Dear Readers,
Here's the news today: Japanese nuclear experts "might" be making SOME progress on cooling the overheated reactors and spent fuel pools at Fukushima Dai-ichi. The problem is, maybe they AREN'T making ANY progress at all! They just can't know. The internal temperatures of the reactor cores are unknown. Pressures at various places in the system are all that is known. The only thing that creates heat in the system -- and thus, pressure -- is the radioactive fuel. So the continued steam releases suggest fuel isn't cooling very quickly, and stability is NOT guaranteed at ANY of the three reactors that had the misfortune to be operating when the 9.0 earthquake struck.
An explosion of a reactor pressure vessel is not impossible. Those hydrogen explosions we've seen so far were NOT the reactor pressure vessels. Those would be even worse. Hydrogen OR steam explosions are possible within them. Such explosions would be much worse than anything we have seen so far, especially if such explosions cascade across reactors, a very real possibility.
The reactors all shut down as expected (depriving the area of much-needed electrical power) but for days or even weeks after a shutdown, reactors stay very, very hot, whether you get the control rods inserted properly, as apparently happened here, or not, as happened in Chernobyl. So in a sense, no reactor can be guaranteed to be safely shut down in a hurry. That should be obvious now.
After the approximately 25-foot tsunami waves struck an hour later, the site's many backup systems failed one by one by one... and things got neglected, too.
A better immediate grasp of the seriousness of their plight, causing faster responses such as bringing in extra pumps and power generators sooner, might have made a big difference. No matter who else needed them -- and everybody did, and does, including hospitals and sewage stations.
Flooding the reactors with seawater sooner might have helped. Flooding them with boric acid sooner. Ordering emergency shipments of boric acid from around the world sooner. Having a whole lot more on site... One can probably find a hundred things TEPCO did wrong in the first 24 hours alone.
The nuclear industry will admit to one or two of them and move forward unless we stop them. Every plant would make 100 mistakes in the first 24 hours, too. They did at Chernobyl and they did at Three Mile Island. At the Davis Besse plant in Ohio in 2002, nuclear "experts" ignored repeated clogged filters indicating something was seriously rusting out inside the plant -- it was the reactor pressure vessel! It was completely eroded in one place -- a football-sized hole -- and perhaps hours or days away from bursting. ONLY THE LINER (3/16ths of an inch thick!) was holding back the pressure (and the liner was bulging out already)!! Six inches of steal had eroded.
At the Monticello plant in Minnesota, bolts kept baffles for the Emergency Core Cooling System from flapping as they were shipped by truck from the manufacturer. To allow the ECCS to function, these "shipping bolts" were supposed to be removed during installation when the plant was constructed. They weren't, and nobody noticed. For thirty years.
So don't let anyone tell you it can't happen here. It can and it will, and it almost has many times. We won't be the lucky ones forever.
The Japanese are technological wizards. A year ago they were bragging about their nuclear technologies in fancy productions still available -- and laughable -- on You Tube. But a slew of 40-year-old reactors have them beat. Experts called in from around the world are also perplexed.
Venting of radioactive steam might have to go on for YEARS according to many experts.
Meanwhile, Libyan jets are being shot down on film. Good thing THEY are not falling onto reactors or spent fuel pools! They could be! There is a nuclear research center located in Tajura, just ten miles from Tripoli. And AREVA was negotiating to build power reactors in Libya, too! Hopefully that idea was scratched when French fighter jets were scrambled to attack the country instead.
News is now coming out that TEPCO, the owner of the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors in Japan, wanted the U.S. military and the Japanese governments to take over three days into the disaster. But they were told that was "not an option." TEPCO employees understood this to literally mean, "keep going until YOU die" and many of them are apparently doing so.
Wall Street knew all along that nuclear power is a bad investment. Hence the need for "loan guarantees" and other billions of dollars in gifts every year to the nuclear industry. This accident will cost Japan hundreds of billions of dollars (tens of trillions of yen).
I've heard nuclear power called: "The most complicated way known to man to boil water."
But it looks pretty simple to me: Pour sea water on it, and the water boils away!
The nuclear demons charge dearly in lives, land, money, and futures. The price rises every day.
Uranium starts killing the moment the "quap" (the derogatory term science fiction writer H. G. Wells gave it, in his prescient way) is dug out of the ground. Splitting the uranium atom releases energy but also produces extremely deadly byproducts called fission products. Usually a two-for-one deal. You get two fission products for every uranium atom or plutonium atom that's split. These fission products are now being released, along with uranium and plutonium, into the atmosphere, farmlands, and water. This catastrophe will have a profound effect on human DNA globally, as well as on all other living things.
And just how many global nuclear accidents can the human genome tolerate? How many MUST we tolerate?
This latest nuclear cascade of accidents may not be the worst to come: Four nuclear reactors at two sites in California (where this author lives) might do the same thing tomorrow (or today). They have thousands of tons of spent fuel stored at these sites too, either in dry casks (which have no pool for dousing them with water if they catch fire) or in spent fuel pools, which, obviously, are also not safe.
Everyone knows "the big one" is coming to California soon. Huge earthquakes have struck three quadrants of the Pacific Rim -- the Ring of Fire -- recently. But not ours.
The ongoing Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster was really no accident: It was premeditated murder. Virtually every aspect of what's going on was predicted years ago.
Professor Francis A. Boyle considers nuclear power a Crime Against Humanity. I completely concur.
Below is a letter someone sent me about a way to take iodine. I am not a doctor and am not making any recommendations. Consult a physician, of course. If any doctors comment on this suggestion, I'll pass it on in a later newsletter.
Tut, tut, looks like rain. We're in for a heavy rain any minute now. Cesium-137, Strontium-90, Iodine-131, Tritium (Hydrogen-3)... here it comes.... what went up... must come DOWN!
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Taking his forced dose of radioactive "sunshine vitamins" in
Carlsbad, California USA
The author's landmark visual/technical guide to the nuclear industry, The Code Killers, is available for free download from his web site: acehoffman.org . The author is grateful to anyone who forwards this message, publishes it, discusses it with others, or has simply read this far!
Useful educational material:
An interview with Dr. Ernest Sternglass was posted on You-Tube yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPO7Tft0YlQ
An interview with Karl Grossman was also posted yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrMDcZA-YjU
A news conference with CNIC Japan (the first half is translated into English), recorded today:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13447172
Newsweek published a short article by Dr. Helen Caldicott called The Manhattan Meltdown Scenario:
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/20/the-manhattan-meltdown-scenario.html
Out of France comes a map which may or may not accurately predict, or indicate any actual values for, the wind plume from Fukushima Dai-ichi:
http://www.irsn.fr/FR/popup/Pages/irsn-meteo-france_19mars.aspx
Here is something from Nutritionist Sara Shannon's "Diet for the Atomic Age". Many other such diets are based on her book, first published in 1987 and updated and expanded in 1997:
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/NGP/Diet4AtomAge.html
Heavy stuff (the roof of the building?) goes up what appears to be 1000 feet or more (these are VERY big buildings) -- and then comes down on or very near the reactor, AFTER the cloud has drifted away somewhat. Terrifying. Watch closely:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ&feature=related
Iodine solution? At 10:47 AM 3/19/2011 -0700, Mark Smith wrote:
Dear Ace--
Many years ago on a motorcycle trip, I stayed for a week at the house of a woman in Del Mar. If I recall correctly, her name was Esther Czerny. She was an older woman from Vienna and in excellent health. She had the curious habit of putting two drops of tincture of iodine, the kind you put on minor cuts and scrapes that is marked "for external use only," into a glass of water every day, and drinking it. When I asked, she said it was to protect from radioactivity. I didn't think about it for years, until Chernobyl. Then it made sense to me, so I started doing the same thing for a while. I forgot about it again for years until Fukushima happened. Then I started doing it again. I don't know if it helps, but it doesn't seem to hurt.
--Mark
Letter to Canadian Premier Wall from Elaine Hughes (includes Francis Boyle's commentary):
Premier Wall - QUOTE: "Gorbachev described Chernobyl as "a warning sign" for countries dependent on nuclear power or keen to turn to it. " . . . .and now, we have the Nuclear Nightmare in Japan! As a follow-up to your most disappointing (point-less!) letter dated March 8, 2011 (see below) - which totally missed the concerns I set out in my email to you regarding the lessons to be learned by Chernobyl - you might want to examine your conscience within the context of the article below. What a shameful state of affairs that the Saskatchewan Government continues to tout our province around the world as the 'Saudi Arabia of Uranium'! And, continues its unnecessary and dangerous pursuit of more uranium mining, more uranium 'development', more so-called 'innovation', more radioactive waste with no way to handle it.
I urge you, once again, Premier Wall, to devote your time and my tax money to research and development of truly safe, sustainable and clean energy sources, and halt any and all needless activity related to uranium and its killer industry. Elaine Hughes Box 23 Archerwill, SK S0E 0B0 = = = = = = = = Nuclear Power Industry is a Crime Against Humanity
by Francis Boyle March 20, 2011
QUOTE: ". . . . The same must be done by the other peoples in the world against their own Nuclear Power Industries, including and especially here in the United States, the originator of nuclear energy that was criminally used for the first two times at Hiroshima and Nagasaki against innocent Japanese Civilians, also a Crime Against Humanity."
Dear Friends:
I have now had the opportunity to review my information sources. I have already sent to you the basic thrust of my analysis: Namely, that the Japanese Nuclear Power Industry constitutes a Crime against Humanity as defined by Article 7 of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, to which Japan is a party. The same holds true for the Nuclear Power Industries in all the other countries of the World. You have the text of Rome Statute Article 7 below, which is directly on point. The Japanese People must now use this legal conclusion to terminate the Nuclear Power Industry in Japan, this ongoing Crime Against Humanity. The same must be done by the other peoples in the world against their own Nuclear Power Industries, including and especially here in the United States, the originator of nuclear energy that was criminally used for the first two times at Hiroshima and Nagasaki against innocent Japanese Civilians, also a Crime Against Humanity. The Japanese people are now being victimized once again by nuclear energy, only this time by your own Government and Business People in the Nuclear Power Industry.
As for the MOX, you know I have worked before with Junko Abe to stop the further deployment of MOX in Japan. MOX contains plutonium, the deadliest substance known to humanity. And there has already been an explosion at Fukushima Reactor No. 3 containing MOX/plutonium. The Japanese People must demand that the Japanese Government and Nuclear Power Industry inform them specifically about the plutonium at Reactor 3. Has the plutonium been released into the atmosphere already? So far they have said nothing about plutonium release. You must obtain this information and monitor it continuously. Perhaps it might be possible for private scientists and NGOs in Japan to start monitoring for plutonium releasewe are starting to do this in the United States, not relying upon the U.S. Government to tell us the truth since they never do so when it comes to Nuclear Power. And you must now consult with private medical doctors and health experts about what to do about any plutonium release and the other radioactive substances that have already been releasedcesium, strontium, etc. You must not trust the Japanese Government or the Japanese Nuclear Power Industry to tell you the truth. They are the ones who are responsible for this Crime against Humanity in the first place. The Japanese People must act to save yourselves from your own Government and Nuclear Power Industry.
I hope you find these comments to be useful. You have my permission to use them for a newspaper article.
Yours very truly,
Francis A. Boyle Professor of International Law University of Illinois College of Law
- - - -
Dear Friends:
It is very good to hear from you again. I wish to express my deepest sorrow to the Japanese People for all of their suffering as a result of the earthquake and tsunami. As a young Marine my Father arrived at Nagasaki on September 26, 1945. It must have been an horrific site. I am very saddened to see that the Japanese People are once again being victimized by nuclear energy.
It is early in the morning here. Before I respond to your questions, I want to study and examine my information sources that have come in over the night. Then I can adequately respond to your questions. I will perform this task sometime later today and then get back to you. In the meantime, let me state that the Nuclear Power Industry in Japan currently constitutes a Crime Against Humanity as defined by Article 7 of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, to which Japan is a contracting party:
Article 7
Crimes against humanity
1. For the purpose of this Statute, "crime against humanity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:….
(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.
2. For the purpose of paragraph 1:
(a) "Attack directed against any civilian population" means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack; ….
You are free to publish this conclusion at this time in your newspaper if you wish. I will get back to you on the other questions later today after I have had the opportunity to study my information sources.
Yours very truly
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
###
Quotes collected by Ace Hoffman:
"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details." -- Paul Brians (author; quote is from: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction)
"When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." -- Sinclair Lewis (first American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 2.7.1885 - 1.10.1951)
"There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist." -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, 1992)
"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." -- Sun Tzu (Chinese general b.500 BC)
"The most intolerable reactor of all may be one which comes successfully to the end of its planned life having produced mountains of radioactive waste for which there is no disposal safe from earthquake damage or sabotage." -- A. Stanley Thompson (a pioneer nuclear physicist who later realized the whole situation)
"Any dose is an overdose." -- Dr. John W. Gofman (another pioneer nuclear physicist who saw the light (9.21.1918 - 8.15.2007))
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." -- Octavia Butler (science fiction writer, 7.22.1947 - 2.24.2006)
"If you want real welfare reform, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to reduce poverty, you focus on a good education, good healthcare, and a good job.
If you want a stable middle class, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to have citizens who can participate in democracy, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
And if you want to end the violence, you could build a million new prisons and you could fill them up, but you never end this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and the skill and the intellect and the character of our children. You focus on a good education, good health care and a good job.
And other than that, I don't feel strongly about anything."
-- Paul Wellstone (US Senator, D-Minnesota, 7.21.1944 - 10.25.2002)
"There are no warlike peoples - just warlike leaders." -- Ralph Bunche (8.7.1903 - 12.9.1971)
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Please send this to everyone you know!" -- Ace Hoffman (original collector of the above quotes, January, 2008)
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company
