Japanese Finally admit leak will kill people...head of plant breaks down in tears

The way I understand it, is that these miliverts people are getting, are PER HOUR.

A lot of confusion, IMO, over dosages of radiation that is acceptable.
IE you can say it is no more radiation than a chest x-ray but who wants one per hour for the next 30 years?

And the TSA, how funny, radiating people with scanners on the way in, scanning them for Japanese radiation on the way out.

reply to post by inthemass

The picture of the circle of spent rods in reactor #4 is an incredible metaphor for our own man-made "ring of fire." Seems our attempts to subdue mother nature and re-make her in our own image may not be such a good idea after all.

What I've always wanted to know is why don't they just build these reactors in used mine shafts that way if something does go wrong its already entombed and isolated all you would have to do is seal it off.

I cannot begin to express my utter despair for the Japanese people. I have never felt so hopeless about an event.

I live in La Jolla, CA by the coast. My husband is a scientist and has access to equipment that he is monitoring. We are now making plans for the kids and I to leave the area. If it were just us, we might stay on..but I cannot risk my children..they are most vulnerable.

Can't they drop massive sheets on them or foam the reactors with some substance so that it does not spread, put some type of casing around them or something in quicktime, have at least a backup plan. Drop some sheets to cover the tops of them at least the smoke won't spread.

I can only imagine what the people think now, They were sceptic and fearful already and now theres going to be even more chaos, I'm thinking about all Japanese people everyday and hope for the best, To anyone in California,I'm thinking about you as well, Be safe, dont panic do whatever it takes to stay safe and keep others safe.

I was also just noticing how many politicians and such are out of the country now..a little interesting..

Obama, Palin..even Rockefellers whole family in India..

Originally posted by The time lord
Can't they drop massive sheets on them or foam the reactors with some substance so that it does not spread, put some type of casing around them or something in quicktime, have at least a backup plan. Drop some sheets to cover the tops of them at least the smoke won't spread.

Wow - you would think the geniuses that deploy these things would have it all figured out don't you? Back up plans and all.
No.. they are as bad as the Soviets were with Chernobyl. "We are perfect, our technology is fail-safe, no need to concern yourselves, we have everything under control."

Actually they DON'T know what to do, nothing is under control and ..lo and behold...they are just as fallible as the street sweeper that used to clean the streets of that town. Aren't they surprised.

And understand- they aren't any worse than any other company/group who has control of one of these things.

Originally posted by iAnjo
They're trying to calm down everyone here saying that it's under control...

*I hope they're right or we're leaving soon"

I wont say it's under control by a long shot, but the news coming out of the plant the last day or so has been trending positive. If it were me and I had some resources at my disposal I'd be spending a week or two watching the situation from the farthest port town where I could hop a boat at a moment's notice. If nothing deadly serious rises from this situation then you've taken a 2 week vacation, but if it turns out to be bad then you've made getting out much easier.

Last word of advice; never rely on a government to take care of you, make your own preparations to protect you and your family if you've got one.

How about some accurate reporting?

The Reuters photo is not showing the fuel rods but the reactor vessel itself during loading or unloading. The "rods" visible are the "screws" for securing the top of the vessel which is removed for loading or unloading. The canal behind the circular vessel goes to the spent fuel pool which is in the back end of the photo and therefore not visible.

BAD reporting all around... also the green apparatus is not the reactor but the crane used for loading and unloading the fuel.

Just stating things which make sense to me. Not implying that the situation is fine... the rods in the spent fuel pool may have been on fire, they may be uncovered, the core(s) may be melten and outside the pressure vessel, the second explosion might have come from the pressure vessel itself, the protection of the firemen is totally amateurish, the emergency radiation monitors do not show any measurements, planes have in arrived in Europe with radioactive substances on their hull and so on and so on...BUT please check your facts. Thank you!

Boy oh boy, I was just watching CNN and they were talking that they had made progress and there is zero radiation leaking out of the reactors. So of course I logged on to check on the REAL situation. It amazes me how many people don't really think that this is a crisis, that they are just trying to scare us?! All day yesterday they barely mentioned the crisis and only covered Libya. Thats because they know how bad its really going to be. Sacry times and am more confused than ever. We are all human beings and WE have the right to know whats really going on. Just because we are not in Government does not make our lives less important than theirs. Its actually making me really mad, and I am sure most of you are getting upset over the b.s. and lies as well. Stay vigilant my friends...

www.cnn.com...

At least the Japanese haven't lost their sence of humer and might I add some people here really need to watch this to understand what is going on.

The head of the plant should not be so hard on himself. The disaster is to blame for this incident and not him. I feel very much empathy for this plant owner and it almost makes me tear. He should realize he could not do much of anything to avert this because it was a natural disaster and not a man made disaster that caused this.

Originally posted by Stevenjames15
It amazes me how many people don't really think that this is a crisis, that they are just trying to scare us?! All day yesterday they barely mentioned the crisis and only covered Libya. Thats because they know how bad its really going to be.

edit on 19-3-2011 by Stevenjames15 because: I wanted to add a link about the food contamination!

That is because GE built his plant and many others. GE owns (just purchased by Comcast) NBC Universal. The Koch Bros are working on building some plants and Rupert Murdoch (FOX) is on board with them- they have massive PR power between these 'think tanks' and media outlets. And they have billions of dollars riding on getting the 'right' message out there. It was rumored before Japan's Crisis that the Koch bros wanted to build a 'non union' Nuke plant in Wisconsin as well as take over the energy plants already there.

If that isn't a nightmare scenario- I don't know what is.

reply to post by Stratus9


The plants are a GE design, but actually GE, Toshiba and Hitachi all built different plants there together.

www.businessweek.com...

Talk about a horrific series of events. A record-breaking earthquake leads to a huge tsunami which leads to six reactors damned in one spot.

If somebody had told me this was going to happen, I would have sworn they were describing one of SciFy's made for tv cheesy movies. Reality is stranger than fiction.

I feel for the workers who now are realizing a helluva lot of them aren't going to make it. And I feel for all the people who have been lied to over there.

Later on, there will be time for criminal courts to act.

Right now there just is no easy way out of this.

reply to post by sallamy


That video is too funny.
Breaks it down for the laymans.
Good find!

This is pure speculation on my part, but instinct tells me the head of the plant may well have been a puppet, instructed to report in a particular way by some invisible party further up the food chain. Who knows what consequences he or his family may face for having finally spilled the beans. If we discover he's committed suicide in the near future, as some have suggested, I'm not necessarily going believe it was self-inflicted.

Regardless of how awful his lies were, I can't see that photo of his tears and not feel pity.

Also, where people have commented on it being a natural disaster that brought about the plant's problems, I'm not 100% convinced either way as to the accuracy of that. There's plenty of debate as to the possibility of HAARP, or other human interference having been at the root of it.

13th of March also brought a virtually unnoticed announcement of bird-flu having been found at Tokyo's biggest poultry producer. I can't help feeling that there are too many combined disasters for it to have been coincidence. Maybe I'm paranoid. Some will label me a fear monger, but I'm a very positive person, who's extremely spooked to see what's going on in Japan.

God help all those poor souls. This last week's been so unbearably cruel.

Originally posted by sallamy
At least the Japanese haven't lost their sence of humer and might I add some people here really need to watch this to understand what is going on.

We need to watch a cartoon to know what's going on? Are you being serious? This is one of the most stupid and deluded ideas I have seen thus far in regard to the situation in Japan. You just cannot be serious.

This is a cartoon playing down the most serious nuclear accident in history. And it's still ongoing! Those who sit there pompously saying this is nothing as bad as Chernobyl are completely stupid or are being intellectually dishonest. Chernobyl was one reactor. This is multiple reactors WHICH HAD SPENT RODS SITTING IN A POOL ABOVE THEM AND THE TOPS OF THE REACTORS BLEW OFF IN MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS.

We are being lied to. LIED TO.

To those of you who think this video is funny and shows the true sentiment of the average Japanese, did it ever occur to you that the video might have been made by public relations dept. employees of the Tokyo Electric Power Company?

Get a grip. "Deny ignorance" is a lost cause around ATS these days.

Originally posted by bastet11
I cannot begin to express my utter despair for the Japanese people. I have never felt so hopeless about an event.

I live in La Jolla, CA by the coast. My husband is a scientist and has access to equipment that he is monitoring. We are now making plans for the kids and I to leave the area. If it were just us, we might stay on..but I cannot risk my children..they are most vulnerable.

I guess Obama didn't consider Brazil safe after all, he was supposed to leave on Friday for Brazil. Gee, I wonder whats about to happen?