Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, says the situation is so bad that “This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives. … It’s very difficult for me to contemplate that but it’s, it may have reached that point.”
The U.S. military has banned service members […] Continue Reading…
The Japanese government now says the official number of dead has hit 13,000.
This number will increase, as local prefectures are giving numbers that, taken together, are more than the official national government count. Also, there are still tens of thousand missing, according to local governments.
After watching interviews of tsunami survivors it has become clear that there was very little time between the 9.0 quake and the first tsunami surge.
Most survivors say there was less than 15 minutes from the time of the quake to the tsunami impact. An environmental activist from the United States, Brian Barnes, says where […] Continue Reading…
The Japanese government is turning to hotels to house evacuees from the ongoing nuclear disaster.
People living within 20km of the Fukushima Daiichi plant were ordered to evacuate. Many people discovered that the shelters they were supposed to report to were already full of quake/tsunami survivors.
A Japanese doctor, who specializes in radiation sickness, says microsievert is OK (in general). Millisievert is bad, because it is 1,000 times more than microsievert.
Japanese officials have given radiation levels in both sieverts, sometimes correcting each other during the press conferences. This is causing confusion, and adding to people’s mistrust of officials.
One official reading […] Continue Reading…
Dr Thomas Neff, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said “This is a slow-moving nightmare.”
Fukushima Daiichi reactors 3 & 4 are priorities. Reactor 4 has a large amount of spent fuel rods on fire. Reactor 3 is the only reactor at the plant that uses plutonium. Plutonium is the most deadly of the fuels […] Continue Reading…
Guenther Oettinger, European Union’s energy chief, said the Fukushima Daiichi plant was “…effectively out of control”.
Japanese fire trucks, police water cannon trucks, as well as water trucks from the U.S. military, are heading towards the pant. This is because the helicopter water drops stopped due to high radiation levels. Official radiation reports for the […] Continue Reading…
The Japanese government is pleading with private companies to help supply people evacuated from around the Fukushima nuclear plant, with food, water and other supplies.
This is a clear indicator that the Japanese government is not prepared for such an emergency, despite the international perception of Japan’s high level of disaster readiness.
TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) is asking the JSDF to make another try at dropping water on the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The Japanese Self Defense Forces stopped after radiation levels, above the plant, got too high.
Plant workers are trying to prevent a massive melt down of fuel rods (1,000+), which have overheated and caught fire.
There are more than 1,000 spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daiichi plant. So far attempts to cool the rods down with water is failing.
To show how hard it is to cool down spent fuel rods: It takes 3 to 4 years under normal conditions.
The large amount of spent fuel rods, at the plant, means […] Continue Reading…