Published: July 14th, 2012 at 2:09 am ET
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1973 KPFA interview of nuclear expert John Gofman, who worked on the Manhattan Project
TUC Radio, host Maria Gilardin
Rebroadcast: June 9, 2012
John Gofman, worker on the Manhattan Project: If a nuclear plant loses its cooling water… failure of cooling system… It will very rapidly heat itself up to several thousand degrees… and everything in the core will melt and keep itself hot because of the further radioactive decay…
This has been named the China Syndrome… now in truth it won’t melt all the way to China.
It’s estimated that it would cool itself down and probably wouldn’t melt more than a half mile into the earth.
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Listen to the report here
What happened during the Chernobyl meltdown, via Wikipedia:
The designing of the sarcophagus started on May, 20, 1986. Subsequent construction lasted for 206 days, from June to late November of the same year. The first task before construction started was to build a cooling slab under the reactor to prevent the hot nuclear fuel from burning a hole in the base. Coal miners were called up to dig the necessary tunnel below the reactor and by June 24, 1986 four hundred coal miners had dug the 168 metre (551 ft) long tunnel
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John Gofman via Wikipedia:
John William Gofman (September 21, 1918 – August 15, 2007) was an American scientist and advocate. He was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California at Berkeley. Some of his early work was on the Manhattan Project, and he shares patents on the fissionability of uranium-233 as well as on early processes for separating plutonium from fission products. Dr. Gofman later worked in medicine and led the team that discovered and characterized lipoproteins in the causation of heart disease. In 1963, he established the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory, where he was on the cutting edge of research into the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer.
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Published: July 14th, 2012 at 2:09 am ET
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BP will be interested in that for offshore drilling.
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http://www.avaaz.org/fr/petition/Appel_urgent_pour_eviter_une_nouvelle_catastrophe_nucleaire_mondiale/
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The French website http://fukushima.over-blog.fr/ which is dedicated to monitoring the situation in Fukushima has launched a petition to Sec. Ban Ki-Moon demanding the UN take immediate action on the danger of the SFPs. Please consider adding your signature. Click on the picture of Ban Ki-Moon to access the petition, Will soon be translated in English.
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I signed did not need to wait for English translation, I urge all to sign, please. Hurry time is limited for mankind.
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It does not list the United States.
I can't vote because of this.
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–> United States = États-Unis
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Hi Gotham,
It has been awhile, but I think there is an English translation version. If you do a browser search, there are, perhaps, two different versions of this. The version I signed was in English. Perhaps Centaur already provided the answer for you. Is there a "translate" button on one of the website pages? Can you set the translation through your browser settings? That's somewtimes and option.
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Noticed last sick SickPuter said he uses an app to translate from Japanese. 'Don't know if you're using a phone or other small device, but maybe there's an app?
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Thanks.
Add another vote. Let's see if the irrevalent UN will act on this one.
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You may as well write to TEPCO…Ban Ki Moon is as establishment and conformist and slippery a status quo Asian politician as you are going to find.
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charlie 3…You are no doubt correct. But still it is no reason to give up, no reason not to try. We must try every means possible, including the apparently impossible!
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"…cool itself down…" almost sounds benign…
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Nobody ever thought there would be re-criticalities, no simulations showed that there would be. That the corium would repeatedly heat itself up was not considered even by the most ardent anti-nuclear advocates.
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Their a lot we don't know about nuclear fission, even the so called experts are out of their league, they neither fully understand it, control it or can stop unchained nuclear reaction.
The fathers of nuclear fission pleaded with governments not to let the genie out of the bottle, they did not listen.
Atom smashers are dead, long live alternative power
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"It’s estimated that it would cool itself down and probably wouldn’t melt more than a half mile into the earth."
Estimated, by who?
You're right, weeman, no one knows anything about any of this. We are all in uncharted territory. The worst any of the 'experts' can come up with, so far appears to be grossly underestimated.
But we're going to find out.
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I wonder if he included criticality's into his estimate and not one, not two, but three total meltdowns. Who knows how far as we are in unchartered territory. I don't think he even imagined such a horrific catastrophe.
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Nice look at the animation:
http://www.javys.sk/en/nuclear-facilities/interim-spent-fuel-storage/interim-spent-fuel-storage
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that was fun! It's amazing to think that a hundred-plus-million went into developing that facility, just so they can keep the machine going.
They'd like us to think they've got it under control. But from mining to disposal, they've left nothing but death and destruction in their wake. Had we been able to allocate a fraction of the public's resources that was spent on nuclear power, towards renewable energy technologies, what we're witnessing these days (global conflict, pollution and suffering of bio-lifeforms) would've been easily avoided.
Thanks for the link…
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Yes, Aftershock. How much wealth has been dedicated to suppressing new technologies to maintain the self-interests of the petroleum and nuclear industries (industry at vertically and horizontally integrated levels)?
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Thanks for posting that link.
That animation and the inside photos at this website
http://www.nuclear-power-plant.net/index.php?lang=en
gives you a fairly good estimate of what a non-destroyed boiling water reactor building should look like and how proper removal of spent fuel should take place.
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Both links in this thread are awesome. The animation for spent fuel casks shows just how they will proceed at Fukushima. Only thing different is that the animation and video are a state of the art facility that is much more advanced. Same with the web site showing the BWR in Austria. A lot of parts of the plant are the same as Fukushima, but are also a much later and more refined design.
Mr Goffman stepped up during World War 2 and helped the United States develop nuclear weapons when Nazi Germany was developing nuclear weapons themselves. How can people find fault with that, especially when most of his life was spent working with medicine to help save lives. I do not get people trashing him.
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The Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science; via A Green Road Blog
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/03/primer-in-art-of-deception-cult-of.html
IAEA, WHO, NRC And Others; A Web Of Deception? via A Green Road Blog
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/05/iaea-who-and-others-web-of-deception.html
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Chrisk… Agreed. We shouldn't trash Gofman. He was a good and dedicated man. He did what he could. You can find a brief bio sketch of him on line. It's a chapter in a book called "Nuclear Witnesses."
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Feliks: I love the name! "Interim spent nuclear fuel storage…"
Just what "interim " are they talking about?
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One must ask… WHY?
"…he was on the cutting edge of research into the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer." – wiki
Unfortunately, his name will go down in history as one who was on the cutting edge of causing abnormalities and cancer too.
I wonder if Mr. Gofman thought Nuclear Power was safe?
Would Gofman think the same today?
What would he do now?
I also wonder how close his estimate of 1/2 mile core travel is?
I guess we're going to find out.
The entire world now gets to be part of this experiment!
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Gofman is best known for his advocacy AGAINST nuclear power, especially: "Poisoned Power: The Case against Nuclear Power Plants" (1971).
That said, he certainly worked close to the belly of the beast. On balance, he was a Good Guy in my book. He stopped a lot of nuclear madness (such as using nukes to build canals!) but we all tend to focus on the nuclear madness that didn't get stopped, for obvious reasons. Anyway, it's complicated….
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/09/04_GofmanObit.shtml
He died long before the Fukushima crisis started, so his "half mile" comment is hypothetical in the context of Fukushima. Time will indeed tell.
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Did you actually listen to the radio program? Dr. Gofman said in no uncertain terms he was vehemently against nuclear power and nuclear weapons programs.
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Quotes from Dr. John Gofman:
"We can now say, there cannot be a safe dose of radiation. There is no safe threshold. If this truth is known, then any permitted radiation is a permit to commit murder."
"I'm sad to say, I don't think 90% of doctors in this country know a goddamned thing about ionizing radiation and its effect. Somebody polled some pediatricians recently and said, "Do you believe there's a safe dose of radiation?" And 45% said, "Yes." They weren't asked, "What papers have you ever read on this subject that led you to conclude there's a safe dose?" I think medical education on the hazard of radiation is atrocious. What have they taught you in radiology?"
"The human experimentation that has been done is bad, and it's good that that's being cleared away. But for 25 years the DOE has not shown any concern for the health of Americans. Their concern has been for the health of the DOE. Their falsehoods concerning the hazards of ionizing radiation have put not thousands of people at risk, not millions of people, but billions of people."
http://www.whale.to/a/gofman.html
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Thanks Bobby1.
At least his conscience is clear.
They will all say "It's regrettable" sooner or later.
That really doesn't help 'the situation' now.
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"The human experimentation that has been done is bad, and it's good that that's being cleared away."
Well, he was wrong about that. Every living organism on this planet is now a member of an experiment on how devastating a multiple nuclear reactor meltdown/explosion can be.
Now where's that release form? I don't remember signing it . . .
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John Gofman did help create the first A-bombs, but went on to do groundbreaking work to identify the risks of ionizing radiation. His health studies of Hanford nuclear workers were defunded by the AEC and he was slandered by the industry, but he never backed down and refined his estimates of radiation's effects on health. He founded the Center for Nuclear Responsibility and wrote many scientific papers.
His estimates of radiation health risk changed only slightly over decades, while official estimates – initially showing that radiation was FAR less hazardous than Gofman's findings – very slowly increased to the point that the National Academy of Sciences BEIR committee is now in very close agreement with what Gofman found decades ago (& was blacklisted for).
Everyone should be very grateful for Gofman's many contributions to the debates about nuclear energy. See his excellent book for laymen on the topic: Irevvy at http://www.amazon.com/Irrevy-irreverent-illustrated-collection-Blunderland/dp/0932682006
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The real problem now is how do we use all our "words" here on these forumns to make something happen. If we all don't work to funnel our concerns into actions then all of our "words" will amount to a bunch nothing.
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FYI, for SF Bay Area Enenewser's, the radio program information number is located in Healdsburg, CA. Area code 707, and prefix 463.
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TUC Radio, http://www.TUCradio.org
(707) 463-2654 to obtain copies of this program, or other programs.
Can be ordered in CD format, according to the narrator.
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Half a mile . . . I don't think so, but let's hope there's plenty of sand under those reactors . . .
There have been a couple of excellent BBC vids on the Chernobyl disaster. In the more recent one — Inside Chernobyl — BBC explains how the rods actually melted down, and it took years for them to figure out where the molten fuel mass had leaked to.
In the end they found that sand packing around the reactor vessel melted into glass, which formed a glass seal around the burning fuel, probably preventing an event that could have been worse by multiple factors of magnitude.
It is an absolutely mesmerizing video, particularly post Daiichi. The molten fuel segment is at about min 23.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AygAYffoiuo
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The three Fuku coriums have certainly hit the water table. Radiating all the surrounding seawater and spewing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Nothing being done to stop any of it.
If the constant 'earthquakes' are recriticalities, and/or steam explosions, no glass seal will be happening in Japan.
And G-d help the engineers tasked with looking down those holes.
'Boil, boil, toil and trouble'.
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http://www.potw.org/archive/potw283.html
"Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and caldron bubble ….
Fillet of a fenny snake …. "
And some eye of newt for good measure.
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I made a complete transcript of the Gofman interview:in 2 posts.
TUC Radio, host Maria Gilardin
Rebroadcast: June 9, 2012
Below is my transcript of this excellent interview (in. Listen to the report here.
50s & 60s nuc. tests. Higher rates of cancers, thyroid cancers, deaths in 'downwinders'. In SW states and other test areas. USG lied and denied, said doses were too low. Continued testing in Nevada until 1992. After that there were UG tests. 1990 – finally USG admits huge lists of cancers caused by radiation.
Accidents are just as toxic and deadly. Pu – 24,000 years remains highly toxic.
John William Gofman (September 21, 1918 – August 15, 2007) was an American scientist and advocate. He was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California at Berkeley. Some of his early work was on the Manhattan Project, and he shares patents on the fissionability of uranium-233 as well as on early processes for separating plutonium from fission products. Dr. Gofman later worked in medicine and led the team that discovered and characterized lipoproteins in the causation of heart disease. In 1963, he established the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory, where he was on the cutting edge of research into the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer.
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thanks Bleep, I can read alot faster than watching a video.
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Part 2 – below is part 3 of transcript.
1973 KPFA interview of nuclear expert John Gofman MD & nuclear chemist (now dead) – important whistleblower of nuc age – worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs and elsewhere, worked on the Manhattan Project.Concluded nuke power plants need to be closed. Nuke industry tried to destroy him. 20 times as many cancers per unit or radiation as nuke industry alleged.
AEC and nuke power industry opposed and fought him viciously, attempted to destroy his credibility as a scientist. Elec. util. industry and makers of nuke reactors were the chief opponents of Gofman. 1973 was forced to resign from LL Labs. Dr. Arthur Tamplin worked with him. Wrote 14 scientific papers. Said there is NO SAFE DOSE and produced experimental support for that statement.
Anon caller – he got visit from AEC member, tried to get his support. "I don't care if they are right or not scientifically. It is necessary to destroy them. by the time these people get cancer, you and I will be retired. And if you ever tell anyone I said this, I will deny it."
se
Industry is not safe, clean, or cheap – is most expensive way to produce power. (Legislation) removes liability for damage resulting from it.
June 1970 he testified against nuke power. Continued research on cancer and chromosomes. Wrote book – POISONED POWER .
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Part 3 of transcript.
A large nuke power plant in op for several months – years has radioactivity of several nuke bombs. Does not explode ; but if loses its cooling power, it shuts it self down – but so much contained radioactivity continues to produce heat, heats up to several 1000 degrees, stays hot – "China Syndrome" – actually melts about half a mile into earth – generates hydrogen explosion, spews radioactivity – of 1000 Hiroshiima bombs worth of radioactivity. (SO IS THIS WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MELTED-DOWN FUKU PLANTS? – that much radiation released?!
10-30 miles from major cities – plants – can blanket a city with radiation – for 12 hrs. or more can get several rads of radiation. Gotta evac. 12-20 hours (not really possible) or they will get fatal doses. Even with lower doses, may not show acute injury but have new risk for every rad accumulated a 2% increase in chance of getting cancer in a 5-30 years. Genetic mutations are also increased in offspring.
Infallibility and perfect operation are ASSUMED.
Radioactivity accumulates in food chains and in body areas. Fresh water – cesium 137, for example – one of the most hazardous – behaves like Potassium – so fish in the water concentrate cesium in muscle cells at levels many times higher than it is in the water.
NUCLEAR WITNESSES (BOOK)
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First of all, Gofman is a hero who broke ranks with the crazies hell bent on pushing civilian nuclear power on us … he spoke the loudest against the fraud, from the inside, but was black listed, down-played and overridden … Oh well. Big money wins again,
Some awesome TUC links … the anti-nuke movement is natural ally to the Occupy movement (if it still exists) but we are without a major party, as long as the Pusher-In-Chief, Obummer, still touts nuclear ideology!
Drought is making news … revealing the ethanol hoax for what it is … the first five billion bushels go to the ethanol mandate … but the Romney vs. Obummer contest leaves us with a choice between two pro-nuclear shills! I can't bring myself to vote for a pro-nuke BONEHEAD post-Fukushima. I feel ill.
Any advise out there in enenewser land???
peace … (it's a nice send off, even if it won't stop Big Nuclear)
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Gofman is a hero who broke ranks with the crazies
needed a laugh afore i slept
thanks ned.. hope u get your answer
peace
nice post bleeps
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nedlifromvermont…Election advice: I definitely can't vote for either Obromneybomber.
And I forever swear off voting for the lesser because of the vulnerable SCOTUS. It doesn't make much difference. We got one barely moderate and Kagan who voted with the 4 conservatives on ACA.
So, I'm voting for the Green ticket, Dr. Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala. They were featured on Democracy Now either last Thursday or Friday (12th or 13th) for the entire hour. Lots of information. There is also Rocky Anderson, Peace & Freedom; but the Stein-Honkala ticket seems better to me, AND–they will appeal to the OCCUPY folks. So they could get a significant number out of the 99%ers.
So that's what I'm doing.
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We have to vote our individual consciences. If we continue to vote for "the lesser of two evils" we continue to support the status quo.
True, we may be fragmented in our efforts at first but eventually the "alternative" parties we support will gain momentum.
We need to stop voting FOR people selected for us, and start voting for those whom we want in office.
The two party system in the U.S. is defunct; it's a joke IMHO. The whole left-right political construct is a diversion to keep us distracted from real issues.
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'Wouldn't hurt to get rid of the Diebold machines. Too easy to rig the voting when there's no one tallying the individual ballots.
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thanks for the advise dharmasyd … sounds reasonable …
we'll keep chipping away at the varnish on the Good Ship "All Is Well In Nuclearland" …
their lies will be the ties that bind …
U.S. populace largely and blithely completely unaware!!!
Go Green Party … it's time we had one, too. Ralph Nader anyone?
Night night!
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Thanks Nedli…Let me know what you think of the Democracy Now program.
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I don"t know enough about Gofman at this point to have an opinion about his work…
I do wonder what the impetus would be for the coriums to stop at the half mile.
Why a half mile?
Corium has hit groundwater..Fukushima Npp..IMHO
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We know Coriums1,2,&3 have already hit groungwater, Heart. TEPCO is building a cofferdam 100' into the bedrock between UNITS1,2,&3 and the Pacific Ocean in order to stop groundwater from reaching the Ocean. http://enenews.com/wall-100-feet-tall-be-built-underground-fukushima-daiichi-tepco-trying-prevent-contamination-ocean-construction-begins-tomorrow-ends-june-2014-photos
Why? Because the ground water flows past Coriums1,2,&3 on its way to the Ocean. They do not want this highly contaminated groundwater to flow into the Pacific if they can stop it. On the uphill side of the cofferdam, they are drilling wells to intercept ground water flowing towards the Pacific. They will test this water, then dump it directly into the Ocean, effectively stopping the flow of water around Coriums1,2,&3.
If Coriums1,2,&3 are as much as a half mile deep, then the holes in the bedrock, through which corium has traveled can be filled with concrete. This might slow or stop some of the radiation that is venting into the air from Fuku, as the coriums sputter and fizzle deep underground.
Thanks Admin for finding this. There has been little or no discussion in the academic community about where Coriums1,2,&3 are. If we won't even discuss this topic, then we won't be able to make a plan to effectively deal with the Fukusituation. Is TEPCO's plan really to hang out at Fuku for 30 years, keeping temperature guages and robot cameras working, then declare the Fukufires to be out?
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I am willing to bet the deed to the farm Tepco and their occupation forces buddies know the exact location and depth of the corium. They are hoping the multiple nuclear blobs do indeed sink much deeper and entomb their toxic perpetual fires from air releases, but that doesn't solve the other problem of precarious spent fuel ponds.
There's a lot of "outs" at Fukushima: out of control, out of money, out of ideas, and out of luck. Even with new ideas and more money the other two may trump the feeble efforts of humans in the beginning of this nuclear fallout epoch.
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@TepcoSievert and other, the petition to UN is translated in English here : http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/4/37/62/00/appels/petition-avaaz-piscine-4/Petition-avaaz-doc-blog.pdf
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if one were to use Google Chrome, there is an automatic translation feature built into it…
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