Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is reminding Tokyo Electric Power Company that it must stop the flood of contamination that is still pouring into the ocean.
According to NHK, TEPCo is still trying to figure out how to stop leaks of contaminated water. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency gave TEPCo until 01 June 2011 to figure out a way to plug the leaks.
Recently Tokyo Electric Power Company tried to blame the metldown of reactor 1 on an employee turning off the cooling system. Turns out the employee was following TEPCo’s own operating manual!
TEPCo now says the employee was following procedure because coolants temps had actually dropped, so much that their manual called for the shut down of the cooling system.
They also revealed that data recorded immediately after 11 March 2011 does not show any cooling problems, for at least 30 minutes after the 11 March quake/tsunami. A week ago TEPCo said reactor 1 began meltdown in the early hours of 12 March. Reactor 3 melted down on 13 March and reactor 2 on 15 March. I have to think that TEPCo’s instrumentation is faulty, or TEPCo officials are inept at reading the data collected, why else are they just now figuring this out?
Tokyo Electric Power Company now confirm reactors 2 and 3 at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, melted down within days after the 11 March tsunami.
Reactor 3 began meltdown on 13 March, Reactor 2 on 15 March.
Previously TEPCo officials said their inability to access the reactor buildings kept them from the knowledge of any meltdowns, but a Japanese expert says that’s BS.
According to NHK, Naito Masanori of the Institute of Applied Energy, says data from the reactors should have been easy to get. In fact TEPCo sould have realized meltdowns were taking place within a day, not several months.
The latest admission from TEPCo means that three nuclear reactors melted down within days of the 11 March disasters, again proving that this is worse than Chernobyl. It also proves that TEPCo literally fiddled while Fukushima burned. In a previous posting I wrote how TEPCo spent most of their time in the first weeks of the nuke disaster trying to come up with plans to build new reactors.
“The co-operation that I see every day in intelligence matters is without parallel in the world. So is our nuclear co-operation. Our armed forces are working together with intimate closeness”-William Hague, British Foreign Secretary
According to British media, President Obama will make a joint announcement, with Prime Minister David Cameron, concerning a new U.S./U.K. national security policy.
The new “National Security Strategy Board” will meet several times per year, to discuss issues such as terrorism, and the so called Arab Spring revolution.
More details will be given on the May 24 announcement.
May 22, the day after the Queen of England left Ireland, a Northern Ireland bank was hit by a small bomb. Three masked men burst into the bank, warning customers they had one hour to leave before the bomb went off. Police say people could have been killed if they were still in the bank when the bomb exploded.
May 23, President Barack Obama arrived in Ireland, where he was greeted by at least one hundred protesters.
“Barack Obama came to power promising change, but in reality he has continued the policies of the Bush era.”-John Molynuex, protester
He is scheduled to visit United Kingdom next, where he will have dinner with the Queen of England (a sure sign that the U.S. is under control of the British Empire). Thousands of protesters plan to demonstrate outside Buckingham palace while he dines with the Queen.
“We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech…”-President Barak Obama, May 19 Middle East speech
Obama talks about freedom of speech, while at the same time bans reporters from being present at White House press briefings.
Reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Herald, are the latest to be banned from the White House.
White House spokesman Matt Lehrich, admits the move regarding the Boston Herald, was a purely personal decision. Basically Obama didn’t like the editorial decisions of the paper: “I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters. My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting U.S. President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits.”
In other words, Obama was mad that the Boston Herald didn’t make his visit to Boston a front page story!
Regarding the San Francisco Chronicle, reporters were banned after the SFC posted video of a protest in which Obama was heckled (bad a poorly sung song) for failing to come through on many promises, and on the treatment of Army Private Bradley Manning.
The amazing thing, if you watch the video, is that It doesn’t really make Obama look bad. He wasn’t trying to avoid their questions, or sending his goons to squash the protesters. So why did he ban the SFC reporter who posted the video? The official White House response was that the SFC is part of the “print pool”, meaning newspaper reporters should not be making and posting videos!
Wake up people of the United States, Obama is a hypocrite, just like most presidents before him.
French environment minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, declared a “crisis situation” because of the ongoing drought. She explained that current water levels are the same as if it was July, instead of May.
She has ordered a third of all French administrative departments to cut back on water use. Two-thirds of the country’s groundwater reserves are reported to be below normal.
Korean media reporting the three U.S. Army veterans have testified that they were ordered to dump 250 55-gallon barrels of Agent Orange on a U.S. base in South Korea.
“They just told us it was going to be used for disposal.”-Steve House, veteran
South Korea’s environment ministry will take soil samples at Camp Carroll in Chilgok County, North Gyeongsang. The local government wants the United States to pay: “If the news report is true, the U.S. military must take responsibility, pay compensation and conduct regular Korea-U.S. joint inspections.”
While British Petroleum fights to pin blame on others for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, they somehow have convinced one of its Japanese business partners to pay for part of it.
MOEX, a unit of Japanese trading firm Mitsui and Company, will pay just over $1 billion to cover damages and clean up. MOEX is a 10% shareholder of BP.
British Petroleum is struggling to come up with an estimated $40 billion to pay for damages and clean up.
Tokyo Electric Power Company president, Shimizu Masataka, has resigned, and will step down in June.
TEPCo has lost $15 billion. $12 billion of that is directly due to dealing with the ongoing nuclear disaster at their Fukushima Daiichi plant.
In order to pay compensation to people affected by the radiation disaster, TEPCo will sell off $7 billion in property, and cut $6 billion in operating expenses by laying employees off, and ending research & development.