http://www.thenation.com/blog/159211/nfl-labor-pains-and-press-release-redefined-chutzpah
Please click on the link and facebook-share and tweet this week's column. The more popular it is on the Nation's site, the more sports articles they will crave.
In struggle and sports,
Dave Zirin
Beyond all the self-pity and spin coming from the offices of National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell, here is the naked truth. We face the prospect of no football in 2011 because the players made a three word demand that would not have cost the owners a dime: open your books.
DeMaurice Smith and the NFL Players Association wanted 10 years of financial audits so they could see why the most successful sports league on earth was claiming to be financially embattled. They wanted to see how the owners could feel justified to ask for a rookie pay scale and 18% cuts in player compensation. They wanted to see how, despite all we now know about the brutal hazards of the sport, the owners could insist on adding two more regular season games. But the owners refused to open the books, offering instead “a single sheet of paper with two numbers on it.” This single sheet would only be available to the union after being vetted by an independent third-party.
It’s unclear why the owners have made a deal-breaking fetish of financial secrecy. We can only assume that the "books" would not be flattered by the light of day. We don't know whether their private ledgers would provoke the IRS to give the NFL something slightly less pleasant than a body cavity search. We don’t know if the audits would demonstrate that owners leveraged their franchises and then took a bath in the 2008 economic crash. We don’t know if individual NFL owners - like their MLB counterparts - lied to local governments so they could get more taxpayer cash for stadiums. Given the financial state of baseball’s New York Mets, whose owners flushed their liquidity by partnering up with a guy by the name of Bernie Madoff, you’d forgive us for fearing the worst.
The NFLPA also offered to consider all cuts in return for an ownership stake in the teams. The owners responding like the players arrived at negotiations wearing white after Labor Day. NFL lead counsel Bob Batterman reportedly responded, "My clients aren't interested in being partners with your guys." It’s this kind of plutocratic noblesse contempt that’s poisoned the well.
The NFL Players Association, feeling derided and disrespected has now decertified so they can sue the league and forestall the owners from shutting down the sport. Litigation isn't pretty, but going to the courts means that the NFLPA can get an injunction and prevent a lockout. An injunction means we will have football this fall.
The owners have responded by confusingly calling for a return to the bargaining table, while stating their intent to move forward with the lockout. This is like claiming to care about concussions while calling for two extra games a season.
After negotiations broke off, NFLPA leader DeMaurice Smith said, “As businessmen, we asked the owners two years ago to consider two basic tenets to getting a fair deal: financial transparency and the health and safety of our players. Financial transparency would help us reach a compromise. Even until the last moment, we were rebutted. And as for health and safety, that’s a non-negotiable issue. To our players, I will not ever yield on this point. There is no price tag for your arms, legs, backs, necks, shoulders and brains.”
Then the owners released a statement that took the chutzpah scale to new, unimagined heights. They wrote, "At a time when thousands of employees are fighting for their collective bargaining rights, this union has chosen to abandon collective bargaining in favor of a sham 'decertification' and antitrust litigation."
Gobsmacked does not begin to describe my reaction. NFL owners are people who in their personal politics, respect unions about as much as Peter King respects Ramadan (that's congressional Islamaphobic goon Peter King, not Starbucks-swilling NFL writer, Peter King.)
It would be nice to think their press release is simply a respectful tribute to the heroic struggles of the public sector unions. It would be nice to think that even NFL owners have been moved by the plight of Wisconsin's teachers, nurses, and ambulance drivers, but let's be real. The owners are trying to drive a wedge between working class fans and players by portraying the members of the union as greedy, entitled and out-of-touch.
Professional football players average three and a half years in the league. They severely injure their bodies, and die 22 years before the typical American male. Yet the owners would like us to see them as ungrateful, cloistered, creatures of privilege. If the owners really want to see people who match that description, they'd be better off investing in a mirror.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Fuck Jon Stewart!
From FireDogLake.com:
Now, let’s discuss how we can be less nice to each other.
Less polite.
Less CIVIL.
I spent last Thursday with the Wisconsin Assembly debate on the Screw the Workers We Don’t Need ‘Em Anyway Act on in the background while I worked, and as I listened to speeches by Republicans and Democrats I was struck by something.
These people were angry. They were hurt. They were unapologetic. They said things like “lies” and “hate” and “wrong” and “unjust.” They said these things loudly. They said them to the people they were saying them about. They made no apologies. They didn’t pretend to be friendly. They didn’t smile and nod and easily give way to the gentle lady from East This and That. They raged.
It was GLORIOUS...
We can’t make decisions about who best represents American values if everybody’s busy pretending they all really want the same things in the end. We can’t make choices about who we want to lead us if our candidates value being nice over being honest. And we can’t understand the consequences of politics when we act like politics is inconsequential.
These people, these Republicans in Wisconsin, hell these Republicans nationally, really are willing to tell the whole world to go to hell so that they can keep cutting taxes for the wealthy. Schoolteachers, firefighters, cops, ironworkers, steamfitters, farmers, they can all die early and poor, lest David Koch’s stock drop a quarter of a point. That deserves to be met not with bemused and polite opposition, but blistering outrage and sincere and vociferous contempt.
People are cynical about politics because they take their cues from the behavior of their leaders, and their leaders, who make their living in politics, appear determined to convince us all that politics is a dirty word. Politics isn’t something you should care about. Politics isn’t something you should raise your voice for. Politics is a big ironic joke, and really, it’s no big deal either way, so don’t get upset. Politics isn’t CIVIL.
Well, maybe it shouldn’t be. What happens as a result of political decisions isn’t civil. People starve in poverty. People die of preventable disease. People’s children are educated in schools with holes in the roof and chains the doors. Two unwinnable wars, scores of people dead, secret prisons, torture, indefinite detention, warrantless eavesdropping … because those things were done by men and women wearing suits and ties doesn’t make them any more rarefied than some protester yelling something mean.
When all the great pundits of our time get together and talk about how civility has vanished from American public life, they mean somebody like me said fuck on the Internet. They mean somebody at a MoveOn rally had a Hitler sign. They mean, hell, that somebody at a Tea Party rally had a Hitler sign. They’re all focused on what those of us out here are doing and saying, and not at all focused on what people in power are doing and saying.
I for one don’t deplore the combative tone of the Wisconsin State Legislature. I love it. Looking back at the past decade, looking back at the past four decades, I’m not sure our country can take much more civility.
Late Night: A Plea for Less Civility in Politics
Allison Hantschel
Monday March 14, 2011
http://firedoglake.com/2011/03/14/late-night-a-plea-for-less-civility-in-politics/
Now, let’s discuss how we can be less nice to each other.
Less polite.
Less CIVIL.
I spent last Thursday with the Wisconsin Assembly debate on the Screw the Workers We Don’t Need ‘Em Anyway Act on in the background while I worked, and as I listened to speeches by Republicans and Democrats I was struck by something.
These people were angry. They were hurt. They were unapologetic. They said things like “lies” and “hate” and “wrong” and “unjust.” They said these things loudly. They said them to the people they were saying them about. They made no apologies. They didn’t pretend to be friendly. They didn’t smile and nod and easily give way to the gentle lady from East This and That. They raged.
It was GLORIOUS...
We can’t make decisions about who best represents American values if everybody’s busy pretending they all really want the same things in the end. We can’t make choices about who we want to lead us if our candidates value being nice over being honest. And we can’t understand the consequences of politics when we act like politics is inconsequential.
These people, these Republicans in Wisconsin, hell these Republicans nationally, really are willing to tell the whole world to go to hell so that they can keep cutting taxes for the wealthy. Schoolteachers, firefighters, cops, ironworkers, steamfitters, farmers, they can all die early and poor, lest David Koch’s stock drop a quarter of a point. That deserves to be met not with bemused and polite opposition, but blistering outrage and sincere and vociferous contempt.
People are cynical about politics because they take their cues from the behavior of their leaders, and their leaders, who make their living in politics, appear determined to convince us all that politics is a dirty word. Politics isn’t something you should care about. Politics isn’t something you should raise your voice for. Politics is a big ironic joke, and really, it’s no big deal either way, so don’t get upset. Politics isn’t CIVIL.
Well, maybe it shouldn’t be. What happens as a result of political decisions isn’t civil. People starve in poverty. People die of preventable disease. People’s children are educated in schools with holes in the roof and chains the doors. Two unwinnable wars, scores of people dead, secret prisons, torture, indefinite detention, warrantless eavesdropping … because those things were done by men and women wearing suits and ties doesn’t make them any more rarefied than some protester yelling something mean.
When all the great pundits of our time get together and talk about how civility has vanished from American public life, they mean somebody like me said fuck on the Internet. They mean somebody at a MoveOn rally had a Hitler sign. They mean, hell, that somebody at a Tea Party rally had a Hitler sign. They’re all focused on what those of us out here are doing and saying, and not at all focused on what people in power are doing and saying.
I for one don’t deplore the combative tone of the Wisconsin State Legislature. I love it. Looking back at the past decade, looking back at the past four decades, I’m not sure our country can take much more civility.
Late Night: A Plea for Less Civility in Politics
Allison Hantschel
Monday March 14, 2011
http://firedoglake.com/2011/03/14/late-night-a-plea-for-less-civility-in-politics/
PJ Crowley Out for Criticizing Torture
From the London Guardian:
PJ Crowley, the official spokesman at the state department, has fallen on his sword after calling the treatment of Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the WikiLeaks files, "counterproductive and stupid".
The resignation followed Crowley's remarks to an MIT seminar last week about Manning's treatment in military prison.
Crowley had said: "What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence."
The remarks forced President Obama to address for the first time the issue of Manning's handling at Quantico marine base in Virginia. Obama defended the way Manning is being treated, saying he had been reassured by the Pentagon that his confinement was appropriate.
In a resignation letter, Crowley said he took full responsibility for his remarks. Though he attacked the leaking of classified information, which he called "a serious crime under US law", he stood by his earlier criticism of the Pentagon.
In words that could cause further difficulty for Obama, Crowley said his comments "were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today's challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values."
When Obama entered the White House, he made improving the global standing of the US one of the key aims of his administration. He also denounced the extreme treatment of detainees by George W Bush as running counter to the national interest.
In her letter, Hilary Clinton said that "with regret" she had accepted Crowley's departure. "PJ has served our nation with distinction for more than three decades, in uniform and as a civilian," she said...
PJ Crowley resigns over Bradley Manning remark
Ed Pilkington
Sunday 13 March 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/13/pj-crowley-resigns-bradley-manning-remarks
PJ Crowley, the official spokesman at the state department, has fallen on his sword after calling the treatment of Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the WikiLeaks files, "counterproductive and stupid".
The resignation followed Crowley's remarks to an MIT seminar last week about Manning's treatment in military prison.
Crowley had said: "What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence."
The remarks forced President Obama to address for the first time the issue of Manning's handling at Quantico marine base in Virginia. Obama defended the way Manning is being treated, saying he had been reassured by the Pentagon that his confinement was appropriate.
In a resignation letter, Crowley said he took full responsibility for his remarks. Though he attacked the leaking of classified information, which he called "a serious crime under US law", he stood by his earlier criticism of the Pentagon.
In words that could cause further difficulty for Obama, Crowley said his comments "were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today's challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values."
When Obama entered the White House, he made improving the global standing of the US one of the key aims of his administration. He also denounced the extreme treatment of detainees by George W Bush as running counter to the national interest.
In her letter, Hilary Clinton said that "with regret" she had accepted Crowley's departure. "PJ has served our nation with distinction for more than three decades, in uniform and as a civilian," she said...
PJ Crowley resigns over Bradley Manning remark
Ed Pilkington
Sunday 13 March 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/13/pj-crowley-resigns-bradley-manning-remarks
This shameful abuse of Bradley Manning
The WikiLeaks suspect's mistreatment amounts to torture. Either President Obama knows this or he should make it his business
Daniel Ellsberg
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 March 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/11/bradley-manning-wikileaks
President Obama tells us that he's asked the Pentagon whether the conditions of confinement of Bradley Manning, the soldier charged with leaking state secrets, "are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are."
If Obama believes that, he'll believe anything. I would hope he would know better than to ask the perpetrators whether they've been behaving appropriately. I can just hear President Nixon saying to a press conference the same thing: "I was assured by the the White House Plumbers that their burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's doctor in Los Angeles was appropriate and met basic standards."
When that criminal behaviour ordered from the Oval Office came out, Nixon faced impeachment and had to resign. Well, times have changed. But if President Obama really doesn't yet know the actual conditions of Manning's detention – if he really believes, as he's said, that "some of this [nudity, isolation, harassment, sleep-deprivation] has to do with Private Manning's wellbeing", despite the contrary judgments of the prison psychologist – then he's being lied to, and he needs to get a grip on his administration.
If he does know, and agrees that it's appropriate or even legal, that doesn't speak well for his memory of the courses he taught on constitutional law.
The president refused to comment on PJ Crowley's statement that the treatment of Manning is "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid". Those words are true enough as far as they go – which is probably about as far as a state department spokesperson can allow himself to go in condemning actions of the defence department. But at least two other words are called for: abusive and illegal.
Crowley was responding to a question about the "torturing" of an American citizen, and, creditably, he didn't rebut that description. Prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity – that's right out of the manual of the CIA for "enhanced interrogation". We've seen it applied in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. It's what the CIA calls "no-touch torture", and its purpose there, as in this case, is very clear: to demoralise someone to the point of offering a desired confession. That's what they are after, I suspect, with Manning. They don't care if the confession is true or false, so long as it implicates WikiLeaks in a way that will help them prosecute Julian Assange.
That's just my guess, as to their motives. But it does not affect the illegality of the behaviour. If I'm right, it's likely that such harsh treatment wasn't ordered at the level of a warrant officer or the brig commander. The fact that they have continued to inflict such suffering on the prisoner despite weeks of complaint from his defence counsel, harsh publicity and condemnation from organisations such as Amnesty International, suggests to me that it might have come from high levels of the defence department or the justice department, if not from the White House itself.
It's no coincidence that it's someone from the state department who has gone off-message to speak out about this. When a branch of the US government makes a mockery of our pretensions to honour the rule of law, specifically our obligation not to use torture, the state department bears the brunt of that, as it affects our standing in the world.
The fact that Manning's abusive mistreatment is going on at Quantico – where I spent nine months as a Marine officer in basic school – and that Marines are lying about it, makes me feel ashamed for the Corps. Just three years as an infantry officer was more than enough time for me to know that what is going on there is illegal behaviour that must be stopped and disciplined.
Daniel Ellsberg
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 March 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/11/bradley-manning-wikileaks
President Obama tells us that he's asked the Pentagon whether the conditions of confinement of Bradley Manning, the soldier charged with leaking state secrets, "are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are."
If Obama believes that, he'll believe anything. I would hope he would know better than to ask the perpetrators whether they've been behaving appropriately. I can just hear President Nixon saying to a press conference the same thing: "I was assured by the the White House Plumbers that their burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's doctor in Los Angeles was appropriate and met basic standards."
When that criminal behaviour ordered from the Oval Office came out, Nixon faced impeachment and had to resign. Well, times have changed. But if President Obama really doesn't yet know the actual conditions of Manning's detention – if he really believes, as he's said, that "some of this [nudity, isolation, harassment, sleep-deprivation] has to do with Private Manning's wellbeing", despite the contrary judgments of the prison psychologist – then he's being lied to, and he needs to get a grip on his administration.
If he does know, and agrees that it's appropriate or even legal, that doesn't speak well for his memory of the courses he taught on constitutional law.
The president refused to comment on PJ Crowley's statement that the treatment of Manning is "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid". Those words are true enough as far as they go – which is probably about as far as a state department spokesperson can allow himself to go in condemning actions of the defence department. But at least two other words are called for: abusive and illegal.
Crowley was responding to a question about the "torturing" of an American citizen, and, creditably, he didn't rebut that description. Prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity – that's right out of the manual of the CIA for "enhanced interrogation". We've seen it applied in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. It's what the CIA calls "no-touch torture", and its purpose there, as in this case, is very clear: to demoralise someone to the point of offering a desired confession. That's what they are after, I suspect, with Manning. They don't care if the confession is true or false, so long as it implicates WikiLeaks in a way that will help them prosecute Julian Assange.
That's just my guess, as to their motives. But it does not affect the illegality of the behaviour. If I'm right, it's likely that such harsh treatment wasn't ordered at the level of a warrant officer or the brig commander. The fact that they have continued to inflict such suffering on the prisoner despite weeks of complaint from his defence counsel, harsh publicity and condemnation from organisations such as Amnesty International, suggests to me that it might have come from high levels of the defence department or the justice department, if not from the White House itself.
It's no coincidence that it's someone from the state department who has gone off-message to speak out about this. When a branch of the US government makes a mockery of our pretensions to honour the rule of law, specifically our obligation not to use torture, the state department bears the brunt of that, as it affects our standing in the world.
The fact that Manning's abusive mistreatment is going on at Quantico – where I spent nine months as a Marine officer in basic school – and that Marines are lying about it, makes me feel ashamed for the Corps. Just three years as an infantry officer was more than enough time for me to know that what is going on there is illegal behaviour that must be stopped and disciplined.
Muslim McCarthyism
From FlagerLive.com:
New York Congressman Peter King’s so-called homeland security hearing on Muslim radicalization should surprise no one. We’ve been at war with Islam abroad for 10 years. It’s amazing it’s taken this long for the xenophobia and hate-mongering to be elevated to heroic status on Capitol Hill, where even the fringe the notion of Barack Obama as a Muslim fifth columnist still has currency. It’s all part of a long American tradition, rich in blood and bile.
This is a country partly built on the genocidal eradication of the Indian, on the enslavement of blacks for 300 years and the terrorizing and demonizing of blacks for another hundred. At the turn of the last century it was the “Yellow Peril” that led Congress to ban Asian immigration. In the 1920s, at a time when Jews were openly barred from colleges, clubs, restaurants and neighborhoods, Henry Ford was devoting page after page of his Michigan newspaper to battling what he perceived as the threat of Jewish radicalization in America, and dreaming of the day when the country would be cleansed of them. That was just warm-up for the mass hysteria of the 1950s when it was feared that Soviet communists, who had trouble keeping a light bulb functioning properly in Russia, would overrun the United States thanks to a few well-placed “infiltrators.” The Soviet threat has become the Muslim threat.
And to keep the bigots along the Mexican border happy, there’s always the “Brown Peril” to worry about, and goon brigades such as the “Minutemen Project” to meet brown skins with brown shirts. So Peter King, if anything, is a cliché, an elected, and therefore presumably more respectable reflection of our national prejudices. But the difference between him and, say, that radical nut Terry Jones, the Gainesville preacher who warms his religious bigotry to the fire of burning Korans, is just a different address.
If there is a “radicalization” problem in the United States, Muslims have better take a number. They’re vastly outnumbered. The odd attack with a Muslim at the trigger can’t be denied. We are a diverse country. But bullet for bullet, it’s safe to say that Muslims are more law-abiding than their more Christian brothers, at least stat wise.
“In an 11-day period this January,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reports, “a neo-Nazi was arrested headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades; a terrorist bomb attack on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was averted after police dismantled a sophisticated anti-personnel weapon; and a man who officials said had a long history of antigovernment activities was arrested outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich., and charged with possessing explosives with unlawful intent.” The same Dearborn where Henry Ford once spewed his anti-Semitism. “That’s in addition, the same month, to the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, an attack that left six dead and may have had a political dimension...”
Peter King’s Muslim McCarthyism
Pierre Tristam
March 11, 2011
http://flaglerlive.com/19048/pt-king-muslim
New York Congressman Peter King’s so-called homeland security hearing on Muslim radicalization should surprise no one. We’ve been at war with Islam abroad for 10 years. It’s amazing it’s taken this long for the xenophobia and hate-mongering to be elevated to heroic status on Capitol Hill, where even the fringe the notion of Barack Obama as a Muslim fifth columnist still has currency. It’s all part of a long American tradition, rich in blood and bile.
This is a country partly built on the genocidal eradication of the Indian, on the enslavement of blacks for 300 years and the terrorizing and demonizing of blacks for another hundred. At the turn of the last century it was the “Yellow Peril” that led Congress to ban Asian immigration. In the 1920s, at a time when Jews were openly barred from colleges, clubs, restaurants and neighborhoods, Henry Ford was devoting page after page of his Michigan newspaper to battling what he perceived as the threat of Jewish radicalization in America, and dreaming of the day when the country would be cleansed of them. That was just warm-up for the mass hysteria of the 1950s when it was feared that Soviet communists, who had trouble keeping a light bulb functioning properly in Russia, would overrun the United States thanks to a few well-placed “infiltrators.” The Soviet threat has become the Muslim threat.
And to keep the bigots along the Mexican border happy, there’s always the “Brown Peril” to worry about, and goon brigades such as the “Minutemen Project” to meet brown skins with brown shirts. So Peter King, if anything, is a cliché, an elected, and therefore presumably more respectable reflection of our national prejudices. But the difference between him and, say, that radical nut Terry Jones, the Gainesville preacher who warms his religious bigotry to the fire of burning Korans, is just a different address.
If there is a “radicalization” problem in the United States, Muslims have better take a number. They’re vastly outnumbered. The odd attack with a Muslim at the trigger can’t be denied. We are a diverse country. But bullet for bullet, it’s safe to say that Muslims are more law-abiding than their more Christian brothers, at least stat wise.
“In an 11-day period this January,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reports, “a neo-Nazi was arrested headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades; a terrorist bomb attack on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was averted after police dismantled a sophisticated anti-personnel weapon; and a man who officials said had a long history of antigovernment activities was arrested outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich., and charged with possessing explosives with unlawful intent.” The same Dearborn where Henry Ford once spewed his anti-Semitism. “That’s in addition, the same month, to the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, an attack that left six dead and may have had a political dimension...”
Peter King’s Muslim McCarthyism
Pierre Tristam
March 11, 2011
http://flaglerlive.com/19048/pt-king-muslim
Wisconsin protesters target bank that supported Governor Walker
Muriel Kane Friday, March 11th, 2011
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/11/wisconsin-protesters-target-bank-that-supported-governor-walker/
As the protesting spirit spreads in Wisconsin, one tactic that union members are now adopting is to take aim at institutions that have donated heavily to Governor Scott Walker.
Members of the Wisconsin firefighter's union set out for a local branch of the M & I Bank on Thursday to withdraw their personal savings. The UpTake, which describes itself as "a citizen-fueled, online video news gathering organization," reports that "on Thursday members of the union withdrew close to $200,000 from the bank."
A website titled "Keep on eye on Marshall & Ilsley Bank" had been targeting the M & I Bank since last month. "After working families gave Marshall and Ilsley Bank (M&I) a $1.7 billion bailout in 2008," the site explains, "their executives did an about face and funded Governor Scott Walker's attack on our right to collectively bargain. In fact, their financial help combined was more than what the Koch Brothers contributed. And while Governor Walker was demanding austerity from working people, M&I CEO Mark Furlong got an $18 million golden parachute. Even after the bank was having diffulty paying back its TARP loan."
According to Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars, the run on the bank began when teachers, firefighters, and police offers threatened to start a boycott on March 17 if the bank did not publicly oppose Walker's attack on collective bargaining rights. But after the governor pushed the cancellation of collective bargaining through the state legislation, it inspired so many protesters to show up on Thursday that the branch shut down "under the advisement of the Madison Police Department."
A diary at Daily Kos, headed "We're Going To Destroy A Bank," described the action in more personal terms. "M &I Bank of Wisconsin has committed an unpardonable offense," diarist Stranded Wind wrote. "This bank took bailout funds and thanks to the magic of Citizens United our own tax dollars flowed through their executives hands into the coffers of Scott Walker's gubernatorial campaign. We haven't dug deeply yet, but I think when we do we're going to find that we no longer have Russ Feingold's voice in the Senate because of this as well."
"What these pictures show are six hundred ordinary citizens descending on the M&I branch near the Wisconsin Capitol after learning of their purchase of the gubernatorial election last November," the diary continues. "If the 60% of Wisconsin that's sick to death of Scott Walker's behavior simply go close their accounts the bank will crash and they'll have stripped him of the funds he needs to fight the recall next January."
The bank has continued to insist that "M&I has not contributed to any candidate and did not contribute to Governor Walker or Mayor Barrett in the last gubernatorial election. M&I has over 6,000 employees in Wisconsin, and, in the great tradition of political freedom in this country, those employees have the right to contribute to the candidate of their choice."
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/11/wisconsin-protesters-target-bank-that-supported-governor-walker/
As the protesting spirit spreads in Wisconsin, one tactic that union members are now adopting is to take aim at institutions that have donated heavily to Governor Scott Walker.
Members of the Wisconsin firefighter's union set out for a local branch of the M & I Bank on Thursday to withdraw their personal savings. The UpTake, which describes itself as "a citizen-fueled, online video news gathering organization," reports that "on Thursday members of the union withdrew close to $200,000 from the bank."
A website titled "Keep on eye on Marshall & Ilsley Bank" had been targeting the M & I Bank since last month. "After working families gave Marshall and Ilsley Bank (M&I) a $1.7 billion bailout in 2008," the site explains, "their executives did an about face and funded Governor Scott Walker's attack on our right to collectively bargain. In fact, their financial help combined was more than what the Koch Brothers contributed. And while Governor Walker was demanding austerity from working people, M&I CEO Mark Furlong got an $18 million golden parachute. Even after the bank was having diffulty paying back its TARP loan."
According to Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars, the run on the bank began when teachers, firefighters, and police offers threatened to start a boycott on March 17 if the bank did not publicly oppose Walker's attack on collective bargaining rights. But after the governor pushed the cancellation of collective bargaining through the state legislation, it inspired so many protesters to show up on Thursday that the branch shut down "under the advisement of the Madison Police Department."
A diary at Daily Kos, headed "We're Going To Destroy A Bank," described the action in more personal terms. "M &I Bank of Wisconsin has committed an unpardonable offense," diarist Stranded Wind wrote. "This bank took bailout funds and thanks to the magic of Citizens United our own tax dollars flowed through their executives hands into the coffers of Scott Walker's gubernatorial campaign. We haven't dug deeply yet, but I think when we do we're going to find that we no longer have Russ Feingold's voice in the Senate because of this as well."
"What these pictures show are six hundred ordinary citizens descending on the M&I branch near the Wisconsin Capitol after learning of their purchase of the gubernatorial election last November," the diary continues. "If the 60% of Wisconsin that's sick to death of Scott Walker's behavior simply go close their accounts the bank will crash and they'll have stripped him of the funds he needs to fight the recall next January."
The bank has continued to insist that "M&I has not contributed to any candidate and did not contribute to Governor Walker or Mayor Barrett in the last gubernatorial election. M&I has over 6,000 employees in Wisconsin, and, in the great tradition of political freedom in this country, those employees have the right to contribute to the candidate of their choice."
Why Don’t All Major Unions Own Banks?
Jon Walker
Saturday March 12, 2011
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/03/12/why-dont-all-major-unions-own-banks
Seeing that large banks are the most powerful political entity in America and one of the only institutions members of Congress will practically trip over each other in their rush to save from their own mistakes, I’m left wondering why all the major labor unions don’t get in on the action by starting their own banks.
With control of big financial reserves and large numbers of members, the larger unions already have basically all the most important things they need to start successful banks.
Amalgamated Bank, one of the few union banks from the 1920s to survive the great depression, shows that a union-owned bank can be run successfully and not behave like a bastard to their customers.
Most big banks are jerks
Most of the big national banks have basically turned into vampires. They have handled the mortgage crisis in a manner that is often outright fraudulent, and a big part of their business model is to bleed their customers dry with fees. If all the new union banks did was run at cost, so as to give their members accounts free of predatory fees and practices, while reducing the size of the big national banks, it would be a sufficient improvement to make the task worth it.
In addition, the new union-owned banks can provide favorable loans to businesses that are unionized, new union-owned businesses, and loans to members trying to start small companies organized as worker-owned cooperatives.
Greater influence in the world of finance
That is, of course, only the potential tip of the iceberg. The union bank would gain sufficient extra additional financial holdings from members deposits, the union’s deposits, retirement accounts and even municipal holdings. They could use this to expand their political and financial influence, for example, buying sufficient shares of the large companies that are unionized to give the unions significant voting power on the boards. Voting power on the boards is a key part of both the industrial and union success in Germany. If unions can’t do it by direct law here, maybe they can do it by finance.
Given how terrible the banks are in this country, I think if the major unions put a real push behind starting their own banks, it would be very well received. While not ideal, I can see the political writing on the wall in this winner-take-all economy. Unions are in decline and under all-out assault by Republicans. They need political power, and it seems the easiest way is to steal it from the incredibly powerful banks by starting their own.
Simple unity on wages is no longer enough
As our broken political system slowly turns into a plutocracy where political power flows from the few extremely wealthy individuals and corporations, regular workers united for collective bargaining on wages is no longer good enough. Labor unions should strive to be a force for fully unifying regular people’s collective political and, more importantly, financial power.
Saturday March 12, 2011
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/03/12/why-dont-all-major-unions-own-banks
Seeing that large banks are the most powerful political entity in America and one of the only institutions members of Congress will practically trip over each other in their rush to save from their own mistakes, I’m left wondering why all the major labor unions don’t get in on the action by starting their own banks.
With control of big financial reserves and large numbers of members, the larger unions already have basically all the most important things they need to start successful banks.
Amalgamated Bank, one of the few union banks from the 1920s to survive the great depression, shows that a union-owned bank can be run successfully and not behave like a bastard to their customers.
Most big banks are jerks
Most of the big national banks have basically turned into vampires. They have handled the mortgage crisis in a manner that is often outright fraudulent, and a big part of their business model is to bleed their customers dry with fees. If all the new union banks did was run at cost, so as to give their members accounts free of predatory fees and practices, while reducing the size of the big national banks, it would be a sufficient improvement to make the task worth it.
In addition, the new union-owned banks can provide favorable loans to businesses that are unionized, new union-owned businesses, and loans to members trying to start small companies organized as worker-owned cooperatives.
Greater influence in the world of finance
That is, of course, only the potential tip of the iceberg. The union bank would gain sufficient extra additional financial holdings from members deposits, the union’s deposits, retirement accounts and even municipal holdings. They could use this to expand their political and financial influence, for example, buying sufficient shares of the large companies that are unionized to give the unions significant voting power on the boards. Voting power on the boards is a key part of both the industrial and union success in Germany. If unions can’t do it by direct law here, maybe they can do it by finance.
Given how terrible the banks are in this country, I think if the major unions put a real push behind starting their own banks, it would be very well received. While not ideal, I can see the political writing on the wall in this winner-take-all economy. Unions are in decline and under all-out assault by Republicans. They need political power, and it seems the easiest way is to steal it from the incredibly powerful banks by starting their own.
Simple unity on wages is no longer enough
As our broken political system slowly turns into a plutocracy where political power flows from the few extremely wealthy individuals and corporations, regular workers united for collective bargaining on wages is no longer good enough. Labor unions should strive to be a force for fully unifying regular people’s collective political and, more importantly, financial power.
Ace Hoffman Postings on Fukushima
We're not out of the wood, by any means Ace Hoffman
3/13/11
Dear Readers,
The explosion at the Fukushima MOX plant (unit 3) looks far worse than the explosion yesterday at Fukushima Unit 1.
They are assuming it was a hydrogen gas explosion, but what happened to the spent fuel pool there? This explosion appears to be larger than the one yesterday, which destroyed the top part of Fukushima 1. These buildings are huge, these are huge explosions. This is awful.
White clouds were coming up from Unit 1 again today, which shouldn't be happening if it's under control. So it's not under control. Unit 2 apparently isn't under control, either. Having huge explosions on either side can't make things easier. Other reactors in Japan are also in trouble.
And the New York Times is saying that radioactive releases could continue for MONTHS.
May I respectfully take this moment to ask San Onofre and Diablo Canyon to shut down forever? What kind of warning do those guys want, anyway? Acts of God aren't good enough? Man's folly exposed says nothing?
The nuclear industry has been telling us for nearly 25 years that nothing as bad as Chernobyl (ONE MILLION DEAD) could EVER happen again. By the time it's over, THIS could be MUCH, MUCH WORSE.
In 2010, according to TEPCO, the operator of the site, there were already more than 10,000 spent fuel assemblies located at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex, mostly in spent fuel pools.
After Chernobyl the nuclear industry ignored cancer clusters, deformities, heart problems, and thus, undercounted the death toll a thousand different ways. But a compendium of thousands of studies, published by the New York Academy of Sciences, put the number at close to a million.
After Hiroshima / Nagasaki and all the atomic bomb testing, health effects were carefully and deliberately downplayed, too. Determining which new cancers have been caused by Fukushima won't be easy EVEN IF a million people die in and around Japan, and another million die around the rest of the planet. The winds and waters move these poisons around very quickly.
There is no way to know how much radiation is being released, or how much will reach the United States. It should be noted, however, that the Japanese military used free-floating balloons to try to bomb America during World War Two. Nearly ten thousand were launched and over a thousand bomb-balloons reportedly got through.
That's the way the winds go.
There's spent fuel in numerous locations around these reactors, including huge pools with four-foot thick concrete walls -- located ABOVE the reactors in these models. These pools need nearly constant water supplies.
Fuel in dry casks, also located at the site, have a few feet of concrete and a few inches of steel protecting them. That's not nearly good enough. In an accident, the dry casks can't simply be doused in water even if you could get near enough to throw the water on them.
The United States wants to build Yucca Mountain because dry casks aren't really a very safe or practical solution. But Yucca Mountain, planned for a seismically active area, isn't a good solution, either. So they just endlessly debate the matter and keep the plants running (and try to build new ones).
Right now, the entire core of any of these stricken reactors in Japan could be turned to rubble in an instant -- pulverized or "rubbleized". This is not a "nuclear explosion," which is not possible, but it would be very, very bad. The resulting reactor vessel steam explosion could, for example, blow the 20,000 pound top of the reactor pressure vessel half a mile high. All four reactors at Fukushima could explode in sequence: Bing bing bing bing, one after another. But that wouldn't even be the worst of it. All that spent fuel is in danger, too.
We're not out of the wood, by any means. We're not even out of the demolition derby.
Yours,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
----------------------------------------------------
Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html
-----------------------------------------------------
Fukushima III explosion on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ
Wow.
-----------------------------------------------------
1945 Japanese Balloon Bombs to North America:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO6-96Pyi0o
***
Meltdowns and false assurances...
Ace Hoffman
3/13/11
Dear Readers,
If you think things are getting better in Japan, find another news source...
"We're still expecting to see another 7 to 8 earthquake..." -- expert interviewed by the BBC just now. He stated that at least one aftershock is usually within a digit of the main quake, although this main quake was the fifth largest ever recorded, so historic data are rare. Anything could happen.
So every nuclear reactor in Japan that isn't in dire trouble already, might be at any moment. A least three nuclear reactors in Japan have been ruined permanently, two of which have had "partial" fuel melts, many are releasing unmeasured volumes of radiation into the air and water, and the nuclear industry just watches and assures us they are "clean and green" and -- oh look, those highly skilled workers (who don't know when to call in the bucket brigade) may have managed to prevent a catastrophic explosion / meltdown!
(Note: That explosion yesterday at Fukushima 1 was NOT the reactor pressure vessel exploding, which may yet happen and if it does, that could start spent fuel pool fires and additional meltdowns of nearby reactors.)
There have been more than 200 earthquakes of 5.0 or greater in the area recently, and more than 20 above 6.0. "NO one can predict earthquakes" added the expert.
Below are some recent communications from the BBC, followed by a comment in the New York Times by former NRC commissioner Nils Diaz, an apologist for the nuclear industry. Nils Diaz is wrong to think that if this had happened here, the meltdowns that have apparently occurred would not have occurred. He claims that American power plant operators would have acted more quickly. Dumping sea water or boric acid into a reactor ruins the reactor, and there is no reason to think we wouldn't have also waited too long. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise. For example, here in America, the Monticello nuclear reactor was found to have an inoperable Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) after operating for 30 years. Shipping bolts had been left on the baffles, and no one noticed. Had it been needed (as the ECCS was at multiple reactors in Japan), it wouldn't have been available.
So what did AMERICAN reactor operators do? Remove the bolts? Yep. Shut the reactor down until the bolts were removed? Nope.
They waited 12 hours before shutting down the reactor, because regulations said they COULD wait that long if they wanted to. The operators might have thought they could fix the ECCS in that amount of time, though it's unlikely. By the 11th hour they surely knew they weren't going to complete the task in time, BUT THEY KEPT THE REACTOR GOING.
Because an operating reactor makes money for its owners. And the regulators said they could. It's a good thing they didn't have an earthquake during those 12 hours, or a tornado or other natural disaster. Good thing nobody flipped the wrong switch and they actually needed the ECCS.
Subsequent investigations of the Fukushima ongoing disaster -- perhaps after the involved personnel have died of their radiation exposures -- might blame faulty equipment, confusing signals, or any number of things that would trip up a U.S. operator too. Nils Diaz's comments are nearly racist, actually.
And just plain wrong. It can happen here today too, tomorrow, or any time. And American nuclear operators are just as bull-headed about keeping the plants online "come hell or high water" as everyone else. These were, after all, American nuclear reactors, built by American firms. Undoubtedly American "experts" were immediately called upon to assist or advise the Japanese operators.
What's happening in Japan can happen here, too.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
NIRS fact sheet on the situation in Japan:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf
Belona fact sheet:
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/mox_reactor_coolant_loss
From the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698
1721: More on the Tokai nuclear power plant: A report submitted to the Ibaraki prefectural government by the Japan Atomic Power Company said that one of the two pumps being used to cool the water of a suppression pool for the plant's nuclear reactor had stopped working, according to the Kyodo news agency. However, the other pump was still working and there was no problem with cooling the reactor, the prefectural government said. All control rods were set in completely at the reactor, it added.
1710: The crisis has renewed concern in other countries about the safety of atomic power. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it represented a turning point for the world. She said that safety standards at her own country's nuclear power stations would now be reviewed. In the United States, Senator Joe Lieberman said Washington needed to put the brakes on the development of nuclear power plants until lessons were learned from what had happened in Japan.
1706: The news about Tokai comes as the authorities battle to prevent a meltdown at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi complex. Sea water is being pumped into three overheating reactors there. The plant was rocked by an explosion on Saturday, which blew off the roof of one reactor building. Meanwhile, a state of emergency has been declared at a second nuclear site. The International Atomic Energy Agency said increased levels of radiation had been detected at Onagawa, close to the area worst hit by the tsunami.
From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13nuclear-industry.html
“They would rather wait and do things in a perfect manner instead of doing it as good as it needs to be now,” Mr. Diaz said. “And this search for perfection has often led to people sometimes hiding things or waiting too long to do things.”
...
In the case of Saturday’s blast, experts said that problem was avoidable.
Mr. Diaz said that a comprehensive nuclear power plant safety program developed in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have prevented a similar accident at any of the nation’s nuclear facilities.
***
Quotes collected by Ace Hoffman:
========================================
"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details." -- Paul Brians (author; quote is from: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction)
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“When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” -- Sinclair Lewis (first American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 2.7.1885 - 1.10.1951)
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"There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist." -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, 1992)
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"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." -- Sun Tzu (Chinese general b.500 BC)
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"The most intolerable reactor of all may be one which comes successfully to the end of its planned life having produced mountains of radioactive waste for which there is no disposal safe from earthquake damage or sabotage." -- A. Stanley Thompson (a pioneer nuclear physicist who later realized the whole situation)
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"Any dose is an overdose." -- Dr. John W. Gofman (another pioneer nuclear physicist who saw the light (9.21.1918 - 8.15.2007))
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"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." -- Octavia Butler (science fiction writer, 7.22.1947 - 2.24.2006)
----------------------------------------------
"If you want real welfare reform, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to reduce poverty, you focus on a good education, good healthcare, and a good job.
If you want a stable middle class, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to have citizens who can participate in democracy, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
And if you want to end the violence, you could build a million new prisons and you could fill them up, but you never end this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and the skill and the intellect and the character of our children. You focus on a good education, good health care and a good job.
And other than that, I don't feel strongly about anything."
-- Paul Wellstone (US Senator, D-Minnesota, 7.21.1944 - 10.25.2002)
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"There are no warlike peoples - just warlike leaders." -- Ralph Bunche (8.7.1903 - 12.9.1971)
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"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson
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"Officials from the San Onofre nuclear reactor said the warning siren that went off yesterday was just a malfunction and no one should worry. Hey, I worry, if they can't even get the siren to work right, what the hell are they doing with the reactor??" Jay Leno 1/20/10
----------------------------------------------
"Please send this to everyone you know!" -- Ace Hoffman (original collector of the above quotes, January, 2008)
***
Things are really bad, folks...
Ace Hoffman
3/14/11
Dear Readers,
I'm aghast. Frightened. Shaking. This is the worst day of my life.
Helen Caldicott said on the radio earlier tonight: "This could be much worse than Chernobyl."
Chernobyl killed about a million people.
And this could be worse?!?
This figure, a million people, is denied by the nuclear industry, but was the conclusion after researchers assessed over five thousand individual studies. The final report was translated into English last year, and published in the United States by the New York Academy of Sciences.
That's fifty times greater than the common figure for the next-worst industrial disaster in history -- Bhopal, India. And four times worse than the worst "natural" disaster in history, the Indonesia tsunami of 2004.
Which, thankfully, didn't severely damage any nuclear power plants, although one reactor site thousands of miles from the epicenter was closed for many months afterwards.
Not one thing that is happening in Japan right now comes as a surprise to knowledgeable so-called "anti-nuclear activists" around the world. We saw it coming decades ago. We really did. No one should deny us that.
Not one step in the horror that is unfolding went unpredicted.
We even presented decades-old historic documents proving our case, such as CARTOONS showing the worries about airplane impacts. And worries about earthquakes. And tsunamis. We kept saying something like this was inevitable. Containments would be breached. Radiation would be released. Deaths will occur globally forever.
THIS WAS UNTHINKABLE. But we thought it out.
It will happen again. That's the really unthinkable part.
Even as this horror unfurls, the bravado of the employees at America's nuclear power plants is unimaginable. Moments ago, a reporter in a live broadcast said the nuclear industry would have lot of new data to figure out what to do next, to keep things safe!
But instead, they'll deny that even a 7.1 earthquake can happen here. And only a "tiny" tsunami...
San Onofre, in Southern California (and downwind from Fukushima-Daiichi) is only built to a 7.0 earthquake standard. It is right near the Pacific Ocean, only "protected" by a 25-foot sea wall. That wouldn't have resisted these waves, or the Indonesian waves of 2004.
ACTUAL tsunami waves washing over San Onofre (and Diablo Canyon) might be HUNDREDS of feet high because nearby underwater canyons can create skyscraper-high waves of water.
Scare tactics? I'm so tired of being accused of scare tactics! The public has a right to know that their participation in opposing nuclear power is required to get these awful nuclear power plants shut down forever -- which HAS to happen, or else THIS will keep happening.
The media also needs to have a better understanding of what's happening. But how can anyone be asked to understand what is going on, when even the experts don't know what is happening inside the containment buildings, let alone inside the reactors pressure vessels themselves? They know that pumping more water into them helps. But even that is very hard to do. And isn't good for the water.
Telling the truth about what's happening right now isn't a scare tactic. Even more than a hundred miles from the site of the accident, the U.S. Navy was getting so irradiated (the equivalent of an entire month's "normal" radiation exposure per hour, we're told) that they lumbered out of the area as fast as their TWO NUCLEAR REACTORS ON BOARD COULD CARRY THEM.
Lucky they didn't blow a gasket in their rush to save themselves.
Three -- now I hear four -- nuclear reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi have suffered explosions. This is unprecedented. And workers are being pulled away... it will get even worse if no one mans the pumps! (See below).
The nuclear industry calls this a great surprise, unpredictable. We'll just build to higher standards, they say, as they continue to run there old reactors despite the dangers.
But we predicted it! We even predicted cascading nuclear accidents!
Harvey Wasserman, like Helen Caldicott a distinguished critic of nuclear power, whose comments have fallen on deaf ears for years ... sounded like he was crying, as I have been, on the interview today. Things are really, really bad.
This is a silent genocide. The deaths will occur for decades, centuries, and millennia to come.
If the winds blow the poisons here, as they typically do, our children will be the first to suffer. Our infants, our fetuses... our pregnant young mothers. No racial or religious group did this to us, industrial arrogance brings these ill winds. We are in for a dousing. A black rain. Parts of Japan may be getting radioactive soot rain-outs, called fallout, right now. And Korea, China, etc... And this isn't even as bad as it can get.
The spent fuel pools: One of them is draining itself. They can't seem to prevent it. Several reactor pressure vessels might suffer a steam explosion at any moment. If the pools empty, then inevitably the fuel will soon catch fire and burn.
This is awful. Thanks, Toshiba. Thanks, Hitachi. Thanks, General Electric. Thanks, nuclear industry.
THIS event, as bad as it is and as bad as it might become, is fair warning for what might happen at every other nuclear site around the world. NO NEW NUKES! is not nearly enough. NO NUKES! Scrap the old ones.
It's now well past too late. We don't need to wait 20 years for a new set of studies of the health effects.
Everywhere along the coast where the tsunami struck, people will be moving back and rebuilding their homes. But around Fukushima-Daiichi, they won't be moving back in our lifetime. And the exclusion zone was just expanded again, and probably will be again. Or should be.
Actions have always spoken louder than words. Acts of God, acts of Mother Nature, have always trumped arrogance. Acts of arrogance should be followed by acts of contrition. But if you expect the nuclear industry to fold, don't hold your breath.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Hoping San Onofre is spared until we can shut it down forever and get the waste stored properly! (Catch-22: There is no proper storage of the waste.)
One-minute tutorial on wind patterns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPT6VWZ9mk
***
Fukushima News 3-14-11
Ace Hoffman
3/14/11
Dear Readers,
Today's news is worse than yesterday's, which was worse than the day before. Now THREE reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility (or perhaps I should say, former nuclear power facility) are permanently disabled -- damaged by the introduction of boric acid and sea water in a desperate measure to prevent a full-scale disaster. It might work yet... it might not. This "hail mary" approach has to work perfectly three times... seaweed clogging the pipes could spell doom...
The reactor cores are apparently already in some state of partial meltdown. The exact conditions inside the reactor pressure vessels are unknown. The three reactors that are in trouble are, not coincidentally, the three that were operating at the time the earthquake struck. They automatically shut down, but all the backup generators failed when the tsunami struck an hour later
Unpredictable? Not at all!
Read my own blogs, or read any of a thousand other activists who have been warning about these sorts of problems for YEARS!
Yet, even recently, at San Onofre in California, the backup generators have failed to start in scheduled TESTS because required maintenance had not been not performed. How will they perform in an emergency?
California's four operating nuclear reactors are Pressurized Water Reactors. The reactors at Fukushima are all Boiling Water Reactors. The differences are not particularly important at the moment: Both types are dangerous. Both need to be eliminated from the earth. There is no type of reactor which is safe from catastrophic fuel melting, burning, vaporizing, or otherwise escaping into the environment.
If you didn't believe it before, remember that THIS basic reactor design is more than 50 years old. Tried and true? So they said. For half a century we've been told that nothing like this could possibly happen anywhere: A cascade of nuclear reactor accidents.
Now we're being told that we're in "uncharted territory" and nobody knows what to do... the nuclear industry admits there are lessons to be learned from this. Yes, there is one lesson. It's this: SHUT 'EM DOWN NOW. All of them forever.
Below are the four main points from today's British Mail Online, about fallout coming to America. These headlines are terrifying.
From:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366055/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-America-nuclear-alert-Fukushima-explosion.html
'Worst-case scenario' could send nuclear cloud across Pacific
30,000ft winds would carry radioactive material across the ocean
U.S.S. Ronald Reagan hit by month's radiation in just one hour
Japanese reactors are very similar to 23 in America
Let's hope this doesn't get any worse. Don't think it can't.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
I've released another version of the Chernobyl winds video, this time centered over Fukushima. Here's the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPT6VWZ9mk
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
3/13/11
Dear Readers,
The explosion at the Fukushima MOX plant (unit 3) looks far worse than the explosion yesterday at Fukushima Unit 1.
They are assuming it was a hydrogen gas explosion, but what happened to the spent fuel pool there? This explosion appears to be larger than the one yesterday, which destroyed the top part of Fukushima 1. These buildings are huge, these are huge explosions. This is awful.
White clouds were coming up from Unit 1 again today, which shouldn't be happening if it's under control. So it's not under control. Unit 2 apparently isn't under control, either. Having huge explosions on either side can't make things easier. Other reactors in Japan are also in trouble.
And the New York Times is saying that radioactive releases could continue for MONTHS.
May I respectfully take this moment to ask San Onofre and Diablo Canyon to shut down forever? What kind of warning do those guys want, anyway? Acts of God aren't good enough? Man's folly exposed says nothing?
The nuclear industry has been telling us for nearly 25 years that nothing as bad as Chernobyl (ONE MILLION DEAD) could EVER happen again. By the time it's over, THIS could be MUCH, MUCH WORSE.
In 2010, according to TEPCO, the operator of the site, there were already more than 10,000 spent fuel assemblies located at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex, mostly in spent fuel pools.
After Chernobyl the nuclear industry ignored cancer clusters, deformities, heart problems, and thus, undercounted the death toll a thousand different ways. But a compendium of thousands of studies, published by the New York Academy of Sciences, put the number at close to a million.
After Hiroshima / Nagasaki and all the atomic bomb testing, health effects were carefully and deliberately downplayed, too. Determining which new cancers have been caused by Fukushima won't be easy EVEN IF a million people die in and around Japan, and another million die around the rest of the planet. The winds and waters move these poisons around very quickly.
There is no way to know how much radiation is being released, or how much will reach the United States. It should be noted, however, that the Japanese military used free-floating balloons to try to bomb America during World War Two. Nearly ten thousand were launched and over a thousand bomb-balloons reportedly got through.
That's the way the winds go.
There's spent fuel in numerous locations around these reactors, including huge pools with four-foot thick concrete walls -- located ABOVE the reactors in these models. These pools need nearly constant water supplies.
Fuel in dry casks, also located at the site, have a few feet of concrete and a few inches of steel protecting them. That's not nearly good enough. In an accident, the dry casks can't simply be doused in water even if you could get near enough to throw the water on them.
The United States wants to build Yucca Mountain because dry casks aren't really a very safe or practical solution. But Yucca Mountain, planned for a seismically active area, isn't a good solution, either. So they just endlessly debate the matter and keep the plants running (and try to build new ones).
Right now, the entire core of any of these stricken reactors in Japan could be turned to rubble in an instant -- pulverized or "rubbleized". This is not a "nuclear explosion," which is not possible, but it would be very, very bad. The resulting reactor vessel steam explosion could, for example, blow the 20,000 pound top of the reactor pressure vessel half a mile high. All four reactors at Fukushima could explode in sequence: Bing bing bing bing, one after another. But that wouldn't even be the worst of it. All that spent fuel is in danger, too.
We're not out of the wood, by any means. We're not even out of the demolition derby.
Yours,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
----------------------------------------------------
Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html
-----------------------------------------------------
Fukushima III explosion on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ
Wow.
-----------------------------------------------------
1945 Japanese Balloon Bombs to North America:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO6-96Pyi0o
***
Meltdowns and false assurances...
Ace Hoffman
3/13/11
Dear Readers,
If you think things are getting better in Japan, find another news source...
"We're still expecting to see another 7 to 8 earthquake..." -- expert interviewed by the BBC just now. He stated that at least one aftershock is usually within a digit of the main quake, although this main quake was the fifth largest ever recorded, so historic data are rare. Anything could happen.
So every nuclear reactor in Japan that isn't in dire trouble already, might be at any moment. A least three nuclear reactors in Japan have been ruined permanently, two of which have had "partial" fuel melts, many are releasing unmeasured volumes of radiation into the air and water, and the nuclear industry just watches and assures us they are "clean and green" and -- oh look, those highly skilled workers (who don't know when to call in the bucket brigade) may have managed to prevent a catastrophic explosion / meltdown!
(Note: That explosion yesterday at Fukushima 1 was NOT the reactor pressure vessel exploding, which may yet happen and if it does, that could start spent fuel pool fires and additional meltdowns of nearby reactors.)
There have been more than 200 earthquakes of 5.0 or greater in the area recently, and more than 20 above 6.0. "NO one can predict earthquakes" added the expert.
Below are some recent communications from the BBC, followed by a comment in the New York Times by former NRC commissioner Nils Diaz, an apologist for the nuclear industry. Nils Diaz is wrong to think that if this had happened here, the meltdowns that have apparently occurred would not have occurred. He claims that American power plant operators would have acted more quickly. Dumping sea water or boric acid into a reactor ruins the reactor, and there is no reason to think we wouldn't have also waited too long. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise. For example, here in America, the Monticello nuclear reactor was found to have an inoperable Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) after operating for 30 years. Shipping bolts had been left on the baffles, and no one noticed. Had it been needed (as the ECCS was at multiple reactors in Japan), it wouldn't have been available.
So what did AMERICAN reactor operators do? Remove the bolts? Yep. Shut the reactor down until the bolts were removed? Nope.
They waited 12 hours before shutting down the reactor, because regulations said they COULD wait that long if they wanted to. The operators might have thought they could fix the ECCS in that amount of time, though it's unlikely. By the 11th hour they surely knew they weren't going to complete the task in time, BUT THEY KEPT THE REACTOR GOING.
Because an operating reactor makes money for its owners. And the regulators said they could. It's a good thing they didn't have an earthquake during those 12 hours, or a tornado or other natural disaster. Good thing nobody flipped the wrong switch and they actually needed the ECCS.
Subsequent investigations of the Fukushima ongoing disaster -- perhaps after the involved personnel have died of their radiation exposures -- might blame faulty equipment, confusing signals, or any number of things that would trip up a U.S. operator too. Nils Diaz's comments are nearly racist, actually.
And just plain wrong. It can happen here today too, tomorrow, or any time. And American nuclear operators are just as bull-headed about keeping the plants online "come hell or high water" as everyone else. These were, after all, American nuclear reactors, built by American firms. Undoubtedly American "experts" were immediately called upon to assist or advise the Japanese operators.
What's happening in Japan can happen here, too.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
NIRS fact sheet on the situation in Japan:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf
Belona fact sheet:
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/mox_reactor_coolant_loss
From the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698
1721: More on the Tokai nuclear power plant: A report submitted to the Ibaraki prefectural government by the Japan Atomic Power Company said that one of the two pumps being used to cool the water of a suppression pool for the plant's nuclear reactor had stopped working, according to the Kyodo news agency. However, the other pump was still working and there was no problem with cooling the reactor, the prefectural government said. All control rods were set in completely at the reactor, it added.
1710: The crisis has renewed concern in other countries about the safety of atomic power. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it represented a turning point for the world. She said that safety standards at her own country's nuclear power stations would now be reviewed. In the United States, Senator Joe Lieberman said Washington needed to put the brakes on the development of nuclear power plants until lessons were learned from what had happened in Japan.
1706: The news about Tokai comes as the authorities battle to prevent a meltdown at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi complex. Sea water is being pumped into three overheating reactors there. The plant was rocked by an explosion on Saturday, which blew off the roof of one reactor building. Meanwhile, a state of emergency has been declared at a second nuclear site. The International Atomic Energy Agency said increased levels of radiation had been detected at Onagawa, close to the area worst hit by the tsunami.
From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13nuclear-industry.html
“They would rather wait and do things in a perfect manner instead of doing it as good as it needs to be now,” Mr. Diaz said. “And this search for perfection has often led to people sometimes hiding things or waiting too long to do things.”
...
In the case of Saturday’s blast, experts said that problem was avoidable.
Mr. Diaz said that a comprehensive nuclear power plant safety program developed in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have prevented a similar accident at any of the nation’s nuclear facilities.
***
Quotes collected by Ace Hoffman:
========================================
"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details." -- Paul Brians (author; quote is from: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction)
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“When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” -- Sinclair Lewis (first American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 2.7.1885 - 1.10.1951)
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"There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist." -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, 1992)
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"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." -- Sun Tzu (Chinese general b.500 BC)
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"The most intolerable reactor of all may be one which comes successfully to the end of its planned life having produced mountains of radioactive waste for which there is no disposal safe from earthquake damage or sabotage." -- A. Stanley Thompson (a pioneer nuclear physicist who later realized the whole situation)
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"Any dose is an overdose." -- Dr. John W. Gofman (another pioneer nuclear physicist who saw the light (9.21.1918 - 8.15.2007))
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"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." -- Octavia Butler (science fiction writer, 7.22.1947 - 2.24.2006)
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"If you want real welfare reform, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to reduce poverty, you focus on a good education, good healthcare, and a good job.
If you want a stable middle class, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to have citizens who can participate in democracy, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
And if you want to end the violence, you could build a million new prisons and you could fill them up, but you never end this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and the skill and the intellect and the character of our children. You focus on a good education, good health care and a good job.
And other than that, I don't feel strongly about anything."
-- Paul Wellstone (US Senator, D-Minnesota, 7.21.1944 - 10.25.2002)
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"There are no warlike peoples - just warlike leaders." -- Ralph Bunche (8.7.1903 - 12.9.1971)
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"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson
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"Officials from the San Onofre nuclear reactor said the warning siren that went off yesterday was just a malfunction and no one should worry. Hey, I worry, if they can't even get the siren to work right, what the hell are they doing with the reactor??" Jay Leno 1/20/10
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"Please send this to everyone you know!" -- Ace Hoffman (original collector of the above quotes, January, 2008)
***
Things are really bad, folks...
Ace Hoffman
3/14/11
Dear Readers,
I'm aghast. Frightened. Shaking. This is the worst day of my life.
Helen Caldicott said on the radio earlier tonight: "This could be much worse than Chernobyl."
Chernobyl killed about a million people.
And this could be worse?!?
This figure, a million people, is denied by the nuclear industry, but was the conclusion after researchers assessed over five thousand individual studies. The final report was translated into English last year, and published in the United States by the New York Academy of Sciences.
That's fifty times greater than the common figure for the next-worst industrial disaster in history -- Bhopal, India. And four times worse than the worst "natural" disaster in history, the Indonesia tsunami of 2004.
Which, thankfully, didn't severely damage any nuclear power plants, although one reactor site thousands of miles from the epicenter was closed for many months afterwards.
Not one thing that is happening in Japan right now comes as a surprise to knowledgeable so-called "anti-nuclear activists" around the world. We saw it coming decades ago. We really did. No one should deny us that.
Not one step in the horror that is unfolding went unpredicted.
We even presented decades-old historic documents proving our case, such as CARTOONS showing the worries about airplane impacts. And worries about earthquakes. And tsunamis. We kept saying something like this was inevitable. Containments would be breached. Radiation would be released. Deaths will occur globally forever.
THIS WAS UNTHINKABLE. But we thought it out.
It will happen again. That's the really unthinkable part.
Even as this horror unfurls, the bravado of the employees at America's nuclear power plants is unimaginable. Moments ago, a reporter in a live broadcast said the nuclear industry would have lot of new data to figure out what to do next, to keep things safe!
But instead, they'll deny that even a 7.1 earthquake can happen here. And only a "tiny" tsunami...
San Onofre, in Southern California (and downwind from Fukushima-Daiichi) is only built to a 7.0 earthquake standard. It is right near the Pacific Ocean, only "protected" by a 25-foot sea wall. That wouldn't have resisted these waves, or the Indonesian waves of 2004.
ACTUAL tsunami waves washing over San Onofre (and Diablo Canyon) might be HUNDREDS of feet high because nearby underwater canyons can create skyscraper-high waves of water.
Scare tactics? I'm so tired of being accused of scare tactics! The public has a right to know that their participation in opposing nuclear power is required to get these awful nuclear power plants shut down forever -- which HAS to happen, or else THIS will keep happening.
The media also needs to have a better understanding of what's happening. But how can anyone be asked to understand what is going on, when even the experts don't know what is happening inside the containment buildings, let alone inside the reactors pressure vessels themselves? They know that pumping more water into them helps. But even that is very hard to do. And isn't good for the water.
Telling the truth about what's happening right now isn't a scare tactic. Even more than a hundred miles from the site of the accident, the U.S. Navy was getting so irradiated (the equivalent of an entire month's "normal" radiation exposure per hour, we're told) that they lumbered out of the area as fast as their TWO NUCLEAR REACTORS ON BOARD COULD CARRY THEM.
Lucky they didn't blow a gasket in their rush to save themselves.
Three -- now I hear four -- nuclear reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi have suffered explosions. This is unprecedented. And workers are being pulled away... it will get even worse if no one mans the pumps! (See below).
The nuclear industry calls this a great surprise, unpredictable. We'll just build to higher standards, they say, as they continue to run there old reactors despite the dangers.
But we predicted it! We even predicted cascading nuclear accidents!
Harvey Wasserman, like Helen Caldicott a distinguished critic of nuclear power, whose comments have fallen on deaf ears for years ... sounded like he was crying, as I have been, on the interview today. Things are really, really bad.
This is a silent genocide. The deaths will occur for decades, centuries, and millennia to come.
If the winds blow the poisons here, as they typically do, our children will be the first to suffer. Our infants, our fetuses... our pregnant young mothers. No racial or religious group did this to us, industrial arrogance brings these ill winds. We are in for a dousing. A black rain. Parts of Japan may be getting radioactive soot rain-outs, called fallout, right now. And Korea, China, etc... And this isn't even as bad as it can get.
The spent fuel pools: One of them is draining itself. They can't seem to prevent it. Several reactor pressure vessels might suffer a steam explosion at any moment. If the pools empty, then inevitably the fuel will soon catch fire and burn.
This is awful. Thanks, Toshiba. Thanks, Hitachi. Thanks, General Electric. Thanks, nuclear industry.
THIS event, as bad as it is and as bad as it might become, is fair warning for what might happen at every other nuclear site around the world. NO NEW NUKES! is not nearly enough. NO NUKES! Scrap the old ones.
It's now well past too late. We don't need to wait 20 years for a new set of studies of the health effects.
Everywhere along the coast where the tsunami struck, people will be moving back and rebuilding their homes. But around Fukushima-Daiichi, they won't be moving back in our lifetime. And the exclusion zone was just expanded again, and probably will be again. Or should be.
Actions have always spoken louder than words. Acts of God, acts of Mother Nature, have always trumped arrogance. Acts of arrogance should be followed by acts of contrition. But if you expect the nuclear industry to fold, don't hold your breath.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Hoping San Onofre is spared until we can shut it down forever and get the waste stored properly! (Catch-22: There is no proper storage of the waste.)
One-minute tutorial on wind patterns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPT6VWZ9mk
***
Fukushima News 3-14-11
Ace Hoffman
3/14/11
Dear Readers,
Today's news is worse than yesterday's, which was worse than the day before. Now THREE reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility (or perhaps I should say, former nuclear power facility) are permanently disabled -- damaged by the introduction of boric acid and sea water in a desperate measure to prevent a full-scale disaster. It might work yet... it might not. This "hail mary" approach has to work perfectly three times... seaweed clogging the pipes could spell doom...
The reactor cores are apparently already in some state of partial meltdown. The exact conditions inside the reactor pressure vessels are unknown. The three reactors that are in trouble are, not coincidentally, the three that were operating at the time the earthquake struck. They automatically shut down, but all the backup generators failed when the tsunami struck an hour later
Unpredictable? Not at all!
Read my own blogs, or read any of a thousand other activists who have been warning about these sorts of problems for YEARS!
Yet, even recently, at San Onofre in California, the backup generators have failed to start in scheduled TESTS because required maintenance had not been not performed. How will they perform in an emergency?
California's four operating nuclear reactors are Pressurized Water Reactors. The reactors at Fukushima are all Boiling Water Reactors. The differences are not particularly important at the moment: Both types are dangerous. Both need to be eliminated from the earth. There is no type of reactor which is safe from catastrophic fuel melting, burning, vaporizing, or otherwise escaping into the environment.
If you didn't believe it before, remember that THIS basic reactor design is more than 50 years old. Tried and true? So they said. For half a century we've been told that nothing like this could possibly happen anywhere: A cascade of nuclear reactor accidents.
Now we're being told that we're in "uncharted territory" and nobody knows what to do... the nuclear industry admits there are lessons to be learned from this. Yes, there is one lesson. It's this: SHUT 'EM DOWN NOW. All of them forever.
Below are the four main points from today's British Mail Online, about fallout coming to America. These headlines are terrifying.
From:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366055/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-America-nuclear-alert-Fukushima-explosion.html
'Worst-case scenario' could send nuclear cloud across Pacific
30,000ft winds would carry radioactive material across the ocean
U.S.S. Ronald Reagan hit by month's radiation in just one hour
Japanese reactors are very similar to 23 in America
Let's hope this doesn't get any worse. Don't think it can't.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
I've released another version of the Chernobyl winds video, this time centered over Fukushima. Here's the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPT6VWZ9mk
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
Nuclear Power Madness
Norman Solomon Monday, March 14, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/14-5
Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever.
Political elites are still clinging to the oxymoron of “safe nuclear power.” It’s up to us -- people around the world -- to peacefully and insistently shut those plants down.
There is no more techno-advanced country in the world than Japan. Nuclear power is not safe there, and it is not safe anywhere.
As the New York Times reported on Monday, “most of the nuclear plants in the United States share some or all of the risk factors that played a role at Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel generators and batteries that could fail in extreme circumstances.”
Nuclear power -- from uranium mining to fuel fabrication to reactor operations to nuclear waste that will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years -- is, in fact, a moral crime against future generations.
But syrupy rhetoric has always marinated the nuclear age. From the outset -- even as radioactive ashes were still hot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- top officials in Washington touted atomic energy as redemptive. The split atom, we were to believe, could be an elevating marvel.
President Dwight Eisenhower pledged “to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma” by showing that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”
Even after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 -- and now this catastrophe in Japan -- the corporate theologians of nuclear faith have continued to bless their own divine projects.
Thirty years ago, when I coordinated the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims on the edge of Capitol Hill, we heard grim testimony from nuclear scientists, workers, downwinders and many others whose lives had been forever ravaged by the split atom. Routine in the process was tag-team deception from government agencies and nuclear-invested companies.
By 1980, generations had already suffered a vast array of terrible consequences -- including cancer, leukemia and genetic injuries -- from a nuclear fuel cycle shared by the “peaceful” and military atom. Today, we know a lot more about the abrupt and slow-moving horrors of the nuclear industry.
And we keep learning, by the minute, as nuclear catastrophe goes exponential in Japan. But government leaders don’t seem to be learning much of anything.
On Sunday, even while nuclear-power reactors were melting down, the White House issued this statement: “The president believes that meeting our energy needs means relying on a diverse set of energy sources that includes renewables like wind and solar, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power. Information is still coming in about the events unfolding in Japan, but the administration is committed to learning from them and ensuring that nuclear energy is produced safely and responsibly here in the U.S.”
Yet another reflexive nuclear salute.
When this year’s State of the Union address proclaimed a goal of “clean energy sources” for 80 percent of U.S. electricity by 2035, Obama added: “Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.”
Bipartisan for nuclear power? You betcha. On Sunday morning TV shows, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell voiced support for nuclear power, while Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer offered this convoluted ode to atomic flackery: “We are going to have to see what happens here -- obviously still things are happening -- but the bottom line is we do have to free ourselves of independence from foreign oil in the other half of the globe. Libya showed that. Prices are up, our economy is being hurt by it, or could be hurt by it. So I'm still willing to look at nuclear. As I’ve always said it has to be done safely and carefully.”
Such behavior might just seem absurd or pathetic -- if the consequences weren’t so grave.
Nuclear power madness is so entrenched that mainline pundits and top elected officials rarely murmur dissent. Acquiescence is equated with prudent sagacity.
In early 2010, President Obama announced federal loan guarantees -- totaling more than $8 billion -- to revive the construction of nuclear power plants in this country, where 110 nuclear-power reactors are already in operation.
“Investing in nuclear energy remains a necessary step,” he said. “What I hope is that, with this announcement, we’re underscoring both our seriousness in meeting the energy challenge and our willingness to look at this challenge, not as a partisan issue, but as a matter that’s far more important than politics because the choices we make will affect not just the next generation but many generations to come.”
Promising to push for bigger loan guarantees to build more nuclear power plants, the president said: “This is only the beginning.”
Norman Solomon is president of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a senior fellow at RootsAction. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/14-5
Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever.
Political elites are still clinging to the oxymoron of “safe nuclear power.” It’s up to us -- people around the world -- to peacefully and insistently shut those plants down.
There is no more techno-advanced country in the world than Japan. Nuclear power is not safe there, and it is not safe anywhere.
As the New York Times reported on Monday, “most of the nuclear plants in the United States share some or all of the risk factors that played a role at Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel generators and batteries that could fail in extreme circumstances.”
Nuclear power -- from uranium mining to fuel fabrication to reactor operations to nuclear waste that will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years -- is, in fact, a moral crime against future generations.
But syrupy rhetoric has always marinated the nuclear age. From the outset -- even as radioactive ashes were still hot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- top officials in Washington touted atomic energy as redemptive. The split atom, we were to believe, could be an elevating marvel.
President Dwight Eisenhower pledged “to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma” by showing that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”
Even after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 -- and now this catastrophe in Japan -- the corporate theologians of nuclear faith have continued to bless their own divine projects.
Thirty years ago, when I coordinated the National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims on the edge of Capitol Hill, we heard grim testimony from nuclear scientists, workers, downwinders and many others whose lives had been forever ravaged by the split atom. Routine in the process was tag-team deception from government agencies and nuclear-invested companies.
By 1980, generations had already suffered a vast array of terrible consequences -- including cancer, leukemia and genetic injuries -- from a nuclear fuel cycle shared by the “peaceful” and military atom. Today, we know a lot more about the abrupt and slow-moving horrors of the nuclear industry.
And we keep learning, by the minute, as nuclear catastrophe goes exponential in Japan. But government leaders don’t seem to be learning much of anything.
On Sunday, even while nuclear-power reactors were melting down, the White House issued this statement: “The president believes that meeting our energy needs means relying on a diverse set of energy sources that includes renewables like wind and solar, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power. Information is still coming in about the events unfolding in Japan, but the administration is committed to learning from them and ensuring that nuclear energy is produced safely and responsibly here in the U.S.”
Yet another reflexive nuclear salute.
When this year’s State of the Union address proclaimed a goal of “clean energy sources” for 80 percent of U.S. electricity by 2035, Obama added: “Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.”
Bipartisan for nuclear power? You betcha. On Sunday morning TV shows, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell voiced support for nuclear power, while Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer offered this convoluted ode to atomic flackery: “We are going to have to see what happens here -- obviously still things are happening -- but the bottom line is we do have to free ourselves of independence from foreign oil in the other half of the globe. Libya showed that. Prices are up, our economy is being hurt by it, or could be hurt by it. So I'm still willing to look at nuclear. As I’ve always said it has to be done safely and carefully.”
Such behavior might just seem absurd or pathetic -- if the consequences weren’t so grave.
Nuclear power madness is so entrenched that mainline pundits and top elected officials rarely murmur dissent. Acquiescence is equated with prudent sagacity.
In early 2010, President Obama announced federal loan guarantees -- totaling more than $8 billion -- to revive the construction of nuclear power plants in this country, where 110 nuclear-power reactors are already in operation.
“Investing in nuclear energy remains a necessary step,” he said. “What I hope is that, with this announcement, we’re underscoring both our seriousness in meeting the energy challenge and our willingness to look at this challenge, not as a partisan issue, but as a matter that’s far more important than politics because the choices we make will affect not just the next generation but many generations to come.”
Promising to push for bigger loan guarantees to build more nuclear power plants, the president said: “This is only the beginning.”
Norman Solomon is president of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a senior fellow at RootsAction. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
TOKYO ELECTRIC TO BUILD US NUCLEAR PLANTS
The no-BS info on Japan's disastrous nuclear operators
Greg Palast
New York - March 14, 2011
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.
Texas plants planned by Tokyo Electric. Image:NINAI 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.
*
For Truthout/Buzzflash
Greg Palast is the co-author of Democracy and Regulation, the United Nations ILO guide for public service regulators, with Jerrold Oppenheim and Theo MacGregor. Palast has advised regulators in 26 states and in 12 nations on the regulation of the utility industry.
Palast, whose reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight, is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
GregPalast.com
Greg Palast
New York - March 14, 2011
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.
Texas plants planned by Tokyo Electric. Image:NINAI 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.
*
For Truthout/Buzzflash
Greg Palast is the co-author of Democracy and Regulation, the United Nations ILO guide for public service regulators, with Jerrold Oppenheim and Theo MacGregor. Palast has advised regulators in 26 states and in 12 nations on the regulation of the utility industry.
Palast, whose reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight, is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
GregPalast.com
Behind the Hydrogen Explosion at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant
Karl Grossman Saturday, March 12, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/12-3
The explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is being described as caused by a “hydrogen build-up” The situation harks back to the “hydrogen bubble” that was feared would explode when the Three Mile Island plant in 1979 underwent a partial meltdown.
The hydrogen explosion problem at nuclear power plants involves a story as crazy as can be. As nuts as using nuclear fission to boil water to generate electricity is, the hydrogen problem and its cause cap the lunacy.
Eruption of hydrogen gas as a first reaction in a loss-of-coolant accident has been discussed with great worry in U.S. government and nuclear industry literature for decades.
That is because a highly volatile substance called zirconium was chosen back in the 1940’s and 50’s, when plans were first developed to build nuclear power plants, as the material to be used to make the rods into which radioactive fuel would be loaded.
There are 30,000 to 40,000 rods—composed of twenty tons of zirconium—in an average nuclear power plant. Many other substances were tried, particularly stainless steel, but only zirconium worked well. That’s because zirconium, it was found, allows neutrons from the fuel pellets in the rods to pass freely between the rods and thus a nuclear chain reaction to be sustained.
But there’s a huge problem with zirconium—it is highly volatile and when hot will explode spontaneously upon contact with air, water or steam.
The only other major commercial use of zirconium through the years has been in flashbulbs used in photography. A speck of it, on a flashbulb, ignites to provide a flash of light.
But in a nuclear plant, we’re not talking about specks—but tons and tons of zirconium, put together as a compound called “zircaloy” that clads tens of thousands of fuel rods.
Heat, a great deal of heat, builds up in a very short time with any interruption of coolant flow in a nuclear power plant—the problem at Fukushima after the earthquake that struck Japan.
Zirconium, with the explosive power, pound for pound, of nitroglycerine, will catch fire and explode at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 5,000 degree temperature of a meltdown.
Before then, however, zirconium reacts to the heat by drawing oxygen from water and steam and letting off hydrogen, which itself can explode—and is said to have done so at Fukushima.
As a result of such a hydrogen explosion, there is additional heat—bringing the zirconium itself closer and closer to its explosive level.
Whether in addition to being a hydrogen explosion, zirconium also exploded at Fukushima remains to be known.
But what has happened regarding hydrogen at Fukushima, like the “hydrogen bubble” when the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania underwent its near partial meltdown, is no mystery—but precisely what is expected in a loss-of-coolant accident.
It is described in U.S. government and nuclear industry accident studies as a “metal-water” reaction. It’s a reaction, the research has long stated, that can easily trigger a meltdown.
Using tons of a material otherwise used as the speck that explodes in a flashbulb in nuclear power plants —yes, absolutely crazy.
Moreover, in the spent fuel pools usually situated next to nuclear power plants, there are large numbers of additional fuel rods, used ones, disposed of as waste. There must be constant water circulation in the spent fuel pools. In what is labeled a “loss-of-water’ accident in a spent fuel pool, the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods is projected as exploding—sending into the environment the lethal nuclear poisons in a spent fuel pool.
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, has long specialized in doing investigative reporting on nuclear technology. He is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. He is the host of the nationally aired TV program, Enviro Close-Up (envirovideo.com).
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/12-3
The explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is being described as caused by a “hydrogen build-up” The situation harks back to the “hydrogen bubble” that was feared would explode when the Three Mile Island plant in 1979 underwent a partial meltdown.
The hydrogen explosion problem at nuclear power plants involves a story as crazy as can be. As nuts as using nuclear fission to boil water to generate electricity is, the hydrogen problem and its cause cap the lunacy.
Eruption of hydrogen gas as a first reaction in a loss-of-coolant accident has been discussed with great worry in U.S. government and nuclear industry literature for decades.
That is because a highly volatile substance called zirconium was chosen back in the 1940’s and 50’s, when plans were first developed to build nuclear power plants, as the material to be used to make the rods into which radioactive fuel would be loaded.
There are 30,000 to 40,000 rods—composed of twenty tons of zirconium—in an average nuclear power plant. Many other substances were tried, particularly stainless steel, but only zirconium worked well. That’s because zirconium, it was found, allows neutrons from the fuel pellets in the rods to pass freely between the rods and thus a nuclear chain reaction to be sustained.
But there’s a huge problem with zirconium—it is highly volatile and when hot will explode spontaneously upon contact with air, water or steam.
The only other major commercial use of zirconium through the years has been in flashbulbs used in photography. A speck of it, on a flashbulb, ignites to provide a flash of light.
But in a nuclear plant, we’re not talking about specks—but tons and tons of zirconium, put together as a compound called “zircaloy” that clads tens of thousands of fuel rods.
Heat, a great deal of heat, builds up in a very short time with any interruption of coolant flow in a nuclear power plant—the problem at Fukushima after the earthquake that struck Japan.
Zirconium, with the explosive power, pound for pound, of nitroglycerine, will catch fire and explode at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 5,000 degree temperature of a meltdown.
Before then, however, zirconium reacts to the heat by drawing oxygen from water and steam and letting off hydrogen, which itself can explode—and is said to have done so at Fukushima.
As a result of such a hydrogen explosion, there is additional heat—bringing the zirconium itself closer and closer to its explosive level.
Whether in addition to being a hydrogen explosion, zirconium also exploded at Fukushima remains to be known.
But what has happened regarding hydrogen at Fukushima, like the “hydrogen bubble” when the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania underwent its near partial meltdown, is no mystery—but precisely what is expected in a loss-of-coolant accident.
It is described in U.S. government and nuclear industry accident studies as a “metal-water” reaction. It’s a reaction, the research has long stated, that can easily trigger a meltdown.
Using tons of a material otherwise used as the speck that explodes in a flashbulb in nuclear power plants —yes, absolutely crazy.
Moreover, in the spent fuel pools usually situated next to nuclear power plants, there are large numbers of additional fuel rods, used ones, disposed of as waste. There must be constant water circulation in the spent fuel pools. In what is labeled a “loss-of-water’ accident in a spent fuel pool, the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods is projected as exploding—sending into the environment the lethal nuclear poisons in a spent fuel pool.
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, has long specialized in doing investigative reporting on nuclear technology. He is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. He is the host of the nationally aired TV program, Enviro Close-Up (envirovideo.com).
An 8.9 Quake Could Have Irradiated the Entire US
Harvey Wasserman
Friday, March 11, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/11-12
Had the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.
The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.
All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.
San Onofre sits between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.
Diablo Canyon is at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive eruption there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.
By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors---including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison---would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the fallout victims. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.
The most definitive recent study of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster puts the death toll at 985,000. The accident irradiated a remote rural area. The nearest city, Kiev, is 80 kilometers away.
But San Luis Obispo is some ten miles directly downwind from Diablo Canyon. The region around San Onofre has become heavily suburbanized.
Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. It covered an area far larger than the United States.
Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.
Chernobyl Unit Four was of comparable size to the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, and somewhat larger than the two at San Onofre.
But it was very new when it exploded. California's four coastal reactors have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s. Their accumulated internal radioactive burdens could exceed what was spewed at Chernobyl.
Japanese officials say all affected reactors automatically shut, with no radiation releases. But they are not reliable. In 2007 a smaller earthquake rocked the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki site and forced its lengthy shut-down.
Preliminary reports indicate at least one fire at a Japanese reactor hit by this quake and tsunami.
In 1986 the Perry nuclear plant, east of Cleveland, was rocked by a 5.5 Richter-scale shock, many orders of magnitude weaker than this one. That quake broke pipes and other key equipment within the plant. It took out nearby roads and bridges.
Thankfully, Perry had not yet opened. An official Ohio commission later warned that evacuation during such a quake would be impossible.
Numerous other American reactors sit on or near earthquake faults.
The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors.
Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at http://www.solartopia.org/. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org. He and Bob Fitrakis have co-authored four books on election protection, including Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?, As Goes Ohio: Election Theft Since 2004, How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, and What Happened in Ohio
Friday, March 11, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/11-12
Had the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.
The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.
All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.
San Onofre sits between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.
Diablo Canyon is at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive eruption there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.
By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors---including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison---would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the fallout victims. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.
The most definitive recent study of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster puts the death toll at 985,000. The accident irradiated a remote rural area. The nearest city, Kiev, is 80 kilometers away.
But San Luis Obispo is some ten miles directly downwind from Diablo Canyon. The region around San Onofre has become heavily suburbanized.
Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. It covered an area far larger than the United States.
Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.
Chernobyl Unit Four was of comparable size to the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, and somewhat larger than the two at San Onofre.
But it was very new when it exploded. California's four coastal reactors have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s. Their accumulated internal radioactive burdens could exceed what was spewed at Chernobyl.
Japanese officials say all affected reactors automatically shut, with no radiation releases. But they are not reliable. In 2007 a smaller earthquake rocked the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki site and forced its lengthy shut-down.
Preliminary reports indicate at least one fire at a Japanese reactor hit by this quake and tsunami.
In 1986 the Perry nuclear plant, east of Cleveland, was rocked by a 5.5 Richter-scale shock, many orders of magnitude weaker than this one. That quake broke pipes and other key equipment within the plant. It took out nearby roads and bridges.
Thankfully, Perry had not yet opened. An official Ohio commission later warned that evacuation during such a quake would be impossible.
Numerous other American reactors sit on or near earthquake faults.
The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors.
Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at http://www.solartopia.org/. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org. He and Bob Fitrakis have co-authored four books on election protection, including Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?, As Goes Ohio: Election Theft Since 2004, How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, and What Happened in Ohio
Japan's Apocalyptic Cinema
Not to make light of what is happening, but in no small part due to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan's artistic sensibility in film has long been obsessed with megadoom. Here's some greatest hits, courtesy of Salon.com:
Astro Boy
The plucky little robot warrior who pioneered the anime genre (and the manga, or Japanese comic book, genre before that) represents one side of Japan's confrontation with nuclear disaster: An attempt to accentuate the positive. (See also Gamera, the nuked-out chelonian defender of children.) But there's also a tragic back story to Astro Boy's adventures, since the scientist who invented him originally meant him as a replacement for his dead son, one who turns out to be incapable of human feeling. (Any resemblance to the Pinocchio legend, and to the Kubrick-via-Spielberg film "A.I.," is probably no accident.) As any anime fan already knows, Astro Boy's Japanese name translates as "Mighty Atom."
Godzilla, Gamera, Mothra and their friends
Every article ever written about Godzilla cites the big lizard as a nuclear fable or allegory, especially in his original mid-'50s incarnation, when he was at his angriest and most destructive. But until I read Oxford professor Peter Wynn Kirby's recent online New York Times post, I hadn't realized that the original 1954 "Gojira" (often packaged as such to differentiate it from the later, American-friendly version with Raymond Burr) was a response to a specific disaster -- not the Hiroshima bombings but the poisoning of a Japanese trawler crew by an American thermonuclear device tested near Bikini Atoll. It's fair to suggest that the later Japanese movie monsters of the '60s and '70s put a vastly friendlier spin on nuclear power, and even the Big G ultimately becomes a misunderstood, almost tragic, kid-friendly figure, bearing a suspicious resemblance to a battered Siamese tomcat.
Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen
Japanese postwar culture devoted tremendous energy to forgetting about what had happened in August 1945, but you know what they say about the return of the repressed. Anime was pretty well established by the '80s, and wasn't entirely for kids, but the genre got a violent jolt with the unforgettable wartime fables "Grave of the Fireflies" (1983) and "Barefoot Gen" (1988), among the first efforts in Japanese pop culture to depict the firebombing of Tokyo and other major cities (in the first film) and the history-shaking Hiroshima nuke (in the second). Those films spoke to and for a postwar generation that couldn't personally remember the events in question, and their effects have been far-reaching.
Akira
Katsuhiro Otomo's now-legendary anime film (based on his own manga) appeared the same year as "Barefoot Gen," and has nothing specifically to do with Hiroshima or the A-bomb. But its slick and sinister vision of a dystopian city of the future called Neo-Tokyo, dominated by secret government projects, vain and corrupt scientists and underground biker gangs, drew as much on the apocalyptic collective unconscious of Japan as it did on "Blade Runner." Along the way, Otomo established a kind of cultural template -- in which today's orderly Japan will be replaced by the nightmarish chaos of the future -- that's been a running theme of manga and anime ever since.
Tetsuo the Iron Man
Shinya Tsukamoto's low-budget 1989 cult classic pretty much introduced cyberpunk to Japan, long before the general public had ever heard the word, but this David Lynch-influenced nightmare about a man who turns into a machine also embodies the distinctive pathologies of post-Hiroshima Japanese pop culture. Tsukamoto might be outraged by the suggestion that his movie is the result of some post-nuclear hangover, but to me the formal disorientation and technological-psychological terror of "Tetsuo" speak for a generation marked by a national trauma. Like "Akira," this movie launched a zillion imitators (including Tsukamoto's various wacked-out sequels), establishing the techno-Kafka nightmare transformation as one of recent Japanese pop's favorite themes.
Princess Mononoke
Aficionados can argue about whether Hayao Miyazaki is indeed the greatest exponent of Japan's anime tradition (my vote: yes) or whether this dark and spectacular environmental fable is his best film (yes again). You can't reduce "Princess Mononoke" to a post-Hiroshima allegory, and I'm not trying to. This 1997 film weaves Japanese fairy tale and myth, the influence of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and a highly contemporary eco-consciousness into a work with all the complexity and texture of a masterpiece. "Princess Mononoke" isn't about the A-bomb any more than "The Lord of the Rings" is about World War I, and maybe a bit less than that. But it's a distinctively Japanese work of art, imbued with the sense of human arrogance and folly, and the sense that the precarious balance of ordinary life is always poised on the brink of destruction.
Eureka
Shinji Aoyama's black-and-white, minimalist near-masterpiece from 2000 runs almost four hours and has been described by the director as a remake of John Ford's "The Searchers" inspired by the Sonic Youth album "Daydream Nation." It begins with a bus kidnapping -- which we see only as a few fragmented images -- but that episode of violence is over almost as soon as it begins, and the rest of the film is concerned with its survivors. "Eureka" has been highly influential in formal terms, inspiring a new generation of lo-fi, naturalistic filmmakers around the world. But beyond that, it's difficult for non-Japanese viewers to avoid seeing it as a partly conscious allegory -- diagnosis might be a better word -- about a nation haunted by its traumatic past and paralyzed by dread of the future.
Pulse
Arguably the greatest film of the so-called J-horror wave of the late '90s and early 2000s, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse" brought the current of apocalyptic dread that runs through Japanese pop culture into the Internet age with a vengeance. Part mournful art film, part techno-paranoia and part creeped-out ghost thriller, "Pulse" is an imperfect but memorably haunting experience, which recalls the nuclear disaster (and suggests the original "Godzilla" film) while spinning a contemporary film about a soul-sucking website that makes people disappear.
Fish Story
I guess Yoshihiro Nakamura's crackpot, "Donnie Darko"-style fable about how a forgotten mid-'70s punk single saves the earth from destruction in this century was just too weird and specific and Japanese to reach an American audience. (As far as I know, "Fish Story" was never released in this country, and isn't available on Region 1 DVD.) For me, at least, it's one of the seminal works of Japan's post-post-Hiroshima cultural moment and one of the most enjoyable unknown films of recent years. Oddly but perfectly balanced between pitch-perfect period farce, romantic tragedy and sci-fi mock-apocalypse, "Fish Story" is fueled by the faith that stupid and pointless dreams are worth pursuing and that Japan's perverse culture will outlast all destructive forces. I only wish that cheesy but wonderful punk single, with the mysterious mid-song silence that spawned so many terrible rumors, could do something to help the Japanese people right now.
Japan's cinema of disaster, from Godzilla to J-horror
Andrew O'Hehir
Tuesday, Mar 15, 2011
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/03/15/japan_disaster/index.html
Astro Boy
The plucky little robot warrior who pioneered the anime genre (and the manga, or Japanese comic book, genre before that) represents one side of Japan's confrontation with nuclear disaster: An attempt to accentuate the positive. (See also Gamera, the nuked-out chelonian defender of children.) But there's also a tragic back story to Astro Boy's adventures, since the scientist who invented him originally meant him as a replacement for his dead son, one who turns out to be incapable of human feeling. (Any resemblance to the Pinocchio legend, and to the Kubrick-via-Spielberg film "A.I.," is probably no accident.) As any anime fan already knows, Astro Boy's Japanese name translates as "Mighty Atom."
Godzilla, Gamera, Mothra and their friends
Every article ever written about Godzilla cites the big lizard as a nuclear fable or allegory, especially in his original mid-'50s incarnation, when he was at his angriest and most destructive. But until I read Oxford professor Peter Wynn Kirby's recent online New York Times post, I hadn't realized that the original 1954 "Gojira" (often packaged as such to differentiate it from the later, American-friendly version with Raymond Burr) was a response to a specific disaster -- not the Hiroshima bombings but the poisoning of a Japanese trawler crew by an American thermonuclear device tested near Bikini Atoll. It's fair to suggest that the later Japanese movie monsters of the '60s and '70s put a vastly friendlier spin on nuclear power, and even the Big G ultimately becomes a misunderstood, almost tragic, kid-friendly figure, bearing a suspicious resemblance to a battered Siamese tomcat.
Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen
Japanese postwar culture devoted tremendous energy to forgetting about what had happened in August 1945, but you know what they say about the return of the repressed. Anime was pretty well established by the '80s, and wasn't entirely for kids, but the genre got a violent jolt with the unforgettable wartime fables "Grave of the Fireflies" (1983) and "Barefoot Gen" (1988), among the first efforts in Japanese pop culture to depict the firebombing of Tokyo and other major cities (in the first film) and the history-shaking Hiroshima nuke (in the second). Those films spoke to and for a postwar generation that couldn't personally remember the events in question, and their effects have been far-reaching.
Akira
Katsuhiro Otomo's now-legendary anime film (based on his own manga) appeared the same year as "Barefoot Gen," and has nothing specifically to do with Hiroshima or the A-bomb. But its slick and sinister vision of a dystopian city of the future called Neo-Tokyo, dominated by secret government projects, vain and corrupt scientists and underground biker gangs, drew as much on the apocalyptic collective unconscious of Japan as it did on "Blade Runner." Along the way, Otomo established a kind of cultural template -- in which today's orderly Japan will be replaced by the nightmarish chaos of the future -- that's been a running theme of manga and anime ever since.
Tetsuo the Iron Man
Shinya Tsukamoto's low-budget 1989 cult classic pretty much introduced cyberpunk to Japan, long before the general public had ever heard the word, but this David Lynch-influenced nightmare about a man who turns into a machine also embodies the distinctive pathologies of post-Hiroshima Japanese pop culture. Tsukamoto might be outraged by the suggestion that his movie is the result of some post-nuclear hangover, but to me the formal disorientation and technological-psychological terror of "Tetsuo" speak for a generation marked by a national trauma. Like "Akira," this movie launched a zillion imitators (including Tsukamoto's various wacked-out sequels), establishing the techno-Kafka nightmare transformation as one of recent Japanese pop's favorite themes.
Princess Mononoke
Aficionados can argue about whether Hayao Miyazaki is indeed the greatest exponent of Japan's anime tradition (my vote: yes) or whether this dark and spectacular environmental fable is his best film (yes again). You can't reduce "Princess Mononoke" to a post-Hiroshima allegory, and I'm not trying to. This 1997 film weaves Japanese fairy tale and myth, the influence of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and a highly contemporary eco-consciousness into a work with all the complexity and texture of a masterpiece. "Princess Mononoke" isn't about the A-bomb any more than "The Lord of the Rings" is about World War I, and maybe a bit less than that. But it's a distinctively Japanese work of art, imbued with the sense of human arrogance and folly, and the sense that the precarious balance of ordinary life is always poised on the brink of destruction.
Eureka
Shinji Aoyama's black-and-white, minimalist near-masterpiece from 2000 runs almost four hours and has been described by the director as a remake of John Ford's "The Searchers" inspired by the Sonic Youth album "Daydream Nation." It begins with a bus kidnapping -- which we see only as a few fragmented images -- but that episode of violence is over almost as soon as it begins, and the rest of the film is concerned with its survivors. "Eureka" has been highly influential in formal terms, inspiring a new generation of lo-fi, naturalistic filmmakers around the world. But beyond that, it's difficult for non-Japanese viewers to avoid seeing it as a partly conscious allegory -- diagnosis might be a better word -- about a nation haunted by its traumatic past and paralyzed by dread of the future.
Pulse
Arguably the greatest film of the so-called J-horror wave of the late '90s and early 2000s, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse" brought the current of apocalyptic dread that runs through Japanese pop culture into the Internet age with a vengeance. Part mournful art film, part techno-paranoia and part creeped-out ghost thriller, "Pulse" is an imperfect but memorably haunting experience, which recalls the nuclear disaster (and suggests the original "Godzilla" film) while spinning a contemporary film about a soul-sucking website that makes people disappear.
Fish Story
I guess Yoshihiro Nakamura's crackpot, "Donnie Darko"-style fable about how a forgotten mid-'70s punk single saves the earth from destruction in this century was just too weird and specific and Japanese to reach an American audience. (As far as I know, "Fish Story" was never released in this country, and isn't available on Region 1 DVD.) For me, at least, it's one of the seminal works of Japan's post-post-Hiroshima cultural moment and one of the most enjoyable unknown films of recent years. Oddly but perfectly balanced between pitch-perfect period farce, romantic tragedy and sci-fi mock-apocalypse, "Fish Story" is fueled by the faith that stupid and pointless dreams are worth pursuing and that Japan's perverse culture will outlast all destructive forces. I only wish that cheesy but wonderful punk single, with the mysterious mid-song silence that spawned so many terrible rumors, could do something to help the Japanese people right now.
Japan's cinema of disaster, from Godzilla to J-horror
Andrew O'Hehir
Tuesday, Mar 15, 2011
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/03/15/japan_disaster/index.html
Chernobyl on Steroids
From Infowars.com:
In addition to under reporting the fires at Fukushima, the Japanese government has not told the people about the ominous fact that the nuclear plant site is a hellish repository where a staggering number of spent fuel rods have accumulated for 40 years...
The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools dedicated to spent fuel rods. These are located at the top of six reactor buildings – or were until explosions and fires ravaged the plant. On the ground level there is a common pool in a separate building that was critical damaged by the tsunami. Each reactor building pool holds 3,450 fuel rod assemblies and the common pool holds 6,291 fuel rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods. In short, the Fukushima Daiichi plant contains over 600,000 spent fuel rods – a massive amount of radiation that will soon be released into the atmosphere.
It should be obvious by now that the authorities in Japan are lying about the effort to contain the situation in order to mollify the public. It is highly likely there are no workers on the site attempting to contain the disaster.
Earlier today, a report was issued indicating that over 70% of these spent fuel rods are now damaged – in other words, they are emitting radiation or will soon. The disclosure reveals that authorities in Japan – who have consistently played down the danger and issued conflicting information – are guilty of criminal behavior and endangering the lives of countless people.
On Tuesday, it was finally admitted that meltdowns of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactor cores are responsible for the release of a massive amount of radiation.
After reporting that a fire at the No. 4 reactor was contained, the media is reporting this evening that it has resumed. The media predictably does not bother to point out why the fire is uncontainable – the fuel rods are no longer submerged in water and are exposed to the atmosphere and that is why they are burning and cannot be extinguished.
It cannot be stressed enough that the situation at Fukushima represents the greatest environmental disaster in the history of humanity, far more dangerous that Chernobyl, and the government of that country is responsible.
Perhaps the most underreported and deadliest aspect of the three explosions and numerous fires to hit the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactor since Saturday is the fact that highly radioactive spent fuel rods which are stored outside of the active nuclear rod containment facility are likely to have been massively compromised by the blasts, an elevation in the crisis that would represent “Chernobyl on steroids,” according to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen...
“Japanese news agency Kyodo reports that the storage pool in reactor four – where the spent fuel rods are kept – may be boiling. Tepco says readings are showing high levels of radiation in the building, so it is inaccessible,” adds the report.
“At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside,” reports the Washington Post.
The rods must be kept cool because otherwise they start to burn and, in the case of reactor number 3, would release plutonium and uranium in the form of vapor into the atmosphere.
“That’s bad news, because plutonium scattered into the atmosphere is even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods without plutonium,” writes Kirk James Murphy.
“We’d be lucky if we only had to worry about the spent fuel rods from a single holding pool. We’re not that lucky. The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools for spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were) located at the top of six reactor buildings. One “common pool” is at ground level in a separate building. Each “reactor top” pool holds 3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod assemblies. [The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost certainly destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods.”
There have been massive design issues with the Mark 1 nuclear reactor stretching back three decades.
As ABC News reports today, “Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues at General Electric resigned from their jobs after becoming increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor design they were reviewing — the Mark 1 — was so flawed it could lead to a devastating accident.”
“The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant,” Bridenbaugh told ABC News in an interview. “The impact loads the containment would receive by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart and create an uncontrolled release.”
Alert: Fukushima Coverup, 40 Years of Spent Nuclear Rods Blown Sky High
Paul Joseph Watson and Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 15, 2011
http://www.infowars.com/alert-fukushima-coverup-40-years-of-spent-nuclear-rods-blown-sky-high
In addition to under reporting the fires at Fukushima, the Japanese government has not told the people about the ominous fact that the nuclear plant site is a hellish repository where a staggering number of spent fuel rods have accumulated for 40 years...
The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools dedicated to spent fuel rods. These are located at the top of six reactor buildings – or were until explosions and fires ravaged the plant. On the ground level there is a common pool in a separate building that was critical damaged by the tsunami. Each reactor building pool holds 3,450 fuel rod assemblies and the common pool holds 6,291 fuel rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods. In short, the Fukushima Daiichi plant contains over 600,000 spent fuel rods – a massive amount of radiation that will soon be released into the atmosphere.
It should be obvious by now that the authorities in Japan are lying about the effort to contain the situation in order to mollify the public. It is highly likely there are no workers on the site attempting to contain the disaster.
Earlier today, a report was issued indicating that over 70% of these spent fuel rods are now damaged – in other words, they are emitting radiation or will soon. The disclosure reveals that authorities in Japan – who have consistently played down the danger and issued conflicting information – are guilty of criminal behavior and endangering the lives of countless people.
On Tuesday, it was finally admitted that meltdowns of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactor cores are responsible for the release of a massive amount of radiation.
After reporting that a fire at the No. 4 reactor was contained, the media is reporting this evening that it has resumed. The media predictably does not bother to point out why the fire is uncontainable – the fuel rods are no longer submerged in water and are exposed to the atmosphere and that is why they are burning and cannot be extinguished.
It cannot be stressed enough that the situation at Fukushima represents the greatest environmental disaster in the history of humanity, far more dangerous that Chernobyl, and the government of that country is responsible.
Perhaps the most underreported and deadliest aspect of the three explosions and numerous fires to hit the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactor since Saturday is the fact that highly radioactive spent fuel rods which are stored outside of the active nuclear rod containment facility are likely to have been massively compromised by the blasts, an elevation in the crisis that would represent “Chernobyl on steroids,” according to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen...
“Japanese news agency Kyodo reports that the storage pool in reactor four – where the spent fuel rods are kept – may be boiling. Tepco says readings are showing high levels of radiation in the building, so it is inaccessible,” adds the report.
“At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside,” reports the Washington Post.
The rods must be kept cool because otherwise they start to burn and, in the case of reactor number 3, would release plutonium and uranium in the form of vapor into the atmosphere.
“That’s bad news, because plutonium scattered into the atmosphere is even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods without plutonium,” writes Kirk James Murphy.
“We’d be lucky if we only had to worry about the spent fuel rods from a single holding pool. We’re not that lucky. The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools for spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were) located at the top of six reactor buildings. One “common pool” is at ground level in a separate building. Each “reactor top” pool holds 3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod assemblies. [The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost certainly destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods.”
There have been massive design issues with the Mark 1 nuclear reactor stretching back three decades.
As ABC News reports today, “Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues at General Electric resigned from their jobs after becoming increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor design they were reviewing — the Mark 1 — was so flawed it could lead to a devastating accident.”
“The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant,” Bridenbaugh told ABC News in an interview. “The impact loads the containment would receive by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart and create an uncontrolled release.”
Alert: Fukushima Coverup, 40 Years of Spent Nuclear Rods Blown Sky High
Paul Joseph Watson and Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 15, 2011
http://www.infowars.com/alert-fukushima-coverup-40-years-of-spent-nuclear-rods-blown-sky-high
Nuclear Disaster in Japan - workers and citizens at high risk
A media release from South Africa:
13 March 2011
Courtesy of Ace Hoffman of AceHoffman.org
The massive explosion following a cooling problem at one Fukushima’s nuclear reactors, Daiichi, has not only released radiation and other toxic compounds, but has created an untenable situation for workers at Fukushima’s other nuclear reactors nearby, called Daini, especially given that a state of emergency has been declared for five reactors at the two plants. Latest news is that a hydrogen explosion is now possible at the No. 3 reactor at Fukushima 1.
“Workers are being exposed to the ‘allowable’ annual dose of radiation every hour that they remain on site. Our hearts go out to them,” said Muna Lakhani, co-ordinator of Earthlife Africa’s Unplug Nuclear 1 campaign. The danger is not over. There are fears of another explosion as the cooling system at a second reactor has also failed, as of Sunday morning. “The measuring of Caesium at the plant indicates that a meltdown has indeed taken place, which raises the levels of radiation released to catastrophic proportions” suggested Lakhani. Latest news on Sunday confirms fears of a multiple meltdown.
The reactors have all been shut down. The reactor core remains hot for days after shutdown, however, so workers have been busy ensuring that the fuel rods do not melt down. For this the cooling systems need to be operational requiring a power source. The quake has disrupted the backup supplies of power including diesel generators. The IAEA supplied batteries and coolant in the interim. They are now flushing the highly radioactive core with seawater which will cause massive seawater contamination whilst preventing a full scale Chernobyl type meltdown. This is an act of desperation and unprecedented.
Platitudes by the Japanese government and nuclear industry suggesting that the radiation threat is minimal must be treated with great caution, as reports confirm that not only has the containment been breached, and that ‘venting’ is taking place, but also that radiation levels at about 1000 higher than normal have been measured. The 24 hr monitoring that is supposed to happen as a matter of course, has been shutdown (www/nu/pamp/index-j.html) Japanese activists suggest that this is so that the public and the world at large will not be told how much radiation has and is being released” said Gray Maguire, ELA branch secretary.
It took local activists many hours to get the exclusion zone expanded from the initial 10km to 20 km, which, while not completely safe, helps limit harm to local residents.
“We call upon the nuclear industry, and the South African government, to take this disaster seriously, and abandon all nuclear plans for our country. Given that proposed sites are all along the coast, we believe that this gamble is unacceptable. Not only are sustainable and safe alternatives cheaper than nuclear power, but they are also better solutions to the creation of decent work and energy security, as well as the best solutions to limit climate change,” Lakhani states. The public should note that our existing nuclear power plant Koeberg is on a geological fault on the Cape Fold Belt with the last destructive large earthquake occurring in 1809. Interesting also is that if we were to apply the 20km exclusion/ evacuation zone (which has been applied to Fukushima) to Koeberg this would mean evacuating most of Cape Town.
There has been a history of safety problems and cover-ups by TEPCO at the Fukushima reactor complex:
http://cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit92/nit92articles/nit92coverupdata.html
South Africa is considering a ‘fleet’ of nuclear reactors, at Thyspunt, Bantamklip and additional reactors at Koeberg, at a potential cost of hundreds of billions of Rands. Yje National Nuclear Regulator has also come under fire, for not mobilising a “hazmat” team, with local activists questioning their ability to respond to a disaster at Koeberg.
*
Examples of problems and cover ups:
Local concerns had already been fuelled by revelations, which came to light in 2002 and 2003, that data at the plant had been deliberately falsified to comply with regulations on wastewater discharges into the sea.
In 1999, the seeming lack of controls at nuclear power plants caused widespread alarm when three workers at Tokaimura, in Ibaraki prefecture, suffered high doses of radiation and more than 100 local residents were exposed to low levels of radiation due to a “criticality” event, which is a limited, uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction.
It emerged that Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Company (JCO), which operated the plant, had modified its enriched uranium processing procedure, without approval from the authorities and removed various safety measures aimed at ensuring prevention of criticality.
Not long before the Tokaimura accident, on December 8, 1995, a fast-breeder reactor, known as Monju, which uses plutonium fuel instead of uranium, suffered a serious accident, which led to leakage of sodium coolant.
Issued by:
Earthlife Africa Cape Town
Unplug Nuclear 1 Campaign
Contact:
Muna Lakhani
083-471-7276
muna@iafrica.com
13 March 2011
Courtesy of Ace Hoffman of AceHoffman.org
The massive explosion following a cooling problem at one Fukushima’s nuclear reactors, Daiichi, has not only released radiation and other toxic compounds, but has created an untenable situation for workers at Fukushima’s other nuclear reactors nearby, called Daini, especially given that a state of emergency has been declared for five reactors at the two plants. Latest news is that a hydrogen explosion is now possible at the No. 3 reactor at Fukushima 1.
“Workers are being exposed to the ‘allowable’ annual dose of radiation every hour that they remain on site. Our hearts go out to them,” said Muna Lakhani, co-ordinator of Earthlife Africa’s Unplug Nuclear 1 campaign. The danger is not over. There are fears of another explosion as the cooling system at a second reactor has also failed, as of Sunday morning. “The measuring of Caesium at the plant indicates that a meltdown has indeed taken place, which raises the levels of radiation released to catastrophic proportions” suggested Lakhani. Latest news on Sunday confirms fears of a multiple meltdown.
The reactors have all been shut down. The reactor core remains hot for days after shutdown, however, so workers have been busy ensuring that the fuel rods do not melt down. For this the cooling systems need to be operational requiring a power source. The quake has disrupted the backup supplies of power including diesel generators. The IAEA supplied batteries and coolant in the interim. They are now flushing the highly radioactive core with seawater which will cause massive seawater contamination whilst preventing a full scale Chernobyl type meltdown. This is an act of desperation and unprecedented.
Platitudes by the Japanese government and nuclear industry suggesting that the radiation threat is minimal must be treated with great caution, as reports confirm that not only has the containment been breached, and that ‘venting’ is taking place, but also that radiation levels at about 1000 higher than normal have been measured. The 24 hr monitoring that is supposed to happen as a matter of course, has been shutdown (www/nu/pamp/index-j.html) Japanese activists suggest that this is so that the public and the world at large will not be told how much radiation has and is being released” said Gray Maguire, ELA branch secretary.
It took local activists many hours to get the exclusion zone expanded from the initial 10km to 20 km, which, while not completely safe, helps limit harm to local residents.
“We call upon the nuclear industry, and the South African government, to take this disaster seriously, and abandon all nuclear plans for our country. Given that proposed sites are all along the coast, we believe that this gamble is unacceptable. Not only are sustainable and safe alternatives cheaper than nuclear power, but they are also better solutions to the creation of decent work and energy security, as well as the best solutions to limit climate change,” Lakhani states. The public should note that our existing nuclear power plant Koeberg is on a geological fault on the Cape Fold Belt with the last destructive large earthquake occurring in 1809. Interesting also is that if we were to apply the 20km exclusion/ evacuation zone (which has been applied to Fukushima) to Koeberg this would mean evacuating most of Cape Town.
There has been a history of safety problems and cover-ups by TEPCO at the Fukushima reactor complex:
http://cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit92/nit92articles/nit92coverupdata.html
South Africa is considering a ‘fleet’ of nuclear reactors, at Thyspunt, Bantamklip and additional reactors at Koeberg, at a potential cost of hundreds of billions of Rands. Yje National Nuclear Regulator has also come under fire, for not mobilising a “hazmat” team, with local activists questioning their ability to respond to a disaster at Koeberg.
*
Examples of problems and cover ups:
Local concerns had already been fuelled by revelations, which came to light in 2002 and 2003, that data at the plant had been deliberately falsified to comply with regulations on wastewater discharges into the sea.
In 1999, the seeming lack of controls at nuclear power plants caused widespread alarm when three workers at Tokaimura, in Ibaraki prefecture, suffered high doses of radiation and more than 100 local residents were exposed to low levels of radiation due to a “criticality” event, which is a limited, uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction.
It emerged that Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Company (JCO), which operated the plant, had modified its enriched uranium processing procedure, without approval from the authorities and removed various safety measures aimed at ensuring prevention of criticality.
Not long before the Tokaimura accident, on December 8, 1995, a fast-breeder reactor, known as Monju, which uses plutonium fuel instead of uranium, suffered a serious accident, which led to leakage of sodium coolant.
Issued by:
Earthlife Africa Cape Town
Unplug Nuclear 1 Campaign
Contact:
Muna Lakhani
083-471-7276
muna@iafrica.com
One Million Chernobyl Dead Can't Be Wrong
How bad could the damage be from the Japanese nuclear crisis? Here's a look back at Chernobyl, with this piece courtesy of PrisonPlanet.com:
Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility.
The book, “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus.
The authors examined more than 5,000 published articles and studies, most written in Slavic languages and never before available in English.
The authors said, “For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
“No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe,” they said. “Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere.”
Their findings are in contrast to estimates by the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency that initially said only 31 people had died among the “liquidators,” those approximately 830,000 people who were in charge of extinguishing the fire at the Chernobyl reactor and deactivation and cleanup of the site.
The book finds that by 2005, between 112,000 and 125,000 liquidators had died.
“On this 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, we now realize that the consequences were far worse than many researchers had believed,” says Janette Sherman, MD, the physician and toxicologist who edited the book.
Drawing upon extensive data, the authors estimate the number of deaths worldwide due to Chernobyl fallout from 1986 through 2004 was 985,000, a number that has since increased.
By contrast, WHO and the IAEA estimated 9,000 deaths and some 200,000 people sickened in 2005.
On April 26, 1986, two explosions occured at reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant which tore the top from the reactor and its building and exposed the reactor core. The resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over large parts of the western Soviet Union, Europe and across the Northern Hemisphere. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia had to be evacuated.
Yablokov and his co-authors find that radioactive emissions from the stricken reactor, once believed to be 50 million curies, may have been as great as 10 billion curies, or 200 times greater than the initial estimate, and hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nations outside the former Soviet Union received high doses of radioactive fallout, most notably Norway, Sweden, Finland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Austria, Romania, Greece, and parts of the United Kingdom and Germany.
About 550 million Europeans, and 150 to 230 million others in the Northern Hemisphere received notable contamination. Fallout reached the United States and Canada nine days after the disaster.
The proportion of children considered healthy born to irradiated parents in Belarus, the Ukraine, and European Russia considered healthy fell from about 80 percent to less than 20 percent since 1986...
Harmless? Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People
Thursday, March 17, 2011
http://www.prisonplanet.com/harmless-chernobyl-radiation-killed-nearly-one-million-people.html
Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility.
The book, “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus.
The authors examined more than 5,000 published articles and studies, most written in Slavic languages and never before available in English.
The authors said, “For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
“No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe,” they said. “Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere.”
Their findings are in contrast to estimates by the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency that initially said only 31 people had died among the “liquidators,” those approximately 830,000 people who were in charge of extinguishing the fire at the Chernobyl reactor and deactivation and cleanup of the site.
The book finds that by 2005, between 112,000 and 125,000 liquidators had died.
“On this 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, we now realize that the consequences were far worse than many researchers had believed,” says Janette Sherman, MD, the physician and toxicologist who edited the book.
Drawing upon extensive data, the authors estimate the number of deaths worldwide due to Chernobyl fallout from 1986 through 2004 was 985,000, a number that has since increased.
By contrast, WHO and the IAEA estimated 9,000 deaths and some 200,000 people sickened in 2005.
On April 26, 1986, two explosions occured at reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant which tore the top from the reactor and its building and exposed the reactor core. The resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over large parts of the western Soviet Union, Europe and across the Northern Hemisphere. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia had to be evacuated.
Yablokov and his co-authors find that radioactive emissions from the stricken reactor, once believed to be 50 million curies, may have been as great as 10 billion curies, or 200 times greater than the initial estimate, and hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nations outside the former Soviet Union received high doses of radioactive fallout, most notably Norway, Sweden, Finland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Austria, Romania, Greece, and parts of the United Kingdom and Germany.
About 550 million Europeans, and 150 to 230 million others in the Northern Hemisphere received notable contamination. Fallout reached the United States and Canada nine days after the disaster.
The proportion of children considered healthy born to irradiated parents in Belarus, the Ukraine, and European Russia considered healthy fell from about 80 percent to less than 20 percent since 1986...
Harmless? Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People
Thursday, March 17, 2011
http://www.prisonplanet.com/harmless-chernobyl-radiation-killed-nearly-one-million-people.html
Death Toll in Japan?
With so much focus on the potential for another Chernobyl in Japan, the horror caused by the earthquake and tsunami has almost been lost.
In fact, the horror is beyond comprehension. From the Herald Sun of Australia:
THE terrible toll of Japan's double disaster could rise as high as 25,000.
As rescue crews trawled through the tsunami wasteland, officials from the coastal town of Ishinomaki confirmed 10,000 of its citizens were missing.
The unimaginable figure is the same as in the town of Minami Sanriku, which lost about half its population when razed by the 10m wall of water.
So far the official death toll has hit 4340, with another 9083 people missing. But there are very real fears that the statistics have been underestimated.
Chiba University associate professor Ken Joseph is in Ishinomaki with the Japan Emergency Team.
"I think the death toll is going to be closer to 100,000 than 10,000," he said.
"I have been to every disaster zone in the last 20 years and I have never seen anything remotely like this."
One particularly shocking report of the carnage comes from Time.com:
A tide of bodies washed up along Japan's coastline, crematoriums were overwhelmed and rescue workers ran out of body bags as the nation faced the grim reality of its mounting humanitarian, economic and nuclear crisis Monday after a calamitous tsunami...
A Japanese police official said 1,000 washed up bodies were found scattered Monday across the coastline of Miyagi prefecture. The official declined to be named, citing department policy.
Of course, there's a good reason for the bigger focus on the nuclear danger over the deaths caused by Mother Nature so far: if there is a serious nuclear power disaster, the death toll from it will dwarf what has happened so far...
Japan crisis: Death toll could top 25,000
March 18, 2011
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special-reports/japan-crisis-death-toll-could-top-25000/story-fn7zkbgs-1226023578542
Tide of 1,000 Bodies Overwhelms Japan
JAY ALABASTER and TODD PITMAN
Monday, Mar. 14, 2011
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2058649,00.html
In fact, the horror is beyond comprehension. From the Herald Sun of Australia:
THE terrible toll of Japan's double disaster could rise as high as 25,000.
As rescue crews trawled through the tsunami wasteland, officials from the coastal town of Ishinomaki confirmed 10,000 of its citizens were missing.
The unimaginable figure is the same as in the town of Minami Sanriku, which lost about half its population when razed by the 10m wall of water.
So far the official death toll has hit 4340, with another 9083 people missing. But there are very real fears that the statistics have been underestimated.
Chiba University associate professor Ken Joseph is in Ishinomaki with the Japan Emergency Team.
"I think the death toll is going to be closer to 100,000 than 10,000," he said.
"I have been to every disaster zone in the last 20 years and I have never seen anything remotely like this."
One particularly shocking report of the carnage comes from Time.com:
A tide of bodies washed up along Japan's coastline, crematoriums were overwhelmed and rescue workers ran out of body bags as the nation faced the grim reality of its mounting humanitarian, economic and nuclear crisis Monday after a calamitous tsunami...
A Japanese police official said 1,000 washed up bodies were found scattered Monday across the coastline of Miyagi prefecture. The official declined to be named, citing department policy.
Of course, there's a good reason for the bigger focus on the nuclear danger over the deaths caused by Mother Nature so far: if there is a serious nuclear power disaster, the death toll from it will dwarf what has happened so far...
Japan crisis: Death toll could top 25,000
March 18, 2011
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special-reports/japan-crisis-death-toll-could-top-25000/story-fn7zkbgs-1226023578542
Tide of 1,000 Bodies Overwhelms Japan
JAY ALABASTER and TODD PITMAN
Monday, Mar. 14, 2011
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2058649,00.html
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