Published: July 18th, 2012 at 8:49 pm ET
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Interview with Greg Palast
The Monitor, KPFT
July 16, 2012
Greg Palast, New York Times-bestselling author and freelance journalist for the BBC
At ~4:00 in
Palast: Seismic testing, that is earthquake proofing, at nuclear plants worldwide, is systematically faked. They’ve done it all over the United States and they’ve done it in Japan.
At ~8:45 in
Palast: They were not inundated, there is not one picture of a diesel generator wet, let alone flooded.
It’s just not there. It doesn’t exist. It’s phony, it’s a lie.
It’s a complete fairy tale that you believe these things would work in America.
At ~9:30 in
Host: I just want to reiterate this because it’s very important.
We’ve got the earthquake damaging the core in the reactor and that shouldn’t have happened. And the reason that happened was the seismic qualification documents were faked by the people who built it.
Then we’ve got the diesel engines failing predictably, not because of the wave, but because they were idle, being switched on and expected to run at full speed, but they couldn’t.
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Download broadcast here
Published: July 18th, 2012 at 8:49 pm ET
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sending...
Nuclear accidents are triggered by different things. It's all hindsight now. And too late.
The next one could be caused by human or mechanical error, which was the case in the U.S. and Russia.
The ONLY way to stop deadly radiation from spreading, is to stop using this failed technology. What are we waiting for?
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I love KPFT, having been one of their original supporters.
As I've been saying all along, the weakest part of a nuclear plant is the owners.
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Follow The Money, Deep Throat from All The Presidents Men/Water Gate…
Then Fuky Gate, with TEPCO planting false data about the Quake Damage…
Now we have Nuke Gate in SoCal: http://is.gd/T1Sc4X
See Whistle Blower Comments there.
What a Nuclear Waste!
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Japan Utilities Drop on Nuke Safety Concern: Tokyo Mover
"..July 17, 2012 Tweet Facebook LinkedIn Google Plus 0 Comments
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) led declines among Japan’s utilities after Nikkei news report that a tariff increase will be less than anticipated amid escalating opposition to the country’s plans for restarting nuclear reactors and reorganizing the industry.
Tepco, as the utility at the center of last year’s nuclear disaster is also known, dropped 12 percent to 123 yen, a new low. Hokuriku Electric Power Co. (9505) plunged 8.3 percent to 1,115 yen after Kyodo News reported a fault line beneath one of the company’s reactors may be active. The Topix Electric Power & Gas Index fell 4.6 percent, the most in a year, after tens of thousands of people rallied in Tokyo to protest nuclear power…"
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-16/hokuriku-electric-drops-on-report-of-fault-under-reactor
not really anti nuclear? eh greg? shows…
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Thatz it Time Magazine: FUK GATE. Sells magazines AND gets the truth out. The only way to get the masses attention these days is with sleaze.
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Here's a key point that Palast makes:
"Then we’ve got the diesel engines failing predictably, not because of the wave, but because they were idle, being switched on and expected to run at full speed, but they couldn’t."
Here's what he means by that comment.
Per his book, 'Vulture's Picnic', every NPP has back up generators in case incoming power fails, to pull the rods out and keep the water pumps running.
However, EVERY SINGLE DIESEL BACKUP GENERATOR will fail, due to incorrect application – not design, but application. In order to save money, the NPPs use standard diesel engines, like you would see in a bulldozer, connected to a generator. Now, at a hospital, for instance, when the power fails, the backup generators are able to come up to the necessary speed quickly, as the equipment that needs to be powered does not require a large current spike to continue running.
At an NPP, the generator is required to run high starting current pumps and hydraulics. These generators installed at all the NPPs will not handle the increased current load. They start and idle fine. But in an emergency, such as Fukushima, they're turned on, then when wound up to 80% or higher running speed, the crankshaft snaps.
Palast makes this clear, based on conversations with nuclear backup generator engineers, that EVERY SINGLE BACKUP GENERATOR IN THE WORLD WILL SNAP THE CRANKSHAFT WHEN TURNED UP TO SPEED. All to cut costs.
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He also says that per international nuclear safety regulations, the backup generators are only tested at 10% speeds – never full up. So the generators meet 'safety specs', but everyone knows they will fail if needed.
If you think this industry can't get any worse, stick around. There's much more to come.
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Technology goes out to the front. You can have over some diesel, but should be the basis of the inverter and UPS batteries.
No unless I use the aversion not allow solutions from green energy….
But I think, with this reason for savings, because and so nuke is already insanely expensive.
Better to pretend that the new technology there is not know…
http://www05.abb.com/global/scot/scot235.nsf/veritydisplay/1fbaf829798d9615c1257870003576c1/$file/des_brochure_rev_c.pdf
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Not to offend anyone one, but Palast is out there on the fringe pretty far. So we'd want to look first before jumping into this conspiracy theory with both feet.
Maybe more details would help, but it's difficult for me to see how a diesel that can power a bulldozer is not going to handle a few pumps. It is harder for me to see how every single NPP in the world would have this problem. How would you know without an inventory? And it's really hard to see that the nuke people are all that stupid.
As for Fukupshima, earlier this year Kenichi Ohmae's group released a 291 page report on what went wrong. Ohmae struts himself as an MIT grad and yada, yada, but he's obviously very smart and he had access to a lot of data after the disaster. His version doesn't mention busted crank-shafts that I can see. That doesn't mean a lot with all the lying going on, but he's got more cred than Palast.
According to Ohmae the generator that survived had more than enough stuff to power the pumps. It did double-duty.
"There was an air-cooled diesel engine sitting atop a hill close to Reactor No. 6. Its airfins were too big to fit into the basement and was luckily placed outside, and as such, this engine started to generate electricity. With a pump brought in from outside, it started to cool not only Reactor No. 6, but had enough power to cool Reactor No. 5."
Ohmae's report and comments can be found at Fukushima Resources.
http://www.something-stinks…
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I picture Palast more as an effective, respected (and feared) investigative reporter, not one who is on the fringe, so to speak.
I've been following him since about 2003.
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hes about as main stream as theu come.. he has only paid a homage to the situation in japan
the manual of category "d" uk censorship is clutched to his bosom if you look carefully imo.. lol!
does the odd good sleuth though.. i am disappointed in him.. think the vultures book is more important.. i suppose we all gotta make a living, unfortunately, it seems to be at the expense of the dying
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He just doesn't sound very mainstream to me:
"Palast is best known in his native USA as the journalist who, for the Observer (UK), broke the story of how Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black Florida citizens from voter rolls before the 2000 election, thereby handing the White House to his brother George.
His reports on the theft of the 2000 and 2004 US elections, the spike of the FBI investigations of the bin Ladens before September 11, the secret State Department documents planning the seizure of Iraq's oil fields have won him a record six Project Censored awards for reporting the news American media doesn't want you to hear. "The top investigative journalist in the United States is persona non grata in his own country's media." [Asia Times.] He returned to America to report for Harper's Magazine."
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hi pu ..repost
very ot article here…
NY Times Admits: Mainstream News is Basically Censored Propaganda
Posted on July 17, 2012
"..Important article from the NY Times demonstrating how real journalism covering the criminal political elite in America is basically dead. Even better, is Glenn Greenwald’s article at Salon slamming the complete joke that is the mainstream media, and he shows us all exactly why alternative media is taking over. After all, only an incredible 21% of Americans have confidence in television news, a new low according to a recent Gallup poll…"
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2012/07/17/ny-times-admits-mainstream-news-is-basically-censored-propaganda/
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Pier…I've lived long enough to realize that most of what is originally called "Conspiracy Theory" turns out, after a passage of time, to be Accurate Fact.
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So true! BB always euphemizes self-evident thought as a THEORY (synonymous to hypothesis/guess) when in fact, it is tautology.
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Do you think that regulators are so stupid?
Statement that generators will fail in emergency event is refuted by the facts, that in other power plants, which have been shut-ed down by the same earthquake, generators have not failed.
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Sorry, the website http://www.something-stinks. cannot be found
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http://www.something-stinks.com/Fukushima%20Resources.htm
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heres the link to the 291 page report.. thanks richard
http://pr.bbt757.com/eng/pdf/finalrepo_111225.pdf
wonder what old greg would make of this then? is he into mini nuke reactors too?
i am having a pallast bashing day! lol!
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one last bash
is he using the theory to sell his books?
http://www.gregpalast.com/the-fukushima-story-you-didnt-hear-on-cnn/
the word vulture comes up but NO mention of the plight of the people of fukushima.. 2 and a half million of them…
hmmm!
greg! you need to step up to the plate here.. imo
the people of fukushima are waiting……
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Well I've driven lots of diesel trucks in my time and I also know that diesel engines have a governor that is set below red line. Why you can't compare horsepower between comparible cars or boats fitted with diesel vs gas as the gas engine horsepower is rated at redline speeds while the diesel is rated at maximum governed speeds which are always below red line. You can't over rev a diesel unless you leave it in the wrong gear going downhill on a mountain highway. Can't see breaking a crankshaft unless engine is connected to something it can't handle. Unsure how that works on an over taxed generator.
Diesel engines don't have spark plugs the compression of the fuel air mixture in the cylinder creates the heat to ignite the fuel. So certainly a big truck type diesel engine smokes a lot and won't run efficiently until it reaches running temperature. If maximum power upon start up is required, I would think you would need some sort of block heater running on those engines all the time. Can't play video as no headphones at public wifi access. But the story begs questions.
The details are unimportant. Nuclear power accidents happen and the nuclear industry gets off the hook because of a cosy relationship with the government. Ditto with lax regulations. Next accident scheduled maybe in USA which has many aged GE models still running, with over extended licenses thanks in part to OBAMA. Happens all over the world not just Japan.
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Apples and oranges. A diesel truck is entirely different than a rated single speed diesel generator. The larger generators, like at nuke plants, can be 1000 horsepower with 2000 or more foot pounds of torque at 3000 RPM. They are single speed turbocharged beasts.
Starting one up cold and immediately applying full load without a warmup period can cause thermal shock to crankshaft, lack of proper lubrication to bearings and turbo, and can shear the engine-generator coupling mechanism. It is called extreme duty cycling. It also plays hell with generator phasing and voltage levels when you are working with three phase 440 and above voltages. A power surge high or low as the govenor struggles to stabilize the load.
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Thank God for engineers OR maybe god should thank them.
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What you write here and below is very interesting. I think it's extremely important this information be investigated thoroughly since it's obviously very significant if true. And if true it would demonstrate how good the coverups are as this is the first I've heard of it and I'm reading this and other sites daily for information.
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hey greg!!
what about the people..
its not good enough to say some are going to die but you wont put a figure on it…
listen to this.. it might help your focus here.. disel engines are boring, the nuclear industry lies.. now this is much more important.. 2 statements since the disaster and you talk about a theory with no evidence..
heres some relevent evidence to this situation.. shame it doesnt get any air time huh?
Moving Speech by Ms. Muto from Fukushima:
"
This is a speech by Ms. Ruiko Muto at the No-Nuke Rally in Tokyo on September 19, 2011. Ms. Muto is a member of "Action Committee for Decommissioning 40-year-old Fukushima Nuke Plant." This committee was established in November 2010, before the accident.
Ms. Muto runs a coffee shop using natural energy in Miharu Town in Fukushima Prefecture.
Translation is by Ms. Emma Parker, which is posted on this blog: http://onuma.cocolog-nifty.com/blog1/2011/11/post-7a76.html
You can read the full English transcription there.
(Note: translation of the first 3 lines and the final line done by tokyobrowntabby.)
Original video is at sievert311's channel: http://youtu.be/5xdszFXI2J0
Translation by Ms. Emma Parker and captioning by tokyobrowntabby…"
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqvz6h_moving-speech-by-ms-muto-from-fukushima-don-t-snatch-away-our-lives-sep-19-2011-yyyyy-yyyyyyyyyy_news
the real story of fukushima.. and she would know about the diesel engines too!
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Here's a little info on Emergency Diesel Generator testing from 1991..
It is a study of aging and reliability and proposed changes to the testing procedures at that time.
My guess is that the same generators that were at many US plants in 1991, are the same one's sitting there today…
And what about other countries?
I work on large diesel generators professonally and they are some of the most reliable pieces of equipment that my company provides.
That said, the construction industry does not operate these machines at full load within seconds of starting…
Emergency Diesel
Generator Technical
Specifications Study Results
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML0402/ML040290297.pdf
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intersting that they give up to 118 seconds max for start up.. that seems plenty of time to run the engine up..
great link.. looks like pallast doesnt need his "notebook" copy..
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".."Fast, cold" starting refers to plant technical specification requirements that the engine be started within approximately 10 seconds from ambient
conditions and fully loaded in about 60 seconds…"
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One again
Whether engineers will pretend that the atomists still do not know the new inverter UPS Technology on batteries, which in the case of a power failure, it is ready within fractional seconds to the provisioning of the full effect of emergency systems ???
Of course, some diesel then can long function.
But I think, with this reason for savings, because and so nuke is already insanely expensive.
http://www05.abb.com/global/scot/scot235.nsf/veritydisplay/1fbaf829798d9615c1257870003576c1/$file/des_brochure_rev_c.pdf"http://www05.abb.com/global/scot/scot235.n…chure_rev_c.pdf
And Yes, by the way, why does your company not manufactures diesel generators powered by Half Rotate ?
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@admin r u gp??
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My brother is a union diesel mechanic, he says not likely that the crankshaft snapped from a load being placed on it.
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before warm up
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he can be both right and wrong here. The inundation at Fukushima daichi was pretty severe, and te original station design had the backup diesels in the basement.
while the diesels might have failed the tsunami killed any chance they had of making them work.
I think if the diesels are started and slowly ramped up they do okay it's bad when they need to come to 100% right away.
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This reeks of a red herring to me. The generators powered up and were supplying the station with power after the earthquake. There may have been issues related to quake damage at Unit 1, but 2, 3 and 4 were proceeding with their shutdown procedures. All the evidence and even the lies support this. The monitoring data is there and has been discussed and examined. The station was not in a blackout situation until after the tsunami.
The lack of photos of the diesel generators is not evidence of their self-destruction at start-up. It is likely due to the fact they are sitting in pools of radioactive water and TEPCO does not feel it is worth the worker exposure to confirm what they already know. We may see them eventually, say in 20-30 years "if" they get to them.
Think of it this way. The earthquake was like a shrapnel wound, damaging but not necessarily lethal to the survival of the facility as a whole. It's going to hurt like hell and take time, but chances are good for recovery unless it hits something vital. The tsunami coming along was like a shotgun blast to the chest. It wrecked everything that was needed to keep that facility alive and under control.
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http://pr.bbt757.com/eng/pdf/finalrepo_111225.pdf
Everyone should have a look through this report. Stay away from the sensationalized bullshit, wild conjecture and clever hyperbole. The facts of this disaster alone are horrible enough.
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I just read through a good part of this report. It was produced by "The H2O Project," about which it is very difficult to find any information. They're Japanese, as a long-time resident that was evident to me from the English–but the English is unusually good, but not translated by a native speaker as there are obvious mistakes. This tells me, along with the production values/quality of the .pdf and the numer of photos, that it was put together by people in or close to either or both TEPCO and the national government.
Even the phrasing of the events at the time of the earthquake/tsunami–using the passive, for example–neatly fits with the "unexpected act of god" story that TEPCO and the gov't have crafted and are loathe to depart from.
So, I would take some of the "conclusions" in this "final report" (another sign of the producers' agenda) with a very large grain of salt.
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Satellite detection systems showed substantial release of radionuclides from Daiichi before the tsunami hit. That's a no-brainer from day one, it was the earthquake. The next big quake will cause serious damage if the NPP's aren't decommissioned. A third of them still can't be restarted because of earthquake damage, even now, over a year later.
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I heard rumors the EDGs were running fine for almost an hour, but the underground fuel supply lines to diesel tanks were crushed by the tectonic sideways movement and they ran out of tuel a few minutes before the tsunamis swamped them. Don't know if that is true. But the earthquake did move the entire island of Honshu eight feet laterally:
"The earthquake moved Honshu 2.4 m (8 ft) east and shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm (4 in) and 25 cm (10 in)."
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tōhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
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The problem isn't earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, diesel generators, human error, bad design or a monkey wrench in the works. The problem is nuke power and murphy's law. Eventually, something will fuck up, and when it does, the nature of these beasts is to kill all living things around it.
SHUT EM ALL DOWN NOW!
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All great details of diesel engines and their operations. I know nothing about them but even i thought crankshafts breaking on start up was a bit of a stretch. No need to fast start them. TEPCO had hours to get them running, not minutes. So, i'm thinking that what TEPCO needed and didn't have were above ground diesels to run sump pumps to get the water out of the basements that had submerged the diesel generators to run the cooling pumps.
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Greg Palast does some fine work, but this time he's way off.
There were multiple reasons why, after the tsunami there were no working diesel generators at Fukushima. Here's a list:
1. Both diesel fuel tanks washed away:
http://everist.org/pics/Fukushima/Fukushima_fuel_tanks.jpg
2. Ground faulting from earthquake. Could have cut fuel lines from tanks.
http://everist.org/pics/Fukushima/ground_faulting.jpg
3. Tsunami pushed in large blue roller doors at seaward side of generator halls. Backup generators were in the basements here, thus flooded.
http://everist.org/pics/Fukushima/20110402_Daily_Mail-67_roller_doors.jpg
http://everist.org/pics/Fukushima/Cryptome_20110402_50-45_roller_doors.jpg
As for why no photographs of submerged generators – because the water rapidly became radioactively contaminated due to inflows from the reactor buildings. Would _you_ want to go and take photos of the generators?
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Not currently on Bucket List right now.
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No mention of Stuxnet, a computer virus that had allegedly infected Fuku prior to 311, was keeping generator switchgear from working properly after EQ?
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There are a couple of things to keep in mind when you talk about diesel generators. The generators are wired to a breaker. So if the load is too high for the generator, the breaker will not engage. If this happens, the thing to do is to take non essential loads off until the breaker will engage. Diesel engines have governors. The governors either control the injectors by a rack or electronically. The attributes of the generator determines frequency-number of poles and speed. As the load is dropped on the generator, the injectors are opened more and more to inject more fuel into the cylinders. The diesel will do everything in power to come back up to speed which is either 50 hertz or 60 hertz. When the loads are dropped onto the generator, current races into each pump motor and this slows the diesel down. Eventually the diesel will come back up to speed because the current rush starts to diminish and this alows the diesel to get to the 50 or 60 hertz.
If the diesel cannot come back up to speed-too much load, it will bog down and eventually the protection circuits will trip it off line. There is no way a crank will snap because of overload. Engines are design for a 20% overload. The generator will trip long before it snaps the crank. IMHO This just shows how much these nutters know about their plants.
Large diesels will come up to speed and ready to go line in about 20 seconds. Large firewater pumps must start and come up to speed and ready to load in 20 seconds.
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Reading this thread, my conclusion is: The nuclear industry really doesn't like this report about the generators, it must have legs. Palast is a BBC reporter, one of the few mainstream reporters to mention Fukushima since Anderson Cooper fled the scene, and that can't be good for them.
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hi no nukes
i hear you.. i used to admire his journalism but since fukushima he hasnt stepped forward publicly when the pettion was submitted to the UN, where was he?
when mrs muto PLEADED with the west to NOT forget the people of fukushima, where was he?
when the information that the WHO report on the childrens doses was proven wrong and a media stunt, where was he? etc etc..
so maybe admin is greg and hes been doing a sneaky bit of research..
that would be cool and a superclever way of getting info for a blockbuster book that highlights the savage way the people of fukushima have been treated..
or maybe greg thinks that nuclear could work and maybehe has invested all his money in it like he might have been advised too in 2008 (and since until march 2011) ?? the nukes know they have to admit to some damage so they are playing "damage limitation" and the "blame game" .. is greg unwittingly apart of the mindshare project of WPP?
i may be being a bit harsh to old greg on that last point but it highlights just how much he isnt telling us…
and that has got to be the bottom line…
he reminds me of the guy who posted on enenews bu reading an old book and selling his "argentine solution".. he posts a video that only we can see, not his extensive readership.. or maybe im just getting cynical in me old age!
so where is greg anyway?
lol!
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arclight,
Of course, you are right, we all should be doing more for the babies in Fukushima, it is so insane that they are lying in their cribs while this Alpha dust and invisible radiation goes straight into their lungs, and I'm not just saying that because you can do no wrong in my eyes.
Admin is Greg, eh? I missed that…now we know!
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