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I don't know if China's "hiding" is any worse than that of Japan, but if I see any confirming information I'll update.After the Fukushima I nuclear accident, it dawned on many Japanese (probably for the first time) that almost entire Japan is DOWNWIND from China, who plans to have 100 nuclear power plants. And thanks to the Fukushima accident, many Japanese now know it's not the distance that matters when it comes to a nuclear power plant accident, but wind and weather.

The higher the TFR number, the more the population will grow and expand. On the other hand, a TFR number below 2 kids per woman means the population is shrinking for the next generation. Nuclear weaponeers who know about these things say it is impossible for a society to recover, or grow again, with a TFR below 1.3 kids per woman. In short, that society is doomed. Japan’s TFR plummeted to 1.2 since the detonation of the two 10,000 lb sperm and ovary destroying uranium poison gas bombs in August, 1945.

A few weeks after the atomic bombing, Australian journalist George Weller managed to sneak into occupied Japan and nuked Nagasaki in spite of US Army General Douglas MacArthur’s prohibition. Weller, an experienced war correspondent, was utterly stunned at the extent of the other worldly devastation and killing of the Atomic Bomb. Mr. Weller coined the term “Atomic Plague” which then swept around the world on a wave of revulsion at what the Americans had done. Diplomats and other people politically or militarily in-the-know knew the Japanese were eager to surrender and that President Truman lied in his bull shit speech about the Atomic Bomb “saving American lives” that would be forfeit if the US were to invade Japan.

What’s more, the dominant owners of the NYT, the Sultzberger family, like it that way. The family has had a slash and burn radiation policy ever since Hiroshima in 1945. No Lie was too Big, in fact, the Bigger and more Bizarre the better. Germany’s WWII Fuhrer Adolph Hitler may have coined the concept “The Big Lie;” but, the New York Times spun it out to a degree that would make even Hitler proud.

The Radiation Warfare Committee controlled Manhattan Project to build the Atomic Bomb got its name from its organizer, the Manhattan Engineering District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The Sultzbergers’ NY Times was only too eager to help the fledgling CIA and the US War Department lie about the nuke bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan that incinerated hundreds of thousands of people. Many were literally vaporized into nothingness. The Big Lie Lives On with the NY Times

The coming Fuku Kid Disaster and Fuku Kill Off First and foremost will be the ever nasty New York Times (NYT.) When it comes to something really, vitally important to all our futures, our families and friends, we can always count on the NYT to lie through their teeth for the nuclear industry criminals and mass murderers. That is nothing new for the Times, they always have.

The six devastated US Navy/GE reactors at Fukushima Daiichi finished the Kill Truman ordered 65 years, 7 months, and 6 days later on March 3, 2011. Sayonara, Japan, you are history. “Who’s Next?” Good question. There are 438 big reactors, just stationary nuclear weapons really, in the world. 104 big nuke reactors are in America and many, like the Fuku reactors,  are by the sea due to the exorbitant, one billion gallons a day water demand of the reactors. Even the inland reactors are exquisitely vulnerable to becoming another Fukushima. If any lose electricity and off site feeds, a Fuku type meltdown is guaranteed.

The people in the Japanese NHK TV video below live in Northern Japan. They must evacuate and many are dying. Many won’t leave, preferring Denial as the better course to reality and Evacuation. After all, you can’t see, feel, hear or taste radiation as it liquefies your insides. Any of us could be next.

The US Military and probably Russia’s Military, the former Soviet Union, possess weapons that can accomplish this kind of devastation. They should, at least the US has devoted billions to controlling what the DOD calls “earth processes” for 60 years. That would be your basic hurricanes, tornadoes, rain, drought, earthquakes, tsunamis, rogue waves and volcanoes. Even a medium sized tropical storm, not even big enough to be a hurricane or typhoon, contains as much energy as 10,000 Hiroshima sized Atomic Bombs. If the War Department, later renamed to the Department of Defense to confuse the do-gooders, could control the weather or “Earth Processes” they would control the world. That’s the long held dream of Psychos and control freaks everywhere.

Now six months after the disaster, the smoking gun has finally surfaced, not on a Japanese paddy field but inside a pile of steer manure from a pasture near Sacramento, California

The sample of cattle dung and underlying soil was sent to the nuclear engineering lab of the University of California, Berkeley, which reported on September 6:

We tested a topsoil sample and a dried manure sample from the Sacramento area. The manure was produced by a cow long before Fukushima and left outside to dry; it was rained on back in March and April. Both samples showed detectable levels of Cs-134 and Cs-137, with the manure showing higher levels than the soil probably because of its different chemical properties and/or lower density. One interesting feature of t the Sacramento and Sonoma soil samples is that the ratio of Cesium-137 to Cesium-134 is very large - approximately 17.6 and 5.5, respectively. All of our other soil samples until now had shown ratios of between 1 and 2. We know from our air and rainwater measurements that material from Fukushima has a cesium ratio in the range of approximately 1.0 to 1.5, meaning that there is extra Cs-137 in these two soil samples. The best explanation is that in addition to Fukushima fallout, we have also detected atmospheric nuclear weapons testing fallout in these soils. Weapons fallout contains only Cs-137 (no Cs-134) and is known to be present in older soils ..Both of these samples come from older soils, while our samples until this point had come from newer soils.

The last atmospheric nuclear blast at the Nevada Test Site occurred in 1962, whereas the manure was presumably dropped less than 49 years ago. Over the past year, the approximate life-span of a cow patty, the rain that fell on the plain came not from a former province of Spain. Within that short time-frame, the only possible origin of radioactive fallout was Fukushima.To think otherwise would be lame.

Sun-dried manure is more absorbent than the rocky ground of Northern California, which explains the higher level in Sacramento dung than in the Sonoma soil. As a rule of thumb, the accuracy of radiation readings tends to improve with higher concentration of the test material.The manure acted like a sponge for the collection of radioactive rainfall. Its ratio of Cs-137 (resulting from enriched uranium) to Cs-134 (from a civilian fuel rod) is more than 17-to-1. Larger by 1,700 percent, this figure indicates fission of large amounts of weapons-grade material at Fukushima.

The recent higher readings were probably based on either late releases from a fire-destroyed extraction facility or the venting of reactor No.3, a Toshiba-designed unit that used plutonium and uranium mixed oxide or MOX fuel. Unannounced nighttime airborne releases in early May caused radiation burns in many people, as happened to my forearms. Those plumes then drifted toward North America.

Enrichment of uranium for nuclear warheads is prohibited under constitutional law in Japan and by terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Since no suspects have been charged by prosecutors, this cannot be a plot by a few individuals but stands as the crime of a national entity.

Yellow-Cake Factory 608   Fukushima Province has a history of involvement in atomic weapons development, according to a New York Times article by Martin Fackler titled "Fukushima's Long Link to a Dark Nuclear Past" (Sept. 6). Following the lead of Japanese news reports, the correspondent visited the town of Ishikawa, less than an hour's drive south of the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant. There he interviewed Kiwamu Ariga who as a student during the war was forced to mine uranium ore from a local foothill to supply the military-run Factory 608, which refined the ore into yellow-cake.

Several research groups worked on building a super-weapon for militarist Japan. The Naval Technology Research Institute was best-positioned due to its secret cooperation with the German Navy. Submarine U-234 was captured in the Atlantic after Germany's surrender with a cargo of uranium along with two dead passengers - Japanese military officers .Soon after departing Norway, U-864 was bombed and sunk, carrying a load of two tons of processed uranium..

In the article for the Atlanta Constitution, dated, Oct. 2, 1946, David Snell reported that the Japanese military had successfully tested a nuclear weapon off Konan on Aug. 12, 1945. There are detractors who dispute the account by a decommissioned Japanese intelligence officer to the American journalist, stationed in occupied Korea with the 24th Criminal Investigation Detachment of the U.S. Army. A cursory check on his background shows Snell to have been a credible reporter for Life magazine, who also contributed to the Smithsonian and The New Yorker magazines. A new book is being written by American and Russian co-authors on the Soviet shoot-down of the Hog Wild, a B-29 that flew over Konan island soon after the war's end..

Due to its endemic paranoia about all things nuclear, the U.S. government had a strong interest in suppressing the story of Japan's atomic bomb program during the war, just as Washington now maintains the tightest secrecy over the actual situation at Fukushima.

The emerging picture shows that nuclear-weapons development, initiated in 1954 by Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and supervised by Yasuhiro Nakasone, was centered inside civilian nuclear plants, since the Self-Defense Forces were bound by strict Constitutional rules against war-making and the Defense Agency is practically under the direct supervision of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Funding came from the near-limitless budget of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which today claims financial insolvency without explanation of how its vast cash holdings disappeared. A clandestine nuclear program must be expensive, since it would include the cost of buying the silence of parliament, the bureaucracy and foreign dignitaries.

Following the March 11 disaster, TEPCO sent a team of 250 emergency personnel into the plant, yet only 50 men were assigned to cooling the reactors. The other 200 personnel stayed out of sight, possibly to dismantle an underground plutonium-extraction facility. No foreign nuclear engineers or Japanese journalists were ever permitted entry into the reactor structures.   Radiation leakage from Fukushima No.1 prevented local police from rescuing hundreds of tsunami survivors in South Soma, many of whom consequently went unaided and died of wounds or exposure. Tens of thousands of farmers have lost their ancestral lands, while much of Japan's agriculture and natural areas are contaminated for several generations and possibly longer, for the remaining duration of the human species wherever uranium and plutonium particles have seeped into the aquifers.

TEPCO executives, state bureaucrats and physicists in charge of the secret nuclear program are evading justice in contempt of the Constitution. As in World War II, the Japanese conservatives in their maniacal campaign to eliminate their imagined enemies succeeded only in perpetrating crimes against humanity and annihilating their own nation. If history does repeat itself, Tokyo once again needs a tribunal to send another generation of Class-A criminals to the gallows.

For example, many of you have probably seen or read the Associated Press hit piece on the effort by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear industry to address the issue of aging nuclear power stations

The encouraging thing about that response is that it happened on the SAME DAY as the AP report was released. After Dan published his report, he notified the world via Twitter that the post was up. I have already had the opportunity to retweet his announcement and to share his link in a conversation related to a Huffington Post article titled U.S. Nuclear Regulators Weaken Safety Rules, Fail To Enforce Them: AP Investigation and in a conversation on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress titled AP Bombshell: U.S. Nuclear Regulators “Repeatedly” Weaken Safety Rules or are “Simply Failing to Enforce Them”.Think about that – it has been just 24 hours since the AP story hit the wires, yet nuclear professionals are already sharing a completely different side of the story without the filter of someone else deciding what is important.

However, the AP reporter, most likely someone who has never worked on an old car or repaired an old submarine, took a lot of stories out of context. He added a number of scary sounding inferences about the relationship between the regulators and the regulated. In response to the story, Dan Yurman, who blogs at Idaho Samizdat and was a professional journalist before he became a nuclear professional, reached out for real expertise.

He interviewed Dr. John Bickel, a man who has about 39 years worth of professional experience in plant aging, defense in depth and other safety related issues. You can read Dan’s excellent article at Associated Press Nukes the NRC on Reactor Safety.

It should be no secret to anyone that the average age of nuclear power plants in the US increases by almost exactly one year with every passing year. We are only officially building one plant right now, with four more that will enter that category as soon as the NRC issues the construction and operating licenses. It is also no secret that the NRC and the industry have been working hard to address aging as part of the effort to relicense plants for an additional 20 years, a process that is complete for more than 60 plants so far.

Another thing that is different about the fight over using atomic energy now, compared to the fight that happened in the late 1960s through the 1990s is that the opposition has a much less capable base of leaders. In the previous phase of the battle, the antinuclear movement grew out of a morally understandable effort to stop testing nuclear weapons in the earth’s atmosphere.

That effort was inspired by real world events like showering a Japanese fishing vessel with lethal doses of fallout from an ill-timed test in the middle of the Pacific ocean. It was led by some of the world’s most renowned atomic scientists, many of whom bore a deep moral guilt for their wartime efforts to build the Bomb in the first place.

When that effort succeeded in convincing the US, the UK and Russia to agree to stop atmospheric testing in 1963, some of the organizations that had been formed to do the heavy lifting saw substantial decreases in membership and contributions. After all, they could have easily hung up a large banner saying “Mission Accomplished” and closed up shop. Some did just that. Some persisted for a while with a variety of related issues like fighting against antiballistic missile installations and medium range rockets.

The groups organized against nuclear energy today are no longer led by world renowned scientists, though they do have some media celebrities with spotty professional histories and puffed up resumes. In many cases, they are grayer than I am and less well versed in the techniques of modern communications. Their fellow travelers on blogs and message boards routinely expose their own ignorance and sometimes their near illiteracy.

In contrast to the past, many of the renowned nuclear scientists and engineers in the profession today have no guilt at all. They did not participate in developing fearful weapons of mass destruction. Instead, they have spent their lives participating in an enterprise that provides massive quantities of emission free, low cost power to the people of the world. Seasoned professionals like Ted Rockwell, Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin and Gail Marcus are out there blogging away and telling people what they know to be true about nuclear energy.

Enthusiastic younger people like Kirk Sorensen, Jack Gamble, and Suzy Hobbs are sharing optimistic visions for the future and explaining why they have chosen to support nuclear energy development, often in the face of numerous friends who disagree

I am encouraged. Atomic energy is alive and well; there is nothing that humans can do to eliminate its existence. We are entering a golden age of nuclear energy where facts and reality will overcome fictional tall tales spun by folks like Arnie Gundersen or Paul Blanche.

As Curt Stager and other researchers like him have determined, the material will be suspended in our atmosphere and affecting our climate for at least 100,000 years. Many of the effects are somewhat unpredictable and not terribly beneficial. The duration of the effect gets worse if we continue on our present course and speed. An unaltered dependence on fossil fuels also puts future generations at risk of trying to figure out how to operate an economy WITHOUT access to reliable sources of controlled heat.

The twin attributes of supply sustainability and climate change mitigation are nuclear fission power advantages topics that have attracted some high profile converts (Mark Lynas, George Monbiot, James Hansen, Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Cravens, and Patrick Moore, for example) to the cause of pronuclear advocacy. If nuclear energy’s potential as a climate change mitigation strategy is something that attracts former antinuclear protesters and causes them to reevaluate their opposition, that alone makes it something worth emphasizing

It was interesting to hear that the primary nuclear technology that Curt mentions as being worth aggressive pursuit is based on thorium, but I am pretty sure that is mainly because thorium evangelists have done a better job of guerilla marketing since 2005 than the people who have been refining uranium-based nuclear reactors for the past 5 decades.

As I often to tell my thorium enthused friends – you cannot build or operate a thorium reactor without uranium. I also tell both my buddies who are thorium advocates and my integral fast reactor (IFR) friends that any atomic fission power plants is better than any hydrocarbon based power plant. I hope that someday soon, fission fans will stop engaging in fratricidal attacks on each other, but I guess I have always been a bit of a dreamer

To jump-start construction of modular reactors, the administration proposed a cost-sharing program of $500 million over five years to help two companies develop designs and obtain Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses. The DOE funds would be equally matched with industry money. There are those who maintain the government should not be involved in energy development, and that it should be left to the marketplace to determine which technologies emerge in America’s energy future. That’s an understandable sentiment, given the Solyndra scandal. But nuclear power, which has enabled the nation to meet its energy needs for more than a half-century without polluting the air or depending on the whims of foreign rulers, got its start with government financial backing. The first nuclear plants were built with government funds.

Like conventional nuclear plants, small modular reactors could produce electricity around the clock, day in and day out, without being subject to weather conditions. But what’s especially appealing about small reactors is their affordability. Instead of having to pay the capital cost of a new nuclear plant, which can run $8 billion or more, a utility would have the option of ordering small modular reactors for construction in a series, as funds become available and the need for electricity arises. The Tennessee Valley Authority recently signed a letter of intent to buy six small modular reactors using conventional light–water reactor technology, each with the capacity to produce 125 megawatts of electricity, from Babcock & Wilcox, a Virginia-based nuclear manufacturer. A small reactor is expected to take three years to build instead of five years or more for a conventional 1,200-megawatt nuclear plant. Experts say that a prototype reactor would cost about $500 million.

Small modular reactors — known as SMRs — would be shipped from a factory by rail or truck to a nuclear site and situated side-by-side. They would be hooked to the same electric-power grid but operate independently of one another. One module could be taken off line for refueling and maintenance while the others produce electricity. At some locations, modular reactors could be situated beneath the ground for security. What’s more, SMRs are air-cooled. They don’t have to be located on the oceanfront or near lakes and rivers, an important feature in large parts of the world where water resources are scarce.

The question is whether, in the face of opposition from Sen. Feinstein and some other members, Congress will make funds available for developing SMRs. At least 10 U.S. nuclear companies have done preliminary design work. They include such well-known names as Westinghouse, General Electric, General Atomics and Babcock & Wilcox. And a number of start-up companies are part of the competition. “SMRs could change the game and restore U.S. leadership in nuclear power,” said Vic Reis, a senior adviser in the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. “Nuclear power is essential to the administration’s commitment to clean energy.”

But if our reactor designs are going to be competitive in the global marketplace, it is essential that American companies be able to compete on a level playing field. Foreign reactor manufacturers have the backing of their governments in the form of subsidies and grants. Our companies, on the other hand, are cut off from government support. Congress can and must make this a turnaround decade in building a more affordable modular reactor for electricity generation. A factory-built small reactor should be the cornerstone of our government’s energy strategy.

Meanwhile, also in line with the planned grid would be a program called the Mediterranean Solar Plan, which is pushing for the quicker development of renewable energy sources in the southern and eastern rims of the Mediterranean, mostly through solar power, Kowal added. “This solar plan cannot become a reality if you don’t have a transmission system to transmit the electricity,” he said. Medgrid would serve as such a transmission system, to allow neighbor nations to benefit from each other’s renewable sources, rather than relying on polluting sources to fill in gaps during peak hours, according to Kowal.

The idea is to try to find out what could be this network all around the Mediterranean, but also to assess what could be the conditions to make it real because there are so many problems,” he added. One such problem, according to Kowal, is that the interconnections between the southeastern Mediterranean countries are currently very weak, particularly among Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. “If we want to develop this system, we will have to rely on submarine cables going from south to north,” he said, noting, however, that cables can currently only go to a maximum depth of 1,650 meters.