Tag Archives: economy

Fukushima

Bill Nye is right, Tokyo Electric now checking for Plutonium! NOW?

TEPCo has asked another company to check soil samples for plutonium. Plutonium is created when the uranium fuel rods are “jolted” during the fission process.  If reactor cores are breached, which many “experts” now believe, then plutonium should be detected outside the reactors.

Plutonium is bad. Depending on the type of plutonium isotope, the half life can range from 14 years to 80 million years!

As Bill Nye said in a CNN interview last week, all they can do now is dump concrete on the reactors.

Here’s more proof that corporations are idiots: TEPCo has not been able to detect plutonium, so they are contracting with another company to do the test.  The test will take several days, according to Japanese media reports.  Several days? When your dealing with plutonium you need to know yesterday!

TEPCo now says it will check soil twice a week for plutonium. NOW?  Why not from the beginning of the disaster you idiots! Plutonium is present in spent fuel rods, and three of the spent fuel pools blew up, remember?  That means plutonium was spread all over during the first week!

Fukushima

Tokyo Electric says ‘Ooops’, on radiation reading, it’s still bad!

TEPCo says it will conduct another test of the leaked water at Fukushima Daiichi, reactor 2’s turbine building.  The reading for iodine-134 (has a shorter half life than iodine-131) announced earlier was actually for another isotope that has a longer half-life.

TEPCo officials say the level of 10 million times more than normal is incorrect, but the radiation levels being emitted are still 1,000 millisieverts (1 million microsieverts) per hour!  If the radiation is from an isotope with a longer half life than iodine-134, that still makes it real bad.

Can’t these corporate buffoons get anything right?

Fukushima, Technology

Panasonic shipping batteries INTO Japan

Japanese company, Panasonic, is rushing to get batteries shipped into Japan.

Batteries for electronic items have run short after Japanese bought up all they could after the March 11 disasters.

Panasonic makes batteries in Japan, but even with increasing their production, they can’t meet domestic demand.  Usually batteries are shipped by boat, because of their weight, but Panasonic is using airfreight.

Current battery shipments are coming from Indonesia and Thailand. The April shipments will be coming from Belgium and Poland.

Fukushima

Japanese Police being sent in to evacuate more people, Radiation levels too high at Fukushima Daiichi!

Cabinet Secretary, Edano Yuki, announced that national police are being sent in to 20-30km evacuation/disaster zones.

Edano said that radiation levels are so high at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that work must be halted until the contamination can be removed. Soil samples around the area show rapidly increasing radiation contamination.

Japanese government will now evacuate those who want to voluntarily evacuate, but don’t have the means to do so. The national police will try to contact people who are still in the zones that have been designated “stay indoors” zones.  All options open.

Medical teams from around the world are now being sent into the zones.

Japanese government expects more “difficulties”.  Japanese government admitting that financing for any recovery from the nuclear disaster will be a problem.

 

 

Business/Economics, International

Iran declares “Year of Economic Jihad”

“I call this year the ‘Year of Economic Jihad’ and I expect the officials of the country and also our dear nation to work in a jihadi way in the economic areas.” -Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei

The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, announced on March 21 (the beginning of the new year in the Iranian calendar) a year of Economic Jihad.  This is the year 1390 under the Iranian calendar system.

His reasoning for declaring an Economic Jihad is the continued efforts by the “West” to place more economic sanctions against Iran.  

Fukushima, Technology

Local governments in Japan lost all documentation in Tsunami, computers no help

The coastal towns along the north east coast of Honshu, lost all official documentation regarding their cities, and residents.

Not only “hard copies”, but everything stored on computers. All computers were destroyed by Mother Earth. Basically you would’ve had to store everything of importance inside a old fashioned bank safe.

So much for high tech.

Fukushima, Technology

Retail stores cutting back on power, shoppers in the dark

In Japan, in order to cut back on the usage of electricity, many retail stores are cutting back on operating hours, and on lighting.

Japanese consumers have less time to shop, and in some stores, are shopping in the dark.  Stores are keeping most of their lights turned off.

Consumers say they don’t mind, especially because they know it’s due to the triple whammy of disasters that have struck their country.