Published: June 2nd, 2011 at 6:33 am ET
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Wastewater rises, fears mount, NHK, June 02, 2011:
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is struggling to remove pools of highly radioactive wastewater as fears of an overflow get more intense.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says wastewater levels rose around 6 centimeters inside the No.2 reactor turbine building, and in its utility tunnel, during the 24-hour period through Thursday morning.
Increases were also seen inside the No.3 and 4 reactor turbine buildings.
The water level in the utility tunnel is now just 28 centimeters from the surface outside the No.2 reactor, and 24 centimeters from the surface outside the No.3 reactor. [...]
Published: June 2nd, 2011 at 6:33 am ET
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In a sense all these stories from Tepco are diversionary. They have been dumping radioactive water into the sea since early on. They proudly announced they were going to contain the water with a giant floating curtain, also with a giant floating barge, and also with some holding tanks, but then we heard a special Russian decontamination unit was going to make the water safe. After that of course the circus tent was going to hold in the “steam”. How serious they were about any of that other than mentioning it for PR is impossible to know. So its hardly news if the thing is still leaking into the sea.
Of course, that water will likely also be leaking into the aquifer at Fukushima. Presumably that will mean the ground water in the Fukushima area will be unusable? Arnie Gunderson reckoned contamination had already gone a mile or so through the aquifer to another nuke plant weeks ago.
I suppose if people are focused on worrying whether a bit more overflows into the sea they might not ask about the fallout going into their lungs, their food, and their drinking water.
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I completely agree. The Japanese papers have been following this story cm by cm for weeks now day after day as if it was critical. The reactors are leaking all over the place, highly radioactive material as been dispersed over the site (by the explosions, especially number 3) and a lot has not been removed yet. So what difference can a few cubic meters of water make?
This is just to my opinion symbolic of a situation which has not yet been brought under control but it’s a side show.
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In a sense all these stories from Tepco are diversionary.
And this indeed is the issue, there are no solutions to the problem. They are just pouring water, much of it corrosive salt water, onto some smashed pile of rubble hoping that it finds its way to the hottest spots. The result is massive quantities of radioactive water that no one really knows what to do with, even Aveda.
The real problem is the “infrastructure” is decaying, rapidly so and this will lead to huge problems. My guess is most of this water will end up in the ocean or in the ground water aquifer. They cannot get close enough to fix anything and without ongoing maintenance the systems will fail.
There are no solutions to this dilemma, it will take armies of people, much like Chernobyl, to make headway. Millions of people will need to make the sacrifice. I guess we know where this leaves us and the picture is not pretty.
sschu
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World leaders hark! In India the civil society fought tooth and nail with the insiduous government to have civil society members on the committee to draft an anti-corruption bill. Can you not all force Japan to agree to oversee through independent knowledgeable persons in the know of the inside outs of nukes to storm into TEPCO and observe and report the truth? Noble Prize winners are you listening?
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Hasn’t kept India from continuing their suicidal rush to add more unsafe and failing nuclear technology.
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Perhaps the civil society will force our government to send an observer with the tem to invade Tepco-perhaps two-one from the civil soc and one from the gov
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India also has made a deal with BP…
India WILL regret this.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/04/us-bp-reliance-idUSTRE7230SE20110304
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India buys 40 nuclear-capable fighter jets.
http://www.takepart.com/news/2010/09/14/indias-nuclear-weapons-look-to-the-skies
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Indeed Heart of the Rose… the India BP will rise into an attack as it is an infinite bed of thorns!
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The irony here is that India is still perceived as one of the most corrupt countries in the world according to Transparency International in its annual survey, and the new anti-corruption bill in India has been drafted, according to the critics, with what look like deliberate loopholes that undermine the bill’s stated purpose.
Political corruption has been endemic in Japan for ages. Whole books are written on on the subject. The situation is unlikely to change partly because authority automatically engenders respect and challenging false authority is not part of the Japanese culture. This can be very hard for outsiders to understand, especially Westerners.
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The draft anti-corrution bill is being redrafted now jointly by civil society members and government reps on the drafting panel, precisely to plug the loopholes. We hope that after a protracted fight the modified bill will see the light of the day…Coming to the next para, this is an emergecy of unprecedented proportions and requires an out of the box gate crashing….
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I wish the attempt every success. The reality in every other country with an anti-corruption law is that it is a wonderful symbolic gesture, but the end result is a number of token prosecutions, while the majority of cases continue either undetected due to under-resourced law-enforcement or deliberately ignored due to strong corruption by powerful well-connected people. Corruption is part of human nature; people help their friends, family helps family, etc. The countries with the best enforced anti-corruption laws merely have the best hidden corruption.
Back to the topic: Japan will not be changing its culture as a result of the Fukushima disaster. The corruption in Japan that had historically led to cost-cutting on safety measures such as tsunami barriers, fire suppression systems, earthquake resistance certification, etc, will continue quietly into the future.
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Et tu Brute then fall nukes and forever
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Well… gee….It’s Hillary again.
http://www.state.gov/p/sca/ci/in/strategicdialgue/index.htm
Here is part of India’s problem…”close ties” with the US.
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It is more distraction bullshit to make more useless laws, that no one enforces. US FINREG, same joke. The banksters committed fraud and continue to do so. There are plenty of laws against fraud. I guess they are only for us little peeps.
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the world governments are all busy at the moment. leave a message at the sound of the beep.
*beep*
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Have a look at the gory Pacific Ring Resonance Dance of the Dams and Great Earthquakes on the coming holocaust at
http://predictingquakes.blogspot.com
Holocaust expected between 12 June and End August….
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You have dedicated yourself to some interesting work! I scanned your Earthquake page. From geology we know about
the long slow process of glaciation, then drying or melting cycles, with resultant “rebound” or those crustal formations which were under such huge weight. So now, not just by
theory, but by demonstrable measurement, the annual cycle
of huge water-weight crushing the land, and then releasing the
land, causes the equivalent of thousands of years of Natural
change to be compressed into annual cycles.
Just amazing that these engineering feats last as long as they
do. Nice Work Kumar! I would think Big-Time investment
analysts should be keenly aware of this data!
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Jack, it may be really so that the Japs knew it…In one of the briefings either by Edano or by Kan a sentence was just dropped that the time line for return of the evacuees would be stuck to the Year end UNLESS otherwise another disaster occurred like another quake! In any case in my URL
http://predictingquakes.blogspot.com/2006/08/possible-dates-of-occurrence-of-major.html
I had put up the Table on Three or more great quakes in a year while discussing the predictions- on 6 June 2007! Thanks Jack for joining in with your explanation.
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Does your model suggest where the earthquake(s) will occur?
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Yes. Via hotspots.
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May i just add that I´m very impressed by the Indian people protesting against the Jaitapur plant.
Greetings!
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Further, does your model also predict volcanic activity. The latter is a connection to Jack’s sharing about the effects of water weight on the continental shelf. I have read that the great feedback loop between Ice Ages is controlled by this reliving and imposing of water weight on the continental shelf of the Pacific Rim of Fire. Less weight =’s less volcanic activity. More weight =’s increased volcanic activity – the atmospheric fallout of which eventually triggers another Ice Age. I guess you are aware of this link.
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This effect has been observed a number of times- volcanos erupt on dam surges!
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It goes into the ocean anyway. And then they can proclaim that it will “dilute” and cease to be a problem. What idiocy.
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Circle Correct Answer:
In Japan, did the meltdowns tear a hole in the fabric of space, opening up a doorway to pure evil?
A. Definitely
B. Indubitably
C. Positively
D. Tacomagroove
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Sorry,
But Tacomagroove has been Ahead of everybody in
anticipating the truth, predicting the official announcements.
I dig Humor.
I dig intelligence.
Let’s GO, “SCIENTIFIC”….Double Time, HUP!
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@Jack..do I detect a PDA?
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“Ahead of everybody in anticipating the truth”?
There are so many things wrong with that statement.
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Scientifically speaking, I noticed that nobody here has a clue except for tacomagroove, who predicted 50% extinction of life by November.
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In that case, can you or she explain why would it be exactly 50%?
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That is not possible. Radiation does not act so quickly. The dark feminine (Tacomagrove) speculates at best. Misses essential facts at worst. This is no prophet.
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Scientifically speaking…
…out of your ass.
50% extinction of life by November? Get a grip.
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Anyone know what “space” is?
Is it the sum total of empty bits of nothingness between bits of “material” (which are also empty bits of nothingness when broken down).
Once we find out what space is, we might look into this …
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Always seemed logical to me for space to be the continuation of expansion we see from solid to liquid to gas. In each case, the orbit of the electrons increases vastly. Keep blowing it up like a balloon and the orbit will be the edge of the universe – and that would be called space. Only a poetical assertion, not mathematical.
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D. Is my final answer! Taco MaGroovey!
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A+ = Your Grade.
You’d fit right into a class for gifted students … as a teacher.
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@Faithful reader.
That is incorrect..many of us here know we are toast.
Simple as that..
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I’m with the idea that this is
a cover for groundwater contamination.
The TEPCO/Japanese govt model is to
dribble out bad news one step at a time.
however all the equipment in Unit 2 is likely completely trashed now. Any equipment below the water line is flooded,
that means valves, pumps, controllers, switches, fuses, breakers, relays, conduits.
Shouldn’t Unit 2 be back in blackout, and,
the systems to try and unwnd the crisis back offline?
Also Unit 2 had a blow out of the torus,
so the contamination of the torus is now flooding the basement?
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Yes Faithful reader, I live in northern Cali., and I know that this will kill me. I happen to agree with Taco Magroove,…:-)
This can not be ‘survived’ by the weak, sickly, immuno suppressed. That’s a BIG 10,
4
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Or the hungry…
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Hungry zombies.
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Please Move!…there are much safer and far less expensive places than Cali…even with doctors who do not prescribe chemo and have great success!
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FREE DOWNLOAD
Chernobyl – Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment
(NY Academy of Sciences, 2009)
[about 1 million deaths]
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-Ikqg4T4F30OWJmYjgwYWQtZmFiOC00NmM5LWI3NzYtMzVkODA2MmRmMmI1&hl=en&invite=CNPPgbQN&authkey=CLXh9bkN
“For a long time I have thought that the time has come to put an end to the opposition between technocracy advocates and those who support objective scientific approaches
to estimate the negative risks for people exposed to the Chernobyl fallout.
The basis for
believing that these risks are not minor is very convincing.
Declassified documents of that time issued by Soviet Union/Ukraine governmental
commissions in regard to the first decade after 1986 contain data on a number of
people who were hospitalized with acute radiation sickness. The number is greater by
two orders of magnitude than was recently quoted in official documents.
How can we
understand this difference in calculating the numbers of individuals who are ill as a
result of irradiation? It is groundless to think that the doctors’ diagnoses were universally
wrong. Many knew in the first 10-day period after the meltdown that diseases of the
nasopharynx were widespread. We do not know the quantity or dose of hot particles that
settled in the nasopharyngeal epithelium to cause this syndrome. They were probably
higher than the accepted figures.”
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Sorry God,….short of a MIRACLE from a power greater than ANY human! I won’t make it through ’til fall.
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There was someone who posted a nice prayer to say to the aliens that could save us if we but asked. Hec, I said the prayer. I figured we could use all the help we can get and I am not even into aliens.
I hope you stay strong and healthy Jill.
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Thanks Anna!
I’m gonna give ‘em hell! I like what George Carlin said about death, shortly before his own: “I’m not gonna go in softly,…I’m going to go flyin’ in sideways at 60 MPH, on two wheels”. Or something to that very effect! Me too me thinks! 
Thanks for the encouragement friend!
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Where is Bruce Willis when you need him to drill some holes and set off shaped charges? The plant is built on an artificial island… So hasten the watery burial it is grinding to inexorably. Bury it in the ocean and take our chances…beats the release in air of one nuclear bomb fallout a day for the next 100 years.
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It will come to this it is the only way.
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There is only one problem with that solution. The corium will bury itself into the ground and produce radioactive steam for the foreseeable future. It is not going to stay quietly down there. It is way to energetic for that.
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At this point–I no longer think that suggestion is OVERKILL.
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I do. Burying it in the ocean means that we increase our global exposure exponentially. The ocean doesn’t make things disappear. It increase their circulation throughout the planet. I think they need to dig a huge hole under the reactors and line it with something useful, like boron, and then dump each reactor into the earth….not the ocean…and they need to start dumping a concrete cap on this thing asap….
No, I don’t think 50% of all life will be extinct by the end of the year…that is nonsense. Radionuclides, unfortunately, take much longer than that to kill. I think in 50 years we will be able to begin to assess the damage in terms in genetic mutations, immune system illnesses, diabetes, mental ill-health, asthmthas, cancers, low birth weight babies and miscarriages. The marine life is not immune to these effects…but it will take a very long time…I don’t understand really how they are going to shut down Fukushima’s emissions any time soon…
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I’m serious about blasting it to the sea. Excuse me for venting a bit here…I tried to post a comment to no avail at Time.com about their idiot article criticizing Germany for killing the nuclear program:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2075013,00.html
Unfortunately I must have scared the moderator for suggesting my Dunkirk remarks at the end of this post so he just denied my post (not even the courtesy of a rejection email *;-).
Still I forgive the poor miscreants at Time Warner/CNN/Time.com! Got a little pressure from the nuclear military complex I gather. I forgive your Luddite souls, but despise your cowardly behavior. I hope they pay you well to hold the company line. But you can’t stop the Internet…even if only one in ten thousand people know the true situation at Fukushima that is still a mighty world voice on the Internet.
The Russians have several ocean-buried reactors and there are several nuclear subs and bombers with nuclear weapons already in Davy Jones locker. And the French (Areva) with their vaunted purification system have been polluting the English Channel at Normandy for years with a sneaky pipeline. At least the US has some hard data on how the Fukashambles Plant could be pushed into the sea from the 1962 blasts in Project Plowshare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKo8g0wAuBc&feature=related
They should call my Fukushima disposal plan Project Joshua after the battle of Jericho. *;-) Because if they don’t come up with a plan in less than 90 days to save Tokyo before the monsoon winds of September…another hornblower comes to mind…Gabriel. >;> Muslims and Christians are well familar with that angel.
Better move a few battleships like the Reagan into position off the west coast of Japan…because in a worst case scenario nearly 130 million Japanese are going to need a Dunkirk-style Operation Dynamo 2011 to flee the island. They won’t be fleeing Nazi stormtroopers, it will be invisible life-threatening…
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It funny you make a compelling point I beleive with intentions to eliminate the airboprne emmission dangers to humans.
While I think your idea would possibly offset airborne emmissions, what you are suggesting ultimately maybe just as dangerous as leaving it on land. Consider all the clouds are generated off the ocean via evaporation – so all the poisons again will be airborne and depositted on land in North America by precipitation.
The other aspect is that using the ocean would be the ultimate *out of sight out of mind* scenario. I have a problem with that as Man (we) have undeniably altered the state of Earth, arguably permanently. So far, we have badly contaminated Japan and there are deadly isotopes circulating at least in the Northern Hemisphere for who knows how long to come. I think the future will show us it is not only in the North as well.
It would be taking the high road if Man stopped being so self centered and showed they understand that all life on earth has equal value and a right to exist. We never were the only game in town. Given that we demonstrated having shit for brains and ruined our human environment and lands, there is no logical or ethical excuse for us to DESTROY whats left on this planet which is the ocean. We have damaged enough and the ocean is NOT our environment to destroy.
I think if this is the even that costs humankind their future, so be it. We have walked a path which led us here.
So respectfully, I disagree that the ocean is a viable alternative. Using the ocean at this stage for me signifies that nothing has been learned about this tragedy.
We have no business playing with nuclear substances we cannot control in a safe manner. That is what needs to be learned or this whole matter has been in vain.
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They won’t be fleeing Nazi stormtroopers, it will be invisible life-threatening nuclear pollution that drives them off the island. Hopefully those refugees will find a new home where the cesium and strontium are not at toxic levels. Sure, millions will not leave and will stay behind like the 2011 returning residents in Chernobyl’s dead zone. But a surprising number of Japanese may begin to look for an exit policy when the bodies begin to pile up.
This slow motion world-changing event could well be quite like the Mad Max world in the movie The Road except the appearances of the environment may be deceiving. Yes, the survival strategies for health, welfare, and safe food may be similar. Cannibals will probably not abound because land animals will not immediately die in large scale around the world and plants will appear to flourish. The sun will shine and all appears well. Yet tiny invisible-to-the-naked eye flakes of radiation will burrow deep inside lungs, bone marrow, and organs leading to a dramatic decline in lifespan and a tremendous incidence of birth defects. Eating contaminated food will accelerate the decline in the numbers of the human race. Perhaps it is just mother earth’s way of saying your time of overpopulation is coming to an end. The earth will survive barring a total loss of atmosphere from Emmy’s worst case scenario of a coronal mass ejection.
Yet let us not reject that atmospheric supposition as trivial fear mongering….This picture from 1962 is truly enlightening on how much affect a single nuclear device has on the atmosphere:
http://www.inflexwetrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IFWTnukeinspace.png
That photo to me personifies the evil of men who would inflict such wrath on the planet in the name of science.
Perhaps future clumps of mankind will survive in Biodomes and grow all their food indoors and utilize Kodak air filtration (a little private nuclear history joke I will explain another time).
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There is only one problem with the idea of letting it burn into the ground. The corium will produce radioactive steam for the foreseeable future. It is not going to stay quietly down there. It is way to energetic for that.
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It’s a no-win solution with the current futile attempts to stop the reactor meltdowns. It’s time to think outside the box. Either way… I agree with Arnie that this is the bookend for the nuclear industry in America. The nuclear industry will go down fighting, but the handwriting is getting bigger on the wall. They certainly aren’t the only polluters of the earth, but the toxic waste is now obviously uncontrollable and that make construction costs look pretty exorbitant.
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