Published: June 12th, 2012 at 1:19 am ET
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‘Flyjin’ feel vindicated, worry for those left in Japan
The Japan Times
By PATRICK BUDMAR
June 12, 2012
Kate (not her real name), worked in Tokyo’s Harumi Triton office tower
[...]
By March 12, Kate’s father was advising her that the situation in Fukushima was dire, the media could probably not be trusted, and that she ought to think about leaving.
“Based on his experience on Three Mile Island, he knew that the media reports would be filled with inaccuracies and outright lies told by the government to prevent panic,” she says.
[...]
While Kate admits that the level 7 classification has vindicated her decision to leave Japan, she still feels that the INES scale is “insufficient to describe the higher-end disasters.”
“In some ways, I believe Fukushima exceeds the level 7 rating as there are four reactors involved,” she says. “I suspect that the government wants to ensure that Fukushima does not exceed Chernobyl’s radioactive element output, and fudges the calculations to see that it does not.”
[...]
Published: June 12th, 2012 at 1:19 am ET
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sending...
IMO,
4 X 7 = A lot bigger number to me, too.
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I'm now pondering the long and short term implications of 15 reactors on Level 7. Probably definitely game-set-match for the humanoids, genetic experiment complete, at least for the Northern Hemisphere.
Anyway, with at least 3 x 7 constantly belching forth poisonous clouds of plutonium and other things and carried by the Jet Stream and ocean currents to our doorsteps on the West Coast
we're actually getting it at low-level constantly – not the greatest thing for you and your loved ones.
Word has it that persistent hot particles, buckyballs with a smattering of alpha, beta and gamma actinides[?] and other odd things are not the greatest thing to be continually hammering at you, the ocean, the fish, your cat (or dog), your vegetables and crops and your insides.
As the Russian lady said:
"If they tell you it's safe, run like hell."
3 x 7 = bad sh*t
4 x 7 = game over*
15 x 7 = walking the streets of glory
*(according to Uncle Arnie).
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A useful reminder …
CEREA, joint laboratory École des Ponts ParisTech and EdF R&D
Atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides from the Fukushima-Daichii nuclear power plant
Victor Winiarek, Marc Bocquet
Yelva Roustan, Camille Birman, Pierre Tran
http://cerea.enpc.fr/en/fukushima.html
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Soon they will figure the figure to be unfigurably high: A fraction of a meltdown at Chernobyl vs the equivalent of many meltdowns.You must include all the destruction of the bases of life … My figureless est: Infinity. Please stop all this madness forthwith. When they fudge the truth like the ICRP does by employing withchcraft to gauge the risk-by replacing the meaningless of the dose for internal emitters with an external irradiation based model to explain away the risk of ionising radiation, you must factor in untruth as well and come up with CORRUPTION thy name is the nuclear power programme. Tamam shud!
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@rama – +++ Infinity
I wanted to ask .. what is the witchcraft you've mentioned before – any docs or links ?
Oh, and what's your preferred nick (shortname) – is it the first name or the last name – excuse my limited cultural education there
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Nicely put RK.
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@Pu239
June 12, 2012 at 2:41 am
Dear Pu239:
With all your personal experience you have so kindly put up in these columns, your comment is gratefully accepted. Hope things will change.
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Maybe the scale only goes to 7 is because beyond 7 life on earth will end. There's no point including 8
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O LORD, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy.
-excerpt from the Book of Armaments
2:!9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk
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indeed….
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Truth expressed another way so succinctly. Thanks.
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Also for:
eatliesndie
June 12, 2012 at 2:08 am
Truth expressed another way so succinctly. Thanks.
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You have a disturbing but brilliant thought there eatliesndie.
What if the world was never meant to have a level 8.
That's why it only goes up to 7.
An 8 was never meant to be.
Beyond that (like a level 9) and it's probably time to break out that old dusty bottle and toast liberally the certainty of your imminent demise through serious radiation poisoning from persistent 'safe', green and only-low-level man-made hyper-bullets that make you sick and age faster, tear your guts to bits, mess your brain up, rip your hair out and cluster-bomb your DNA for generations and beyond.
Even if we're still just getting background levels, the new background has a differnt mix of isotopes than the previous 60s-bomb-test+Chernobyl-type background. All those new things like Strontium-89 and 90, Cesium 134 and 137, Cobalt-60, Americium-244, Uranium-235 and 238 form the new 'background'.
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> the new background has a different mix of isotopes than the previous 60s-bomb-test+Chernobyl-type background. All those new things like Strontium-89 and 90, Cesium 134 and 137, Cobalt-60, Americium-244, Uranium-235 and 238 form the new 'background'.
SP: Cesium-137 and Strontium 90 were big components of the "new" radioactive isotopes in the 1950s/1960s bomb tests. Strontium 90 was a lot more of the public boogie man than cesium back in the 50s and 60s.
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@richard
June 12, 2012 at 1:58 am
In these columns Anne has given the on line 2010 URL of the this book:
2003 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: Health effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiaqtion Protection Purposes: Regulators' Edition, Brussels, 2003/2010
page 10-11:
Polanyi saw many similarities between scientists and primitive witch-doctors like the Azande who had been studied in the 1093s: 'They reason excellently in the idiom of their BELIEFS, because they have no other idiom in which to express their thoughts. The contradiction between experience and one mystical notion is explained by reference to other mystical notions'.-E. Evans Pritchard.1937. Witchcraft. Oracles and magic among the Azande.
Addressing the supposedly scientific world view, Polanyi in his work Personal Knowledge(1958) concluded: '[For] the stability of the naturalistic system we currently accept, instead, rests on the same logical structure as Azande witchcraft beliefs. Any contradiction between a particular scientific notion and facts of experience will be explained by other scientific notions…'
ECRR concludes:"..the ICRP scientists and risk models are good examples of such systems of closed scientific communities..Polanyi's comparisons with Azande witch-doctors are familiar territory to those who have registered the sequence of denials and implausible explanations..of the failure of the ICRP risk models..'
I will post the online…
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Errata above: Pl replace Radiaqtion with Radiation.Replace 1093s by 1930s. I shall get the online URL of the ECRR 2010 version after search.
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Here it is:
http://www.euradcom.org/2011/ecrr2010.pdf
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Dear richard:
Short for Ramaswami Kumar: Rama!
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I figure melted fuel pools 1, 2, and/or 3 have to hit water eventually, since all this is on the edge of the ocean. Coupled with leaning tower of radiation 4, and the "common" fuel pool, ENENEWS will soon be unable to keep up with the events as they unfold.
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Until We all know….
Jet streams, debris tracking & many rad monitoring links
http://realitycheck.no-ip.info/forum/index.php/board,24.0.html
Fukushima fallout forecasts and other rad updated
http://realitycheck.no-ip.info/nnn.html
other folks to tell
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
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Most of us have been skeptical of the official underratings of the disaster from day one. Being antinuke and having known of Leuren Moret's prediction in the Japan Times a decade ago, I fully expected everything at Daiichi to be lost immediately which is apparently what has happened. Many of us knew it was worse than Chernobyl. I mean after no. 3 blew its top spewing the plutonium fuel pellets all over, it was a little clue that this was alot worse than your grandfather's Chernobyl. It sure was not my grandfather's Oldsmobile, this pile melted down on us, not only bankrupting the hell out of Japan but making everyone sick. So, we skeptics knew all along it was way worse than Chernobyl. Just comparing the amount of fuel going up in smoke shoulda told anyone. But I guess it is only us antinuke people paying attention.
No, I do not think the coriums will reach groundwater. I think they do what nature programs for them, a high temp vitrification as the extremely hot melted fuel melts the concrete sand or natural sand under the containments. What we saw in Chernobyl was pahoehoe lava corium sitting in a solidified slump on top of the concrete basement floor slab. It did not burn through a basement floor slab….the China Syndrome is a fallacy. Show us where corium burns and burns through everything, cuz so far what we DO know without a doubt is that corium is a steady state as the vitrification does what nature intended, to return things to equilibrium.
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I just want to add one point about how this disaster compares to Chernobyl: location. In one sense it occurred in a lucky location for Tokyo, DOWNWIND of most of Japan, on the east coast. Yes, during the first week there was yellow rain from radioactive iodine falling in Tokyo due to wind shift blowing it south, and there was that horrible contamination northwest going up into Fukushima, but most of the spewing has happened with winds blowing offshore, and only because of that has Tokyo not gotten a worse dose. As it is, and anyone can confirm by taking readings, Tokyo got rain deposition of the radiation and it retains the rainout as a permanent terrain contamination. But it would have been a hundred times worse for Tokyo if Daiichi was upwind in the normal prevailing winds. As it is, North America has received several heavy rainouts that were recorded on video.
The hugely more serious disaster at Daiichi far surpassing Chernobyl in curies released, mostly has diluted the invisible radiation and put most of it in the ocean. The effect is less apparent to many so far than severe rad poisoning symptoms from burning graphite at Chernobyl. Overall since 1945, the accumulated fallout exposures have slowly and almost imperceptibly -since we are told not to think about the evidence–raised cancer and autism incidences by amounts never seen before in any health registry. The SAT scores continue to fall as radiation slowly destroys human cognition.
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This disaster in Japan far excedes any scale that man could ever devise. It is so far off scale that there is a media "blackout". So far off scale they took control of the internet. So far off scale that the fish off the California coast are contaminated. I can continue in this fashion, but why bother.
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@ Perfect reply like to those who minimize the magnitude.
And you must emphasise that they never bothered to do their homework about the balance sheet. It will kill so much life amnd maim many including trees that the thing can be expressed as infinite madness -WMD and perfect mass murder. There are many ways of putting the facts and the value across so that this is put a stop to by civilized folk. The trick seems to be to convert the criminally oriented ignoramuses or worse to the side of moral upliftment or right attitude so that the ultimate in life becomes the goal to be striven: perfection. Cs137,0.1% leak of annual inventory means for the 350000 MW of reactors a consequence of committing 500000 Bhopals at the rate of 2043 immediate deaths a Bhopal or 1 billion cancer deaths for the next hundred years. And a billion infant mortalities included. Minimize the scale? No. The facts glare at us. Just check out for example,
http://isisunveiledhenp.blogspot.in/2010/07/health-effects-of-nuclear-power-during.html
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Level 7 is a major release of radionuclides with heavy impact on environment and population. That describes Fukushima Daiichi pretty well. The INS system is a set of categories that are used to describe conditions of an event, not a linear scale.
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Dosdos. It at least SEEMS linear. All levels are bad but 2 seems worse than 1, and 3 seems worse than 2, and 4 seems worse than 3, etc. and 7 speaks of other countrys being badly affected but doesn't seem to quite cover the global scene like an 8 might.
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I'd give Fuku an 8, my wife says a perfect 10.
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And what number would the INS system assign to a nuclear ELE?
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Radiation contamination can vary in intensity and magnitude from 0 to almost infinity. So I suggest they call it Level Infinity. Level Infinity is an ele. Multiple Level Infinity accidents speed up the process of extinction. What is it you folks really want to contemplate?
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The INES scale is theoretically intended to be logarithmic, base 10. This means that a level 7 event is ten times as bad as a level 6, which is ten times as bad as level 5.
If the scale were perfect, it would mean that an event that is a really bad level 7 would be nearly ten times as bad as an event that is just barely level 7. Four middle of the road level 7 events in the same place and time would still be level 7, but four really bad level 7 events would add to a level 8. All quite marvelous and hard to figure, unless you are a geek (which I do not recommend).
A big problem with the INES scale is that an event ain't over till the Fat Lady sings, which she never does. So the Windscale Fire is a level 5, until it becomes a level 6 or 7. Chernobyl is a level 7, but could easily get worse.
Fukushima is a level 7 (they claim), and we are holding our breaths – forever, because the Fat Lady will never, ever sing. It could get worse, and it probably will. We do not know whether a spent fuel pool will collapse, or the ground water will begin to boil. And we never will be able to know when the last victim will die from the damage of the radiation – it could be centuries from now.
The good news is there is a better way, and we can use it. Part of the bad news is that Nodo wants to restart the archaic, murderous technology of nuclear generation. Part of the bad news is that various evil, greedy governments and corporations want the same.
Please sing, Fat Lady!
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Rad contamination: Its the effect that may guide the value or disvalue to be assigned: The realisation of a state of the earth where life forms are exterminated in one or two generations is a level infinity set of events? This discussion must turn intense and quickly. But for this, data matters like Gofman's scenarios. How magnificent it can become when for example nuke data is significantly free from error/corruption. Perhaps it is high time we immediately call for a quickly realisable shut down of nukes and associated fuel cycles with the data that could be made available to the public, which is already reliable and with the powers that be. With the scenario indicated above in this section, I for one would call for a halt to nukes and simultaneously head in a normal feasible healthy direction, however unpleasant it may be to the business as usual species.
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Is this what I thought all along? That it was over by march 18? I mean life.What about sp4 and Arnies concerns? Are they just Keeping us busy?
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Go Rama! I like your style. Yes, I believe we shall end the of madness of nuclear power generation, and we shall do it today … and every single day from now on, into eternity.
Today would be a good day to shutter a nuclear power plant, somewhere and anywhere.
Big nuclear plans to kill you with his actinides, if he hasn't already.
Big SHOUT OUT from the United States of Cancer. Go Big Nuclear … straight to Hell!
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This is the only scale I have ever heard of that goes to 7. Usually a scale would go up to 10. Another nuclear power doublespeak spin. 7 doesn't sound too bad. The uneducated might think its not so bad. Nothing the nuclear industry says can be trusted and everything they say is muddy.
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I'm not arguing that Fukushima isn't the worst industrial accident in the history of mankind. I've been saying that it is the worst since March 2011, when everyone thought I was a nutcake for saying so, because everything had still been so well covered up.
Still, 7 is as bad as it gets, and Fukushima is as bad as it gets, so 7 it is. Any scale is only implied and not an actual part of the category system. The magnitude of 10 scale is only actual in the earthquake intensity system. You can play games with it to express your feelings all you like, but it doesn't achieve anything except expression. It's not getting any nukes shut down.
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