There was a recent post (h/t Anja) about the death of sea animals on the Pacific coast of Canada. The author shows dozens of photographs of the shoreline, commenting that there is no longer the sea life that he would typically expect. There are no bugs on the windshield of his car, and few birds to be seen. The sea anemone are absent from the land scape.
There was a recent post about sea lions having the seizures and dying along the California coast. They are accumulating a neurotoxin, domoic acid, being at the top of the food train. The post went on to say:
First discovered in 1987 when 107 people on Prince Edward Island fell ill after eating mussels harboring domoic acid, the algae occasionally produce this deadly toxin, which scientists believe is triggered by changing ocean conditions and surges of nitrogen into bodies of water.
Once produced by the algae, domoic acid quickly works its way up the food chain, first gobbled up by shellfish and plankton-eating fish, like sardines and anchovies, that harbor the toxin in their guts. Next in line are sea lions, brown pelicans, otters, whales and dolphins, all of which have been stranding in large numbers recently, or, in the case of pelicans, literally dropping dead out of the sky.
This blog reports that the rate of thyroid cancer among children in Japan is at least 10 times greater than the incident after Chernobyl.
Tokyo Press Conference: Gov’t is committing crimes against humanity; Fukushima children living in war zone and can’t leave — Childhood cancer developing much faster than Chernobyl; Rate now 14 times higher — Parent: “I’m revealing the reality of what’s going on… it’s only way to get rid of the criminals” (VIDEO)http://enenews.com/tokyo-press-conference-officials-committing-crimes-against-humanity-fukushima-children-living-war-zone-evacuate-childhood-cancer-developing-faster-chernobyl-rate-14-times-higher-parent-im-reveal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=e
Press Conference at The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, August 18, 2014:
Toshio Yanagihara, attorney representing Fukushima children and their parents
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Harvey Wasserman reported on the similarities between the Lucky Dragon and the USS Ronald Reagan recently in a blog. The Lucky Dragon was a Japanese fishing boat that was down wind from a nuclear bomb test. For a long time the US denied any relationship with The LuckyDragon and they are denying any relationship with USS Ronald Reagan.
One idea by TEPCO was to create an ice wall to prevent the flow of water. This blog indicates that the efforts were unsuccessful. This is another idea which was done just to do something, without evidence that it might work. It has not worked.
” Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday it had failed in an attempt to create an ice wall in an underground tunnel to block the flow of highly radioactive water from a damaged reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station.
Since last month, TEPCO has injected more than 400 tons of ice and dry ice to freeze radioactive water in a section that connects the tunnel, used to run cables, with the turbine building of the No. 2 reactor, one of three reactors that suffered core meltdowns in the March 2011 disaster.
By freezing the water, TEPCO hoped to create a wall of ice to block the flow of water between the turbine building and the tunnel. The process would have made it easier to pump out highly radioactive water from the tunnel.
But the temperature inside the section did not fall low enough despite the use of…
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This article and it’s link shows that there have been successful hackings into nuclear reactors in the last several years. Although no damage was reported, there is the possibility that future hacks May be more damaging.
U.S. government’s nuclear watchdog victim of cyber attacks -report, Yahoo7 News
August 20, 2014, By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was “successfully hacked” three times in recent years in attacks involving tainted emails, according to an internal investigation on cyber attacks at the agency, Nextgov.com reported on Tuesday.
At least two of the attacks originated overseas, according to the report obtained by Nextgov, a rare public report with details of a cyber attack on the energy sector.
The publication said it obtained a copy of a report by the NRC’s Office of the Inspector General, which reviewed 17 suspected breaches from 2010 to 2013.
The report did not name the countries where the attacks originated or say if data had been stolen from the regulatory agency, which holds sensitive data on the nuclear power industry.
Reuters was not immediately able to access the report, which Nextgov…
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Under careful scrutiny rice is once more being exported from Fukushima to Singapore according to this report in the Wall Street Journal. Presumably the rice is being checked very carefully for evidence of radiation, and no significant radiation has been found. However would you want to buy rice that was marketed as having come from Fukushima?
” The National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations said it would resume exports of rice produced in Fukushima prefecture for the first time since the nuclear crisis in 2011.
About 300 kilograms of rice harvested at Sukagawa city, in the central part of the prefecture, will be shipped to Singapore. They will be sold in five-kilogram bags at a local Japanese supermarket beginning this Friday, the organization said.
“We will check the rice thoroughly in Fukushima before shipping it overseas, and then the bags will undergo another check in Singapore,” a spokesman for the federation, known as Zen-noh, told Japan Real Time.
Approximately 100 tons of rice from Fukushima had been exported per year before the prefecture was hit with the nuclear accident following the March 11, 2011, earthquake.
Export of fruit produced in Fukushima, including apples, resumed earlier, and the federation had been negotiating with multiple countries to allow…
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There was a recent report in the news about the genetic damage that is being seen in the area around Fukushima. The article describes:
“A growing body of empirical results from studies of birds, monkeys, butterflies, and other insects suggests that some species have been significantly impacted by the radioactive releases related to the Fukushima disaster,” said Timothy Mousseau, lead author of one of the studies detailing the effects, in a news release.
Some of these stories have been published previously on this blog, or here.
Back to the drawing boards. Apparently systems put into place by TEPCO are not working. This raises the question of how much of what they are doing is actually working. I have found that given the choice between doing something or nothing with the same outcomes that many people prefer to do something, even if it is not effective. Doing something and doing nothing may be both futile, but doing something creates hope. The problem is that this disaster may not be fixable.
” Tokyo Electric has determined that it will cease use of AREVA’s decontamination system, which uses chemicals to remove radioactive materials from water, as it has not lived up to expectations since it was installed. The utility will file an application with the Nuclear Regulation Authority in order to scrap the system.
The decontamination system was set up in June 2011, three months after the onset of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. The design was so complicated that it took 50 welders more than a month to put the system together. In the first three months, the system processed 76,000 tons of contaminated water, but was repeatedly forced to be shut down by a variety of problems.
For the last three years the system has been unused and kept out of operations and in the meantime, TEPCO has introduced a new system to process the ever-accumulating amounts of contaminated water…
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There are thousands of abandonment uranium mines in the Western United States. They are creating an environmental disaster among the Indians.
Enviros push Congress on abandoned uranium mine cleanup, Tucson Sentinel Aug 11, 2014, Matthew Seeman Cronkite News Service The people behind Clean Up the Mines understand that others have been trying for years to clean up abandoned uranium mines and have mostly met with limited success.
But they say that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t keep trying.
The grass-roots advocacy group launched in April with the goal of getting Congress to mandate cleanup of the more than 10,000 abandoned mines in the country, at least 500 of which are on the Navajo Nation.
“This needs to be a federal standard,” said Klee Benally, a Navajo who is a member of Clean Up the Mines. “It needs to be the highest that we can possibly have to address these toxic abandoned uranium mines.”
Key to that effort is a proposed piece of legislation, the Uranium Exploration and Mining Accountability Act, that would…
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Vernon Radiation Safety 