Japan Nuclear Disaster Caps Decades of Faked Reports, Accidents

The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant follows decades of falsified safety reports, fatal accidents and underestimated earthquake risk in Japan’s atomic power industry.

The destruction caused by last week’s 9.0 earthquake and tsunami comes less than four years after a 6.8 quake shut the world’s biggest atomic plant, also run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. In 2002 and 2007, revelations the utility had faked repair records forced the resignation of the company’s chairman and president, and a three-week shutdown of all 17 of its reactors.

With almost no oil or gas reserves of its own, nuclear power has been a national priority for Japan since the end of World War II, a conflict the country fought partly to secure oil supplies. Japan has 54 operating nuclear reactors -- more than any other country except the U.S. and France -- to power its industries, pitting economic demands against safety concerns in the world’s most earthquake-prone country.

Nuclear engineers and academics who have worked in Japan’s atomic power industry spoke in interviews of a history of accidents, faked reports and inaction by a succession of Liberal Democratic Party governments that ran Japan for nearly all of the postwar period.

Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismology professor at Kobe University, has said Japan’s history of nuclear accidents stems from an overconfidence in plant engineering. In 2006, he resigned from a government panel on reactor safety, saying the review process was rigged and “unscientific.”

Click to read more...

Spent Fuel Rods Spew Radiation; Europe Puts Bone Marrow Centers on Standby

As the United States finally joined certain European countries (France, Germany) in evacuating nationals and family members from Toyko, a buried cover of fuel rods threatens to add more roentgens to the crisis. 

A powerpoint presentation indicates that Toyko Electric Power had decided to construct an off-site interim spent fuel storage facility for recycling the rods, according to data obtained by NIRS.org.  The report dated Nov 16, 2010 stated that the storage amount (ton-U) as of March 2010 at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility as possibly  600,000 spent fuel rods.

The strategy for Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants is “to store spent fuels safely until being reprocessed.” Many of the rods were stored close to the reactor roofs, which have been blown off of some reactors.

Descriptions of the ravaged plant and spreading radiation have experts groping for adjectives.  Expert Joe Cirincione told Fox News that the threat is an “unprecedented crisis” and nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen called the inclusion of the spent rods into the equation represents “Chernobyl on steroids.”

Gundersen is a member of the oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1. The first pool contains 20 years of spent rods that are still radioactive. Since the Japanese plant did not maintain proper pools to store the spent rods, “catastrophic fires” are a possibility. In fact, the BBC reported that rods in the pool of reactor four may be boiling. Readings are unavailable due to high radiation levels making the structure inaccessible.

Click to read more...

Amnesty International criticises Bahrain over 'excessive force'

A report released by the London-based rights group Amnesty International on Thursday criticised Bahraini officials for a "systematic use of excessive force" against protesters, following the deaths of at least 12 people in the past four weeks. 

The seven-page report, titled Bloodied but Unbowed: Unwarranted State Violence against Bahraini Protesters, provided testimonies from witnesses and those injured, and showed graphic images of people severely wounded and killed in the crackdown. 

"The authorities must exercise proper control over the security forces, uphold and protect the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, including the right to peaceful protest," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa. 

A number of the materials and weapons used against protesters was made abroad, according to the report. 

The report found that US-made tear gas canisters, US-made 37mm rubber multi-baton rounds, French-made tear gas grenades, and French- made rubber "dispersion" grenades, which fragment into 18 pieces and produce a loud sound effect, were used against protesters. 

AI urged at least 10 countries, including Germany, France, Britain and the United States, to stop supplying munitions to Bahrain. 

A video that circulated widely online showed a security officer shooting an unarmed man in the abdomen and head. The video, which could not be independently verified, led to worldwide condemnation. 

Click to read more ...

Scientists Project Path of Radiation Plume

A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable. In a similar way, radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the West Coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels measurable but minuscule.

The projection, by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arm of the United Nations in Vienna, gives no information about actual radiation levels but only shows how a radioactive plume would probably move and disperse.

The forecast, calculated Tuesday, is based on patterns of Pacific winds at that time and the predicted path is likely to change as weather patterns shift.

On Sunday, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it expected that no “harmful levels of radioactivity” would travel from Japan to the United States “given the thousands of miles between the two countries.”

The test ban treaty group routinely does radiation projections in an effort to understand which of its global stations to activate for monitoring the worldwide ban on nuclear arms testing. It has more than 60 stations that sniff the air for radiation spikes and uses weather forecasts and powerful computers to model the transport of radiation on the winds.

Click to read more...

RADIATION reaches US!

Feds deploy more radiation monitors in western US

More radiation monitors are being deployed in the western United States and Pacific territories, as officials seek to mollify public concern over exposure from damaged nuclear plants in Japan, federal environmental regulators said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency already monitors radiation throughout the area as part of its RadNet system, which measures levels in air, drinking water, milk and rain.

The additional monitors are being deployed in response to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, where emergency workers are attempting to cool overheated reactors damaged by last week's magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami.

Officials with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said they do not expect harmful radiation levels to reach the U.S. from Japan.

"The agency decided out of an abundance of caution to send these deployable monitors in order to get some monitors on the ground closer to Japan," said Jonathan Edwards, director of EPA's radiation protection division.

California already has 12 monitoring stations scattered throughout the state that test the air for radiation levels. EPA also has 40 so-called "deployable" monitors that can be moved around in cases of emergency.

EPA told The Associated Press it is adding two more stations in Hawaii and two in Guam. In Alaska, officials are setting up three new monitors in Dutch Harbor, Nome and Juneau.

The idea is to get a better geographic spread of monitoring equipment than currently exists, Edwards said.

Click to read more...

U.S. WARNS OF ‘EXTREMELY HIGH’ RADIATION AT JAPANESE NUCLEAR PLANT

The United States on Wednesday urged Americans who live within 50 miles of Japan’s earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to evacuate, and the top U.S. nuclear regulatory official indicated that Japan faces an increasingly dangerous situation at one of the plant’s reactors.

Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Wednesday that no water remains in a pool used to cool spent fuel at the plant and that radiation levels there are thought to be “extremely high.”

Japanese officials denied that the water is gone from the spent-fuel pool, the Associated Press reported.

Jaczko, testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on what his agency has been told about the crisis, said the plant’s unit 4 reactor appeared to have suffered a hydrogen explosion.

The reactor at unit 4 was shut down at the time of the earthquake last Friday, meaning that crews had transferred all of the radioactive fuel from the reactor’s core to the pool. The building housing the pool was damaged when two nearby reactor buildings exploded Saturday and Monday.

“It’s unprecedented,” said David Helwig, a retired nuclear engineer who spent 40 years working on boiling water nuclear reactors of the same design as those at Fukushima Daiichi. “That’s never happened before.”

Left exposed to the air, the fuel rods will start to decay and release radioactivity into the air.

The spent fuel pool at another reactor, unit 3, also appeared compromised, Jaczko said.

The increasingly desperate picture of the struggle at the stricken nuclear plant emerged after Japanese helicopter crews abandoned an attempt to dump water on the pools of uranium fuel after detecting dangerous radiation above the plant. 

Click to read more...

WTF - Illuminati Card Game Predicts Japan's Disaster?

Steven Jackson's illuminati card game from 1991 or so had images that resembled the false flag attack called 9/11. Now this ...  the combined disasters card , from the same game, features(what looks like) the Ginza Wako clock tower from Tokyo.

Coincidence??? It probably is not. Listen to this lecture by Leuren Moret as she discusses HAARP & Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Disaster! Click here!

Ray Davis Released: Blood Money Paid By CIA?

BBC

A Pakistani court has freed a US CIA contractor after acquitting him of two counts of murder at a hearing held at a prison in Lahore, officials say.

Raymond Davis, 36, was alleged to have shot dead two men in the eastern city of Lahore in January following what he said was an attempted armed robbery.

The acquittal came when relatives of the dead men pardoned him in court.

They confirmed to the judge overseeing the case that they had received compensation - known as "blood money".

Under Pakistani law, relatives of a murder victim can pardon the killer.

Reports say about 18 family members of the two dead men were in court on Wednesday and confirmed that they wanted Mr Davis to be freed and pardoned because they had received "blood money".

Illegal weapons

The superintendent at Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore - where Mr Davis was being held - told the AP news agency that the contractor had left the prison in the company of US consulate officials.

Click to read more...

A cloud of nuclear mistrust spreads around the world

INDEPENDENT

It is unprecedented: four atomic reactors in dire trouble at once, three threatening meltdown from overheating, and a fourth hit by a fire in its storage pond for radioactive spent fuel.

All day yesterday, dire reports continued to circulate about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, faced with disaster after Japan's tsunami knocked out its cooling systems. Some turned out to be false: for example, a rumour, disseminated by text message, that radiation from the plant had been spreading across Asia. Others were true: that radiation at about 20 times normal levels had been detected in Tokyo; that Chinese airlines had cancelled flights to the Japanese capital; that Austria had moved it embassy from Tokyo to Osaka; that a 24-hour general store in Tokyo's Roppongi district had sold out of radios, torches, candles and sleeping bags.

But perhaps the most alarming thing was that although Naoto Kan, Japan's Prime Minister, once again appealed for calm, there are many – in Japan and beyond – who are no longer prepared to be reassured.

The scale of the alarm is the remarkable thing: how it has gone round the world (Angela Merkel has imposed a moratorium on nuclear energy; in France, there are calls for a referendum); how it's even displaced the terrible story of Japan's tsunami itself from the front-page headlines. But then, public alarm about nuclear safety, as the Fukushima emergency proves, is very easy to raise – and, as the Japanese authorities are now discovering, very hard to calm.

Click to read more...

Chernobyl effect on the economy

A FULL-BLOWN nuclear disaster in Japan, though unlikely, could lead to a new global economic crisis, according to Europe's top trade official.

''We have gone through that experience in Europe with Chernobyl'' in 1986, said the European Union's trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, during a visit to Sydney yesterday.

A big uncontrolled release of radioactivity "has a major impact on the economy but it also has a major impact on people's behaviour," Mr De Gucht told the Herald. "It would really be out of control."

"People are extremely afraid, worried, don't take risks any more, reject anything that is new. The impact of a nuclear crisis is lethal in the military sense of the word, but it's also very much psychological."

Click to read more...

Scores wounded in Yemen clashes

GUARDIAN

At least 150 people were wounded as Yemeni security forces tried to break up a rally in the Red Sea city of Hudaida demanding an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule, a doctor and witnesses said on Wednesday.

The impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, neighbour to Saudi Arabia, has been hit by weeks of protests trying to end Saleh's 32-year grip on power. Pro- and anti-government factions have increasingly resorted to violence in the struggle.

A doctor treating protesters at a sit-in in Hudaida said hundreds of security forces and plainclothes police, all armed, attacked the demonstrators. "They attacked the protesters and wounded around 120 people," he said. "They were using teargas, rubber bullets, live fire and bats."

Demonstrators said they were calling on private hospitals to send ambulances and asked Yemenis to donate blood to help treat the wounded. One protester said mostly plainclothes police had attacked the sit-in. "Special forces, central security forces and police, most of them in civilian clothing, are surrounding the protesters," said Mohammed Muajem. "The main hospital is now at full capacity."

Two protesters said some of the wounded demonstrators were attacked by security forces in hospital, but this could not be immediately verified.

The US, which has long seen Saleh as a bulwark against an aggressive and agile al-Qaida wing based in Yemen, has condemned the bloodshed and backed the right to peaceful protest. It has also insisted only dialogue can end the political crisis.

Click to read more...

Underground information on what's happening at Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan

NaturalNews has received information directly from an American who happened to be in Tokyo at the time of the nuclear incident and who also happens to have a background in atomic energy and nuclear reactors. He has sent us some extremely disturbing information that seems to indicate the situation with the reactors in Japan is far, far worse than what the conventional media is describing. We are not releasing this individual's name for obvious reasons (he's still in Tokyo and virtually unreachable), but he is an individual who is known to me personally and with whom I have spent a considerable number of hours over a period of two years. He is a very high-integrity individual and someone who is also extremely well connected in the world of advanced medicine.

In an email sent from Tokyo, this individual explains:

"...nuclear reactors use bundles of enriched uranium packed into stainless steel fuel rods in order to generate the heat that drives the turbines. You need to keep these bundles of pins cool otherwise they melt or burst.

Now, it seems the Fukushima power plant pulled spent fuel bundles (a collection of fuel rods) and stored them on site rather than shipping them to another location. Speculation is that in addition to the fires that are damaging the working reactor, these storage areas of their spent fuel bundles could [now] be on fire. This vastly compounds the problem of any meltdown, as this spent fuel will add to the contamination [because] it is extremely toxic.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031718_nuclear_power_dirty_bomb.html#ixzz1GlLIblwi

AT&T puts broadband users on monthly allowance

CNN

 AT&T broadband users will soon face a cap on the amount of internet data they can download a month.

Traditional DSL users will be capped at 150 GB per month, while subscribers to the fiber-backed UVerse system have a 250-GB limit. Usage over that will be charged at $10/month for 50 GB, the company says.

The company says that currently only a small percentage of users -- around 2% -- use this much data a month. If that's the case, it's not clear why the company is bothering to install the caps.

It is, however, the same rationale (and the same usage stat) that the company relied upon to explain why it would be capping iPhone data plans last summer, which had hitherto been "unlimited."

DSL and UVerse connect fairly directly to a hub -- unlike cable connections where users share a local loop that can become congested. Bulk-bandwidth costs for an ISP are a tiny portion of its business costs, and those prices continue to fall even as users consume more and more data.

So, how could a user end up hitting these caps? Streaming video such as HD movies from Netflix, using bittorrent to download movies and heavy gaming with services like Steam can easily eat up lots of data, especially in households with multiple heavy internet users.

Click to read more..

Fukushima No. 3 reactor's container feared damaged: Edano

KYODO

Japan's nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power station showed no signs of abating Wednesday, five days after a mega earthquake crippled it, with authorities pointing to possible damage to the No. 3 reactor and the release of radioactive steam, and another fire hitting the No. 4 reactor.

If the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. and authorities confirm damage to the No. 3 reactor's containment vessel, it will be the second among the plant's six reactors to have suffered damage to the steel containment key to enclosing harmful radioactive substances, meaning steps they have taken to avoid a further critical situation are not working.

Top government spokesman Yukio Edano told a press conference in the morning that smoke has been recognized from about 8:30 a.m. around the No.3 reactor and said, ''As we saw in the No. 2 unit, steam has been released from the (No. 3) reactor's containment vessel.''

At the No. 2 reactor, the pressure-suppression chamber connected to its containment vessel was damaged following an apparent hydrogen explosion early Tuesday.

The government's nuclear safety agency separately said that the radiation level briefly reached 10 millisievert per hour at the plant's entrance at 10:40 a.m. Wednesday, but added that it was possibly due to radioactive substances emitted from the No. 2 reactor.

Click to read more...

Thousands flee Tokyo as radiation fears mount

Thousands of tourists and residents left Tokyo and fled to safer areas on wednesday, despite official reassurances that radiation levels in the capital were negligible and posed no threat to health, after an explosion in reactor no 2 of the Fukushima nuclear plant, threatened to send radiation levels soaring.

The explosion is believed to have caused a crack in the chamber of reactor no 2 and steam and radioactive substances are reportedly pouring out through it, raising the contamination levels.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yukio Edano, said that the levels quickly fell again, but refused to rule out further leaks.

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan has warned that the risk of further contamination from the Fukushima complex was 'still high'.

Experts and government ministers have warned that contamination in the areas around the plant, about 300 km north east of Tokyo, was dangerous to human health, and told the people living there to evacuate or stay indoors.

Several airlines, including Air China and Lufthansa, have also stopped services into the city's airports, The Independent reports.

However, experts have tried to dampen down fears of a catastrophe.

Masako Sawai, an expert from the Citizens' Nuclear Information Centre said: "We don't believe it is necessary to evacuate Tokyo, even though the radioactivity is certainly out there. However, there is a possibility that our view may change depending on how the reactor activity progresses."

Click to read more ...

Fire at Japan nuclear reactor heightens radiation threat

Another fire broke out on Wednesday at an earthquake-crippled Japanese nuclear plant that has sent low levels of radiation wafting into Tokyo and triggered international alarm, suggesting that the crisis may be slipping out of control.

REUTERS

Academics and nuclear experts agree that the solutions being proposed to contain damage to the Daiichi reactors at Fukushima, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, are last-ditch efforts to stem what could well be remembered as one of the world's worst industrial disasters.

While public broadcaster NHK said flames were no longer visible at the building housing the No.4 reactor of the plant, Japanese TV pictures showed smoke rising from the facility at mid-morning (1000 local, 0100 GMT).

Experts say spent fuel rods in a cooling pool at the No. 4 reactor could be exposed by the fire and spew more radiation into the atmosphere. Operator Tokyo Electric Power said it was considering using a helicopter to dump boric acid, a fire retardant, on the facility.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said two workers were missing after blasts at the facility a day earlier blew a hole in the building housing the No. 4 reactor.

Click to read more...

Japan abandons stricken nuke plant over radiation

Japan suspended operations to prevent a stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after a surge in radiation made it too dangerous for workers to remain at the facility.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said work on dousing reactors with water was disrupted by the need to withdraw.

Earlier officials said 70 percent of fuel rods at one of the six reactors at the plant were significantly damaged in the aftermath of Friday's calamitous earthquake and tsunami.

News reports said 33 percent of fuel rods were also damaged at another reactor. Officials said they would use helicopters and fire trucks to spray water in a desperate effort to prevent further radiation leaks and to cool down the reactors.

The nuclear crisis has triggered international alarm and partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday's double disaster, which pulverized Japan's northeastern coastline, killing an estimated 10,000 people.

Authorities have tried frantically since last Friday's earthquake and tsunami to avert an environmental catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex in northeastern Japan, 170 miles (270 kilometers) north Tokyo.

The government has ordered some 140,000 people in the vicinity to stay indoors. A little radiation was also detected in Tokyo, 150 miles (240 kilometers) to the south and triggered panic buying of food and water.

There are six reactors at the plant, and three that were operating at the time have been rocked by explosions. The one still on fire was offline at the time of the magnitude 9.0 quake, Japan's most powerful on record.

Click to read more...

Poll: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say Afghan war isn’t worth fighting

The finding signals a growing challenge for President Obama as he decides how quickly to pull U.S. forces from the country beginning this summer. After nearly a decade of conflict, political opposition to the battle breaks sharply along partisan lines, with only 19 percent of Democratic respondents and half of Republicans surveyed saying the war continues to be worth fighting.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say Obama should withdraw a “substantial number” of combat troops from Afghanistan this summer, the deadline he set to begin pulling out some forces. Only 39 percent of respondents, however, say they expect him to withdraw large numbers.

The Post-ABC News poll results come as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, prepares to testify before Congress on Tuesday about the course of the war. He is expected to face tough questioning about a conflict that is increasingly unpopular among a broad cross section of Americans.

Petraeus will tell Congress that “things are progressing very well,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Monday. But because of battlefield gains made by U.S. and coalition forces since last year, Morrell told MSNBC, “it’s going to be heavy and intensive in terms of fighting” once the winter cold passes.

The poll began asking only in 2007 whether the Afghan war is worth fighting, but support has almost certainly never been as low as it is in the most recent survey.

The growing opposition pre­sents Obama with a difficult political challenge ahead of his 2012 reelection effort, especially in his pursuit of independent voters.

Click to read more...

WikiLeaks rift between US and Indonesia worsens as talks called off

JAKARTA: A planned telephone call between the US President, Barack Obama, and his Indonesian counterpart, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was scuttled after revelations US diplomats had told Washington the Indonesian leader and his family were implicated in corruption.

The call had been arranged before the Herald published the allegations in US cables, which were obtained from WikiLeaks and have been denied by Dr Yudhoyono and some of those cited in the cables as sources.

Mr Obama was to have called Dr Yudhoyono on Friday but ''when the WikiLeaks thing broke, it didn't happen'' said one well-placed source, adding the original purpose of the call was to discuss the upcoming East Asia Summit, to be held in Indonesia.

It is understood the US cancelled the call after discussions with officials from the palace.

There is little doubt that, had the call proceeded, Mr Obama would have followed the example of his envoy in Jakarta, Scot Marciel, and expressed his regret over the exposure of the cables and their startling allegations.

A spokesman for Dr Yudhoyono, Teuku Faizasyah, confirmed the lack of contact, but played down its significance, saying ''the scheduling for these kinds of calls is always fluid''.

Even so, US-Indonesian relations have been strained by the publication of the cables and their reports that Dr Yudhoyono blocked a corruption investigation into a political powerbroker, Taufik Kiemas, used the intelligence services to spy on rivals and received funding from the controversial businessman Tomy Winata via a middleman.

Click to read more...