
These reactors are obviously very badly damaged. I do not intend to imply that nuclear power is safe; this is a major disaster Yet I am not convinced that part of the problem is a "Leaning Tower of Fukushima."
Does either Michael Shaw or Robert Jacobs know the focal length of the webcam lens? I wonder how they determined the vertical line for the Photoshop illustration. And if they are confident of their conclusion, why aren't they also reporting that unit 3 is leaning too?
Giving credit where credit is due (hint to author) is customary.
I guess not anymore. Journalism's big nose dive.
That site has a brief statement saying its web host is convinced by sources in the Japanese media that the tilt in reactor 4 is not an optical illusion. I wish it gave sources: there's an optical dilemma in the May 7 photograph and I may be the first to have noticed it.
The May 7 photograph hosted at theintelhub.com shows four different buildings at Fukushima Daiichi that are all appear nonvertical, and at least three of them differ from vertical by different amounts.
From left to right:
*The tower by Reactor 3 is off by 0.5 degrees, apparently leaning to the right.
*Reactor 3 is also leaning to the right by a similar amount; there aren't enough pixels to give a precise estimate.
*The tower by Reactor 4 is off by 0.8 degrees, apparently leaning to the right.
*Reactor 4 is also leaning to the right somewhat more than the adjacent tower.
It takes a trained eye to notice these differences. Minor distortions in architectural photography are commonplace: most of the pre-earthquake exterior photographs at houseoffoust.com have small amounts of distortion.
Regarding the May 7 photograph is that it is impossible say there is zero distortion in the image and that only Reactor 4 is leaning. Either--at minimum--reactor 4's adjacent tower is also leaning, or else wide angle distortion and possible camera rotation are affecting the image.
Here are two of my favorite links for keeping up with this story:
http://www.fairewinds.com/home
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/
F & F
In the video of the spent fuel pool one can follow the tracks of rising bubbles as related to the verticle elements of the pool's sides which offers reasonably definitive evidence that the building is not leaning in two axes, though one should never discount the possibility that #4 is leaning "up."
That TEPCO and the press have not been forthcoming is unfortunate since it forces others to depend on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th hand information, some of it inaccurate, some distorted, offered by some who are writing books, and by some others who offer free shipping on orders over $50.