By Dr. Mark Sircus
None of us could have calculated in our wildest dreams the likes of what is happening and still yet to happen in northern Japan. The 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami laid waste to Japan’s industrial northeast on March 11 triggered a huge nuclear disaster. Many of us feared something like this might happen in the nuclear industry someday.
And now it has happened and we can all start saying prayers for the men, women and children in Tokyo and the rest of northern Japan. The entire world is struggling to determine the fallout effects of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, along with many ensuing and complicating problems. We really have no idea the mess the Japanese are in and how bad this is all going to get.
Countries across the world have shunned Japanese
food imports as radioactive steam leaked from a
disaster-struck nuclear plant, straining nerves in Tokyo.
The desperate attempts to contain the fallout from the shattered atomic Fukushima Daiichi plant are failing and no one is truly talking about how long-lasting and widespread the radiation’s effects may be. Day after day we hear of setbacks; on the 21st it was a pool holding spent nuclear fuel heated up to the boiling point. Then it was another fire and forced evacuation of the plant yet again by men who are risking their lives in a desperate attempt to bring the disaster under control.
It is now near the end of the second week and what we are hearing is that the contamination is spreading further and further from the plant and now the anxiety levels of the Japanese is going off the Richter scale. The effects are going to be pervasive, profound, and critical on a scale never seen by a modern culture.
German shipping companies are avoiding Tokyo Bay
area ports due to radiation fears and Japan could face
severe supply chain bottlenecks as vessels get diverted.
The principal elements that have been released from reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are iodine 131 and cesium 137. Cesium is very dangerous because it is long-lived and travels easily through the food chain, continuing to emit particles for centuries once it is released. The media is programming in tranquility and calmness while nuclear contamination spreads and gets worse. The Japanese are a much disciplined people not prone to panic but sometimes a measure of panic will drive people to act instead of vegetating in indecision.
A rise in radiation levels in faraway Tokyo’s tap water spurred deepening fears about food and water safety. Radiation in Tokyo’s tap water rose to twice the level acceptable for infants 12 days after the nuclear accident and we can expect contamination levels to get worse with each passing day. The water in Tokyo already contains 210 becquerels of iodine-131 per liter making it unacceptably dangerous for children to drink. Soon, if not already, it will be undrinkable for adults if present trends of contamination continue, which they undoubtedly will. It hardly pays to be either optimistic or pessimistic about this one. The nuclear dice have been thrown and they are crashing down most on the citizens of northern Japan.
Many distant villages were contaminated with iodine-131 fallout from the Chernobyl accident, and local cows ate grass that contained the radiation. Children who drank milk from those cows ended up with high rates of thyroid cancer. So it is not really a good idea to be complacent no matter where you are on planet earth today with a large nuclear power station running out of control.
The New York Times published on the 24th, “Despite the frequent rain in recent days, it was not entirely clear why the levels of iodine were so high, said a senior Western nuclear executive, noting that the prevailing breezes seemed to be pushing radiation out to sea. “The contamination levels are well beyond what you’d expect from what is in the public domain,” said the executive, who insisted on anonymity and has broad contacts in Japan. It was possible that the levels were an indirect indication that the problems at the plant were deeper than had been publicly acknowledged.” Hints don’t get any louder than this.
Fallout from a damaged power plant has already reached halfway around the globe to Iceland and is expected soon to touch down in France and the rest of Europe. According to the absence of reports from the United States one could imagine that America escaped untouched but we all know that is not true—they are just not talking about it. If you look enough though you will see that increased levels of “safe” radiation has fallen on the North American continent. If anyone actually wants to know, hard core science insists that there is no level of radiation that can be considered safe.
The fact is radiation levels around the world will go up but in certain places they’ll go much higher than in others. Fate chose the wrong nuclear power station to destroy because it is the largest with unimaginable tonnages of spent nuclear fuel on site. It’s a setup for nuclear Armageddon.
There is a growing suspicion that the full effects of the radioactive release have been downplayed to the public. Everyone who works with nuclear radiation pretends its safe, when it’s not, and that includes just about every doctor and dentist in the world.
The world’s most significant nuclear accident occurred 25 years ago at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Although its effects are now well-documented, many forget how thoroughly the damage was covered up at the time. To avoid panic, the Soviet authorities grossly downplayed the risks to those living near the plant, as well as those who lived hundreds, and even thousands, of miles away. In the months that followed, high levels of radiation were detected as far away as Scotland.
Contamination will be most intense in the areas local to the nuclear power station. It’s a foregone conclusion that the entire northern half of Japan is threatened as is most of its food and water supply, yet the Japanese are told to remain calm and sit in their homes. Will the government allow their citizens to slowly succumb to the radiation sickness that will surely come or will they come to their senses and start a wholesale evacuation of northern Japan?
Areas continents away are reporting levels of contamination that are still considered safe but that’s what the Japanese in northern Japan are being told. Every report you read will tell you (or the Japanese) that it is only safe amounts though already 220 kilometers away in Tokyo it’s no longer safe at all for the children. Staying indoors is neither a solution nor a preventive treatment.
The most dangerous accident that humanity has ever witnessed is happening but don’t worry, the nuclear power industry is safe. The elites’ media team will have a hard time double speaking this one. You will see their editorial hands moving every time you see the word safe.
If you want to close your eyes for a second and imagine what is really going on over in northern Japan just imagine the invisible level of energy and radiation like a hot fire radiating out in 360 degrees of direction, including right down into the ground and the waters below, sending death rays (yeah sure, safe ones) hundreds and now thousands of miles away. So powerful is this nuclear firestorm that hundreds of miles away it’s unsafe for the children to be drinking the public water. In twelve days the contamination has spread powerfully into the local area where it is becoming unsafe to live. It’s an invisible fire but a deadly one.
Everything is safe to the monsters that have enriched themselves by poisoning humanity and polluting the world. This is a dramatic book about many converging forces that are breaking across the neck of humanity. It really does not help our present world situation that it is mostly psychopaths who roam the top of the human heap and it has always been that way. We have trusted the wrong people and organizations and now we will pay for that huge mistake.
Denial is the name of the toxicity game that industry has played for well over a hundred years. To the chemical industry, then the petrochemical one, on into the pharmaceutical universe and then the atomic one those who make money from toxic substances deny that there is any problem with them in terms of health.
Do you think we can relax with the authorities and have confidence that they will get it all under control? Can they stabilize the situation? Or will it get explosively worse?
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Japan Quake Map - an observational tool
On the 11th of March 2011, the world's media reported a massive earthquake off the East coast of Japan. It turned out to hit magnitude 9 on the Richter scale, and caused a devastating tsunami; the region's nuclear power facilities have been experiencing major difficulties since the earthquake and tsunami triggered a series of events leading to massive overheating, with complete nuclear meltdown still a possibility.
The Japan Quake Map presents a time-lapse visualization of the Sendai earthquake and its aftershocks, primarily to help those outside the affected area understand what the people of Japan are experiencing. It plots earthquake data from USGS on a map using the Google Maps API, with the size of the circle denoting the magnitude (the higher the magnitude, the larger the circle) and the colour showing the focal depth (see the legend below the map).
How to use the Map
The map will start playing through the earthquakes, starting on March 11 2011, once it finishes loading. The controls to the right allow you to play/pause the animation, jump to the start or end of the sequence, or adjust the playback speed. You can also use the links above the map or the "Show Day" dropdown box and links to the right to view quakes from a specific time period.http://www.japanquakemap.com/
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