Celebrated Physician: Fukushima has humanity “on brink of a possible worldwide nuclear holocaust�

reply to post by iLemming


Yeah, that whole stubborn nature of the hierarchy here in Japan is not making matters better at all. I have dealt with this element of Japanese society for years. Most of the political leadership, on a national level, are elder children from filthy rich families. They have lived a life of hardcore elitist entitlement and are highly disconnected from the people.

They have been hold their entire lives that they are the top of society and are never wrong. In fact, if it does not come from someone in their little circle of power then it must be a lie or a political attack against them.

That is the kind of leadership we are dealing with in Japan. They will sink this island nation to the bottom of the ocean in order to save face.

reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus


The Caesium came from the nuclear nukes Testing starting
in the early 50'ies until the 80'ies!
the Atom-Archive

It is crazy what they have done in the last Decades,
the French even tested a Nuke in 1995 in the Pacific!

werewolf99
I still think that Japan will have a terrible effect on the health of those that live their. I believe that it people should leave Japan so that the Japanese people can be healthy. I understand that in the east there is many concepts of face, and some may see this as a loss of face: I do not. But although radiation spreads Japan should be classed as a non-habitable zone. If it isn't now it eventually must be surely.

Anyone that knows me will probably do a double-take, but I just don't have the words to convey the ache I feel when I think of these proud people and all of the families caught up in this. Here at ATS, someone is always ready to jump in and request(a polite way of putting it... Demand is probably closer.) links to back up nearly any assertion. Where I read it has slipped my mind, but (if I absolutely HAVE to) I'm sure I could track it down. Pregnant women are actually being offered free or nearly free housing if they will move back closer to the danger zone.

This isn't some G*d D*mned lab and a bunch of disposable test animals!!!! Instead of returning families anywhere NEAR there, they should be getting the women and children out of Dodge...

For the last two and a half years, nothing has lifted the melancholy I feel. The pictures of the abandoned amuzement park and the ghost villages and farms broke my heart.

There is only one thing I'm sure of, things will never be the same.

Now word is they are going to "Hand Remove" fuel rods this coming week.

This is what I want to keep an eye out on. If the smallest thing goes wrong.......

There is far more damage and more toxic leaks then we are being told or will be told.


This falls under the mass hysteria that the world govt. fear.
So they will "put a lid on it" as it were.

DogMeat
Now word is they are going to "Hand Remove" fuel rods this coming week.

This is what I want to keep an eye out on. If the smallest thing goes wrong.......

There is far more damage and more toxic leaks then we are being told or will be told.

This falls under the mass hysteria that the world govt. fear.
So they will "put a lid on it" as it were.

The people with background and education qualifying them to comment have been treated like fearmongers by the governments and media. I'd thought of posting this when I first read it... In light of what I've read today, it needs to be out there.

A disaster in the making.

Note: emphasis is mine.

Nov. 6, 2013: “Did you ever play pick up sticks?” asked a foreign nuclear expert who has been monitoring Tepco’s efforts to regain control of the plant. “You had 50 sticks, you heaved them into the air and than had to take one off the pile at a time. “If the pile collapsed when you were picking up a stick, you lost,” he said. “There are 1,534 pick-up sticks in a jumble in [sic] top of an unsteady reactor 4. What do you think can happen? I do not know anyone who is confident that this can be done since it has never been tried.” Even now, it is not clear whether any of the rods, containing transuranic and transplutonic elements, are cracked, he said. [...] Others have issued even more dire warnings, with Charles Perrow, a professor emeritus at Yale University, warning: “The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas, including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site, the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.”

It's a bit like street magic. Watch how dexterously my right hand folded this guy's $10 dollar bill and pay no attention to the fact I just slipped something into my jacket pocket...

It's not ABOUT just SFP4!!! All that's needed is one mistake of the right kind (Yeah, I know that sounds strange but its wording is apropos!) and we aren't talking about just SFP4 anymore. The site will have to be abandoned and the world is well and truly screwed.

Now comes the next step...

Tepco to train amateur workers in reactor4 pool

In the press conference of 11/8/2013, Tepco’s spokesman stated the amateur workers are to be trained in reactor4 pool to remove the fuel. Tepco plans to start the fuel removal from mid-November. According to their statement, the skilled workers who have experienced the fuel removal are to have training in the mock-up test. After the training, those workers come to reactor4 pool and train the workers who have the least experience in the actual site.

1. “Fukushima is the most terrifying situation I can imagine.” - Suzuki

David Measday, nuclear and particle physicist (University of British Columbia)

“People are really exaggerating this. I mean, over 20,000 people were killed in the tsunami. As far as we know, no one was killed by radiation.”

Marcello Pavan

“As scientists talking around the lunchroom, we are more or less of a unanimous opinion that the hysteria around Fukushima is grossly overblown [...] With the supersensitive detectors we have at our disposal, [radiation] levels are way below anything that anybody has to worry about. We're subjected to background radiation from the moment we're born. I mean, every banana you've ever eaten has radioactive potassium in it.”

2. “They're lying through their teeth.” - Suzuki

Marcello Pavan

“That is absolutely correct, at least from what I see. TEPCO has been minimizing the effects of what is happening. But here we have a large industrial concern lying to the government about an accident related to its business—is that news?”

David Measday

“It's very difficult to find exact information, because of course they don't tell you everything. I've talked to a few Japanese physicists, but they don't know either. But now they have no reason to lie about the amount of radiation there is [...] The critical thing is, what is the level and how bad is it for humans?”

3. “...if there's another earthquake of 7 or above, that building will go and all hell breaks loose.” - Suzuki

David Measday

“Chernobyl actually exploded half the reactor into the atmosphere. That's as bad as you can get. At Fukushima, there was nowhere near that level [...] I don't deny there could be a small chance that things could go wrong. An earthquake or tsunami would probably be the worst, but if it's of that magnitude the radiation would be a much lesser concern.”

4. “Thirteen-hundred rods of spent fuel [...] They're pouring water in but water's leaking out.” - Suzuki

Malcolm Crick

“Radioactive isotopes are migrating into that groundwater and then towards the sea [...] The level of radionuclides in the harbor right there by the damaged plant seem to be increasing recently. But to give perspective, they're below the levels that WHO uses for determining the quality of drinking water.”

Marcello Pavan

“There's clearly issues with radioactivity in the water. Cooling water is leaking into the groundwater and into the ocean. But the ocean's a big place; the levels of radiation are dispersed. It's completely negligible.”

5. “They don't know what to do [...] The Japanese government has too much pride to admit that.” - Suzuki

Helen Caldicott “TEPCO is trying to move those damaged rods by crane manually, which has never, ever been done before; usually fuel rods are moved by computer control. If two fuel rods happened to touch, there could be a fission reaction releasing huge amounts of radioactive gases. This would be a catastrophe. The radiation would circle the Northern Hemisphere.”

David Measday

“The Japanese were very careful, they built all their reactors to very high levels. I don't think it would breach... They probably have done as well as you possibly could with their existing reactors. What they failed to do was to estimate the size of the [2011] tsunami. But if there were another tsunami, they still haven't totally prepared for it. They could be in trouble again.”

6. “It's bye-bye Japan—and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate.” - Suzuki

David Measday

“I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. It's totally impossible! I can't believe he would say that. When he's in his own field, he's usually reasonable. But this is just crazy.”

Marcello Pavan

“It doesn't in any remote sense seem plausible. It's contaminated material, yes, but certainly not on a scale that would devastate Japan, nor travel all way across the Pacific and cause an evacuation."

Read the whole Interview, if you want

reply to post by GaryN


What has the fossil fuel industry got to do with it? Are you a pro-nuclear shill??

ANY radiation is bad for you (yes, even background) but the probability of it causing mutations in DNA and causing cancer, is very low.

Radiation has two parts to it:

* Duration of exposure
* Rate of decay

This is why the units are always expressed as some value per hour/day/week (either Rem in USA, or Sievert in SI units). It is a way of quantifying exposure relative to dosage required to cause cancers, etc..

You can be exposed to background for a lifetime, or get the same equivalent exposure in a day if the rate is high enough.

So all that aside... a little bit of extra exposure here, a little bit there, adds up. Radiation exposure is accumulative.

This 'celebrated physician', Stephen Hosea, I couldn't find much about him except he lives in Santa Barbara and has an MD in Infectious Diseases.


Is he qualified to discuss the effects of radiation? Seems a little out of his remit.

Dav1d
There are 104 nuclear reactors in 31 states around the country. We can shut them down.

How will you power essential services like schools, hospitals, transport infrastructure etc?

Oh god. Where's the facepalm icon?