Fukushima: There may be no more time

Fukushima: There may be no more time

In the movie classic "On the Beach," the end scene shows a banner flapping in the breeze across over a radioactive and dead Melbourne, Australia proclaiming "There is Still Time. . Brother."

For the people of the fictional Earth, there was no time left in Nevil Shute's classic novel and Stanley Kramer's epic film. And there may not be any time left for the people of the actual Earth if authoritative warnings about the dire effects of the Daiichi nuclear plant disaster in Fukushima, Japan turn out to be correct.



Naoto Kan was the Prime Minister of Japan at the time of the now confirmed partial meltdowns of three nuclear reactors following the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Kan assured the press that the evacuation order for a 20-mile radius around the stricken plant would be sufficient. However, Kan's statement was based on assurances and reassurances from Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission that the evacuation zone was sufficient. It turned out that the commission was packed with shills for the nuclear plant operator, the politically-pwerful Tokyp Electric Power Company (TEPCO). In addition, the powerful General Electric, the manufacturer of the nuclear reactors, mobilized its army of lobbyists and public relations flacks to pepper the broadcast and web media with propaganda and "sock puppet" comments on blogs posted by paid trolls criticizing any suggestions that Fukushima represented a major disaster.

Recently, Kan recently totally shed his past support for nuclear power by writing the following: "The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was the most severe accident in the history of mankind." Kan revealed that the situation at Fukushima was more dire than what he reported to the media on March 25, 2010. Kan wrote: "At Unit 1, the fuel rods melted down in about five hours after the earthquake, and molten fuel breached and melted through the reactor pressure vessel. Meltdowns occurred in Units 2 and 3 within one hundred hours of the accident. At around the same time, hydrogen-air blasted in the reactor buildings of Units 1, 3 and 4."

Kan, apologizing for his past support for nuclear power, admitted that he almost ordered the evacuation of 50 million Japanese from the Greater Tokyo region as a result of the multiple nuclear core meltdowns at Fukushima. Kan wrote: "Before the Fukushima accident, with the belief that no nuclear accident would happen as long as the safety measures were followed properly, I had pushed the policy of utilizing nuclear power. Having faced the real accident as Prime Minister, and having experienced the situation which came so close to requiring me to order the evacuation of 50 million people, my view is now changed 180 degrees."

Kan, a member of the opopsition Democratic Party of Japan, is now opposed to nuclear power generation. Kan's words are powerful. "The most severe accident in the history of mankind" are words not to be taken lightly. The current Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister, the far right-wing Shinzo Abe, favors restarting Japan's 54 working nuclear reactors, shut down in the wake of Fukushima. Abe is supported by multinational companies, including TEPCO and GE, that put profits ahead of people.

Abe is so far outside the mainstream on nuclear power in Japan that his own political mentor, former Liberal Democratic Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the Elvis Presley fan who maintained close ties to President George W. Bush, recently stunned an audience of Liberal Democratic Party faithful with the following speech:

"I wonder if human beings can really control nuclear energy. I have now become an advocate calling for zero nuclear plants and urge politicians to make that decision as quickly as possible."

Like Kan, Koizumi made a 180 degree turn in announcing his opposition to nuclear power plants. It is obvious that these two former Japanese Prime Ministers of opposing political parties know something that has been slow to be conveyed to the general public. The world is in trouble as a result of the Fukushima melt downs. And it isn't a question of there still being time left but how much time is left.

The debate over the Affordable Care Act in the United States may soon shift from whether one wants to participate or not to one of triaging medical care for those with short-term effects of terminal cancer from the effects of Fukushima radiation to those with medium- and long-term effects. If the worst-case scenarios play out, there will also be a debate over whether government or private health care plans will cover euthanasia for those who will die a painful death from the effects of airborne and seaborne radiation from Fukushima.

Although Prime Minister Kan doesn't believe that the most critically-effected reactors at Fukushima have melted through the bottom containment vessel, other nuclear power specialists are not so sanguine. Dean Wilkie is a nuclear plant engineer at the Department of Energy's Idago National Laboratory. In an interview with WERU-FM in Bangor, Maine on August 7, Wilkie said he believes some of the Fukushima reactors melted completely through the base of the reactor building and that highly radioactive water is saturating the ground soil.


Explosion from Daiichi nuclear plant.

Canadian nuclear expert Gordon Edwards concurs.

In an August 12 interview, Edwards stated that Units 1, 2, and 3 at Fukushima have either melted through the reactors' buildings into the ground or are in the process of doing so.

This scenario sets up the "China Syndrome" popularized by another motion picture with the same name. The syndrome is that if cold water is not constantly pumped onto the molten cores, they will descend into the earth's crust, creating a molten radioactive mass that will melt right down to our planet's core and, eventually emerge on the other side of the Earth. In the "China Syndrome," a melted down core in the United States was to have melted through to China.

But TEPCO is covertly pumping seawater from the Pacific Ocean to cool down the molten reactors. This highly-radioactive seawater is seeping back into the ocean.



The nuclear energy industry, led by Exelon, General Electric, Duke Energy, and Westinghouse, are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to place bogus news stories in the media and attack nuclear industry critics by playing down the adverse effects of the Fukushima disaster on the world's population of humans and other living creatures. Those who warn of the dangerous after-effects of Fukushima are being referred to as doomsayers and kooks by the Brooks Brothers suit-clad PR flacks of Washington's K Street and New York's Madison Avenue.

The power of the nuke industry was on full display when it pressured the resignation of Gregory Jaczko as chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission because of his criticism of his own agency for not fully appreciating the lessons of Fukushima. Appearing on a panel with Kan this past summer in California, Jaczko criticized the safety of the GE nuclear reactors sold by GE to TEPCO. Jaczko noted the GE reactors at Fukushima came from the U.S. and the disaster in Fukushima put to rest the notion that "severe accidents wouldn’t happen."

The fact that President Barack Obama, who has received tons of campaign cash from Exelon, would not stand by his own NRC Chairman, provides full evidence of the power of the nuke industry in framing the debate and defeating its opponents.

But the face savers for the nuclear industry cannot explain the complete reversals of two Japanese Prime Ministers from opposing political parties on nuclear power and Kan's apocalyptic statement that Fukushima is the worst accident in the history of mankind.

And the nuclear energy apologists and paid shills cannot convince people to avoid Pacific Ocean seafood, including blue fin tuna caught off the U.S. west coast and seaweed, which are now registering high and unsafe levels of radiation. The nuclear industry lackeys are even pushing the inane meme that one receives more radiation from eating a banana than from eating Pacific seafood.

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As a reminder of what we all potentially face:


 

EARLY EDITION. When it comes to major disasters, Obama's priority is the same: protect the corporate interests

President Obama, as he displayed so ignominiously in the aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, has, once again, demonstrated that his first priority in the face of major disasters is the protection of corporate interests. Obama's reaction to the post-quake nuclear power plant disasters in Japan complements what amounts to a cover-up of the danger posed by nuclear power plants in quake-prone areas. Obama has good reason to be protective of the nuclear power industry: he is in their pockets as much as he was in the pockets of BP and other oil companies after the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion and subsequent oil deluge in the Gulf.

The nearly 40 year-old nuclear reactor that experienced a core meltdown and explosion, Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 1, was manufactured by General Electric and built in Japan at a time when memories of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh in the minds of many Japanese. Of course, thanks to slick public relations and the support of both the U.S. and Japanese governments, the fear of the Japanese public about nuclear power plants was assuaged by guarantees that the safety of the plants was guaranteed, even during an earthquake in seismically-active Japan.

Nuclear power generation has been a good business for the United States and Japan. In 2007, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, was formed as a U.S.-Japanese global joint company to advance nuclear power plant construction around the world. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy had some 80 employees and contractors working at the Fukushima 1 plant at the time of the nuclear disaster.

Just as Obama permitted BP to call the shots for all government emergency response and regulatory agencies in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the president decided to send a White House team under the direction of the CIA-infused US Agency for International Development (USAID) Disaster Assistance Response Team to Japan to provide consultation to the Japanese government. Additionally, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu was asked to keep in contact with Japanese nuclear energy officials to ascertain needs. Obama decided not to send personnel from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, National Nuclear Security Administration, or even the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to Japan.

The reason for Obama's tepid response is his ties to the U.S. nuclear power industry. American experts who may have discovered the true nature of the nuclear disaster may have leaked the details to the media and for the most opaque administration in U.S. history, that would be the real "disaster."

Obama's close relationship with GE chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt, who the president named as chairman of the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, is a top Obama corporate cheerleader and a major campaign donor. And for the corporate- and Wall Street-owned and operated Obama, it is the needs of the corporations, not those affected by corporate greed, malfeasance, and cover-ups that matters in the end.

GE and its nuclear arm, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, are not Obama's only friends and donors in the nuclear power industry. Chicago-based Exelon Corporation, which operates nuclear power plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, was the fourth-largest donor to Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. Thanks to its $269,000 in campaign cash, Obama has responded favorably to the needs of Exelon. Exelon was created in 2000 with the merger of Commonwealth Edison's parent corporation, Unicom of Chicago, and PECO Energy of Philadelphia. Representing Unicom in the merger was Rahm Emanuel, later Obama's White House chief of staff and newly-elected mayor of Chicago. Unicom was also advised by Goldman Sachs, the firm that has supplied many of the Obama administration's top officials. Former White House political adviser David Axelrod also acted as a consultant for Exelon.

In addition to his connections to GE Hitachi, Obama's now-imprisoned fundraiser, Tony Rezko was involved in shady deals with GE Capital Corporation. Rezko has been accused of helping to flip a real estate deal in order to facilitate a mortgage for the president's home in south Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood.

And in a major tip of the hat to the nuclear industry, Obama asked for $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for the construction of new nuclear power plants in the United States. In his 2012 budget, Obama has asked for $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants, and he has the support of the Republicans in Congress even though there are opponents and skeptic in his own Democratic Party.

Obama's attempt to put a smiley face on the nuclear disaster in Japan is coupled by charges that the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who has admitted to accepting campaign donations from foreign sources, illegal in Japan, has dragged his feet on publicly admitting the true nature of the nuclear disaster in Japan. The mayor of Tsuruga City has questioned whether the Japanese government is telling all about the situation at Fukushima.
It appears that Kan was taking a page from Obama's disaster response playbook in delaying the announcement that the evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant had been extended from a radius of 6 to 12 miles around the stricken complex. The Japanese government, after admitting a meltdown had occurred at Fukushima Unit 1, revealed a similar meltdown had occurred a Unit 3. A hydrogen explosion occurred at Unit 3 on March 14 at 11:08 am (Tokyo time), resulting in the collapse of a building wall. Fukushima Units 2 and 6 are also experiencing critical safety problems but TEPCO and GE Hitachi officials are revealing little in the way of details. Some Japanese officials have leaked information that the level of radiation near the Fukushima reactors are at a strength that results in uncontrolled vomiting, immediate hair loss, and the onset of fast-acting cancer. However, Obama and Kan, more interested in placating the needs of corporations, continue to downplay the seriousness of the nuclear catastrophe.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima reactors, appeared more interested in public relations than in informing the public about the true nature of the disaster. Kan followed TEPCO's lead in much the same way as Obama followed the lead of BP after the Gulf of Mexico disaster. And for good measure, TEPCO lined up its primary lobbyist, D L A Piper, in Washington, to ensure the U.S. media remained relatively sanguine in its reporting on the unfolding disaster at Fukushima.

The media spin on behalf of the powerful nuclear industry is underway at full force. Fukushima is being downplayed by corporate media shills who are stating that the disaster is not at the level of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Nuclear Regulatory Commission statements that radiation from Japan poses no threat to the United States are being hyped by such neocon publications as the Wall Street Journal and the newly neocon-leaning Christian Science Monitor, which is neither "Christian" nor "scientific" in its reporting on a major disaster-in-the-making.

WMR has learned that the mega-quake that struck Japan could not have come at a better time for Kan and his government for a reason that extends to the web of Washington's and the CIA's influence-peddling in Japan.

The foreign campaign donation scandal that saw Kan's Foreign Minister and potential heir apparent, Seiji Maehara, resign just days before the quake, also implicated Kan. Kan took over from his predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama, after Hatoyama was forced to recant on his earlier campaign promise to have a U.S. Marine Corps base moved from Okinawa after pressure was applied by the Obama administration. After the humiliation of being forced to change his mind on the Okinawa base, Hatoyama resigned in September 2010.

The mega-quake just as Kan was answering questions in the Diet in Tokyo and admitting to accepting a 1.04 million yen Campaign donation from a South Korean businessman representing Chuo Syogin, a financial entity based in Yokohama that provides various services for South Korean residents of Japan. WMR is told by a well-informed source that the South Korean donations to Kan and Maehara represent a pass-through established by the CIA decades ago that saw the United States pass money to Japanese politicians using the auspices of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), now the National Intelligence Service of South Korea, the Japanese Yakuza organized crime syndicate, and elements in South Korea of the Unification Church of Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
Meanwhile, Obama's information czar, the Fagin-like plotter and schemer of disinformation campaigns, Cass Sunstein, head of the White House Office of Information Regulatory Affairs, is seeing his "cognitive infiltration" of the Internet playing out in full force. Automated "personae" and "sock puppets," funded by the US Air Force and endorsed by the Department of Justice, are ensuring that pro-nuclear energy comments are being posted on web site comment sections, discussion groups, and blogs worldwide.

When it comes to the suffering of the people of Japan and potential disastrous health effects for Americans living in Hawaii, Alaska, the West Coast, and the Rockies, Obama is content to defer to the interests of the nuclear power industry and ignore the interests of the people of the United States, Japan, Canada, and other nations that will be impacted by the nuclear disaster that is continuing to unfold in Japan. Obama continues to defend the interests of BP and the oil industry even as the health problems of the people of the Gulf of Mexico worsen by the day. For someone who grew up privileged, protected by family members in the employment of the CIA and its front organizations, Obama, owned lock, stock, and barrel by Big Oil and Big Nuclear, cannot do anything else. Over the weekend, as Japan's nuclear situation worsened, Obama chose to attend Washington's annual Gridiron dinner, a collection of Washington's pedantic journalistic elite where jokes, skits, and minstrel and Vaudeville shtick rule the evening. In May 2010, as oil gushed from the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico, Obama chose to laugh off an evening at the White House Correspondents' dinner. Chortling and back slapping with the oligarchs is what Obama was trained and groomed to do.

From our top Asia source: Tohoku Quake and Tsunami Monitor 2: "The Good News Guys" .

Sunday 13 March 2011 (0800 hrs Tokyo Time)
Following a high-level meeting called by the lame-duck prime minister, Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top. The censorship is being carried out following the imposition of the Article 15 Emergency Law. Official silencing of bad news is a polite way of reassuring the public. According to the chief Cabinet Secretary, reactor heat is being lowered and radiation levels are coming down. The Unit 1 reactor container is not cracked despite the explosion that destroyed its building. The explosion did not erupt out of the reactor.

So what caused the explosion that blasted away the reinforced concrete roof and walls? Silence.

Yes, there's nothing to worry about if residents just stay indoors, turn off their air-cons and don't breathe deeply. Everyone, go back to sleep.

The radiation leak at Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant is now officially designated as a "4" on the international nuclear-events scale of 7. This is the same criticality rating at an earlier minor accident at Tokaimura plant in Ibaraki. Technically, there is no comparison. Tokaimura did not experience a partial meltdown.

Enough of the Good New

The mayor of Tsuruga City, home of the trouble-plagued Monju plutonium-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, isn't buying Tokyo's weak explanation about the Fukushima 1 blast and demanded the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to conduct an all-points investigation immediately.

A specialist medical team from the National Radiology Health Institute, flown by helicopter from Chiba to a field center 5 km from the No.1 Nuclear Plant, found radiation illness in 3 residents out of a sample group of 90. Overnight that number of civilian-nuclear "hibakusha" shot up to 19, but in other counts to 160. The evacuation zone has been further widened from 10 km to 20 km.

A third reactor, Unit 6, has lost its cooling system and is overheating along with Reactors 1 and 2.

Fukushima No.2 plant, further south, is ringed by a wall of silence as a quiet evacuation is being conducted.

Firefighters are pumping seawater into the three overheated Fukushima 1 reactors. The mandatory freshwater supply is missing, presumably due to tsunami contamination from surging ocean waves. An American nuclear expert has called this desperation measure the equivalent of a "Hail Mary pass"...

So, the Prime Minister should be hoping that Japan's tiny Christian community is feverishly praying. Because right now, Japan and much of the world are living on a prayer.

Players not prayers.

USA: The White House sent in a team to consult withe US-friendly Naoto Kan government. Instead of dispatching in experts from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Safety Agency and Health Department, President Obamas sent representatives of USAID, which is cover for the CIA.

The presence of these paranoiac bumblers only confirms suspicions of a top-level cover up. Why would the Agency be worried about the disaster? There are security considerations, such as regional "enemies" Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow taking advantage of the crisis. To the contrary, China and Russia have both offered carte blanche civilian aid.

Second, to coordinate a pro-American public campaign synchronized with the US relief effort from the nuclear carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Many Japanese might actually be alarmed by Navy ships offshore, reminding them of the firebombing campaign in the big war, and US helicopters rumbling overhead as if Sendai was Danang Vietnam 1968. The whole "aid" exercise smacks of a con job aimed at keeping US military bases in Okinawa and surreptitiously at a Japanese Self-Defense Force firing range at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Third, to ensure the safekeeping of Misawa Air Force Base in quake-hit Iwate Prefecture. Misawa, the hub of US electronic warfare and high-tech espionage in East Asia with its fleet of P-3 Orions and an ECHELON eavesdropping antennae.

PRC: In contrast to Washington's ulterior motives, China in an unprecedented move has sent in an emergency team into Japan. Unbeknownst to the world, China has world-leading expertise in extinguishing nuclear meltdowns and blocking radiation leaks at their uranium mines and military nuclear plants. This was discovered on a 2003 visit to a geological research center in the uranium-rich Altai mountain region of Xinjiang, where a scientist disclosed "off the record" China's development of mineral blends that block radiation "much more than 90 percent, nearly totally". When asked why the institute doesn't commercialize their formulas, he responded: "We've never thought about that." That's too bad because if one of China's exports was ever needed, it's their radiation blanket.

Russia: Moscow too, is offering unconditional aid, despite ongoing territorial conflict with Japan over four northern islands. The Russian Air Force, from bases in Kamchatka and the Kuriles, could play a key role in cloud-seeding to prevent radioactive particles from drifting over to the United States. Americans should learn how to act as team players in an international community, especially now their own children's lives will be at stake in the event of a total meltdown in Fukushima.

Canada: Meteorology is becoming evermore interesting, despite the "what me worry" attitudes of the global-warming skeptics. A freak of nature called El Nino Variable, if it occurs later this spring, could push the Pacific jet stream northward, meaning western Canada and more U.S. states could find themselves along a winding stream of radiation fallout from Japan.

Japanese nuclear power plants.