Japan earthquake

ehm, do we need this to be reported on libcom? I have fresher news from mass media on this and see no class perspective in any of it.

Well I for one am very worried about the workers at the plant. They're working in what could become (in the worst case) lethal conditions.

Also, if it turns out that Tepco were running an unsafe facility, that potentially changes the whole story.

From the Guardian:

"Getting information out of the nuclear industry is never easy (a legacy perhaps of its Cold War origins) and the Japanese political system is also notorious for keeping a tight lid on unwelcome news. This all means it will be hard to know what is exactly happening at any one time at Fukushima.

"But I have been talking to a top British nuclear engineer who visited that plant in Japan and he says it was built in the 1970s and is not as earthquake-proof as later models. He also said there had long been speculation about how strong was the containment dome over the top of the reactor - the final barrier for any radioactive emissions to be released into the environment.

"It is also not the first time there have been problems at Fukushima. There have been reports of a loss-of-power incident in June last year. I have also seen suggestions that one reactor at the complex began using MOX (mixed plutonium-uranium) fuel starting in September."

if it turns out that Tepco were running an unsafe facility

There's no such thing as a safe nuclear facility, so there's no "if" about it. Constructing a nuclear facility on a faultline is doubly stupid, but then bourgeois science never cares about the use to which it is put. And let's hope we don't hear from all those strawmanners who justify bourgeois science that an attack on nuclear power is primitivist or hippy.
What we shall probably hear from the nuclear power lobby is that the levels of radioactivity are not too dangerous (the nuke industry is always upping the amounts of becquerels the human body can "safely" endure). It might be worth looking at Semprun's text on Chernobyl - "Abyss" (not available online yet, but reproduced in this book here) for the propaganda war that the Japanese State and the nuke industry will roll out (eg - "this is not going to happen in any of the post-70s nuke facilities, because the industry learnt from 3 mile island", blah blah etc.), and for the more obviously ridiculous aspects of this propaganda that they won't repeat (eg in France, it took the media and the State 3 weeks to admit, in effect, that radioactivity could cross the Italian border without a passport).

Sam

It might be worth looking at Semprun's text on Chernobyl - "Abyss" (not available online yet, but reproduced in this book here)

It's been in the library for a long time; http://libcom.org/library/abyss-encyclopedie-nuisances-1986
Semprun

“The Ukrainian disaster was followed by a veritable bacchanal of unreason wherein not a sober voice was to be heard. For more than a month, as the winds from Chernobyl continued to blow, power's experts, who in France regretted having upset us at first by saying nothing, now undertook to reassure us by saying anything at all. Flanked by their communications people, they put on a show that defied parody...
Indoctrination of this kind, so poorly disguised as information, always bears the clear marks of its origin. Uncontrollable statistics and unverifiable figures are solemnly trotted out, for all the world as though the whole of society consisted of docile civil servants; and incomprehensible acronyms - designating obscure but presumably powerful institutions - are pompously produced one after the other, like the litanies of a self-satisfied cleric who can be sure of awed respect from his audience. "

has anyone heard from mike harman? he is there right?

RedM:

It's been in the library for a long time; http://libcom.org/library/abyss-encyclopedie-nuisances-1986

Googled it, but it didn't come up, but maybe because I put in "Semprun" rather than the "Encyclopedie des nuisances".

has anyone heard from mike harman? he is there right?

PMed him about 8 hours ago, but no reply so far; still, Japan's a fairly big place...

Mark.

Report from nuclear industry source

Battle to stabilise earthquake reactors

Call me an idiot but it says that seawater is being injected into the plant. Is this just a fancy word for leaking or a technique they're using to try and prevent/lower the meltdown?

Just watched the explosion video here. Let's just hope it doesn't catch the reactor.

Yeah, he's okay. I wrote a panicked message to internal but thankfully all is well with him.. :)

Sir Vile Minds

Mark.

Report from nuclear industry source

Battle to stabilise earthquake reactors

Call me an idiot but it says that seawater is being injected into the plant. Is this just a fancy word for leaking or a technique they're using to try and prevent/lower the meltdown?

i think they are going to flood the reactor area with sea water to keep it cool, this means that they cant use there normal water supply and have abandon any idea of salvaging the reactor, because sea water is vary impure and will really mess up the reactor.

in Germany, there were today ~ 60.000 at a "human chain" between the city of Stuttgart and the nuclear power station of Neckarwestheim; the demonstration was planned some weeks ago against the extention of operation time of nuclear power stations by the government, before the incidents in Japan, the organizers of the demonstration had expected only 10.000-20.000. Today in the evening and tomorrow, there will be more (unplanned) anti-nuclear demonstrations in more than 15 cities in Germany

From "Nuclear power plants and earthquakes":

In France for instance, nuclear plants are designed to withstand an earthquake twice as strong as the 1000-year event calculated for each site.

But they don't need to have earthquakes to have significant leaks; a couple of years ago there was a big leak in one of the reactors (forget where) and Areva, the company owning it, didn't inform anyone in the area for close to 24 hours, during which several thousand had been drinking the contaminated water. But, of course, the effects won't be felt for years yet, and who will be able to prove the cancer was due to the nuclear industry? With at least 59 nuclear power stations, France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, and nuclear power has been pushed by the scientific socialists of the French Stalinist Party, as well as the right-wing, ever since 1945 when the Stalinists were in coalition with the Gaullists. When the Greens joined Jospins' Socialist Party govt. in the 1990s they justified supporting the continuation of the nuclear power building programme with the ideology that if the programme was stopped, the companies would just start building a lot more in India to make up for their losses, and that just wouldn't be fair to the third world.
Bit of a diversion from the Japanese "serious accident but not a nuclear catastrophe" as one leading French government minister (Besson) reassuringly called it today.

http://signalfire.org/?p=8486

Attention, japanese government warns about a second explosion (i'm frankly amazed about the extraordinary advantages of nukes power):

http://www.rtve.es/noticias/

(You have a japanese telly live-stream too)

Japan's contribution to the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, which is in 6 weeks time. Pity that much of the critique of nuke power is so liberal, but the article previously mentioned on this thread, considering particularly that it was an instant response, is a good radical critique.

Good article, yes, pretty semprunesque (not a fault at all) In spanish has just been released a text by semprun (maybe a posthumous one) that insists in the same position called "Catastrofismo" (pehaps "Catastrophism" in english?) I still remember i think it was in Anselm Jappe's account of Debord that he reproduced an oppinion expressed in the Nuisances bulletin saying that for the first time in history, survival instinct could be counted among the ideas supporting revolution.

ehm, do we need this to be reported on libcom? I have fresher news from mass media on this and see no class perspective in any of it.

This liveupdating is obscene and in this case it's better to 'go watch the birds outside'. But it's all so predictable that leftists are gonna try to give things a "class perspective". You already see with the example Entdinglichung mentioned in Germany how they cash in on this disaster. Next there will be stories of cleanup workers receiving too little pay, working long hours, wearing not enough protection, etc. All true, but is this really the best time to display your undoubtedly sincere care for safety of working conditions.

I still remember i think it was in Anselm Jappe's account of Debord

:cry:

**COMMUNIQUE FROM UNCONTROLLABLE THREAD-READER**

Dear users of libcom, as I am unable to stop clicking on new threads even when the title is quite clear that its content is something I'm not interested in, I am demanding that:

1. You ONLY write about things I am interested in
2. That you under NO circumstances write about things you are interested in unless it has a direct relation to the struggle for libertarian communism, as I have no wish to converse with you about other topics.
3. That you DISCIPLINE yourselves when writing so that you do not inadvertently venture an opinion on aspects of any event you are writing about that I might find annoying.

If you collectively FAIL to abide by these demands, I shall whinge at the admins! For liberty!

Noa Rodman

I still remember i think it was in Anselm Jappe's account of Debord

:cry:

What's up rodman, don't like old guy or young jappe's work on him?

Ed

Yeah, he's okay. I wrote a panicked message to internal but thankfully all is well with him.. :)

I pm'ed him but didn't get a reply. So glad to hear hes allrite.

Commode Failure

Sunday, March 13---I've been asked to provide a brief primer on the situation in Japan. I have no special access to news and up-to-date information is scarce so I will not attempt to encapsulate the rapidly changing reports. I will address some background issues and give some prognostication of what might be expected.

Both affected reactors are US-made light-water reactors of the Three Mile Island type, manufactured by GE in the 1960s. The good news is that we are dealing more with a TMI-type disaster than a Chernobyl-type disaster. Chernobyl was not a light-water reactor and its meltdown consequences were of a much greater scale than anything we might expect here, at least in terms of long-range fallout. (Short-range could be very nasty.) That is, the dramatic effects will be limited geographically and we probably will not see problems like the post-Chernobyl contamination of Mediterranean grapes and olives.

The bad news is that the TMI accident in 1979 was relatively easy to control because there had not been a massive earthquake. So TMI could be limited to a partial core meltdown with most infrastructure and some monitoring systems remaining intact. The real problem in Japan as I understand it is that the infrastructure is gone -- general power failure, mucked up roads inhibiting the movement of generators, etc. may mean that it's not even possible to get on-site monitoring systems to function. This is self-escalating because the worse the problem gets, the more impossible it becomes to keep personnel on site. Staying on-site becomes a suicide mission.

In that sense it is like Chernobyl in that Chernobyl was saved from becoming a much greater calamity by the literal sacrifice of about 200 employees, who stayed on-site knowing their radiation doses would be lethal. I interviewed a number of those workers -- such courage is not a trait of the post-industrial world. An open question is whether that will be possible in Japan, given cultural factors, etc.

Whether or not the kamikaze mentality remains in Japan, we could well see a full core meltdown, or two -- essentially TMI if the worst case had unfolded. Refer to the eerily prescient film China Syndrome for the judgment that an area "the size of Pennsylvania" would be rendered uninhabitable -- meaning all northern Japan. But once again, if there's a silver lining -- we would not see as dramatic long-range fallout as we did with Chernobyl, probably. Different isotopes are involved. Californians need not panic.

That two reactors are in crisis suggests we are dealing with that old bane of the nuclear industry -- Common Mode Failure or Commode Failure for short. The nuclear industry fended off safety critics by building in redundant safety systems. The problem, as critics have charged for forty years, is that such redundant systems are subject to common causes of failure -- like massive earthquakes. You can put a fire alarm in your house, and a second, and a third, but if your house is hit by a meteorite, all bets are off.

It has been an intellectual argument since TMI as to whether the new redundancy systems really solved the Commode Failure problem or not, since engineers got very creative at exorbitant prices. That debate may now be considered resolved.

So beyond the human suffering issues -- which I can't yet estimate or fathom -- all those "Nuclear Renaissance" projections are now looking pretty Dark Age. Look for nuclear stocks to tumble like a tumbleweed in a hurricane on Monday.

This is especially true since the accident happened in Japan, which was ballyhooed as the world leader in achieving "safe nuclear power." "Why can't we do it like Japan?" -- the slogan actually used by the US nuclear industry, now will have quite a different ring. This is even more especially true since the reactors involved are US-made.

From a policy perspective this will be a big challenge for the Obama Administration and Congress, since Obama just proposed in his State of the Union Address a batch of $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors. For the federal government to offer a loan guarantee after this Japanese disaster would be like having the government invest treasury funds in an incandescent light bulb factory run by crack addicts.

One might hope that the loan guarantees for this industry will disappear. Then again, I hope for world peace.

If the worst-case scenario does unfold in Japan, we will also see an unprecedented wave of calls for the shutdown of operating light-water reactors, all of which are aging beyond design specifications. The NRC is just now considering issues related to extension of reactor lifetimes. Neither TMI nor Chernobyl involved the full meltdown of a light-water reactor. Certainly such reactors near major cities, like Indian Point, and those in earthquake zones, will have to be shut down. The resulting sudden loss of generating capacity may be one of the biggest effects of this calamity, coming at a time when oil prices are at a peak.

How Japan will now produce its power is an open question, since it had gone to nuclear in desperation. I suppose the possibilities are that Japan might generally "dedevelop" from the combined effects of the earthquake, lack of energy options, and financial crisis. Or Japan could rapidly become a powerhouse of renewable energy, a direction in which it was already heading.

Yet another possibility is that Japan will place the blame on the US light water reactor type and move to shut down only those reactors. In that case this could feed a general world renunciation of US nuclear "assistance" agreements, which would be most interesting in many ways.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Geoffrey Sea, with a training in nuclear and reactor physics, long experience inside both the US nuclear-industrial complex (working for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union) and the downwinder communities of the Western United States and Kazakhstan, helps us think clearly about the news, and the silence, coming out of Fukushima.

Oh god here comes the Anti-nuke people

Two words: Boron Reactors

Also, Japanase gov't knows what it needs to do to cool the reactors down. Up until this point I feel they've been trying to simply salvage the instrument. This plant is way safer than Chernobyl was if you read into it.

Hieronymous - very interesting article - where's it from?

Intifada88:

Oh god here comes the Anti-nuke people

Oh human - here come the Pro-Nuke apologists.

Japanase gov't knows what it needs to do to cool the reactors down.

You sure? I mean, do you believe all that reassuring propaganda - or do you know something different?

Here in France, endless discussions are taking place between the nuclear unclear experts trying to get their story right and provide the Japanese nuclear industry and the Japanese State with the "reassuring" scripts to pacify the population, and not cause a massive exodus from the areas hit.
Everytime I hear those sweetly calming words "Don't worry - there's nothing we can't handle" I think "Get the fuck out as quick as you can".

Also in the library - on the nuclear industry, disasters and the 1970s anti-nuke movements; http://libcom.org/library/strange-victories-midnight-notes

Nuclear power plants malfunctioning has nothing to do with the fact they are nuclear. The industry involved will cut corners safety wise and will mislead the public over all sorts of crucial details, but that's not exactly unique is it?
Nuclear is very risky, but only because of shoddy implementation and the obvious pursuit of profit.
In other words it's a terrible idea under capitalism, but not scientifically.

i fully agree with that, there are no technical reasons why nuclear power is unsafe, only capitalist ones.
This is something scientists tend to forget, they realise that nuclear power could be safe, but they rarely realise why it isn't

Perhaps that's true:

Nuclear is very risky, but only because of shoddy implementation and the obvious pursuit of profit.
In other words it's a terrible idea under capitalism, but not scientifically.

But actually the arguments in this thread that tried to support nukes made no effort to put it that way. To defend science today in a totally detached way, separating it of the conditions it is put into practice it's socially totally useless and it explains or says nothing about the consequences to human beings.

Valeriano Orobón Fernández

Perhaps that's true:

Nuclear is very risky, but only because of shoddy implementation and the obvious pursuit of profit.
In other words it's a terrible idea under capitalism, but not scientifically.

But actually the arguments in this thread that tried to support nukes made no effort to put it that way. To defend science today in a totally detached way, separating it of the conditions it is put into practice it's socially totally useless and it explains or says nothing about the consequences to human beings.

I agree. I guess what I said is mainly just semantics but I feel it's an important distinction as well, mainly because I don't like it when people just say nuclear is 'unsafe' in an absolute way.
I think we will have to use nuclear power extensively at some point in the near future in order to meet ever increasing demands and that debate is not as simple as saying nuclear=unsafe.

Anyway that is a discussion for another time....

Valeriano Orobón Fernández

Perhaps that's true:

Nuclear is very risky, but only because of shoddy implementation and the obvious pursuit of profit.
In other words it's a terrible idea under capitalism, but not scientifically.

But actually the arguments in this thread that tried to support nukes made no effort to put it that way. To defend science today in a totally detached way, separating it of the conditions it is put into practice it's socially totally useless and it explains or says nothing about the consequences to human beings.

i had a quick look and i cant see what posts you are talking about?

I haven't either the time or the (non-nuclear) energy (I've got flu) to translate this at the moment, but for those who read French, this seems quite basic:

ALERTE NUCLÉAIRE, AU JAPON COMME PARTOUT !
À 15h30 ce samedi 12 mars, une explosion a retenti dans la centrale
nucléaire de Fukushima consécutivement au séisme qui avait touché
l’archipel nippon la veille. Quelques minutes plus tard, le porte-
parole du gouvernement, qui cherchait depuis plusieurs heures à
minimiser les alertes en cours dans la centrale, annonce
l’effondrement du toit d'un réacteur. Dans un immense élan de
responsabilité, le gouvernement invite les riverains à se «calfeutrer
chez eux» et à se «protéger les voix respiratoires avec des
serviettes mouillées» tout en continuant à minimiser les conséquences
de cette explosion. Il devient clair que des fuites se sont
produites, «l'accident» étant très vite comparé à celui de Three
Miles Island.
Au Japon comme ici : l'antidémocratisme à l'œuvre
Comme à chaque incident les gouvernants et nucléocrates de tous genres
nous ressortent leurs vieille soupe : «le risque zéro n'existe pas, tout
dépend de ci, de ça», les mêmes qui, quelques jours avant pouvaient nous
expliquer que Tchernobyl était la simple conséquence d’une mauvaise
gestion, d'un État soviétique en déroute. Or ici, l'horreur nucléaire est
dévoilée au cœur même de la société industrielle occidentale, dans l'un
des pôles économiques les plus puissants de l'impérialisme économique
mondial. Il met à mal les schémas scientistes développés par l’industrie
nucléaire et sur lesquels la population n'a aucune prise.
Comme à chaque accident nucléaire, les gouvernements, dictatoriaux ou
«démocratiques», utilisent les mêmes méthodes : comme en 1986 en Ukraine, le Japon envoie sur place des «Super pompiers» chargés de résoudre le problème. Ces Super pompiers auront sans doute leurs heures de gloire durant toute cette semaine mais il est fort à parier que ce gouvernement si prompt à réagir en temps de crise sera beaucoup plus timoré quand il s'agira de payer l’enterrement de ces sacrifiés, morts du cancer de la thyroïde.
Mais on ne fait pas d'omelette sans casser les œufs ma pauvre dame !
Ces constats sont encore plus vrais pour le Japon où le nucléaire,
historiquement synonyme de massacre, est rejeté par l’immense majorité de
la population. En 1991 le gouvernement a même renoncé totalement à sonder
les Japonais sur cette question tant la désapprobation envers cette
industrie se faisait grande (environ 90% d'avis négatifs). En 2007 encore,
suite à un nouvel incident dans cette même centrale de Fukushima, un
sondage montra que seul 27% des hommes et 9% des femmes considéraient
l’énergie nucléaire comme «nécessaire».
Comment expliquer autrement que par le puissant lobbying de l’industrie
nucléaire le fait qu’un pays aussi soumis aux risques sismiques que le
Japon investisse dans le nucléaire ? Un risque qui avait motivé l’Italie à
arrêter la production nucléaire dans les années 90 (programme réactivé par
Berlusconi en 2008). Malgré tout cela, le Japon est resté le troisième
producteur nucléaire au monde derrière les États-Unis et … la France. Et
ceci en totale opposition aux principes «démocratiques» qui sont paraît-il
les fondements des sociétés industrialisées.
Le nucléaire n'a pas de frontière : la lutte non plus !
La fin de l'année 2010 a été marquée par un regain d’activité dans la
lutte anti-nucléaire, notamment outre-Rhin, une lutte qui a été fortement
médiatisée par le fiasco de l’acheminement du train Castor vers
l'Allemagne.
Ce regain est moins ancré en France, mais pourtant, il y a à faire ! La
France et Areva sont l’un des promoteurs mondiaux les plus actifs de ces
usines mortifères. Areva ne s’illustre pas seulement dans le domaine
écologique, elle appuie également l’implantation de la filière
électronucléaire française dans de nombreux pays, par des moyens plus ou
moins dégueulasses (l’exemple du Niger vient en tête en premier lieu) mais
avec des objectifs toujours sacrément juteux ! Le nucléaire, par son
aspect de technologie de pointe, profitant du manque de formation et
d’élites scientifiques sur ce sujet dans de nombreux pays, permet de
légitimer l’ingérence de sociétés françaises au sein des pays du Tiers
monde (l’Inde entre autres, mais aussi la Chine) et permet la mainmise de
l'Occident sur des questions aussi fondamentales que l’énergie.
Le nucléaire est une industrie de mort !
Le nucléaire est un outil de pression et de domination économique et
idéologique !
Le nucléaire est une plaie ! Combattons-la !
Une immense colère doit parcourir le monde
Cela fait des dizaines d’années que l’on sait parfaitement qu’un jour ou
l’autre un tremblement de terre provoquera un «incident majeur».
Des années que le lobby de l’industrie nucléaire travaille pour le plus
grand bien des profits des capitalistes.
Des années qu’on nous rabâche qu’on ne peut se passer du nucléaire sous
peine de retour à la bougie. Le retour à la bougie c’est maintenant au
Japon qu’il se dessine !
Des années que la gauche se couche devant le lobby nucléaire au nom des
intérêts de l’économie française.
L’explosion dans la centrale nucléaire de Fukushima a provoqué en nous une
immense colère que nous devons laisser exploser partout.
L’ARRÊT IMMÉDIAT ET SANS CONDITION DU NUCLÉAIRE EST LA SEULE SOLUTION
ACCEPTABLE, ET ELLE EST POSSIBLE.
Crions-le, organisons partout des manifestations/rassemblements.
Dès ce samedi 12 février, des dizaines de milliers de personnes ont
manifesté contre l’industrie nucléaire en Allemagne.
Des rassemblements anti-nucléaires dans tout le pays sont prévus pour
lundi soir.
Qu’attendons-nous ?

As for those who somehow think nuclear power is ok, it's just its capitalist use that's the problem, it always amazes me how immune they are to the decades long critique of Marx (and definitely not just by the reactive reactionary primitivists) - the recognition that capitalism produces alienated forms, content and goals, that it's not just a question of seizing some "neutral" social product and suppressing exchange value. Thus Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling's comment:

I think we will have to use nuclear power extensively at some point in the near future in order to meet ever increasing demands and that debate is not as simple as saying nuclear=unsafe.

For one thing, in this society the "demands" (another neutral term?) for electricity are way way above what would be rational in a self-determined world.

Here is as good a place to debate nuke power as any, particularly in the light of a very immediate disaster who's unfolding misery has only just begun. It's easy to have a debate "abstractly", but when theory is a concrete question, all those abstractions about nuke power in a communist world have no practical meaning whatsoever.

These extracts from a previous debate seem worth reproducing here, though I've hardly reproduced those in favour of nuke power because their arguments were so under-developed and flimsy- perhaps inevitably:

What is a safe and well managed nuclear program? Like i'm sure the money-black hole that is the nuclear power industry appreciates the plug, but really what place does non-renewable, prohibitively expensive and pollutive/toxic energy production have in our future? What is the point in going down that way? 85 years (or less) later, there will be no uranium left - and then what? Just demolish all the nuclear plants we spent billions and decades on?
Though to be honest, the nuclear power industry has/had so much money sunk into it by private capital and government over the years (a lot of which still hasn't paid off) that i think it will continue for decades to come if only because people want to get what they paid for (even if it takes nearly a decade to build), and for investors - to see their return, people have contractual obligations after all. It's also a boon industry for any country that has large uranium deposits (like canada and australia) - so it has some natural proponents (i.e. people who can make $ or have spent $ on it already) - but not many outside of government and industry? It should also be noted that uranium rich countries are few and far between (canada and australia combined are responsible for over half of the worlds uranium production).
That could raise the question of our nuclear future potentially being dominated by a resource cartel akin to the oil-producing countries today.

Consider that most of these "needs" are produced by bourgeois society, like any other commodity...using capitalist energy-extraction technology in cases of genuine necessity is acceptable, however communism is a new and different society which puts the needs of the entire community before bourgeois "convenience"...all forms of industrial energy-extraction, within the context of alienated labor and commodity production, are equally detrimental to the ecology, which includes humanity...you are brainwashed by the "alternative energy" bourgeoisie into thinking fossil fuels are uniquely evil.

There is no such thing as bourgeois science. There is science and then there is the use that science is put to.

Science is empirical observation of the universe.
What most men call "science" is actually an ideology of liberal-capitalist control.

we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater and that nuclear power and gm crops (both of which in pratise I think are a bad idea) could potentially be useful.

The burden of positive proof lies on those who claim that practices could be "potentially useful" which you admit are "bad idea[s]". Until that time I will oppose them in practice.

I am not anti-science in the sense of science as a method of constantly testing and experimenting with reality to overcome certain limits in our development.
In this society science is inevitably ‘bourgeois science’: separating something from the dominant use to which it is put is sometimes useful, but unless it is done on the basis of a thorough critique of its capitalist use (which JRCashcrop certainly did not even begin to attempt to do in his original post) it inevitably ends up as an apology for bourgeois science.

nuclear powered electricity…? You really are as mad as the world you pretend you oppose. I am not going into all the ins and outs of the carcinogenic nature of nuclear power, and all its other miseries, since the information has been around for at least 40 years now, but to talk about making it “safe and well-managed” is like a paid PR man for Selafield. The language of bureaucratic clones. Orwell would have had field-day tearing apart your sterile words.

the number of children who have been getting leukaemia around Selafield/Windscale since the 1950s, indicative of the carcinogenic effects of nuclear power everywhere, or the estimate of over a million deaths in the USSR (now former) alone (not including the rest of Europe or elsewhere) resulting from radioactivity released at Chernobyl in 1986, an estimate given very limited publicity in France a few months after the disaster, but which has since been revised vastly downwards in keeping with the power of the nuclear lobby. This lobby also always manages to persuade its friends in the State to constantly revise the acceptable levels of contamination - the "safe"amount of becquerels released in endless nuke accidents round the world or just showing up in normal everyday contamination is constantly increased so as not to "scare" (JRCashpointless' word) people. Of course, unlike cluster bombs or aerial bombardment, death is slow, the pain is prolonged, the cancer is invisible (very convenient for the 'immortal, omniscient' God of the commodity) and there's an inability to attribute the fatalities directly to anything specific. The perfect alibi. It is a measure of the enormous ideological power of this society and of the nuclear industry in particular, that so-called 'communists' can arrogantly dismiss my analogy as flawed. But then the Stalinist shitheads of the French Communist Party, the main propagators of neclear power whilst in government in post-WWll France, also dismissed anyone who attacked their madness as idiots or whatever. At that time, they too were thought to be communist by the vast majority, even of people who were opposed to this society in some ways.

To make clearer sense of much of these quotes, refer back to the original debate, though it's long and mainly about GMOs.

http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2018

Mobilisations against Nuclear Power Plants

Shut them all down now

It was a sad coincidence: The German anti-nuclear movement had long being planning a huge mobilisation against the decision of the German government to extend considerably the life of the country’s nuclear plants thus to cancel the law, introduced by the former Labour/Green government that they be decommisioned.

On Saturday, March 12, a giant human chain, 45 km long was formed between the nuclear plant at Neckarwestheim and the seat of the regional government of Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart . 60 000 people took part in the protest in the run up to regional elections. It was the day of the meltdown of the Fukushima-plant after the earthquake in Japan...
A majority against nuclear energy

For decades there has been a stable and absolute majority in the polls in Germany against the use of nuclear energy. And in the last year there was a new upturn of the movement with a new generation of young activists: The mobilisations of last year against the transports of nuclear waste had been the biggest for more than 15 years. But the ruling federal government of Conservatives and Liberals ignored the demonstrations and complaints.

The former government of the Social Democrats and Green Party some years ago passed a law, which limited the running time of the existing nuclear plants. But this was a foul compromise. The "exit" from nuclear energy was planned to be a long one, and, what was worse, this law was made in a way, that it was quite easy for the following government to change it.

So the present government argued, that the nuclear plants are needed in order to fight climate change and the industry now can count on billions of extra-profits from the plants, which are partly almost as old as the Japanese ones in Fukushima..
The movement is growing

The 60,000 on March 12 was a big success. It was also a surprise - not even the most optimistic expected this number of participants. The catastrophy of Fukushima has given the anti-nuclear movement new power. And nobody believes in the hastily made official statements of the government, that something like there cannot happen in Germany. Many people have very clearly in mind the lies about "no danger" in the first days after the Chernobyl-meltdown.

And there were other mobilisations: In several towns all over the country spontaneous manifestations and demonstrations took place on Saturday, organized by the radical left and local initiatives. For Monday 14th there is a call for nationwide vigils at 6 p.m., and there are already numerous announcements of activities for Monday in the map (http://www.ausgestrahlt.de/mitmachen/fukushima.html) of one of the biggest anti-nuclear websites, which shows the towns in which the movement is mobilizing - and the number doubled from Saturday to Sunday already.

Our solidarity is with the people of Japan, hit by the earthquake and the nuclear catastrophe. But the best way, to express it, is, to take part in the reemerging movement against Nuclear energy and to fight for the immediate shut-down of Nuclear power plants worldwide.

Samotnaf

As for those who somehow think nuclear power is ok, it's just its capitalist use that's the problem, it always amazes me how immune they are to the decades long critique of Marx

By that logic, you could replace nuclear power in that sentence with technology as a whole. I believe there are slow steps being made towards safe nuclear power currently, although whether they'll come to fruition under capitalism, who knows. If it was possible in a rational economy, there would be absolutely no reason to be power ascetic when you could create unlimitless energy to be supplied the world over, with no danger. I suppose you could say that's abstract but only as abstract as other technology related questions for the future. Mass transport without pollution for instance.

flaneur

Samotnaf

As for those who somehow think nuclear power is ok, it's just its capitalist use that's the problem, it always amazes me how immune they are to the decades long critique of Marx

By that logic, you could replace nuclear power in that sentence with technology as a whole. I believe there are slow steps being made towards safe nuclear power currently, although whether they'll come to fruition under capitalism, who knows. If it was possible in a rational economy, there would be absolutely no reason to be power ascetic when you could create unlimitless energy to be supplied the world over, with no danger. I suppose you could say that's abstract but only as abstract as other technology related questions for the future. Mass transport without pollution for instance.

with nuclear power it is different, because even in a "rational economy", there
will be the possibility (natural or non-natural) of disasters ... and a nuclear plant blowing up is something different than a steel mill exploding ... and unlike Scientoligists (and Neo-Fourierists?), I also do not believe, that someone can become "immune" to radioactivity on "higher stages" of development ... two other important points: mining uranium always produces a constant "low radiation" which slowly kills the miners but also affects the surrounding communities and the problem of storing nuclear waste (which will only lose its radioactivity in case of some isotopes after millions of years) is totally unsolved

By what logic could you

replace nuclear power in that sentence with technology as a whole.

?

Nuclear doesn't mean just uranium. Thorium is being touted as an alternative which is meltdown proof and can burn existing radioactive waste including weapons. It's not without problems especially in the tentative stages, but it is very much a real possibility.

By the way, State propaganda has changed since Chernobyl - TV news just now admitted that in the past there'd been a great deal of lying about nuclear accidents, but what now characterises the present discourse in Japan is that they admit there's a danger, and are evacuating the areas concerned. Expect lies to be used sparingly; they can't hide this catastrophe, but they can claim it's not as bad as Chernobyl. Maybe it isn't, and certainly it's different, but there seems to be a good chance that it will turn out to be almost as bad, at least for Japan. And if the radioactivity spreads to Korea or Russia, will the population there be made aware of the dangers? We shall see, but somehow I doubt it.

Samotnaf

By what logic could you

replace nuclear power in that sentence with technology as a whole.

?

Because both are neutral. They can be used with regard for the environment and the people around them or without it just as easily. I'm not swearing by nuclear power for a second and I could always be wrong about its future but I don't think it's automatically shit because it's been an unmitigated disaster under capitalism.

I think the difference is that problems with nuclear materials the stakes seem to be so much higher. Personally I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, the market is stunningly short-sighted when it comes to risk and the need to have spare capacity is actively opposd.

[youtube]DqwS0Ew77WE[/youtube]

Just on the use of seawater to try to maintain the vital cooling system around the rods: seawater doesn't seem to be good for the system as someone says above but what's even worse is that this method delivers the highly radioactive seawater straight back into the sea as happened on a regular basis in the UK and in France I think.

radicalgraffiti

i fully agree with that, there are no technical reasons why nuclear power is unsafe, only capitalist ones.
This is something scientists tend to forget, they realise that nuclear power could be safe, but they rarely realise why it isn't

This goes for GM food as well.

Nothing is "neutral" - everything is historical, a result of class struggle and class decisions. And if you oppose this society, you should know that. It's a critique that's been around for some time and yet you don't address it. The ideology of "neutral" in this context is not at all neutral - it's an ideology of scientists who want to abnegate all responsiblity for the bourgeois use and origins of their research with their claims to "objectivity".

This doesn't mean that, for instance, a car can't be used subversively - as a barricade or as a method of developing flying pickets; but essentially, the car's function, as a choice reinforced by State decisions (such as the closing down of endless amounts of railway stations) is to suppress the street, reinforce isolation and, of course, to accumulate greater and greater amounts of capital.

Nuke power is maintained by a high caste of ultra-specialised technicians, whose specialism far exceeds that of other energy engineers. In the UK it was partly the rulers' response to one of the most subversive parts of the working class, those who, officially at least, were the least specialised - the British miners.

Thorium is being touted as an alternative which is meltdown proof and can burn existing radioactive waste including weapons.

Are you one of those - do you have the specialised knowledge - to be able to honestly say that the use of Thorium as an energy source is possible or safe? There are a lot of people desperate to make loadsa money from their specialised research, to receive grants and investment for it, who have "good" financial reasons to tout their notions. Though I know nothing about it, I suspect that such research is not something at all "neutral", but narrowly self-interested. If you look, for instance, at the grossly exaggerated claims of nanotechnology and the billions and billions they receive in grants and investments with very little result so far, you might be a little more sceptical about the Thorium-powered energy claims. But maybe you know better than me. Perhaps you're part of the research team...?

For clarification - my post above (post 44) was a response to flaneur's

Samotnaf wrote:

By what logic could you

replace nuclear power in that sentence with technology as a whole.

?

Because both are neutral.

[/quote]

I'm sorry but I think that's a load of rubbish. It reminds me of campaigns like ban knives. You can stab someone with one or you can use it to cut steak. The knife isn't fussed either way.

With your example, I don't think you're disproving what I've said. The state has a transport agenda that it imposes but its not a role inherent to the technology. If the state was done away with, cars wouldn't long to be the primary mode of transportation and concerned with shutting down its rivals.

As for specialisation, what else do you propose? Again, I'm not saying it's correct as it stands but I would still expect there to be people who know what they're talking about post revolution, and those that haven't a clue. I wouldn't feel comfortable with a bunch of insurence workers in charge of sewage maintence. And I would disagree that miners weren't specialised, they certainly were with regards to mines. I don't think that's a job anyone can just go off and do, safely anyway.

I understand what you're saying with regards to whose interest is it but sometimes, ours and theirs do occassionally converge. A transport relevent example would be the bullet trains. I'm sure the state in Japan supports them for different reasons but the technology of the trains themselves are mutually beneficial (problems with line developments and disruption are a seperate issue).

If anything, your nanotech example shows the dialectics between development and funding under capitalism. I don't see why the technology itself is rubbish or not worth pursuing. I am very much sceptical too but I am not outright dismissive.

And if only I was part of the research team, then I wouldn't be rushing to post this and make the dole office in time!

Hieronymous

Commode Failure

Sunday, March 13---I've been asked to provide a brief primer on the situation in Japan.
[...]
Both affected reactors are US-made light-water reactors of the Three Mile Island type, manufactured by GE in the 1960s. The good news is that we are dealing more with a TMI-type disaster than a Chernobyl-type disaster. Chernobyl was not a light-water reactor
[...]

Geoffrey Sea, with a training in nuclear and reactor physics, long experience inside both the US nuclear-industrial complex (working for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union) and the downwinder communities of the Western United States and Kazakhstan, helps us think clearly about the news, and the silence, coming out of Fukushima.

OK, this is not a particularly political point, but... Chernobyl was an RBMK reactor which actually is a type of LWR. TMI was a LWR of the PWR type, but Fukushima is a Boiling Water Reactor (which is also an LWR). Although the point that meltdown that breaches containment would be more similar to TMI than Chernobyl is more or less ok, it's a peculiar factual error to make for someone claiming those credentials.

flaneur:

It reminds me of campaigns like ban knives. You can stab someone with one or you can use it to cut steak.

To compare knives with nuclear power is spurious and ridiculous: just in case you didn't know, neanderthal man had not developed nuclear power. Comparing pre-class society technology with modern spectacular technology is idiotically ahistorical.

There will never be insurance workers in the society I envisage, but certain techniques - like sewerage maintenance - do not require the degree of specialisation (nor the extent of militarised protection and surveillance) that the nuclear power industry require. Stop using silly comparisons that merely show you don't want to think logically or critically. Your acceptance at face value of a piece of PR for Thorium, unbacked by any independent research into it, is indicative of this lack of scepticism.

And I never said that miners weren't specialised - I said that "officially" they were amongst the least specialised. Besides, there are degrees of specialisation, and mining doesn't compare with the elite of the nuclear power industry.

You've decided that the results of bourgeois science are neutral and you'll use any old analogy to convince yourself of this. If you continue like this, I won't bother replying.

It's spurious and ridiculous to be anal retentive about what comparisons I make. You know full well the point I've made, that things, old or new and industries, trifling or crucial have no will bar the one imposed on them. If you wish to take a couple of links as my lack of scepticism, okay. But I never said "bourgeois science is neutral", only science and the technology it creates.

Samotnaf

Hieronymous - very interesting article - where's it from?

From a listserve of people in my area, many of whom are in the Retort group.

And perhaps Geoffrey got some facts wrong, but his initial response was written immediately after the earthquake and may have been somewhat rushed.

Nuclear Bulletin #2:

March 14, 2011---Update and Health Advice

Since my last report, the situation at the two crippled reactors has worsened and cooling system problems are reported at two additional reactors at separate sites. Residents near the meltdown location are already being treated for radiation exposure at hospitals. The severity of the problem at the two new sites is unclear and may be limited to pipe ruptures that can be fixed by temporary shutdowns.

Since rumors and misinformation are being reported, creating a crisis of its own, I thought I should add some basic health protection advice.

FOR ALL CONCERNED IN EAST ASIA AND NORTH PACIFIC COASTAL AREAS:

DO: Take daily vitamin and mineral supplements, especially Vitamin C, Iodized salt, Calcium, Zinc, Potassium, Manganese and Iron. The best way to prevent uptake of radioactive elements is to increase uptake of stable isotope equivalents. Do not overdose, however.

Obtain potassium iodide tablets and keep them handy, but do not ingest them until advised to do so by local health authorities. Taking potassium iodide prematurely can negate any protective effect when needed. The tablets should not be taken on news of a fallout cloud but only in following days if local water and milk sources are reported as contaminated.

Iodized salt and potassium supplements or high-potassium foods like bananas can substitute if potassium iodide cannot be obtained.

DO NOT: Do not ingest any fresh milk or dairy products harvested from animals after Saturday. Do not breastfeed infants. Optimally rely on canned or evaporated milk until the crisis passes. Pasteurized dairy products are tremendously better than fresh.

Don't panic, move your family, or worry over much about air exposure. By far the greatest pathway of exposure is ingested food and water over days following a fallout cloud. Fallout clouds are easy to track and news of any fallout will be available in time to take action, except in Japan itself.

Reduce or eliminate consumption of fresh produce from fallout areas and replace with canned or processed foods until the crisis passes.

Replace tap water with bottled water if in an area where fallout is reported.

Above all, do not listen to crackpot alarmist advice and that especially applies to anything on Pacifica Radio [Berkeley's public radio station KPFA], where we can expect all kinds of bad advice and paranoia in coming days.

IF IN JAPAN OR NEARBY AREAS IN NORTHEAST ASIA:

Follow the above advice more strenuously, obtain supplies of canned foods, bottled water, and packaged iodized salt. Keep windows closed. Wash any eating utensils or plates exposed to open air. Vacuum floors daily ideally using a HEPA filter vacuum. Do not garden or work with exposed vegetation. Wear disposable gloves for any outdoor work. Wear a filter mask or use a tied handkerchief when working outdoors.

--Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #3

14 March 2011---I want to stress in regard to my health advice that, unless you are in Japan, you need not do much except start taking mineral supplements, which is good for you in any case, and trying to obtain potassium iodide pills in case the worst happens. For all other measures outside Japan, there is no emergency until news comes that a fallout cloud is headed in your direction, and hopefully that news will not come. If you are breastfeeding an infant or milking backyard llamas it would be a good idea to prepare alternatives. Otherwise, chill -- it's good for your health.

More information about the Fukushima situation is available and I'm proud to say that I correctly retrodicted that the main problem was in getting power to the cooling and monitoring systems. Ironic that this is usually the problem in major nuclear accidents since we are talking about power plants. The main power grid went down, of course.

I wasn't exactly right about the roads preventing the delivery of diesel generators. What actually happened was that the diesel generator back-ups were kept outdoors in a yard near the waterfront and they were wiped out by the tsunami. (I wonder what probability was assigned to that scenario by the safety planning gurus.) Replacement generators were delivered by truck, but the plugs were incompatible with those of the power plant. Somebody left their universal conversion kit back at the Holiday Inn. (Again I'd like to see the statistical risk factor pre-assigned to that.)

This reminds me of the 1984 loss of a few hundred pounds of uranium at the Fernald Plant in Ohio, which was caused because the night crew did not have keys to the equipment closet where extension cords were kept. An extension cord was needed to power the Hoover vacuum cleaner used to clean up uranium spills. This is secret nuclear stuff difficult for the layman to grasp, I know.

Apologetics from the U.S. nuclear industry started before you could say "Fukushima". This amazing piece appeared on Saturday jumping the gun, as it were: Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanation on the BraveNewClimate website.

It is by someone described as "a PhD scientist......whose father has extensive experience in the German nuclear industry." Wow, what a credential! So anyway this Dr. Science guy knew on Saturday: "There was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity." What a Nostradamus! Within 24 hours, 22 local residents were being hospitalized for radiation exposure, and as of Sunday night in Japan, the reactors were still not under control and one or two full meltdowns are still possible.

In other words that "simple and accurate explanation" was actually a simply inaccurate explanation, and virtually nothing there is truthful. It does well represent the voice of the industry trying to preemptively put a happy face on a very dour situation. Eerily reminiscent of the first days of the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher and BP's blatant lies.

So my hopes that we will see any easy capitulation by the nukomaniacal class have already been dashed. Incredibly, they are going to try to claim this as a proof that "the system worked" -- a line taken in that article. If these modern PR guys had been present at the burning of the Library at Alexandria, they would have claimed the incident well demonstrated the fire-retardant properties of papyrus.

I strongly suggest watching or rewatching the China Syndrome. The movie hit theatres as the TMI accident hit the news. The scenario in the film involved a reactor meltdown set off by a California earthquake. Spooky.

For comparison with that Saturday nuclear puff piece, here's an actual balanced account of where things stood as of Sunday: Stricken Reactors Defy Japan’s Best Efforts to Contain Damage - at NYTimes.com

-- Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #4

14 March 2012---To clarify a prior statement, when I said that the Fukushima reactors were of a Three-Mile-Island type, I meant that both the TMI and Fukushima reactors are moderated by light water, that is ordinary water, unlike the heavy water reactors used in Canada, or graphite-moderated reactors like the units at Chernobyl. Graphite exacerbates the production of radioisotopes in a meltdown scenario, and unlike water, it burns. These factors made Chernobyl worse than anything we might expect in Japan.

I should have clarified that the TMI reactors were PWRs, Pressurized Water Reactors, whereas the Fukushima reactors are BWRs, Boiling Water Reactors. There are engineering differences but the meltdown scenarios are similar, and indeed we have seen that the buildup of explosive gasses was a principal problem at both TMI and Fukushima, where the second stricken reactor has now exploded in its outer shell. Such explosions were narrowly averted at TMI.

The San Francisco Chronicle has led with a story about the drop in nuclear industry stock values and prospects, as predicted here: Nuclear Renaissance Wobbles as Quake Hits Japan Reactors. Australian and, of course, Japanese nuclear stocks were hit hard Monday. US markets are yet to open as of this writing. The fact that the first big new US nuclear construction project led by Constellation Energy in Maryland collapsed last fall for financial reasons bodes poorly for any nuclear revival, given this latest catastrophe.

Joseph Lieberman is quoted in that article as especially down on nuclear futures. That's indicative because Lieberman is the only 'centrist' Independent, and he comes from Connecticut, the most nuclear-dependent state. If Lieberman is trashing nuclear, it means something. Also from the article, India has announced a re-evaluation of nuclear expansion plans because of the Japan situation.

These impacts will hit especially hard on proposals to expand the nuclear fuels industry, since projected demand for fuel will now tumble as iffy reactor projects are now canceled outright. That ought to remove any idea of a new USEC enrichment plant in Ohio. (Disclosure: that plant is proposed for my backyard. Not near but IN my backyard, literally.)

One interesting drama will play out in California, as the nuclear plant perhaps at greatest earthquake risk is the Diablo Canyon plant in San Luis Obispo, near the San Andreas fault. That plant was under construction when Jerry Brown ran for re-election as governor in 1978, and Brown then threatened to use emergency powers to prevent the plant from opening, but he did not do so. Now Brown is governor again and Diablo Canyon is a ticking time bomb. So Diablo Canyon will be the bellwether for other at-risk US reactors.

The "perhaps" in the last paragraph is in consideration of the Callaway Plant in central Missouri, the reactor nearest the New Madrid fault zone, which is rated as the most likely location in the USA of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. (Mayanist New Agers say it will strike in 2012.) The operator of Callaway announced plans in 2008 for a second unit at the site. I don't think that's going to happen.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Wear a filter mask or use a tied handkerchief

How much radioactivity does a filter mask really filter?

it depends of the form of the radioactive substance

Samotnaf

Wear a filter mask or use a tied handkerchief

How much radioactivity does a filter mask really filter?

The idea is to try and prevent the ingestion of particles of material that are radioactive in the sense that they could later decay and emit radiation inside your body (for e.g. alpha decay which is absorbed within a few cms of air).

Nuclear bulletin #5

14 iii 11, 2:30 PM GMT---Shares of USEC are down more than 15% at opening bell. USEC has supplied uranium fuel for the Fukushima reactors and now depends on such customers to justify a federal loan guarantee to build a new plant, against stiff competition. USEC issued a statement of support for its "Japanese Friends" - USEC CEO: We Stand With Our Japanese Friends | Business Wire. GE, manufacturer of the Fukushima reactors, opened down only 2%.

When I speculated that Dr. Science, the author of Saturday's nuclear puff piece might have his PhD in public relations, I was half joking. Well OK, I did have a hunch. His name is Josef Oehmen. So then I came across this comment left on a web page with that article:

"Dr. Josef Oehmen appears to specialize in a narrow area of business administration, which has nothing to do with either physics or nuclear engineering. His publications I could find deal with risks in supply chains and with new product development - two traditional areas of marketing."

Here's the list of Oehmen's publications: Publication List of Josef Oehmen. Not a single one on any nuclear subject, until Saturday.

Oehmen's Saturday article is all over the net, it's gone viral, and it's virtually the only thing one can find by that author, accounting for a large majority of the three thousand search hits on his name.

In other words, here is what happened: The nuclear industry needed an immediate response piece to Fukushima, in order to keep after-hours stock prices from crashing over the weekend, and to give time for Japanese workers to bring the reactors under control. So that article was written by people inside the industry and then they shopped around for a no-baggage guy with an MIT credential. Then it appears that every company in the industry reposted and linked to that article over the weekend, with messages to employees and media shills to do likewise.

The story of that article is itself a great case study in the manipulation of public opinion and stock market prices.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Samotnaf

As for those who somehow think nuclear power is ok, it's just its capitalist use that's the problem, it always amazes me how immune they are to the decades long critique of Marx (and definitely not just by the reactive reactionary primitivists) - the recognition that capitalism produces alienated forms, content and goals, that it's not just a question of seizing some "neutral" social product and suppressing exchange value.
Thus Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling's comment:

I think we will have to use nuclear power extensively at some point in the near future in order to meet ever increasing demands and that debate is not as simple as saying nuclear=unsafe.

For one thing, in this society the "demands" (another neutral term?) for electricity are way way above what would be rational in a self-determined world.

By "the near future" I don't mean a post-capitalist society, if I did then I would have said so. Therefore in our irrational capitalist world where electricity demands are ever rising we may well need nuclear power. We almost certainly will run out of oil and maybe just maybe the suffering placed on the working class as a result of this will eclipse that caused by nuclear power. Who knows?
Does the very serious dangers of nuke power outweigh the dangers of resource shortage?
Do we even need nuke power to overcome that shortage?
You can call these questions abstract if you wish, but when your argument against nuke power, rightly, is based on it's danger to people, you cannot ignore the dangers of the other side.

It amazes me how some believe the workings and demands of capitalist society here and now are irrelevant, I think you are being slightly hypocritical by analyzing nuke power on its own.

Consider that most of these "needs" are produced by bourgeois society, like any other commodity...using capitalist energy-extraction technology in cases of genuine necessity is acceptable, however communism is a new and different society which puts the needs of the entire community before bourgeois "convenience"...all forms of industrial energy-extraction, within the context of alienated labor and commodity production, are equally detrimental to the ecology, which includes humanity...you are brainwashed by the "alternative energy" bourgeoisie into thinking fossil fuels are uniquely evil.

"Needs"? Well i guess I don't strictly need any of the things I have access to thanks to "bourgeois convenience" other than basic foods, water and shelter. But it sure is nice to have them, and the other 7 billion around may want some as well. I guess the computer i'm writing this on is Bourgeois then, (it is, it's a macbook.)

Tokyo Electric to build U.S. nuclear plants

By Greg Palast, March 14, 2011

Texas plants planned by Tokyo Electric

I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.

I don't know the law in Japan, so I can't tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.

But what will Obama plead? The Administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas — by Tokyo Electric Power and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn't suffered enough.

Here are the facts about Tokyo Electric and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from Al Qaeda.

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from 'failed' to 'passed.'

The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction which will work with Tokyo Electric to build the Texas plant, Lord help us.

There's more.

Last night I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.

These safety back-up systems are the 'EDGs' in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators. That they didn't work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn't save a building because "it was on fire."

What dim bulbs designed this system? One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba. Toshiba was also an architect of the emergency diesel system.

Now be afraid. Obama's $4 billion bail-out-in-the-making is called the South Texas Project. It's been sold as a red-white-and-blue way to make power domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand. However, the reactor will be made substantially in Japan by the company that bought the US brand name, Westinghouse — Toshiba.

I once had a Toshiba computer. I only had to send it in once for warranty work. However, it's kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway to the earth's core.

TEPCO and Toshiba don't know what my son learned in 8th grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So these companies are real stupid, eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn't have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.

Back in the day, when we checked the emergency back-up diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuke, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They'd been tested. The tests were faked, the diesels run for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, "Snap, Crackle and Pop."

(Note: Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.)

In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells Tokyo Electric to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn't want to do.

I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders. One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and Tokyo Electric to lure them to America. The US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.

In Japan, it's simply not done. The culture does not allow the salary-men, who work all their their lives for one company, to drop the dime.

Not that US law is a wondrous shield: both engineers in the New York case were fired and blacklisted by the industry. Nevertheless, the government (local, state, federal) brought civil racketeering charges against the builders. The jury didn't buy the corporation's excuses and, in the end, the plant was, thankfully, dismantled.

Am I on some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade? No. In fact, I'm far more frightened by the American operators in the South Texas nuclear project, especially Shaw. Stone & Webster, now the Shaw nuclear division, was also the firm that conspired to fake the EDG tests in New York. (The company's other exploits have been exposed by their former consultant, John Perkins, in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.)

If the planet wants to shiver, consider this: Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become world-wide partners in the construction of nuclear stations.

The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing should also give you the willies. But as I'm in the middle of investigating the American partners, I'll save that for another day.

So, if we turned to America's own nuclear contractors, would we be safe? Well, two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky high, were built by General Electric of the Good Old US of A.

After Texas, you're next. The Obama Administration is planning a total of $56 billion in loans for nuclear reactors all over America.

And now, the homicides:

CNN is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, swept away or lost in the explosion. These plants are now releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the "levels are not dangerous." These are the same people who said these meltdowns could never happen. Over years, not days, there may be a thousand people, two thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation.

In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown "morbidity" rates for the county government. It would be irresponsible for me to estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without further information; but it is just plain criminal for the Tokyo Electric shoguns to say that these releases are not dangerous. Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn't care who lives and who dies whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.

Heaven help us. Because Obama won't.

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling:

in our irrational capitalist world where electricity demands are ever rising we may well need nuclear power. We almost certainly will run out of oil and maybe just maybe the suffering placed on the working class as a result of this will eclipse that caused by nuclear power. Who knows?
Does the very serious dangers of nuke power outweigh the dangers of resource shortage?
Do we even need nuke power to overcome that shortage?
You can call these questions abstract if you wish, but when your argument against nuke power, rightly, is based on it's danger to people, you cannot ignore the dangers of the other side.

I have no desire to choose between the frying pan and the fire, to help capital work out ways of temporarily attempting to overcome the contradictions of its fundamentally irrational world. One might just as well teach ravens to fly underwater.
I don't doubt that many of the alternatives for energy production and consumption are dangerous. Part of the struggle against this irrational world is to critique the material reasons for high levels of energy consumption. I drive a car (far more dangerous for the environment than your computer), though it's essentially the economy that forces me to do this (because of work, lack of public transport, etc.); and I cannot see any development of an amelioration in misery, at least with any secure and long-term basis, coming from anything other than a wholesale attack on capitalism. Because all the other alternatives are irrational and self-defeating.

"Because of the continued risks of seismic activity, Vladimir Jirinovski, the head of the Liberal-Democrat Party of Russia, has offered to displace the whole population of Japan onto the vast uninhabited plains of Siberia. "It's no problem for us if they go there where there's space to build and settle down and Russia has everything to gain by welcoming such hard-working people".

- report in Le Figaro.

8.59pm: The New York Times has some rather worrying quotes from concerned nuclear industry executives in the US who have been talking to Japanese counterparts amid faltering emergency operations to pump seawater into one of the crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station:

"They're basically in a full-scale panic" among Japanese power industry managers, said a senior nuclear industry executive.

The executive is not involved in managing the response to the reactors' difficulties but has many contacts in Japan. "They're in total disarray, they don't know what to do."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&hp

What i tried to say earlier is that it's quite futile to defend the use of nukes in the current situation and the current state of technology. When i am lectured about 4th generation reactors i always (scratching my head) think "where are they functioning right now? nowhere.

When and if we have such possibility in a totally different power balance we can start wondering how to use it. What we have at hand right now and in their current state is no more than a filthy, deadly shady crap that poison your life, makes loads of money for a gang of bastard thugs hindering at the same time the development of heolic and photovoltaic energy (we know a lot about this in spain) and is an invaluable contributor to the consolidation of a secrecy and police state.

Just in case nobody's seen this:

radiation levels at Fukushima 3 are now 400 times legal levels.

Obviously Pandora's box has been opened now. May be with the latest news from Japan it's not really worth mentioning it, but in Germany there were flash-mob style anti-nuclear protests in some 450 towns last night, with an estimated 120,000 people taking part in it. More massive protests for the immediate shut-down of all nuclear power pants worldwide are scheduled for the next days. FAU is about to set up a “Freeters Relief fund” and already has started helping freeter comrades to get out of Japan.

What i tried to say earlier is that it's quite futile to defend the use of nukes in the current situation and the current state of technology. When i am lectured about 4th generation reactors i always (scratching my head) think "where are they functioning right now? nowhere.

There are 4th Generation reactors that are no longer functioning. This isn't a question of something like fusion power which is a long way off and unproven. It's a question of technologies that are no longer pursued for historical (read: military) reasons.

When and if we have such possibility in a totally different power balance we can start wondering how to use it. What we have at hand right now and in their current state is no more than a filthy, deadly shady crap that poison your life, makes loads of money for a gang of bastard thugs hindering at the same time the development of heolic and photovoltaic energy (we know a lot about this in spain) and is an invaluable contributor to the consolidation of a secrecy and police state.

LWR are pretty bad, there is obviously no question about that. The fact is though, even assuming the Japanese situation turns into a Chernobyl, which I don't believe it will, LWR will have a much better track record than coal and gas. We should at least be fair in our comparisons.

As for those who think we will not need nearly as much electricity in a rational human-centric economy, I think that's complete rubbish. We should at least double our electricity use for transport via train tram and electric car if we want to get off of oil.

[quote=jacobian]

(...) As for those who think we will not need nearly as much electricity in a rational self-determined economy, I think that's complete rubbish. We should at least double our electricity use for transport via train tram and electric car if we want to get off of oil.

What are you talking about? Have you ever read a materialist analysis on large-scale industries and their relation to the capitalist mode of production? Even if a rational self-determined economy would double the electricity use (which I do think it will), the electricity will not be a result of nuclear power. The political and economical structure for building nuclear power plants and keeping their waste safe for hundreds of thousand of years can only be done by highly centralized (state) capitalist societies that are able to impose such technologies upon their subjects. Aka the absolute opposite of everything libertarian communists are fighting for. Nuclear power will die with the old society same as every orther anti-human technological structure. It will be replaced with technologies that reflect the decentralized structures libertarian communist are fighting for. There is neither place for nuclear power nor for concentration camps in libertarian communism.

[quote=robot]jacobian

(...) As for those who think we will not need nearly as much electricity in a rational self-determined economy, I think that's complete rubbish. We should at least double our electricity use for transport via train tram and electric car if we want to get off of oil.

What are you talking about? Have you ever read a materialist analysis on large-scale industries and their relation to the capitalist mode of production? Even if a rational self-determined economy would double the electricity use (which I do think it will), the electricity will not be a result of nuclear power. The political and economical structure for building nuclear power plants and keeping their waste safe for hundreds of thousand of years can only be done by highly centralized (state) capitalist societies that are able to impose such technologies upon their subjects. Aka the absolute opposite of everything libertarian communists are fighting for. Nuclear power will die with the old society same as every orther anti-human technological structure. It will be replaced with technologies that reflect the decentralized structures libertarian communist are fighting for. There is neither place for nuclear power nor for concentration camps in libertarian communism.

good point ... in my opinion, what e.g. Panzieri or Tronti said about capitalist technology and science also aplies for nuclear energy technology

The political and economical structure for building nuclear power plants and keeping their waste safe for hundreds of thousand of years can only be done by highly centralized (state) capitalist societies that are able to impose such technologies upon their subjects.

This is based on two misconceptions. One is that nuclear necessarily produces waste that lasts for thousands of years*. The waste products in a near 100% burnup situation would be short lived, essentially 300 years is enough time for containment. These would be things like Strontium-90 - which incidently also make good fuel for RTGs

If we need a centralised state for nuclear power plants then we need it for any plant. I see absolutely no reason that this should be the case.

I also don't really understand the fetish for the decentralising of power generation as it reduces efficiency and we need to be able to coordinate big grids anyhow (especially for those who want solar/wind as a big component), but if you want it, you can make nukes go down to as low as .05 MW

* I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here as if half-lives are in the hundreds of thousands of years, then the stuff is such a low radiological hazard that we can safely dump it in the ocean or put it back in the mine as it is less dangerous than the ore that was removed.

Robot

What are you talking about? Have you ever read a materialist analysis on large-scale industries and their relation to the capitalist mode of production?

Also, I think this is deeply confused. I thought the whole deal with post-taylorism was to make the working class more manageable. I certainly seem to see a decay in working class cooperation as factories get smaller more decentralised and more specialist in nature. Perhaps you have everything upside down?

Working class has historically had its big power in bottle-necks and hubs. Factories, dock workers, trains, trams etc. I think the decentralisation fetish reinforces the capitalist's individualisation and divide and conquer strategy.

Samotnaf

Just in case nobody's seen this:

radiation levels at Fukushima 3 are now 400 times legal levels.

According to this BBC piece, 100 mSv a year causes cancer. The levels at one reactor are now 400 mSv an hour. Which unless there's something special about millisieverts would seem to be equivalent to about 3.5 million mSv/year. That said those levels are apparently highly localised at present. I do wonder where they're pumping all the irradiated seawater/steam that's being used to cool the reactors though (maybe they're trying to contain it all, hence the hydrogen build ups and explosions).

jacobian

If we need a centralised state for nuclear power plants then we need it for any plant. I see absolutely no reason that this should be the case.

Rubbish! Even an academic egg head with all thumbs is able to assemble a wind generator or a a biogas reactor for instance.

jacobian

I also don't really understand the fetish for the decentralising of power generation as it reduces efficiency and we need to be able to coordinate big grids anyhow (especially for those who want solar/wind as a big component), but if you want it, you can make nukes go down to as low as .05 MW

Some thirty years ago when the nuclear-political complex here in Germany introduced their plans to build 150 nuclear power plants, there was a slander song that was like “we will build a nuclear power plant in everybodies garden”. Did those guys know you? Or is it just that there is sorta bullshit that never dies? Effiency the way you obviously define it, as well is little more than a relict of the capitalist mode of production.

Just like Entdinglichung wrote – go and read Tronti or Panzieri or the other operaists that delt with the question of technology, science and command. And forget about your wet and silly nuclear dreams. Or go and get some trainee as a "liquidator" at Fukushima. I guess they will need a couple of thousands there. The japanese government will - other than their soviet counterparts 25 years ago - no be able to send a couple of hundreds of thousand of Russian miners and conscripts into the compound to build a shield of whom many thousands died. So they will need any help from pro-nuke fans as they can get.

Robot

Rubbish! Even an academic egg head with all thumbs is able to assemble a wind generator or a a biogas reactor for instance.

I could assemble an aqueous homogeneous reactor. So what does that prove? It might not be that efficient or safe, but yours probably wouldn't be either.

We shouldn't be forced into ultra-individualism by the fact that egalitarian social relations are so difficult to find in capitalism. Hopefully we'll be able to help each other out and cooperate on big projects. If we can't cooperate on a large scale, it seems unlikely that we'd manage to get rid of capitalism in the first place.

Robot

Effiency the way you obviously define it, as well is little more than a relict of the capitalist mode of production.

This is really grasping at straws. Efficiency in terms of energy production means less time mining thorium or uranium or gas or oil for the same output of power. That means we have more leisure, less waste and more power.

Robot

Just like Entdinglichung wrote – go and read Tronti or Panzieri or the other operaists that delt with the question of technology, science and command.

What do you have to say regards the need to have extremely large grids for solar/wind - or at least massive hydro-batteries which are large scale public works projects themselves.

Or the fact that class power and hubs/centralisation are often related historically and have deteriorated as we've been more decentralised within capitalist social relations?

Seems like you could at least regurgitate what Tronti and Panzieri have to say for my edification if you can't think of anything on your own.

Joseph Kay

I do wonder where they're pumping all the irradiated seawater/steam that's being used to cool the reactors though (maybe they're trying to contain it all, hence the hydrogen build ups and explosions).

Unfortunately it's probably being evacuated as steam and/or pumped back out to sea.

The hydrogen buildups were occurring primarily because of metal oxidation by steam in the core and the evacuations were done intentionally to avoid too much pressure. These of course were causing explosions as hydrogen can recombine with oxygen explosively. So they definitely don't want to try and keep it all in. If the primary containment explodes, we would be well and truly fucked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety#Ignition

robot (referring to jacobian)

Some thirty years ago when the nuclear-political complex here in Germany introduced their plans to build 150 nuclear power plants, there was a slander song that was like “we will build a nuclear power plant in everybodies garden”. Did those guys know you? Or is it just that there is sorta bullshit that never dies?

jacobin-type bullshit has a half-life of only 120 years, so it should die fairly soon. But jacobianism is another form of, clearly not environmentally-friendly, methane-producing energy and , as yet, untested. Let's hope it doesn't last so long. However, not everything jacobian has said is total bullshit:

As for those who think we will not need nearly as much electricity in a rational human-centric economy, I think that's complete rubbish. We should at least double our electricity use for transport via train tram and electric car if we want to get off of oil.

I was thinking of consumption outside of transport - but clearly you're right about transport, though such electricity would probably not involve having a little nuclear power station under the bonnet - which is why I didn't think of transport when I said that electricity consumption would be reduced in a rational society.

Though I'm totally opposed to nuke power (and though nuclear fusion is billed as clean and safe, the evidence doesn't prove it; in fact, I've just started reading something in French that says it definitely isn't clean and safe), I think it's essential in any rational society to have some centralised world energy co-ordination (and only some miserable global Green capitalism, very unlikely, and probably just a utopian capitalist fantasy, could conceivably provide this this side of a victorious global revolution). To leap from that desire to the implication (though, to be fair, jacobian's posts don't make that clear) that only nuke power can provide centralisation isn't at all logical.

jacobian

If the primary containment explodes, we would be well and truly fucked.

Looks as if we are into being truly fucked now. At least if a report of a mayor German news agency proves to be correct. They reported a couple of hours ago that the lower part of Fukushima I / reactor 2 primary container broke during the explosion earlier today and that the radiation in the control room is as high now, that TELPCO will order the staff to leave. It had already been reduced from 800 to 50 earlier tonight. According to another news agency french scientists from French ASN nuclear safety institute qualified the actual situation as being "higher than 6" on the 7 level INES scale. Tchernobyl was level 7.

Samotnaf

jacobin-type bullshit has a half-life of only 120 years, so it should die fairly soon. But jacobianism is another form of, clearly not environmentally-friendly, methane-producing energy and , as yet, untested. Let's hope it doesn't last so long. However, not everything jacobian has said is total bullshit:

Pretty low standard of argument evidenced here. Can you do better?

Samotnaf

I was thinking of consumption outside of transport - but clearly you're right about transport, though such electricity would probably not involve having a little nuclear power station under the bonnet - which is why I didn't think of transport when I said that electricity consumption would be reduced in a rational society.

Jesus, I should hope we aren't putting reactor cores of any type in transport. Nuclear powered steam train anyone?

They reported a couple of hours ago that the lower part of Fukushima I / reactor 2 primary container broke during the explosion earlier today and that the radiation in the control room is as high now, that TELPCO will order the staff to leave.

My understanding was that this is the torus responsible for condensing steam in emergency situations. That's not the same thing as the primary containment system exploding.

[quote=jacobian]

My understanding was that this is the torus responsible for condensing steam in emergency situations. That's not the same thing as the primary containment system exploding.

This was true with reactor 1 and reactor 3 were they apperenty blew off the outer armoured concrete containment whereas the steely primary containment kept intact. But we are told, that this isn't true for reactor 2 where they primary container is said to leak now. There is as well a big problem with reactor 4, were nuclear material in the special pit for wasted fuel rod started burning while the water in the pit was “boiling”. The fire apparently was cleared by US military, but there was larger scale radioactive exposure. German media are reporting that one of the six reactors in Fukushima I is not only containing uranium fuel rods but plutonium rods as well. To the best of my remembrance it was 1 in a million of a gram possibly causing lung cancer and 1 in a thousand of a gram being the lethal dosis.

I also don't really understand the fetish for the decentralising of power generation as it reduces efficiency

Actually it increases it, at least in the long term. While initial building costs are higher, wasteage from long distance energy transport along power lines for example - amounting to something like 7% of all power generated - is drastically reduced.

There's a research summary piece from Greenpeace which is reasonably good at explaining this, pointing out that taking in all considerations something like 65% of original input energy is wasted in UK power stations. It predicts that by reducing transmission and distribution costs savings of around 20% could be found.

Far from being the best method, centralised power is archaic even by capitalist standards, the only reason for keeping it is to retain centralise control structures - ie. the enabling of the existing bourgeoisie to keep its monopoly practice.

A leaflet to gather people tomorrow for a demo against the French company Areva in Lyon in French (too flu/cold-ridden to concentrate on translating it, but if anyone else has the time or inclination...it's a pretty basic text, a bit too basic for my liking, but ...):

Catastrophes nucléaires : ça n’arrive qu’aux autres, jusqu’à quand ?!
Après qu’un séisme ait secoué le Japon, plusieurs réacteurs nucléaires mis en arrêt d’urgence n’ont pas pu être refroidis suffisamment, suite à des défaillances des circuits de refroidissement. Il en a résulté (à ce que l’on sait à l’heure où l’on écrit), à la centrale de Fukushima, une fusion partielle du cœur des réacteur n° 1, n° 2 et n° 3, suite aux grandes difficultés rencontrées pour les refroidir. Cela a entraîné l’explosion des bâtiments des réacteurs n° 1 (le 12 mars) et n° 3 (le 14 mars), et le rejet dans l’atmosphère d’une grande quantité de radioactivité, tandis qu’au niveau de la centrale elle-même, le niveau de radiation est très élevé. D’autres centrales du pays semblent connaître des problèmes également.
Des dégâts déjà importants
Certes, ce n’est pas Tchernobyl, mais cette catastrophe - car c’en est bien une ! - montre bien les dangers énormes que l’industrie nucléaire fait peser sur nos têtes, au Japon comme en France. D’ores et déjà, la région autour de la centrale est contaminée par des radio-éléments et le restera pour de nombreuses années. Des spécialistes anglais de l’industrie nucléaire confirment ce qui est déjà une évidence : l’augmentation du nombre de cancers dans la région pour les années à venir. Par ailleurs, des riverains ont reçu des retombées radioactives, sans parler des travailleurs de la centrale qui sont littéralement sacrifiés pour éviter à tout prix l’accident majeur. Et plus grave encore sur le long terme :  les réacteurs sont refroidis avec de l’eau pompée directement dans la mer, et rejetée de suite dans celle-ci, emportant plein de radio-éléments avec elle qui finiront dans le ventre des poissons...
Et en France, tout va bien ?
Sans surprise, nos nucléocrates minimisent la situation et nous assurent que chez nous, c’est différent. Mais voilà, les réacteurs japonais sont très similaires aux nôtres et peuvent présenter le même type de problème. En France également de nombreux réacteurs sont construits en zone sismique (Fessenheim, par exemple) et pourraient très bien connaître une panne de circuit de refroidissement après un petit tremblement de terre. EDF a dû reconnaître que ses centrales n’étaient pas aux normes sismiques, donc une situation semblable est possible ici.
Et quand la terre ne tremble pas ?
A Three Miles Island (USA) en 1979, comme à Forsmarck (Suède) en 2006, le système de refroidissement à l’arrêt - encore lui ! - a refusé de fonctionner, ainsi que les générateurs diesels de secours à Forsmarck. Il en a résulté une augmentation dangereuse de la température du cœur, ce qui, à Three Miles Island, a généré une bulle d’hydrogène comme à Fukushima, mais qui n’a heureusement pas explosé. A Forsmark, les générateurs ont été remis en marche à temps, à 7 minutes de la catastrophe...
Mais en France, on a des enceintes de confinement « béton »
L’étanchéité de ces enceintes de confinement n’est jamais parfaite. De toute façon, si la température est trop élevée il y a de la vapeur - radioactive - qui se forme et, s’il y en a trop, il faut bien la relâcher dans l’atmosphère ; c’est ce qu’ils font au Japon d’ailleurs. Si, par chance, la vapeur reste dans l’enceinte, les radio-éléments se déposent et, au prochain grand nettoyage, ils partiront directement dans les fleuves ou dans la mer… Quel soulagement, de courte durée !
Pour nous, il est clair que l’accident, pour le moment et si ça n’empire pas, est déjà le troisième plus grave de l’histoire avec Windscale (1), après Kytchim (2) et Tchernobyl.
N’attendons pas que la prochaine catastrophe ait lieu ! Arrêtons le nucléaire maintenant ! (et en France elle est très possible, la catastrophe : par exemple la cuve du réacteur n°1 de la centrale du Tricastin est gravement fissurée, bien qu’il ait reçu l’autorisation de fonctionner encore dix ans de plus !).
Industrie nucléaire, industrie mortifère !
On peut vivre sans l’énergie atomique, source de catastrophes abominables !
Sortons immédiatement du nucléaire, demain il sera peut-être trop tard !
Rassemblons-nous mercredi soir à 18 h devant Areva au square Jérome-Bérerd
(au croisement des rues Lafayette et Récamier dans le 6e, vers Part-Dieu)
Pour dire notre opposition à l’industrie nucléaire sous toutes ses formes !
[email protected]
(1) Vous n’en avez jamais entendu parler ? C’est normal ! Fidèle à la description faite dans le roman « 1984 », le gouvernement britannique a soigneusement dissimulé la chose et a même changé le nom de la ville où c’est arrivé, qui s’appelle maintenant Sellafield. De même, il n’a jamais dit quels radio-éléments s’étaient échappés, alors que cela aurait pu aider à soigner les populations locales... A la centrale de Windscale, le réacteur s’est enflammé et a brûlé, à petit feu, pendant plusieurs heures rejetant une fumée radioactive dans la région.
(2) Jamais entendu parler non plus ? C’est pas étonnant. L’accident a été occulté par l’URSS, avec l’appui de l’AIEA (Agence internationale de l’énergie atomique) et le soutien des Etats occidentaux qui ne voulaient pas faire d’ombre à l’industrie nucléaire en plein développement... A cet endroit une décharge de déchets nucléaires a pris feu emportant une grande quantité de radio-éléments qui sont retombés dans toute la région. Considéré comme la deuxième plus grande catastrophe nucléaire après Tchernobyl.

jacobian:

Pretty low standard of argument evidenced here.

You flatter me - there was NO standard of argument - I was just pissing about, entertaining myself to distract me from my flu.

Jesus, I should hope we aren't putting reactor cores of any type in transport.

Not sure if you took me seriously or not - I was being ever so slightly sarcastic.

jacobian

Jesus, I should hope we aren't putting reactor cores of any type in transport. Nuclear powered steam train anyone?

How can you not when they look this good.

Global financial markets knock-on (bear with me...)

PA: Nuclear fears see stocks plunge

(UKPA) – 49 minutes ago

Stocks plunged on both sides of the Atlantic as the growing nuclear crisis in tsunami-hit Japan sparked a global shares sell-off.

Fears over dangerous levels of radiation leaking from a crippled nuclear plant in Japan sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumping nearly 300 points after trading opened on Wall Street.

The Dow Jones later pulled back to stand 230 points, or 1.8%, lower, helping the FTSE 100 Index ease to a 1.7% decline.

The Footsie had dropped as much as 3% in early trading after panic selling sent the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo tumbling 14% before eventually finishing the session down 10.6%.

Japan's leading stock market has now suffered the worst two-day fall since the 1987 stock market crash.

European indices were among the hardest hit elsewhere amid worries that Japan's earthquake and tsunami may impact the supply chains of global car and technology manufacturers.

The Dax in Germany plummeted 4% and France's Cac 40 was 3% down as investors dumped shares in companies that rely on Japanese suppliers for parts.
[...]

OK, so far as expected. However the next corollorary may perhaps be less obvious:

FT: Yen rises as crisis sparks position liquidation

The yen surged higher on Tuesday as the growing nuclear crisis in Japan prompted traders to liquidate positions across currency markets.
[...]
The yen, which in addition to its traditional attraction as a haven has been supported by expectations of capital repatriation to deal with the crisis, rose 0.4 per cent to Y81.36 against the dollar. This took it within striking distance of the record high of Y79.70 it hit against the dollar in April 1995.
[...]

This may be counter-intuitive for those of us used to seeing the effects of a disaster striking a country leading to the value of it's currency go down, rather than up.

In fact there are two factors at play here (other than the safe haven one). One is the action of Japanese corporate investors to liquidate foreign positions and repatriate fund to cover rebuilding costs at home, as alluded to above. The other is the carry trade - as Japan has had stagnation and low interest rates for the last two decades, global investors, of whatever nationality, have found it convenient to borrow funds in Yen to invest abroad in higher-return areas of the globe, whether that investment is in foreign financial instruments, shares, property assets, or simply taking a position in another currency. Unwinding these "carry trades" when global risk goes up, tends to push the Yen up when the proverbial hits the fan.

Yet the overall picture remains - there are two sorts of countries in the world: those whose currencies goes down when they suffer a disaster, and a smaller number who go the other way. A century or so ago Lenin declared that the characteristic of an imperialist country was the export of capital. A gross oversimplification, no doubt, but the direction of international capital flows when crisis hits, still tells us things about how the capitalist world runs.

Rob Ray

Actually it increases it, at least in the long term. While initial building costs are higher, wasteage from long distance energy transport along power lines for example - amounting to something like 7% of all power generated - is drastically reduced.

I don't care if we decentralise everything. I'm perfectly ok with that . But we should at least be working with the real options if we're going to decide. The important thing is less whether it's decentralised than whether it is fit to purpose.

I'm very dubious of this bit about 7% of all power generated. HVDC has losses of 3% per 1000km. In addition, large loses on the lines can be made up for by other benefits, like fluctuations leading to over-capacity due to solar, wind etc. can be balanced if we have massively large scale power distribution.

Thermal efficiencies are also a big deal, which means we want to operate at high temperatures. If you can, for instance, it's nice to be able to run a Brayton cycle. However, as temperatures increase, you're going to want it further from your house. Which means we should probably build fewer and pipe the power in. The efficiency difference from high temperature Brayton can easily swamp transmission efficiencies in many realistic cases. However, it really depends on the case.

I'm really curious what you think the UK should be powered on. Supposing we trust Greenpeace (which I don't) and we get a 20% reduction, what will we use to generate the remaining 80%?

Far from being the best method, centralised power is archaic even by capitalist standards, the only reason for keeping it is to retain centralise control structures - ie. the enabling of the existing bourgeoisie to keep its monopoly practice.

As I've said before (and I believe nobody has provided counter-argument), it seems to me that this doesn't really sit well with the historical data. Buses were pushed over trains/trams because they are decentralised and decrease the capacity of unions to exert control - improve the ability to scab. Longshoreman were automated away in order to break the workers power over the bottlenecks in shipping transport. Big factories tended to lead to big strikes. I think the same will be true with decentralised power production.

However, what leads to our best hand in the class conflict is really a different question than what would make the most sense after words. I think there is a fair bit of conflation of these two issues.

its possible to increase the efficiency of power transmission considerably by using high voltage direct current, rather than alternating current. this is a relatively recent possibility because the technology to convert between different voltages of dc is relatively new, it didn't exist when the current electricity grids where built.
it should be noted that distributed power generation would most likely work best if it were possible to share that power over large areas, so long range power transmission would still be needed.

the "65% of original input energy is wasted in UK power stations" doesn't necessary mean all that much since the efficacy of power stations is generally between 40-60% and this is something that depends largely on the temperature that the fuel burns at, although it is possible to use more of the energy if the wast heat is used to for heating.

Nuclear bulletin #6

15 March 2011, 1:25 AM---Japan's nuclear crisis is intensifying not allaying, despite remote rhetoric from panicked US industrialists premised on pure denial. The third unit at Fukushima experienced an explosion early Monday morning, with suggestions that this one represented a disabling of cooling capabilities.

As I first anticipated, it is now confirmed that monitoring systems are not functioning, so there is no direct data on what is happening inside any of the three reactors. Nonetheless there is now a stated assumption that meltdowns are proceeding in all three cores and unspecified indirect evidence has been alluded to. Presumably that means monitoring of the radioisotope mixture entering the air and sea water, revealing elements from melted fuel cladding. Whether this becomes a "full" meltdown is now a matter of definition as to whether "full" means 70, 80 or 90%.

Japan has asked the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for assistance, which is like a drug addict going to his dealer for rehabilitation. The New York Times and BBC have more at New Blast Reported at Nuclear Plant as Japan Struggles to Cool Reactor - NYTimes.com and BBC News - Japan earthquake: Meltdown alert at Fukushima reactor.

A US aircraft carrier has left the area at sea after detecting radiation. So much for the line that this is no worse than Three Mile Island. This is orders of magnitude worse. Many workers and residents will die, though they won't be distinguishable from the general cancer toll in most cases.

The general line in the United States coming direct from the industry is still that the danger is "overreaction". It's as if we've become a country of PR consultants and insipid risk analysts who can't tell a calamity from a clam bake, and have lost the capacity to tell the simple truth. Nonetheless, the silence from many of the main American culprits says they know the score. The title of this Wall Street analysis article tells the story:
Japan’s Disaster Kills Nuclear Ambitions, Boost for Nat-Gas (BHP, RIO, CCJ, DNN, UEC, USU, URRE, URG, URZ, URA, GE, SHAW, XOM,)

There is more vocal honesty in Europe. The German government is retreating full march from nuclear in order to stay in power: The World From Berlin: Nuclear Disaster 'Will Have Political Impact as Great as 9/11' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

On the health front, correspondence with Japanese friends leads me to revise my advice as pertaining to those in or very close to Japan. I am told that bottled water, iodized salt, mineral supplements, and potassium iodide cannot now be gotten in Japan. Tap water appears to be the only water available. Thankfully the Japanese do not eat much dairy.

Here are my health-physics suggestions for those in the area:

1. Store as much tap water as you can now and keep it shelved. Shelf-life allows short-lived radionuclides to decay away. Boil tap water before consumption to guard against biological contamination.

2. Seaweed is a good source of minerals including iodine. Make sure the seaweed was not harvested since last Friday. Do whatever you can to stop the harvesting of fresh seaweed -- this is high priority.

3. Fish caught since the earthquake is also highly suspect and should be avoided if at all possible. As goes for all foods, better to dry it and store for as long as possible than to eat fresh. Fresh fish/sushi should not be eaten.

4. Seaweed, bananas, plantain, sweet potatoes are good sources of potassium.

5. If you must eat or drink foods with possible contamination, eat other high-nutrition foods first and wait about twenty minutes. This gives your body selective access to the clean elements, so the contamination will be less likely absorbed.

6. As before, keep windows closed, wash all dishes and utensils exposed to open air, vacuum floors frequently, avoid contact with vegetation and outdoor surfaces, wear gloves and filter masks when outdoors for extended periods. Avoid breathing surface dust -- wear a mask when vacuuming.

7. Use evaporated milk or formula in place of breast milk, especially if the mother's food sources are suspect.

8. Sea salt is as good as iodized salt.

--Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #7

16 March 2011---Well, judging from the day's news, the argument that nuclear power is just too complicated a technology for mortals to master has gained steam, or lost it, as the case may be. It is extremely annoying that both "sides", at least in the USA, continue to spin the news to suit their predilection, which leaves the general public at a total loss to comprehend events. The "anti-nukers" continue to make unwarranted Chernobyl comparisons as if they have some Chernobyl-only speech impediment. The "pro-nukers" continue to spew PR homilies as if every possible eventuality must prove the triumph of nuclear engineering. If a hundred people die, according to them, it will only show that worst nuclear cases are trivial.

My most fervent dream is that this crisis leads to some final understanding that the polemical partisans in the "nuke" war lie like wildfire. All of them.

So the news from Japan is neither good nor bad, it's simply the news to be understood in its complexity. There is success in bringing the reactor units 1,2, and 3, which had been operating, under control so that there likely will not be an uncontrolled breach of containment as happened at Chernobyl. So probably no massive plumes of Cesium-137, as I originally predicted there would not be. On the other hand, continued common mode failure is causing increasing problems at the other three units which were not in operation.

The big problem now is also one I originally predicted, which is that successful containment actually leaves the reactors with more radioactive material in place, so that worker doses to do the necessary cleanup and containment work are becoming impossibly high. That means many workers may refuse to do the work or simply leave, and the brave ones will die. I anticipate we will soon start seeing the acute radiation sickness cases among workers, and that will be an extraordinary drama reminiscent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though on a smaller scale. One estimate is that for some necessary core containment work, a lethal dose will accrue in 16 seconds. I do not volunteer.

And then the question of where to dump the stuff. Japan does not have a desert or Indian reservations. It has quietly dumped much rad-waste at sea. There will be no quiet disposal in this case.

For those curious about the "high radiation levels" variably reported in Tokyo and elsewhere - those levels were caused by transient gas emissions of light gasses like Krypton and Xenon that dissipate rapidly. We have not seen big releases of heavy isotopes like Cesium and Iodine, and we likely will not. Principally light gasses are venting, as is part of the design. The transient high levels reported are not cause for any big concern except in the immediate locale. No special health measures are required in Tokyo, except avoidance of fish and fresh seaweed until ocean releases stop.

So to summarize: No massive plumes of radionuclides as at Chernobyl, as things now stand. But big big problems at the site and in both near and long-term cleanup. No one has ever had to deal with six reactor cores partially melted down all at once. The cost will be unimaginable.

Meanwhile, USEC stock took a second big plunge today, losing another 5%, but the real story there is volume, which was four times the daily average. That signals large-scale stock dumping. It was revealed that Japanese fuel alone accounts for 10-20% of USEC's business, which was operating at a substantial loss already. [USEC shares fall a second day on nuclear crisis | Washington Business Journal]

It's a cascade effect because that means USEC cannot qualify for a loan guarantee, which it needed to build. And if it can't build, then it means that for the first time, the United States will have no domestically owned uranium enrichment plant. That effectively takes the US out of the nuclear business as far as controlling the fuel cycle. USEC was once owned by the US government and may now need to be renationalized.

One reason the pro versus anti-nuke debate is now irrelevant, or counterproductive, is that nuclear will be priced out of the market, definitively. Nobody can afford the kind of costs involved. Therefore the industry will proceed to die everyplace with the possible exception of China. Amory Lovins has said this would happen for the past three decades. It's now a practical matter of dealing with the residuals so that this industry can go away, and in that, polemics and hyperbole will not be helpful.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #8

16 March 2011---As the situation at Fukushima clarifies, the peripheral rhetoric about that situation gets more muddled.

The essence of what is happening is that successful containment in the first four days of the crisis caused an extreme concentration of radioactivity and resultant heat and fire at the facility, at once revealing the extraordinary unwisdom (a technical term for imbecility) of putting six nuclear reactors plus spent fuel storage pools at a single site.

The argument against centralization of technology is one word: Fukushima. When you put things all together at one place - yes, the easiest away to circumvent local siting opposition - you make that location extraordinarily vulnerable to Common Mode Failure, whether it be earthquakes, meteor strikes, sabotage, or terrorist attack.

So Fukishima is now a spiralling fire pit of heat and radiation where work has become impossible because human beings cannot get close enough. This is the price of successful containment.

The boast of western nucleocrats since Chernobyl has been that those silly Soviets did not put their reactors inside thick containment capsules made of high-temperature steel. That allowed the Chernobyl fire to easily break through to the atmosphere, causing the long-distance dispersion of Cesium-137. What dummies, those Leninists.

What we now learn is that the remarkable steel containers manufactured by Hyundai et al. make excellent pressure cookers with no built-in release valve. So instead of wide dispersion in the atmosphere, we get a nuclear cauldron. And those brilliant do-no-wrong-Japanese geniuses put six of them all right next to each other.

Science project (Do NOT try this at home): Take six pressure cookers. With concrete fasten the release cocks in place so they cannot function or be removed. Fill all with water and place them all in contact on a six-burner stove set to high. Place all available pressurized fire extinguishers and smoke detectors within inches of the stove. Leave unattended for a few hours. Note result.

As of early Wednesday in Japan, a helicopter water-drop had to turn away because of high radiation. One containment vessel is reported breached but perhaps not seriously. The spent fuel storage pools are reported drying out, meaning the spent fuel, considered waste (and stored there because Japan has no disposal option) is heating up. Spent fuel has much more plutonium and fission products in it than the fresh fuel in the reactors that were operating. More details at: Setback in Japan's Reactor Fight - WSJ.com.

Among other consequences of this, on-site spent fuel storage will no longer be considered a viable option. On-site storage is now the option employed in the USA, since there is no approved disposal site.

At risk of repetition: the drama now will revolve around the site itself, how work can be done there and whether workers will abandon the scene or be ordered out. Then the question of what to do with Fukushima, assuming a cool-down is somehow obtained. Right now I would forecast that the entire site will be entombed in a big block of concrete for lack of any other option.

Symbolic landscape artists, get to work. Employment opportunities will abound. I think this is also very good news for whoever holds the trademark rights to Godzilla.

--Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #9

I have not seen this mentioned, but "fuku" in Japanese means luck or good fortune. "Shima" means island, so Fukushima means 'lucky island'. The mavens of ancient prophecy will be confounded by that one.

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article out today on corruption behind the calamity at Reports: Lax oversight, 'greed' preceded Japan nuclear crisis - CSMonitor.com. Among the revelations are that TEPCO was previously found to be falsifying safety data, and cut corners on spacing of spent fuel in order to cut costs.

The New York Times has begun coverage of the worker drama at Workers at Fukushima Plant Brave Radiation and Fire - NYTimes.com. They report "an increasing proportion of soldiers" assigned to work at the plant. That hints at the most interesting question, which is how many workers have either abandoned the plant or failed to report for shifts. The number has to be large and obviously TEPCO wants to suppress that information, but ultimately it will be known and will counterbalance the reflexive "hero" stories.

Wall Street has declared the "Nuclear Renaissance" over. I always thought "Renaissance" was an odd choice of terms since the actual Renaissance was a period of throwback, brutality, inquisition and torture. Enlightenment was the thing to shoot for, but alas, the nuclear industry never approached it.

The investment community - as distinct from the industry - appears to be signaling to the government that enough is enough. Whether that message is sinking in is unclear. The US Surgeon General has proclaimed that buying iodine pills would be a good idea for most people, but the Administration has yet to signal that it has a clue.

Perhaps and hopefully the inner wheels are moving. It would make a lot of sense to cancel the loan guarantee program, since that is also a budget drain and the Republicans could be called on their budget consciousness. Continuing such a loan program when the stars, the Tarot cards, and all the fish in the sea are shouting stop would be sheer madness. And it's unclear whether the base of the Democratic Party would stand for it. But in recent days Obama has been golfing and gearing up his re-election campaign - using nuclear loans as a platform. Yet more evidence that Earth was secretly switched with Planet Bizarro.

The reason for slowness, I surmise, is that once the Administration pulls back, the last nail is in the industry's coffin. Nuclear futures were marginal and iffy before Fukushima. This is an industry unusually dependent on both government subsidy and economies of scale. Specifically, the industry needed the government to: (a) refrain from imposing any more safety-related costs, (b) speed up licensing and loan processing, (c) give official projections of wild nuclear expansion in order to dupe investors, and (d) maintain low limits on private liability.

But now the only possible response to the disaster in Japan is to say that safety costs will increase, licensing will be more intensely reviewed, liability limits will be raised, and growth projections will be radically cut. That's not even factoring in the closure of operating plants that are unsafe.

In that environment, the nuclear industry as constituted cannot function, much less survive long-term. Profit margins are too low and speculative, costs and risks too high. If costs cannot be spread over dozens of new plants in the pipeline then the unit costs skyrocket and no new plants can be built. That applies to both reactors and fuel facilities. So the economics scream shutdown. Nuclear power cannot be done small.

Somebody someplace in the US government must realize this. But then, some of these same people thought that privatizing Conrail was a good idea.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #10

16 March 2011---The United Nations IAEA, multiple award-winner for its superlative cover-up of Chernobyl health effects, will hold a special session on the Japan nuclear crisis [UN Calls Emergency Meeting as Japan Nuclear Crisis Deepens - Bloomberg].

I've seen the first quantification there of the drop in water levels in the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) pools - 2 meters or more than 6 feet. The SNF vulnerability does change the nature of the crisis since it is not contained within any whizz-zinger pressurized vessel, to borrow a term from Dr. Seuss, as seems appropriate.

I happen to know a thing or two about SNF because, in 2006, as a result of Harry Reid's intransigence on opening Yucca Mountain in Nevada for disposal, some whizz-bang prodigies with MIT degrees in ethnomusicology, or something, had the bright idea to move all the nation's or the world's SNF to one central location at Piketon, Ohio. Again, that would be in my back yard, literally. I take some personal credit in stopping those hijinks. I would call the plot hare-brained but that might offend Algonquian Indians who consider the hare a culture hero.

So imagine now, if you will, that they had succeeded in creating an enormous single repository for spent nuclear fuel in the middle of southern Ohio. They even talked about how easy and assuredly safe it would be.

And if you think I have been parochial in focusing on USEC, our local friendly local nuclear company, as a bellwether of the industry, USEC today was named as the second most "bearish" stock for investors - Wednesday's Most Bullish & Most Bearish: RAS, THQI, USU, TSTC, PNC, LMLP : Stocks In Focus : Small Cap Stocks and Penny Stocks. Some choice language there:

"USEC...has believable numbers. The problem is, they stink. It's trading at 87 times trailing earnings, and at 25 times 2011's forecasted income. It's got the added problem of probably being in the most hated industry in the world right now...uranium."

If you want to know how a company manages to attract investors while all of its fundamentals tank, you need to read more conspiracy theory. That is, this would be an excellent time for investigation into the financial dealings of companies like USEC.

Let us also reflect with nostalgia on the Dr. Science puff piece on Japan that appeared last Saturday. (And thanks to Ignacio for following up.) There is a whizz-zinger story behind the story in Japan, and it's all about how the companies in this industry manipulated governments into licensing massive fraud.

-- Geoffrey Sea

There is success in bringing the reactor units 1,2, and 3, which had been operating, under control so that there likely will not be an uncontrolled breach of containment as happened at Chernobyl.

Sure about this? Not last night's news, anyway (nor this morning's from what I've heard).

The "anti-nukers" continue to make unwarranted Chernobyl comparisons as if they have some Chernobyl-only speech impediment.

Seems to me that it's not just the traditional reflexes of the liberal section of anti-nuclears that compares with Chernobyl - on French TV (usually pro-nuke) several experts, including a politician or 2 not noted for their Green credentials, have been saying that the crisis could fairly easily become another Chernobyl. And it's far from over as far as I can see. Seems like an unwarranted sneer at the "anti-nukers".

baboon

Just on the use of seawater to try to maintain the vital cooling system around the rods: seawater doesn't seem to be good for the system as someone says above but what's even worse is that this method delivers the highly radioactive seawater straight back into the sea as happened on a regular basis in the UK and in France I think.

This isn't circulating sea water around the plant and back out to sea again, there's no functional pump system to do that. It's literally been collecting sea water via temporary pumps or helicopters and spraying it into the plant. It's a desperate measure, but given the plant is metres form the sea anyway, a bit of the water leaking back out again is the least of the potential issues with that. It will render the plant permanently unusable, but that's not exactly a bad thing anyway.

(and I'm a bit late coming to this thread, but yeah I'm fine where we are, close enough that it's been very unnerving but far enough away that we're not directly impacted by any of it and unlikely to be).

And on where the seawater goes, it's mostly boiling, so going into the air as steam, which from what I've read apart from the exposed fuel rods and fires has been the primary source of radiation around the plant.

Entdinglichung

Nothing can be read on here, mate.

Professor Andrew Sherry explains the situation as helicopters spray water to cool nuclear reactors

Continue reading the main story

Japan Earthquake

Japan says it is stepping up efforts to cool overheating fuel at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Helicopters dumped tonnes of sea water to try to prevent fuel rods melting, and media reports said water cannon had now joined in the operation on the ground.

Following the crisis, China suspended approval for new nuclear plants.

The confirmed death toll from Friday's 9.0 magnitude quake, which triggered the tsunami, has risen above 5,000.

Police say more than 5,400 people are confirmed dead and about 9,500 more are still missing.

'Deep condolences'

Japan's military CH-47 Chinook helicopters began spraying tonnes of sea water on reactors 3 and 4 at Fukushima, 220km (140 miles) from Tokyo, at 0948 local time (0048 GMT), officials said.

The attempt to use helicopters and water cannon to dump seawater on to the Fukushima power station is almost certainly unprecedented in more than half a century of nuclear power.

The water was not destined for the reactors themselves - they are contained within containment systems that are designed to be sealed tight and which appear to be intact, with the possible exception of a crack in a vessel attached to No 3 reactor.

The targets were cooling ponds situated above the reactors, which store fuel rods. The ponds in buildings 3 and 4 - and possibly more - are certainly short of water, possibly completely dry.

This means the rods get hot, increasing the chances of radioactive substances being released. It also exposes workers to radiation from the rods.

The positive development is that electric power may be restored to the plant in the coming hours, meaning pumps can be restarted - if they are still operational.

* Surprise 'critical' warning raises fears

The aircraft dumped four loads before leaving the site in order to minimise the crews' exposure to radiation. On Wednesday, the helicopters were forced to abort a similar operation amid concerns over high radiation levels.

The BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the helicopters can carry an enormous amount of water but given the high winds it is difficult to know whether it has been dropped accurately.

Video footage suggests the attempts were not very successful, with most of the water falling outside the target buildings.

Later military lorries on the ground joined in with water cannon, dousing reactor 3, the NHK TV network said.

Initially police crews had tried to spray the reactor but were forced to withdraw because they would have been exposed to high radiation levels. The military vehicles, unlike those of the police, are built to allow personnel to remain inside, NHK reported.

The operation was intended to help cool the reactors and also to replenish water in a storage pond with spent fuel rods.

Officials also said they were hoping that they would restore "as soon as possible" the power supply to the plant, which is needed for the cooling system and back-up generators.

"If the restoration work is completed, we will be able to activate various electric pumps and pour water into reactors and pools for spent nuclear fuel," a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, told the AFP news agency.

The US has also been asked to fly a drone over the site to help assess the situation.

The crisis has prompted China to suspend approval of new nuclear power stations and carry out checks on existing reactors.

China currently gets about 2% of its electricity from nuclear power, but is building more reactors than any other country in the world.

In Tokyo, our correspondent says that despite an air of superficial calm there are signs of unease under the surface.

Cash machines at one bank went down for a couple of hours on Thursday afternoon - prompting speculation that some people may be stocking up on reserves of cash in case the situation deteriorates.

Britain has advised its nationals currently in Tokyo and to the north of the capital to consider leaving the area, and to keep outside an 80km radius of the Fukushima plant, in line with US state department instructions.

France has urged its citizens in Tokyo to leave the country or move south. A French air force jet took 250 French nationals to South Korea, and two Air France planes are due to begin evacuations.

In areas of the north-east badly hit by the tsunami, bitter winter weather has added to the misery of survivors, though more supplies are now reported to be reaching them.

Also, Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted rescuers as saying that the search for victims had expanded over a wider area as access is improved with the clearance of debris.

About 380,000 people are currently still in temporary shelters, many sleeping on the floor of school gymnasiums.

The crisis has also continued to affect the markets - the benchmark Nikkei index fell 3.6% in early Thursday trading in Tokyo, shortly after the yen briefly hit the highest level against the US dollar since World War II.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12768645

That's a total mess. It's quite clear they haven't got a clue what the aftermath will be. Here the pro-nukes use reasons like you can't stop building houses just because some of them fall :roll:

Valeriano Orobón Fernández

Nothing can be read on here, mate.

If you click on "see image" and then you zoom it, yes you can.

jacobian

Robot

Just like Entdinglichung wrote – go and read Tronti or Panzieri or the other operaists that delt with the question of technology, science and command.

[...]
Seems like you could at least regurgitate what Tronti and Panzieri have to say for my edification if you can't think of anything on your own.

Apologies if this appears as a derail, but I wanted to come back on this.

A history of industry cannot be conceived as anything other than a history of the capitalist organisation of productive labour, hence as a working class history of capital. The "industrial revolution" necessarily springs to mind: This must be the starting point of our research if we are to trace the development of the contemporary form of capital's domination over workers, as it increasingly comes to be exercised through the objective mechanisms of industry, and also the development of capital's capacity to prevent these mechanisms being used by workers. This would lead us to see that the development of the relationship between living labour and the constant part of capital is not a neutral process. Rather, it is determined, and often violently so, by the emerging class relationship between the collective worker and the whole of capital, qua social relations of production. We would then see that it is the specific moments of the class struggle which have determined every technological change in the mechanisms of industry. Thus we would achieve two things: one, we would break free of the apparent neutrality of the man-machine relationship; and two, we would locate this relationship in the interaction, through history, of
working class struggles and capitalist initiative. [emphasis added]

Tronti: The Strategy of Refusal

The reference text from Panzieri would be The Capitalist Use of Machinery. Although there are differences of perspective between the two. I would definitely recommend Tronti's Strategy of Refusal, if you're only going to read one operaist text. He can often be hard and dense to get into, but this one is imo the best place to start and is a classic text (particularly if you're familiar with the orthodox Marxist sacred cows which he slays with verve)

On the other hand, I got the distinct feeling that they were being referenced as in some way on the techno-negative side of the fence, which they most certainly were not as this bit from Steve Wright's book makes clear.

The Meaning of Capitalist Development

Despite the postwar cycle of accumulation, many within the Italian
left continued to see the words 'capitalism' and 'development' as
polar opposites. Their view, expressed in the impeccably orthodox
terms of the contradiction between relations and forces of
production, was of an Italy held back by the stagnant forces of local
capital, yet vulnerable to the proclivities of a crisis-ridden interna-
tional economy. If others in the PCI and PSI rejected such an
interpretation, and conceded the reality of Italy's 'miracle', they did
so from a starting point which denied the inextricable connections
between economic growth and the logic of capital, embracing tech-
nological development instead as an autonomous and innately
progressive force. One of the most important marks of Quademi
Rossi's political realism, by contrast, was to be its rejection of this
false dichotomy. 'One could say', Panzieri (1975: 170-1) told a
meeting of editors in August 1961, 'that the two terms capitalism
and development are the same thing.' Now, however, development
meant neither a generiC 'progress' nor 'modernisation', but merely
the extended reproduction of both the capital relation and the class
contradictions which followed in its train. [emphasis added]

Wright: Storming Heaven, Ch 2 Quaderni Rossi and the Workers' Enquiry

or later in the same chapter

Leonardi, Panzieri continued, had overlooked one of the most
important political aspects of modern, continuous flow production.
This was that while in one sense it offered capital 'new possibilities
for the consolidation of its power', it also strengthened the hand of
the 'collective worker' (that is, 'the various "levels" of workers
created by the present organisation of the large factory'). In
particular, the greater rigidity which modern production methods
entailed gave the threat of working-class uncooperativeness
'enormous disruptive potential' (Panzieri 1980: 49, 51, 53). [emphasis added]

So in that sense jacobian's proposition that the post-fordist ("flexible specialistion", call it what you will) move to decentralisation and dispersal is very much part of the "techno-political" (as opposed to the technophobic/technophilic dichotomy) critique that the operaisti were engaging in.

Bringing it back to the history of the development of the nuclear industry, it is very clear that the direction of the technology was completely shaped by the desire to produce weaponisable materials, rather than power. Which is the unspoken admission behind the West's attack on Iran's nuclear programme - i.e. that an ostensibly "civilian" nuclear power programme aimed at producing reactors of the Generation II type, is indistinguishable from a weapons programme. In fact the early nuclear scientists of the 1940s era were explicitly ordered to ignore paths of development like Thorium, Molten Salt or AHR for e.g. as they didn't produce enough weapons grade materials. Similarly for the relative neglect of increasing burnup.

Clearly here the driver is less about class struggle in the immediate process of production and more about military impulses from inter-imperialist rivalries. Still, one of the powerful resonances for capitalists of nuclear power was that it held out the (chimerical) promise of that ultimate capitalist nirvana - power from a source other than labour.

The irony of the Fukushima event (and it is, imo, a world-historical event) is that it grips the attention of the global media far more than the Sendai earthquake and tsunami itself, even though it is (so far) likely to kill far less people than the 15,000 or so which is the current quake/tsunami toll. Still, I for one will not particularly mourn the passing of the LWR programme.

ocelot:

The irony of the Fukushima event (and it is, imo, a world-historical event) is that it grips the attention of the global media far more than the Sendai earthquake and tsunami itself, even though it is (so far) likely to kill far less people than the 15,000 or so which is the current quake/tsunami toll.

If, as still seems possible, Fukushima becomes as big, or at least almost as big, a disaster as Chernobyl, we're going to see a great deal more than the apparently 15,000 death toll from the earthquake/tsunami. A report in France a few months after Chernobyl (no I don't have it, but several French friends at that time spoke of it) predicted a million deaths long-term from radioactive-induced cancer in Europe as a result of the accident. The French Nuclear industry, I think the 2nd most powerful nuclear industry in the world, never refuted this report, but ignored it. And the report was never mentioned again in the mainstream media.

As we all know, cancer takes some time to develop - and when it does, it's very very difficult to definitively fix its origins.

Of course, you said "so far". Which covers just about anything. But your "likely" is a little on the optimistic side. I'd love to believe it true - but...

There are some scary statistically significant increases in birth defects in the period immediately after Chernobyl. There is not however, good evidence of huge numbers of deaths. No well respected epidemiological study has found much more than increased cancer rates in the surrounding region and mostly from Iodine-131, which was regrettably preventable, yet not prevented. I think the 4000 long term death rate number is probably accurate, but that doesn't really account for the horror of having a kid with downs or what not. Based on my limited knowledge, if I were pregnant in Japan, I'd be looking at how to get to China. Otherwise I probably wouldn't worry so much.

The recent Yablokov Chernobyl book claims 900,000 deaths. I haven't read it myself, but I have read an interview with Yablokov and encountered some of the claims. I'm extremely skeptical. The interview with Yablokov demonstrate a disdain for epidemiological statistical method which makes it pretty difficult to take him seriously.

http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.118-a500

Besides this he makes some claims regards plutonium found in the Nile sediment being from Chernobyl - which leads to speculation that cancers in Egypt are caused by Chernobyl. If this sort of loose connectionism is representative of his method of coming up with 900,000 then we can pretty much ignore it. Plutonium does not fly - It's a heavy metal. The idea that this could come from Chernobyl is ludicrous. Plutonium is also a bi-product of natural fission reactions, especially in Uranium rich ore. Rivers are exactly where you might expect to find that sort of thing. By striking coincidence there are known uranium deposits along the Nile.

http://us-cdn.creamermedia.co.za/assets/articles/images/resized/42604_resized_map_od_africa_1.jpg

Possibly worse than this, the book appears to attribute the huge number of deaths since the collapse of the Soviet Union to Chernobyl. It's critical that the excess deaths in the Ukraine be compared to those in the USSR which were not radically impacted. Indeed, looking at the time-sequence of death rate makes it pretty clear that shock-therapy is the real major cause of death.

It's well worth investigating long term health risks and fetal health risks of radiation. I don't think we've really got a handle on whats dangerous and how dangerous it is and what mechanisms are used. That said, we should also be careful not just swallow any old snake oil.

Plutonium does not fly - It's a heavy metal.

But tritium does - it's very lightweight and moves wherever the winds and pressures carry it. Whether there was tritium at Chernobyl isn't clear but there was a leak of tritium at Fukushima over 4 years ago.

Tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides. It's really not particularly bad as health risks go. You're probably better off worrying about the Radon in your gas mains - or water supply.

http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/tritium.html

Caesium-137 and Iodine-131 are going to have the capacity to make some serious distance, and are a more profound health risk.

edit

ocelot

Clearly here the driver is less about class struggle in the immediate process of production and more about military impulses from inter-imperialist rivalries. Still, one of the powerful resonances for capitalists of nuclear power was that it held out the (chimerical) promise of that ultimate capitalist nirvana - power from a source other than labour.

Even the ubiquity of the PWR over the BWR designs (both LWR) has military origins. PWR type reactors are often started when a country has designs for a nuclear navy as PWR type has the potential to be more compact and therefore more suitable for subs/ships. Engineers can cut their teeth on a big stationary reactor to get experience for the later models on ships.

jacobian:

Tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides. It's really not particularly bad as health risks go. You're probably better off worrying about the Radon in your gas mains - or water supply.

But "La France Nucléaire" says:

Tritium is not easy to handle safely. The beta irradiation emitted by tritium is weak. Nevertheless, in the human body, this weakness can in fact be an aspect of the destructiveness of this isotope, for all the ionization power of the particle is concentrated on the part of the body where it is found [Fairlee 92]. Although the nuclear industry taken as a whole takes tritium lightly, it is a substance known to be at least carcinogenic.

Nuclear installations emit tritium in the form of gas and tritiated water, which can contaminate the food chain. Tritium penetrates human beings and other animals by breathing, by absorption through the skin, and by ingestion. Inhaled tritium spreads equally throughout the soft tissues: tritiated water mixes quickly with all the water in the body [ACES 94]. Since tritiated water is chemically identical to ordinary water, it is generally considered as much more radiotoxic than tritium gas, 25,000 times more, according to an IAEA study [AIEA 91].

It is less well understood that tritium bound organically can be even more dangerous. It can irradiate the interior of the body for 550 days, compared to only 10 days for tritiated water. It concentrates doses to specific cells and organs instead of being diluted throughout all the body fluid.. Moreover, certain studies suggest that tritium is concentrated in the DNA where it can do genetic damage [Fairlee 92].

After an in-depth study of tritium, an advisory council of the
government of Ontario, Canada recommended that the maximum amount of tritium allowed in drinking water be reduced from 7000 Bq/l to 20 Bq/l within five years and that an even greater reduction be considered [ACES 94]. In France, the limit derived from the annual limit of intake is 274,000 Bq/l.
Tritium creates an enormous problem for the industry that produces it. It is difficult and costly to separate tritium from the air, the water, and objects that have absorbed it, and the results leave much to be desired. Thus the usual method for capturing tritium gas is to convert it into more toxic tritiated water. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to store tritium. It is diffused through the least porosity.
Tritiated water will penetrate concrete unless it is provided with a special cover. Tritium gas can penetrate rubber and most grades of steel. Moreover, tritiated water in the presence of nitrogen generates nitric acid which corrodes containers. Therefore, industry claims that in general, the best way to deal with tritiated waste is to "dilute- disperse" rather than to "concentrate and isolate". Thus, by far the most important source in France, the plutonium production factories at La Hague, dump almost all of the free tritium into the air and into the ocean. The authorized limits seem to obey dumping needs more than the logic of environmental protection: La Hague can dump into the sea 1400 times more tritium than a reactor at the Gravelines power plant, which also is located on the seashore.
Deputy Chrisian Bataille in the second volume of his report L’évolution de la recherche sur la gestion des déchets nucléaires à haute activité, stated that tritium "presents incontestable dangers for human health that it is advisable never to forget." Farther on he wrote, "The authorities responsible for nuclear installations, whether civilian or military, should be conscious that releases of tritium into the environment threaten to become a major problem in future years and certainly one of the main themes of the antinuclear contestation [Bataille 97].

I, like I suspect 99% of the population, am completely dependent on information regarding the nucelar industry from sites and experts who seem to know what they're talking about, even if they often say completely conflicting things. jacobian - do you have any special knowledge that makes you think your link is not propaganda but maybe mine is? Or what?

edit

Take your point about radioactive steam Mike. I think I got this mixed up with the radioactive pollution of the Irish Sea from British nuclear plants who circulate coolant seawater back in.

There are still (or was a few months ago) farming areas in Britain and elsewhere that are forbidden to sell their produce, lamb, etc., because of high level of radiation from Chernobyl.

Terrible joke around 1986: Poles don't like Russian underwear 'cause cher nob'll fall out.

I, like I suspect 99% of the population, am completely dependent on information regarding the nucelar industry from sites and experts who seem to know what they're talking about, even if they often say completely conflicting things. jacobian - do you have any special knowledge that makes you think your link is not propaganda but maybe mine is? Or what?

The text states that handling Tritium is difficult. That's a fact, because tritium tends to leak through containment. It's also not something you should ingest in arbitrarily large quantities. That's also true of vitamin-A or any number of other substances.

The text states that in liquid T2O form, tritium is a much larger hazard than as a gas. That's also a fact. That's because it presents almost no danger at all as a gas.

There are other facts as well - like the fact that tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides. It passes through the body without being held indefinitely like some heavy metal toxins or heavy metal radionuclides. None of the facts from either article are in contradiction.

The problem that people have with radiation is that they think it's some mystical substance. It's somehow considered by virtue of being radioactive as being much scarier than poison substances that we keep in deadly concentrations in our houses - and many of these substances which we use on a daily basis are probably contaminating us.

It's not clear that there is any danger at all from small levels of radiation. The question is hotly debated, but it's hotly debated because it's incredibly hard to get a statistically significant demonstration of risk. That means *if* the risks are there, they are very very small.

So - if your internals are being irradiated by tritium in small levels, you probably shouldn't worry about it. If you start worrying about low level radiation you're going to have to figure out a way to stop the high speed muons from cosmic rays flying through your brain and avoid eating in places that use natural gas for cooking lest they release Radon.

Personally, I like radiation better than most other toxins because it tells you it's there.

BTW, tritium production is a problem for fusion reactors as well.

I know this is yesterday's news, but there are some good references.

Nuclear bulletin #11

17 March 2011---The general headline this Thursday is: "Cracks are Appearing." Cracks are appearing in one or two of the containment vessels at the Fukushima reactors (reports are unclear). Cracks are appearing in the bottom of the pool that holds spent fuel rods at Unit 4, possibly explaining why water is draining from the pool. Cracks are appearing in the US-Japan relationship as Japan officially disputed the congressional testimony of an NRC Commissioner on whether the spent fuel rods are now exposed. Japan would prefer to keep blame on the reactor design, which was American.

Cracks are certainly appearing between the nuclear industry and the investment community, as the latter's capital is liquid and so Wall Street wants to abandon the sinking ship. Analysts who portray the interests of "Capital" as monolithic are failing to realize that this is a clear case of intra-class fragmentation. As days and weeks roll by, nobody will want the bodies of Fukushima on their roll card. And nobody can afford it. The price tags will exceed any anticipation.

Cracks are also appearing between the US-based nuclear industry and its world customer base, exacerbated by the WikiLeaks revelation that India's ruling party used bribes to secure its nuclear cooperation agreement with the USA: India Government Hit by WikiLeaks Allegations - WSJ.com. Note that the report comes from an anti-nuke propaganda sheet, the Wall Street Journal.

The inside story there is that, for some time, French companies have been leveraging to take control of the worldwide nuclear industry from US competitors. Thus, the French company AREVA is now the largest nuclear player in the world, by far, and it is building a centrifuge enrichment plant in Idaho. France is mostly immune from the market pressures that beset the US industry, because France lacks both coal and democracy. In a slip of the tongue the other day, US congressman Ed Markey compared the nuclear industry to "communist countries like China and France". What he meant was that the French nuclear industry does wield the hegemony of a Politburo.

So, from a French perspective, Fukushima represents opportunity to gain even more competitive advantage over the USA. The reactors were not designed in Paris, merci beaucoup.

The dreaded word "entombment" has now been uttered in the halls of Washington and New York, if not yet in Tokyo. It is now clear that Fukushima will be entombed, because there isn't enough money in the world, even China, to pay for anything else. Thankfully no PR hacks got to the word earlier or they would have concocted some euphemism like "Christmas boxing". Entombment means encasing the whole place in concrete or sand.

Chernobyl was entombed, and that probably accounts for why the word was not massaged. Entombment was just fine for the Russians, even deserved. A phenomenally larger nuclear tomb on the coast of Japan will have quite a different signification, however. It will, of course, become a monument. A monument to what will be the matter contested.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #12

17 March 2011---I'd like to step back and talk about the aspect of Fukushima so far escaping attention, and that can be called the Management Problem.

Apparently it has seemed to some as if I have been downplaying the effects, because I have said consistently that the geographic long-range consequences will be far less than Chernobyl. I stick to that assessment, even if the spent fuel melts down, and even if cracks widen in the containment vessels. In Japan 2011, as opposed to Ukraine in 1986, there is enough time for authorities to adopt fallback measures to stop massive cesium plumes. They can drop a million sand bags if they need to.

That is not to downplay the catastrophe, but only to say the catastrophe is different. The local impact will be even worse than Chernobyl in my estimation. That's partly because the population density is greater and partly because the initial success at containment kept a lot more radioactivity bottled up at the site than at Chernobyl, where much was dispersed to the winds.

In quantity casualty terms, this may seem less significant. If there are 100 worker and 100 nearby resident deaths at Fukushima (I'm pulling these numbers from my hat), that will pale in comparison to the many thousands of deaths caused by Chernobyl, or the 12,000 deaths caused by the earthquake and tsunami so far.

But qualitatively there is an enormous difference. From Fukushima will emerge hellish stories of workers and soldiers being ordered to engage in suicide missions, of lingering radiation sickness blasted across the web, of workers fleeing their place of employment, of cowardly managers who would not accept the risks themselves.

After that it will be extremely difficult to manage any nuclear operation. Everything becomes harder -- recruitment, contract negotiation, skills retention, training, siting, community relations. The nuclear companies are already anticipating this nightmare, quite apart from the market downturn issues. Managers will have to look employees in the face and explain what happened in Japan.

This is the problem that is also causing the smart class of investors to declare the nuclear Renaissance over. They see the Management Problem ahead, and it has no easy solution. It is irrespective of plant design. Simply put, no one will want to run a nuclear facility after the publicity that emerges from Japan.

Politicians may still hope for big nuclear projects as jobs bonanzas, but it will be a tough sell without private financing. Public opinion polls show a rapid 20% drop in support for nuclear power in the USA, from majority to minority. The Obama Administration dragging its feet on cancellation of the loan guarantee program is just dumb.

Certainly some nuclear projects will continue and some plants will continue in operation. New engineering will be funded because engineering is quite safe. New plants that get completed and put in operation, however, will not happen, and they will not happen because the investors will run. Only government funded R&D will limp along.

--Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #13

18 March 2011. In my Bulletin #11, I forecast that entombment of the entire facility in sand and concrete was the likely, or only possible, conclusion of this drama. I did not, however, think that would be acknowledged for quite a while.

Today, Reuters is out with a report that the Japanese have broached the option of "burying...in sand and concrete". [Japan weighs need to bury nuclear plant | Reuters]. I suppose "burying" sounds a bit better than "entombment" -- almost like it's a pet animal that can fit in shoe-box.

So we now know the end-game. There will be no big cesium plumes that reach across the ocean, but there will be one heck of a big block of cement on the coast of Japan, that will need to outlast the pyramids of Egypt. You heard it here first.

Let the epitaph writing war begin.

-- Geoffrey Sea

So we now know the end-game. There will be no big cesium plumes that reach across the ocean, but there will be one heck of a big block of cement on the coast of Japan, that will need to outlast the pyramids of Egypt. You heard it here first.

It's obviously a possibility, but I'm going to bet he's wrong. The danger at this point is that in a total meltdown scenario there is a significant risk regarding the integrity of the primary containment from below. Without quenching there will be large gas emissions and things could be even worse off. They aren't going to try the sarcophagus approach unless all else fails.

I also don't think the Japanese are going to settle for long term local contamination of Cs-137 and Sr-90. They've not a lot of space on that island. I expect that Japanese will forge the way in phytoremediation efforts.

Under reflection, I think that this problem can not be boiled down to one of capitalists and the profit motive. In fact I think it is more accurately a reflection of class society in a more comprehensive way. As ocelot eluded to earlier with the comment that a lot of the direction of nuclear power has been driven by military concerns rather than directly by profit-concerns, so I feel that the question of worker and public health is not entirely comprehensible within the dynamic of capitalist social relations but actually is more complex - relating to other power relations in society.

Some of these dynamics are actually reflected in the discourse in opposition to nuclear power in general - that scientists are generally compromised - and therefor generally full of shit. That problem is in fact a real problem. Scientists *are* generally compromised. Working as a scientist within our current system means that you have to work with the most heinous of funders. However, that funder is generally the military industrial complex. It's not in fact raw capitalism which funds this, but instead, it's actually a peculiar form of military focused state capitalism.

Some, including the WSJ of all places, have stated that there was a strict profit motive in avoiding the use of sea-water for coolant. I don't think that's true, as the introduction of sea-water to a reactor that is not designed to hold salt would certainly have given me pause. Salt can increase the rate of corrosion of metals dramatically. You definitely wouldn't want to be introducing them without cause. It turns out that it's known that the rate of erosion of steel containment increases dramatically in the presence of sea-water (not a good sign for Fukashima!)

Indeed, the original Chernobyl event can't really entirely be looked at through the lens of capitalist relations. Even those who believe that the USSR was state capitalist have to acknowledge that they were not under local pressures for increasing profits. I've seen in the USSR, how huge inefficiencies (in terms of capital expenditure) were allowed to exist. While some data can perhaps convincingly demonstrate that as a whole, the USSR did function as a large profit accumulating enterprise, internally, they did not operate simply within the confines of the profit motive.

Despite this they lied and completely fucked over the local population by allowing them be contaminated in huge numbers (without even testing food as they are now doing in Japan!). This wasn't clearly for a profit motive.

The pressures to externalise (under capitalism) are there - there is no question that these exist, however the statement by John Large that TEPCO are intentionally lying about radiation levels is a bit hard to believe. Radiation is a bit peculiar in being very easy to monitor. It essentially only requires a 250eur device. There are monitors, linked on the internet, covering all of Japan. I'm skeptical that any conspiracy is happening here as we could easily check using our web browser. The conspiracy of externalisation to me seems to be the huge publicly funded intervention to save TEPCO from disaster. This is literally in the millions and soon to be billions.

On top of this, the theory that they are trying to retain assets, must inevitably lead to the hypothesis that they let the plants explode to save the plants. Perhaps that's true - I can't entirely account for the motivations of others, or their rationality - but given the circumstances, you'd think a core meltdown was not high on the list of priorities in terms of saving assets. Core meltdown versus salt-water damage? It's really hard to call which is more destructive to the capital.

I think the conspiracy here is a bit more subtle and more systemic. I think it has to do with a general anti-humanism - not just in capitalism, but also present in the state and the military. Indeed I think it's a wider problem entirely. It's a question of who makes what decisions for what purpose. Essentially it shows up as an example that raw economism is not sufficient as an analysis of our predicament.

jacobian

Indeed, the original Chernobyl event can't really entirely be looked at through the lens of capitalist relations. Even those who believe that the USSR was state capitalist have to acknowledge that they were not under local pressures for increasing profits. I've seen in the USSR, how huge inefficiencies (in terms of capital expenditure) were allowed to exist. While some data can perhaps convincingly demonstrate that as a whole, the USSR did function as a large profit accumulating enterprise, internally, they did not operate simply within the confines of the profit motive.

They may not have been under pressure to produce profits but there is always pressure to use fewer man hours, fewer materials etc.

On top of this, the theory that they are trying to retain assets, must inevitably lead to the hypothesis that they let the plants explode to save the plants.

Capitalism isn't logical. One of the reasons the state exists is to ensure that capitalists do not work the working class to death. The immediate profit very frequently outweighs the long-term risk. People themselves are very cavalier about risk at times.

jef costello

Capitalism isn't logical. One of the reasons the state exists is to ensure that capitalists do not work the working class to death. The immediate profit very frequently outweighs the long-term risk. People themselves are very cavalier about risk at times.

This is strictly a question of micro-risk versus micro-risk, in the sense that we're comparing the risk to one individual actor (TEPCO).

People are cavalier about risk, but we assume that corporations are only indifferent about risks when it suits them to be. They try, of course, to maximise profits.

As I said before, it's possible that they had misguided delusional ideas and intentions, but supposing they didn't, it was not an obvious gain to let the reactor meltdown as opposed to pouring salt water on it. If I was in that position I'd be hesitant to pour salt water on the reactor if I thought there was any other alternative. When I thought alternatives were exhausted, I'd recommend salt water.

This seems more consistent with the actual course of events. Hence I'm skeptical of a conspiracy. It's unlikely to be a conspiracy because I can't find a motive. The motive is in-obvious because there is not obvious way to profit.

Useful radiation map:

http://www.cbryanjones.com/journal/2011/3/19/japan-radiation-levels-in-english.html

Nuclear bulletin #14

The New Republic carries a good article exposing some of the background on how Japan overcame public resistance to site the Fukushima reactors: How The Japanese Government Manipulated Commercial Nuclear Power. | The New Republic. What the article suggests but doesn't quite say is that the madness of putting six reactor units plus spent fuel storage pools all at one location is a direct product of the native resistance to nuclear power in Japan after 1945.

This is the Catch-22 that the industry will now confront. The principal "lesson learned" from this accident is that you cannot concentrate so many nuclear operations at any single site. If there is such a thing as "safe" nuclear power, it would involve spreading out small reactors at single unit locations, closer to points of end use, with separate sites for spent fuel storage.

However, that option has been politically impossible in any of the major countries except for France, which has a very centralized decision-making structure in general. The only way to obtain amenable sites for reactors in places like the USA and Germany has been to concentrate the facilities, so that a large-scale bribe of many hundreds of jobs can be offered to local unions and chambers of commerce. Spreading facilities out will not offer sufficient incentive compared to the added risk and local opposition. Plus, it's simply hard to find many sites that have necessary access to water and power, and that are far enough away from large cities, earthquake faults, and other natural disaster zones.

Of course, this problem will intensify after Fukushima, where the US and Australia have established a prophylactic 50-mile evacuation zone for their citizens. If every new reactor site must be isolated by a 50-mile zone, that eliminates virtually all sites now under consideration. Only some areas in the remote southwestern desert could qualify in the USA, and they are far from power grids.

So this paradox lacks possibility of resolution. The principal lesson learned will directly contradict the siting requirement for the industry to expand, or even remain stable. Off-site storage of spent nuclear fuel will require that 104 new sites for SNF storage be found in the US immediately. And as we found in Ohio in 2006, even very pro-nuclear communities oppose becoming storage or disposal sites for SNF.

The industry has developed and refined strategies for siting plants and overcoming local opposition. I once was treated to a private showing of a presentation by Battelle about their expert services specifically in that field. (They misunderstood my affiliation.) But all of these techniques rely on the ability to concentrate the nasty stuff at single sites where opposition can be swamped by union and business pressure.

Concentration will not be possible from here on out.

That will be the main legacy of Fukushima in terms of the industry. It has little or nothing to do with health effects of the radiation.

-- Geoffrey Sea

For those who read French:

Mortelle randonnée
A Fukushima, le nucléaire vient encore de montrer de quoi il est capable, en matière de meurtre en gros et en détail. Bon nombre d’irradiés, en première ligne les liquidateurs, risquent déjà, aujourd’hui et dans le proche
avenir, de crever de façon plus ou moins rapide et peu enviable. Sans parler des maladies et des malformations, mortelles ou non, qui apparaîtront
plus tard, dans la région et au-delà des frontières du pays d’Hiroshima.
Les mesures d’urgence prises pour tenter de différer, voire d’éviter, des
conflagrations encore plus monstrueuses dans la centrale n’y changent
rien, d’autant qu’elles portent en elles la mort et la désolation, en dispersant les sources de radioactivité, dans le sol, dans l’air et dans la mer, pour
des centaines, parfois pour des milliers d’années.
Pourtant, la page sombre n’est pas prête d’être tournée, pas plus qu’au
lendemain de Tchernobyl. En annonçant que « la France ne renoncera pas
au programme électronucléaire », Sarkozy réaffirme ce que d’autres ado-
rateurs de l’atome défendirent avant lui, dans des circonstances analo-
gues. Tel Rosen, ponte de l’Agence internationale de l’énergie atomique
(AIEA), chargé de la sécurité sanitaire, qui osa affirmer en 1987 : « Même
s’il y avait un accident de ce type tous les ans, je considérerais le nucléaire comme l’une des sources intéressantes d’énergie. » Profonde vérité !
L’énergie, c’est l’or en barre du capital : sans en produire et en distribuer,
il ne saurait exister. Et le nucléaire en est la corne d’abondance présumée.
Il n’est donc pas question d’arrêter la course à l’abîme mais, même au
prix des pires ravages et de l’instauration de mesures de militarisation, de
l’accélérer. D’où la décision, qui n’est pas limitée à la France, d’allonger de
plusieurs décennies la durée de vie des centrales. D’où la construction de
l’EPR et d’autres monstres nucléaires et thermonucléaires, comme ITER,
nullement inoffensifs comme leurs promoteurs l’affirment, dont le gigantisme exclut la mise en œuvre dans le cadre de l’Etat nation. Supervisés par
des institutions supranationales, comme l’AIEA, ils sont financés par des
sociétés et des Etats qui mobilisent des chercheurs de toutes les natio-
nalités. La même AIEA, en collaboration avec les nucléocrates en blouse
blanche de l’OMS, prétend surveiller l’évolution de la filière nucléaire, au
Japon et ailleurs. La main qui contrôle est aussi celle qui assassine.
Pas question non plus de renoncer à la force nucléaire, moyen de destruction sans égal dans l’histoire. Elle est trop utile aux Etats qui la monopolisent. Par l’effroi de la solution finale par l’atome qu’elle inspire, elle
leur permet de tenir en laisse leurs administrés respectifs, en jouant le
rôle de protectrices face au danger qu’elles contribuent à créer. Elles ont
commencé à mettre à la ferraille les missiles et les bombes dépassées
de l’époque de la Guerre froide, mais elles n’ont pas hésité à arroser des
régions entières à l’uranium appauvri, dès la première guerre du Golfe,
en Iraq. Et elles effectuent des essais plus sophistiqués en laboratoire,
comme sur le nouveau site du Barp, près de Bordeaux. Là, on tente de
créer des armes de moindre puissance, mieux adaptées aux opérations de
terreur diversifiées qui caractérisent les guerres « préventives » actuelles.
Avec Fukushima, la « transparence » est à l’ordre du jour et sanctionne
la fin de la gestion du nucléaire, sur le mode exclusif de l’obéissance militaire et de la censure. L’Etat prend le pouls de la prétendue « société
civile » et fait mine de l’associer au diagnostic, car, depuis Tchernobyl, il ne
peut plus lui mentir comme avant. Bien que la prise de conscience des risques soit encore plus ou moins refoulée, il préfère les minimiser plutôt que les nier en bloc. Les superlatifs sont désormais de mise dans la présentation médiatisée des crises nucléaires, mais le règne de l’omerta n’est pas terminé. Le mensonge par omission passe d’autant mieux qu’on y associe quelques vérités. Ainsi, la catastrophe en
cours est présentée comme une tornade imprévue dans le ciel, paraît-il
plutôt serein depuis vingt ans, de la société nucléarisée, alors qu’elle en
constitue le paroxysme. Lorsque les médias et les chefs d’Etat versent des
larmes de crocodile sur les sacrifiés de Fukushima, ils escamotent par la
même occasion les cadavres et les estropiés à vie qui se comptent par dizaines de millions, victimes des retombées civiles et militaires de l’atome,
depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
S’ils soulèvent le coin du voile, c’est donc pour mieux faire avaler l’es-
sentiel, histoire de calmer les irradiés potentiels et de maintenir l’ordre. La
catastrophe de Fukushima est officiellement reconnue comme telle mais,
simultanément, à Tokyo, les retombées n’auraient pas d’incidence notable
sur les habitants ! Le Premier ministre leur demande de ne pas bouger,
de vaquer à leurs occupations et d’attendre les prochaines directives !
Belle banalisation de la catastrophe ! L’objectif est double : reconnaître,
parmi les conséquences sanitaires des radiations, celles qui apparaissent
le plus vite dans la zone la plus contaminée, ce qui amène la population à
accepter les autres ; associer la même population à leur gestion au nom
de la coresponsabilité du risque. Ainsi, en focalisant l’attention sur l’iode
radioactif et la prise de capsules d’iode neutre qui peut, parfois, en em-
pêcher la fixation sur la thyroïde, l’Etat fait passer à la trappe le cocktail
d’éléments radioactifs rejetés par les réacteurs en déroute. Car, face à
eux, l’institution médicale est impuissante. L’OMS ne reconnaît pas l’ori-
gine nucléaire des maladies les plus différées et les plus diffuses qui en
découlent depuis Tchernobyl. Quant aux plus irradiés, l’armée les trie, les
parque dans des camps autour des zones mortelles de Fukushima, avec
interdiction d’en sortir, sous prétexte de les soigner. En réalité, pour les
étudier à titre de cobayes. Magnifique laboratoire en plein air pour les
adeptes de la médecine de catastrophe ! Comme à Tchernobyl.
Face au désastre, les partis et des lobbies écologistes européens ressortent leurs propositions de réformes introuvables, tel le misérable réseau
Sortir du nucléaire qui n’a rien trouvé de mieux, dans son communiqué du
15 mars 2011, que de proposer « la fermeture immédiate des seize réacteurs français les plus âgés » et la « planification de la sortie du nucléaire »
pour les autres, associées à la mise en place « ambitieuse de l’éolien »,
créant des « centaines de milliers d’emplois », l’ensemble prenant comme
modèle la cogestion à l’allemande de la merde radioactive, dans laquelle
les Grünen jouent le rôle de conseillers de Merkel. La question du nucléaire militaire est, elle, passée sous silence. De tels cadavres politiques,
dans des conditions où le capital ne réforme plus mais innove, participent
à la poursuite du nucléaire car ils jouent le rôle de liquidateurs préventifs
de tentatives d’opposition effectives. Leurs propos fumeux restent sur le
terrain qu’ils contestent à genoux : au problème social posé par le nucléaire, ils opposent, en véritables technocrates, des solutions techniciennes,
contribuant à perpétuer la domination qu’ils prétendent rejeter.
Plus que jamais, l’arrêt du nucléaire n’est pas négociable. A moins d’accepter d’être exposé pour longtemps à des radiations, à des accidents, à
des catastrophes au cours desquelles apparaît de façon paroxystique la
fonction première de l’Etat : assurer la sécurité et la survie de la société
par la négation de la liberté et de la vie des individus. La militarisation des
populations indignées, atterrées, confinées, déportées, condamnées à
crever et la neutralisation des rétifs, y compris par la fusillade, prévues par
les plans d’urgence nucléaire, en France et ailleurs, en sont la preuve. Certes, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, la masse de nos contemporains préfère souvent
ne pas y penser. Car le nucléaire est intégré à leur vie de tous les jours
comme dispensateur d’énergie, particulièrement en France, chose sans
laquelle ils ne peuvent, en règle générale, imaginer vivre. Certes, la créa-
tion d’oppositions de masse radicales au monde nucléarisé ne dépend
pas que de poignées d’irréductibles. Pourtant, il est impossible de rester
les bras croisés face à ce qui existe déjà et à ce qui est en train d’advenir,
avec la complicité des partis et des lobbies écologistes. A moins d’oublier
en quoi consiste la liberté humaine.

[email protected]
Le 19 mars 2011

Apologies if this has come out in a rather broken up format, but I have to go out soon and it takes too long to correct this, which has been copied from a pdf leaflet handed out in Paris yesterday.

Nuclear bulletin #15 - Health Update

Restoration of power systems to the reactor complex and reported success in bringing temperatures down, along with the development of contingency plans, make it very unlikely that we will see any large plumes of the nasty stuff -- cesium and iodine -- on anything like a Chernobyl scale. Therefore, those outside Japan should relax as regards their own vulnerability. There is nothing that Californians or Hawaiians should be doing out of self-concern, and frankly, the run on potassium iodide pills in California is, if anything, making it harder to get those supplies to Japan. Health concerns should now focus entirely on Japan.

I am not saying there will be zero health effects downwind. I am saying that the downwind effects will be so small and diluted that nothing will be discernable. The effects that do happen will be tiny increases in statistical risks of cancer, especially for those at risk from other causes, like smokers. So quitting smoking or reducing exposure to second-hand smoke will be greatly more effective at reducing risk than worrying about Japan. Generally healthy eating habits are also advised.

In Japan, especially within 100 km of Fukushima, which does not include Tokyo, small amounts of radioactive isotopes from the accident have started to show up in milk and produce: Elevated Radioactivity Found in Japanese Milk, Spinach - WSJ.com. Reported levels are very low, but this would be the time to avoid dairy products that come from the affected region, especially for nursing mothers. According to that article, an unnamed isotope has appeared in trace amounts in Tokyo tap water. This would be the time to start drinking tap water stored on the shelf a week ago, while continuing to store tap water in dated bottles. One week on the shelf will greatly reduce the radioactivity from isotopes like I-131.

I-131 has a half-life of eight days, so shelving water for eight days reduces the radioactivity by half. Other emitted radionuclides have even shorter half-lives and can be completely eliminated by shelving or drying food and water, so this is a good practice, if you are concerned about the honesty of reports. But levels reported are very low and need generate no great alarm.

My biggest concern is about fish caught in the north Pacific, especially by nationals of other countries besides Japan i.e. Russian, Chinese, Korean, and American fishing fleets. I have not read anything about such fleets being restrained or reducing their catches. I would be concerned about any fresh fish that may have been caught in the waters east of northern Japan.

Some anti-nuclear sources are continuing to spread false and misleading information about imminent plumes of plutonium or cesium. This kind of disinformation following the TMI and Chernobyl accidents did much to confuse the public, thwart sound health advice, and discredit all nuclear critics. So it's important to stress -- there are NO plumes of plutonium or cesium on their way to North America at any levels that should generate health concerns. (All of us do breathe in plutonium every day as a result of the age of atmospheric nuclear testing.)

I sincerely hope that the disinformation will be combated.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Samotnaf

For those who read French:

Mortelle randonnée
A Fukushima, le nucléaire vient encore de montrer de quoi il est capable, en matière de meurtre en gros et en détail. Bon nombre d’irradiés, en première ligne les liquidateurs, risquent déjà, aujourd’hui et dans le proche
avenir, de crever de façon plus ou moins rapide et peu enviable. Sans parler des maladies et des malformations, mortelles ou non, qui apparaîtront
plus tard, dans la région et au-delà des frontières du pays d’Hiroshima.
Les mesures d’urgence prises pour tenter de différer, voire d’éviter, des
conflagrations encore plus monstrueuses dans la centrale n’y changent
rien, d’autant qu’elles portent en elles la mort et la désolation, en dispersant les sources de radioactivité, dans le sol, dans l’air et dans la mer, pour
des centaines, parfois pour des milliers d’années.

{{At Fukushima, nuclear [power] has once more shows what it is capable of, in the matter of murder, wholesale and retail. Many of the irradiated, in the frontline the [salvage] engineers, risk already today and in the near future, to die in a manner more or less rapid and unenviable. Not to mention the diseases and deformities, fatal or otherwise, that will appear later, in the region and beyond the borders of the country of Hiroshima.

The emergency measures taken to try to defer or avoid the conflagrations even more monstrous at the site change nothing, especially since they carry with them [the seeds of further] death and desolation, by dispersing radioactive sources, in the soil, air and sea, for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years [to come].
}}
[...]
Lorsque les médias et les chefs d’Etat versent des
larmes de crocodile sur les sacrifiés de Fukushima, ils escamotent par la
même occasion les cadavres et les estropiés à vie qui se comptent par dizaines de millions, victimes des retombées civiles et militaires de l’atome,
depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

{{
When the media and heads of state spill crocodile tears over the sacrificed of Fukushima, they conjure away at the same time the dead and maimed for life, counted in the tens of millions, victims of the civilian and military fallout of the atom [sic], since the end of the Second World War.
}}
[...]
Quant aux plus irradiés, l’armée les trie, les
parque dans des camps autour des zones mortelles de Fukushima, avec
interdiction d’en sortir, sous prétexte de les soigner. En réalité, pour les
étudier à titre de cobayes. Magnifique laboratoire en plein air pour les
adeptes de la médecine de catastrophe !
{{
As for the most irradiated, the army is triaging them, parking them in camps around the fatal areas of Fukushima, with orders not to leave, under the guise of treatment. In fact, for study as guinea pigs. Wonderful outdoor laboratory for followers of disaster medicine!
}}

Apologies if this has come out in a rather broken up format, but I have to go out soon and it takes too long to correct this, which has been copied from a pdf leaflet handed out in Paris yesterday.

Wow, that's some 9/11-proof stuff in there. I mean I can accept a bit of hyperbole as style in a political context, but still...

Given that the current death tolls for the recent catastrophes inflicted on the Japanese are: earthquake + tsunami: ~15,000 ; Fuskushima nuclear leaks: 0, the talk of wholesale murder seems a bit strong. I'm also not sure where exactly s/he/they are getting the tens of millions of nuclear victims since WW2?

And the last story is phenonemal. The army are imprisoning irradiated Japanese civilians in internment camps in the "death zones" around Fukushima, for Mengele-like medical experiments? Really? I'd like to see some sources for that. Somewhat surprising that 127 million Japanese people seem not to have noticed or cared so far...

N'importe quoi...

Then again, the true horror of the fallout is beyond all predictions... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12815631

ocelot

Then again, the true horror of the fallout is beyond all predictions... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12815631

LOL agree...fucking bono, worst scavenger ever!

For those who believe everything is far away;

2011-03-22 -- 19:53 CET | Islands Strahlenschutzbehörde IRSA hat den Nachweis von radioaktivem Jod bestätigt, das vermutlich aus dem japanischen Unglücksreaktor stammt. Die Mengen seien ungefährlich für den Menschen, sagte ein Sprecher der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters.

“Islands department for radiation protection IRSA has confirmed the existance of radioactive iodine, propably originating from the Japanese wreck reactor. The amounts are nonhazardous for humans, a speaker confirmed to Reuters news agency.”

This fallout propably originates from the blowout following the explosion in the first reactor, when the winds were driven northnorheast towards the Russian, US-American and Canadian polar regions. Island is to the south of the European weather lab for lows, most of them heading further down south-east towards the continent.

As long as they are not able to build containers for the rotten reactors in Fukushima this will only be the beginning, because the concentrations will accumulate as well as the areas affected.

Nuclear bulletin #16 - update

Predictably, reaction to the ongoing events at Fukushima is bipolar. On the one hand, severe impact on nuclear industry plans is causing denial and lashing out from apologists, like this claim of "nuclear hysteria": RealClearPolitics - Nuclear Hysteria.

On the other hand, we see a resurgence of magical thinking associated with invisible radiation fears, causing unhelpful references to Chernobyl to magnify, and causing runs on potassium iodide in Europe and California where the pills will do no good.

These reactions feed each other and should likewise be combatted by rational thinking.

As I've tried to make clear, there are few helpful comparisons to Chernobyl in regard to fallout effects. At Chernobyl, the burning graphite reactor cores were exposed to open air by the initial explosion. This led to massive plumes of radioiodine and Cesium-137, ultimately leaving a permanent evacuation zone the size of Switzerland.

At Fukushima there is no such core exposure. The radionuclides escaping are leaking out through broken or melted pipes. There is no burning graphite. It is not yet clear how much exposure of spent fuel rods occurred but if there was some, it appears to have been halted. The predominant nuclides released were light gasses that will dissipate quickly, leaving little long-term contamination. Continued comparison to Chernobyl will make Fukushima look small and insignificant.

This is why radiation levels in Tokyo and elsewhere outside the immediate area are rising and falling rapidly -- that's good news. A tap-water hazard for infants in Tokyo was reported and has led to the government providing bottled water for households with infants: Japan issues radiation warning on 11 vegetables - The Washington Post. A later report suggests the Tokyo levels have gone back down. Produce from the affected region is problematic but being controlled. The USA has banned importation of produce and dairy from four prefectures near Fukushima.

To be perfectly clear: these kinds of transient radiation levels are not due to long-lived contamination by cesium or plutonium and are not a major concern. The iodine problem is limited to milk and dairy from nearby.

So to repeat prior advice: If in Japan, avoid fresh fish, use bottled water if available, or tap water that has been stored on the shelf. Continue to store as much tap water as possible for emergency use and keep shelved so contamination decays away. But do not avoid drinking water as it cleanses the body. Use alternatives to breast-feeding for the duration of the crisis.

If outside Japan there is no cause for health concern at present. The detectable levels reaching California are negligible and should be ignored. If you live near the Diablo Canyon or San Onofre reactors, get the places shut down. Have your doctor write a prescription for that.

On-site problems at Fukushima will be worse, maybe much worse than Chernobyl in terms of total contamination, and that is another reason to avoid comparisons. Never have six reactors and six spent fuel pools been involved in a single accident.

Little attention has been given to the fact that US military has now been assigned to the reactor complex, and is performing much or most of the hazardous work. Japanese military is also involved. We hear much about some alleged "50 heroes" who stayed to do work at the site - Behind Reactor Battle, a Legion of Grunts - WSJ.com. My guess is that those workers were mostly sent away after maximum exposures, replaced by the military. The advantage of using military personnel for TEPCO and the industry will be that those soldiers can be ordered to perform suicide missions, and can be barred at least temporarily from talking to the media.

But it's with those workers and soldiers that the real story lies. It may be, as reports suggest, that workers are mainly standing clear of the hot zones, which has, of course, made the situation harder to bring under control. Martyrdom and liability lawyers do not mix well.

There is also now conspiracy-theory talk about entombment. I think everyone knows that entombment is coming. However, it is in everyone's best interest not to rush to that solution, because the bigger the mess inside the sarcophagus, the more of a problem we create for future generations. Ultimately the sarcophagus will have to be opened, or it will erode away. There's also the question of how large it will need to be and how isolated.

Therefore it is best to salvage as much as possible before pouring in sand and concrete. Ideally the spent fuel rods stored in pools can be extracted and carted away before entombment of the reactor cores. Also there is a question about the three reactors that were not operating. They would like to be able to entomb only the three units where meltdowns had started, but salvage the three other units, even if they never operate, to minimize the size of the sarcophagus.

It is in the public interest to keep the sarcophagus as small and as cool inside as possible.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Hieronymous

According to a Tepco enginieer at an IAEA-conference in november 2010 let alone the waste rods in the boiling basins outside the primary containments of Fukushima 1 are 1760 tons in total. Not counting the Mox and Uranium rods inside the reactors. So even if the primary containments of all reactors were without leaks (which they apparently aren't in all cases) their amount of exposable radiaoactive elements of various types is far bigger than it has been at Tchernobyl. If the waste rod basins containment cannot be restored and the material there be cooled within days, the risk of large scale wide range radioactive contamination far beyond any 150 miles perimeter is huge.

http://www.zamg.ac.at/pict/aktuell/20110325_Reanalyse-I131-Period2.gif

Nuclear bulletin #17

27 March 2011, 4:00 AM GMT---Late Friday EST the story broke on CNN and CBS that radioactivity levels in Japan have skyrocketed, implying that a core breach has occurred in unit 3. That would mean that the melting core has penetrated the containment vessel in some way. Later accounts mention the possibility that a spent fuel pool has melted down. On Saturday the Japanese government accused TEPCO of withholding information from the government, implying that not even the government knows the exact situation as of Saturday. Seawater levels of radioiodine have risen from 100 to over 1200 times the legal limit near Fukushima, confirming that something major has changed. Fish from the area has been banned. Radioactivity rises in seawater near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant - The Washington Post

Whatever the cause, the accident now enters a new phase, where containment is no longer assured as in the first two weeks. Whatever the cause, the situation does seem to be related to the inability or unwillingness to send workers into the high radiation areas to gauge what is going on. Reports from workers have started to appear: Fukushima crisis: radiation fears grow for low-paid heroes battling disaster | World news | The Observer.

Cargo shippers have started boycotting Japan in fear of radiation hazards:
Japan Ports Shunned by Shipping Lines Fearful of Radiation - NYTimes.com. This will be causing major economic disruptions in and outside of Japan. 200,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators protested in Germany on Saturday, foreshadowing an expected strong showing by Greens in coming elections.

The US government has gone silent since Obama's "At Ease" message in the immediate days after the earthquake. The Administration will be under intense pressure to cancel the nuclear loan guarantee program, while some legal considerations may force loan decisions in coming weeks.

It is difficult to offer health protection advice at this time since the nature of what is happening at the reactors is either not known or not being disclosed. It remains the case that California and the continental USA will see only tiny fractions of whatever fallout results, and so there is yet no cause for alarm in these areas. Distant fallout will depend on wind and precipitation and people will have to rely on reports by local weather and health authorities.

In Japan, it seems that authorities are doing what they can in terms of providing bottled water and restricting foods from contaminated areas. There ought to be programs to deliver potassium iodide tablets to Japan, but I have heard of none. One concern is that people will stop drinking water, which actually would do more harm than good. Once again, storing tap water now and shelving it before any major fallout clouds pass is the best protective measure.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear bulletin #18 - a review of basics

It's been requested that I review some physics and chemistry basics to help sort out what's what.

Typical light-water reactor fuel is 3% enriched meaning that it is comprised of 3% Uranium-235 and 97% Uranium-238, whereas natural uranium is only .7% U-235. Hence the requirement for uranium enrichment, which was, for the Japanese reactors in question, done in the United States by and large. (Some recent fuel may include old Soviet weapons uranium that was downblended in Russia and sold through the American company USEC.)

In typical nuclear fuel only the U-235 is fissionable, meaning capable of splitting when hit by a neutron. When U-238 is hit by a neutron, it tends to absorb the neutron rather than split, transmuting into Plutonium-239, the source of most plutonium in reactors.

Since 97% of typical fuel is U-238, there is a lot of plutonium accumulation. Plutonium is much more radioactive than either isotope of uranium, and the fuel therefore becomes more radioactive over time. Since most reactors are not designed to operate when the fuel gets very radioactive, the fuel must be replaced with fresh fuel at varying frequency. The Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) comprised largely of plutonium is actually many times "hotter" than fresh fuel, contrary to the suggestion of the word "spent." This is the problem in the SNF pools at Fukushima and why their exposure with loss of coolant is potentially much more problematic than a core breach at the formerly operating reactors themselves.

The SNF pools have no thick containment vessels as do the reactors, a result of the fact that on-site storage was designed as a makeshift solution for lack of a permanent disposal site. The inadequacy of on-site SNF storage pools will be one of the chief lessons of Fukushima. Another problem with SNF is that plutonium spontaneously ignites when exposed to air, whereas uranium does not.

Because Japan lacked even a candidate site for permanent SNF disposal, like the failed US candidate site at Yucca Mountain, Japan long ago turned to reprocessing which means chemical extraction of the plutonium and U-235 from spent fuel. This mixture extracted from spent fuel is then formulated into an alternative reactor fuel called MOX for "Mixed Oxide." The United States has experimented with MOX at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

There has long been a debate about the safety of MOX fuel since most reactor components were designed for pure uranium fuel and might not behave as expected with high levels of plutonium mixed in. That is another debate resolved by the current accident, since Unit 3 was the only unit running on MOX fuel, and it's the Unit 3 reactor now suspected of breaching its containment vessel. Presumably that is not just a coincidence - the containment appears to have been inadequately engineered to contain a meltdown of MOX fuel.

Now let's go back to the U-235 atoms inside typical nuclear fuel, the atoms that undergo fission. These atoms, when hit by a neutron, tend to split into two pieces of slightly unequal mass. One piece tends to have an atomic weight of about 138 and the other about 95 (plus 2 neutrons = 235). The immediate fission products are very short-lived and rapidly decay into more long-lived fission products that have slightly lower atomic weights. Hence we get the most problematic fission products: Cesium-137, Iodine-131, Strontium-90, and Krypton-85.

The first three of these have the unfortunate property of mimicking minerals essential for good health. Cesium mimics potassium, radioiodine is treated just like stable iodine, and strontium mimics calcium. The body cannot distinguish between the nuclear fission products and stable minerals.

That is why the best overall protection against fallout and food contamination is to take mineral supplements and potassium iodide pills (as directed by health authorities), or foods very rich in minerals like seaweed. The point is to load the body with non-radioactive minerals so that fewer of the fallout particles are absorbed.

In judging reports of fallout as are now coming fast and furious, it's important to distinguish a plume that may consist of mainly light gasses like krypton, xenon, and hydrogen, versus a plume of heaver particles like cesium, strontium and radioiodine. Unfortunately, most news reports do not make a distinction and only give "radiation levels" - which is almost useless information.

In general - the heavier fallout particles will "fall out" over shorter distances and will be less subject to transient wind patterns. So a sudden cloud of "radiation" over California or Montana is likely to be light gasses, which is not a major concern at the levels in question. If there are big cesium and iodine plumes, we are likely to have some warning, as they would first be detected over Pacific Islands, if not in Japan.

Light gasses will produce radiation readings that rise and fall rapidly, whereas heavy fallout particles will leave residues that persist at least for days and weeks.

In areas affected by heavier fallout particles, the principal danger is not from air exposure or even inhalation but from ingestion of particles from food or from contamination of clothing, hands, etc. If you are in such an affected area, you should minimize any contact with surface dust by wearing a filter mask, washing hands regularly, vacuuming often with a HEPA filter, and avoiding contact with vegetation or outdoor surfaces. Surfaces exposed to open air during fallout periods should be cleaned or discarded.

Basic practices to reduce internal deposition of dust particles can drastically reduce exposure and reduce risk of long-term cancer, so panic is really counter-productive. Even if you are in a fallout cloud, it need not mean a long-term impact on your health if you act wisely.

-- Geoffrey Sea

From the Guardian yesterday:

The latest setback engineers face is the discovery of highly radioactive water in and around the turbine building at reactor two. Radiation detectors measured the level at 1,000 millisieverts per hour and as workers are allowed an exposure of 250 millisieverts a year, raised from 100 millisieverts before the crisis, they could only be in the contaminated area for 15 minutes before reaching the maximum dose.

Officials at Tepco, who run the plant, say it is not clear where the radioactive water came from, but it escaped from the reactor core, either directly through a breach in the containment vessel or through a crack or hole in pipework.

Lahey believes that molten fuel inside reactor two has begun to leak out of its containment vessel, meaning it may be too late to save that reactor.

The troubles on site are compounded by fears that radioactive material, including plutonium, is leaching into the soil and has washed into the sea. So far, these problems are localised: most radioactive material leaked onto land will bind to soil and stay there, while radioactive material in the sea will be diluted and disperse. "They are doing all the right things now, but this is a tight horse race," Lahey said.

(my emphasis)

page by the Doro-Chiba union on the topic: http://www.doro-chiba.org/english/english2.htm

I was wondering where they might find a new batch of liquidators, since they can't match USSR in compulsion or in lies, but I guess there is always money: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/suicide-squads-paid-huge-sums-to-stabilise-nuclear-reactor-2256741.html

Workers at Japan's stricken nuclear plant are reportedly being offered huge sums to brave high radiation and bring its overheated reactors under control, as plant operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, battles to stop a spreading contamination crisis which could see another 13

....

Subcontractors to several companies connected to the plant have reportedly been offered 80,000 to 100,000 yen a day (£608 to £760) to join the operation, according to one former plant worker. "They know it's dangerous so they have to pay up to 20 times what they usually do," said Shingo Kanno, a seasonal farmer and construction worker who was offered work at the complex by a subcontractor but refused. "My wife and family are against it

and http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=040000&biid=2011033062688

Finding replacement workers is also tough due to the difficult work environment. The Japanese daily Tokyo Shimbun said the power company is urging workers who evacuated to return, promising to pay 400,000 yen (4,900 U.S. dollars) per day.”

Nuclear bulletin #19

29 March 2011. In the 1986 film version of The Transformers, when the protagonist is first confronted by a gargantuan biotronic "autobot" of obvious alien origin, he exclaims, "Must be Japanese!"

That certainly will date the film, since ongoing revelations paint the Japanese as the Keystone Cops of high technology. It is now clear why they can't rush to entomb the reactor and the story goes like this:

1. In the first days, TEPCO managers trusted industry PR about the inherent safety of reactor designs, and so, without working instruments to monitor conditions, they opted to keep workers away and trust that plant conditions would take care of themselves. This was very different from Chernobyl where dozens of workers engaged in suicide missions to do reconnaissance and perform necessary manual tasks like closing valves deep inside the reactors. In Japan they let the liability lawyers rule.

2. Without knowing what else to do, they dropped huge quantities of seawater from above, in a vain attempt to reduce temperatures inside, hoping that would relieve any short-run meltdown, and trusting that some passive cooling systems might still function.

3. Salt from the boiling seawater encrusted pipes and containment structures, insulating them, blocking the infusion of more water, and in fact raising temperatures, exacerbating the meltdowns.

4. Restoration of power failed to restore the damaged instruments, but by then workers had been alerted to the radiation hazard and many simply failed to report for shifts. The lawyers, though, had huddled around the scene. So at that point, it was impossible to get workers to go in and do the reconnaissance that was necessary. Three workers who tried landed in the hospital with radiation burns from the contaminated water.

5. Entombment cannot now be done for two reasons -- the fuel assemblies remain encrusted with salt, increasing temperatures and voiding any design specifications for containment. More importantly, there is so much ambient water around that if you dropped sand and concrete it would not harden -- it would just form nuclear slush, and that might make the overall problem a lot worse. They now have to flood the reactors with more fresh water, which works exactly against any hypothetical entombment.

6. Various reports say that pumping out all the water as a necessary step to whatever comes next may take weeks, months, or YEARS.

And there it lies.

For decades, you see, the nuclear industry has operated a massive scam, with faux safety agencies put in place to provide legitimate covers for corruption. The result in Japan is made clear by this article in the New York Times: Tsunami Caught Japan's Nuclear Industry Off Guard - NYTimes.com. Even though tsunamis were forecast that could top the flood wall at Fukushima by five feet, the diesel generators were raised only 8 inches - out of pure denial. Engineering standards were arbitrary:

Engineers employed a lot of guesswork, adopting a standard that structures inside nuclear plants should have three times the quake resistance of general buildings.

“There was no basis in deciding on three times,” said Mr. Aoyama, an emeritus professor of structural engineering at the University of Tokyo. “They were shooting from the hip,” he added, making a sign of a pistol with his right thumb and index finger.

Precedent was used as the basis of design: "seawalls were erected higher than the highest tsunamis on record."

This is a philosophy of always preparing for the last accident, not the next one. This philosophy has governed after Three Mile Island, after Chernobyl, and now before we even know the extent of Fukushima.

Engineers are taught in school to use the maximum "historic record" of disaster magnitude as a guide. Thus, in planning for earthquake protection for reactors in the Midwest, the 1811 New Madrid earthquake, estimated to have topped 9.0, is not included because the Richter scale had not been invented yet. Therefore New Madrid is not part of the "historical record."

Similarly there is no preparation for a plane flying into a reactor because it hasn't happened yet. Though it was threatened in 1965 when hijackers threatened to fly a plane into the Oak Ridge uranium enrichment plant in Tennessee. No possible building design could guard against the hazard of a commercial jet being flown into a nuclear plant, therefore the risk is ruled out of consideration.

The Japanese Miracle I think they called it. Who believes in miracles anymore?

-- Geoffrey Sea

The wind is blowing this way;
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23936554-radioactive-iodine-from-japan-found-in-oxford-and-scotland.do

Anyone know anything about the nuclear fuel storage facility at Rakkasho? Was it affected by the tsunami?

on Friday Tepco reported that groundwater beneath one of the plant's six reactors contained levels of radioactive iodine 10,000 times higher than government standards....
Experts said it was unlikely that the radioactive iodine-131 found nearly 15 metres (50ft) below one of the reactors would find its way into drinking water....
For several days authorities have issued assurances that none of the radiation readings are high enough to present a threat to people living beyond the 12-mile (20km) evacuation zone.

from here. Tepco's experts and "authorities" also do PR for The Flat Earth Society, Pinocchio International and the Baron Munchausen Gazette.

Article here on the decrease in invertebrates 20 years after Chernobyl.

Cementing over the cracks...

Japan PM tells nuclear workers 'you can't lose this battle'

RIKUZENTAKATA: Japan's premier on Saturday visited emergency crew who have struggled to stabilise a tsunami-hit nuclear plant that has leaked radiation into the air, ground and ocean.
The visit came as the firm operating the Fukushima power station announced it had discovered a crack in a pit leaking highly radioactive water straight into the sea.
Donning a blue workman's outfit, Prime Minister Naoto Kan arrived by military helicopter to give a pep talk to the atomic plant workers, firefighters and troops battling to shut down the plant.
"I want you to fight with the conviction that you absolutely cannot lose this battle," Kan told them at their base, the J-Village football academy 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the plant, Kyodo News reported. He urged military personnel there to "fight to determine Japan's fate".
The hundreds of workers and troops have battled to stabilise the plant since the tsunami three weeks ago knocked out its water cooling system, leading fuel rods to overheat, partially melt down and release radioactivity.
The crew have endured gruelling conditions and the threat of high radiation. The government has hiked the exposure limit for emergency workers from 100 to 250 millisieverts, the equivalent of 10 brain scans.
The workers have used fire engines and concrete pumps to pour thousands of tons of water into overheating reactors and spent fuel rod pools, creating clouds of radioactive steam and highly contaminated runoff.
The nuclear safety agency said a 20 centimetre (eight inch) crack had been found in a concrete pit from where water has leaked into the sea, where iodine-131 over 4,000 times the legal limit has been measured.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said workers would cement over the crack.
In longer term efforts to control the emergency, two of the world's largest cement boom pumps with a 70-metre reach were to be shipped to Japan from the United States, supporting models already sent by Germany and China.
The truck mounted pumps -- similar to those used to seal off Ukraine's Chernobyl plant after its 1986 meltdown -- can be remote-controlled and shoot either water or, if necessary, cement to entomb the facility.
TEPCO "didn't specifically say that they wanted to pump concrete, but it is the option. They don't have to bring in more equipment should that need occur," said Kelly Blickle of the US subsidiary of German pump maker Putzmeister. The two pumps are scheduled to fly to Japan on April 9 aboard Russian Antonov AN-225 transport planes, the world's largest aircraft.
Japan also planned to deploy a floating steel pontoon that can hold 18,000 tonnes of water, to safely store the highly radioactive runoff that has accumulated in turbine room basements and tunnels, media reports said. As Fukushima has belched radiation that has been measured in minuscule traces as far as New York, Japan has imposed a 20 km exclusion zone around it and has urged people within 30 km to move away. AFP
http://www.thebangladeshtoday.com/international.htm

Some necessary antidote to all the anti-nuclear power stuff:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2988/is-nuclear-power-safe

Coal-burning power plants release close to three times as much radioactivity as nuclear plants.

I heard some months ago on RT someone mention that you get a decent dose of radiation from a long distance plane flight. Meanwhile on PressTv they mention that the Japanese plants were Amerikkka made and "report" there were 1 million deaths due to Chernobyl.

straightdope is a good site (check also how Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear).

Dear Noa Rodman: Well, if you think that nuclear power is producing less radioactivity than coal-burning, why don't you look for a job a the Fukushima plant? They are presently paying $5000 per shift there. But don't forget to take you own dosimeter, gauntlets and safety boots–they won't provide you with this. Ok, at certain hot spots at the site you get your lethal LD50 dosis in two hours, but how do they say at strangedope.com: “Is radiation sickness or cancer a horrible way to die? Yeah. So is black lung“. So go and get your ticket.

Or are you just hanging around and waiting for the next article on that site whos maintainer has apparently consumed to much straight dope in the past? What about “Take care, wind generators are killing millions of people!”. Or “Why reflections from solar panels are preventing our alien friends to land on Earth”? This would be as “scientific” and “factual” as that ignorant crap you linked here.

Noa Rodman:

Some necessary antidote to all the anti-nuclear power stuff: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2988/is-nuclear-power-safe

Are you fucking serious? I suppose after Hiroshima you would have referred people to some Mad magazine comic trivialising the whole thing . I mean, what the fuck are you trying to say here? Will you be putting links to Holocaust denial sites and gas chamber jokes next? Straight Dope is written for dopes by a dope who's clearly never strayed off the straight and narrow and reduces the life around him to frivolity. Insofar as the article linked to pretends to be serious (though I doubt it) I think robot's pertinent remarks here are little too tolerant towards you. You seem to be in a very deep coma.

Malcy:

Anyone know anything about the nuclear fuel storage facility at Rakkasho? Was it affected by the tsunami?

Rokkasho – Japan’s Nuclear Reprocessing Plant – Is Running On Emergency Diesel Power
JAIF also reported that the Rokkasho reprocessing facility was being powered by emergency diesel generators. No other unusual events or radiation leaks have been reported.
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=132&storyCode=2059127
“As of 8 p.m., the base remained almost completely black, save for some buildings with generator back-up. All we can assume is people are hunkering down and bundling up because there’s no heat. It’s brutal.
“There were two big fears: one, that the tsunami would reach far enough inland — two miles — to swamp the base.
“The second was the nuclear power plant Rokkasho. (The Rokkasho nuclear reprocessing facility was being powered by emergency diesel generators. No other unusual events or radiation leaks have been reported.)

From this. Probably this is the usual "reassuring" propaganda since this is from pro-nuke propaganda sources - e.g., this text says

Between the Pacific Ocean coastline and the rich farmland of Rokkasho, in northern Japan, stands a vast and controversial monument to man’s triumph over nature.
The 12.7 trillion yen Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, which can recycle up to 800 tonnes of nuclear waste a year for reuse, will launch the pacifist nation into a new era of nuclear power when it commences operations in July.

Be good if radicals in Japan reading this site could tell help to make us better informed.

What doesn't contribute to an understanding of the disastrous effect of nuke power is this ridiculous comment from ocelot (post 118) in response to something in French I posted:

Given that the current death tolls for the recent catastrophes inflicted on the Japanese are: earthquake + tsunami: ~15,000 ; Fuskushima nuclear leaks: 0, the talk of wholesale murder seems a bit strong.

I suppose if s/he'd said that several hundred thousand people who'd started smoking 200 cigarettes a day 3 weeks ago are still alive, so that's proof that an earthquake can cause more deaths than tobacco, I suspect a few people may have thought

N'importe quoi...

.As for the other objections he made to the French leaflet, I'll have to come back to them at some later date, as I clearly need to do some further research .

As for the dangers of tritium (posts 99 to 106), jacobian dismisses the difference between the information about tritium on La France Nucléaire and the information on the PR site for the American State's Environmental Protection Agency which, bizarrely, he considers some positive reference, "objective" and "neutral". S/he says

None of the facts from either article are in contradiction.

And yet "La France Nucléaire says:

It is less well understood that tritium bound organically can be even more dangerous. It can irradiate the interior of the body for 550 days, compared to only 10 days for tritiated water. It concentrates doses to specific cells and organs instead of being diluted throughout all the body fluid.. Moreover, certain studies suggest that tritium is concentrated in the DNA where it can do genetic damage [Fairlee 92].
After an in-depth study of tritium, an advisory council of the
government of Ontario, Canada recommended that the maximum amount of tritium allowed in drinking water be reduced from 7000 Bq/l to 20 Bq/l within five years and that an even greater reduction be considered [ACES 94]. In France, the limit derived from the annual limit of intake is 274,000 Bq/l....Deputy Chrisian Bataille in the second volume of his report L’évolution de la recherche sur la gestion des déchets nucléaires à haute activité, stated that tritium "presents incontestable dangers for human health that it is advisable never to forget." Further on he wrote, "The authorities responsible for nuclear installations, whether civilian or military, should be conscious that releases of tritium into the environment threaten to become a major problem in future years and certainly one of the main themes of the antinuclear contestation

. Whereas the Environmental Protection Agency says

As with all ionizing radiation, exposure to tritium increases the risk of developing cancer. However, because it emits very low energy radiation and leaves the body relatively quickly, for a given amount of activity ingested, tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides. Since tritium is almost always found as water, it goes directly into soft tissues and organs.

How can someone who gives the appearance of being ultra-logical then say "None of the facts from either article are in contradiction." is a mystery to ignoramuses like me. As I said originally:

I, like I suspect 99% of the population, am completely dependent on information regarding the nuclear industry from sites and experts who seem to know what they're talking about, even if they often say completely conflicting things. jacobian - do you have any special knowledge that makes you think your link is not propaganda but maybe mine is? Or what?

jacobian just seems to muddy the increasingly radioactive waters....but then, who am I - certainly no expert, the appearance of which jacobian obviously likes to play.

(apologies for responding somewhat belatedly to ocelot's and jacobian's posts)

So for me there are two main issues:

A lot of the non-Japanese press has been doing ridiculously alarmist reporting - both about the Tsunami and the situation at Fukushima - for example the Sun interview with a woman from Croydon who'd lived in Tokyo for 10 years, saying it looked like a scene out of 28 days later (not to mention Shibuya Eggman and all the other shit). This has fucked me off a great deal and I have absolutely zero patience for any of their fucking opinion pieces on either side.

On the other hand, TEPCO are lying bastards, there is plenty of documentation of corruption/conflict of interests in the government etc. and Japanese media like NHK is a bit too calm about things as well (and I can't read newspapers, can barely manage food and street signs).

I've been relying on a few people on twitter, who are collating as much as possible from various sources - http://gakuranman.com/great-tohoku-earthquake/#live is one. As well as the updates from the IAEA and similar, which are at least detailed. This at least saves trying to sort through all the shit in UK/US press which is almost entirely useless if not properly misinformation. Also while NHK needs to be compared about other things, they do have an English language stream, so you can at least see the press releases (and call diorama) first hand (2nd hand including the interpreter) instead of 5th hand from foreign journalists.

Mike Harman

(...) I have absolutely zero patience for any of their fucking opinion pieces on either side.

Which sides are you talking of? I guess there are roughly two. On the one hand there is the politico-corporate nuclear complex, that has been cheating people for decades. They have earned multi-billions so far by producing a form of energy nobody will ever be able to control. The worst thing for them would be if they were forced to shut down their plants, because nobody has an idea about what to do with the radioactive waste they produced for more than five decades. Shutting down and wrecking nuclear power plants is the worst case scenario for that industry. In Germany the calculation is 5 billion dollars for wrecking every single nuclear power plant and storing the radioactive debris for a couple of decades until somebody has got an idea where to store it safely for several hundreds of thousands of years. This renders nuclear power electricity the most expensive type of enery production ever.

Not to talk about the fact, that no nuclear power plant on this planet has sufficient insurance for the risk of a severe damage. German nuclear power plants have an insurance for up to 4 billion dollars. Insurance companies are calculating the costs from the Fukushima disaster into several hundred billion dollars, if the situation lasts for a couple of month. in other words using nuclear power has one single purpose – privatizing the benefits while socializing the costs.

This brings us to the other side. Nuclear power plants are one of the worst results of the capitalist market system. Nuclear disasters are as inheritent to the system of nuclear power production as economic crisis is to capitalism. The more reactors, the more disasters. The more disasters, the more centralization and militarization of societies in oder to deal with the consequences and to opress the social unrest linked to it. Fighting the capitalist system and fighting for a libertarian communist society and mode of production therefor necessarily includes fighting the politico-corporate nuclear complex.

Mike Harman:
Haven't looked at the Sun interview, but "alarmism" is not confined to such highly reputable journals. The French State, which knows a thing or two about nuclear power, called for, and helped organise, the evacuation of all French nationals (at least of those who could afford the exhorbitant air fares) from Japan. And I saw a report in The Guardian (can't find it at the moment) of unburied bodies round the plant - caused by the tsunami, but so highly radioactive nobody dared bury them...the "28 days after" reference is obviously journalistic exaggeration designed to sell the paper, but it has some basis in fact.

By the way, France has the world's most concentrated area of nuclear power stations - the Rhone valley, some of which is on a fault line; an earthquake half the strength of FuckU-Shima's has been recorded there; there are dams there that could cause the equivalent of a tsunami if cracked.....Which is one of the reasons why many people in France are far more so-called "alarmist" than the apparent stoicism, so admired by the conservative commentators in the media, of the Japanese. Another reason is the enormous thyroid, and worse, problems that developed 20 years after Chernobyl and the radioactive rainfalls that State and nuclear-lobby propaganda in '86 said couldn't cross the border with Italy because customs would never allow it to (the cloud didn't have a valid passport).

robot - I presume you're based in Germany; I'm based in France: the 2 countries in Europe with the most opposition to nuke power. In 1977 at Malville (translated as "Eviltown") both Germans and French demonstrators erupted in one of the most violent confrontations with the nuclear industry. One demonstrator was killed. In fact, in the 70s, a very different epoch for the class struggle in general, there was a far more radical anti-nuke movement than more recently - though it seems likely that, after FuckU-Shima, there will be an increasingly radical anti-nuclear movement globally. Already we've seen the effects in Germany (a freeze on further nuclear power station construction, and massive calls for the dismantling of its - compared to France - relatively small nuke power industry). The UK and the USA demonstrations and movements have tended to be fairly conventional green pacifist events, but in France and Germany, they've often had an explicitly anti-capitalist perspective.

In 1977 at Malville (translated as "Eviltown") both Germans and French demonstrators erupted in one of the most violent confrontations with the nuclear industry.

I remember I took to the streets of my hometown when the CRS killed Vital Michalon during the demonstration at Malville back in 1977. It was one of my first demonstrations. And yes, anti-nuclear protests have been an integral part in the politics of the German radical left in general and the anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian communist movement in particular since the mid-70 including a wide-range of direct action from blockades to sabotage for more than 40 years now.

robot

Mike Harman

(...) I have absolutely zero patience for any of their fucking opinion pieces on either side.

Which sides are you talking of? I guess there are roughly two.

...
Fighting the capitalist system and fighting for a libertarian communist society and mode of production therefor necessarily includes fighting the politico-corporate nuclear complex.

In direct reference to Fukushima, I have no use for either at the moment. While I'm opposed to nuclear power, by definition it and nuclear waste are going to be around for an extremely long time. Being against nuclear power does not help people to assess what the risks are x number of miles from Fukushima, or how the cleanup operation should be operated. Even if all nuclear power stations are shut down tomorrow, you will still have spent fuel rods etc. to deal with.

Samotnaf

Mike Harman:
Haven't looked at the Sun interview

Found it, enjoy: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3473142/My-nightmare-trapped-in-post-tsunami-Tokyo-City-of-Ghosts.html

The French State, which knows a thing or two about nuclear power, called for, and helped organise, the evacuation of all French nationals (at least of those who could afford the exhorbitant air fares) from Japan.

Right, but Japan is quite a large country. Hokkaido, Okinawa, even Fukuoka are about the same distance from Fukushima as parts of China, South Korea and Russia. At least 600 miles, probably around 1000 for Okinawa.

So if the French government has a Japan-wide evacuation policy, which presumably would include people in Naha, did they also have one for Busan, Jeju, and Vladivostock? If not, is that because radiation flows are restricted to nation states, or because at a certain point (undefined by them), there ceases to be a risk compared to other places more than x miles away from the plant, and it's an arse-covering/diplomatic exercise instead?

And I saw a report in The Guardian (can't find it at the moment) of unburied bodies round the plant - caused by the tsunami, but so highly radioactive nobody dared bury them...the "28 days after" reference is obviously journalistic exaggeration designed to sell the paper

I linked to the article above. Note that kids where face masks in Japan whenever they catch a cold, nuclear disaster or not, the rest of the article speaks for itself.

Which is one of the reasons why many people in France are far more so-called "alarmist" than the apparent stoicism, so admired by the conservative commentators in the media, of the Japanese.

Yes it's this kind of near-racist commentary that is pissing me off. If you look at the news here, it is more or less 24 hour coverage of the crisis, it's a constant topic of discussion (and I live in an area that wasn't hit by the Tsunami at all), there's also been a tonne of panic buying in Tokyo (which has had a worse effect on supplies there than the actual disruption from the tsunami did). Like I said, I mistrust TEPCO/NHK as much as the international media coverage, it is all shit (although at least NHK actually tries to present actual information about what's happening - they have radiation levels tacked onto the weather reports now).

Mike Harman - how inaccurate is The Sun interview? I ask, because I listened to a radio interview with a French woman living in Tokyo a week or so after the meltdown and she was saying something similar, though in a far less panicky way - ie that the city was a bit like a ghost-town and that there were significant shortages of stuff in the shops and of petrol. All calmly stated.

if the French government has a Japan-wide evacuation policy, which presumably would include people in Naha, did they also have one for Busan, Jeju, and Vladivostock? If not, is that because radiation flows are restricted to nation states, or because at a certain point (undefined by them), there ceases to be a risk compared to other places more than x miles away from the plant, and it's an arse-covering/diplomatic exercise instead?

Maybe if they'd told French nationals in Vladivostock etc. to get out that would have been too much for the nuclear lobby, because it would have given an impression of greater widespread contamination than they wanted to give (most people's imagination is not entirely logical). Or maybe the government assumed that the radioactivity didn't have a visa to go travelling outside Japan. Nevertheless, evacuating the French wasn't very good PR for the nuclear industry, which is very much in cahoots with the French State, so it implies they wanted to give an impression of mantaining the health of "their" nationals balanced with not being so logical as to evacuate people in Russia etc.
I should add that, though the French TV gave the impression of an order to evacuate Japan as a whole, and I've heard someone else say that this was the case, I've not treble, quadruple or centuple checked - which seems like the thing you have to do nowadays, because nuances of misinformation contaminate everything . It may have only been limited areas.

Samotnaf

Mike Harman - how inaccurate is The Sun interview? I ask, because I listened to a radio interview with a French woman living in Tokyo a week or so after the meltdown and she was saying something similar, though in a far less panicky way - ie that the city was a bit like a ghost-town and that there were significant shortages of stuff in the shops and of petrol. All calmly stated.

I haven't been to Tokyo since this happened, but have spoken to people who live there.

There are significant shortages in the shops, this is mainly due to panic buying (one friends's work mate has a 3 month old, and had to got to 10 or 20 supermarkets to buy bottled water - sometimes seeing people walking off with crates of the stuff just before they got there).

In terms of a ghost town, that's a bit silly. A lot of lights got switched off to save power, and there were some power cuts especially in the suburbs (although scheduled). However people were going to work even while the aftershocks were pretty strong afaik.

Maybe if they'd told French nationals in Vladivostock etc. to get out that would have been too much for the nuclear lobby, because it would have given an impression of greater widespread contamination than they wanted to give (most people's imagination is not entirely logical). Or maybe the government assumed that the radioactivity didn't have a visa to go travelling outside Japan. Nevertheless, evacuating the French wasn't very good PR for the nuclear industry, which is very much in cahoots with the French State, so it implies they wanted to give an impression of mantaining the health of "their" nationals balanced with not being so logical as to evacuate people in Russia etc.
I should add that, though the French TV gave the impression of an order to evacuate Japan as a whole, and I've heard someone else say that this was the case, I've not treble, quadruple or centuple checked - which seems like the thing you have to do nowadays, because nuances of misinformation contaminate everything . It may have only been limited areas.

According to Reuters it was just Tokyo and areas north of there (although again presumably not Hokkaido). If so this is only slightly wider than the UK and US zones (which in turn are only slightly wider than the Japanese governments). Tokyo's < 200km from Fukushima.

so it implies they wanted to give an impression of mantaining the health of "their" nationals balanced with not being so logical as to evacuate people in Russia etc.

Or there could actually be no significant risk beyond a certain number of kilometres and the food chain.

Either way, while I hate George Monbiot (and the tone of the article), http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nuclear-lobby-misled-world covers some of my feeling on this. The situation is already bad, so there's no need to exaggerate it or throw figures around - and doing so completely fucks up any kind of proper criticism of data that's skewed the other way.

In other news - http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110405x1.html

The George Monbiot article hits the nail on the head (albiet from the wrong way). The massive insurmountable problem with this issue is that actual scientific evidence is very rarely used and even then is likely to have been produced with a clear bias in mind. I have read this entire thread with great interest and while the class-based arguments are solid, i can't see any evidence that can't be explained by being from either the pro or anti-nuclear lobby. Infact it's probably impossible to find unbiased evidence and statistics in this debate and considering the overriding factor is radiation and it's effects to humans and the environment, that makes it very hard to come to any kind of conclusion.

However Monbiot thinks that a lack of 'neutral' evidence is a sign to plough on with nuclear power, which is clearly retarted considering the potential risks.

Before someone pipes up with "science cant be neutral"... Yes but nuclear power is clearly an issue that revolves around the study of bio-chemistry, which I (and probably most people in Libcom) know fuck all about.

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling

The George Monbiot article hits the nail on the head (albiet from the wrong way). The massive insurmountable problem with this issue is that actual scientific evidence is very rarely used and even then is likely to have been produced with a clear bias in mind. I have read this entire thread with great interest and while the class-based arguments are solid, i can't see any evidence that can't be explained by being from either the pro or anti-nuclear lobby. Infact it's probably impossible to find unbiased evidence and statistics in this debate and considering the overriding factor is radiation and it's effects to humans and the environment, that makes it very hard to come to any kind of conclusion.

However Monbiot thinks that a lack of 'neutral' evidence is a sign to plough on with nuclear power, which is clearly retarted considering the potential risks.

Before someone pipes up with "science cant be neutral"... Yes but nuclear power is clearly an issue that revolves around the study of bio-chemistry, which I (and probably most people in Libcom) know fuck all about.

Yep, exactly.

i also hate Monbiot.

what i think is that capital's nature as only a measure of total labour time and surplus value really comes to a fore when examining nuclear safety. it fails to take into account the full potential cost to humanity if there is a blow-up.

i'm not saying there weren't safety systems in place, its just that the drive to supply Japan's energy needs led to some of them being built pretty close to the coast.

the safety standards, which surely had to be imposed by the state to begin with, were not as tight as they ought to be due to a) the influence of the capitalists over politics and b) the necessity to provide growth for japanese capitalism

What this debate really needs...

Sir Arthur Greeb-Streebling:

Monbiot thinks that a lack of 'neutral' evidence is a sign to plough on with nuclear power

Not at all how I read it - he thinks that the "scientific concensus" is neutral, and constantly refers to a United Nations body - UNSCEAR - as if it was The Truth .

I know nothing about UNSCARE, but I know that the World Health Organisation ( WHO), another UN body, is utterly complicitous with the nuclear lobby. Signed on May 28, 1959 at the 12th World Health Assembly, an agreement between the WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA ) states:

“Whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement,” and continues: The IAEA and the WHO “recognize that they may find it necessary to apply certain limitations for the safeguarding of confidential information furnished to them. They therefore agree that nothing in this agreement shall be construed as requiring either of them to furnish such information as would, in the judgment of the other party possessing the information, interfere with the orderly conduct of its operation.”
Perhaps we/I should do some research on UNSCEAR - but since science has always been an arm of the bourgeoisie (admittedly in also some of its progressive aspects in its struggle against religion), citing their findings as a positive reference is indicative of Mobiots bourgeois perspectives. Not at all neutral - as if one's selection of facts can ever be 'neutral'. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence proving the devastating effects of radiation - deformities in animals in France, post-Chernobyl, high increases in thyroid problems 20 years on. And before people dismiss "anecdotal " evidence as "unscientific" - the way scientists often like to dismiss things as mere anecdotal evidence simply because they're utterly alienated from any concern about daily life and uninterested in anything they don't get paid to research - we should remember that loads of aspects of history - our own as well as that of the class struggle - is "anecdotal" (for that matter, the evidence of much of the slaughter in the gas chambers is "anecdotal" - ie passed down by people's experience of it...)

Tommy Ascaso:

Are any of the people arguing strongly against nuclear power on this thread under 40? I'm getting the impression that such strong opposition to it seems to be a generational thing. I used to be very opposed to it but now I don't think I really care, there are still some things that worry me but it feels kind of insignificant as an issue in my life.

Since you were under 40 when you felt strongly against it, your comment doesn't make sense (or am I reading you wrong?). I know of people in France and the States who are around 30 who are furious about nuclear power. It's you - and maybe a reflection of the vast ignorance and repression that has dominated the counter-revolution in the UK for the past 20 years or so (the amazing ignorance towards GMOs - as if you have to be a primitivist or hippy to oppose them - is also symptomatic of the lack of consciouness in the UK). Maybe also an excessive respect for science, and just a general resignation to miserable health conditions, possibly more prevalent in the UK than elsewhere, because modern science financed by the bourgeoisie first developed there and so it's part of the national culture more than in other countries....? I don't know...

Btw, Mike Harman, is there any information you have about Rokkasho?

Samotnaf

Perhaps we/I should do some research on UNSCEAR - but since science has always been an arm of the bourgeoisie (admittedly in also some of its progressive aspects in its struggle against religion), citing their findings as a positive reference is indicative of Mobiots bourgeois perspectives. Not at all neutral - as if one's selection of facts can ever be 'neutral'. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence proving the devastating effects of radiation - deformities in animals in France, post-Chernobyl, high increases in thyroid problems 20 years on. And before people dismiss "anecdotal " evidence as "unscientific" - the way scientists often like to dismiss things as mere anecdotal evidence simply because they're utterly alienated from any concern about daily life and uninterested in anything they don't get paid to research - we should remember that loads of aspects of history - our own as well as that of the class struggle - is "anecdotal" (for that matter, the evidence of much of the slaughter in the gas chambers is "anecdotal" - ie passed down by people's experience of it...)

The reason scientists dismiss anecdotal evidence is because it has not in any way a comprehensive research using the scientific method. Plenty of people see what they think are UFO's in the sky and they are quite right to think they are because we are unable to judge what is causing this phenomenon without applying some kind of test.

The holocaust has nothing to do with science, it is an historical event and our understanding of historical events can only ever be based on 'anecdotal' evidence as we cannot test them in a lab. We don't come to the conclusion that the Earth travels round the sun and not vice versa because of anecdotal evidence.

I agree with you that science is used as an arm of the Bourgeois, For this reason alone scientists say should not be taken as gospel unless you yourself are in a position to review the evidence or research method. But how can you make claims to the contrary if you do not have research based evidence to back you up.

Nuclear bulletin #20

1 April, 2011, 11:00 PM BST---Events in Fukushima Prefecture have settled into unsettledness, with a very long-term process of pumping out vast quantities radioactive water, removing it to tanks under construction, flushing the cores with new fresh water, eventual removal of spent fuel rods, and then long-term entombment. TEPCO has announced final decommissioning of all six units, quashing speculation that two units someday might be placed back in service. The Japanese government has said it will seek control of TEPCO through stock purchases, facilitated by the fact that the stock has lost 80% of its value. This also seems directed at quelling public rumors and fears that TEPCO is not pursuing the public interest.

Meanwhile, the cores in at least three units will continue to melt down, in a time-released catastrophe, wherein the containment vessels have become like pharmaceutical capsules, disintegrating slowly. In contrast to Chernobyl, which was described as a "volcano" that ejected material into the atmosphere quickly, over the initial three weeks, Fukushima was a slow starter, but will unstoppably leak radioactive isotopes for many months or years. Reports now of high levels of plutonium and cesium in water at the site and nearby ocean will continue for a very long time. But there is no ejection force, so the pattern of calamity will be different from Ukraine in 1986. Here we will see concentrated suffering and relative safety at a distance. Inverse square law applies.

This will require an adjustment of public psychology about nuclear disasters. We are used to categorizing atomic dangers into either those that flash and burn, or those that permit the technical salvation of containment. At Fukushima we have neither. Quick remedies like the duck and cover approach or prophylactics like potassium iodide will all be ineffective (store those KI pills for a future episode), because we're in this for the long haul. Seepage not explosion is the watchword. Yet the wizards of atomic technology gizmos will increasingly be made to look impotent, because their long-term pump and flush campaign will be continually trumped by the irrevocable dynamic of seawater and soil. The Leak shall inherit the earth.

This is the worst-case scenario for the nuclear industry, and for US politicians attempting to triangulate in prep for the 2012 election. They all would like the story to go away, and a cynic might even suspect that the Obama about-face in Libya was aimed at blasting Fukushima off the front page. Let's get on with our necessary pre-election nuclear boosterism in the dilapidated precincts of Appalachia already.

Well, that's not going to happen. The German full retreat, the new decision by China to divert development from nuclear to solar -- China to Cut Nuclear Goal After Japan Reactor Crisis - Bloomberg, the decommissioning decision in Japan, and even plaintiff howling from the nucleomaniacal French, mean that the industry is in trouble. That industry depended (past tense) on logarithmic future growth projections. It was the only thing they had to anaesthetize the chambers of commerce and trade unions. But now nuclear power is a negative-growth proposition.

So the US Department of Energy is mum on the question of nuclear power, and so are virtually all US politicians except for the anti-nuclear few like Ed Markey and Dennis Kucinich. Obama issued a gung-ho nuclear statement absent of the crucial details, like whether he will grant loan guarantees, which only made him sound like he's ordered news from Japan redacted from his morning paper. If he sticks to that position, he will lose in 2012. Whether that would mean the end of the world remains to be seen.

-- Geoffrey Sea

Thanks for the Geoffrey Sea articles, Hieronymous, they seem to provide some of the best insight into this frightening event.

I'll add this NY Times article, which paints, if anything, a more frightening picture than we've previous heard.

Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.

Just for info, the following site has plots of various data for the first 3 reactors.

Plots of reactor data - Fukushima Daiichi - Units #1--#3

The data source, since 22/03, is NISA, so be aware of that. Click on the thumbnail graphics of the plots to get a larger view (and magnify to see detail). Core pressure on reactor #1 is trending in a disturbing direction.

On the general radiation exposure thing, there's this cool graphic from everyone's favourite geek-humour page, xkcd xkcd: Radiation Dose Chart

On UNSCEAR background, they appear to have been set up in the aftermath of the Castle Bravo disaster. That's the one (1 Mar 1954) where they set off a bomb on Bikini atoll which turned out to be 250% more powerful than they thought and irradiated a load of Marshall Islanders and the crew of the Japanse tuna trawler Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon no 5), inspiring Godzilla and the Japanese anti-nuclear movement.

UNSCEAR seems to have grown out the then-secret Project 4.1 set up, officially, 6 days after the disaster, to try and measure and study the effects of the fallout (unofficially some people claim that Project 4.1 was set up before the Bravo detonation, and that the whole thing was planned, but that's a whole other can of conspira-worms).

A measure of the different perspectives of UNSCEAR, WHO, etc, can perhaps be provided by their differing estimates of the Chernobyl fallout related death-toll. From WP:

Estimates of the number of deaths potentially resulting from the accident vary enormously; the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest it could reach 4,000 while a Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more. A UNSCEAR report places the total deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008.

200,000 or 64... yer pays yer money and you takes yer choice.

For data, there are decent graphs, compiled from as many sources as possible at fleep.com http://fleep.com/earthquake/

You can see overall levels of radiation going down, with some exceptions (like the plants, and some of the water processing plants).

I would be extremely careful with any radiation data from TEPCO or NISA. NISA is but a lobby organization for the Japanese nuclear power industry. The sources for independant radiation measuremets are very limited at present. Samples taken by Greenpeace within the past few days outside the 30 km evacuation perimeter, are quite alarming. At Tsushima (30 km from Fukushima I) yesterday the radiation level according to Greenpeace was at 47 µSievert/h. This is enough to get the anual dosis in about 24 hours. According to Reuters, the Japanese government plans to weaken the official radiation threshold within the next few days because otherwise loads of people will have to be considered as being contaminated and might therefor apply for compensations. The radioactivity threshold for Japanese fish and agricultural trade goods allowed to pass the European Union customs was already weakend substantially last week by the European Commision.

ocelot:
That UNSCEAR information, which the increasingly nauseating Monbiot uses without mentioning how ridiculously understated it is even in relation to other UN bodies which collaborate with the nuclear energy industry (e.g. the WHO), shows,as if we needed further evidence, how "neutral" science is.

I suspect those in the immediate area can't bear to think of the upheaval of leaving, so are very happy to hear that everyone other than the official experts are just spreading scare stories, preferring the soporific reassurances of NISA to the "anti-nuke agenda-driven" research of Greenpeace (pointed out by robot above). I obviously don't support Greenpeace, based as it is on the attempt to recuperate the anger into reformist policies and activism, but I'd guess their research is a little less motivated by muti-billion dollar concerns than TEPCO's or NISA's. My dad passed through Berlin in March 1939 and saw a Jewish dentist friend of his, telling him to get out before it was too late. The dentist dismissed his suggestion, saying something like "It can't get any worse than it is". Not quite the same historical context of course, but a similar psychology at play: petrification before the uncoming juggernaut. UNSCARE should be the collective name of these official "experts".

Meanwhile...

Demonstrations in California: No More Nukes!
A spike in the level of radioactive iodine, linked to the release of I-131 from Japan's Fukushima Daichii plant, was discovered in milk samples in California's San Luis Obispo County in late March. Then on April 2nd, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a press release, stating that radioactive material in California's rainwater is the result of the nuclear disaster in Japan.
While health officials are rushing to assure the public that these increases present no danger to human health, Californians are expressing deep concern about the possibility of a Fukushima-like scenario in their state, where two nuclear reactors are poised near earthquake faults on the coast. During a protest in the San Francisco Peninsula city of Menlo Park, held shortly after the magnitude of Japan's crisis became evident, demonstrators called for the immediate halt of the "rubber-stamping of licenses for nuclear reactors by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission". More demonstrations are scheduled for the month of April.
In San Francisco there is an urgent call to action for April 14th. Organizers are encouraging California residents to speak out at the Board of the California Public Utility Commission's public meeting to call for the closure of Diablo Canyon, a nuclear reactor that is a mere 200 miles from the city.
Mothers for Peace, a group that protested the establishment of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in the 1970's and has continued to question its safety, is organizing a mass demonstration on April 16th at Avila Beach, California, near that nuclear plant.
April 26th will see a global day of action against nuclear power on the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl. Demonstrators will gather in cities throughout the U.S. and in many countries. Near San Francisco, a protest will be held in Menlo Park.

- from here.

robot

Samples taken by Greenpeace within the past few days outside the 30 km evacuation perimeter, are quite alarming. At Tsushima (30 km from Fukushima I) yesterday the radiation level according to Greenpeace was at 47 µSievert/h. This is enough to get the anual dosis in about 24 hours.

Do you actually have a link to this? Is there a comparison to TEPCO/NISA's anywhere?

That fleep site is taking readings from prefecture websites, not just NISA and TEPCO (although it's possible that the prefectures are just republishing data from NISA and TEPCO) - I've been meaning to get in touch with the fleep person to see about adding more sources.

According to Reuters, the Japanese government plans to weaken the official radiation threshold within the next few days because otherwise loads of people will have to be considered as being contaminated and might therefor apply for compensations. The radioactivity threshold for Japanese fish and agricultural trade goods allowed to pass the European Union customs was already weakend substantially last week by the European Commision.

Again, links are nice.

Also, http://www.jpquake.info/

German lanuage readers might find this interview interesting. It's a debate of two scientists about whether the Fukushima disaster ist already as worse as was Tchernobyl or whether it is already even worse. The interview was published on march 30, when the contamination situation was not at worse as it appears to be now.

The one stating that Fukushima is already beyond Tchernobyl is Thomas Dersee who is working for the „Gesellschaft für Strahlenschutz“ (Society for radiation protection - GfS). This is a public institution that is very nuclear power friendly. The GfS for instance is the authorising body for the annual nuclear waste transports from La Hague / France to Gorleben / Germany (We love them, because they give us the annual opportunity to have three days including lots of fun with 25,000 police troopers trying to get 6 or 12 Castor containers in, burning 70,000,000 to 100,000,000 Dollars of taxes for each transport).

While they have somewhat different opinions concerning the level the disaster has already reached, there conclusion is, that Pandoras box has been opened, that the situation can worsen substantially at any moment, that the exposure and accumulation of radioactive material will be a long-lasting process and that presently nobody has an idea about whether and how the situation could be controlled in the near future.

So, looking on the Greenpeace site, I couldn't find the article that robot mentioned, but I did find this:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/Greenpeace-expands-Fukushima-radiation-team/Greenpeace-finds-high-contamination-levels-in-Minamisoma/

The government has been publishing raw data from its own field monitoring, however, its assessment is currently far from comprehensive (4). Further radiation measurements made by the team in several parts of Minamisoma city show levels up to 4.5 microSievert per hour, which contrasts with the only official monitoring point in Minamisoma City which shows the relatively low levels of 0.7 microSievert per hour. (5).

“While the Japanese government’s data is not necessarily incorrect, it is neither telling the full story, nor being adequately used to protect the health of people in Minamisoma” said radiation expert Jan Vande Putte, who is leading one of the Greenpeace radiation monitoring teams. “Our measurements, taken between government monitoring points, show elevated levels of contamination outside the official 20km mandatory evacuation zone that indicate a risk to health, yet people in Minamisoma are only being advised to stay indoors or leave on a voluntary basis. This is unacceptable.”

This is a completely sane article, that doesn't require any conspiracy on the part of TEPCO or NISA to hide data they have - just points out two things:

1. The data being released is not comprehensive enough - one monitoring station cannot accurately represent a city of tens of thousands of people, in the same way rainfall and snowfall isn't consistent in anywhere a few miles across, especially day-to-day.

2. TEPCO and the Japanese government are giving very little useful advice to people within various radius from the plant.

Both of these can be perfectly true without there being a cover-up, lying, or a need to sensationalise this into 'OMG MELTDOWN CHERNOBYL".

robot:

German lanuage readers might find this interview interesting. ...
The one stating that Fukushima is already beyond Tchernobyl is Thomas Dersee who is working for the „Gesellschaft für Strahlenschutz“ (Society for radiation protection - GfS). This is a public institution that is very nuclear power friendly. The GfS for instance is the authorising body for the annual nuclear waste transports from La Hague / France to Gorleben / Germany ...
While they have somewhat different opinions concerning the level the disaster has already reached, there conclusion is, that Pandoras box has been opened, that the situation can worsen substantially at any moment, that the exposure and accumulation of radioactive material will be a long-lasting process and that presently nobody has an idea about whether and how the situation could be controlled in the near future.

Any chance, when you've got the time, of translating the relevant bits of what they actually said (rather than your précis) for those of us whose German is either non-existent or pretty crap?

Checking out the figures for unit #1, the core pressure is still building to dangerous levels. This means they're going to have to try and vent some of the excess gas to prevent an explosion. Problem is, most of that gas is hydrogen which tends to react explosively with airborn oxygen, so now TEPCO are injecting Nitrogen into the containment vessel. (NB, the line in the various newspaper stories is that this is just to prevent accidental explosion of hydrogen leaked into the containment vessel, but my nuke techie mate assures me that its preparation for venting gas from the core (again, see core pressure readings, NISA sourced or not). Could be another big bang, and almost certainly another release of radiation.

Incidentally, I've no idea what drugs German scientists are taking, but Chernobyl basically blew the entire reactor core into the atmosphere (thanks also to a flammable graphite core, which is also not part of this design). That's not the case here (at least not yet!).

There was an earlier assertion (by Robot? can't recall) that there are only 2 sides here - the pro-nuclear industry, pro-capitalist side, and the anti-nuclear, anti-capitalist side. I dispute this. There is a third side that is anti-capitalist and nuke industry-sceptic but believes in the necessity of sticking to the actual science of the dangers, rather than resorting to fantastical stories that bear no relation to reality and, if anything, actually let the nuclear industry and their institutional defenders, off the hook by giving them easy targets to make out that the critics of the industry's appalling safety record are all hysterical conspiraloons whose alarmist tales can be disproved with ease.

Mike Harman

robot

Samples taken by Greenpeace within the past few days outside the 30 km evacuation perimeter, are quite alarming. At Tsushima (30 km from Fukushima I) yesterday the radiation level according to Greenpeace was at 47 µSievert/h. This is enough to get the anual dosis in about 24 hours.

Do you actually have a link to this? Is there a comparison to TEPCO/NISA's anywhere?

It is on the international Greenpeace site here. They say their measurement war 47 µSievert/h “compared to the 32.7 reported by the authorities”. So obviously some official body as well detected quite high radiation levels. But I did not find any source where those measurments have been published.

Somebody leaked a comprehensive internal AREVA report yesterday. AREVA is the worlds largest nuclear power plant construction company – they had a working party at Fukushima the day of the Tsunami. According to the German investigation TV format “Monitor”, AREVA does not like to comment the report, because it “is not intended for public use”. The are quite some facts in it, the most interesting section might be page 30 ff. which deals with the situation in the waste rod pit of reactor 4. They say that due to maintanance, the complete core of reactor 4 is presently stored in that waste rod pit and that “It is currently unclear if release from fuel pool already happened” following a possible “core melt on 'fresh air’“. The AREVA report dates from april 1. “Monitor“ showed new areal view fotos of the destroyed outer containment of reactor 4. A nuclear power scientist did a comment that one can see the transport crane of the waste rod pit that had collapsed into the fuel pool and that there was no water at all in the pit, propably because the pit had been broken by the Tsunami or the hydrogen explosion in reactor building 4. Under normal conditions, those rods are covered by more than 5 meters of water.

Tonight started with some sort of dejà-vu. The news say that following the 7.1 earth-quake earlier today, the following nuclear power plants got cut off their external power supply: Onagawa, Higashidori and the Rokkasho rod reprocessing plant. All those plants are or were on emergency power today. While I try to be optimistic, the wording in the press-releases sound pretty much the same than it had been on Fukushimas black friday.

I believe that radiation measure in micro-sieverts is essentially not dangerous unless you in the area indefinitely.

The worker who injured at the plant, for example, were in water giving off more than a full sievert/hour. (A million times more radiation).

Of course, we also know the reactor was dumping similar water in the ocean until they supposedly stopped recently.

Unless there's a serious explosion at the plant, it's reasonable to think there surrounding land-area won't get huge doses of radiation - but there's no guarantee there won't be such a further explosion considering they essentially have not regained control of the reactor - meaning that all they are doing is flooding it with water from the outside and hoping for the best (well, water, boron and nitrogen). The parts of the reactor that are melted and the parts that are covered with salt may cool down or they may accumulate heat. If they accumulate heat, they just melt and dilute themselves or they might explode. Melted parts could also interfere with other stuff cool. This unstable situation could continue for a long time. It's "bucket chemistry" and no one has tried these particular buckets before.

[quote=NY Times]“I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods,” said Mr. Lochbaum [David A. Lochbaum, Nuclear Engineer For Union Of Concerned Scientists], who was not involved in preparing the document. “This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don’t work out for them.” [/quote]

RedHughs

I believe that radiation measure in micro-sieverts is essentially not dangerous unless you in the area indefinitely.

Or as long as you do not swallow or inhale contaminated water or food or dust. Because once certain radioactive element are incorporated into human bones and fat tissue they accumulate the dosis hour past hour.

RedHughs

The worker who injured at the plant, for example, were in water giving off more than a full sievert/hour. (A million times more radiation).

Yes and unfortunately they won't propably die from old age. 1-2 Sv is medically LD 10/30 (10% risk of dying from radiation sickness within 30 days). The LD 50/30 dose is at 3-4 Sv. TEPCO did not release any information how long those worker had to work with their unprotected feet in radioactive water. But three hours would have been enough to kill half of them in a little while. Not counting the culmulative effects from the other sources of radiation the workers at the plant are permantly exposed to. Prior to the disaster it appeared as if it were TEPCOs code of practice to send homeless people, working poor, migrant workers and other marginalized persons in for higher radiation maintenance jobs. In Japan those workers are called “throwaway workers”.

ocelot

There is a third side that is anti-capitalist and nuke industry-sceptic but believes in the necessity of sticking to the actual science of the dangers, rather than resorting to fantastical stories that bear no relation to reality and, if anything, actually let the nuclear industry and their institutional defenders, off the hook by giving them easy targets to make out that the critics of the industry's appalling safety record are all hysterical conspiraloons whose alarmist tales can be disproved with ease.

Thank you.

robot

TEPCO did not release any information how long those worker had to work with their unprotected feet in radioactive water.

This was well reported at the time, I can't remember now but it was either 45 minutes or three hours. The story as reported (and it fits well with employing barely trained people) is that they disbelieved their radiation monitors, thinking they were faulty when they went completely off the scale - so just stayed their working with water in their boots. But it was definitely reported how long they were in there for, and for how long, so I'm not sure why you're asserting that it wasn't.

By the way, big earthquake last night - biggest since the three on the 11th, and I felt it a fair way from the epicentre (house was shaking/rocking for two to three minutes). A couple of power stations (not daiichi) went onto emergency power (or one step away from emergency power), but so far there doesn't seem to have been a regression in the situation at any of them compared to how it already was.

Mike Harman

By the way, big earthquake last night - biggest since the three on the 11th, and I felt it a fair way from the epicentre (house was shaking/rocking for two to three minutes). A couple of power stations (not daiichi) went onto emergency power (or one step away from emergency power), but so far there doesn't seem to have been a regression in the situation at any of them compared to how it already was.

Looks as if here is the next “minor problem”, this time at Onagawa followingf yesterdays quake: Water leaked at Japan's Onagawa nuclear plant.

Just on the UNSCEAR report on Chernobyl and Monbiot's reference to it, there's a good letter in the Guardian about this.

Lack of vital knowledge about effects of the Chernobyl accident

[...]
The [UNSCEAR] document [on Chernobyl fallout effects] does not represent any consensus across the relevant scientific community.

In fact, recently a group of experts, under the auspices of a European commission project (arch.iarc.fr), has completed an in-depth review of the health-related research on the sequelae of the Chernobyl accident to date and found that, apart from research on the thyroid cancer outbreak, the international coverage is "unco-ordinated ... forming a patchwork ... rather than a comprehensive, structured attempt to delineate the overall health consequences of the accident". The truth is we, as the international scientific community, don't know the true impact of the accident on health because the funds have not been available to thoroughly investigate it.[...]

Nuclear bulletin #21 - The "Radiation" Debate

6 April 2011--While a real calamity unfolds in Japan, Western attention is being unconscionably diverted to a "debate" about low-level radiation effects, a debate that corresponds to no real scientific dispute, but instead relates only to the peculiar politics of the so-called "anti-nuclear" movement.

To be clear, the important consequences of Fukushima will not relate to "low-level" radiation. Stories are already appearing about acute radiation sickness and other short-term effects appearing and anticipated in the hundreds of workers and soldiers exposed to HIGH doses at and near the reactor site. Waylaying the conversation to personal agendas about whether very low levels of radiation do or do not cause health effects, while disaster management is ongoing, is obscene. I could digress to talk about the lack of focus in modern discourse, but that might undermine my own point. People are now suffering and dying from high-dose radiation, and other consequences of the earthquake and tsunami. Focus, people, focus.

Last week, the show Democracy Now! aired a "debate" between the so-called anti-nuclear crusader (appropriate term) Helen Caldicott, and the former so-called anti-nuclear activist turned pro-nuclear apologist George Monbiot. Monbiot has now published a virulent attack on Caldicott in The Guardian, The unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby has misled us all | George Monbiot | The Guardian. Monbiot's piece is mostly correct (see below) and even more totally beside the point, because Helen Caldicott has not, does not, and will not ever represent any strain of serious thought on any subject. It's high time that this becomes universally recognized.

As disclosure that serves as essential background, thirty-three years ago, I was hired to work as the national staff person for the new organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility, of which Helen Caldicott then served as board president. I was merely a junior at Harvard College, but one of my responsibilities, assigned by the executive director and the board, was to review Caldicott's speech texts for accuracy.

That job was both easy and impossible, because as far as accuracy was concerned, there was none in anything penned by Dr. Caldicott. She was ultimately removed by the PSR board for this very problem, as she also was by the board of the next organization she founded -- Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament.

To give one representative example, Helen was giving a regular stump speech about the consequences of nuclear war to physicians at hospitals and medical schools, which contained the line (verbatim): "After a nuclear war, the earth will be populated by bands of roving mutant humanoids."

There was no use asking Helen for a source of that non-medical opinion -- obviously she had watched some late-night sci-fi B movie. More than a few times I edited that line out from Caldicott's speech texts, but every time she would reinsert the line when giving her talk.

This led to growing confrontations within the PSR organization, fed by a whistleblower problem. Helen's personal secretary came to me confidentially one day (it now can be revealed) to report that Caldicott's then-recent book Nuclear Madness had actually been authored by the secretary, not by Helen, and without credit or attribution. The charge was valid. I was also given, by a whistleblower, a copy of instructions, in Helen's handwriting, on how to deliver the "anti-nuclear" message by appealing to gut-level emotions, not to facts. Often, Caldicott would say openly that the only way to stop "nuclear madness" was to make men feel queasy "in their testicles". Her political naivete was astounding, as when she arrived at a large demonstration in Washington D.C. in a staff car provided by the Soviet embassy.

Between 1978 and 1981, PSR board members and staff decided to deal with this problem internally, mostly out of a hope that Helen Caldicott could be reasoned with and persuaded to stop her tirades of nonsense. This decision I personally regret, because Helen has never stopped. At WAND she persistently advocated that nuclear weapons could be eliminated by having women refuse to sleep with men until it happened -- a strategy that brought quizzical reactions from feminist audiences that were largely lesbian. Throughout the 1980s, it was Helen Caldicott who trumpeted the false claims of disease clusters resulting from Three Mile Island, which not only diverted attention away from real problems revealed by the accident, but also led to disastrous litigation on behalf of alleged victims who could prove no harm in court.

In the 1990s, leading up to and including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Caldicott almost single-handedly brought the Ba'ath Party lie about depleted uranium to American shores. In actual fact, cancer clusters in and near Basra had been caused by the demolition of depots containing Iraqi chemical weapons during the 1991 Gulf War. Obviously unwilling to disclose that fact, Saddam Hussein and his party concocted the idea that the cancers were caused by American depleted uranium weapons left scattered in the desert. This made no sense whatsoever, yet Caldicott turned it into yet another cause celebre, and she started the allegation that the United States was waging a "nuclear war" in Iraq. This calumny not only made anti-war activists in the West look like imbeciles, it also fed recruitment efforts by terrorist groups in the Middle East, as Islamic militant groups were only too happy to repeat the allegation made by an Australian-American physician.

So now Helen Caldicott is on to Fukushima, and George Monbiot is on to Helen Caldicott. Monbiot is correct in virtually all of his criticisms of Caldicott, but he focuses on her weaknesses because he has so little to say in defense of his own position. Yes, Caldicott always stresses that low-level radiation causes birth defects, because she has learned, like a crass televangelist, that the birth-defect pitch gets people to open their checkbooks. An Arab woman I saw protesting in New York City in 2003 carried posters of photos of Iraqi children with birth defects, allegedly caused by depleted uranium, because that woman had listened to Helen Caldicott. (It can be stated with certainty that none of those birth defects were caused by depleted uranium, which has a half-life of about 4 billion years.)

Monbiot is absolutely right to trash that argument, because, contrary to everything you've heard from the Caldicott contingent, low-level radiation does NOT cause birth defects, and gross birth defects are almost never caused by radiation exposure of the parents prior to conception. The birth defects seen following Hiroshima and Nagasaki were caused by direct exposure of fetuses to HIGH doses of radiation in utero. Since pregnant women are not sloshing through the flooded trenches at Fukushima, this is not an issue of the current catastrophe.

Genetic illnesses, another of Caldicott's favorite topics, also do not manifest from low-level radiation exposure in the way that Caldicott has often claimed. Again, we learned from long-term follow-up of the A-Bomb survivors, as well as from fruit fly studies, that practically no genetic illnesses appear in the first generation. It takes multiple generations for such effects to appear, meaning, for humans, roughly forty years or more. So while genetic effects may be predicted in the abstract, you'll never be able to point to disease cases in downwind populations and pin those cases on Fukushima. That argument is long-term and statistical, as unfortunate as that may be for Helen Caldicott's bank account.

The real dilemmas we will face at Fukushima - and this is where Monbiot dissembles - concern the populations within a fifty-mile radius. These include evacuations that will become permanent, resulting homelessness, devastation of the agricultural economy because of bans on area food, heavy reliance of the Japanese diet on seafood, social stigma of the highly exposed survivors who will constitute a new class of hibakusha, and personal choices against having children, the latter problem magnified by the Caldicott propaganda.

Smarten up, people. The funding vultures who exploit mass tragedies for their own aggrandizement are circling. Change the channel, pass by the books, pay attention to the legitimate experts in the field. And keep your attention focused on the real victims in Japan. The discernable effects of Fukushima will be concentrated within a fifty-mile radius of Fukushima, and that's bad enough. The discussion about distant downwind effects is all distraction.

The "anti-nuclear" contingent, led by Dr. Caldicott, has been the best friend that the nuclear industry ever had. We made a mistake not going public about the problem in 1979. It needs to be aired now, so that we're not caught in the claws of the very same inanity yet another time around. Lies have victims too.

Immediately after the Caldicott-Monbiot debate on Democracy Now! I was invited to appear on that show. I declined. I told Amy Goodman the same thing I will say publicly here: I won't lend my credibility to any outlet that provides a platform for willful distortion and distraction. Five years after the last time that Helen Caldicott appears on her show, Amy is welcome to call me.

--Geoffrey Sea

Just a little update for the playdowners who like to qualify themselves as “unscarers”.

(TOKYO, April 12 - Kyodo) Japan raises nuke accident severity level to highest 7 from 5. Japan on Tuesday raised the severity level of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to the maximum 7 on an international scale, up from the current 5 and matching that of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.

They also increased the evacuation area around the plant to include places with higher levels of accumulated radiation (I think at the moment it's town by down rather than simply a higher radius, possibly the radius will be increased too).

Both of these reflect a response to what's already happened at the plant (IMO at least the evacuation is very late coming but at least it's happening, I'm don't think the severity levels are very useful apart from for headlines), neither is due to new developments (which it looks like there are not many after the large-ish earthquake yesterday).

Some questions from an ignorant unscientific mind:

Hieronymous quotes Geoffrey Sea:

In the 1990s, leading up to and including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Caldicott almost single-handedly brought the Ba'ath Party lie about depleted uranium to American shores. In actual fact, cancer clusters in and near Basra had been caused by the demolition of depots containing Iraqi chemical weapons during the 1991 Gulf War... It can be stated with certainty that none of those birth defects were caused by depleted uranium, which has a half-life of about 4 billion years...

Where does this information come from? This is the first time I heard it was a Ba'ath Party lie. If you're going to attack such a commonly held (mis?)understanding of the reason for Gulf War syndrome, at least give a source or two. And why does a half-life of 4bn years exclude genetic defects as an effect that can "be stated with certainty"?

Genetic illnesses, another of Caldicott's favorite topics, also do not manifest from low-level radiation exposure in the way that Caldicott has often claimed.

Only anecdotal evidence, but in the South of France, following the post-Chernobyl rainfalls, a large amount of newborn animals suffered genetic defects (heard recently from several different sources, none of them scientific).

I might have more respect for Geoffrey Sea if he did as much a hatchet job on Monbiot as he did on Caldicott. She might have exaggerated things, and her sick acceptance of Stalinist Russia's hospitality obviously makes her past attitudes questionable, but sometimes, as Walter Benjamin said, "the truth is in the exaggerations".

He says

pay attention to the legitimate experts in the field.

Well, here's one, but maybe this too is an exaggeration:

Japan is to raise the nuclear alert level at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to a maximum seven, putting the emergency on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Nuclear safety officials had insisted they had no plans to raise the severity of the crisis from five – the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 – according to the international nuclear and radiological event scale.
But the government came under pressure to raise the level at the plant after Japan's nuclear safety commission estimated the amount of radioactive material released from its stricken reactors reached 10,000 terabecquerels per hour for several hours following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's northeast coast on 11 March. That level of radiation constitutes a major accident, according to the INES scale.
The scale, devised by the international atomic energy agency, ranks nuclear and radiological accidents and incidents by their severity from one to seven.

- from The Guardian.

Perhaps Hieronymous could get Geoffrey Sea to show us what's deceitful in these quotes from Caldicott, which are possibly excessive exaggerations too, but they surely need to be clarified:

the difference between external and internal radiation...
The former is what populations were exposed to when the atomic bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; their profound and on-going medical effects are well documented. [1]
Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). [2] After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.
The grave effects of internal emitters are of the most profound concern at Fukushima. It is inaccurate and misleading to use the term "acceptable levels of external radiation" in assessing internal radiation exposures. To do so, as Monbiot has done, is to propagate inaccuracies and to mislead the public worldwide (not to mention other journalists) who are seeking the truth about radiation's hazards.
2) Nuclear industry proponents often assert that low doses of radiation (eg below 100mSV) produce no ill effects and are therefore safe. But , as the US National Academy of Sciences BEIR VII report has concluded, no dose of radiation is safe, however small, including background radiation; exposure is cumulative and adds to an individual's risk of developing cancer.
Footnotes: [1] See, for example, WJ Schull, Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Half-Century of Studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (New York: Wiley-Lis, 1995) and DE Thompson, K Mabuchi, E Ron, M Soda, M Tokunaga, S Ochikubo, S Sugimoto, T Ikeda, M Terasaki, S Izumi et al. "Cancer incidence in atomic bomb survivors, Part I: Solid tumors, 1958-1987" in Radiat Res 137:S17-S67 (1994).
[2] This process is called bioaccumulation and comes in two subtypes as well, bioconcentration and biomagnification. For more information see: J.U. Clark and V.A. McFarland, Assessing Bioaccumulation in Aquatic Organisms Exposed to Contaminated Sediments, Miscellaneous Paper D-91-2 (1991), Environmental Laboratory, Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg, MS and H.A. Vanderplog, D.C. Parzyck, W.H. Wilcox, J.R. Kercher, and S.V. Kaye, Bioaccumulation Factors for Radionuclides in Freshwater Biota, ORNL-5002 (1975), Environmental Sciences Division Publication, Number 783, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN.

As I said, I'm an ignoramus - but so far I'm not convinced by the nuclear power sceptics who tend to minimise the effects of it. My questions (posts 138) concerning Ocelot's and Jacobian's attitudes have yet to be answered.

PS - just seen robot's post; I've obviously reproduced some of the information here.

There's a lot of data around regarding levels of Iodine (and two types of Caesium, one has a much longer half-life than the other) in Fukushima and neighbouring prefectures. IMO there's not nearly enough data, and it's been good to see the Greenpeace reports which fill some gaps (but don't completely contradict, something that's also reassuring) with what's been put out already.

As far as I know, Iodine is the biggest short term risk - since it's absorbed so easily by the thyroid, and at Chernobyl there were zero restrictions on food (and it was being released in large quantities for an extremely long time), so people were eating contaminated fruit and vegetables over an extended period of time. However once the station is properly under control (which could be a long time yet, and we can't rule out further large releases before that happens), since Iodine has a half-life of a week or so, that should clean up quickly.

There's been Caesium released as well, and while I think this has less direct short term health risks than Iodine (not sure if this is true, half-remembered from a couple of weeks ago), that sticks around a lot longer - so is a much bigger problem in terms of certain areas staying contaminated for long periods, and when it enters the food chain, accumulated doses after the immediate crisis is lifted - since temporary bans are not going to cut it.

There was at least one trace of plutonium found in close proximity to the plant (assuming the report was correct), but I haven't heard much about this recently. The 20km evacuation zone isn't a no-go area (people are ignoring advice and picking up belongings from houses recently), it probably should be for quite a while until much, much more detailed surveys have been done. Apart from the Tritium that Samotnaf mentioned earlier, I haven't seen much about other isotopes.

Basically what concerns me at the moment is the following:

1. There has not been enough surveys done of areas outside the 20km zone, especially food/soil samples, the information is patchy, and people in Fukushima have said they're very confused.
2. Evacuation zones and food bans, again this information is patchy (and relates to the issues around #1)
3. There's still a lot of large earthquakes in the region (Shindo 6 just now). Amazingly the reactors do appear to be pretty good at withstanding earthquakes even in such a bad state (or at least as far as we know at the moment), and it really was the Tsunami that fucked things up. But how long this lasts for who knows.

Samotnaf

As I said, I'm an ignoramus - but so far I'm not convinced by the nuclear power sceptics who tend to minimise the effects of it. My questions (posts 138) concerning Ocelot's and Jacobian's attitudes have yet to be answered.

I presume you're referring to this section of #138:

Samotnaf

What doesn't contribute to an understanding of the disastrous effect of nuke power is this ridiculous comment from ocelot (post 118) in response to something in French I posted:

ocelot

Given that the current death tolls for the recent catastrophes inflicted on the Japanese are: earthquake + tsunami: ~15,000 ; Fuskushima nuclear leaks: 0, the talk of wholesale murder seems a bit strong.

I suppose if s/he'd said that several hundred thousand people who'd started smoking 200 cigarettes a day 3 weeks ago are still alive, so that's proof that an earthquake can cause more deaths than tobacco, I suspect a few people may have thought

ocelot

N'importe quoi...

.As for the other objections he made to the French leaflet, I'll have to come back to them at some later date, as I clearly need to do some further research .

I haven't responded to that comment because you haven't come back to the examples of para-factuality that I pointed out in the original leaflet. Until then I stand by my assessment of that leaflet as having an entirely "leninist" approach to the truth - i.e. that propaganda is to be judged by its effectiveness in promoting your particular political aims, regardless of its actual veracity. As an anarchist I reject this instrumental "ends justifies the means" approach to questions of fact. Just as I reject robot's continual insinuations that "whoever is not with us, is with the enemy", which is also an old stalinist line and also inherently authoritarian.

Back to more factual stuff. The link I gave for the reactor stats above hasn't been updated since 7/04. So here's another page with a log of the figures released - nb by TEPCO, rather than NISA - http://www.gyldengrisgaard.dk/fukmon/uni1_monitor.html

The reactor core pressure is still continuing to rise (see figures for column RP(B), nb in MPa, as opposed to KPa for previous graph). I haven't found a reference for the max pressure specs for this design's reactor pressure vessel (these kind of specs seem not to make it online that much), but one of my unattributable sources with access to the gossip, indicates it may already be above the official specs. Entirely unverifiable, I'm afraid. Still, what is clear is that unless there is a turnaround in the direction the pressure is going in short order, they will have to vent the core soon (we were expecting this weekend past, tbh).

ocelot

[...] Just as I reject robot's continual insinuations that "whoever is not with us, is with the enemy", which is also an old stalinist line and also inherently authoritarian.

I would rather call it a matter of fact, because sometimes you have to decide which side you are on. But anyhow...

Maybe someone is interested in a little more details concerning the “disposal” or “throwaway” workers TEPCO and other nuclear power trusts have been using for long. I guess this is not only the case in Japan. I remember back in the late 80th German nuclear power companies hired temp workers for cleaning puroposes as well. Once their dosimeters turned form green to yellow, the exchanged them with others.

A couple of days ago, there was quite an interesting report at the New York Time website about temp workers at Fukushima and other sites:

Japanese Workers Braved Radiation for a Temp Job

Current and former workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, above, describe hazardous conditions and lax safety practices.

By HIROKO TABUCHI

Published: April 9, 2011

KAZO, Japan — The ground started to buck at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and Masayuki Ishizawa could scarcely stay on his feet. Helmet in hand, he ran from a workers’ standby room outside the plant’s No. 3 reactor, near where he and a group of workers had been doing repair work. He saw a chimney and crane swaying like weeds. Everybody was shouting in a panic, he recalled.

Mr. Ishizawa, 55, raced to the plant’s central gate. But a security guard would not let him out of the complex. A long line of cars had formed at the gate, and some drivers were blaring their horns. “Show me your IDs,” Mr. Ishizawa remembered the guard saying, insisting that he follow the correct sign-out procedure. And where, the guard demanded, were his supervisors?

“What are you saying?” Mr. Ishizawa said he shouted at the guard. He looked over his shoulder and saw a dark shadow on the horizon, out at sea, he said. He shouted again: “Don’t you know a tsunami is coming?”

Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he is not even an employee of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the crippled plant. He is one of thousands of untrained, itinerant, temporary laborers who handle the bulk of the dangerous work at nuclear power plants here and in other countries, lured by the higher wages offered for working with radiation. Collectively, these contractors were exposed to levels of radiation about 16 times as high as the levels faced by Tokyo Electric employees last year, according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which regulates the industry. These workers remain vital to efforts to contain the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plants.

They are emblematic of Japan’s two-tiered work force, with an elite class of highly paid employees at top companies and a subclass of laborers who work for less pay, have less job security and receive fewer benefits. Such labor practices have both endangered the health of these workers and undermined safety at Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors, critics charge.

“This is the hidden world of nuclear power,” said Yuko Fujita, a former physics professor at Keio University in Tokyo and a longtime campaigner for improved labor conditions in the nuclear industry. “Wherever there are hazardous conditions, these laborers are told to go. It is dangerous for them, and it is dangerous for nuclear safety.”

Of roughly 83,000 workers at Japan’s 18 commercial nuclear power plants, 88 percent were contract workers in the year that ended in March 2010, the nuclear agency said. At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 89 percent of the 10,303 workers during that period were contractors. In Japan’s nuclear industry, the elite are operators like Tokyo Electric and the manufacturers that build and help maintain the plants like Toshiba and Hitachi. But under those companies are contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors — with wages, benefits and protection against radiation dwindling with each step down the ladder.

Interviews with about a half-dozen past and current workers at Fukushima Daiichi and other plants paint a bleak picture of workers on the nuclear circuit: battling intense heat as they clean off radiation from the reactors’ drywells and spent-fuel pools using mops and rags, clearing the way for inspectors, technicians and Tokyo Electric employees, and working in the cold to fill drums with contaminated waste.

Some workers are hired from construction sites, and some are local farmers looking for extra income. Yet others are hired by local gangsters, according to a number of workers who did not want to give their names.

They spoke of the constant fear of getting fired, trying to hide injuries to avoid trouble for their employers, carrying skin-colored adhesive bandages to cover up cuts and bruises.

In the most dangerous places, current and former workers said, radiation levels would be so high that workers would take turns approaching a valve just to open it, turning it for a few seconds before a supervisor with a stopwatch ordered the job to be handed off to the next person. Similar work would be required at the Fukushima Daiichi plant now, where the three reactors in operation at the time of the earthquake shut down automatically, workers say.

“Your first priority is to avoid pan-ku,” said one current worker at the Fukushima Daini plant, using a Japanese expression based on the English word puncture. Workers use the term to describe their dosimeter, which measures radiation exposure, from reaching the daily cumulative limit of 50 millisieverts. “Once you reach the limit, there is no more work,” said the worker, who did not want to give his name for fear of being fired by his employer.

Takeshi Kawakami, 64, remembers climbing into the spent-fuel pool of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant during an annual maintenance shutdown in the 1980s to scrub the walls clean of radiation with brushes and rags. All workers carried dosimeters set to sound an alarm if exposure levels hit a cumulative dose limit; Mr. Kawakami said he usually did not last 20 minutes.

Masayuki Ishizawa had a close call as a nuclear worker.

“It was unbearable, and you had your mask on, and it was so tight,” Mr. Kawakami said. “I started feeling dizzy. I could not even see what I was doing. I thought I would drown in my own sweat.”

Since the mid-1970s, about 50 former workers have received workers’ compensation after developing leukemia and other forms of cancer. Health experts say that though many former workers are experiencing health problems that may be a result of their nuclear work, it is often difficult to prove a direct link. Mr. Kawakami has received a diagnosis of stomach and intestinal cancer.

News of workers’ mishaps turns up periodically in safety reports: one submitted by Tokyo Electric to the government of Fukushima Prefecture in October 2010 outlines an accident during which a contract worker who had been wiping down a turbine building was exposed to harmful levels of radiation after accidentally using one of the towels on his face. In response, the company said in the report that it would provide special towels for workers to wipe their sweat.

Most day workers were evacuated from Fukushima Daiichi after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which knocked out the plant’s power and pushed some of the reactors to the brink of a partial meltdown. Since then, those who have returned have been strictly shielded from the news media; many of them are housed at a staging ground for workers that is off limits to reporters. But there have been signs that such laborers continue to play a big role at the crippled power plant.

The two workers who were injured two weeks ago when they stepped in radioactive water were subcontractor employees. As of Thursday, 21 workers at the plant had each been exposed to cumulative radiation levels of more than 100 millisieverts, or the usual limit set for nuclear plant workers during an emergency, according to Tokyo Electric. (That limit was raised to 250 millisieverts last month.)

The company refused to say how many contract workers had been exposed to radiation. Of roughly 300 workers left at the plant on Thursday, 45 were employed by contractors, the company said.

Day laborers are being lured back to the plant by wages that have increased along with the risks of working there. Mr. Ishizawa, whose home is about a mile from the plant and who evacuated with the town’s other residents the day after the quake, said he had been called last week by a former employer who offered daily wages of about $350 for just two hours of work at the Fukushima Daiichi plant — more than twice his previous pay. Some of the former members of his team have been offered nearly $1,000 a day. Offers have fluctuated depending on the progress at the plant and the perceived radiation risks that day. So far, Mr. Ishizawa has refused to return.

Working conditions have improved over the years, experts say. While exposure per worker dropped in the 1990s as safety standards improved, government statistics show, the rates have been rising since 2000, partly because there have been more accidents as reactors age. Moreover, the number of workers in the industry has risen, as the same tasks are carried out by more employees to reduce individual exposure levels.

Tetsuen Nakajima, chief priest of the 1,200-year-old Myotsuji Temple in the city of Obama near the Sea of Japan, has campaigned for workers’ rights since the 1970s, when the local utility started building reactors along the coast; today there are 15 of them. In the early 1980s, he helped found the country’s first union for day workers at nuclear plants.

The union, he said, made 19 demands of plant operators, including urging operators not to forge radiation exposure records and not to force workers to lie to government inspectors about safety procedures. Although more than 180 workers belonged to the union at its peak, its leaders were soon visited by thugs who kicked down their doors and threatened to harm their families, he said.

“They were not allowed to speak up,” Mr. Nakajima said. “Once you enter a nuclear power plant, everything’s a secret.”

Last week, conversations among Fukushima Daiichi workers at a smoking area at the evacuees’ center focused on whether to stay or go back to the plant. Some said construction jobs still seemed safer, if they could be found. “You can see a hole in the ground, but you can’t see radiation,” one worker said.

Mr. Ishizawa, the only one who allowed his name to be used, said, “I might go back to a nuclear plant one day, but I’d have to be starving.” In addition to his jobs at Daiichi, he has worked at thermal power plants and on highway construction sites in the region. For now, he said, he will stay away from the nuclear industry.

“I need a job,” he said, “but I need a safe job.”

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/world/asia/10workers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1)

Just to point out the lack of logic in ocelot's statement:

I stand by my assessment of that leaflet as having an entirely "leninist" approach to the truth - i.e. that propaganda is to be judged by its effectiveness in promoting your particular political aims, regardless of its actual veracity. As an anarchist I reject this instrumental "ends justifies the means" approach to questions of fact.

I entirely agree (I posted the leaflet, emailed me by a friend, just before going very early to work and only very superficially skimmed it before doing so; up till now, my research into some of its more dubious statements has been very limited because of various other things in my life).
But when he says this in order to avoid my questioning of this:

ocelot wrote:
Given that the current death tolls for the recent catastrophes inflicted on the Japanese are: earthquake + tsunami: ~15,000 ; Fuskushima nuclear leaks: 0, the talk of wholesale murder seems a bit strong.

I'd say that this is a rather "liberal" approach to the truth - i.e. that his statement is to be judged by its effectiveness in promoting an abstract veracity which is meaningless, and in fact hides any practical truth over time, as well as any decisive attitude. In fact, the consequence of nuclear power "sceptics" is to intellectually "question" everything and practically decide nothing. This abstract questioning represses a basic anger towards the Fukushima situation, a repressed anger that might need a metaphorical tsunami of opposition to be released to create a metaphorical explosion against nuclear power (as just one of the symptoms of capitalist social relations) as big as the real tsunami that set off this real explosion.

Re. Robot's post (180) taken from The New York Times, this, from yesterday's Guardian, seems apt:

Research proposals are already being submitted. The workers of Fukushima, who have been lauded in the past month as heroes or Kamikaze suicide warriors, may yet be most famous as nuclear guinea pigs.

Starting to see more of this coming through.

http://twitter.com/#!/DailyYomiuri/status/58377449708331008

There's no article linked from there, it's hard to tell whether that's going to be a co-ordinated holiday (which if it's paid leave and not taken from other holiday time isn't necessarily bad - most Japanese salaried workers get very little annual leave, and it's hard to take more than a couple of days at once) or an actual lockout. Will keep an eye out for stuff like this especially if that turns into a trend.

These are a bit different to the forced closures of companies in the immediate aftermath, shops running with lights off etc. which was probably not even initiated by management in a lot of cases. There is bound to come a point where things cross over from genuine emergency measures and reconstruction to companies taking advantage. Obviously this is nothing compared to the scale of the contract workers at Fukushima or the hundreds of thousands directly affected by the tsunami - but I imagine this will be the argument used by those employers too.

Also someone I know works in a '70s office building that has some largish cracks from the original earthquake, and their employer has been insisting that the building is 'fine'. That's probably relatively unusual though (although I have nothing to back this up either way) - consider that buildings 40 years or older are considered very old, and over 80 years are antiquities, whereas they're two a penny in the UK.

May be interesting for Samotnaf, though in German.

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/1310008/Unterwegs-mit-den-Nuklear-Nomaden

This is an investigative report about the French version of the “throwaway workers”. EDF is hiring up to 10,000 temp workers a year for the dirty work within the French nuclear power plants. Those workers are called “nuclear nomads”. Some of them have been recently protesting against their working conditions.

Thanks for that, robot - my German, though, is pretty crap - haven't used it much for over 40 years, and even then it was only good enough to scrape through (GCSE) A level. But I'll check it out.

http://www.gyldengrisgaard.dk/fukmon/uni1_monitor.html

Fukushima reactor no.1 monitoring pressure/temperature data

Time RP(B) WL(B)
MPa abs meter

00:00, April 15th 1.054 -1.55
06:00, April 14th 1.041 -1.60
00:00, April 14th 1.041 -1.60
12:00, April 13th 1.034 -1.65
06:00, April 13th 1.029 -1.65
06:00, April 12th 1.009 -1.65

hmm, bit hard to do columns/tables. Pressure still rising.

Japan needs 2-3 months to end nuclear crisis
Tokyo, April 16 : Japan will need at least two to three more months to bring an end to the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, a nuclear industry official said Saturday.
Takashi Sawada, deputy director of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said it was likely to take that long to restore normal cooling systems at the damaged reactors at Fukushima, CNN reported....
Over 78,000 people who lived within 20 km of the plant were ordered to evacuate. Another 60,000 people living in the next 10 km were told to take shelter indoors.

From here .
Btw - some people from Areva (the French-based nuke power company), who happened to be at the Fukushima power station when it all went haywire over a month ago, were immediately ordered to evacuate to outside 40 km from the area; the rest of the population were evacuated 20 km away (reported in Canard Enchainé).

Possible new leak at nuclear plant in Japan
Government cites rise in levels of radioactive materials in sea nearby. Radiation levels have spiked again in seawater near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan in an indication of possible new leaks at the complex, the government said Saturday...
Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the plant, recently found and eventually plugged a leak that might have been spewing for days. Levels of radioactive materials in the ocean near the site fell afterward.
But the government said Saturday those radioactive levels in the seawater rose again in recent days, and may have been caused by the installation of steel panels meant to control radioactive materials, according to an Associated Press report....

From here (includes Reuters video of Japanese demonstrations in Tokyo calling on the government to take responsibility for radiation leaks).

Maybe a new thread should be started - "The Fukushima effect"...?

RIOTING CONTINUED yesterday at a small town in western India as protesters opposing government plans to build a nuclear complex ransacked a hospital and burnt buses.
Police had shot dead one protester on Monday at Jaitapur, 420km south of India’s financial capital, Mumbai. Locals and anti-nuclear activists have been protesting at Jaitapur against construction of a proposed 9,900 megawatt six-reactor facility by French energy giant Areva.
Locals shouted slogans as the protest gained momentum against what is billed as the world’s largest nuclear power complex, costing an estimated $10 billion (€6.97 billion).
Vociferous opposition to the complex has grown in the wake of the ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, with activists and experts claiming Jaitapur is located in a seismic zone.
Posters at Jaitapur yesterday portrayed horrifying scenes from Fukushima, and anti-nuclear activists warned of what could be in store for the region if the plant were to be built and a Japanese-type disaster were to occur.
Environmentalists maintain the Konkan belt, in which Jaitapur lies, is one of the world’s most bio-diverse regions and would be destroyed by a nuclear complex.
In response to the growing opposition, India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh last week reiterated his government’s intention to proceed with the plant’s construction but maintained that extra safeguards would be undertaken in view of the Fukushima disaster.
The minister termed Fukushima a “wake-up call”, adding that India could not abandon its quest for “clean” nuclear energy to fuel its high economic growth rate.
Construction of the Jaitapur complex is slated to begin later this year and the first unit is expected to start generating power by 2018. Officials claim the Jaitapur nuclear plant, one of around 30 planned across the country over 10 to 15 years, would augment nuclear power generation to about 13 per cent of the total, from the current 3 per cent.
India currently runs 20 small nuclear reactors with a capacity of 4,780 megawatts (MW), and through the new plants hopes to boost nuclear power generation to 7,280 MW by 2012 and to 63,000 MW two decades later, but at tremendous cost.
Critics claim the Jaitapur reactors, based on European pressurised reactor technology, had not yet been commissioned anywhere in the world. India’s powerful Marxists also raised “questions about the reliability and safety of these reactors”, and said their construction had run into difficulties in France and Finland. They were also “much more expensive” than other reactors on offer, the Marxists said.
India was permitted to trade in civil nuclear fuel and equipment after the 2008 nuclear energy pact with the US – without it having to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or forgo its nuclear weapons programme.
In return for international inspection of 14 of its reactors and related facilities, India was granted global access to foreign civil nuclear technology, which was endorsed by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers’ Group.

- from The Irish Times.

Today the Japanese ministry of education decided to adjust the radiation threshold value to the facts. It increased the legal hourly dosis for Japanese childs in schools and playgrounds to 3.8 microsievert. Within one year this can be nearly as much as the legal dosis for an adult workers in a German nuclear power plant. The International Commission on Radiological Protection makes no difference in radiation thresholds for children and adult.

http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2011042000112

I've just been offered a very good job in Japan, unfortunatly it seems like its in the prefectures surrounding Fukushima (hence the "good" part of the job no doubt).

I simply havnt had the exposure to the level of science needed to really understand whats going on, and I know its probably not got one answer...but is there anyone who could provide a brief summary of whats going on, how wary should I be etc...?

Which prefecture(s)? Answer really depends on this.

More than 50km from the plant, radiation dose rates are about the same as they were before the tsunami hit now.

30-50km (it's very unlikely your job would be here) there are some hotspots due to wind/rainfall. Japanese government was/is a bit tardy evacuating those.

More of a concern to me is levels of iodine and caesium (and other isotopes) in spinach and other crops, plus seafood caught off the coast. While there are controls in place, it's not that easy to find out about this in English, nor is it clear how proactive the government is being in taking soil and crop samples. While caesium sticks around for a lifetime, Iodine is more or less done after a month, so assuming things don't get worse, at least the Iodine risk is going to reduce dramatically the next few weeks. Eating food contaminated with Iodine over an extended period will give you thyroid cancer, caesium I'm not as clear what the health effects are.

There are a lot of news stories around about Fukushima farmers having to abandon entire crops due to both exclusions, and just cancelled orders from distributors, so I think it is unlikely much is slipping through even if the government is not being as proactive as it could be just due to general fear. I think this will probably all get a bit clearer within the next month - already there are Greenpeace teams doing their own independent monitoring etc. and there will be more to come.

Mike H:

More than 50km from the plant, radiation dose rates are about the same as they were before the tsunami hit now.

Who's measured these dose rates? How available is (and what is the cost of) the better accurate equipment for measuring such doses? Has Greenpeace already monitored these areas? Is Greenpeace reliable? (it wants to be an accepted reformist organisation, possibly with direct links to future governments, so not "creating panic" might be part of their unofficial agenda, no?). Have there been any groups who have no connection to any official organisation (NGOs or govt.) doing any testing? Also you imply that there are no further leaks, that they've stopped them. Are you sure?

@Samotnaf, the biggest quantity of readings are from the Fukushima prefectural offices (and offices of other prefectures). Where there are nuclear power plants in the prefecture, the prefectures apparently have their own monitoring stations etc., I don't know how independent these are from NISA/MEXT (I would imagine they're at least nominally independent if not always in practice).

Also Greenpeace, MEXT/NISA, and also some universities/individuals are also taking readings.

This site crowdsources both official and diy readings onto a nice map:
http://rdtn.org/

Graphs of readings from prefectural offices (mainly, other stuff as well): http://fleep.com/earthquake/

Also this physics professor is graphing (not sure of his sources, probably the same as fleep): http://twitter.com/#!/hayano
http://plixi.com/p/94471246
http://plixi.com/p/94376912

This guy is a (Spanish) researcher at the Japanese AEA (not sure if that is MEXT, NISA or something else), he's graphing Ibaraki rather than Fukushima. He is fairly openly pro-nuclear power (compared to coal/gas etc like everyone who's pro-nuke is), but also pretty conscientious and makes nice graphs:
http://dgr4quake.wordpress.com/ibaraki-radioactivity/

This is a quite interesting bit from counterpunch. It is about the danger for even more nuclear power plants and future earthquakes around the Pacific Plate.

The Nuclear Disaster That Could Destroy Japan ... and the World

By HIROSE TAKASHI

Translated by Doug Lummis

The nuclear power plants in Japan are ageing rapidly; like cyborgs, they are barely kept in operation by a continuous replacement of parts. And now that Japan has entered a period of earthquake activity and a major accident could happen at any time, the people live in constant state of anxiety.

Seismologists and geologists agree that, after some fifty years of seismic inactivity, with the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Southern Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake), the country has entered a period of seismic activity. In 2004, the Chuetsu Earthquake hit Niigata Prefecture, doing damage to the village of Yamakoshi. Three years later, in 2007, the Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake severely damaged the nuclear reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. In 2008, there was an earthquake in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures, causing a whole mountain to disappear completely. Then in 2009 the Hamaoka nuclear plant was put in a state of emergency by the Suruga Bay Earthquake. And now, in 2011, we have the 3/11 earthquake offshore from the northeast coast. But the period of seismic activity is expected to continue for decades. From the perspective of seismology, a space of 10 or 15 years is but a moment in time.

Because the Pacific Plate, the largest of the plates that envelop the earth, is in motion, I had predicted that there would be major earthquakes all over the world.

More: http://www.counterpunch.org/takashi04252011.html

Hieronymous: I asked the following 2 weeks ago:[quote] Some questions from an ignorant unscientific mind:
Hieronymous quotes Geoffrey Sea:

In the 1990s, leading up to and including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Caldicott almost single-handedly brought the Ba'ath Party lie about depleted uranium to American shores. In actual fact, cancer clusters in and near Basra had been caused by the demolition of depots containing Iraqi chemical weapons during the 1991 Gulf War... It can be stated with certainty that none of those birth defects were caused by depleted uranium, which has a half-life of about 4 billion years...

Where does this information come from? This is the first time I heard it was a Ba'ath Party lie. If you're going to attack such a commonly held (mis?)understanding of the reason for Gulf War syndrome, at least give a source or two. And why does a half-life of 4bn years exclude genetic defects as an effect that can "be stated with certainty"?

I know this is not about the earthquake but it was on this thread, so I'm going back to it, and wondered if you'd got an answer from Geoffrey Sea (particularly the bit about the depleted uranium and Gulf War syndrome)?

Looks like the rdtn project is evolving into a "get your own data" concept.

AJ: Crowdsourcing Japan's radiation levels

"We were getting frustrated with what was being reported in the media, what was being released by TEPCO, what was being released by the government," said Sean Bonner, co-founder of Safecast.org, which is currently partially self-funded, partially funded via a Kickstarter fundraiser.

"The information was just kind of unreliable, not updated frequently, no way to fact-check it... So, we just started thinking: What happens if we go get numbers ourselves? Like, is that an option?"

Apparently so.

Out of thin air, a group of folks based in the US and Japan created a network that distributes Geiger counters to teams of people who record radiation levels in a consistent manner and upload it all to the Safecast site.

Mapped out with radiation readings gathered from other sources, Bonner said Safecast hopes to "paint a more reliable picture of what was going on".

Safecast currently has around 30 Geiger counters out in the field, they have ordered the parts to build another 300, and Bonner said their plan is to have 600 units collecting data within six months.

Like Copwatch with geiger counters. Democratise the data.

ocelot: good to see this useful information.

robot: any interesting aspects to the "eighty anti-nuke marches which took place in 100 cities across Germany over the Easter weekend" (does this mean that some demos marched from one city to another, that some demos didn't involve a march or that there were only 4/5ths of a demo in each city?) Here there was a die-in, which I always find pathetic masochistic theatricals, as if people didn't know the obvious that radiation=death (there was one here against the Iraq war in 2003, without which people wouldn't have realised that war kills people).

Samotnaf

robot: any interesting aspects to the "eighty anti-nuke marches which took place in 100 cities across Germany over the Easter weekend" (does this mean that some demos marched from one city to another, that some demos didn't involve a march or that there were only 4/5ths of a demo in each city?)

The report is somewhat misleading, because it mixes up two mobilizations:

1. The “Easter marches”. This is a pacifist mobilization since the early 1960. It includes dozens of marches where people are roaming from town to town by feet, bike, motor-bikes etc. The peak was in the early 1980, when NATO brought new mid-range nuclear weapons to Europe. In those years some 200,000 to 300,000 people tooks part in the three days marches. In the past years only a core of a couple of thousand people took to the streets. This year saw more, because the organizers put Fukushima and Tchernobyl (25 years yesterday...) on the agenda.

2. A day of action against nuclear power plants on april 25.120,000 to 140,000 people took to the street in a series of manifestations at most German nuclear power plant sites, a nuclear waste dumping site and URENCO at Gronau, the company manufacturing nearly 1/3 of the worlds nuclear fuel rods. At some sites the nuclear power plants were picketed and people anounced constant blockades in case the seven plants that have been temporarily shut down after Fukushima should be powered up again. The biggest manifestations were those at Grohnde (20,000), Krümel (17,000), Grafenrheinfeld, Biblis and Gronau (15,000 each). More manifestations took part at Salzgitter (Schacht Konrad nuclear waste dump) Brunsbüttel, Esenshamm, Gundremmingen, Neckarwestheim, Philippsburg and Lubmin.

Can I second Samotnaf's call for Hieronymous to reply on Geoffrey Sea's dismissal of depleted uranium as the cause of Gulf War Syndrome? More information on this would be very helpful.

Thanks

Thanks for the info, robot (and Malcy, thanks for seconding me: it's such a widespread idea that Gulf War syndrome was caused by depleted uranium and it's the first time I've ever seen it refuted, so this refutation better be accurate or else it kind of tends to undermine much of Geoffrey Sea's other information, imo).

Article about a clampdown on an antinuke demo in India, which has followed the antinuke riot and death of a demonstrator from a week ago.

Re the Geoffrey Sea statement

"It can be stated with certainty that none of those birth defects were caused by depleted uranium, which has a half-life of about 4 billion years..."

It looks to me like a dumb statement as the clear implication is that the only possible link between DU and birth defects, cancers and other health pathologies, is the radiological risk. Hence his argument about the half-life of DU being ~4 billion years (actually 4.5 billion years is the half-life of U-238 which is mostly - but not entirely - what DU is). But that ignores the health effects of the chemical toxicity of Uranium, which is a toxic metal, like arsenic or mercury, for e.g.

The following paper discusses assessing the relative health dangers of DU dust or aerosols. Health Canada: Depleted Uranium. Granted its by an official state body of a state that sponsors a nuclear power programme, but the info is pretty solid.

The recent alarming rise in birth defects in Fallujah Iraq, 6 years on from the US armed forces hitting the place with as much firepower as they could concentrate, is told in this recent-ish (Dec 2010) Guardian article: Research links rise in Falluja birth defects and cancers to US assault

A couple of things to note. First of all, the correction they had to print about DU's ionising radiation being the source of penetration power, shows the lack of technical grounding of the author (and the editorial staff who originally ok'd the article for publication). Plus the tendency, in the absence of relevant knowledge, to focus on the radiation at the expense of other factors/hazards.

The problem in the Fallujah case is separating out the effects of DU from all the other crap that the US dropped, shot or sprayed into Fallujah (and the fact that they're not going to give us an honest or full inventory of that). So distinguishing the toxic metal effects from those of other birth-defect causing agents (teratogens - from Gk teratos, monsters, i.e. monster-makers) like dioxins (see Agent Orange effects in Vietnam) or other lethal organic compounds (e.g. Benzene), is not simple.

Nonetheless, there's no question that toxic metals, when pulverised into dusts that can be inhaled or ingested, are bad for you (clue's in the name!). Also, they're harder to clean up than organic chemical hazards as you can't just neutralise them with a reagent that will break down the hazardous molecules into more neutral compounds, as they are elements. The only way you can chemically neutralise them is with a chelating agent. In other words, it's difficult and expensive - which is why the US does not want to pay to clean up their shite, basically.

I think Sea has made the mistake of reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to the uneducated anti-nuke propaganda (a quick google search for "depleted uranium health risks" will turn up a few") which goes on breathlessly about DU and radiation and, for e.g., "the US is guilty of knowingly contaminating parts of the Gulf and former Yugoslavia for the next 4.5 billion years" (from here) which is just wrong on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start. Trying to discuss rationally with someone who can't be bothered to find out or understand what a half-life is, in the age of the internet, is like trying to discuss abortion with the pope.

That's a shame. I found it quite useful. I only wanted to know why he dismissed the DU thing so completely.

Given what i know about physics (studied to degree level) i would think its likely that he is right about the risk from radiation from DU, but it also seems to me that he is overlooking the toxic properties of DU, I'm guessing he is a physicist not a chemist or biologist?

The point about the long half life of DU is that something with a longer half life emits radiation at a lower rate that something with a shorter half life, because DU has such a long half life the amount or radiation it emits over human time scales is vary small, so he doesn't think the radiation from DU is enough to cause significant harm (remember that it is perfectly normal and safe to encounter a certain level of radiation in normal life).

If anyone is interested enough in the DU topic to invest a good bit of reading time, the 2005 report by Rita Hindin et al. is worth a read:

Teratogenicity of depleted uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective

certainly puts the claim on the WHO's official DU factsheet (NB last revised 2003) that "No reproductive or developmental effects have been reported in humans", into a proper perspective.

Yesterday morning, before my morning coffee, I made a series of posts. Thankfully they were all deleted. The gist of what I wrote was: I don't know Geoffrey Sea, since he's a friend of some pro-Situ comrades, so I can't support anything he wrote. Nor do I have a scientific background to do anything more than uncritically relay his posts for their informational value.

That all said, here's his latest:

Geoffrey Sea

Nuclear Bulletin #22
27 April 2011

The Word is Bail.

A summation of events since Bulletin 21 is in order: Japan has extended the evacuation zone and imposed tough measures against violators, prompting tensions with evacuees who assumed such removal would be temporary. Japan upgraded the catastrophe to Category 7, the same as Chernobyl, while credibly reporting that the total amount of material released was about one tenth the radioactivity released at Chernobyl. Given the much greater concentration of releases in nearby territory in Japan, this highlights my prior point that the long-range fallout effects of Fukushima will be minuscule compared to Chernobyl. Correspondingly, the on-site and near-site effects will be of similar magnitude, and numerous reports of radiation sickness among the workforce are beginning to appear.

Activity at the site is now focused on construction of containers to hold contaminated water being pumped out, and Japan has acknowledged that much such water will have to be intentionally released to the sea. Mostly French and some US firms have been contracted to do the cleanup.

A report on Voice of Russia radio on the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, which was yesterday, interestingly made the comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl as being like stories of corruption in contracting and management. That story is bolstered by an in-depth report about corruption at Fukushima in today's New York Times: Safety Becomes Victim in Japan’s Nuclear Collusion - NYTimes.com. Corruption, of course, plagues all complex societies, and has shown little preference for one economic system over another. There is an argument to be made that intolerant technologies like nuclear power do not jive well with universal human frailties like susceptibility to bribery, dishonesty, and denial. There is not a comparable case that nuclear technology proves the superiority or inferiority of any given system of political economy.

That becomes especially clear in reviewing the six worst single-site nuclear catastrophes, only three of which have penetrated into media and public consciousness. In order of severity of effects, those include two Soviet disasters, two American, one Japanese and one French:

1. Chelyabinsk, Russia, 1957
2. Chernobyl, Ukraine, 1986
3. Fukushima, Japan, 2011
4. Idaho Falls, USA, 1961 SL-1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
5. La Hague, France 1980
6. Three Mile Island, USA, 1979

If the ranking were in terms of potential severity, the order would be substantially different with reference to the above list: 2-4-3-6-1-5. Interestingly, Chernobyl was not the worst Soviet disaster, nor was Three Mile Island the worst American one. It was, in fact, the Chelyabinsk disaster that provided the USSR with large numbers of radiation management specialists, radioecologists, and disaster teams that made Chernobyl much more manageable almost thirty years later.

Consideration of that full list is what has made the constant comparisons between Fukushima and Chernobyl so pointless. One thing we learned from the top two experiences, as well as from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and atmospheric nuclear testing around the world, is that psychosocial effects can be as, or more, severe than radiation effects, and by that I do not mean "psychosomatic" injuries.

What I do mean is that evacuations and the resulting impoverishment, food restrictions leading to malnutrition, social stigma applied to exposed populations, voluntary or imposed restrictions on reproduction, and depression leading to suicide will typically have a greater combined impact on health than the direct effects produced by radioactivity. This phenomenon was very pronounced in Central Asia, for example, where large populations were exposed concurrently to Chelyabinsk fallout, fallout from Soviet and Chinese weapons tests, and uranium mining wastes.

Consequent cancer rates were elevated, but this may not have approached the number of casualties caused by food and land restrictions, paranoia leading to non-reproduction, and skyrocketing suicide rates, the latter tied to false propaganda about downwinders' incapacity to have healthy children. This is the phenomenon, to which (we know from the A-Bomb history) the Japanese are especially susceptible. And this is what the counter-factual "radioactivists" fail to grasp -- that their spewing of disinformation causes real physical harm, aside from undermining the credibility of all critics. And yes, I'll say it again. Helen Caldicott is by far the worst willful offender.

That is important to say because right now, in Japan, unfounded fears about magical radiation injury are causing a host of problems, given that the great majority of Japanese are not in the zone of significant hazard. People of good will need to speak up if the concern for human health is genuine.

Meanwhile, utility executives, financial analysts, and right-wing politicians are doing a thorough job of shutting the nuclear industry down in the United States, Germany, Italy, India, and elsewhere. On April 19, NRG announced that the South Texas nuclear reactor project is over, kaput. This was the biggest new reactor project in the USA, the one that defined the "Nuclear Renaissance" in America, the one next up at the plate for a federal loan guarantee. Texas also presented the most nuclear-friendly locale one could imagine. The death of this project was underplayed in the media. In retrospect it will be seen as the coup de grace for nuclear revival dreams.

In short, if you call yourself an "antinuclear activist", the powers that be are trying mighty hard to make you redundant. There simply isn't any work left on that agenda that the big money men aren't already accomplishing. Sure, there are squeaks and murmurs on the investment websites, but these are coming from lackadaisical stock traders who hope to create some new mini-bubble, so that they can sell their own shares without absorbing a tremendous loss. The word is bail. That's the word inside, outside, and altogether. Soon anti-nukers will be like the Japanese soldiers left behind in jungles on Pacific Islands after WWII, with only imaginary enemies to fight.

The guy who was right all along is Amory Lovins. He said long before Three Mile Island that the economics of nuclear power would doom the industry, and he produced lots of graphs to demonstrate that TMI had practically no effect on the industry's established downward trend. He has now produced the same kind of graphs to show that the industry, in the United States, was dead long before Fukushima. There are open questions left in France, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, where reliance on nuclear power is high and access to natural gas is low. But there are few open questions in the USA, Russia, and most of Asia and the rest of the world, where nuclear was simply not a contender in a market dominated by natural gas, and surging renewables.

The task now is to build a future energy policy, and stop beating the dead horse.

--Geoffrey Sea

There are open questions left in France

Not that "open" or questioning: Sarkozy aggressively insisted yesterday that the nuclear industry would definitely continue (adding though, in conjunction with solar/wind and other energy), and was very contemptuous of the anti-nukes.
And the contemptuous comparison

Soon anti-nukers will be like the Japanese soldiers left behind in jungles on Pacific Islands after WWII, with only imaginary enemies to fight.

won't at all be applicable to France; and it's a really dumb, pointlessly nasty, comparison aimed for laughs and to show an arrogant dismissive superiority that doesn't get to grips with why people have good reason to oppose nuclear power (particularly in France, where radioactive leaks are pretty regular, though maybe in plenty of other places as well) which has nothing to do with the delerium of obsessively supporting a feudal Emperor who no longer exists decades after his fall.

The guy who was right all along is Amory Lovins. He said long before Three Mile Island that the economics of nuclear power would doom the industry, and he produced lots of graphs to demonstrate that TMI had practically no effect on the industry's established downward trend. He has now produced the same kind of graphs to show that the industry, in the United States, was dead long before Fukushima. [...] there are few open questions in the USA, Russia, and most of Asia and the rest of the world, where nuclear was simply not a contender in a market dominated by natural gas, and surging renewables.

To uncritically accept that line of argument is to naturalise market logic. The day to day monetary accounting of market logics are a powerful force within capitalism. But they are a part of the system, but not the whole of it. You could equally well as say that the economics of launching 500 million-dollar cruise missiles in a single day don't add up either. But that doesn't mean that capitalism is about to abolish wars because they're too expensive. You have to understand the logic of the system taken as a whole.

Twenty odd years ago, a number of us in the Anti-Poll Tax movement thought that the billions of pounds left missing from local government budgets all over ES&W from mass non-payment, would create some systemic crisis (actually, so at one stage did the councils, they had at least one discreet national conference of finance officers about it). But in fact, of course, when it came to it, they were able to simply write off the missing billions through various accountancy devices.

In capitalism the relations are real, but the figures are somewhat virtual*, in the sense that when it suits the overall logic of maintaining the system, a way can always be found to make inconvenient numbers quietly disappear.

So the "contra-autonomist" notion that "the powers that be" are making the anti-nuclear movement redundant in response to market and state logics, is bourgeois utopian and deeply unhistorical - given the origins of present day "civilian" nuclear power in state nuclear programmes founded in state-logics of the military and geopolitical type that eat accountants, and all their witless graphs, for breakfast.

* Which of course is the opposite of the dominant ideology that the money is real and the relations (domination, exploitation, inequality, etc) are virtual or imaginary, leading ultimately to absurdities like "there's no such thing as society" as Maggie famously said.

I would like to bring everyone's attention to this letter: http://libcom.org/library/must-we-rebuild-their-anthill-letter-tofor-japanese-comrades

I've always felt the worst aspect of nuclear power is how it gives the ruling class such effective means to frighten us into passive reliance on their expertise so I was glad to see this letter elaborate on this idea.

Samotnaf

which has nothing to do with the delerium of obsessively supporting a feudal Emperor who no longer exists decades after his fall.

Japan still has an Emperor. iirc Japan tried to negotiate a surrender that allowed the Emperor to stay on, the US refused this so dropped two atomic bombs, then they accepted a surrender that allowed the Emperor to stay on. A lot of other aspects of feudalism in Japan were dismantled after world war 2, but not this one.

I put this badly. I know the current Emperor exists (he visited Fukushima) - didn't mean to imply the Empirarchy (or whatever you have when there's an Emperor) as an institution died, merely that that particular Emperor had died, iirc, when the last lone survivor living in the jungle was found after the Hirohito from WWl had died. And by "fall" I meant his transformation into a constitutional empirarchy only formally ruling like the Queen in the UK, in practise taking a back seat to bourgeois democracy, becoming its yes-man. Or is that not the case in Japan?

No it's a constitutional role only, however that was more or less the case during the Meiji and Taisho periods already, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taish%C5%8D_period has the basics.

Having said that, I think this was reversed somewhat during the '30s and WWII, and the post-war changes may have been more dramatic (although possibly only legally/constitutionally as opposed to in practice) compared to the Meiji/Taisho periods.

merely that that particular Emperor had died, iirc, when the last lone survivor living in the jungle was found

The last one that looks remotely credible is 1980 according to http://www.wanpela.com/holdouts/list.html (and there's not much information on that one either), but yeah that's close enough.

edit: if anyone's remotely interested this, best article I could find from google was http://mattstodayinhistory.blogspot.com/2007/01/last-japanese-holdout-on-guam-january.html

US aircraft carriers (or at least I assume that's what they are) depart Japan today in case they're needed to respond to new terrorism threat after Osama assassination:

http://twitter.com/#!/W7VOA/status/65033731911593984

Mike Harman:

The last one that looks remotely credible is 1980 according to http://www.wanpela.com/holdouts/list.html (and there's not much information on that one either), but yeah that's close enough.

I thought there was one in the last 9 years, but maybe he was just playing hide and seek and got a bit carried away

Soon anti-nukers will be like the Japanese soldiers left behind in jungles on Pacific Islands after WWII, with only imaginary enemies to fight.

-Geoffrey Sea.

he had had a tough childhood full of unkind relatives: "I stuck to the jungle because I wanted to get even with them."

- one of these Japanese soldiers quoted from here. In other words, anti-nukers will be like those children of a tough capitalism full of unkind rulers, left behind in the jungle of their wildest desires, sticking there to get even with the bastards.

Just for the minutes: As far as I can see almost everything those „anti-nukers” that are like “Japanese soldiers left behind in jungles” predicted turned out to be true so far. Complete fuel rod meltdown in reactor #1, at least partial fuel rod meltdown in reactor #2, at least partial fuel rod meltdown in reactor #3, Primary containment leakage in reactor#1. Caesium radiation in water on bottom of reactor #1 according to TEPCO some 2 million becquerel (as of may 30). Iodine radiation in water on bottom of reactor #2 according to TEPCO still more than 600 fold over threshold.

And here is some news from Fukushimas political consequences in Germany. Following a constant mobilization of several hundreds of thousand of “anti-nukers” and a strong anti-nuke sentiment in more than 80% of the population, at present it looks as if an all-party-consensus within the German political class will vote for an exit from nuclear energy until 2022 within the next few weeks. In a first step eight reactor blocks that have been shut down in a kind of moratorium short after Fukushima should not be powered on again. Seven more blocks should be powered off until 2021 and the three remaining ones in 2022. But maybe the extremly dry spring this year (there has never been a spring so hot and dry since measurements started in 1881) will turn Germany into a “nuke-free” zone even earlier. Out of 18 reactor blocks only four are on-line at present (The rest is either part of the moratorium or under technical revision) and if the big rivers water level doesn't stop falling as a consequence of the drought, they must possibly been temporarily shut down due to deprivation of cooling water ;-)

According to the major German news agency (dpa) an automatic vehicle yesterday draw a probe with more than 4,000 milliSievert in the south eastern part of reactor building #1. The probe was taken at the bottom of the building where hot steam from the primary containement is leaking. 4,000 milliSievert is enough for getting the annual dosis in some 4 minutes. Exposition with 1,500 to 2,500 milliSievert for one hour is a threshold for a lethal radioactive contamination.

robot

Just for the minutes: As far as I can see almost everything those „anti-nukers” that are like “Japanese soldiers left behind in jungles” predicted turned out to be true so far.[...]

Whoa. Major rewriting of recent history going on there. For those who haven't been following the thread from the beginning, a couple of refreshers from earlier posts might be apposite.

#75

According to another news agency french scientists from French ASN nuclear safety institute qualified the actual situation as being "higher than 6" on the 7 level INES scale. Tchernobyl was level 7.

#86

The "anti-nukers" continue to make unwarranted Chernobyl comparisons as if they have some Chernobyl-only speech impediment. The "pro-nukers" continue to spew PR homilies as if every possible eventuality must prove the triumph of nuclear engineering. If a hundred people die, according to them, it will only show that worst nuclear cases are trivial.

My most fervent dream is that this crisis leads to some final understanding that the polemical partisans in the "nuke" war lie like wildfire. All of them.

#98

If, as still seems possible, Fukushima becomes as big, or at least almost as big, a disaster as Chernobyl, we're going to see a great deal more than the apparently 15,000 death toll from the earthquake/tsunami.

And there's plenty more (I'm not going to bother to quote the completely batshit mental "mortelle randonné" leaflet). The point is that you can only say "almost everything" the "anti-nukers" said has come to pass is if you ignore everything that came out of that scattergun that has since transpired to be incorrect - and was always going to be incorrect, as any application of rational thought and a bit of science could show. Really, it's this latter point - the defense of rational thought against the vagaries of instrumentalist politics that judges truth-value purely on grounds of expediency - i.e. that a useful lie (tens of millions of dead!) is better than an incovenient truth (total Fukushima radiation death toll thus far: 0). Leo Strauss is for neo-cons and right-wingers, not libertarian socialists.

Or as an old antifa comrade or mine put it several decades ago: The nazis are not the only ones who try to rewrite history, the capitalists and the left do it as well. But whoever tries to rewrite history for partisan advantage, is always an enemy of working class self-emancipation, whatever the colour of their banner.

an incovenient truth (total Fukushima radiation death toll thus far: 0)

I responded to this ages ago, and which you didn't respond to, but which you now repeat: if several thousands of people smoke 200 cigarettes a day, and they're still alive 3 months later, that hardly proves that smoking doesn't kill (i didn't say this exactly, but something close to it). You know perfectly well that radioactivity takes time to kill, yet you repeat this evasion of an inconvenient self-evident truth. It is impossible to count who or how many people have died since the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan, but a couple of hundred thousand per year (from leaks, nuclear tests, etc.) seems to me fairly possible, if not probable (even if it dwarfs entirely the tens of millions each year who die from famine and malnutrituion and easily avoidable diseases).
I take back the false accusation of you as an anarcho-liberal - your other posts prove that you're not , but in this case

whoever tries to rewrite history for partisan advantage, is always an enemy of working class self-emancipation, whatever the colour of their banner

could certainly apply to this kind of argument from you.

Samotnaf

an incovenient truth (total Fukushima radiation death toll thus far: 0)

I responded to this ages ago, and which you didn't respond to, but which you now repeat: if several thousands of people smoke 200 cigarettes a day, and they're still alive 3 months later, that hardly proves that smoking doesn't kill (i didn't say this exactly, but something close to it). You know perfectly well that radioactivity takes time to kill, yet you repeat this evasion of an inconvenient self-evident truth.

After Chernobyl 237 people were hospitalised with Acute Radiation Sickness and the first deaths were within 2 weeks (fireman Lieutenant Volodymyr Pravik and a number of his fellow firefighters who went on the roof). Within 3 months of the Chernobyl accident there were 31 dead. Saturday will be 3 months since the start of the Fukushima incident.

The Japanese state has just more than doubled the official estimate of the initial radiation leak from 370,000 TBq to 770,000 TBq. That compares with the Chernobyl figures of 5,200,000 TBq.

But all of this is easy enough to predict from a simple understanding of what happened at Chernobyl - i.e. there was no containment vessel, and a carbon core fire blew the whole of Reactor 4 core into the atmosphere. In Fukushima there has been some venting of steam from the primary containment and some leaking of higly radioactive water. But there has been no explosive breach of primary containment, or a massive core fire (graphite cores are good for that) to blast the whole kaboodle into the atmosphere.

But none of this matters to the people who want to get on television to say "as bad as Chernobyl" or "already worse than Chernobyl", because for them they are operating by the standard media maxim of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

And for the bulk of the ecological movement, who still come from liberal, socialdemocratic or leninist backgrounds, this is not a problem either, because "the end justifies the means". And for them the end is state intervention not social transformation.

For me the parallel with those anarchists who have made the mistake of uncritical support for national liberation movements is clear. The same blindness to, or underplaying of, the political motives of the reactionary sections of the movement. The same uncritical support of "end-justifies-the-means" false propaganda. The same demonisation of any critical voices on the grounds that "you're either with us, or you're servants of the enemy". And so on.

Even accepting your facts, without double checking them, the geographical position of Fukushima - nearer far more concentrated population centres than Chernobyl and right by the sea - means that the long term carcenogenic effect will probably be comparable with Chernobyl's, even if the release of radioactivity has been lower than that of Chernobyl (which comparison came from official bodies whose apparent interests seemed to be to rather downplay the effects of the disaster, btw). And of course, the immediate deaths within 3 months in 1986 can be attributable to both the fact that the area wasn't evacuated as quickly as this year's disaster and to the fact that the workers sent in to clean up were treated even more as sacrificial fodder than those in Japan.

the bulk of the ecological movement, who still come from liberal, socialdemocratic or leninist backgrounds, this is not a problem either, because "the end justifies the means". And for them the end is state intervention not social transformation.

That's true for the bulk of the ecological movement, but there are certainly plenty of people absolutely opposed to nuclear power who want the end of capital and the State, who come from anarchist/autonomist or situationist-influenced backgrounds; likewise, in movements against cuts in welfare the bulk of the movement have liberal, social democratic or State capitalist perspectives, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't totally oppose cuts in welfare, albeit within a perspective that recognises that capital uses the welfare state to recuperate the organic links of solidarity and mutual aid that used to and still exist in more limited forms amongst the proletariat. Likewise, total opposition to nuclear power can recognise that nuclear power is essentially part of the military hierarchy and of the hyper-specialist hierarchies which can play no part in a society in which the masses of individuals determine their own existence non-hierarchically.

Haven't checked how true the following is but....

RADIATION: It's Official: "Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through Base of Fukushima Plant"

It's Official: "Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through Base of Fukushima Plant" ... “The Findings of the Report, Which has Been Given to the International Atomic Energy Agency ... Described a 'Melt-Through' as Being 'Far Worse than a Core Meltdown' and 'The Worst Possibility In a Nuclear Accident'"
The Telegraph reports today:
The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.
The findings of the report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a "melt-through" as being "far worse than a core meltdown" and "the worst possibility in a nuclear accident."
***
The pressure vessel of the No. 1 reactor is now believed to have suffered damage just five hours after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contrary to an estimation released by Tepco, which estimated the failure at 15 hours later.
Melt-downs of the fuel in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors followed over the following days with the molten fuel collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessels before burning through and into the external steel containment vessels.
***
"The recovery effort at the plant is likely to be more difficult as they will not be able to use their previous plan to contain the fuel," Yoshiaki Oka, a professor of nuclear science at Tokyo's Waseda University told The Daily Telegraph.
"So it may take longer and be more difficult, but it is something they have to do.
Alexander Higgins picks up on other parts of the Telegraph article underplaying the severity of the crisis, noting:
The Telegraph report once again echoes statement from TEPCO that the fuel at the plant is now being cooled and that plant is stable. However, we have heard the same exact statements from TEPCO day after day for almost three months now. We heard it when there was no meltdown. and an were assured the rods were stable so the risk of meltdown was little to none. The media printed the statements.
When we were told that there was only a partial nuclear meltdown under way and there is no comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl. Again, TEPCO and the media told use there was no danger because the fuel rods were stable and being cooled.
Then were found out this was in fact a level 7 incident on par with Chernobyl and were reassured the plant and fuel rods were stable.
Then they reveal a full meltdown occurred at 3 reactors, and the media again reported the fuel rods were stable and being cooled.
Now even with news that the nuclear lava inside the reactor has melted through the base of 3 reactors they once again print the same lies again that the cool rods are being effectively cooled and are in stable condition? Should we believe them this time after 3 months of lies?
The media is also still reporting that there is no risk to human health in Japan. What a joke. Does anyone seriously believe these lies?

- from here.

"Does anyone seriously believe these lies", ocelot? As far as i remember, in all your posts on here you've never said what practical conclusions arise from your "neither for, nor against nuclear power" stance. Me, I feel anybody who seriously opposes capital and the State has to oppose actually existing nuclear power within a perspective radically critical of the ecologists who believe that reforms in energy policy are the solution, and with a perspective that in mythical After The Revolution Land nuclear power will play absolutely no part. I repeat: What, after all the factual disagreements, are the practical consequences you draw from your point of view?

Following the 12 positive Strontium 90 probes at the Fukushima province (some of the outside the evacuation perimeter) earlier this week, traces of radionucleides have apparently been found in green tea at Shizuoka, 370 km south west of Fukushima. Local authorities in Warashina found 679 Becquerel/kilo of radioactivity in green tea leaves, whereas the threshold for food is 500 Becquerel/kilo. Almost 40 per cent of Japan 80,000 of green tea production is from the Shizuoka province (Source)

Don't know whether somebody read it on Monday: Nearly 3 month after the earthquakes and the tsunami, TEPCO released a news that they as well have problems in block 1 and 4 of Fukushima Daini (Fukushima II). The cooling system of two reactors was destroyed by the tsnunami and one of them was only partially restored earlier this week. The other one is still running on emergency cooling. TEPCO now thinks about releasing some 3,000 tons of contaminated water into the sea.[/b]

Strontium found in groundwater near stricken Fukushima plant:

Tokyo - Radioactive contamination from the stricken nuclear power facility Fukushima has worsened, the operators Tepco warned Sunday, with probes of groundwater turning up traces of strontium that were 240 times above the allowable maximum limit.
Nuclear regulatory authorities reported finding the dangerously radioactive element near the damaged reactors 1 and 2.
The Kyodo news agency said it was the first discovery of strontium in the groundwater and was possibly caused by leakage resulting from pipelines being stopped up.
Meanwhile Tepco said that due to technical problems it could not yet start testing a new facility to decontaminate the tainted water.
Tepco had planned to start a week of testing on Friday, but due to the problems the start-up of the new facility - originally targeted for mid-June - would be delayed.
The decontamination facility poses a key element in Tepco's hopes of recycling the thousands of tons of highly-contaminated water used for cooling the reactors.

And ocelot, I repeat once again: What, after all the factual disagreements, are the practical consequences you draw from what seems to be your "neither for, nor against nuclear power" stance?

Samotnaf

And ocelot, I repeat once again: What, after all the factual disagreements, are the practical consequences you draw from what seems to be your "neither for, nor against nuclear power" stance?

You mistake what I am for and against. What I am for is the basic principles of the Sonvilier circular - that you cannot construct a libertarian future with authoritarian methods. What I am against is the instrumental use of disinformation for short-term tactical advantage, which is an authoritarian method, in that it necessarily requires an antinomian structure within the movements or groups in which it is practiced - due to the necessity of decision-makers needing to have a grasp of the realities of the situation, as well as the propaganda.

Strategically, it also acts as a filter, repelling those sections of the class who's natural scepticism leads them to reject any organisation that tries to foist obvious baloney on them, and only letting through the more credulous or easily-led individuals. The complete opposite of a serious organiser perspective which focuses on winning over the more guarded and sceptical individuals (as they are more likely to have the power to move their proximate workers, family and community members) and fending off the enthusiastic but useless (if not downright counterproductive) people who's opinions are principally those of the last person that spoke to them. Of course there are good reasons why authoritarian political players and runners of rackets have no objections to such a filter. But as serious organisers we have to recognise that the people that initially appear to be the easiest to recruit, are generally the last people we actually want.

On the specific question of existing nuclear power, I have already made clear in the posts above, that I consider the existing nuclear industry to be transparently an outgrowth of the nuclear weapons programmes of the imperialist countries. Witness that since the Italian referendum this Sunday gone, the main defenders of nuclear power in Western Europe are now down to France and Britain, defending their membership of the 5 permanent members of the UNSC, and the ghostly vestiges of "world-power" status that, in reality, has been dead for nearly half a century (Sarko's crusade in Libya, notwithstanding).

The current nuclear power technology is fundamentally unsafe on basic technical grounds, and the incentive structures of capitalism militate against the safety issues being addressed in any fundamental way. Capitalism, after all, is essentially unsafe by it's monomaniacal nature. So for me the situation is somewhat similar to the death penalty. I am opposed to giving the state the right to the death penalty, that does not mean that I consider killing to be necessarily wrong in every case. Should any party be fool enough to propose the introduction of nuclear power to Ireland, I would of course campaign against it, but on the basis of facts, rather than fictions.

Secondly, we learned again what makes a good intervention: presence plus critique. Presence means being there, but it also means participating, becoming a material and integral part of what is going on. Critique means not leaving your brain at home because you think you're going to scare people off with your anarchist ideas; it means expressing yourself, and also listening, and evaluating your own behavior.

ocelot -

Though some of what you say could be used against you (saying, for instance, that there have been no deaths from radiation in Fukushima, without saying the obvious - that cancer takes time to develop, is a lie by omission) I agree with most of what you say, even though the tendency in your posts has been to minimise the horror.
But I certainly DON'T agree with this curious comparison:

for me the situation is somewhat similar to the death penalty. I am opposed to giving the state the right to the death penalty, that does not mean that I consider killing to be necessarily wrong in every case.

which is rather like our old friend, Kapital and the commodity, making an exchange value equivalent of "a quarter of wheat [which] can be exchanged for x blacking, y silk, z gold, etc.". However, the use value of comparing killing with nuclear power is merely an intellectual form of abstract rhetoric which unconsciously, sloppily and incoherently, takes as its model commodity equivalents on the level of argument. It hides the real differences in history and social relations, which, at this level at least, is just like exchange value.
Killing has had innumerable causes and consequences throughout history and has always existed, even before Neanderthal man. Nuclear power is no way even remotely comparable: it, as you rightly say, comes from the military and has always existed since its creation in WWll, whether under State capitalism or Keynesian-style State-subsidised semi-private capitalism, as part of brutal hierarchical power. It is in no way even remotely as "neutral" as killing is (in the sense that you can be in favour of it in certain circumstances) . Regardless of the safety question (which is very difficult to eradicate even if economic considerations were abolished), it's totally unnecessary given the alternatives, inherently has a hyper-super-specialist nature incompatable imo with the kind of social relations I want and would always involve very high security against the enemies of the revolution who would doubtless persist in some future After The Revolution self-determined society for at least a generation.
You earlier agreed, at a fairly abstract level iirc - ie without referring to anything specific, that the technological structures of society are not neutral, but somehow you now, when it comes down to the concrete question of nuclear power, say that it is neutral (without using the word 'neutral', but that's your argument). It always amazes me that many marxists obviously say that social relations are not at all neutral or equal, and yet come out with crap that says that technology is neutral and progressive and it's just a case of who manages it. Many anarchists do the same, and you seem to be one of them.

In the meantime:

Fukushima halts operation to clean 'high radiation contaminated water'
Tokyo, June 19 : Officials at Japan's earth-quake-cum-tsunami hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants have reportedly suspended an operation hours after it had begun to clean contaminated water after workers detected a sharp radiation increase in the system's caesium-absorbing component.

- here.
And:

Fukushima Failures Kept Behind Closed Doors at UN Atomic Meeting
June 19, 2011, 10:03 PM EDT
.......The International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to shield the inquiry in Vienna from public view may backfire, analysts and scientists said.
The handpicked participants include scientists, diplomats and people from the industry who will have a chance to question Japanese authorities about what went wrong in the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. Journalists are excluded

- from here.
And also from yesterday:

Fukushima Workers Had to Bring Their Own Protective Gear
A new report says Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant was so unprepared for the disaster that workers had to bring protective gear and an emergency manual from distant buildings and borrow equipment from a contractor.

- here.

And from a few days ago:

Fishermen oppose TEPCO's plan to discharge water from Fukushima No. 2 plant
2011/06/15
Municipalities and fishermen in the Tohoku region are vehemently opposed to Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s plan to release contaminated water from the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant.
They say the fishing industry is finally starting to recover from the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, but cannot resume coastal fishing because of the ongoing crisis at TEPCO's Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
A discharge of radioactive water from the No. 2 plant would only fuel fears and rumors of contaminated marine products, they said.
TEPCO plans to discharge about 3,000 tons of seawater at the No. 2 plant - which straddles Naraha and Tomioka in Fukushima Prefecture - into the sea after lowering the radiation level below the safety standard to the same level as the company discharge during its normal plant operations.
The water is believed to contain rust and other substances contaminated with low levels of radiation.
The utility said it needs to discharge the water because the salt will likely corrode a storage tank holding the water.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said as long as the water's radiation level is below the safety standard, TEPCO will not have a legal problem discharging the water.
But the agency urged the company to keep the water on its premises unless local municipalities give their consent to the discharge.
Junichi Matsumoto, a senior official at TEPCO's nuclear power section, said the company has not made a final decision on the water release. It will explain the situation to area residents while considering alternatives, he said.
Katsuya Endo, the mayor of Tomioka, said TEPCO has yet to notify the town of the plan.
Endo demanded that TEPCO talk to local municipalities before making a decision and explain how much water it plans to release and if other options are available.
Tetsu Nozaki, chairman of the Fukushima prefectural fishing association, said the water release could pose an immense roadblock to the rebuilding process. He also said the association is currently investigating the effects of the Fukushima No. 1 plant crisis on seawater and fish.
The expected water release has stirred concerns in the Onahama port of Iwaki, about 40 kilometers south of the No. 2 plant.
Fishermen there will reopen its fish market on June 16, and their bonito fishing boats are operating for the first time since the March 11 earthquake.
In Kita-Ibaraki, Ibaraki Prefecture, Mayor Minoru Toyoda sent a letter of protest to TEPCO on June 9, stating the water-release plan does not take into account the sentiments of area residents.
Nobutaka Tsutsui, the vice fishery minister, said the same day that since the seawater still contains low levels of radiation from the release of water from the No. 1 plant, a second discharge of water will likely fuel harmful rumors.

- here.

Samotnaf

ocelot -
Though some of what you say could be used against you (saying, for instance, that there have been no deaths from radiation in Fukushima, without saying the obvious - that cancer takes time to develop, is a lie by omission)

For the record, you keep ignoring what I've repeatedly pointed out - that within the first 3 months of the Chernobyl disaster 237 people had been hospitalised with Acute Radiation Sickness and 31 were already dead, the first death occuring within 2 weeks. Fatal direct radiation poisoning can kill within days or weeks. Again, the point is in relation to the comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl, with the "instrumentalists" insisting, against the evidence, that Fukushima is already as bad or worse than Chernobyl. The medium and long-term effects are not at issue here as the incident is not over, so it is impossible to predict how much radioactivity will eventually be released.

Samotnaf

But I certainly DON'T agree with this curious comparison:

for me the situation is somewhat similar to the death penalty. I am opposed to giving the state the right to the death penalty, that does not mean that I consider killing to be necessarily wrong in every case.

which is rather like our old friend, Kapital and the commodity, making an exchange value equivalent of "a quarter of wheat [which] can be exchanged for x blacking, y silk, z gold, etc.". However, the use value of comparing killing with nuclear power is merely an intellectual form of abstract rhetoric which unconsciously, sloppily and incoherently, takes as its model commodity equivalents on the level of argument. It hides the real differences in history and social relations, which, at this level at least, is just like exchange value.

I think that has to go down as unintentional self-parody.

But laughing aside, I think we have the core of the argument here:
Samotnaf

Regardless of the safety question (which is very difficult to eradicate even if economic considerations were abolished), it's totally unnecessary given the alternatives, inherently has a hyper-super-specialist nature incompatable imo with the kind of social relations I want and would always involve very high security against the enemies of the revolution who would doubtless persist in some future After The Revolution self-determined society for at least a generation.

You present here four arguments (actually 3, the last one is just the safety argument again, in a different context). The "better alternatives exist" argument I basically agree with (at least in an earth-bound frame - currently there are no practical alternatives for nuclear power for satellite or space-flight uses, e.g. any potential Mars mission). However, I think the core of your objection is the bit I bolded above. In that sense, the safety argument is secondary because discussing safety requires some knowledge of the science, and you appear to be objecting to the science itself.

In other words, whether conscious or not, the core of your argument is implicitly primitivist. You appear to draw a line beyond which the increasing "hyper-super-specialisation" of science is itself inherently threatening to the possibility of egalitarian society. This is an argument that does not explicitly state it's foundations. Why exactly is specialist knowledge (beyond a "certain level") inherently threatening to the libertarian cause? Is a modern medical doctor who has to train for 7 years, above or below that line. What defines the line? How do you prevent the argument regressing through all science and technology, back to the inanities of a Zerzan denouncing, not only agriculture, but fire and language itself?

Samotnaf

You earlier agreed, at a fairly abstract level iirc - ie without referring to anything specific, that the technological structures of society are not neutral, but somehow you now, when it comes down to the concrete question of nuclear power, say that it is neutral (without using the word 'neutral', but that's your argument). It always amazes me that many marxists obviously say that social relations are not at all neutral or equal, and yet come out with crap that says that technology is neutral and progressive and it's just a case of who manages it. Many anarchists do the same, and you seem to be one of them.

OK, I think there is a confusion of both science and technology and process and object here (which would explain the primitivist confusion). I certainly hold that both the process developing science and its technological application are shaped by the dominant relations of society. Similarly the objects produced by these processes.

Am I opposed to the technology-in-process of applying science practically, in general terms? No, such a position would be absurd imo. Technology in this sense also goes back to the Neaderthals (and the young Marx defined it as a part of the human species-being). Am I opposed to particular technologies-as-objects, produced by particular process of development shaped by the social forces of class society? Of course.

But I can be opposed to CCTV (and not simply because of who's managing it) without necessarily being opposed to cameras or the science of optics. Further I can appreciate the usefullness of ballistics and calculus, while still being aware that historically, the main impulse force behind the development of these sciences or branches of mathematics, was the search for ever-more murderously effective artillery. Ditto the internet and "second-strike capability". And so on...

So, am I opposed to the current generation of PWRs? Yes. Does that mean that I believe that nuclear science is inherently evil? No. Is there a contradiction between these two positions? Only if you can't distinguish between relations, processes and objects - in which case capitalism, technology and civilisation are undistinguishable and inseparable.

ocelot:

For the record, you keep ignoring what I've repeatedly pointed out - that within the first 3 months of the Chernobyl disaster 237 people had been hospitalised with Acute Radiation Sickness and 31 were already dead, the first death occuring within 2 weeks.

Not at all true. Post 221:

Even accepting your facts, without double checking them, the geographical position of Fukushima - nearer far more concentrated population centres than Chernobyl and right by the sea - means that the long term carcenogenic effect will probably be comparable with Chernobyl's, even if the release of radioactivity has been lower than that of Chernobyl (which comparison came from official bodies whose apparent interests seemed to be to rather downplay the effects of the disaster, btw). And of course, the immediate deaths within 3 months in 1986 can be attributable to both the fact that the area wasn't evacuated as quickly as this year's disaster and to the fact that the workers sent in to clean up were treated even more as sacrificial fodder than those in Japan.

Obviously you missed this.

the core of your argument is implicitly primitivist

I'm using the internet, and recognise use of the internet involves a certain degree of specialism but nuke power is not at all what is called "user-friendly". I am not nor ever have been an opponent of technology as such, but recognise that, even if I use the internet and a computer, there are contradictions about them involving a subversive use and a conservative use (though it's even more complicated than that - and you'd have to read some of the stuff I wrote about computers, mostly 10 years ago or more to understand some of what I think). But nuclear power is something else, just as the neutron bomb is something else - there are some things, like concentration camps, that have no proletarian use, as you well know.
You also know perfectly well I'm not a primitivist, implicitly or otherwise - so just stop using silly polemical descriptions that have nothing to do with what I've said:

How do you prevent the argument regressing through all science and technology, back to the inanities of a Zerzan denouncing, not only agriculture, but fire and language itself?

To which I could just as well use this kind of argumentative method to say to you, "How do you prevent your argument "advancing" through all science and technology, forward to the inanities of a nuclear or a neutron bomb apologist supporting the massacre of hundreds of thousands?" I have no desire to go further into this idiotic way of arguing, which is polemical simply for oneupmanship's sake, and not as part of a struggle to clarify what we're opposed to. It's a method that reinforces separations and doesn't aim to overcome them.
You'll probably think it beneath your dignity to admit I'm essentially right (perhaps not in all details and nuances) here, so let's just call it a day with this "argument", which really is getting tiringly acrimonious.

PS

the "instrumentalists" insisting, against the evidence, that Fukushima is already as bad or worse than Chernobyl.

Not just the "instrumentalists" it seems:

UK government's Fukushima crisis plan based on bigger leak than Chernobyl...
The British government made contingency plans at the height of the Fukushima nuclear crisis which anticipated a "reasonable worst case scenario" of the plant releasing more radiation than Chernobyl

- from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/20/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-japan

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/contingency

Revisiting Fukushima: Worse Than You Think
Doug Mataconis · Tuesday, June 21, 2011
... as al-Jazeera reports, it looks like the disaster is far worse than we first thought:
“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
“Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed,” he said, “You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.”
“The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor,” Gundersen added. “TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water.”
“We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl,” said Gundersen. “The data I’m seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man’s-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can’t clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl.”
It’s been two months since the crisis started, and it’s looks like it’s going to be much longer before this situation is under control:
Gundersen’s assessment of solving this crisis is grim.”Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years,” he said. “Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn’t exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor.”..…
Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan.
“So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water,” Gundersen said. “We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come."....

A comment posted below this quotes a report that I can't find, saying:

The fragment I found most scary was:
[...] a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station – an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan – is now likely uninhabitable.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/revisiting-fukushima-worse-than-you-think/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OTB+%28Outside+The+Beltway+

i've seen that before, but the source doesn't appear to be any kind of expert on nuclear science, so i'm not going to believe what he says until someone who actually knows what they are talking about confirms it

I see the CGT have made the Fukushima link on their report on this story about recent leakages at EDF's Paluel reactor #3 in France.

Mediapart: Nucléaire: incidents en série à la centrale de Paluel

A shocking report prepared by Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency (FAAE) on information provided to them by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) states that the Obama regime has ordered a “total and complete” news blackout relating to any information regarding the near catastrophic meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant ... located in Nebraska.
According to this report, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suffered a “catastrophic loss of cooling” to one of its idle spent fuel rod pools on 7 June after this plant was deluged with water caused by the historic flooding of the Missouri River which resulted in a fire causing the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to issue a “no-fly ban” over the area.
Located about 20 minutes outside downtown Omaha, the largest city in Nebraska, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant is owned by Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) who on their website denies their plant is at a “Level 4” emergency by stating: “This terminology is not accurate, and is not how emergencies at nuclear power plants are classified.”
Russian atomic scientists in this FAAE report, however, say that this OPPD statement is an “outright falsehood” as all nuclear plants in the world operate under the guidelines of the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) which clearly states the “events” occurring at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant do, indeed, put it in the “Level 4” emergency category of an “accident with local consequences” thus making this one of the worst nuclear accidents in US history.
Though this report confirms independent readings in the United States of “negligible release of nuclear gasses” related to this accident it warns that by the Obama regimes censoring of this event for “political purposes” it risks a “serious blowback” from the American public should they gain knowledge of this being hidden from them.
Interesting to note about this event was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chief, Gregory B. Jaczko, blasting the Obama regime just days before the near meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant by declaring that “the policy of not enforcing most fire code violations at dozens of nuclear plants is “unacceptable” and has tied the hands of NRC inspectors.”
This report further notes that the “cover-up” of this nuclear disaster by President Obama is being based on his “fantasy” of creating so-called green jobs which he (strangely) includes nuclear power into as his efforts to bankrupt the US coal industry proceed at a record breaking pace.
Unknown to the American people about Obama’s “war” on the US coal industry is it’s estimated to cost them over a 60% increase in their electricity bills by 2014 and cause over 250,000 jobs to be lost in an already beleaguered economy.

from http://www.myweathertech.com/2011/06/17/us-orders-news-blackout-over-crippled-nebraska-nuclear-plant/

Japanese parents fume over Fukushima radiation impact
2011-06-26
FUKUSHIMA - Angry parents of children in Japan's Fukushima city marched along with hundreds of people on Sunday to demand protection for their children from radiation more than three months after a massive quake and tsunami triggered the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.
"We want our lives back, we want to live like before the quake in happy families," said Hiroko Sato who marched in heavy rain with her nephews, age 3 and 7, next to banners saying "No Nukes" and "One Fukushima is Enough". "My baby was born two weeks before the nuclear accident and I don't feed her with my milk as I'm afraid I was exposed to too much radiation," said Sato.......
The parents have felt emboldened since May, when mass protests led to the government lowering the limit for radiation exposure for children at schools and to offer money for schools to remove topsoil in playgrounds with too much radiation.
But the protesters, who included activists and members of groups from Tokyo, said the government had not done enough.
"They still haven't removed the topsoil at the majority of grounds, and didn't help cleaning up the school buildings,"said Akiko Murakami, a mother of four and volunteer at the "Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation".
It is one of many self-help citizen groups near the plant in Fukushima, where many areas are exposed to around 13 or more millisieverts of radiation a year, about 6.5 times natural background radiation levels, a city survey showed.
According to the survey, as many as 182 places showed readings close to or above the official annual exposure limit of 20 millisieverts per year.
The International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends that governments set radiation exposure targets at the lower end of the 1-20 millisievert per year range.

- here.

250 riot police dispatched to TEPCO shareholders' meeting today:

http://twitter.com/#!/dailyyomiuri

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/zoom/20110628-OYT9I00717.htm

250 riot police dispatched to TEPCO shareholders' meeting today:

Shareholders rioting because they're losing their blood money or what?

Saw elsewhere on twitter that there was a motion to drop nuclear power that was voted down, don't know numbers. I would assume non-shareholder protesters are there but there could also be angry shareholders too.

Found this here:

TEPCO Chairman apologizes to investors over Fukushima nuke accident
6/28/2011 11:04:00 AM
TOKYO, June 28 (KUNA) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata on Tuesday apologized for causing troubles and concerns to shareholders over the accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, while reiterating that the operator will end the ongoing nuclear crisis as soon as possible.
"On behalf of all of the executives, I want to apologize to our investors and society for causing inconvenience," Katsumata said at the outset of TEPCO's annual shareholders meeting, which was held under tight security with more than 250 police officers.
"We are doing our best to get out of this crisis and compensate people forced to evacuate around the Fukushima plant as soon as possible," he said, seeking shareholders' support....
TEPCO aims to bring radiation crisis under control by January.
According to TEPCO, a record 9,258 shareholders attended the annual event, compared with last year's figure of 3,342. The meeting was often interrupted with yells and harsh questions by angry shareholders. Some said the accident was a man-made disaster, and the other said senior executives are not taking enough responsibility.
The utility is also facing denuclearization motion submitted by more than 400 individual shareholders, on whether it will withdraw from nuclear power generation. The motion requires a two-thirds majority vote to be approved, and the voting is expected to be held later in the day.
Since the March 11 disaster, TEPCO shares have plunged 85 percent, and major US rating firms such as Moody's Investors Service Inc. and Standard and Poor's have downgraded its credit rating. The compensation to be paid by TEPCO could cost at least JPY 3 trillion (USD 37.4 billion).
Prime Minister Naoto Kan's government approved on June 14 a bill to help TEPCO to pay massive compensation to victims of the world's worst radiation crisis in 25 years while maintaining a stable supply of electricity. The bill calls for the establishment of a new state-backed institution that will receive financial contributions from other electricity firms facing possible future nuclear accident compensation claims.
Meanwhile, engineers at the Fukushima plant started cooling the damaged reactors by using decontaminated water on Monday, but the operation was suspended just 90 minutes later due to a water leak.

Surprise surprise -

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.
Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.

- The Guardian.

TOKYO: Japan yesterday recommended 113 households should evacuate from four districts considered radiation “hot spots” near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, officials said.
The voluntary guidance, for areas where higher levels of radiation have been detected sporadically, will affect households in Fukushima prefecture’s Date city, officials said, adding that they would be given financial assistance.
The districts are Ryozenmachi, Kamioguni, Shimooguni and Tsukidatemachi in Date, some 60 kilometres northwest of the troubled plant, far beyond the 20 kilometre exclusion zone immediately around it.
Higher levels of radiation have been detected in the newly designated locations, raising fears that residents’ accumulated exposure may exceed 20 millisieverts per year — the government’s limit for evacuation.
Since the March 11 disaster, Japan has raised the legal exposure limit for people, including children, from one to 20 millisieverts per year — matching the safety standard for nuclear industry workers in many countries.
Environmental groups and critics have slammed the government for the rule change and say the current evacuation zone around the plant is not wide enough and does not account for the irregular pattern of radiation exposure.

- here.

Whilst not directly caused by the nuke power disaster, the following shows - against all the endlessly repeated mantras that (so far) "nobody has died as a result of Fukushima" - that there definitely have been fatalities:

Fleeing crisis takes deadly toll on elderly: 77 Fukushima evacuees died within 3 mths
Nearly 80 elderly people who were evacuated from nursing homes near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant died within three months of the accidents at the plant that forced them to move, according to a Yomiuri Shimbun survey.
The 77 deaths are more than triple the 25 recorded at the nursing homes during the corresponding period last year.
Officials at the homes believe many of this year's deaths resulted from a decline in physical strength caused by moving far from the nursing homes and living in an unfamiliar environment. Many of the people who died had struggled to adapt to their new living conditions, the officials said.
The Yomiuri Shimbun surveyed 15 nursing homes--13 for elderly people requiring special care, and two for elderly people who cannot live alone or with their family due to financial and other reasons--within 30 kilometers of the Fukushima nuclear plant.
One nursing home just outside the 30-kilometer evacuation zone, run by a corporation that operates a home within the zone, also responded to the survey.
According to the survey, 826 elderly people were evacuated from 12 nursing homes near the nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture.
Based on the Law on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness, the government instructed residents living within three kilometers of the nuclear plant to evacuate on March 11, the day after a massive earthquake and tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling functions.
The next day, residents within 20 kilometers of the plant were told to evacuate. On March 18, the government asked elderly people at nursing homes 20 to 30 kilometers from the plant to leave the area.
The 77 elderly people who died after evacuating were aged 68 to 104--46 were in their 90s, 19 in their 80s, seven in their 100s, four in their 70s and one was 68.
At least 20 died within a month after the nuclear accident, and 42 the following month, according to the nursing homes. The major causes of death were pneumonia and brain infarction, the survey found. Some died of old age, the nursing homes said.
A nursing home within 10 kilometers of the nuclear plant evacuated its 88 residents to emergency shelters, including a gymnasium in Kawamatamachi, Fukushima Prefecture. They were then moved to a nursing home in Tochigi Prefecture and elsewhere, but 10 died.
"Many of them had to stay on the gym's hard floor for a week. Some suffered from dehydration," an official of the evacuated nursing home said.

(here)

Angry video in French by French resident in Japan from June 15th, mentioning the suicide of a Fukushima farmer forced to destroy all his produce, the ridiculousness of schoolkids in the area having a meter attached to them showing how much radiation they've consumed, and lots of other things...Pity those who play down the situation can't get emotional except in defending this manner of minimising it in the name of a detached rationalism.
Also points out the fact that many of the countries who have stopped or are stopping nuke power are still going to buy it from France and therefore are encouraging its proliferation.

Also this:

Reconstruction minister Matsumoto to resign over gaffes
Japan's disaster reconstruction minister Ryu Matsumoto tendered his resignation Tuesday only about a week after he assumed the newly created post, following a series of remarks that have angered people affected by the March 11 catastrophes in the country's northeast.
The move of Matsumoto, who came under fire over his remarks widely regarded as "high-handed," added another headache upon the unpopular Prime Minister Naoto Kan as opposition lawmakers are set to pursue Kan's responsibility for appointing Matsumoto for the post.
This could even affect the timing of the resignation of the premier, who last month announced his intention to step down once tangible progress is achieved in containing the nuclear crisis and rebuilding Japan.
Matsumoto was handpicked by Kan in late June to the post tasked with implementing reconstruction measures for areas that were hit hard by the March earthquake and tsunami, after enactment of a special law on the disaster reconstruction.
On Sunday, he held talks with Iwate Gov. Takuya Tasso and Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai when he visited quake-hit areas in Japan's northeast, and made a number of remarks that were regarded by many as arrogant and cold.
Matsumoto told Tasso that the government "will help municipalities that come up with ideas but will not help those without them."
During the meeting, parts of which were open to the press, the minister also said that as he hails from the southwestern region of Kyushu, he is not familiar with where towns and cities in the disaster-stricken northeastern region of Tohoku are located.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110705x1.html

lso points out the fact that many of the countries who have stopped or are stopping nuke power are still going to buy it from France and therefore are encouraging its proliferation.

Yes I was a bit surprised to see so many people declare x country had gone nuclear free when they were going to be making up for the shortfall by buying electricity from France.

ity those who play down the situation can't get emotional except in defending this manner of minimising it in the name of a detached rationalism.

Who has been playing it down on this thread? Both ocelot and myself have only been objecting to people playing it up - which is as offensive to the people actually dealing with the issues in Fukushima as playing it down would be.

I felt ocelot was playing it down - eg by (disingenuously) saying no-one had died as a result of the nuke power accident, when obviously people, internationally, will die, and it will be impossible to say precisely with certainty that it was the radiation that killed them. With a few OTT exceptions those who have been "playing it up" look like being correct.

I don't think that was playing it down - there is documentation of deaths from severe radiation poisoning within the few weeks after Chernobyl, there is not yet any such documentation for Fukushima - that is not playing down the impact of Fukushima, just pointing down it's not at all the same. Since so much over the 'over playing' in the mass media was 'as bad as'/'the same as' Chernobyl (ignoring all the very real differences between the two) it's reasonable to point out the very real differences in impact.

Your example of the nursing home residents who died after being evacuated is bad by anyone's standards. However there's also been plenty of criticism that the evacuation zone around Fukushima is too small (to me it seems like 60km would be more sensible given the hotspots they've found up to that radius). If we're going to do Chernobyl comparisons again, we'd need to compare this to not evacuating anywhere near up to that radius, nor adding any food restrictions. I don't think either of us want to compare elderly people dying as a result of evacuation to people dying as a result of radiation exposure (either proximity or contaminated food), but they are pretty different if you're talking about the actual effects of the crisis and how it has been managed (rather than whether there should ever have been a nuclear plant there in the first place).

I prefaced the cutting about the old people dying as a result of evacuation with

Whilst not directly caused by the nuke power disaster

. And I meant as a result of having a nuke power station, not about how the crisis was managed (which is another question). As I said ages ago , the differences with Chernobyl are partly the long term results of Fukushima are likely to be just as bad if not worse, because it's in a highly populated area (unlike Chernobyl) and by the sea (unlike Chernobyl). Also, as I said ages ago, the management of the crisis is different: for instance, those who "cleaned" up after Chernobyl were very obviously on a suicide mission, had decided to die for the greater good (that is, if they were conscious of the situation, which perhaps was not always the case) and weren't as protected as those in Fukushima (not that , longish term, that'll make all that much difference). Chernobyl and Fukushima aren't the same, any more than the bombing of Dresden was the same as the bombing of Hiroshima; but the results in terms of deaths, in both comparisons, are/were very similar (though obviously, as i also said before, an assessment of death through radiation is always going to be a rough guess).

By the way, if you look back, ocelot called me an implicit primitivist, ie "logically" I am primitivist for opposing nuclear power. This is clearly an OTT illogical argument by someone claiming to be on the side of logic, and certainly as bad a distortion, if not worse, as those who have exaggerated the situation in Fukushima. It's this that made me talk about people getting emotional "in the name of a detached rationalism."

And I meant as a result of having a nuke power station, not about how the crisis was managed (which is another question).

That's fair enough, those are two very different issues though and a lot of people (not necessarily you) have confused them.

This in the Guardian today, makes me want to punch Monbiot in the face as usual: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/04/nuclear-industry-stinks-cleaner-energy

Seems to have completely missed the fact that Daini has had its own share of troubles. Also I wonder just how high the tsunami was at Daini, iirc it's 30km south from Daiichi and all kinds of things may have affected wave height.

Yes - Monbiot is scum,but then he denounced the "violence " of London Mayday 2000 quite hysterically - so no change there (except that he used to have useful facts, but now doesn't even bother with accuracy).

Samotnaf

By the way, if you look back, ocelot called me an implicit primitivist, ie "logically" I am primitivist for opposing nuclear power. This is clearly an OTT illogical argument by someone claiming to be on the side of logic, and certainly as bad a distortion, if not worse, as those who have exaggerated the situation in Fukushima. It's this that made me talk about people getting emotional "in the name of a detached rationalism."

This is a reference back to http://libcom.org/forums/news/japan-earthquake-nuclear-meltdown-fears-12032011?page=7#comment-432858

(for some reason I can't get that url to alias/link properly within the limitations of the bb tag)

to recap:

Samotnaf

[nuclear power] inherently has a hyper-super-specialist nature incompatable imo with the kind of social relations I want [...]

[...]I think the core of your objection is the bit I bolded above. [...] whether conscious or not, the core of your argument is implicitly primitivist. You appear to draw a line beyond which the increasing "hyper-super-specialisation" of science is itself inherently threatening to the possibility of egalitarian society. This is an argument that does not explicitly state it's foundations. Why exactly is specialist knowledge (beyond a "certain level") inherently threatening to the libertarian cause?

to which your response in the next post was:

Samotnaf

I am not nor ever have been an opponent of technology as such,[...] But nuclear power is something else, just as the neutron bomb is something else - there are some things, like concentration camps, that have no proletarian use, as you well know.

Which, frankly, just side-stepped the "hyper-super specialist" nature question and pretended it wasn't there. So be it.

However, I did not accuse you of being a primitivist for opposing nuclear power. That is clearly not so.

Mike Harman:

[Monbiot]Seems to have completely missed the fact that Daini has had its own share of troubles. Also I wonder just how high the tsunami was at Daini, iirc it's 30km south from Daiichi and all kinds of things may have affected wave height.

Wikipedia:

the cooling system for unit 3 was undamaged, the other reactors were affected. The cooling systems remained operational, but heated up due to the lack of a heat sink. The high pressure coolant injection (HPCI) system (powered by reactor steam) was used as additional cooling. On March 12, the cooling system for three reactors (numbers 1, 2 and 4) at the torus had topped 100 °C between 05:30 and 06:10 rendering all cooling systems (which depend on a temperature difference between the torus and the reactor) ineffective

And Daini is 11.5 km south from Daiichi where the worst accident is still occurring; which doesn't rule out your point that this distance, and the various obstacles between, may well have affected wave height.

The argument between me and ocelot, for the lurkers who haven't gone back to sleep, is here and the next couple of posts.

ocelot:

I did not accuse you of being a primitivist for opposing nuclear power. That is clearly not so.

If we're going to be precise about what's been said and what hasn't, then you should realise I said you'd called me "implicitly primitivist" not actually "primitivist", which clearly is so:

whether conscious or not, the core of your argument is implicitly primitivist. You appear to draw a line beyond which the increasing "hyper-super-specialisation" of science is itself inherently threatening to the possibility of egalitarian society. This is an argument that does not explicitly state it's foundations. Why exactly is specialist knowledge (beyond a "certain level") inherently threatening to the libertarian cause? Is a modern medical doctor who has to train for 7 years, above or below that line. What defines the line? How do you prevent the argument regressing through all science and technology, back to the inanities of a Zerzan denouncing, not only agriculture, but fire and language itself?

To which i replied:

I could just as well use this kind of argumentative method to say to you, "How do you prevent your argument "advancing" through all science and technology, forward to the inanities of a nuclear or a neutron bomb apologist supporting the massacre of hundreds of thousands?" I have no desire to go further into this idiotic way of arguing, which is polemical simply for oneupmanship's sake, and not as part of a struggle to clarify what we're opposed to. It's a method that reinforces separations and doesn't aim to overcome them.

If you want to play legal eagle, then, yes, you're right - I did say I was against ""hyper-super-specialisation"; but this is kind of out of context, since i was clearly referring to nuclear power, but technically you're right because i said, "the kind of hyper-super-specialisation"; but this sounds too much like a bourgeois prosecutor saying " I put it to you that you did not precisely define the parameters of your analysis...I rest my case" blah blah. Again, oneupmanship. You win. Congratulations. But obviously there's a vast difference between a brain surgeon's specialism and an industry that has developed out of the military and needs vast security and secrecy to function, and would still need that if it continued "after the revolution" assuming that there would still be enemies of this revolution for at least a generation.

Your almost equation of me with that misanthropically delerious guru of anti-proletarian anti-logic, Zerzan, gets close to the kind of amalgam technique i too could make against you if we're going to get into this defence/prosecutor method of "communication" - e.g. you're no better than Monbiot, who says in today's Guardian:

the dangers of exaggerating the risks of nuclear power are at least as great as the dangers of downplaying it....there is no inconsistency between opposing the machinations and corruption of the nuclear industry and supporting the technology.

But that kind of argument is, as I said previously, just a very standard method of maintaining separations and not getting down to the reality of what we're up against; a head-banging exercise, but not a communist headache.

This is not a game of oneupmanship. It is a continuation of a dialogue on method (that has arisen by accident rather than design, in this thread).

We have already discussed the question of information, the role of its accuracy and credibility in constructing arguments that will win over all sections of the class, the sceptical ones included.

This now is about the logic of the arguments that articulate that information. In my view the fact that you cannot distinguish between my critique of your argument as implicitly primitivist in its logic, and an ad hominem attack on your character - i.e. that I am thus "calling you a primitivist" - is a problem.

It leaves you in the paradoxical postion of being simultaneously overcommitted and undercommitted to your arguments.

On the one hand, overcommitted in that you make no separation between your self (including amour-propre) and your arguments - such that any critique of your argument is immediately a experienced as a personal attack.

On the other hand, undercommittment in that when unable to avoid the possibility that your argument may be flawed, you retreat to the position of "hear what I mean, not what I say" - that is, the argument is not to be taken seriously, in terms of its own logic. It's imperfections should be overlooked in light of the alibi given it by the moral character of its speaker.

Both of these positions are deeply problematic to any collective political project. Especially a communist one.

The first because it makes the necessary evolution of political arguments through debate between comrades impossible in the medium or long term.

The second because the whole point of any collective political project in modern society is to articulate political arguments that, like "a boy named Sue", will have to serve the cause for which they were created, without the support or aid of their original creators standing by to correct them when they go wrong in the hands of new users. It is the difference between an artisanal model (where the customer can always bring the artefact back to its artificer for further adjustment or repair) and a modern industrial model of social production (where the end users will, in all likelihood, never know the creator of the tool they use).

Guattari

I have never considered ideas, theories or ideologies as anything but instruments or tools. Whence this expression, which has had a certain success and has since been used by Michel Foucault, that ideas and concepts are all part of a "tool box." As tools they can be changed, borrowed, stolen or used for another purpose.

As toolmakers, our responsibility to our class is to design the tools we try to make, to serve their purpose to the best of our abilities, and above all, as far as we can, to critically test them to make sure they cannot be used for entirely opposite purposes than that intended.

Well if you're going to quote Guattari (and implictly Foucault) as a positive reference then that explains how trapped you are in a detached philosophical way of understanding and arguing that seems to come from academia, and completely misses the point, a point your intellectual, emotionally autistic, approach is completely incapable of understanding. The unity of critical emotions and intellect, of critical subjectivity and objectivity, is a struggle you have no notion of.

For me, this conversation is over.

Samotnaf

For me, this conversation is over.

No doubt you've spent most of your political life saying that. Which is precisely my point.

The disaster and fuck-ups continue:

Radioactive water treatment facility at Fukushima misses target
2011/07/08
A key system to treat highly radioactive water at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is operating below its target, threatening to delay the year-end goal for treating all the accumulated water.
The system operated at about 76 percent its daily maximum capacity of 1,200 tons between June 29 and July 5, falling short of the 80 percent target, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant's operator, said July 6.
The capacity utilization rate improved from about 55 percent between June 17 and 28, but the system was stopped three times on June 29 and 30 due to water leaks and other problems, reducing the amount of water treated.
About 119,000 tons of radioactive water was accumulated at the reactor buildings and elsewhere at the Fukushima plant as of July 5, about 1,700 tons less than a week earlier.
About 14,970 tons of radioactive water has been treated since the system started up June 17.

- here.

And here:

Earthquake hits Japan's Fukushima region again
Tokyo, July 8 : An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter Scale shook the Japanese island of Honshu at 3:35 a.m. this morning.
The same area was earlier ravaged by a March 11 quake and tsunami that knocked out power at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Fox News reports.
No immediate damage or casualties were reported from the quake, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
No tsunami watch was immediately issued. The epicenter of the quake was about 51 miles southeast of Fukushima in Honshu in Japan, according to the USGS.
The quake was centered some 28 miles deep.

Japan says Fukushima cleanup will take decades
Decommissioning of Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, crippled in the March 2011 quake and tsunami, will take decades, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Saturday in the first government announcement of a long-term timeframe for the cleanup....
The TV channel reported that the authorities, the operator and equipment manufacturers also expect "several decades" to pass before the reactors are ready to be dismantled, citing a long-term roadmap for bringing the plant under control.
In late June the Japanese government announced that the double natural disaster could cost the country up to 16.9 trillion yen (about $210 bln). The estimates do not include the damages from a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the government said.

- http://en.rian.ru/world/20110709/165107714.html

Fukushimas radiation now spreading in japanese meat

BBC: Japan PM Naoto Kan urges nuclear-free future

[...]
On Wednesday, [Kan] went a step further, saying: "We will aim at realising a society which can exist without nuclear power."

He said the country should aim to develop alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass.

But he did not lay out a timescale for his plan.

Last month Mr Kan headed off a bid to topple him from power by telling his colleagues he would step down when Japan's crises were under control.

But his continued refusal to say when he will quit has led to speculation that he might call a snap election on the nuclear issue.

In Wednesday's news conference, he denied that he intended to call an election

Mr Kan has slumped to his lowest level of popularity since he took office just over a year ago.

According to an opinion poll this week, just 16% of the population believe he is doing a good job.

also this from Monday, was pretty good

BBC: Fukushima: Nuclear power's VHS relic?

The never ending saga:

Fukushima's radioactive water treatment system fails again
A radioactive water treatment unit at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was shut down on July 13 after a pipe junction snapped.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201107140338.html

Fukushima workers to be exposed to high radiation

The Japanese government has estimated 1,600 nuclear workers will be exposed to high levels of radiation while battling to stabilise the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The estimate is contained in a newly released Japanese government document, which includes concerns about the safety of dozens of other nuclear reactors.

It warned that with so many nuclear workers at Fukushima exposed to such high doses of radiation, they may not be able to work at other plants in the coming months.

The government has raised the radiation exposure limit so workers can remain at the Fukushima site.

It says the workers will be subject to more than 50 millisieverts of radiation, which is defined as a high level.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-28/fukushima-nuclear-workers-radiation/2813460?section=world

I'm going to continue with this neverending story updates:

Fukushima radiation reaches lethal levels

Discovery at crippled plant a fresh reminder of risks faced by workers battling to contain nuclear accident

Pockets of lethal levels of radiation have been detected at Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in a fresh reminder of the risks faced by workers battling to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) reported on Monday that radiation exceeding 10 sieverts (10,000 millisieverts) per hour was found at the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between two reactors.

On Tuesday Tepco said it found another spot on the ventilation stack itself where radiation exceeded 10 sieverts per hour, a level that could lead to incapacitation or death after just a short period of exposure.

The company used equipment to measure radiation from a distance and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is 10 sieverts per hour.

While Tepco said the readings would not hinder its goal of stabilising the Fukushima reactors by January, experts warned that worker safety could be at risk if the operator prioritised hitting the deadline over radiation risks.

"Radiation leakage at the plant may have been contained or slowed but it has not been sealed off completely. The utility is likely to continue finding these spots of high radiation," said Kenji Sumita, a professor at Osaka University who specialises in nuclear engineering.

"Considering this, recovery work at the plant should not be rushed to meet schedules and goals as that could put workers in harm's way. We are past the immediate crisis phase and some delays should be permissible."

Workers at Daiichi are only allowed to be exposed to 250 millisieverts of radiation a year.

Tepco, which provides power to Tokyo and neighbouring areas, said it had not detected a sharp rise in overall radiation levels at the compound.

"The high dose was discovered in an area that doesn't hamper recovery efforts at the plant," Tepco spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told reporters on Tuesday.

Although it is still investigating the matter, Tepco said the spots of high radiation could stem from debris left behind by emergency venting conducted days after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami that crippled the plant.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/02/japan-nuclear

Thanks to Valeriano for posting the Guardian stuff. But the problem are not only the hotspots with possibly more than 10 sievert (possibly more because the maxium range of the detectors) is 10 sievert. There are more and more problems with contaminated food. Cattle from four districts (Some 168.000 animals) may no longer be sold. And yesterday 17 districts announced that they will introduce large scale testing for radioactivity in rice. Looks as if the contamination perimeter is steadily growing. While this is an automatic translation, the content of this article from the German business-friendly newspaper FTD might be of interest.

Fukushima Radiation Hits Record High

Record- high radiation was detected at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, according to its owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

TEPCO said Tuesday radiation levels have reached over 10 sieverts (10,000 millisieverts) per hour near Fukushima's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors, nearly double the record high reached in June.

The record level could lead to incapacitation or death after just several seconds of exposure, MSNBC reports.

Peter Burns, former chief executive officer of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, told ABC News the high reading is to be expected given the scale of the Fukushima emergency.

"The levels reported of 10 sieverts per hour are very high levels and it's going to be very difficult to manage workers going into those areas and doing operations," he said, as reported by ABC News.

"To put the 10 sieverts into context, that 10 sieverts is actually a lethal dose of radiation. So you can't afford to be exposed for more than a few minutes at those levels.

"It means you're directly exposed to fuel rods in the reactors or the spent fuel ponds very closely and while it's possible to get to those levels it means there is very little shielding going on there."

Burns adds that those working on the reactor also have to contend with contaminated waste generated by the clean-up operation.

"There have been reports it's a huge problem of a huge inventory of contaminated materials - water and other materials that are going to have to be managed over the next years," he said.

"Obviously these have to be contained by some mechanism and then removed to various storage sites so that they can be properly managed over what will be decades.

"The ways of doing it are reasonably well known, what you have to do, but it's just managing it on the scale that they're going to have to manage it on would be unique in the world."

Kenji Sumita, a professor at Osaka University who specializes in nuclear engineering, asserts that the cleanup should be thorough in order to protect the workers.

"The utility is likely to continue finding these spots of high radiation," said Sumita, as reported by MSNBC.

"Considering this, recovery work at the plant should not be rushed to meet schedules and goals as that could put workers in harm's way. We are past the immediate crisis phase and some delays should be permissible."
Workers at Daiichi are only allowed to be exposed to 250 millisieverts of radiation per year, MSNBC reports....

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_10637.shtml

Experts: Fukushima 'off-scale' lethal radiation level infers millions dying
Whilst this might well be over the top, I hate the way anarchos who apologise for bourgeois science, applying that classic liberal criticism of condemnation of free speech which puts down people who shout "fire!" in a theatre, even when there is a fire, to the situation in Fukushima...

Fukushima nuclear power plant radiation recordings of external gamma radiation have been so high this week, they went off scale said veteran nuclear expert Arnie Gunderson on Thursday after the famous physicist, Dr. Chris Busby told the Japanese people this week that radioactive air contamination there now is 300 times that of Chernobyl and 1000 times the atomic bomb peak in 1963, possibly inferring that hundreds of millions of people are now dying from Fukushima radiation, including people in the United States.

If noticing unusual amounts of hair falling out, confusion, nose bleeds or other odd symptoms typical of radiation sickness, it might be due to the United States record high levels of radiation, now multiple times acceptable safety limits not only on the west coast, but also in other locations around the nation.

Because Fukushima radiation data retrieval and interpretation has been so complex or non-existent for the concerned public, citizen reporters in Japan and United States have now established easily accessible ways to view radiation levels on the internet.

Dr Janette Sherman, a highly respected physician and acknowledged expert in radiation exposure who has reported a north-east United States 35% baby death spike since Fukushima fall-out reached the nation, concurs with estimates that world wide, the Chernobyl Kill is one million people killed to date reported NOVA News. Extrapolating, worldwide deaths by Fukushima radiation could eventually be hundreds of millions of people, becoming the most significant depopulation event to date.

Dr. Chris Busby, world famous physicist, said tests conducted at the respected Harwell Radiation Laboratory in England demonstrate that airborne radiation in Japan is 1,000 times higher than radioactive “fallout” at the peak in 1963 of H-Bomb detonations by nuclear powers. In March, Busby had estimated that Fukushima radiation to be 72,000 times greater than what the United States released at Hiroshima.

"Let’s wipe the Tokyo Electric Power Company and the General Electric officials and policy makers off the face of the Earth, as they manifestly deserve," asserted Dr. Busby when addressing the Japanese this week.

Thirty-nine year nuclear industry veteran Arnie Gunderson of Fairwinds stated Tuesday,"There will continue to be enormous spikes for at least ten years."

Dr. Busby advocates not only independent studies of the nuclear catastrophe. He received a resounding applause when he told the Japanese people this week that in his opinion, scientists who said this accident was not a problem must be prosecuted.

"Many nuclear scientists said it was not a problem when the knew it was a serious accident. People who listened to those scientists and did not run away when they should have. Because of that, people will die."

Busby explained that the World Health Organization is tied to the Nuclear Industry so their research is bogus. In studying Fukushima, the World Health Organization expects to find no effects "and so that's what they'll find," he said.

According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, WHO's subjugation to the nuclear industry has been widely known since May 28, 1959, when at the 12th World Health Assembly, WHO drafted an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) granting the right of prior approval over any research it might undertake or report on to the IAEA, the group many people, including some journalists, think is a neutral watchdog but is, "in fact, an advocate for the nuclear power industry."

”The agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity through the world,” the founding papers state, as reported in The Age.

Latest nuclear 'peace, health and prosperity' spike

TEPCO discovered a hot spot location on the Fukushima nuclear power plant site a few days ago with lethal levels of external gamma radiation.
How the latest radiation spike at Fukushima might have been deposited and also how similar radioactive material would have been released off-site was presented this week by Gunderson, with over 25-years of experience in nuclear decommissioning oversight, co-authored the first edition of the Department Of Energy (DOE) Decommissioning Handbook. (See embedded Vimeo, "Lethal Levels of Radiation at Fukushima: What Are the Implications?", Arnie Gunderson, Fairwinds)

Garneson noted that over 1000 REMs were released according to TEPCO earlier this week, an amount that, "if there, would mean death within a couple of days."

"Those kinds of exposures cause extensive neurological breakdowns that can't be reversed medically," Gunderson reported.
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"To be anywhere near that for a couple of minutes would be a death sentence."

Gunderson has questioned how this hot spot could have been missed over 100 days.

"Earlier site maps do not show this high concentration of radioactivity in that area," he said. "More likely that this event happened over time. This radiation built up over time."

Gunderson said he wanted to put that into perspective and let the public know what is happening, saying the key is that it occurred in a vent.

It contained cesium and hot water that ran down the outside of the pipe and collected in the bottom, so the concentration got higher and higher as more water containing cesium came down. It was found in a stack condensing.

"Air was being pulled over that and exhausted into the air for a long period of time," he said.

"It speaks to how much radiation was released over the last 140 days, only a small amount compared to the total amount being released to the environment."

Nuclear insanity, 'Destroyer of Worlds' hits states but fixed by vaccines?

According to Gunderson, over the next ten years, there will be continued spikes in radiation on site, first where places bulldozed actually come to the surface in excavations.

"There will continue to be enormous radioactive sources that are unearthed," he said."When they get into these buildings to actually try to dismantle the plant, they are going to find even higher radiation levels than this one."

"At the bottom of the plant, the nuclear core has leaked out and is now lying like a pancake on the concrete floor, working its way down, but probably not through the concrete."

According to Gunderson, the bottom if the plant has even much more radioactive material leaking than the recent off-the-scale recordings.

"It's going to take ten or twenty years to clean up," he said.

The Japanese government has called for a voluntary cease of using compost materials from fallen leaves due to humus registering cesium over the government's acceptable radiation limits according to MSNBC World News Asia Pacific.

Following criticism of government radiation data being too difficult to interpret, organizations started collecting their own data. Now, the government is helping to interpret radiation readings found in air, water, grass, farm soil, trees and food.

Alexander Higgins is among citizen reporters in the United States who are rallying to provide accurate radiation monitoring data to Americans. This week, Higgins presented a new interactive website that clearly shows with maps and charts the radiation levels across the country.

Data on these pages reflect CPMs remarkably higher than government safety levels. For example, in recent days, Los Angeles radiation has been spiking higher than 300 CPMs, and Little Rock, higher than 250 CPMs. (See: "Real Time EPA RadNet Japan Nuclear Radiation Monitoring For Every Major City In The Entire US On A Single Page," Higgins, A.)

Global Security Newswire reported over one hundred million dollars allocated for drug research companies to address radiation sickness in the United States. Within less than a week of Fukushima's catastrophe onset, on Mar 16, U.S. bio-defense groups, that develop products for radiation leak effects from nuclear power plants and attacks and a number of anti-cancer drugs, were awarded a five-year $118 million contract to further develop "research and producing vaccines and immunotherapies directed at potential agents of bio-terrorism," according to Daily Finance.

"The government's concern is reflected in the 2004 passage of the BioShield Act, which created Project BioShield to fund countermeasures against a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack. The project has set aside $5.6 billion for the next 10 years for the government purchase of next-generation medical countermeasures, including improved vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. The budget includes grants from the Department of Health and Human Resources to biotechs developing such bio-defense products. That $5.6 billion budget may now look insufficient. Already, there is talk among some senators for the need to bump up the nation's preparedness in the wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan." (Daily Finance)

As Americans struggle to survive amid the economic depression, Obama has allocated 39 billion dollars for the U.S. nuclear power industry, an industry that peace and justice human rights defender Dr. Caldicott has called "nuclear insanity" and the "Destroyer of Worlds."

I'd like to see the nuclear power sceptics (who aren't seriously anti-nuclear power), who automatically dismiss these things as "scare tactics" or "catastrophism", in fact going through these possibly dubious facts and deconstructing them rather than saying it's all bollocks and leaving it at that.

Video here:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/08/06/fukushima-radiation-breaks-the-scale-no-idea-by-how-much-cant-measure-it/

TEPCO says melted nuke fuel may have reached criticality
November 02, 2011
Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) pumped water mixed with boric acid into the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant early on Nov. 2 after finding traces of xenon, a radioactive gas that might indicate nuclear fission has taken place.
Officials of the company said that some parts of the reactor may have reached criticality, a state of self-sustaining nuclear fission. Fuel believed to have melted in the accident triggered by the March 11 earthquake may have caused the fission. The boric acid was pumped into the reactor to suppress the reactions.

- here.

This was one of the more useful threads that libcom has produced...

apparently japan has shut down all there nuclear reactors now http://news.yahoo.com/japan-switch-off-final-nuclear-reactor-013349327.html

they can turn them back on later,but at eh moment non of the are running

Spam?

In the light of this:
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201309060053
I trust all those on this thread who minimised this catastrophe and laughed at the perfectly valid comparasons with Chernobyl feel deeply ashamed. Or at least embarassed. But I doubt they will. Their complacent arrogance knows no bounds.

They should feel ashamed if they trust alarmist and scientific illiterate technophobic manipulators. Maybe they should read these instead:
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/09/02/are-your-days-of-eating-pacific-ocean-fish-really-over/

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-toll-none-dead-none-sick-20130604-2nomz.html

Or to know better as these people act in France: http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article62

But in the subject of agriculture leftists are even more obscurantists. Long live poverty and irrationalism! That is the only way ultra-left poison could be swallowed.

Of course. If you feel disgust for the products of bourgeois science like nuclear power, you are automatically parodied as a "technophobe". The kind of sick "anti-alarmist" adorer of bourgeois sceintific "literacy" who tells people not to shout fire in a theatre even when it is quite clear that there is a fire. The endless minimisers of the Fukushima disaster, aided and abetted by the disinformation-spreaders of the nuclear power PR industry, are as impervious to shame as the neoliberals who think money is the measure of all things and all of nature and of all human beings.

How can you evaluate that there is fire without recourse to the "bourgeois" science? I took two courses in Nuclear Physics in the University and still I need to recur to scientific informed reports to know what is happening. How is ignorance of science proletarian or libertarian?
When I say poverty I don't mean money but wealth. Energy, food are not created with magic invocations and poverty is sordid not romantic. Poverty kills much more than Nuclear Plants.
Your allegations that what I linked is Nuclear power PR are baseless. You clearly prefer the professionals of disinformation that live thanks to fear mongering. You need to demonize industry to sell your particular brand of leftist illusions. The trouble with capitalism is not its ability to produce wealth throught the application of science to industry. If you think it is I prefer to side with capitalism. than to try to spice my life framing it as an heroic struggle in an apocalytical world.

In the end, who pays for the illusions are the poor: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html

I wrote : " The kind of sick "anti-alarmist" adorer of bourgeois sceintific "literacy" who tells people not to shout fire in a theatre even when it is quite clear that there is a fire.”

In response, Vermelho wrote: “How can you evaluate that there is fire without recourse to the "bourgeois" science?”

Sure. As the theatre begins to burn to the ground, everybody rushes out, even the cats and rats backstage – everybody that is, except Vermelho who proves his superiority to all living creatures by remaining there setting up his lab equipment to verify scientifically whether there is a fire or not. Thereby proving how worthy he was of the two courses in Nuclear Physics he took in the University whilst he gets reduced to ashes. Burn yourself, by all means, Vermelho – just don’t ask others to also get burnt merely to show their reverence for abstraction. I prefer to fight capitalist “scientific” ideology and its horrific practical consequences , than to try to spice my life framing siding with it as a rationalist struggle against a poverty that is clearly one of the many social consequences of bourgeois science and its dark satanic nuclear power mills. Your attempts to reassure yourself of the validity of your chosen career by proudly nailing yourself to the cross of your Nuclear Physics degrees deludes only your contemptible self.

Two and a half years after the disaster, with no possible end in sight, kids are already developing thyroid cancer. To say nothing (because nothing has been said) of those homeless street people rounded up by the Japanese mafia to do the scariest “cleaning up” work at the beginning of this disaster, whose subsequent health or lack of has never been monitored. So, the link you put up saying that no-one has died or been made sick from the radiation at Fuckyoushima is not exactly true, is it? Written by John Watson, a consistent apologist for the nuclear state. Even if it were true though, it would be no more “scientific” than saying that the fact that someone who has been smoking cigarettes for two and a half years has not died or been made sick is proof that all those who say cigarettes cause cancer are alarmist, fear mongering and scientifically illiterate cigarettophobic manipulators, demonising the tobacco industry.

As for the idea that it is a simple rejection of bourgeois science that causes poverty, rather than the capitalist use and methods of the current “ecological” alternatives to nuclear power that inevitably makes the poor pay - when have the poor ever NOT had to pay for the disasters of capitalism? Caught in all the false choices that this society spews up, you are incapable of thinking beyond, and acting against, the false alternatives of green capitalism versus the more traditional kind. The real alternative is a revolution against the capitalist forms, methods and goals of everything, including technology, alternative or not – and in particular, a total questioning of what “energy” needs to be produced, why and how.

In the meantime, those of us who can still think critically enough to not want to be destroyed by the insanity of this society, should consider the following:

(See: http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/tepco-exec-tells-dpj-that-fukushima-plant-not-under-control )

TEPCO exec tells DPJ Fukushima plant not under control

The Japanese government and TEPCO were scrambling to reassure people Friday that they have a lid on Fukushima after a senior utility executive said the nuclear plant was “not under control”.
The remarks by Kazuhiko Yamashita, who holds the executive-level title of “fellow” at Tokyo Electric Power Co, seem to flatly contradict assurances Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave Olympic chiefs a week earlier.
In a meeting with members of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, Yamashita was asked whether he agreed that “the situation is under control” as Abe had declared at the International Olympic Committee meeting in Buenos Aires.
He responded by saying, “I think the current situation is that it is not under control,” according to major media, including national broadcaster NHK.
News of his comment prompted a rush by the government and TEPCO to elaborate on Yamashita’s remark, saying he was talking specifically about the plant’s waste water problem, and not the facility’s situation in general.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Abe’s right-hand man, separately said Yamashita was repeatedly pressed by DPJ lawmakers when he made the remark.
The view of TEPCO as a company does not contradict Abe’s statement, Suga added.
TEPCO has poured thousands of tons of water on the Fukushima reactors to tame meltdowns sparked by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The utility says they are now stable but need to be kept cool to prevent them running out of control again.
Much of that now-contaminated water is being stored in temporary tanks at the plant, and TEPCO has so far revealed no clear plan for it.
The problem has been worsened by leaks in some of those tanks that are believed to have seeped into groundwater, which runs out to sea.
The continuing nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima has come under the international spotlight in recent weeks as Tokyo fought off challenges from Madrid and Istanbul for the right to host the 2020 Games.

It is worth looking at this also for some of the comments elaborating some aspects of this continuing disaster. And check out this as well: http://rt.com/op-edge/fukushima-radiation-threat-level-288/
Please note: my access to the internet is limited, which is why I have delayed replying to vermelhos seriously dangerous rubbish, a symptom of the dangerous absence of any clear antagonistic class consciousness generally. I shall not bother to argue with such an unpleasantly ridiculous person again. But if someone else wants to develop some of this, I shall, in time, probably respond.

Some URLs::

Risky repair of Fuckyoushima

Two years on from Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster, more than 250,000 people are still living in temporary housing.
The radioactive meltdown meant towns have been completely abandoned and former residents are allowed home just 10 times a year for no more than five hours at a time.

Town unanimously protests against President

The latest surge in radiation at Fukushima nuclear plant may suggest not only additional water leaks at the site, but could also mean fission is occurring outside the crippled reactor, explains Chris Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

We don´t need energy. We can put women to work in the fields.

You sound exactly like this moron when you say that we don't need technology or energy with scare quotes:
‘modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such. But does not this hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to the wind’s blowing. But the windmill does not unlock the energy from the air currents in order to store it.’ Nazi Heidegger

How do you intend to produce food or produce material wealth without energy or technology? You really believe in the reactionary romantic miths that feudalist supporters invented about the past and you don't even know how people actually lived. We live like kings compared to them. Try to read this for instance http://pt.scribd.com/doc/135056365/Ekirch-Sleep-We-Have-Lost
How do you intent to fight diseases? You prefer Rudolf Steiner methods? He was not a bourgeois scientist, he was a reactionary clairvoyant, a true ennemy of the dark satanic mills that brought wealth to human kind. I hope communist priests will be much better at that. Organic farming is a recipe to poverty based in vitalism, natural medicine is snake oil.
No, you need epidemiology and nuclear physics to know if really the accident in Fukushima is worst than coal plants acidents or a life without energy. I know for sure that a pre-industrial life is shit and kills a lot more. You can consult the evolution of life expectancy unless you consider that bourgeois science and prefer to consult your communist guru in that matters.
People like you are reactionary anti-capitalists, like nazis. What you defend is a planetary genocide. You are an obscurantist and reactionary. I rather prefer the company of liberals or even moderate catholics. You, the guy that spread desinformation about GMO. Carrefour shill! You rather love to see southern asian children to die from Xerophthalmia than to allow to grow golden rice.

If you compare poverty that results from capitalism (not from technology) to poverty that existed before without the romantic reactionary spectacles that you like to wear, i mean, you need to recur to bourgeois historiography, not to nazi fairy tales, you will be shocked. You are so worried about poverty that you are an anti-consumerist. Famines were endemic before industrial agriculture and global trade. Chemicals and GMO are good for you, nuclear energy is good for us all, it's the equivalent of a lot of servants. Rather rule over the atom and nature than over human servants. Are you worried about harnessing energy and "exploring" nature*? Did you not learning nothing with western judeo-christian way to freedom? You prefer to kneel to the eternal return of poverty and adore stones and trees like a stupid primitive man? I hope police fuck your lot hard. We don't need anarcho-nazis fooling around spitting the same old reactionary shit. We need airports not stupid hippies having intercourse with reactionary peasants in the countryside halting progress. Peasants and hippies are good for nothing except to vote right-wing and spreading lice.

I hope you enjoy a good stay in jail after being caught destroying crops or trying to increase the value of real state of some aristocrat performing green clownesque vandalism.

Beyond spending a significant amount of their last post arguing points that nobody made, there are some pretty questionable things buried in vermelho's last post:
vermelho

I hope police fuck your lot hard. We don't need anarcho-nazis fooling around spitting the same old reactionary shit. We need airports not stupid hippies having intercourse with reactionary peasants in the countryside halting progress. Peasants and hippies are good for nothing except to vote right-wing and spreading lice.

I hope you enjoy a good stay in jail after being caught destroying crops or trying to increase the value of real state of some aristocrat performing green clownesque vandalism.

Yes, I confess that I want people that target scientists and their children, that disrupt labs destroying research, that try to halt industrial projects by vandalism or activism based in pseudo-science should be behind bars. I am no book-burners lover. As there are no communist science nor a revolutionary technology could be taken for anarcho-nazi asses, protection from murder and vandalism, in the present, can only be dealt with through laws and police.

These criminal french anarcho-obscurantists for instance spreading anti-vaccines disinformation ( http://www.donotlink.com/brc ) are the sames that are accusing libcom of being cops http://www.donotlink.com/brb

The stench of a dark room full of dead rats is unbearable. These people are not misguided proletarian fighters, they are plain reacionary terrorists praisng death and ignorance.

Groundwater radiation levels at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have soared ....water samples collected from a well on Thursday contained 400,000 becquerels per litre of beta-ray emitting substances, the highest reading since the nuclear accident was triggered in March 2011.

- from here, dated today. May I suggest that vermelho takes a rest from defending atrocities and goes on a nice deep sea diving holiday round the coast of Japan.

Science was originally a progressive struggle for some rational thought based on trial and error against the repressive inventions of the priesthood. But if you want to see how it has lost all pretension to rationality in becoming a priesthood itself, in its absolute submission to the exigencies of those supplying scientist-priests with its finances, you don't have to look any further than our delerious vermelho, with his wonderful diploma in nuclear rationality. The faith in God has been supplanted by faith in a science totally divorced from its concrete consequences. The most ridiculous amalgam techniques, worthy of the Stalinists of the 30s and 40s ("anarcho-nazis" etc.) is too crude to be worth taking apart. And the utter evasiveness of not dealing with one single question I posed merely shows how irrational science has become. Its sick elitism aiming to bring light to the ignorant is the same shit as the colonisers ideology of bringing civilisation to the savages. Science's laboratories will have to be wrecked and/or fundamentally transformed in the same way as the banks etc. That is, their function, as a major support for the system, will have to be destroyed.

The stench of a dark room full of dead rats

is vermelhos own breath.

Good to know that Greenpiss brownshirts will rot in russian jails. I hope the same for all other reactionary anti-science and anti-progress "leftists" of the world. I will offer as a voluntary to smash the noses of all lab-burners.