Death becomes us- Fukushima world disaster
National news media has been hushed on reporting the world’s most critical event in modern history of mankind. The only sources for the Fukushima nuclear power plant, 125 miles north of Tokyo, which has been in a critical melt down since March 2011, is to scan foreign news, alternative news, and of course the compilation at You Tube and Google Alerts, all under the heading of Fukushima disaster 2013.
The Fukushima nuclear power plant with six reactors was constructed in 1971 using a GE design, now obsolete. The site of the nuclear plant was built on a fault line, also with an underground flow of water from mountains behind it. The Tsunami barrier in the Pacific Coast line was under height sized and allowed the tsunami, 100 feet high to sweep over the plant. This followed a magnitude plate-shifting earthquake listed on a magnitude scale of 9. However the earthquake scales had been reduced and the former scale would have listed this earthquake as a magnitude 10.
Four of the six reactors were destroyed.
To grasp the size of the reactor by the original GE design is a big soda bottle design 200 feet high with radioactive 4 tons of “rods” contained therein. Maintaining a stable control of the temperature was by fresh water flowing around and recycling through the reactor containment. Safety measures were incorporated, but never was the earthquake and subsequent tsunami envisioned to created such a disaster.
Details may be viewed from a college of engineering with a noted speaker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCvCMc-XTSI
The current horror this week, now spanning two years of frantic attempts to stem the tide of nuclear radiation spilling into the atmosphere, and the Pacific Ocean, is that the rods have burned through and fallen into the bottom of the soda bottle. These burning broken radioactive rods melted through the steel and concrete containment bottom and now through the base of the plant. This is believed to be mixing downward with the water table and sub soils. The superheated steam pushes up into the atmosphere brings with it radioactivity. Tritium, a heavy water isotope used in thermonuclear military devices may release its hydrogen molecule and cause further explosions with release of radioactive isotopes.
This is called a “China Syndrome, ” based on the movie.
The problem of the burning temperatures of the radioactive materials moving downward proposes several theories- all bad to worse-to extinction of all world life.
Scenario one, may be that the buildings still containing spent rods in the tonnage will collapse and fall into the “quicksand”-man made by flooding. This is not good as one engineer speculated if all goes well the clean up could take ten to forty years. Now that the China syndrome is a given, and if the buildings topple, modern engineering for this disaster may not be contained like Chernobyl some 25 years ago.
Chernobyl was a then Soviet (Russian) nuclear explosion and possible meltdown that killed 100,000 people, spread radiation over most of Europe and disrupted food consumption. Untold birth defects and cancers still proliferate.
Chernobyl was ultimately contained under a hugh dome of earth, boride and concrete with the expenditure of 1000 military Privates-all whom received a medal for valor. Interestingly enough this dome enclosure-or containment is degrading and a new dome must be built. However Russia does not have the money to do so and no European country offers any help.
The emissions of cesium and iodine radiation, plus plutonium and Strontium 90 will in the aigrette last for at least 100, 000 years.
Scenario two is trying to deal with the tons and tons of radioactive water building up in the containment area of the basement thought to be about 308,000 tons, and now rising above the concrete barrier dumping 300 tons a day into the sea. The radioactive cooling water constantly flooding in from pumps holding the spent and now active partial rods used in the heating of the water to make steam to turn the electric turbines for electric power are boiling dry. This leads to further burning of the rods for at least 4,000 years and release of isotopes that kill everything. As cesium is airborne from the burning rods so is Strontium 90 that just eats your bones away. Cancers proliferate and birth defects are proved to happen.
It appears that there is not enough water pumped in, and what is pumped in for cooling washes mostly into the seas as radioactive waste. This is of course just part of the flooding into the sea as the 1000 plus cooling tanks hastily constructed to hold contaminated water are leaking and flowing towards and into the sea.
At the time of this writing the Japanese government has pledged more money to solve the problem, one tactic is to create an ice wall between the sea and the melted cores. This ice wall, a known engineering process, is like a giant refrigerator process that must be sunk into the earth hundreds of feet deep, and as wide, to freeze the ground, hence an ice wall to stop the flow of the ground water underneath the reactors. This of course causes expansion of the soil particles allowing less stability and more likely less strength to maintain the structures from falling over. This process would take several decades to complete as well as taxing the people into poverty.
At present the radioactive farming soil in the devastated countryside where a 100,000 citizens were evacuated is an ongoing process of digging up the contaminated farm usage soil, although where it will be entombed is anyone’s guess.
The Japanese government would like to keep this quiet as the Olympics are coming up and who wants to go near radiation? Yet, in opposition to the clamoring of the citizens opposed to the nuclear industry the government for economic needs is reactivating reactors across Japan. One of particular interest is a “breeder” reactor that produces plutonium besides some commercial electricity. This reactor is built on an obvious protruding fault line. This reactor produces about 5 kilowatts of electricity-hardly enough to light our county. Plutonium is used in thermonuclear “bombs”.
At this time North Korea is re-starting its 1950’s designed, very obsolete breeder reactor also. The intent is solely to produce plutonium for weapons of mass destruction and one breeder reactor could make a few pounds each year sufficient for four or five bombs.
The unpublished scenarios for the future are total contamination of the Pacific Ocean and eventually the world’s oceans. Already Tuna and other shellfish are unfit to eat. Californians are already using geiger counters while shopping for produce in stores. Most likely there will be a mass exodus from California, Oregon and on up the coast eastward as this disaster continues over the decades ahead. Looking into the far future of millennia who, or what mutations, will be left to deal with this horror?
I weep for the young people. However given perhaps 30 years to USA total disaster I will be motivated to totally enclose my garden space in an acrylic greenhouse where on the radioactive alpha and beta particles may wash off and reduce contamination of my vegetables. My water is from underground and I would suspect safe, but ultimately this wonderland of Appalachia will become a desert, as will most of North America. The only place currently considered safe in the long run is Australia, and parts of south America- way south. A Geiger counter-dosimeter instrument of interest is for sale on Amazon.
My readings are from commentaries made public by the science community and I invite you to not discount the likelihood of this disaster affecting you or yours but to continue being informed.
Japan’s government has taken control of the situation but has yet to invite world experts to assist in solving the problem of millennia of constant lethal radiation spewing from the site. The former Prime Minister of Japan, now residing in Taiwan advocates the elimination of nuclear power. There was banter of using solar grids, but this is still insufficient, and as I recall when living in Japan it was always raining with little sunshine…
With best wishes,
God Bless.
Old Timer.
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