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Of all the lies that came out of the Gulf disaster, the most preposterous has been the 3 leaks on the riser story. Figure 165-0a to 165-0c were the first few schematic illustrations of BP’s blowout incident. They were so embarrassingly stupid and logic defying, most experts believed the schematics were deliberately drawn by cartoonists to confuse the average Joe Public. The patchwork of realities resembled a makeshift car hastily assembled from parts of different size vehicles. Obviously a mini car body does not match the oversize truck tires. It is obvious the 5½ inch drill pipe at leak(3) cannot be the same 21inch diameter riser (actually a well casing) at leak(2). Yet the world's technical experts willfully overlooked this fundamental discrepancy and allowed the criminals to get away with murders. And America, the world's greatest nation shouting human rights abuses all over the world, allowed this hideous crime of mass destruction in its own backyard to go unpunished? In China, the corporate criminals responsible for this environmental carnage would have been executed instead of having their lives back. Can the 11 dead crewmen, their young families and thousands of Gulf victims who suffered numerous medical problems from the toxic contaminated Gulf waters and corexit sprayed on them, ever have their lives back?

Surely the world's most technologically advanced country could not have been so easily fooled by this “3 wells & 3 leaks on a single riser” fairy tale (concocted Beyond Phantasm). Besides the many controversial circumstances surrounding the sinking of the burning rig (DWH) and the sudden breaking of the super-strong riser in calm water, how could a third open-ended leak (3) be even possible beyond the completely severed riser at the second leak (2)? See fig165-0c. Leak(2) has to be the blown crater of well no.#3 as illustrated in many of our previous articles and irrefutably shown in Figure 165-5 with the right coordinates in the few undoctored videos.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” S Homes.

One specialist, Nishio Masamichi, director of the Hakkaido Cancer Center, who initially called for "calm" in the early days following the disaster, wrote recently in a top Japanese business journal that the crisis has caused Japan's "myth of nuclear safety" to fall apart.

Nishio, according to this independent report, says it's time to confront the very real prospect of long-term radiation exposure, and has accused TEPCO executives of hiding the truth about the real damage caused by the disaster at the expense of saving the company. He also laid some blame for the way the aftermath of the disaster was handled on the country's leadership, saying Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Cabinet lacked urgency and direction.

Regarding TEPCO, Nishio said the company gave broken dosimeters to temporary workers and only giving monitors when they are working, despite high levels of radiation throughout the entire site. He also accused the company of putting its workers in a gymnasium-type structure to sleep in order to keep them from running away.

Vermont Yankee could close by March 2012 * Entergy fighting for reactor survival NEW YORK, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Vermont health regulators said on Tuesday they found a fish containing radioactive material in the Connecticut River near Entergy's (ETR.N) Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant which could be another setback for Entergy to keep it running. The state said it needs to do more testing to determine the source of the Strontium-90, which can cause bone cancer and leukemia.

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin wants the 620 megawatts reactor shut in March 2012 when its original operating license was to expire. "Today's troubling news from the Vermont Department of Health is another example of Entergy Louisiana putting their shareholders' profits above the welfare of Vermonters," Shumlin said in a statement. "I am asking my Health Department to keep a close eye on test results moving forward to determine the extent of any contamination that has reached the environment."

New Orleans-based Entergy, the second biggest nuclear power operator in the United States, however wants to keep the reactor running for another 20 years under a new license. Entergy filed a complaint in federal court to block the state from shutting the reactor next year. Officials at Entergy were not immediately available for comment. "One finding of (Strontium-90) just above the lower limit of detection in one fish sample is notable because it is the first time Strontium-90 has been detected in the edible portion of any of our fish samples," the Vermont Department of Health said on its website. The Health Department said it did not know how the Strontium-90, which is both naturally occurring in the environment and a byproduct of nuclear power production and nuclear weapons testing, got into the fish.

Stars and Stripes reporters across Japan and the world are sending disaster dispatches as they gather new facts, updated in real time. All times are local Tokyo time.  Japan is 13 hours ahead of the East Coast. So for example, 8 a.m. EDT is 9 p.m. in Japan.

No increase in Yokota radiation levels   11 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeLatest advisory from Yokota’s Facebook page says base officials there just checked with emergency managers and they have confirmed that the radiation levels at Yokota remain at the same background levels we experience every day (even prior to the quake)."To ensure everyone's safety, we are scanning air samples repeatedly every day, we're checking the water daily and we are inspecting aircraft ... and vehicles as they arrive," the Facebook page says.-- Dave Ornauer

The latest on Navy support to Japan   10:20 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeU.S. 7th Fleet has 12,750 personnel, 20 ships, and 140 aircraft participating in Operation Tomodachi. Seventh Fleet forces have delivered 81 tons of relief supplies to date.USS Tortuga is in the vicinity of Hachinohe where she will serve as an afloat forward service base for helicopter operations. CH-53 Sea Stallion aircraft from attached to Tortuga delivered 13 tons of humanitarian aid cargo on Friday, including 5,000 pounds of water and 5,000 MREs, to Yamada Station, 80 miles south of Misawa.USS Essex, USS Harpers Ferry and USS Germantown with the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived off the coast of Akita prefecture Saturday. Marines of the 31st MEU have established a Forward Control Element in Matsushima to coordinate disaster aid planning with officials. They are scheduled to move to Sendai later Saturday.

When the governor of Fukushima started to say "post-nuke", I thought "OK, he must have found a new way to benefit from the close ties with the national government, other than nuke, or in addition to nuke."According to Yomiuri Shinbun, the latest and final version of the Kan administration's plan for recovery and reconstruction after the March 11 earthquake/tsunami for Fukushima Prefecture will include a host of government research institutions going to Fukushima, with the related industries - heavy electric, utilities, pharmaceutical, etc. - tagging along.

Dr. Shunichi "100 millisieverts are no problem" Yamashita is already in Fukushima, salivating at the unique, world-first opportunity to study the long-term effect of radiation on children. Also, Fukushima University and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, of Monju fame, have signed an agreement to cooperate in research and development of the world-class decontamination technology, among others. (Links are in Japanese.)That the government research institutions rushing to Fukushima makes me wonder if the whole plan is one gigantic experiment using the land, water, air, people, animals, crops, forests and mountains in Fukushima to develop world-class technologies in radiation medicine and decontamination, and renewable energy that the government and the industries can later capitalize on.

Yomiuri Shinbun (3:03AM JST 7/27/2011)

Researchers plan to test for radiation in Yukon's local food supply some six months after a Japanese nuclear disaster

The Northern Contaminants Program will test caribou for radiation as part of its ongoing effort to monitor the Porcupine Caribou Herd.

The decision to test for radiation is being done in part to alleviate worries of residents in the area, said Dr. Brendan Hanley, Yukon's Chief Medical Officer of Health. "There have apparently been some of those questions from citizens," said Hanley. "This is in part an answer, or an attempt to answer some of those questions."

India has improved procedures to deal with a nuclear emergency in the wake of the Fukushima crisis in Japan, the country's atomic energy watchdog said Thursday, after criticism of its preparedness."After Fukushima, we have drawn lessons on all aspects of reactor safety and one positive development is the integrated disaster management plan," the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board chairman S.S. Bajaj said.

Earlier this year, Bajaj's predecessor at the AERB, A. Gopalkrishnan, criticised India's readiness to deal with emergencies of any kind and said that plans to tackle major nuclear incidents were largely a paper exercise.Drills were infrequent "half-hearted efforts which amount more to a sham", he said after an massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Japanese Fukushima plant in March, forcing a re-think on nuclear power around the world.A survey of nearly 10,000 Indians at the time also suggested that 77 percent of people had concerns about atomic safety while 69 percent believed the authorities could not handle a nuclear disaster on the scale of that in Japan.

Bajaj told AFP on the sidelines of a nuclear energy summit in the financial hub Mumbai that India's nuclear emergency plan "was not that positive" in the past but added: "These weaknesses have been plugged."M.C. Abani, a nuclear specialist at the National Disaster Management Authority, said that six emergency exercises had been conducted at Indian nuclear power plants since March and procedures strengthened."NDMA has raised 10 battalions of National Disaster Response Force. Each battalion has 1,150 soldiers and officers. They are trained in handling nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological incidents," he said.

Japan Failed to Hand Out Radiation Pills, Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2011:

Government officials failed to distribute to thousands of people pills that could have minimized radiation risks from the March nuclear accident, government documents show. [...] Though Japan’s nuclear-safety experts recommended dispensing pills immediately, Tokyo didn’t order pills be given out until five days after the March 11 accident, the documents show. By then, most of the nearly 100,000 residents evacuated [...] [The pill] has little effect when administered days after the release of radiation. [...] NISA issued an instruction March 16 for residents of towns within 20 kilometers of the plant to take KI pills, nearly four days after the government issued an evacuation order for those same towns. [...]

“Most of our residents had no idea we were supposed to take medication like that [...] By the time the pills were delivered to our office on the 16th, everyone in the village was gone.” -Juichi Ide, general-affairs chief of Kawauchi Village, located about 20 miles from the plant “I had simply assumed local residents had been given potassium iodide [... I was] flabbergasted [when learning recently that wasn't the case].” -Gen Suzuki, a physician specializing in radiation research and adviser to Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission

Japan Failed to Hand Out Radiation Pills, Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2011:

[...] In interviews with The Wall Street Journal, several national and local government officials and advisers [...] cited an abrupt move by the government shortly after the accident, when local officials raised sharply the level of radiation exposure that would qualify an individual for iodine pills [...] According to official disaster manuals written before the accident, anyone who showed radiation readings of 13,000 counts per minute [...] was to be given KI pills [...] On March 14, Fukushima prefecture raised that cutoff to 100,000 cpm. [...] The World Health Organization advocates [1,300 cpm] for giving the medication to children. [...]

“When they told us they wanted to raise the screening level, we instantly knew we had a serious level of contamination [...] They were implicitly telling us they had more people than they could handle logistically, amid the shortage of water, clothing and manpower.” -Gen Suzuki, a physician specializing in radiation research and adviser to Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission Gauges on radiation monitors set for 13,000 cpm going off repeatedly: “It was very clear the previous level of 13,000 cpm wouldn’t work [...] We discussed how the staff should turn off alarm sounds and refrain from wearing protective suits and face masks in order not to fan worries among residents.” -Naoki Matsuda, a professor of radiation biology at Nagasaki University and an adviser to the Fukushima prefecture government

The main trade group for the nuclear power industry, the Nuclear Energy Institute, spent $580,000 in the first quarter lobbying federal officials about financial support for new reactors, safety regulations and other issues, according to a disclosure report. That's 32 percent more than the $440,000 the trade group spent in the second quarter of last year and 6 percent more than the $545,000 it spent in the first quarter of 2011. The nuclear crisis in Japan last March brought about by the earthquake and tsunami led to calls for tighter safety regulations for nuclear plants in the United States.

NEI, based in Washington, lobbied the government on measures designed to ensure the nation's 104 commercial reactors can withstand natural disasters. It also lobbied on a measure that would require nuclear operators to transfer radioactive spent nuclear fuel from cooling pools inside or near reactor cores to dry casks further from the reactors. In the Japanese nuclear accident, crowded pools of spent nuclear fuel overheated when the nuclear station's cooling power was knocked out. NEI also lobbied the government over environmental regulations. Congress is considering measures that would delay new clean air and clean water rules and curb the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to issue rules by forcing the EPA to factor in the cost of their implementation in addition to medical and scientific evidence.

There also are several measures under consideration that would block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. Nuclear power generation produces no greenhouse gases and none of the airborne toxins such as mercury that EPA clean air rules target. But many nuclear plants use outdated cooling systems that consume enormous amounts of water. Replacing those cooling systems with newer systems that use less water is expensive. NEI also lobbied for funds for research and development for smaller, cheaper reactors and other nuclear technologies.

The threat of radioactive contamination faced particularly by children after the Mar. 11 nuclear disaster in Japan has touched the heart of the Japanese public, and become a major political and social issue. Mothers are inevitably in the forefront of citizen groups working to protect children. At a meeting this week at the Ministry of Welfare, they presented an appeal that included a demand for the world’s first radiation safety standards for minors.

During a meeting with Vice-Minister for Health and Welfare Yoko Komiyama, Emiko Ito from the Fukshima- based Kodomo Zenkoku (Children Across Japan) Net called on the government to do more to protect children. “Safety standards established in nuclear power countries are currently set for adults,” she said. “It is a given fact that children are far more vulnerable to exposure.”

Paediatrician Dr Makoto Yamada from the Network to Protect Children from Radiation told IPS: “The hard truth is that radiation levels set in countries today are continuously challenged. Against such a backdrop, it is almost impossible to set a medically accepted rate for children.” Yamada says he believes children should be protected from all levels of radiation, which is the reason he started his network. The network is comprised of doctors from across Japan who visit Fukushima voluntarily to counsel anxious parents and provide independent radiation testing.

The government should relax restrictions on the amount of allowable radiation in food and also rethink its evacuation criteria for Fukushima Prefecture, site of the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, a British physics professor said Monday

"The real problem is fear," Oxford University professor emeritus Wade Allison said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo. Citing the doses of radiation received in medical procedures, such as CT and PET scans, Allison said Japan's standard — which bans the sale of food containing more than 500 becquerels per kilogram of radiation and requires the evacuation of areas receiving 20 millisieverts a year — is far too conservative.

While setting standards is difficult for the government, which must balance radiation risks against the hardships of evacuation, Allison argues its conservatism does more harm than good. The 500-becquerel limit on food sales imposed by the Japanese government is identical to the EU's limit but lower than the 1,200-becquerel limit set by the United States, which, Allison asserts, is also overly cautious. PET scans, which emit gamma rays to map internal organs, usually the brain, give patients a dose of 15 millisieverts of radiation in a couple of hours, which is the equivalent of eating 2,000 kg of meat tainted with 500 becquerels per kilogram of cesium, he said.

FUKUSHIMA -- The Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) and residents of the zone between 20 and 30 kilometers from the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant held an emergency evacuation drill on Sept. 12.

The GSDF held a similar drill without civilian participation in July. The scenario for the drill presupposed further meltdown of the Fukushima plant's No. 3 reactor core, and a local accumulation of radioactive materials emitting 20 millisieverts of radiation within the next four days. A total of some 400 GSDF personnel were deployed for the drill held in the municipalities of Minamisoma, Tamura, Kawauchi, Hirono, Tomioka and Naraha. Thirty-two municipal workers and firefighters along with 18 local residents also joined the drill.

GSDF personnel went to assigned homes to drive elderly residents to evacuation points, as well as hospitals to drive and fly patients to medical facilities in the city of Fukushima.

On 14 June, preparations for the recharging of a gamma-irradiation facility with cobalt-60 sources were being undertaken in Stamboliysky, Bulgaria. A device already recharged with sources had been taken out, instead of an empty one due to personnel error. As a result, four workers were exposed to a powerful gamma radiation for approximately five minutes.   According to a preliminary assessment by the National Centre of Radiobiology and Radiation Protection the effective dose of each affected individual exceeds 1000 mSv. Detailed medical examinations of the workers have already started. The facility has been brought into a safe state and an investigation commission has been appointed.

Despite the increase, the levels were still well below the amount considered harmful to humans and they posed no health risks to residents at the time, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. The findings, published by a mechanical engineering professor at the Cockrell School of Engineering and researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), provide important insight into the magnitude of the disaster. They also demonstrate huge advancements in the technology that's used for monitoring nuclear material and detecting covert nuclear operations around the world.

"I think the conclusion was that this was a really major event here," Cockrell School of Engineering Associate Professor Steven Biegalski said of the Fukushima disaster. Biegalski was on a faculty research assignment at PNNL in Richland, Washington. Its here that, using technology that Biegalski helped improve, he and a team of researchers were the first to detect radioactive materials from Fukushima in the U.S.

The material detected, Xenon 133, is of the same chemical family as helium and argon and is an inert gas, meaning it does not react with other chemicals. The gas is not harmful in small doses and is used medically to study the flow of blood through the brain and the flow of air through the lungs. Tracy Tipping, a health physicist and laboratory manager at The University of Texas at Austin's Nuclear Engineering Teaching Laboratory, said the average person in the U.S. receives about 16.4 microsieverts of radiation dose per day from various sources of naturally occurring radiation, such as radioactive materials in the soil, cosmic radiation from outer space and naturally occurring radioactive materials within the body. In Washington, the increased levels from Fukushima meant the daily dose during that time could have been about 16.4017. A harmful amount that would cause obvious symptoms of exposure is anywhere from two to three million microsieverts at one time, he said

The prefectural government of Fukushima on Sunday started ultrasonic thyroid examinations for children aged up to 18 when the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant began in March. In a move almost without precedent in the world, around 360,000 children in the prefecture will be examined at the Fukushima Medical University. Parents in Fukushima have shown concern over the issue as many children suffered thyroid cancer after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Lockheed Martin has completed delivery of the National Source Tracking System (NSTS) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The system is an Information Technology tool that assists in the accounting and tracking of radioactive source material typically used in medical, academic and industrial applications.

A nationwide study involving more than 1.3 million children in Switzerland has concluded that there is no evidence of an increased risk of cancer for children born near nuclear power plants.    The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) and the Swiss Cancer League requested that the Institute of Social and Preventative Medicine (ISPM) at the University of Bern perform a study of the relationship between childhood cancer and nuclear power plants in Switzerland. ISPM then teamed with the Swiss Childhood Cancer Registry and the Swiss Paediatric Oncology Group to conduct the Childhood Cancer and Nuclear Power Plants in Switzerland (CANUPIS) study between September 2008 and December 2010. The results have now been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The researchers computed person-years at risk for over 1.3 million children aged 0-15 years born in Switzerland between 1985 and 2009, based on the Swiss censuses 1990 and 2000. They also identified cancer cases in those children from the Swiss Childhood Cancer Registry. The ISPM then compared the rate of leukaemias and cancers in children born less than five kilometres, 5-10 km, and 10-15 km from the nearest nuclear power plants with the risk in children born further away.

Researchers concluded that the risk in the zone within 5 km of a nuclear power plant was "similar" to the risk in the control group areas over 15 km away, with 8 cases compared to 6.8 expected cases. In the 5-10 km zone there were 12 cases compared to 20.3 expected cases. And in the 10-15 km zone there were 31 cases compared to 28.3 expected cases. "A statistically significant increase or reduction in the risk of childhood cancer was not observed in any of the analyses," said the ISPM.

I have a distinct feeling that Japan is getting totally unhinged

Consider these news summaries. Consider them together. Do they make sense to you? Yes they do, don't they? The combined message is this: Let's all rejoice in the radiation, it's good for you and your children. If we all have it everywhere, millions of becquerels of it, that's only fair and equitable

4,320 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium found from the beef from Minami Soma City, Fukushima: the cattle farm that shipped cows found with radioactive cesium far exceeding the already loose provisional safety limit of 500 becquerels/kg is located in the "emergency evacuation-ready zone" - not even "the planned evacuation zone" or plain "evacuation zone", both of which do exist in Minami Soma City. (Various posts at this blog)

SOURCE: German TV-channel ZDF talks with TEPCO-employees (german, english subs), October 8, 2011 At 5:55 in Fukushima prefecture health adviser (Shunichi Yamashita, MD, PhD. Dean. Nagasaki University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences): Those who smile will have no radiation damage, only those who make constant worry… At 6:10 in Less than 100 MICROsieverts per HOUR no danger to health, or 876 millisievert per year — over double Germany’s 400 millisievert LIFETIME exposure limit for nuclear workers…

And from an article today on the Energy Collective: [Emphasis Added]

Harold Swartz of Dartmouth Medical School [...] basically said that in the real events of Fukushima [...] the “worried well” are the major issue. Civilians will not experience exposure at a dose which would measurably increase their chances of getting cancer or limit their life-expectancy. At the same time, they will not believe any official reassurances that “everything is okay.” It would be the duty of the scientific community to explain that people are not in danger of cancer or early death. In other words, it would be the duty of the scientific community to reduce one of the major public health effects of any type of accident: fear and anxiety.