400 Tons!!!

Four hundred tons of radioactive contaminated water leak out of the Fukushima power plant into the ocean each and every day...

Operation Tomodachi

The Fukushima catastrophe changed the world. Nuclear reactors melted down on live television and twice as much radioactive material was released as during the Chernobyl accident in 1986. The disaster drove 150,000 people from their towns and villages, poisoned entire landscapes for centuries and killed hundreds of thousands of farm animals.

AFP/US Navy

There's an old Saturday Night skit in which a Black janitor (Garrett Morris) is ordered to get his mop and bucket and clean up... a radioactive spill at a nuclear power plant. It was one funny skit- it's also basically what  Navy Captain Thom Burke told his crew to do on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan when they entered the radioactive plume dispersed by the critically damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. Not so funny...

Many of those sailors lived and worked well within that radioactive plume for days, cleaning radioactive fallout without protective clothing, drinking contaminated water. Hundreds of them are now suffering from advanced cancers and "unexplained" debilitating diseases that the Navy says they cannot explain, and for which they take no responsibility and admit no accountability. Of the 500 sailors stricken ill, 247 are now attempting to sue Tepco (the Japanese power company that ran the plant in question), they're legally prohibited from suing the US Military itself due to the Feres Doctrine).

 

 How much of this have you heard or read about on the news???

Nuclear Energy: Safe, Clean, Cheap, Efficient...

Until it all goes south in a very big way- then it costs billions to contain (there is no "fix"), quite possibly for hundreds thousands millions of years (a multi-multi-multi generational legacy of cancerous contamination)... I've said it before- if the Japanese can't do this right- ain't no humans on earth that can.

Technology That Can Destroy A Nation...

And it's practically everywhere. Ticking time bombs, each and every one- that last generations...
And Obama's backing two more!

Cannon Fodder

It's amazing (ie- disgusting, outrageous, blatantly criminal) how our military continues to treat its very own as subhuman expendables, time and time and time again... From marching them straight into atomic bombs, to Gulf War Syndrome, to Fukushima. I damn well saw this coming, why didn't their commanding officers have the basic human decency to prevent such an obvious threat to the health and well being of their own men and women?

And then you have the chorus of lying hypocritical bastards crying out about how many lives Edward Snowden may be responsible for!?!? Why do we live in fear of an Al Qaeda dirty bomb when our very own leaders jump to send their own countrymen ill informed and unequipped into a radioactive danger zone- and then deny them basic medical care for the years of pain and suffering that was guaranteed should they live to tell the tale???? You don't have to spend millions to send drones to far off Yemen to find monsters that will gleefully kill Americans- they live right here in our own ranks...

"Please have no leniency with me."

Said the 80 yr old nun to the judge... Hero(es), plain and simple.
(and truly Christlike).

The unmitigated hypocrisy! Not only should Homeland Security thank them for exposing such obvious lack of security, think of all the banksters who robbed us blind and didn't serve one, single day!

The Man Who Saved The World

Why every Tea Party Republican (and every single American) should kneel down and KISS this ever lovin' Red Commie's Ass!!!

Pandora's Promise

The trailer for Pandora's Promise starts off briefly mentioning the names of our most infamous, peace time, nuclear catastrophes: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. It sounds like yet another hard hitting expose of our dreaded "Friendly Atom." Midway through however, it injects the argument(s) favored by pro nuclear, "pro environmental" advocates (insert sarcastic oxymoron jokes here). They point out that we cannot continue our current (let alone increased) power consumption without incorporating nuclear into the mix on a large scale, global basis- not to do so they warn, will result in unprecedented global warming. What they don't tell you, won't tell you, is that it's a short term, short sighted fix that will poison our planet for millenia to come. And, of course, what they will tell you is that it can now be done in a safer, cleaner and more efficient manner... Bull, bull, and bull. The same decades old promises (of a broken, failed industry) spilling from the mouths of brand spanking new converts.

No matter how you color, dress and disguise it, nuclear power is the deadly poison that keeps on poisoning en masse for untold hundreds of years to come. And nuclear power plants no matter how brand spanking new and efficient are still vulnerable to catastrophes of biblical proportions due to human error, terrorism and natural calamities; and to this day we still have no safe method to store their deadly waste (again, deadly for centuries- now there's a slogan) or the needed areas "guaranteed" geologically sound for that required period of time. It's an industry essentially built on a house of cards from start to never ending finish with millions of lives at stake for thousands of years. Cool!!!

Basically, we've painted ourselves into a radioactive, smoked filled corner of our own making. The time to adequately prepare ourselves has long past, we should have been heavily investing into alternative R & D as our #1 priority since the '70s. But Grandpa Ronnie told us not to worry. And like the children that we are- we didn't.

And so here we sit in a brand new century, royally fucked with the worst yet to come- and we got warmed over shit served on a brand new platter for today's menu...

*Just a little something for all to ponder while I'm away (see yas full force come July- preposted a coupla things for the interim).

So What's The Rush?

People act like all this radioactive shit leaking all over the place could get into their water supply or something!

"In all, since that very first leak in the 1950s, at least 69 tanks are known to have excreted more than 1 million gallons of waste — and possibly far more — into the soil."

The tanks create their own chemical environment. Between the heat and the radionuclides and the chemicals that are already in there, they're just their own nuclear reactors," Whalen said. "They're generating their own little world in there."

There now- ya see, things just have a way of... working their way out!

Safe, Cheap, Efficient- Nuclear!

 

We dodged the bullet big time with Three Mile Island, and it didn't exactly take a rocket nuclear scientist to predict that if anyone would fuck up big time with the almighty atom, it would be the (just sweep it under the rug) Soviets- so Chernobyl certainly came as no surprise. But if the do it to the detail Japanese can't keep the cap on this deadly game of power now/contamination later (for centuries)- than who on earth can???

Don't worry America! That radiation leaking into your water supply is well within safety limits. And that ever growing, ever warming pile of long buried radioactive waste is every bit as safe and secure as your mama's loving bosom... (2nd link fixed)

The Greatest Single Threat to Humanity

September 23, 1979

When I scanned the above negative this weekend, I only knew that it was taken sometime in the latter '70s on what I thought was a previous Earth Day. A little cursory research however revealed it was taken on the date above- and I must say I'm somewhat gobsmacked to discover exactly what I was doing for 1/500 of a second some thirty three years ago when I was all of twenty four years old. Actually, it was an anti-nuke concert/rally (in response to Three Mile Island) celebrated on undeveloped landfill, around what is currently called Nelson A. Rockefeller Park west of Tribeca in NYC.

I was going to comment on the current ecological mess our planet is in, particularly what mass media is not reporting about the BP gulf area fiasco, that is certainly scary enough- until I read the article below which almost makes our current overall ecological peril seem like the proverbial cakewalk. This is the other shoe waiting to drop, dangling over all our heads and making the Sword of Damocles seem like an inoffensive pin prick. Basically, we're talking about the end of the world as we know it, not in song, not metaphorically, but in actual lives lost, unless we're able to do something about it (which we have not been able to thus far)- and there's a 98% chance of this sword falling within... 3 years!

If you ever bother to read anything via this damn blog- make sure this is it:

"It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.

Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 85 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization."

Well, This Is Certainly Of Concern...

I have no idea on how to even begin describing this...


Hiroshima after the Atomic Bomb (3 of 5) by Harbert F Austin Jr in Japan

Our Friendly Atom

What Me Worry?

No Worries...


None Whatsoever!

Internet Scary, Or Real Life Scary?

I thought this was pretty damn insidious- but this is really downright scary! How'd you like to have something in that vastly spreading zone of danger and death end up on your dinner plate? Germany is certainly to be applauded for their astounding leap of faith in favor of logic and humanity... But who will protect her from the nuclear disasters just beyond her borders, and further still?

Our Grand Nuclear Legacy

Here are but two of the highly unpublicized "highlights" from the short but notable history of this totally safe, cheap and reliable source of potentially limitless energy...

Our Peaceful, Murderous Atom

Think the various atomic/nuclear agencies worldwide will be honoring, praising and saluting The Fukushima 50 for the rest of their numbered days and beyond? They're gonna give 'em a hero's send off and keep their names and legacy alive in the annals of nuclear history long after they've departed this mortal coil for single handily sparing the world an unimaginable nuclear disaster, right? Right???

Bet the house their sorry asses will never again be mentioned, invoked or acknowledged by anyone even remotely related to nuclear power in order to put as much distance between their inevitably shortened lives and an industry that can kill you now, or decades later- and create enough deadly by products to keep killing for century upon century to come...

As one of the AEC scientists says in the film: *
"We discovered that our theoretical calculations didn't have a strong correlation with reality. But we just couldn't admit to the public that all these safety systems we told you about might not do any good"

 *(Thanks to Matt Croxton)

Baby I'm Amazed...

Now I'll be the first to admit that I sometimes have trouble telling my plutonium, uranium and cesium apart. Truth is, I really do try to put as much distance between them and me as possible on a daily basis. Don't much care for the whole freakin' lot.

So let me see if I got this anywhere near right... Men pour water on broken, crippled reactors (that had actually exploded to some unknown degree) because the water that cooled them down had escaped. Then when this water, whose purpose was to come into contact with said nuclear fuel rods to cool them the fuck down, in turn leaks out, nuclear engineers are shocked- shocked I tell you, gobsmacked beyond tarnation, that said water in turn has also become... radioactive!?!

This is is the manner of foresight, planning and training that permeates the world's most safety conscious and highly regulated, high tech energy industry in the world? Really? Seriously?

145/77=

There are 145 million lbs. of spent nuclear fuel in 77 locations in the USA alone- 44 million additional lbs. are produced each year. Much of it is stored in casks that can last 100+ yrs- the waste remains deadly for tens of thousands...

The Fukushima 50, And Beyond...

(AP Photo/Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency)

As the bastards who design, finance and propagate these technological wonders of mass death continue to live happy, healthy and... wealthy lives, it's always the nameless worker bees who must come in and sacrifice their own lives to save ours and... theirs.

And long after those murderous bastards are long gone and dead, there'll still be this little problem we have yet to confront in any meaningful way whatsoever- a life and death decision that will be very much with us for thousands of years to come...