Fukushima is falling apart and the impact will be felt here ( in fact , we already have had a great impact , not that the EPA would do anything about this )

Title: Why Nuclear Scientists Have Missed the Danger of Spent Fuel Pools
Source: Akio Matsumura
Author: Gordon Edwards
Date: Jan. 23, 2012

Dear Akio,

You asked me why there has been so little warning from the “nuclear establishment” (TEPCO and the regulatory agency) about the potential for catastrophic accidents involving the spent fuel pool in reactor number 4.

[...]

In addition to the possibility of zirconium fires (which have for a long time been almost completely overlooked by nuclear engineers and regulators) there is another, even more dangerous possibility. An alteration in the geometry of the spent fuel in the pool, by which the separation between the spent fuel rods is slightly but significantly reduced, can lead to re-initiation of the chain reaction in the pool.

This “accidental criticality” will not only drive the temperature up rapidly, but will also replenish the supply of short-lived heat-producing fission products, accelerating the damage to the fuel, magnifying the heat loading, increasing the probability of a fuel pool meltdown, and vastly increasing the atmospheric releases of radioactivity.

It has been a standard practice in the nuclear industry to avoid consideration of all of these possibilities, based on the assumption that there will be “lots of time” to react to any emergency involving the spent fuel pool, as it will normally take days for the spent fuel to reach the melting point and it will be a “simple matter” to refill the pools with water if necessary.

This ignores the fact that major structural damage may make it impossible to approach the spent fuel pool due to the lethal levels of gamma radiation emanating from the spent fuel once the protective shielding of the water is gone.

http://enenews.com/canadian-nuclear-scientist-another-even-more-dangerous-possibility-than-fire-at-spent-fuel-pool-no-4-re-initiation-of-chain-reaction-can-occur-if-fuel-rods-move-slightly-an-accidental-critica

and.....



http://endthelie.com/2012/04/21/fukushima-is-falling-apart-are-you-ready/#axzz1sjwfD6ve

Fukushima is falling apart: are you ready?

By Christina Consolo

Contributing writer for End the Lie and host of Nuked Radio

Investigators visiting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in May 2011 (Image credit: Greg Webb/IAEA)

Thirteen months have passed since the Fukushima reactors exploded, and a U.S. Senator finally got off his ass and went to Japan to see what is going on over there.

What he saw was horrific.

And now he is saying that we are in big trouble.

See the letter he sent to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Ichiro Fujisaki, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and NRC’s Chairman Gregory Jaczko here.

But what is so ironic about this is that we have been in this heap of trouble since March of 2011. March 17^th, to be exact, when the plume of radioactive materials began bombarding the west coast of California.

And Oregon. And Washington. And British Columbia. And later Maine, Europe, and everywhere in between.

Independent researchers, nuke experts, and scientists, from oceanography to entomology and everywhere in between, having been trying to sound the alarm ever since.

The scientists most upset are those who have studied the effects of radiation on health. I’ll say it again, so its really clear: we are in big trouble.

The most preliminary reports of soil contamination are starting to come in from the USGS, who has seemed reluctant to share this information. Los Angeles, California, Portland, Oregon, and Boulder, Colorado, so far have the highest radioactive particle contamination out of the entire US.

That being said, every single city tested across the country showed contamination from Fukushima. What is even more alarming, however, about the numbers coming in, is that they are from samples taken April 5^th, of last year.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has only recently confirmed that there were three meltdowns, and they have been ongoing, unabated, for thirteen months, and no effort has been made to contain them.

Technology has to be developed/invented to deal with the melted out corium under the reactors. Until then, they will keep doing what they have been doing.

TEPCO just keeps dumping water on them, after which they let it pour into the ocean, and steam up through the ground, every second of every day. The jet stream, and a highly dynamic portion of our atmosphere called the troposphere, have been swirling around massive amounts of radioactive particles and settling them out, mostly in rain, over the entire northern hemisphere, especially the west coast of North America, from Alaska down to Baja and even further.

Iodine, cesium, strontium, plutonium, uranium, and a host of other fission products have been coming directly from Japan to the west coast for thirteen months.

Maybe you have heard about sick seals, polar bears, tainted fish, mutations in dandelions and fruits and vegetables, possibly even animals already, and seaweed. In fact the kelp from Corona del Mar contained 40,000,000 bcq/kg of radioactive iodine, as reported in Scientific American several weeks ago.

If you don’t know your becquerels, its a lot. That’s what your pacific fish feed on. And that was only ONE isotope reported. There were up to 1600 different isotopes that have been floating around in our air, pouring out of the reactors, and steaming out of the ground, every second of every day, for 13 months.

And there has been silence from our mainstream media, for which the depths of depravity are so severe I will devote an entire article just to the “why” at a future time.

But back to the research: reports in the past week indicate the pollen in southern California is radioactive now too, and it is flying around, and if you live there and go outside, you are breathing it in. And so are your children.

Along with fission products blowing over from Japan. And radiation in your drinking water. And in your rain. And in the fish you are eating. And your vegetables. And the milk supply. And its happening every second, of every day. For 13 months. Are you starting to see a problem here?

Problem is, that’s not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is what Senator Wyden is all bent out of shape about, even though independent researchers and nuke experts have been warning about this for a year.

And that is that the Reactor #4 building is on the verge of collapsing. Seismicity standards rate the building at a zero, meaning even a small earthquake could send it into a heap of rubble. And sitting at the top of the building, in a pool that is cracked, leaking, and precarious even without an earthquake, are 1565 fuel rods (give or take a few), some of them “fresh fuel” that was ready to go into the reactor on the morning of March 11^th when the earthquake and tsunami hit.

If they are MOX fuel, containing 6% plutonium, one fuel rod has the potential to kill 2.89 billion people. If this pool collapses, as Senator Wyden is now saying too, we would face a mass extinction event from the release of radiation in those rods.

That is, if we aren’t in one already. Nuke experts like Arnie Gundersen and Helen Caldicott are prepared to evacuate their families to the southern hemisphere if that happens. It is that serious.

So now you know, if you didn’t before. We are in big trouble.

Get informed. Start paying attention to this. Every single statement in this article is verifiable, and I will continue to verify and validate the seriousness of this situation at every opportunity I have.

This may be the most important thing you ever pay attention to, for the sake of your family, friends, your neighbors, every one you know and meet, all of humanity.

It’s been thirteen months, you have some catching up to do.

and....

Title: Audit Confirms EPA Radiation Monitors Broken During Fukushima Crisis
Source: Global Security Newswire | NTI
Author: Douglas P. Guarino
Date: Apr 23, 2012
Emphasis Added

An internal audit has confirmed observers’ concerns that many of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation monitors were out of service at the height of the 2011 Fukushima power plant meltdown in Japan [...]

RadNet consists of 124 stations scattered throughout U.S. territories and 40 deployable air monitors that can be sent to take readings anywhere, according to the IG report. [...]

At the time of the Fukushima crisis, “this critical infrastructure asset” was impaired because many monitors were broken, while others had not undergone filter changes in so long that they could not be used to accurately detect real-time radiation levels, the IG report says.

“On March 11, 2011, at the time of the Japan nuclear incident, 25 of the 124 installed RadNet monitors, or 20 percent, were out of service for an average of 130 days,” the report says. “In addition, six of the 12 RadNet monitors we sampled (50 percent) had gone over eight weeks without a filter change, and two of those for over 300 days,” the report adds, noting that EPA policy calls on operators to change the filters twice per week.

Currently, “EPA remains behind schedule for installing” radiation monitors and has not resolved contracting issues identified as causing similar problems with the system in a 2009 audit, the report says. “Until EPA improves contractor oversight, the agency’s ability to use RadNet data to protect human health and the environment, and meet requirements established in the National Response Framework for Radiological Incidents,is potentially impaired.” [...]

EPA uses FDA standards

[I]n Hilo, Hawaii, EPA had detected radioactive iodine in milk at concentrations of 18 picocuries per liter, which is about six times greater than the agency’s maximum contaminant level of 3 picocuries per liter for the contaminant in drinking water. In Little Rock, Ark., the agency detected radioactive iodine in milk at concentrations of 8.9 picocuries per liter – aboutthree times the regulatory level.

At the time, the agency defended its statements that the iodine levels were not a threat by noting that they were below emergency guidelines established by the U.S. Food and Drug administration. Documents the agency released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that someEPA officials, though, had questioned whether the FDA guidelines were appropriate given how dramatically less strict they were than the agency’s own enforceable regulations.

Taking Action

Advocacy groups – including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Committee to Bridge the Gap – raised concerns about broken and out of service monitors in an August 2011 letter to the agency and during an October 2011 presentation to top EPA officials in Washington.

Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California (Santa Cruz) and president of Committee to Bridge the Gap

• The April 19 report by the EPA Inspector General’s Office also casts further doubt on the agency’s already controversial claims that radiation from Fukushima did not pose any public health threat on U.S. soil

• • The report “raises serious questions about bland assurances at the height of the Fukushima disaster that no radiation was reaching the U.S.”
  • “It also raises serious questions about whether EPA will be prepared if a nuclear incident occurs in the United States”
  • Hirsch asked whether the agency “views its job as providing reassurance or providing factual information”

  h/t Anonymous tip