Nuclear Nightmare (and what to do about it .. )

Nuclear Nightmare

Posted by Mark Sircus on 18 March 2011 | Filed under World Affairs

The Japanese government today admitted that
it is overwhelmed by unfolding events.

If millions of Japanese wondering what they need to do to get out of harm’s way are confused, there is good reason for it. The Japanese government as well as the American one and health officials around the world are themselves confused about the potential dangers to the people of the greater metropolitan Tokyo area, which is practically in the shadow of the out-of-control nuclear power station. Imagine how they feel being so close. It’s a nuclear nightmare up there in northern Japan. Is there anyone who really wants to doubt that?
Top U.S. officials have testified before congress this week that the situation in Japan has reached catastrophic proportions on par with Chernobyl. Both the Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Gregory B. Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave dire testimony before the House Energy and Commerce committee. This is not the same story being told in Tokyo, at least not yet. But Japan’s nuclear agency spokesman conceded that a “Chernobyl solution” of burying the reactors in sand and concrete was in the back of the authorities’ minds. A day later it is moving to the very front of their minds.
American officials in Japan continue to operate on the assumption that the danger level is higher than described by the Japanese and in this essay we continue to assume the dangers are stratospherically higher than even the American officials are admitting. At this point both the primary and secondary containment vessels at the Fukushima nuclear reactor #4 are breached. To make matters worse, radiation readings taken by the U.S. indicate that the cooling pond is empty, indicating the fuel rods are in a state of complete meltdown with no cooling to counteract the meltdown in progress. These events spell out NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE and there will be many deaths in this bad dream.
The U.S. has issued a 50-mile evacuation zone around the plant and even that might be too conservative of a radius as things get further out of hand. This is in contrast to Japanese directives that people within about 12 miles evacuate while those between 12 and 19 miles stay indoors. Yet there are strong indications that fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation, suggesting they should really start considering evacuating Tokyo.
It is time to get people out and it’s time for us to stop using fluoride in our water and mercury in our vaccines and dental products but that’s the problem with us humans and our cherished institutions—we don’t recognize the real dangers until it’s too late and we come up with all kinds of excuses and rationalizations to do or not do something. The frenetic series of efforts to get water into four of the plant’s six reactors is not working.
American officials say they suspect that the Japanese power company has consistently underestimated the risk and moved too slowly to contain the damage. To expect the politicians, nuclear power energy officials and the company owners to communicate in an unbiased/untwisted way about nuclear events is to be a fool. All they see are safety signs in their minds and they cannot let anything get in the way of the future of nuclear power even though it’s proving out to be the stupidest, most insane thing modern man has ever done. We will now learn this lesson the hard way. Does anyone have any doubt about that either?
As each hour passes in Japan, the world comes closer to reading news of one of the largest nuclear stations in the world going out of control creating a permanent hot spot on our planet that will result in nightmares for ages to come. It is already happening and we are within a hair’s breadth of incalculable suffering and harm to human civilization. Yet the risks are not being disclosed for fear of panic. The days and weeks ahead are going to give us a shocking wake-up call about who we are and what we have done and allowed to be done to our lives. It is a good time for prayers and a good time for some self-reflection.

The United Nations is forecasting a possible radioactive
plume coming across the Pacific Ocean and arriving
in California today, according to the New York Times.

California is going to get dumped on by the jet stream from Japan with the fallout being the first whiffs from the first, most minor explosion at Fukushima. The radioactive fallout will contain uranium, cesium, tritium, strontium, and carbon 14 but not very much radioactive iodine. In our next essay entitled “No Danger, No Concern, No Sanity,” we will look more carefully at what to pay attention to regarding long-range, traveling nuclear fallout.
Iodine supplementation always makes perfect medical sense for an iodine-deficient population whether confronted with radioactive iodine or not. Dr. David Brownstein has tested 5,000 of his patients and has conferred with many of his colleagues who all sustain the reality that 95 percent of Americans are iodine deficient. Without sufficient iodine we are sitting ducks to toxicities of many kinds with radioactive iodine being only one. Fluoride in the drinking water is much more toxic to an iodine-deficient thyroid. They will not warn you about that and they will not give sufficient warning to what is happening in Japan and what lies ahead.
Soon it will be deadly +plutonium coming through. The fuel rods at all six reactors at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi complex contain plutonium. Only six percent of the fuel rods at the plant’s Unit 3 were a mixture of plutonium-239 and uranium-235 when first put into operation. The fuel in other reactors is only uranium, but even there, plutonium is created during the fission process. This means the fuel in all of the stricken reactors and spent fuel pools contain plutonium. Plutonium is super nasty stuff, especially damaging to lungs and kidneys. Inhaling or ingesting only one radioactive particle of plutonium can cause cancer.
There are 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools within the six-reactor plant, including one joint pool storing very old fuel from units 3 and 4. There are 877 tons in five of the reactor cores. That is a lot of radioactive material and Japan is actually a very small place.
The media run by the super elites are not going to tell people what is really going on. You think they are telling the truth about what is happening in the Gulf states? You think they are going to warn the kids going down for spring break to stay out of the water? You think they are going to tell everyone to go out and buy both eatingand external clay to help draw radioactive particles from the body? No they will not come out with any helpful informative information.
You would think they would give a heads up to the population about the usefulness of simple Arm & Hammer baking soda and how useful that can be to citizens worried about or actually suffering with radioactive contamination? Not a chance even though it’s been reported that you can clear soil of uranium with it, with sodium bicarbonate, the same stuff that you can stick in your refrigerator, brush your teeth and wash your hair with and even save a life in the emergency room.
The world is already paying a high price for nuclear energy. It is not clean and green and certainly not safe but you will never get them to admit that. If a company like Boeing can fall to the temptation of arrogance and shoddy planes, as 60 Minutes exposed, what do you think the nuclear power industry is all about?
So what aren’t they telling us? They are not telling us that the mixed oxide fuel rods used in the compromised number three reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi complex contain enough plutonium to threaten public health with the possibility of inhalation of airborne plutonium particles.
Plutonium is most dangerous when it is inhaled and gets into the lungs. The effect on the human body is to vastly increase the chance of developing fatal cancers. That is why in my protocol I call for use of glutathione sodium bicarbonate nebulization because it treats and helps clear the lung tissues. If one has anything above a zero chance of surviving the inhalation of airborne plutonium it’s going to be this kind of treatment as well as with the use of clay. Well actually increasing one’s chance from zero entails the use of a complete protocol for radiation exposure.
The damaged number three reactor was undergoing its first fuel cycle using MOX at Daiichi. If one of thoseMOX reactors blows, spewing plutonium dust across Japan and elsewhere, it is lights out via cancer for anyone who breathes the stuff. The half-life of various plutonium isotopes ranges from minutes to 80 million years. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years meaning it takes that long to lose half of its radioactive potency—nothing compared to depleted uranium, which counts its time in billions of years. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years. And cesium, which tends to go airborne easily, has a half-life of 30 years.

Wikileaks: Japan Was Warned About Fukushima

Wikileaks: Japan Was Warned About Fukushima


Posted on March 16, 2011

We are now at this stage in the life of our country and our world: WikiLeaks revealed that the Japanese Government was warned three years ago that earthquake preparedness at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant was dangerously insufficient.



Naturally, the leaders of the world are – or wish to start – prosecuting WikiLeaks, and not the Japanese Government.



The IAEA was saying in 2008 that Japan’s nuclear safety guidelines were dangerously out of date. A government whistleblower in that country was quoted in a cable to Washington the same year that a Japanese ministry was “covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry.”



And our government, in our name, continues both to seek ways to prosecute WikiLeaks, and to stick by the President’s ludicrous 2009 suggestion that we accelerate our national Nuclear Power program. The uncensored real oversight, and the truth about Japan’s irresponsibility, are both buried because the illusion of Japan as a successful safe nuclear nation is necessary to President Obama’s pitch, and President Obama’s pitch is necessary to some labyrinthine political calculation, and to the bottom lines of sundry international corporations.



We could say that the worsening news from Japan is coming by drips, except that the latest information from our own Nuclear Regulatory Commission suggests that there’s nothing to drip; that the water in the cooling system for Dai-Ichi Reactor 4 has evaporated and NHK broadcasts, late night our time, were filled with images of helicopters trying to douse the facility with seawater, as if it were a forest fire.



Most ominously are reports that read like the worst days of the dark, sick humor of the Bush Administration, when Americans were told to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect their homes from radiation (and memorably one poor soul in Connecticut put it up on the wrong side of his windows). Why, truly, do you think people around Fukushima are being told to stay in their homes and offices? Because going outside somehow significantly reduces the chances they will be exposed to radiation? Because they’re safer indoors in the event the worst-case scenario develops and the thing spews out a kind of nuclear holocaust? Or is it because it’ll be easier to keep track of the victims of a best-case scenario if they stay where they are and don’t try to flee the area, and thus no effort will be required to see where they go and if they have taken radiation with them?



And the saddest story of them all: Gregory Jaczko, the head of our NRA stating this, bluntly, matter-of-factly, and even blandly:

We believe that around the reactor site there are high levels of radiation. It would be very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time. This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives. It’s very difficult for me to contemplate that, but it may have reached that point.

As you think of Japan, and you think of the aging nuclear plants in this country, and their nearness to our major metropolitan areas, remember that there are 180 human beings – our brothers and sisters – working around this Doomsday Machine that their government was warned about at least three years ago, about which it did nothing!

180 men and women, the same as any Americans, and very possibly the forerunners of any Americans, who are facing this reality: “This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives.”

The experts are dead wrong on potassium iodide for radiation

The experts are dead wrong on potassium iodide for radiation


With the tragedy in Japan raising fears of radioactive contamination, there’s been a massive run on potassium iodide. The experts are telling everyone that this combination will protect them from nuclear fallout. They’re wrong!
Potassium iodide is a good product. The potassium is supposed to protect you from the radioactive cesium. And the iodide protects against radioactive iodine. However, there are a couple problems with it.


First, there’s not nearly enough potassium in this combination to protect you against the radioactive cesium. In the body, cesium acts like potassium. So having enough potassium in your body is supposed to prevent your body from absorbing the cesium. But most people are so deficient in potassium, that the small amount in potassium iodide won’t protect you. You need to take a separate potassium supplement to protect yourself.



Second, you have to protect a lot more than your thyroid from radiation. Yes, the iodide in potassium iodide will protect your thyroid. However, it won’t be as efficient at protecting your breasts and other organs. Here’s why:

Iodide is a form of iodine. Iodine is essential for your thyroid and several other tissues and organs. Your thyroid needs it most. So, your body has a heavy concentration there. If you’re deficient, as most Americans are, your thyroid will pick up any iodine your body ingests. This includes radioactive iodine, which can poison your thyroid.

On the other hand, if your thyroid is sufficient (full) of iodine, it will ignore any other iodine passing by — including radioactive iodine. Iodide and iodine serve slightly different roles in your body. They each protect different organs in different ways. So in the event of nuclear fallout, it’s vital you protect your body with both nutrients. Potassium iodide doesn’t provide iodine.

There are two products that provide ample amounts of both iodide and iodine. I’ve written a lot about Iodoral in past issues (available on my website). I think most people should take one capsule daily, just for general nutritional purposes. I do. After a few weeks, your thyroid should be sufficient in iodine and iodide, making your organs more resistant to radioactive iodine.

A good alternative is Lugol’s solution, which is the liquid form of Iodoral. Two drops of this iodine/iodide product is equivalent to one Iodoral. If you know there’s a significant risk of radioactive iodine exposure, you can double or triple the dose in the short run. Regardless of whether radiation from Japan’s nuclear facilities comes this way or not, these are great products to take on a regular basis. Both are readily available on the Internet.

Finally, potassium iodide can’t protect you against the radioactive heavy metals. Normally, chelation is the ideal way to deal with heavy metals. But there’s a problem. Uranium atoms may be too large for conventional chelators to grab. So I recommend a totally natural supplement from decaying organic matter instead. It’s my favorite for super heavy metals. This includes uranium, which is the heaviest naturally occurring metal. The product is Metal Magnet, which contains humic/fulvic acids. These are complex large organic molecules containing lots of carboxylic acid chemical groups. These attract metals like a giant catcher’s mitt. All metals will fit in. And it is especially good at capturing toxic metals (see Second Opinion from June and July 2006). You can find Metal Magnet on the Internet.

Strontium 90, a radioactive mineral, is a more difficult issue. It is chemically similar to calcium and can wind up in your bones. Since EDTA can chelate calcium, it would make sense that it would also grab strontium. And studies suggest it does. For strontium 90, consider both oral and rectal EDTA, which may offer limited protection. If you are exposed to radiation, I’d go directly to intravenous EDTA under the care of a trained chelation doctor.

I also recommend taking Chlorella regularly (take 15 tablets daily). It is an excellent metal detoxifier and all around superfood.

When Chernobyl melted down, researchers found that brown seaweed greatly reduced radiation poisoning. There are two products that offer brown seaweed, also known as alginate. The first is Modifilan (available on the Internet). The other is Pectasol Chelation Complex. Both products are rich in alginates.

Another fantastic product I’ve used for years is Advanced Detox Formula. I use this formulation to help cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. The formula greatly reduces the amount of radiation your body absorbs. It also protects you with its sulfur-bearing detoxification nutrients, which also help regenerate glutathione. Be sure to take it along with supplemental vitamin C (2-8 grams daily) and vitamin E (1,200 IU daily) when exposed to radiation. My favorite vitamin E is Unique E, Carlson’s E, and Delta-Fraction Tocotrienols (take one softgel, twice a day). You can order King Chlorella, Pectasol Chelation Complex, Advanced Detox Formula, and Delta-Fraction Tocotrienols from Advanced Bionutritionals.
Finally, there are certain foods that can protect you. Start by eating as many Living Foods as possible. Remember, plant chemicals protect plants from solar radiation. They can help protect you as well.
For general radiation exposure, whether nuclear, or even medical gamma ray exposure, you might be surprised to know that miso can protect you. I read years ago of a hospital right under ground zero in Japan, which survived the bombing. (Directly under the explosion, it was spared the destruction of the blast, which went out more than down.) The doctor walked out of the hospital, saw the total destruction, walked back in and told everyone to eat miso. Those who did were spared radiation sickness. Many studies have confirmed the protective effects of fermented soy!

With nuclear radiation, potassium iodide can help. But, as you can see, it’s not nearly enough.


Yours for better health and medical freedom,

Robert J. Rowen, MD

Ref: Hiroshima J Med Sci., 2001 Dec;50(4):83-6; Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, volume 18, number 4, 612-616, DOI: 10.1007/BF01055029.



EBOOK on Radiation detox

http://meditationexpert.com/RadiationDetoxDraft.pdf


Here's How to Help Support the Body's Healing After Intense Radioactive Contamination or Radiation Exposure ... The book ain't pretty, but the Radiation Detox Info is FREE

LIES, MORE LIES and more fucking LIES, so some FACTS

MWM: So far the media-ocracy and politic-ocracy is feeding a lot of crappy information which uses ignorant boogle-heads like Obamma and newscasters to pooh pooh the concerns about the radiation leaks, while Tokyo Electric Inscrutible Stiff Upper Lip avoids telling us anything about how desparate they are with the total devastation into which their nuclear reactor plant has fallen. They continue to talk about how pumps and electricity will get the situation under control but anybody who looks at the pix in detail can readily see that some of the reactors are a tangled mangled colllapsed mess which isn't going to hold much water, not even for Jesus, meanwhile thousands of fuel rods are burning into melted pools somewhere deep and only the debbil knows if and when they can merge to some kind of queer criticality for exploding vociferously. JAPAN IS TOTALLY FUBARED. HERE IN THIS PACKET IS SOME IMPORTANT REAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE DANGER OF EVEN DILUTED DUST PLUMES. Remember, if you can, we have had desert storms from Mongolia get picked up into the Jet Stream and delivered over Arizona to render magnificant red sunsets as the dust diffracted the the rays of the Sun. Anybody who tells you there is only a minimal threat from Japan simply is ignorantly blowing farts out of his face. The truth is we don't know but this is so big and the stakes are so immense - your health and life - you really shouldn't play Russian Roulette here.

From: Naia One Heart
Subject: Fwd: Plume hits West Coast Friday - Risk Assessment
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 02:04:46 -0700

Here's another. Lots of info on radiation, and as you see, plume hits west coast now, though it looks the really nasty stuff will take a bit longer.

Begin forwarded message:

Date: March 17, 2011 11:44:53 PM MST
Subject: Plume hits West Coast Friday - Risk Assessment

PLUME FORECAST:

The United Nations Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization provided a projection of the plume's path to member states, but on Wednesday it refused to release it news organizations. Fortunately, the New York Times obtained a copy from another source and published it the same day. It shows the first fallout reaching the West Coast early Friday morning:

[]

[]

See an animation of the forecast here:
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/science/plume-graphic.html?ref=science>http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/science/plume-graphic.html?ref=science

More info here:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/science/17plume.html>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/science/17plume.html

Here's a comment on the issue from the CTBT:
<http://newsroom.ctbto.org/>http://newsroom.ctbto.org/

TRACK THE PLUME (almost) LIVE:
<http://www.zamg.ac.at/pict/aktuell/20110315_fuku_Cs-137-glob_12.gif>http://www.zamg.ac.at/pict/aktuell/20110315_fuku_Cs-137-glob_12.gif

Article on CA monitoring:
<http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-local-radiation-monitors,0,2685193.story>http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-local-radiation-monitors,0,2685193.story

RISK ASSESSMENT:

Watch out - you are being misled! All of the reporting on the risk to public health that I've seen is focused on radiation levels, and how low they are, and how the radiation levels are way too low to pose a danger to public health. THIS IS IRRELEVANT! Direct levels of radiation are going to be extremely low, as they are from all fallout, regardless of source, when measured many miles from the source. This is due to the effects of dilution caused by the dispersion of the cloud. BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT!!! The danger to public health from fallout is not direct radiation, it's from the absorption into the body of radioactive particles - the radioactive dust itself. The media is choosing to focus on something that is not a concern - levels of direct radiation, and neglecting to mention that all people in the path of the fallout will be inhaling and otherwise absorbing microscopic radioactive dust particles, that will lodge in the body. Some of those particles, especially plutonium, cesium, iodine and strontium, WILL CAUSE SIGNIFICANT NEGATIVE HEALTH EFFECTS. In years to come, THEY WILL CAUSE CANCER IN A LOT OF PEOPLE.

Sure, you won't feel a thing and you won't keel over dead when the plume blows overhead, but you will be inhaling particles that will significantly increase your risk of cancer. And later you will be eating contaminated food and drinking contaminated drinks that will significantly increase your dose.

Consider the difference between sitting in front of a fire, and feeling the heat on your face: that's direct radiation. Then imagine you're downwind of the fire, and you inhale the smoke. That's fallout. Now most smoke particles from a fire will be cool by the time you inhale them, but in the case of radioactive dust clouds, some of those particles will remain radioactive for months, years, or for your entire lifetime (and way beyond, in the case of plutonium).

A rule of thumb is, if the authorities report a "minor" "insignificant" rise in radiation levels in your area (as they have already in Alaska), you know you are breathing in dangerous radioactive dust particles.

Here is an excellent and very thorough report on the effects of Chernobyl:
<http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1239_web.pdf>http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1239_web.pdf

And some more info:
<http://www.ratical.com/radiation/Chernobyl/Chernobyl@10p2.html>http://www.ratical.com/radiation/Chernobyl/Chernobyl@10p2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_compared_to_other_radioactivity_releases
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects

Of high concern, especially to children, is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131>iodine-131. It is a major component of uranium fission, and it has been detected in the plumes from Fukushima. It remains dangerous for about 80 days - enough for the fallout to carry it to all parts of the northern hemisphere. It can be inhaled, or consumed for example in milk products from cows whose feed is contaminated by fallout. Once absorbed by the body, it will migrate to the thyroid gland where it will eventually cause cancer in many cases. As mentioned in my first email, thyroid cancer rates in children living in Connecticut doubled a few years after Chernobyl. Japan is about half the distance by Westerly winds to Connecticut than the Ukraine is, plus there will eventually be probably between 10 and 200 times more radioactive emissions from Fukushima than from Chernobyl.

There is a way to protect the thyroid from radioactive iodine by saturating the gland with NON radioactive iodine before the plume hits your area. The two most effective substances to do this are Potassium Iodide and Potassium Iodate. They do the same thing, but the required dosage is different (adult dose 170 mg/day of iodate vs 130 mg/day for the iodide). Iodate is a little less toxic.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_iodide>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_iodide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_iodate

Those dosages are full blocking doses: something that will saturate your thyroid with iodine, preventing it from absorbing any more, which would be good if you are exposed to I-131. However, you can't take that much iodine per day for very long before you will suffer significant negative health effects from the iodine itself. Perhaps it would be better to take half or lesser doses - but will that provide any protection? I wish I knew but I don't.

Be aware that the blocking doses given for potasssium iodide and iodate deliver (I THINK) 100 mg of elemental iodine per day. THAT IS A LOT OF FREAKING IODINE!! The US RDA for iodine is 150 mcg (millionths of a gram). Some people take up to 20 times that, or 3 mg per day, with no ill effects. But doses of as little as 4.5 mg/day or more will produce negative side effects in most people if taken on an ongoing basis. These include: mouth sores, metallic taste, swollen salivary glands, diarrhea, vomiting, headache, rash, hypothyroidism and breathing difficulties.

Note that while there are serious side effects to saturating your thyroid with iodine, they may be less bad for you than absorbing iodine-131. Nonetheless you should inform yourself. It is not safe to take a full blocking dose for more than a few days, and unfortunately we probably will be exposed to low levels of fallout for many weeks to come:
<http://preparedness.com/potioddosgui.html>http://preparedness.com/potioddosgui.html
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp
<http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/EmergencyPreparedness/BioterrorismandDrugPreparedness/ucm072265.htm>http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/EmergencyPreparedness/BioterrorismandDrugPreparedness/ucm072265.htm
http://www.campingsurvival.com/nucprot.html
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42135438/ns/health-health_care/>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42135438/ns/health-health_care/ (Good to read for it's cautionary info but I don't agree that there is no need to take thyroid blockers. I do very much agree that taking too soon or too much or for too long may be counterproductive or even dangerous. Use your own judgement.)

One side effect of taking a lot of iodine is that the thyroid will produce less thyroid hormone ("hypothyroidism"), and so if you are taking a "thyroid blocking" dose of iodine (or even a lesser dose) for more than a few days, you should have your thyroid hormone levels checked. Since I have hypothyroidism and have to take thyroid medication, I can tell you that the cheapest way to get a level check is to order the test yourself online. I recommend this one:
<http://www.healthcheckusa.com/lab_tests/Thyroid_Screenings/STTM_Basic_Thyroid_Function>http://www.healthcheckusa.com/lab_tests/Thyroid_Screenings/STTM_Basic_Thyroid_Function

Before you order the test, check that there's a lab near you where you can get the blood drawn:
<http://www.healthcheckusa.com/locations.asp>http://www.healthcheckusa.com/locations.asp
healthcheckusa uses LabCorp, which has blood draw locations all over the place. So if the above link doesn't reveal a nearby lab, check the LabCorp site: <http://www.healthcheckusa.com/locations.asp>http://www.healthcheckusa.com/locations.asp Then call healthcheckusa to confirm that that lab location will okay. You'll get the results by email usually the next day. Contact your doctor for help in interpreting the results, or you can contact me if you wish.

If you can't get hold of either potassium iodide or iodate, any nontoxic form of iodine supplement may help, but the problem is getting the right dose. Most supplements have too little to help (you have to saturate the gland before being exposed to I-131 in order to be protected).

Thyroid Cancer Effects in Children:
<http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/features/chernobyl-15/thyroid.shtml>http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/features/chernobyl-15/thyroid.shtml

Another isotope of great concern is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesium_137>cesium-137, also detected in the Fukushima plumes. The body can't distinguish cesium from potassium, so it's taken up by our cells and becomes an internal source of radiation. Cesium-137 is a gamma emitter and its half-life of 30 years means that it stays in the soil, to concentrate in the food chain, for over 300 years. While iodine-131 remains radioactive for six weeks, cesium-137 stays in the body for decades, concentrating in muscle where it irradiates muscle cells and nearby organs.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium-90>Strontium-90 is also long-lived and, because it resembles calcium, is permanently incorporated into bone tissue where it can cause leukemia.

Plutonium will lodge in the lungs where it will remain radioactive for several tens of thousands of years. It will cause lung cancer in many people.

<http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2011/03/15/fears_of_health_risks_rise_amid_japan_crisis/?page=full>http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2011/03/15/fears_of_health_risks_rise_amid_japan_crisis/?page=full

Fears about health risks rose dramatically in Japan Tuesday with news of a greater radiation release and renewed warnings to remaining residents within 20 miles to stay indoors.

By Marilynn Marchione
AP Medical Writer / March 15, 2011

Japanese officials said that more radiation was released at a nuclear plant disastrously damaged by last week's tsunami. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation had spread from four reactors.

"The level seems very high, and there is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out," he said.

Thyroid cancer is the most immediate risk, and the Japanese government made plans to distribute potassium iodide pills to prevent it. Worse case scenarios -- lots of radioactive fallout -- can lead to other cancers years later.

Even a meltdown would not necessarily mean medical doom, experts said. It depends on the amount and type of radioactive materials.

Donald Olander, professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, said even the much higher levels of radiation are "not a health hazard."

The world has seen two big nuclear reactor scares -- in 1986 at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine, and in 1979 at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

At Three Mile Island, even though a quarter of the reactor core melted, the steel containment structure held. The radiation released was so minuscule that it did not threaten health - the equivalent of a chest X-ray to local folks.

At Chernobyl, where there was no containment vessel, far more radioactive material was released, and of a more dangerous type than at Three Mile Island. It stayed in soil and got into plants in the Ukraine, contaminating milk and meat for decades. Thousands of children developed thyroid cancer from radiation exposure, and scientists are still working to document other possible health problems.

The lessons have not been lost on the Japanese as they grapple with the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, whose cooling systems failed after a power outage from the massive earthquake last week.

They have evacuated 180,000 people from areas near the troubled reactors, where relatively minimal fallout was mostly confined at first. They've told people still in the area to wear masks, which can keep radioactive particles from being inhaled.

Most importantly, they have stockpiled and are making plans to give out potassium iodide -- pills that can keep radioactive iodine from being taken up by the thyroid gland and causing cancer.

"Those are all preventable cancers" if the protective pills are taken right after exposure, said University of New Mexico radiologist Dr. Fred Mettler. He led an international group that studied health effects of the Chernobyl disaster and is a U.S. representative to the United Nations on radiation safety.

At Chernobyl "they had millions of square kilometers to cover and it was all rural areas and they didn't really have anything stockpiled," he said.

The Russian reactor also lacked a containment vessel like those in Japan and the United States to prevent or minimize release of the more dangerous types of radioactive materials, Mettler said.

"Right now it's worse than Three Mile Island," Olander said, but isn't near the Chernobyl situation. Some radioactive iodine was released before the latest crisis Tuesday. Iodine is relatively short-lived, and potassium iodide pills can be used to block its uptake.

Of greater concern is the release of cesium, which officials had said was released in small amounts earlier. Cesium is absorbed throughout the body -- not just by the thyroid -- and stays in organs, tissue and the environment much longer, Mettler explained.

Cesium particles are relatively large and heavy, so they would not likely travel far in a plume. Much of it would drop near the reactor site, and officials hope, may be carried by winds east over the Pacific Ocean where it would fall harmlessly, Mettler said.

Any release of cesium is a concern environmentally and for health, said Jacqueline Williams, a radiation biologist and safety expert at the University of Rochester Medical Center in upstate New York.

"Prior to Chernobyl, we believed that the cesium would be diluted out, that once the cloud went through and it rained, the cesium would be washed out. What we found out was there was an accumulation of cesium in certain types of vegetation, and it accumulated rather than diluted," she said.

Animals fed on the vegetation and became contaminated, and meat and milk were affected.

"You can't be quite so blase about the fallout," Williams said.

At Three Mile Island, however, "the public health risk was close to zero because the radiation was contained within the site itself," Williams said.

Mettler agreed. The research he led in Russia documented 6,000 to 7,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer in people who were children and teens when Chernobyl occurred, "and there are questionable increases of leukemia in the cleanup workers but it's not certain."

And were there long-lasting problems from Three Mile Island?

"Not that most of the scientific community believes," Mettler said.

------

Online:

EPA: <http://1.usa.gov/gt46aP>http://1.usa.gov/gt46aP

NRC: <http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/rad-health-effects.html>http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/rad-health-effects.html

Three Mile Island: <http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html>http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Health_effects_of_the_Chernobyl_accident

Health effects of the Chernobyl accident

Published: July 24, 2008, 9:04 pm
Edited: July 24, 2008, 9:04 pm
Lead Author:
Content Source: <http://www.eoearth.org/contributor/Biomed.central>Biomed.central
This article has been reviewed by the following Topic Editor: <http://www.eoearth.org/profile/Emily.monosson>Emily Monosson

Introduction

April 26, 2006, was the 20th anniversary of the <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chernobyl,_Ukraine>Chernobyl accident, the second major single exposure to radiation of a substantial population. The accident produced a significant <http://www.eoearth.org/article/International_response_to_the_Chernobyl_accident>international response whose effectiveness is the subject of debate. It is relevant to the current view of the consequences of Chernobyl to reflect on the understanding in 1965 of the health consequences of the first major event, radiation from the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. The only significant consequences observed in survivors 20 years after the atomic bombs were increases in leukemia and thyroid cancer, and the general view of the future was reassuring. In 1974, a significant increase in solid cancers was detected, and nearly 50 years after the event, an unexpected increase was found in non-cancer diseases. Today, leukemia and thyroid cancer form only a small fraction of the accepted total radiation-related health detriment.

In 1990, four years after the Chernobyl accident, an increase in thyroid cancer was found in children exposed to fallout from the accident. Two years later, the first reports in the Western literature of an increase in childhood thyroid cancer (CTC) in Belarus were published. In 2000, about 2,000 cases of thyroid cancer had been reported in those exposed as children in the former Soviet Socialist Union, and in 2005, the number was estimated at 4,000; the latest estimate for the year 2056 ranges from 3,400 to 72,000. The effects are not limited by national borders; Poland has recorded cases in spite of a rapid precautionary distribution of stable <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Iodine>iodine. The causative agent,131I, was detected in many European countries with as yet unknown effects. Interestingly, a significant increase in leukemia has not been reliably reported in the three most affected countries.

This dramatic contrast between the two incidents is in part due to the different types of radiation exposure, but both show that the effects of massive exposures to radiation are immensely complex. In comparing the health effects after <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chernobyl,_Ukraine>Chernobyl with those after the atomic bombs, it must be remembered that apart from workers in or close to the <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Nuclear_power_reactor>power plant, the Chernobyl accident involved mainly exposure to radioactive isotopes, and the atomic bombs primarily involved direct exposure to gamma rays and neutrons. Because of the prominence given to thyroid carcinoma after Chernobyl, less attention has been given to whole-body exposure from the ingestion and inhalation of all isotopes, together with the shine from the radioactive cloud and deposited radioactivity. Consideration of the health effects of Chernobyl must take into account both tissue-specific doses due to <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Isotope>isotope concentration and whole-body <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Dose>doses.

The most prominent tissue-specific dose is that to the thyroid, largely from 131I, with a smaller contribution from short-lived isotopes of <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Iodine>iodine. For many in the 30-km zone (135,000), there were relatively high <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Absorption_of_toxicants>absorbed doses to other <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Organ_systems_and_organs>organs as well as the thyroid until evacuation, and for those living in the contaminated areas around the 30-km zone (5 million), relatively high dose rate exposure (days to weeks) was followed by prolonged (years) exposure to a low dose rate. This exposure was a complex mixture of external radiation and internal emitters. For others living farther from the accident, in Western Europe, for example, their average exposure was equivalent to an additional ≤ 50% of average annual natural background level of radiation. About 600,000 liquidators assisted with the cleanup. Those working at the site shortly after the accident (200,000) received substantial doses. For all of these groups, estimates of numbers of fatal cancers can be derived from the collective doses. However, such estimates depend on the assumed risk coefficient, but of the order of 60,000 such fatalities in total can be estimated, based on the collective dose estimated by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), less than half of which would derive from the declared contaminated areas. A more recent estimate of the numbers of fatal cancers based on a collective dose of less than half the UNSCEAR estimate gives a central value of 16,000 (95% confidence interval, 7,000–38,000).

Firmly established health consequences

Thyroid carcinoma

By far, the most prominent health consequence of the accident is the increase in thyroid cancer among those exposed as children. The medical authorities in Belarus and Ukraine were aware in 1990 that the incidence of the rare (typically about 1/106children/year) CTC was increasing, particularly in children living close to the <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Nuclear_power_reactor>reactor. Initially, various non-<http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chernobyl,_Ukraine>Chernobyl-related causes were suggested for the increase in thyroid carcinoma. In terms of radiation dose, the most likely culprit was 131I, a copious product of nuclear fission with an 8.1-day half-life. 131I is rapidly taken up by the thyroid but was widely regarded as carrying little risk of thyroid neoplasia. Swedish <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Epidemiology>epidemiologic studies of the widespread use of 131I in diagnosis and treatment of thyroid disease found no significant risk of thyroid cancer. Other <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Isotope>isotopes of <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Iodine>iodine and <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Tellurium>tellurium-132 were also released in very large amounts, but because of their much shorter half-lives, their most significant contribution to the thyroid <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Dose>dose occurred only in those living near the reactor.

The first reports of the increase in Belarus were received with skepticism by the scientific community, but the risks were shown to be real. Analysis of thyroid carcinogenesis after X-ray exposure also showed clearly that the younger the subject at exposure, the higher the risk. The almost complete lack of children in the Swedish studies thus accounted for the apparent lack of a carcinogenic risk from 131I. It has since become increasingly clear that 131I is as carcinogenic in children as X rays. The child’s thyroid is one of the most sensitive human tissues to cancer induction by radiation. Because iodine is a volatile element, its release from fractured fuel rods is inevitable.

Much has been made of the fact that differentiated thyroid cancer is an eminently curable disease. Only a very small number of deaths from <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chernobyl,_Ukraine>Chernobyl-related thyroid carcinoma have occurred so far. However, the preferred treatment regime, total thyroidectomy followed by 131I treatment to destroy metastases, is not always fully effective. Death from papillary carcinoma of the thyroid is rare, usually of the order of 5–10%. Because of the slow growth of the tumor, it is premature to assume that the even lower death rate for current Chernobyl-related cases will be maintained, particularly for cases yet to occur. An older age at onset can be associated with a less favorable prognosis. Currently, those exposed as small children are now adolescents or young adults but continue to carry an increased risk of developing thyroid carcinoma. The incidence of thyroid cancer in those who were adults at the time of exposure is reported to have increased in the many exposed populations, although the relationship to radiation is not clear. Screening has become more sophisticated, and increased ascertainment may be a major factor. The concentration of effort on the major increase in those exposed as children has meant that the possible much smaller risk to adults has not been adequately investigated.

Acute radiation sickness

A small group of liquidators and plant workers received very high whole-body <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Dose>doses. Among these, about 150 individuals were treated for acute radiation sickness; 28 of these died within a relatively short time. Approximately 20 more have since died from probable radiation-related diseases.

Psychological consequences

Psychological effects are of considerable importance. They arise from an understandable fear of exposure to an unknown amount of an intangible but potentially dangerous agent, fear for exposed children, mistrust of reassurances from the authorities, and for hundreds of thousands of people, the consequences of forced evacuation from home and land. For some, the stress from these experiences has precipitated psychological illness; for others, an increased consumption of alcohol and cigarettes; and for still others, dietary changes to avoid perceived contamination. Some deaths from suicide, cirrhosis, or lung cancer could be regarded as indirect consequences of the accident and the subsequent measures taken. Whatever the view the nuclear industry may have about the irrationality of these consequences, they are real and have an important impact on public health, and so deserve greater attention.

Genetic consequences

Another consequence, not as firmly established as thyroid cancer, is mini-satellite instability (MSI) in children born to exposed fathers after <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chernobyl,_Ukraine>Chernobyl. MSI is not a classical genetic effect, and its implications for health are far from clear. A similar effect has been seen in the children and grandchildren of men exposed to weapons testing in Semipalatinsk and a parallel phenomenon, tandem repeat instability, occurs in laboratory mice. MSI has not been observed in the survivors of the atomic bombings in studies of Chernobyl cleanup workers or in radiotherapy patients. MSI is considerably more frequent in relation to radiation <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Dose>dose than classical genetic effects and apparently does not become diluted in subsequent generations. Although its clinical significance is uncertain it is of some concern, certainly more than the Chernobyl Forum gave it credit for.

These issues are particularly relevant in view of developments in radiobiological research over the past 15 years. The apparently simple relationship between radiation dose and its effects are being reappraised. In the early 1990s, two previously unacknowledged effects of radiation were reported, genomic instability and the bystander effect. These effects are not accommodated by the current theoretical framework. Also in 1986, the risk per unit dose accrued from Chernobyl would have been assumed to be half that estimated from the atomic bombs in Japan. A recent detailed analysis of the Japanese experience suggested that the risk for those exposed to the lower doses could even be supralinear. Furthermore, the accuracy of the standard models for inferring doses from internal exposure have been questioned by the U.K. Committee Examining Radiation Risk of Internal Emitters. There is, therefore, considerable uncertainty in translating collective dose to health detriment and fatalities.

Unanswered issues

Birth defects

There have been many claims of an increased incidence of congenital anomalies in children born shortly after the accident. Some cases reported in the press show abnormalities similar to those following the use of thalidomide in pregnancy, and thalidomide was apparently available in the Soviet Union. It is not possible to separate <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chernobyl,_Ukraine>Chernobyl-related abnormalities from those due to other causes or from the effects of increased ascertainment. Although a slight increase in minor conditions has been observed, there does not appear to have been a major increase in serious conditions such as limb deformities.

Leukemia

Intensive efforts have been made to detect an increase in leukemia, which is strongly associated with radiation. No statistically significant increases of those forms associated with radiation have been reported, but increases in chronic lymphatic leukemia, a no-radiation-related disease of older age, may testify to increased case ascertainment. However, the level of increase expected, given the received <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Dose>doses, anticipated risk factor, and the rarity of the condition, would only be detected by large analytical­as opposed to <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Ecology>ecological­<http://www.eoearth.org/article/Epidemiology>epidemiology studies.

In the future

Experience from Japan shows that many effects of whole-body radiation exposure may not be apparent for decades. While the short initial latent period associated with the thyroid carcinoma after <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chernobyl,_Ukraine>Chernobyl, together with the very large amounts of radioactive isotopes of <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Iodine>iodine released, have led to a huge effort to reconstruct thyroid doses, much less attention has been paid to whole-body <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Dose>doses. Measurements of the initial exposure phase for those in the 30-km zone, while confused, point to <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Absorption_of_toxicants>absorbed doses to the whole body of many individuals that were > 1 <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Gray>Gray (Gy), with average doses to some 25,000 Belarusian evacuees of a substantial fraction of a Gray. Doses received by infants evacuated from the 30-km zone are estimated to be in the range of 0.03–2 <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Sievert>sieverts (Sv), well within the range that led to a significant rise in cancer incidence after the atomic bombs. As well as the thyroid, other <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Organ_systems_and_organs>organs show some concentration of iodine. One particularly important tissue is breast epithelium, which can concentrate iodine and receive radiation from <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Isotope>isotopes in the lung or thyroid. Some particular groups at exposure may show an excess incidence of breast cancer now or in the future. A significant rise in incidence of a range of malignancies in the population exposed to high levels of fallout, particularly those exposed as children, is clearly possible. All too often the phrase “no increase has been observed†conceals the lack of an adequate study.

The full complexity of the exposure regime has not been adequately explored, and the estimation of whole-body and many tissue-specific <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Dose>doses is imprecise or unknown. The radiation <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Dose>dose received from the atomic bombs was still being revised 50 years after the event. Taking into account the results of new research and the CERRIE report, it is very difficult to derive with any confidence the likely levels of health detriment from the estimated dose levels. It is also too soon to make an accurate assessment of longer-term effects from those already observed.

In the light of this level of uncertainty, the case is compelling for international research surveillance of the millions of people exposed to fallout from <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chernobyl,_Ukraine>Chernobyl and selective follow-up of those exposed to high levels similar to that following the atomic bombings in Japan.

Editor's Note

This article is derived largely from Keith Baverstock and Dillwyn Williams, <http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/9113/9113.html>The Chernobyl Accident 20 Years On: An Assessment of the Health Consequences and the International Response, Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(9):1312:1317 (September 2006) doi:10.1289/ehp.9113. Topic editors and authors for the Encyclopedia of Earth have edited its content or added new information. That article is used here under the terms of its <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>Creative Commons Attribution License. The use of information from the original article should not be construed as support for or endorsement by its author for any new information added by EoE personnel, or for any editing of the original content.

Further Reading

* Baverstock, K., Egloff, B., Pinchera, A., Ruchti, C. and Williams, D., 1992. Thyroid cancer after Chernobyl. Nature, 359(6390):21–22.
* Cardis, E., Krewski, D., Boniol, M., Drozdovitch, V., Darby, S.C., Gilbert, E.S., et al., 2006. Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident. International Journal of Cancer, 119(6):1224–1235. doi 10.1002/ijc.22037.
* CERRIE, 2004. <http://www.cerrie.org/report/>Report of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters. London: National Radiological Protection Board.
* IAEA, 1991. <http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub885e_web.pdf>International Chernobyl Project: Technical Report: Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures. Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency.
* IAEA, 1996. <http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1001_web.pdf>One Decade after Chernobyl: Summing up the Consequences of the Accident. Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency.
* UN, 2002. <http://www.undp.org/dpa/publications/chernobyl.pdf>The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident: A Strategy for Recovery. New York: United Nations.
* UNSCEAR. 1988. <http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/1988/1988i_unscear.pdf>Annex D: Exposures from the Chernobyl accident. In: <http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/1988.html>Sources and Effects of Ionising Radiation; United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation 1988 Report to the General Assembly, with Annexes. New York: United Nations.
* UNSCEAR, 2000. <http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/annexj.pdf>Annex J: Exposures and effects of the Chernobyl accident. In: <http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2000_2.html>Sources and Effects of Ionising Radiation; United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation 2000 Report to the General Assembly, with Scientific Annexes, Volume II: Effects. New York: United Nations, 451–566.
* Westermann, A., van den Brink, W., et al., 1997. <http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1469920&blobtype=pdf>Health effects of the Chernobyl disaster: illness or illness behavior? A comparative general health survey in two former Soviet regions. Environmental Health Perspectives, 105(6):1533–1537.>
* WHO, 1995. Health Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident. Results of the IPHECA Pilot Projects and Related National Programmes. Summary Report. Geneva: World Health Organization. <http://www.amazon.com/dp/9241561815/?tag=encycofearth-20>ISBN: 9241561815
* WHO, 2005a. <http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/a_e/chernobyl/-EGH%20Master%20file%202005.08.24.pdf>Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes.
* WHO, 2005b. <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html>Chernobyl: The True Scale of the Accident; 20 Years Later a UN Report Provides Definitive Answers and Ways to Repair Lives [Press Release].


Citation

Biomed.central (Content Source);<http://www.eoearth.org/profile/Emily.monosson>Emily Monosson (Topic Editor) "Health effects of the Chernobyl accident". In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth July 24, 2008; Last revised Date July 24, 2008; Retrieved March 17, 2011 <<http://www.eoearth.org/article/Health_effects_of_the_Chernobyl_accident>http://www.eoearth.org/article/Health_effects_of_the_Chernobyl_accident>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout

Status of the Nuclear Reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant:

<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/world/asia/reactors-status.html?ref=asia>http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/world/asia/reactors-status.html?ref=asia

~ CHERNOBYL ON STEROIDS ~

EMERGENCY ALERT - JAPAN IN MELTDOWN

Tokyo Electric Is Disassembling The Truth
and us.

FULL TILT PARANOIA ALARM BELLS.

They have tens of thousands of fuel rods in those storage ponds inside the reactors

EVERYTHING HAS GONE COMPLETELY WRONG IN JAPAN

BELOW - this is what they WERENT TELLING US.

just when you have witnessed what seemed mind boggling...

NOW a complete mind f$ck.

holy shit I am speechless.

PEOPLE ARE BEING POISENED FAR AND WIDE, DON'T LET THE MEDIA POOHPOOHS STEER YOU WRONG. THINK OF THEM AS FEMA DISINFO AGENTS.

from all sources, here is what my mind infers:

HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: THERE IS SUCH A FURY - IT IS MT DOOM ITSELF - OF RADI0ACTIVE CRAP EMITTING SO MUCH INTENSE GAMMA AND NEUTRON RADIATIONS THAT THE ENTIRE MESS IN BEYOND THE ABILITY OF ANYONE TO DO ANYTHING WITH IT. SITUATION IS NOW HOPELESS UNLESS MASSIVELY NEW APPROACH UNDERTAKEN. MEANWHILE, MELTDOWNS ARE NOW IN PROCESS. All types of radioactive atoms will end up in the atmosphere, including plutonium. This crap is going to disrupt a lot of things permanantly and it is going to spread far and wide in a variety of ways. Don't let armchair experts mollify you. Prepare for the worst case scenario. A great many people won't be directly affected but this is like Russian Roulette. Wanna play?
Lets get off the armchair and be practical. Better for everyone to run paranoid and prepare.

thanks for the heads up Naia

probably most of the last 50 workers on site are already dieing....... the whole rotten mess is a completely done FUBAR and nobody knows what to do.

probably the only thing they can do now is attempt to pile as much dirt on it as fast as possible.
they will need a whole fleet of hueys dumping sand, gravel and then concrete on it. LIke Chernoble, that area is doomed for a very long time.

Serious question, though, whether you can get anybody close enough to do anything.

NE ASIA MAY BE TRIPLE WHAMMED.
Can the Japanese ever recover from this....???????

Pray that somebody in Russia or the U.S. has the comprehension to mobilize a massive intervention. The Japanese are way in over their heads. They will need a lot of air logistics to do what they have to do. They will need a lot of cats to berm up a wall of earth around the entire sordid affair just so they can creep closer and closer to shove in fill without killing the workers with massive gamma burns.

At 08:36 PM 3/17/2011 -0700, you wrote:
>from a friend... thought you might find this of interest, michael. :(
>
>Begin forwarded message:
>
>Subject: 'Chernobyl on Steroids' - 20 years of Spent Fuel Rods Stored at Daiichi
>
>Wow, just when I thought I had a handle on how bad this crisis may get, I learn that I didn't even have a clue.
>
>This is just incredible. It turns out, this type of GE reactor is designed to hold tens of thousands of intensely radioactive spent fuel rods, not only on site, not only inside the reactor building, but in pools that are literally right on top of the reactor. There are 3450 fuel rod assemblies (each holding 63 fuel rods) in those pools which is approximately 20 years worth of fuel rods, and they have no containment structure around them. Just water to keep them cool and suppress the gamma radiation. In other words, each of the four reactors at the Daiichi plant holds the potential for 21 Chernobyls. If those fuel rods don't have water covering them, they will catch fire and begin a nuclear meltdown. According to Congressional testimony today by Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there is now little or no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere. That is apparently the source of the fire in that reactor - the fuel rods themselves are burning.
>
>“We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures." Jaczko told Congress today.
>
>According to the US-based Institute for Science and International Security, there has been an explosion at reactor 4 in the past 24 hours that apparently has gone unreported. Here is the satellite pic - you can see the newly-damaged building of reactor 4 on the left:
>
>[]
>
>Figure 1. DigitalGlobe commercial satellite image of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear site taken at 9:35AM local time on March 16, 2011. 
>
>Next to it you can see massive plumes of intensely radioactive steam coming from reactor 3 - that's the one that has the plutonium MOX fuel; you know - the one that had the big explosion reported yesterday. Oh, and today Japanese officials admitted the containment vessel in reactor 3 has indeed been breached. It apparently is in full scale meltdown. Next to reactor 3, you can see steam venting from reactor 2 through a hole made by workers. Japanese officials admitted that containment vessel is also cracked.
>
>Apparently there are no workers at the plant now because the radiation is so intense that the workers would die before being able to accomplish anything much. It's so intense they even abandoned a desperate plan to drop water on the spent fuel rods by helicopter. As near as I can determine, there is nothing anyone will be able to do to prevent each of the four reactors (and perhaps all of their spent fuel rods) from undergoing meltdown, with further explosions and release of ungodly amounts of radiation.
>
>Then there is an additional, larger spent fuel pool in a separate building on the site which holds another 6291 spent fuel rod assemblies. The tsunami blew out the windows of that building, presumably causing considerable damage.
>
>And there are two additional reactors - 5 and 6 - at the Daiichi plant. Those don't appear to be leaking anything at the moment, but they apparently contain the same amount of spent fuel rods as the other four reactors on the site.
>
>[]
>
>Figure 2. DigitalGlobe commercial satellite image taken of the same site, showing reactor buildings for Units 5 and 6. 
>
><http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/new-satellite-image-of-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-site-in-japan-from-march-1/37>http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/new-satellite-image-of-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-site-in-japan-from-march-1/37
>
>And don't forget there is the sister plant Fukushima Dai-ni, where there are another 4 reactors, three of which have had the cooling water systems knocked out by the quake/tsunami. So those are in extreme danger of meltdown also.
>
>A report on the spent fuel at Daiichi from Tokyo Electric last year showed that at the time of the quake there would have been close to 11,000 spent fuel assemblies stored on site, a total of some 660,000 fuel rods:
><http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf>http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf
>
>Compare that to the 1700 fuel rods that burned at Chernobyl, releasing 400 times more radiation than the Hiroshima bomb and causing 1 million deaths world-wide.
>
><http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html>http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html
>
>
>http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/
>
>Nuke engineer: Fuel rod fire at Fukushima reactor "would be like Chernobyl on steroids"
>
>By: <http://my.firedoglake.com/members/kirkmurphy/>Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Monday March 14, 2011 12:14 am
>
>The Fukushima reactor building that <http://firedoglake.com/2011/03/12/explosion-at-fukushima-nuke-smoke-billowing-and-walls-collapsed/>exploded March 12 is one of a series of identical General Electric reactors constructed in Japan and the US. In this reactor design, the used nuclear fuel rods are stored in pools of water at the top of the reactor building. These “spent†rods are still highly radioactive: the radioactivity is so great the rods must be stored in water so they do not combust. The explosion at Fukushima Daiichi reactor unit 1 apparently destroyed at least one wall and the roof of the building: some reports stated the roof had collapsed into the building.
>
>Two days later, the nearby building containing the plutonium-uranium (MOX) fueled Fuksuhima Daichii <http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/03/13/japan-nuclear-watch-possible-new-explosion-at-naiichi-3/>reactor unit 3 exploded. So why bother about the rubble of reactor No 1? The WaPo quotes a <http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/at-two-reactors-a-race-to-contain-meltdowns/2011/03/13/ABtdVDU_story.html>nuclear engineer who knows the answer: 
>Although Tokyo Electric said it also continued to deal with cooling system failures and high pressures at half a dozen of its 10 reactors in the two Fukushima complexes, fears mounted about the threat posed by the pools of water where years of spent fuel rods are stored. 
>At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside. 
>“That would be like Chernobyl on steroids,†said Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1. 
>People familiar with the plant said there are seven spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi, many of them densely packed. 
>Gundersen said the unit 1 pool could have as much as 20 years of spent fuel rods, which are still radioactive. 
>[]
>
>
>We’d be lucky if we only had to worry about the spent fuel rods from a single holding pool. We’re not that lucky. The Fukushima Daiichi plant has <http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229439>seven pools for spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were) located at the top of six reactor buildings. One “common pool†is at ground level in a separate building. Each “reactor top†pool holds 3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod assemblies. [The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost certainly destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds <http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229446>sixty-three fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods.
>
>The fuel rods must be kept submerged in water. Why? Outside of the water bath, the radioactivity in the used rods can cause them to become so hot they begin to catch fire. These fires can burn so hot the radioactive rod contents are carried into the atmosphere as vaporized material or as very small particles. Reactor no 3 burns MOX fuel that contains a mix of plutonium and uranium. Plutonium generates more heat than uranium, which means these rods have the greatest risk of burning. That’s bad news, because plutonium scattered into the atmosphere is even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods without plutonium.
>
>Chernobyl on steroids. When the nuclear engineer from an identical plant states there’s any possibility of such a catastrophe, Washington, we have a problem. Chernobyl’s contamination settled upon people and nations thousands of miles from that reactor’s location. How far would “Chernobyl on steroids†travel? And where are the up to 20 years of reactor no 1 spent fuel rods that could cause such a problem, and the spent fuel rods held – until the building exploded – in in the spent fuel rod pool atop reactor no 3?
>
>Along with the rest of the planet, Washington’s looking at the risk of a potential catastrophe. At least when it comes to finding the fuel rods from reactor 1, Washington possesses some unique assets. One asset – the secretive <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office>National Reconassiance Office – runs the <http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/07/nro_2010.html>spy satellites remote sensing devices that enable US national security to spy on planet Earth. The NRO’s slightly less secretive cousin over at the the Pentagon is the <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/gov-orgs/dia/>Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA, in turn, controls MASINT “measures and signatures technologies†.
>
>What is MASINT? FDL’s recent guest Tim Shorrock answered that question a few years ago for CorpWatch: 
><http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14821>MASINT is a highly classified form of intelligence that uses infrared sensors and other technologies to “sniff†the atmosphere for certain chemicals and electro-magnetic activity and “see†beneath bridges and forest canopies. Using its tools, analysts can detect signs that a nuclear power plant is producing plutonium, determine from truck exhaust what types of vehicles are in a convoy, and detect people and weapons hidden from the view of satellites or photoreconnaissance aircraft. 
>With assets like the NRO and the DIA’s MASINT capacity, even an Obama administration that couldn’t find out millions of of barrels of Corexit and crude oil would poison the Gulf should be able to help Japan’s Fukushima plant locate their missing fuel rods. And do so before the missing rods – or any of the other pools of fuel rods in Japan’s stricken reactors – ignite Chernobyl on steroids.
>
>Once Obama and his generals have found the fuel rods, let’s hope they’ll time out from Gridion dinners and collateral damage and let the Americans who pay for all the fancy spy technology know what’s happening. Because now that Americans are hearing CNN’s Dr. Gupta talking about potassium iodide (KI) to prevent radiation toxicity, they’re going to be wondering if they need to take KI. As long as we don’t see massive uncontrolled radiation releases from the stricken reactors, they probably won’t. Should we see Chernobyl on steroids, Americans may need a whole lot more than KI. And until the spent fuel rods are located, there won’t be enough information to let Americans plan how to protect their loved ones. Unless we all learn the fuel rods have caught fire.
>
>[Note: revised at 3:15 PM Pacific on 3/14/11]
>
>
><http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/why-fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-will-continue-to-catch-fire/>http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/why-fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-will-continue-to-catch-fire/
>
>Why Fukushima's "spent" fuel rods will continue to catch fire
>
>By: <http://my.firedoglake.com/members/kirkmurphy/>Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Tuesday March 15, 2011 4:26 pm
>
>Yesterday the spent fuel rod pool at Fukushima Daiichi reactor 4 caught fire. About that time instruments at the plant showed an exponential increase in radiation levels. After the fire was quenched, radiation levels fell. In the hour before I sat down to write this, there was an explosion at the same spent fuel rod pool. As I write, another fire is burning there. NHK reports the radiation level – 300 to 400 milliSieverts – is so high that firefighters cannot approach the area.
>
>NHK reports that by Monday March 14 the temperature in the spent fuel rod pool was 84 degrees C: nearly double the usual temperature. NHK reports that there aren’t temperature readings for today: technical failure. We do know the pool temperature increased by roughly twenty degrees C per day after loss of power on Friday. And we know that water boils at 100 degrees C.
>
>The spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 is one of <http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229439>seven pools for spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daichii. These pools are designed to store the intensively radioactive fuel rods that were already used in nuclear reactors. These “used†fuel rods still contain uranium (or in the case of fuel rods from reactor 3, they contain both uranium and plutonium from the MOX fuel used in that reactor). In addition to the uranium and plutonium, the rods also contain other radioactive elements. These radioactive elements are created in the rods by the intense radiation around the rods when they are in the reactor core (before they are moved to the spent fuel pools).
>
>Six of the spent fuel rod pools are (or were) located at the top of six reactor buildings. One “common pool†is at ground level in a separate building. Each “reactor top†pool holds up to 3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds up to 6291 fuel rod assemblies. [The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost certainly destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds <http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229446>sixty-three fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods. The fuel rods once stored atop reactor 3 may no longer be there: one of the several explosions at the Fukushima reactors may have damaged that pool.
>
>Now that we have partial meltdown in the reactor vessels – the part of the reactor where nuclear reactions are supposed to happen – in at least three of the Daiichi palnt’s six reactors, why bother with swimming pools for fuel rods? Simple. Even after they are no longer usable to drive nuclear fission in the reactor vessels, the “spent†fuel rods are still highly radioactive. Part of that radioactive energy is emitted as heat. That’s no surprise: heat from radioactivity is the how the reactor core vessels generate the heat that drives the nuclear plant’s turbines to generate electricity. The fuel rods don’t know whether they are in the core or in the pools: they keep emitting heat and radioactivity until the radioactive material decays into non-radioactive elements. That process can take years, which is why spent fuel rods are still dangerous years after they leave the reactor core.
>
>How can we prevent the spent fuel rods from bursting into flame once they’re out of the reactor core? The Fukushima plant –“ like many other reactors – keeps the rods in water, which absorbs the heat energy. But the pools – like the water in a teakettle – will boil il away unless new water is added. After the Fukushima plant lost power in Friday’s 9.0 earthquake and got hit by the tsunami, the plant was no longer able to keep the pools topped up.
>
>How long does it take the water in spent fuel rod pools to boil down to dangerously low levels? Yesterday FDL reader MtnWoman – who worked at TMI for twelve years – <http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229443>told us about the <http://www.rogerwitherspoon.com/docs/nrctechstudyosfprrisks-10-2000.pdf>2000 Nuclear Regulatory Commission study that looked at this very question. For boiling water reactors (BWR) such as the Fukushima reactors, the time required for spent fuel rod pool water levels to drop to dangerouslyy low levels is about 140 hours. The NRC study only looked at rods that had been out of reactors for six months or more: I don’t have data about how long the rods at the seven Fukushima pools have been out of reactors. Fortunately for the NRC, they weren’t studying fuel rod poos on the upper floors of reactor buildings housing reactor core vessels that had lost adequate cooling and were in partial meltdown. This may explain why the spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 ignited on Monday, roughly 100 hours after the quake and power loss, but before the 140 hours the NRC calculated.
>
>Why did the spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 catch fire again today? Yesterday the <http://www.ieer.org/>Institute for Energy and Enviromental Research‘s Arjun Makhijani wrote a very detailed <http://www.ieer.org/comments/Daiichi-Fukushima-reactors_IEERstatement.pdf>report that answers this question. In his report he quoted extensively from the <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11263>2006 study perfomed by the National Research Council of the National Academies. Their report tells us: 
>“The ability to remove decay heat from the spent fuel also would be reduced as the water level drops, especially when it drops below the tops of the fuel assemblies. This would cause temperatures in the fuel assemblies to rise, accelerating the oxidation of the zirconium alloy (zircaloy) cladding that encases the uranium oxide pellets. This oxidation reaction can occur in the presence of both air and steam and is strongly exothermic—that is, the reaction releases large quantities of heat, which can further raise cladding temperatures. The steam reaction also generates large quantities of hydrogen…. 
>These oxidation reactions [with a loss of coolant] can become locally self-sustaining … at high temperatures (i.e., about a factor of 10 higher than the boiling point of water) if a supply of oxygen and/or steam is available to sustain the reactions…. The result could be a runaway oxidation reaction — referred to in this report as a zirconium cladding fire — that proceeds as a burn front (e.g., as seen in a forest fire or a fireworks sparkler) along the axis of the fuel rod toward the source of oxidant (i.e., air or steam)…. 
>As fuel rod temperatures increase, the gas pressure inside the fuel rod increases and eventually can cause the cladding to balloon out and rupture. At higher temperatures (around 1800°C [approximately 3300°F]), zirconium cladding reacts with the uranium oxide fuel to form a complex molten phase containing zirconium-uranium oxide. 
>Beginning with the cladding rupture, these events would result in the release of radioactive fission gases and some of the fuel’s radioactive material in the form of aerosols into the building that houses the spent fuel pool and possibly into the environment. If the heat from one burning assembly is not dissipated, the fire could spread to other spent fuel assemblies in the pool, producing a propagating zirconium cladding fire. 
>The high-temperature reaction of zirconium and steam has been described quantitatively since at least the early 1960s….†
>Translation for laypeople: Without enough water to cover the, the fuel rods will keep on igniting, just like trick birthday candles keep re-igniting after we blow them out. Just like trick birthday candles, the only way to put out the fuel rods is to put them under water. That’s why even after Monday’s reactor 4 spent fuel rod fire was quenched, the spent fuel rod pool caught fire again this afternoon.
>
>Unlike trick birthday candles, the spent fuel rods burn hot (3300 degrees F) enough so that the radioactive material in the rods is aerosolized: carried into the atmosphere in clouds of hot smoke. And unlike our trick birthday candles, the spent fuel rods in reactor building 4 are four stories off the ground – just like the other five reactor spent fuel pools at Fukushima. And unlike our trick birthday candles, right now the radioactivity around the spent fuel rods is so high that no one can approach them to put out the fire.
>
>I’m a slow typist: by the time I completed this the fire burning at reactor 4’s spent fuel rod pool had gone out – €“ apparently spontaneously. Fortunately, we’re not yet at the 140 hour mark by which the NRC calculated spent fuel rods in ideal conditions would be at risk of combustion. That’s a good thing, because there’s one other big difference between trick birthday candles and spent fuel rods. Trick birthday candles merely drip more wax on the cake. Uncontrolled spent fuel rod fires could pour enough radioactive waste into the atmosphere to cause what a nuclear engineer (at a Vermont plant identical to Fukushima reactors) calls “Chernobyl on steroids†.
>
>Let’s hope the spent fuel rods at Fukushima are put back under water before we have the opportunity to test her hypothesis.
>
>
><http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-resnikoff/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-japan_b_835932.html>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-resnikoff/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-japan_b_835932.html
>
>Doomsday Scenario at Fukushima
>
>Marvin Resnikoff
>Senior Associate, Radioactive Waste Management Associates
>Posted: March 15, 2011 11:03 AM
>
>The slow motion events occurring at Japan's (or GE's) Fukushima reactor cannot be sugar-coated. It is a doomsday scenario unfolding.
>
>Nuclear reactors are not the same as coal/oil/gas electricity plants. Unlike conventional plants, they cannot be turned off. So while brave workers were tending to Units 1, 2 and 3 reactors, attempting against all odds to keep the reactor from overheating, the fuel pool at Unit 4 was left untended; without makeup water to cool them, the fuel rods overheated. Above 1800 oF, an exothermic reaction, a fire, took place with the zirconium cladding around the uranium pellets. Zirconium burned, forming zirconium oxide and hydrogen gas, which then exploded and released radioactive cesium, a semi-volatile metal, to the atmosphere. 
>
>Near the plant, the radiation levels dangerously escalated to 400 milliseiverts/hour (or 40 rems/hour in U.S. parlance). Considering background is on the order of 1 milliseivert per YEAR, this means a yearly background dose every 9 seconds. Put plainly, workers at the Fukushima reactors are putting their lives in immediate jeopardy.
>
>What is a fuel pool? 
>
>Each year a commercial reactor operates, approximately 30 tons of fuel are irradiated. Every year or year and a half, this fuel is moved to a fuel pool for safe storage. Under 20 feet of circulating and replenished water, the fuel is stored. Water shields the radioactivity and cools the fuel, which still gives off heat. If water is not resupplied, which apparently was the case at unit 4, the water levels decline, the fuel is uncovered and it overheats, leading to a hydrogen explosion. 
>
>How much cesium-137 is contained in a fuel pool?
>
>The amount of cesium contained in the fuel pool is typically measured in curies or becquerels, but these assessments are meaningless unless you are a physicist. An easier way to look at it is in relation to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, where 100,000 Japanese where killed. Cesium is a semi-volatile material that has been detected in the air downwind of the Fukushima reactors. How many Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 are contained in the fuel pool? 
>
>In work for the State of Nevada, we estimated that 10 tons of irradiated (what the industry calls "spent") nuclear fuel was equivalent to 240 times the amount of cesium-137 released by the Hiroshima bomb. Ten tons is the amount of irradiated fuel that would be contained in a shipping container or cask used to transport the fuel. Why so much more cesium than the Hiroshima bomb? Because an atomic explosion occurs in milliseconds, but a nuclear reactor operates continuously for years. Many more fissions means much more fission products, including cesium You do the math. If Unit 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of irradiated fuel per year and each ton is equivalent to 24 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, then each fuel pool could contain on the order of 24,000 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, if all the produced irradiated fuel remains in the fuel pool.. 
>
>This is not to say all this material will be released to the atmosphere or ocean. This is the maximum cesium-137 possible inventory at each Fukushima reactor. Each fuel pool at each Fukushima reactor also contains approximately the same amount of strontium-90 and other cancer causing materials. In addition to the fuel pools at each Fukushima reactor, a larger common fuel pool sits at ground level between two reactors in a building with windows. The damage the tsunami caused to this independent fuel pool has not been discussed by the media.
>
>Iodine, cesium and other radionuclides can be carried downwind and inhaled. Radionuclides that land in the sea may be taken up by fish and eaten. When these cancer-causing materials are taken into the body by inhalation or ingestion, they concentrate in different organs. Cesium concentrates in muscle, strontium (like calcium) in bones, iodine in the thyroid. Once in the body, these radioactive materials continue to decay, releasing harmful gamma and beta radiation. Plutonium, also present, gives off alpha radiation. Rearranging the DNA in the human body leads to cancer. To put this in another way, a BWR reactor boils water to produce electricity by generating cancer-causing materials. 
>
>Take this out of the nuclear realm. Imagine another harmful poison, botulism. Imagine a botulism reactor, reproducing botuli fast enough to produce heat and steam to turn turbines. Then imagine having to contain these billions of botuli so the public is not harmed. This is essentially the friendly atom that has now come full circle in Japan and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will relicense for an additional 20 years at Vermont Yankee and at 30 other Fukushima-type reactors in the United States. Fortunately, the State of Vermont has taken matters into its own hands and has decided not to allow Vermont Yankee to run past 2012..

>
><http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html?ref=world>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html?ref=world
>
>[]
>
>March 16, 2011
>
>
>
>U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High,’ Sees Japan Nuclear Crisis Worsening
>

>
>
>By <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_e_sanger/index.html?inline=nyt-per>DAVID E. SANGER, <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/matthew_l_wald/index.html?inline=nyt-per>MATTHEW L. WALD and <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/hiroko_tabuchi/index.html?inline=nyt-per>HIROKO TABUCHI
>

>
>This article is by David E. Sanger, Matthew L. Wald and Hiroko Tabuchi. 
>
>WASHINGTON — The chairman of the United States <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nuclear_regulatory_commission/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a far bleaker appraisal on Wednesday of the threat posed by <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/japan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government had offered. He said American officials believed that the damage to at least one crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo had acknowledged, and he advised Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities. 
>
>The announcement opened a new and ominous chapter in the five-day-long effort by Japanese engineers to bring the six side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and a tsunami last Friday. It also suggested a serious split between Washington and its closest Asian ally at an especially delicate moment. 
>
>The Congressional testimony by Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, was the first time the Obama administration had given its own assessment of the condition of the plant, apparently mixing information it had received from Japan with data it had collected independently. 
>
>Mr. Jaczko’s most startling assertion was that there was now little or no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere. 
>
>As a result, he said, “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.†
>
>His statement was quickly but not definitively rebutted by officials of Tokyo Electric Power, the Daiichi’s plant’s operator, and Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency. 
>
>“We can’t get inside to check, but we’ve been carefully watching the building’s environs, and there has not been any particular problem,†said Hajime Motojuku, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric. Speaking on Thursday morning in Japan, Takumi Koyamada, a spokesman for the regulatory agency, said that when it was checked 12 hours earlier, water remained in the spent fuel pool at reactor No. 4. 
>
>“We cannot confirm that there has been a loss in water,†he said. 
>
>On Wednesday night, Mr. Jaczko reiterated his earlier statement and added that commission representatives in Tokyo had confirmed that the pool was empty. He said Tokyo Electric and other officials in Japan had confirmed that, and also stressed that high radiation fields were going to make it very difficult to continue having people work at the plant. 
>
>If the American analysis is accurate and emergency crews at the plant have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant. In the worst case, experts say, workers could be forced to vacate the plant altogether, and the fuel rods in reactors and spent fuel pools would be left to meltdown, leading to much larger releases of radioactive materials. 
>
>While radiation levels at the plant have varied tremendously, Mr. Jaczko said that the peak levels reported there “would be lethal within a fairly short period of time.†He added that another spent fuel pool, at Reactor No. 3, might also be losing water and could soon be in the same condition. Efforts to pour in water by dumping it from helicopters were suspended, for fear that the helicopter crews would receive too large a dose of radiation. 
>
>Mr. Jaczko’s testimony came as the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles†from the Fukushima plant. 
>
>The advice to Americans in Japan represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves, who have told everyone within 20 kilometers, about 12 miles, to evacuate, and those 20 to 30 kilometers to take shelter. While maps of the plume of radiation being given off by the plant show that an elongated cloud will stretch across the Pacific, American officials said it would be so dissipated by the time it reached the West Coast of the United States that it would not pose a health threat. 
>
>“We would recommend an evacuation to a much larger radius than has currently been provided by Japan,†Mr. Jaczko said. That assessment seems bound to embarrass, if not anger, Japanese officials, suggesting they have miscalculated the danger or deliberately played down the risks. 
>
>It was not immediately clear how many people live within the zone around the plant that American officials believed should be evacuated. But the zone gets far closer to the city of Sendai, with its population of one million, which took the brunt of the earthquake last week. 
>
>At a hearing on Wednesday, Senator <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/barbara_boxer/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, pointed out that 50 miles could take in a huge number of people; San Onofre, in her home state, California, has seven million people living within that radius, she said. 
>
>American officials were careful to offer no public comparisons to past nuclear accidents when discussing the Fukushima disaster. But clearly the crisis in Japan already far outstrips what happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, where very little radiation escaped a crippled reactor. The effort now is to keep the Japanese crisis, involving at least three reactors that had been in active use before the quake, and three others that were inactive but had storage pools for spent fuel, from escalating to the levels of the worst nuclear disaster in history: Chernobyl. 
>
>Though the plant’s reactors shut down automatically when the quake struck on Friday, the subsequent tsunami wiped out the backup electronic pumping and cooling system necessary to keep the fuel rods in the reactors and the storage pools for spent nuclear fuel covered with cool water. 
>
>The spent fuel pools can be even more dangerous than the active fuel rods, as they are not contained in thick steel containers like the reactor core. As they are exposed to air, the zirconium metal cladding on the rods can catch fire, and a deadly mix of radioactive elements can spew into the atmosphere. The most concern surrounds Cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years and can get into food supplies or be inhaled. 
>
>Mr. Jaczko (pronounced YAZZ-koe) said radiation levels might make it impossible to continue what he called the “backup backup†cooling functions that have so far helped check the fuel melting inside the reactors. Those efforts consist of using fire hoses to dump water on overheated fuel and then letting the radioactive steam vent into the atmosphere. 
>
>Those emergency measures, carried out by a small squad of workers and firefighters, represent Japan’s central effort to forestall a full-blown fuel meltdown that would lead to much higher releases of radioactive material into the air. 
>
>Mr. Jaczko’s testimony, the most extended comments by a senior American official on Japan’s nuclear disaster, described what amounts to an agonizing choice for Japanese authorities: keep sending workers into an increasingly contaminated area in a last-ditch effort to cover nuclear fuel with water, or do more to protect the workers but risk letting the pools of water boil away — and thus risk a broader meltdown. 
>
>The Japanese authorities have never been as specific as Mr. Jaczko was in his testimony about the situation at reactor No. 4, where they have been battling fires for more than 24 hours. 
>
>According to Tokyo Electric’s data, the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor contains 548 fuel assemblies that were in use at the reactor until last November, when they were move to the storage pool on the site. That means that the fuel rods were only recently taken out of active use and that their potential to burn and release radioactivity is higher than spent fuel in storage for a longer period. 
>
>Experts say workers at the plant probably could not approach a fuel pool that was dry, because radiation levels would be too high. In a normally operating pool, the water not only provides cooling but also shields workers from gamma radiation. A plan to dump water into the pool, and others like it, from helicopters was suspended because the crews would be flying right into a radioactive plume. 
>
>Earlier in the day, Japanese authorities announced a different escalation of the crisis at Daiichi when they said that a second reactor unit at the plant might have suffered damage to its primary containment structure and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam. 
>
>The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked. 
>
>But in one of a series of rapid and at times confusing pronouncements on the crisis, the authorities insisted that damage to the containment vessel at the No. 3 reactor — the main focus of concern earlier on Wednesday — was unlikely to be severe. 
>
>At a hearing in Washington on Wednesday held by two subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Energy Secretary <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/steven_chu/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Steven Chu said, “We think there is a partial meltdown†at the plant.†
>
>“We are trying to monitor it very closely,†he said. “We hear conflicting reports about exactly what is happening in the several reactors now at risk. I would not want to speculate about what is happening.†
>David E. Sanger and Matthew L. Wald reported from Washington, and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
>
>
>
><http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/at-two-reactors-a-race-to-contain-meltdowns/2011/03/13/ABtdVDU_singlePage.html>http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/at-two-reactors-a-race-to-contain-meltdowns/2011/03/13/ABtdVDU_singlePage.html
>
>
>Japan races to contain meltdowns after two blasts; third reactor loses cooling capacity
>

>
>By Chico Harlan and Steven Mufson, Monday, March 14, 9:30 AM
>

>
>TOKYO — A second explosion rocked Japan’s seaside Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex Monday, this time destroying an outer building at unit 3. A Japanese government official separately said that a third reactor at the six-reactor facility had lost its cooling capacity, adding to the complications facing the engineers who try <http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ultimate-impact-of-damage-to-japan-nuclear-reactors-still-unknown/2011/03/13/ABbwoBU_story.html?hpid=z1>to limit the damage of a partial meltdown.
>
>The explosion at unit 3 did not damage the core containment structure, and Japanese authorities asserted that there would be little increase in radiation levels around the plant. But the explosion -- <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/japan-nuclear-reactors-and-seismic-activity/>a result of hydrogen build-up -- prompted Japan’s nuclear agency to warn those within 12 miles to stay indoors and keep air conditioners off.
>
>The blast injured 11 people, one seriously.
>
>The <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/japan-nuclear-reactors-and-seismic-activity/?hpid=z2>string of earthquake- and tsunami-triggered troubles at the Fukushima Daiichi plant began with the failure of the primary and back-up cooling systems, necessary to keep reactors from overheating.
>
>On Saturday, a similar explosion <http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/japan-11nuclear-reactors-shut-down/2011/03/11/ABjmSxQ_story.html>occurred at unit 1. Trace amounts of radioactive elements cesium-137 and iodine-131 have been detected outside the plant.
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>The U.S. Seventh Fleet said on Monday that some of its personnel, who are stationed 100 miles offshore from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, had come into contact with radioactive contamination. The airborne radioactivity prompted the fleet to reposition its ships and aircraft.
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>Using sensitive instruments, precautionary measurements were conducted on three helicopter aircrews returning to USS Ronald Reagan after conducting disaster relief missions near Sendai. Those measurements identified low levels of radioactivity on 17 air crew members. 
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>The low level radioactivity was easily removed from affected personnel by washing with soap and water, and later tests detected no further contamination.
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>Like the Saturday explosion at unit 1, the blast at unit 3 took place after a buildup of hydrogen was vented by the reactor. The hydrogen was produced by the exposure of the reactor’s fuel rods and their zirconium alloy casing to hot steam.
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>In normal conditions, the fuel rods would be covered and cooled by water.
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>The explosion occurred as Tokyo Electric entered day four of its battle against a cascade of failures at its two Fukushima nuclear complexes, using fire pumps to inject tens of thousands of gallons of seawater into two reactors to contain partial meltdowns of ultra-hot fuel rods.
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>The tactic produced high pressures and vapors that the company vented into its containment structures and then into the air, raising concerns about radioactivity levels in the surrounding area where people have already been evacuated. The utility said that at one of the huge, complicated reactors, a safety relief valve was opened manually to lower the pressure levels in a containment vessel.
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>But the limited vapor emissions were seen as far less dire than the consequences of failure in the fight against a more far-reaching partial or complete meltdown that would occur if the rods blazed their way through the reactor’s layers of steel and concrete walls.
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>The potential size of the area affected by radioactive emissions could be large. A state of emergency was declared briefly at another nuclear facility, the Onagawa plant, after elevated radio­activity levels were detected there. Later, Japanese authorities blamed the measurement on radioactive material that had drifted from the Fukushima plant, more than 75 miles away, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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>The IAEA noted that forecasts said winds would be blowing to the northeast, away from the Japanese coast, over the next three days.
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>Tokyo Electric said radioactivity levels inside the plant and at its nearby monitoring post were higher than normal. Although levels had fallen Sunday, the Kyodo News Agency said that radiation at the plant’s premises rose Monday over the benchmark limit of 500 microsievert per hour at two locations, measuring 751 microsievert at the first location at 2:20 a.m. and 650 at the second at 2:40 a.m., according to information Tokyo Electric gave the government. The hourly amounts are more than half the 1,000 microsievert to which people are usually exposed in one year.
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>In addition to one worker hospitalized for radiation exposure, two others felt ill during stints in the control rooms of Fukushima Daiichi units 1 and 2. 
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>Although Tokyo Electric said it also continued to deal with cooling system failures and high pressures at half a dozen of its 10 reactors in the two Fukushima complexes, fears mounted about the threat posed by the pools of water where years of spent fuel rods are stored.
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>At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside.
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>“That would be like Chernobyl on steroids,†said Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1.
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>People familiar with the plant said there are seven spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi, many of them densely packed.
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>Gundersen said the unit 1 pool could have as much as 20 years of spent fuel rods, which are still radioactive.
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>At Fukushima Daiichi unit 3, the explosion was an indicator of serious problems inside the reactor core.
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>Victor Gilinsky, a former commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that to produce hydrogen, temperatures in the reactor core had to be well over 2,000 degrees and as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. He said a substantial amount of fuel had to be exposed at least at some point.
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>“That’s the significance of the hydrogen — it means there was serious fuel damage and probably melting,†said Gilinsky, who was at the NRC when Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island reactor had a partial meltdown in 1979. “How much? We won’t know for a long time. At TMI we didn’t know for five years, until the vessels were opened. It was a shock.†
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>The Fukushima Daiichi unit 3 was built by Toshiba. Last year, the unit began using some reprocessed fuel known as “mox,†a mixture of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide, produced from recycled material from nuclear weapons as part of a program known as “from megatons to megawatts.†Anti-nuclear activists have called mox more unsafe than enriched uranium. If it escapes the reactor, plutonium even in small quantities can have much graver consequences on human health and the local environment for countless years, much longer than other radioactive materials.
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>The Kyodo News Agency cited Tokyo Electric as saying that more than three yards of a mox nuclear-fuel rod had been left above the water level, raising concerns that bits of plutonium or its byproducts may already be mixed into vapors or molten material.
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>The Fukushima Daiichi unit 3, once capable of generating 784 megawatts of power, is substantially bigger than unit 1, which generated about 460 megawatts. As a result, lowering temperatures in its reactor core could prove a much tougher task, experts said.
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>Japanese officials were also trying to figure out whether Friday’s earthquake, or the subsequent high pressures and temperatures in the reactors, had caused other cracks or leaks in reactors in the region. So far officials have not said that they have found any, though they have noted still unexplained losses of water in some reactor vessels.
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>Although Fukushima Daiichi units 1 and 3 posed the gravest dangers for now, Tokyo Electric said it was still working on its other units.
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>Tokyo Electric also said it had released vapors with some radioactive materials at all four of the reactors at its second Fukushima complex — Fukushima Daini — on Saturday. After injecting water into the reactors, the company said that water levels were stable, off-site power restored, and shutdowns complete or in progress. Nonetheless, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Monday that Fukushima Daini units 1, 2 and 4 remained in a nuclear state of emergency.
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>mufsons@washpost.com>mufsons@washpost.com
>© 2011 The Washington Post Company
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><http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-japan-nuclear-pool-idUSTRE72F8VN20110316>http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-japan-nuclear-pool-idUSTRE72F8VN20110316
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>REUTERS
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>Analysis: Japan nuclear crisis reaches new levels
>

>Wed Mar 16, 2011
>7:24pm EDT
><http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=scott.disavino&>
>By <http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=scott.disavino&>Scott DiSavino
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>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Japan's nuclear crisis may have taken its most dangerous turn yet after a U.S. official said one of the pools containing highly radioactive spent fuel rods at the stricken plant had run dry.
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>One nuclear expert said that there was now even a possibility that the disaster may approach the extent of the Chernobyl accident, the worst ever in the industry's history. When the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine exploded in 1986 it spewed a radiation cloud over a large area of Europe.
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>And a nuclear engineer said that it may be time to consider ways to bury or cover the entire complex in some kind of material that would stop radiation from leaking into the atmosphere.
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>Triggering the new levels of alarm were comments by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko in Congress on Wednesday. "There is no water in the spent fuel pool and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures," he said.
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>Japanese officials have been working desperately for two days to try to get more water into the pool to cover the rods, which remain hot for months after they are removed from the reactors and can quickly release radioactive components if exposed to the air.
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>"If they don't get water to these spent fuel pools in view of the containment breaches in the other plants the actual radiation releases could approach that category of Chernobyl," said Victor Gilinsky, who was an NRC commissioner at the time of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, which was the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
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>Earlier Japanese authorities told the International Atomic Energy Agency that radioactivity was being released directly into the air at the pool for the No.4 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Experts say the pools could present a bigger threat to public health than the reactors, which appear to be still encased in steel containment systems.
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>"Up until now they have not been able to get close to the spent rods, as even with protective clothing it only stops workers from breathing in radioactive particles, not from radiation itself," Dr Peter Hosemann PHD of the University of California Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Department said Tuesday.
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>While the building holding the rods has been rocked by fire and a blast, officials in Japan had not said how much water remained in the 40-foot deep tanks.
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>James Acton, Associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an interview before Jaczko's comments that it appeared there was a leak in the pool.
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>"There is either a leak in the spent fuel pool or the rods are hot enough to cause evaporation," Acton said.
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>DEADLY MIX
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>When a fuel rod is exposed to the air the zirconium metal cladding on the rods can easily catch on fire, releasing a deadly mix of radiation into the atmosphere. The earlier fires and explosion in the area of the spent fuel storage tank left the pool partly open to the air allowing the radiation to escape into the atmosphere.
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>Experts say the water should remain at least eight feet over the spent fuel to maintain acceptable radiation levels but the level usually is kept much higher.
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>"As the water drains there's going to be less stability - and higher levels of radiation released," said Tara Neider, President and CEO of Areva Federal Services, a U.S. arm of the world's biggest nuclear power plant builder, French giant Areva SA.
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>Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the operator of the six-reactor complex, was considering spraying water into the spent fuel pools through the holes in the roof by helicopter but later canceled that mission.
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>Arnie Gundersen, a 29-year veteran of the nuclear industry who has worked on reactors similar to the Daiichi plant and is now chief engineer at Fairewinds Associates Inc, warned that dropping water on the spent fuel pool could make matters worse.
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>"It's a bad idea to drop water onto the fuel racks. You could get an inadvertent criticality. That means you could have a nuclear reaction, similar to that in a reactor core, in the fuel pool," Gundersen said.
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>MORE RADIATION
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>"There is more radiation in the spent fuel pool - which is about ten stories in the air -- than in the reactor core," Gundersen said, noting used rods contain more dangerous radioactive materials than new rods, including elements cesium, strontium and plutonium.
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>Plutonium, in particular, is a very nasty isotope and could cause cancer in very small quantities if ingested, he said.
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>The uranium fuel is burned in the reactor for three to six years before being placed into the pool. About one third of the fuel is removed from the reactor core to the pool every 18 to 24 months during refueling outages.
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>Used fuel rods must sit in the spent fuel pool for at least five years. Though, much to the consternation of environmental and anti-nuclear groups, the rods usually sit in the pool much longer while waiting for either reprocessing or storage in dry casks.
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>Gundersen also said he recommended evacuating children and pregnant women to more than 50 miles away from the plant to avoid the radiation risk.
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>In a sign that other spent fuel rod pools could be in a deteriorating condition, the NRC Chairman Jaczko said he also believed the pool at the No. 3 reactor may also have a leak.
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>"Every day it seems like things may be stabilizing but you wake up the next morning and it seems like things have not stabilized or maybe gotten worse," said Brian Woods, nuclear engineering associate professor at Oregon State University and a former engineer for the U.S. Department of Energy.
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>Woods said that it may be time to think of encasing the complex in some kind of protective material.
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>"More than likely you're probably looking at some kind of external containment," he said.
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>(Reporting by Scott DiSavino, David Sheppard, <http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=matt.daily&>Matt Daily and <http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=ben.berkowitz&>Ben Berkowitz in New York, <http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=tim.gardner&>Timothy Gardner in Washington, <http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=bernie.woodall&>Bernie Woodall in Detroit and <http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=eileen.ogrady&>Eileen O'Grady in Houston; Editing by <http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=martin.howell&>Martin Howell)
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><http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fukushima-mark-nuclear-reactor-design-caused-ge-scientist/story?id=13141287>http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fukushima-mark-nuclear-reactor-design-caused-ge-scientist/story?id=13141287
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>ABC NEWS
>Fukushima: Mark 1 Nuclear Reactor Design Caused GE Scientist To Quit In Protest
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>Damaged Japanese Nuclear Plant Has Five Mark 1 Reactors
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>By MATTHEW MOSK
>March 15, 2011
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>Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues at General Electric resigned from their jobs after becoming increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor design they were reviewing -- the Mark 1 -- was so flawed it could lead to a devastating accident.
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>Questions persisted for decades about the ability of the Mark 1 to handle the immense pressures that would result if the reactor lost cooling power, and today that design is being put to the ultimate test in Japan. Five of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been wracked since Friday's earthquake with explosions and radiation leaks, are Mark 1s.
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>"The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant," Bridenbaugh told ABC News in an interview. "The impact loads the containment would receive by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart and create an uncontrolled release."
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>The situation on the ground at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is so fluid, and the details of what is unfolding are so murky, that it may be days or even weeks before anyone knows how the Mark 1 containment system performed in the face of a devastating combination of natural disasters.
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>But the ability of the containment to withstand the events that have cascaded from what nuclear experts call a "station blackout" -- where the loss of power has crippled the reactor's cooling system -- will be a crucial question as policy makers re-examine the safety issues that surround nuclear power, and specifically the continued use of what is now one of the oldest types of nuclear reactors still operating.
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>GE told ABC News the reactors have "a proven track record of performing reliably and safely for more than 40 years" and "performed as designed," even after the shock of a 9.0 earthquake.
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>Still, concerns about the Mark 1 design have resurfaced occasionally in the years since Bridenbaugh came forward. In 1986, for instance, Harold Denton, then the director of NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, spoke critically about the design during an industry conference.
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>"I don't have the same warm feeling about GE containment that I do about the larger dry containments,'' he said, according to a report at the time that was referenced Tuesday in The Washington Post.
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>"There is a wide spectrum of ability to cope with severe accidents at GE plants,'' Denton said. "And I urge you to think seriously about the ability to cope with such an event if it occurred at your plant.''
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>Bridenbaugh Believes Design Flaws Were Addressed At Fukushima Plant
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>Bridenbaugh told ABC News that he believes the design flaws that prompted his resignation from GE were eventually addressed at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Bridenbaugh said GE agreed to a series of retrofits at Mark 1 reactors around the globe. He compared the retooling to the bolstering of highway bridges in California to better withstand earthquakes.
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>"Like with seismic refitting, they went back and re-analyzed the loads the structures might receive and beefed up the ability of the containment to handle greater loads," he said.
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>When asked if that was sufficient, he paused. "What I would say is, the Mark 1 is still a little more susceptible to an accident that would result in a loss of containment."
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>ABC News asked GE for more detail about how the company responded to critiques of its Mark 1 design. GE spokesman Michael Tetuan said in an email that, over the past 40 years, the company has made several modifications to its Mark 1 reactors in the U.S., including installing "quenchers" and fortifying the steel structures "to accommodate the loads that were generated." He said that GE's responses to modifications ordered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were also shared with the Japanese nuclear industry.
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>Bridenbaugh told ABC News that he is watching the events in Japan with a mix of anxiety and deep reflection. Many years have passed since he and fellow GE colleagues Gregory C Minor and Richard B. Hubbard publicly resigned, joined the anti-nuclear movement, and became known as the "GE Three."
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>Undoubtedly, he said, the containment structures at that Fukushima Daiichi plant are facing significant amounts of pressure -- and testing the very questions he was studying on paper more than three decades earlier. While he knew then that the Mark 1 had design limits, he said, no one knows now whether those limits will be surpassed. 
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