Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

Fukushima is about to get really really bad.



So I have perhaps been too disgusted to post recently.  This breaks my reverie:  as it should yours.  Consider that headline again.

Fukushima is about to get really really bad.  

That's right.  Is about to. 

More likely is already.  Absent the kind of response we have not yet seen even the ghost resemblance of, coming out of anyone with the authority to make a difference.  I have been seeing troubling headlines over the last few weeks, my malaise uneased by the mealymouthed way TepCo & NHK both spoke of the ground "steaming"...

A quote from the video below:

"...its the highest reading for tritium offshore in 2 yrs ...
That is twice the amount detected about two weeks ago, and the highest since monitoring began in June 2011, but they say that the amount is still well below the government set safety limit..."  




NHK; meticulously told truths that amount to lying their asses off.

but I didn't sense the full extent until I read Michaël Van Broekhoven's treatment of the subject, excerpted here:


Alert – Fukushima-Daiichi NPP Crisis: EXTREME Radioactive Water Leaking into Ground; Unprecedented Radioactive Contamination of Pacific Ocean.

Posted on July 31, 2013
by Michaël V.B.  of Not All Alleged Is Apparent

...Even Nuclear insiders are apparently beginning to lose their cool, calling the kettle black:

“This action regarding the water contamination demonstrates a lack of conservative decision-making process.  It also appears that you are not keeping the people of Japan informed.  These actions indicate that you don’t know what you are doing you do not have a plan and that you are not doing all you can to protect the environment and the people.”  
Dale Klein, former head 
of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
(NRC) to TEPCO,
 at a TEPCO-sponsored nuclear reform monitoring panel 
composed of two foreign experts and four Japanese including 
the company’s chairman (July 2013).   
Quote in context

The difficulties we face at Fukushima Daiichi are on par with the difficulties we faced in the wake of World War II.”     
-  Shunichi Tanaka, 
the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman 
at a Tokyo news conference, a
s reported last week in the July 24, 2013 New York Times
 Chairman Shunichi Tanaka also admitted, at last, 
that TEPCO needs help with the cleanup.  

[snip]
  • TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2013 – ABC (Australia): “It’s taken about two-and-a-half years, but it seems the Japanese government is finally losing patience with the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant.  The reason: its haphazard approach to stabilising the complex.  Last week it was unexplained steam rising from the shattered remains of the building housing the melted reactor number three. This week it’s TEPCO’s admission that radioactive water from the plant has probably been leaking into the Pacific for the last three months. [...]"
[snip]
  • FRIDAY, JULY 26, 2013 – TEPCO tries to explain why they’re withholding information.  Apparently they’re just “protecting the fishing industry”, not from contamination, but from the detrimental economic impact of news reports on the apparently continuing radioactive leaking (aka fear of people making informed decisions…)
[snip]
<B1-1: Unit 2 water intake power cable trench (seawater piping foundation part)>



- Sampling on July 26 [2013]:
!!!–> Tritium  8,700,000 Bq/L (8,700Bq/cm3)...
           Chlorine 8,000ppm...
!!!–> Cesium-134  750,000,000Bq/L (750,000Bq/cm3)...
!!!–> Cesium-137  1,600,000,000Bq/L (1,600,000Bq/cm3) ...
           All-β  750,000,000Bq/L (750,000Bq/cm3) ...




  [!!! - For a clue how extreme that is, see [below]...]

[snip]

This was ... strangely not reported by the vast majority of news outlets.  Maybe they’re not quite grasping its rather grave significance?  Maybe the following couple points will help…
So, how bad is that, really?  
  • 1.6 billion becquerels of cesium-137
  • 750 million becquerels of cesium-134
That adds up to 2.35 billion Bq, aka, 2.35 GBq (gigabecquerel), of Cs-134 + Cs-137 combined, PER LITER of contaminated water.   So that that translates to [-x1000]:  2350 GBq per cubic meter (aka 2.35 Tbq/m^3 (TeraBecquerel per Cubic Meter) – See my Radiation Units page for help with conversions, prefixes and units.)

[snip]

So, roughly 33 PBq of Cs-137 was estimated to have leaked from the plant in total (ALL that was deposited over Japan, the Pacific, North America and beyond, as well as all that had directly leaked into the waters in the first year of the disaster), and now there’s over 11 PBq, a whopping 1/3rd of that previous estimated total, in a leaking trench near the beach, with groundwater and nearby ocean contamination levels spiking…

[snip]

I think it’s not outside the scope of possibilities that, on top of what has already been released beyond the reactor site so far, that an entire INES-level 6 or 7 disaster is shaping up underground at this moment.  Could it be that we’re looking at the slow-motion beginnings of some type of ‘China Syndrome‘ (molten corium entering the soil underneath a reactor)?

[snip]

If we wanted to add the trench to the (note: outdated already) fallout maps for Japan or Chernobyl, to be consistent with the [TEPCO's 3-10-30-100-...] logarithmic jumps in contamination values for every new color, we’d have to add at least 4 additional colors to the map legend.  To illustrate, I added 5 color blocks to my 2011 fallout maps legend comparison chart (to explore posts related to that see the Nuclear tab above and click the sub-tab Fukushima vs. Chornobyl).  Until they make such a map, this recently skyrocketing trench contamination level is quite literally “off the charts”:
The contamination of the Fukushima Daiichi trench, practically on the beach aside the Pacific Ocean, put in perspective. Graphic by © Michaël Van Broekhoven, 2013.
The different vertical lines in the presentation above are the colors used in different radiation fallout maps, found here.

Independent Nuclear Engineer Arnie Gundersen weighs in on these latest findings:
  • Radio Interview on Radio New Zealand: Arnie Gundersen is interviewed by Wayne Brittenden for his program “Counterpoint”, July 28, 2013LISTEN HERE  [h/t ENEnews, which posted this transcript excerpt; [w/ MVB's emphasis]...At ~12:00 in: Arnie Gundersen, former nuclear industry executive and now chief engineer at the Fairewinds organisation: “The net effect is: the Pacific near Japan, and likely the whole Pacific, over the next 5 years will have cesium levels 5 to 10 times higher than what they were at the peak of bomb testing.  So this is the biggest release of radiation to a body of water in the history of the world, much worse than Chernobyl. So the net effect is we’ve contaminated the biggest body of water on the planet [...]“...
[snip]

But perhaps you wonder the same: this “5 to 10 times higher than what they were at the peak of bomb testing”, how much radiation are we really talking about here?... 

[snip]
[ calculations available in full at source]
[snip]

   ...Seems entirely possible to me… Consider the following:  According to data mentioned in this July 11, 2013 Global Research article, TEPCO’s already storing 400 tons of contaminated water PER DAY, and that groundwater is entering the complex at a rate of ... some whopping 200 tons/day of in-pouring groundwater....  So we’re talking about 3% [5.6/200=2.8] of (becoming radioactive as it passes by molten corium?) water not getting stored and thus making its way to the ocean…

If the water flows, water contamination and failure to stop this continue unabated, then, yes, 5 years of continued leaking would indeed leave us with an entire Pacific Ocean 5 times more contaminated than at the peak of nuclear bomb testing in the early 1960s…  

[snip]

If I were Japan, or any nuclear regulatory agency with a hint of backbone and genuine care for the wellbeing of humanity…, I would declare an all-hands-on-deck ‘Planetary Emergency’...



Every "[snip]" is also worth your time; do trackback to Not All Alleged Is Apparent to read more...

And spread the word.  Who knows?  Maybe someone can stop this fucking insanity.


Be seeing you.