For the second time Tokyo Electric Power Company has stopped decontamination of water at it’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, this time they broke a water pump.
The first time was because the radiation levels were much higher than first thought, and the water decontamination system wasn’t set up to handle it. This time TEPCo officials think it’s because they tried to force too much water through, and broke a water pump.
On June 20, and for the third time, a mass grave was found which held the bodies of Syrian soldiers. This does not sound like something “peaceful protestors” would do.
This latest mass grave had 29 Syrian soldiers, who had been decapitated, and showed signs of torture.
Earlier this month two mass graves were found, containing the bodies of at least 80 Syrian policemen.
The graves are being found near a town called Jisr al-Shughour, near the Turkish border. Turkey is a member of NATO and has recently agreed to allow an increase of NATO troops in Turkey.
To me, this sounds like the Turkish government is encouraging Kurdish separatists to go on the war path against the Syrian government, to help “Western” plans to destabilize and overthrow the Syrian government. Of course, U.S. media goes on and says it’s “protestors”. There are legitimate protestors, but peaceful protestors don’t go around as trained paramilitaries killing government forces, then burying them in mass graves.
A New York Times report says as many as 80,000 U.S. war vets suffer from lung problems like asthma and bronchitis.
The report says the problems began while ‘in theater’ (while deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan), but have continued since returning home.
Causes could be anything from dust storms to toxic chemicals being used on U.S. military bases. U.S. military medical personnel are calling for an investigation: “I’m concerned that this exposure is not getting the serious review it needs.”-Captain Mark Lyles, Center for Naval Warfare Studies in Newport, Rhode Island.
According to the Iraqi Ministry of Women’s Affairs, by 2008 there were one million Iraqi widows, no thanks to the United States.
Their report also blames the more than two million Iraqi deaths on the United States. On top of that, as of 2008 there were four million children orphaned by the U.S. occupation.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry released a report that says as of 2008, more than 800,000 Iraqis had been disappeared.
There is still more than 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. They were supposed to leave at the end of 2011, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been working hard to convince the Iraqi government to allow the U.S. forces to stay.
The Associated Press spent a year going over government documents concerning the safety of U.S. nuke plants; the conclusion is that a disaster of epic proportions is very likely.
The reason is that U.S. officials, like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, have been relaxing safety standards just so the aging nuclear reactors could be re-licensed. In other words, what the AP found was that if today’s U.S. nuclear reactors were required to meet 1970s safety standards, most would fail. The most common problem at the nuclear plants are leaking valves.
Recently, one Senator from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander, tried to say the U.S. nuclear industry had a record of safe operations. However, the NRC, even with it’s relaxed safety standards, has filed more than 200 safety alerts since 2005. In 2008 the NRC admitted that 70% of potentially dangerous situations resulted from relaxing of standards in order to get the plants re-licensed.
Another surprising find, the Associated Press noted that not a single serious investigation into the safety of nuclear plants has been officially undertaken, not even by the NRC. It appears what government, and the nuke industry corporations have been doing, is trying to find ways to re-license reactors without meeting safety standards!
Here’s the modus operandi of U.S. government, and the corporations running the nuke plants: Old parts fail causing accidents, or jeopardizing re-licensing. Instead of ‘coming up to compliance’, corporations work with government agencies to ‘dumb down’ existing safety regulations.
Another revelation: Most U.S. nuclear plants were supposed to be replaced with brand new plants, once their original 40 year licenses expired. That never happened.
What’s the motivation behind the scandal? Billions and billions of dollars being made by providing almost 20% of the United State’s electricity, using outdated and cheaply maintained nuke plants.
There is so much more in the AP report. Everyone living near nuclear reactors in the United States should make plans to get away.
The Cooper Nuclear Station, in Nebraska, is flooded. The Fort Calhoun nuclear plant, also in Nebraska, has been shut down.
By Sunday, 19 June 2011, several levees failed along the Missouri River, causing nuke plant operators to issue a “Notification of unusual event.” A ‘notification’ is the lowest of four emergency classifications developed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Reuters reported that officials will shut down the Cooper nuclear plant if flood levels hit 13.9 meters (45.5 feet). Other reports say the Fort Calhoun plant was shut down. Heavy rain in the Rocky Mountains could keep the Missouri River high until August.
The Japanese Health and Labor Ministry reports that Tokyo Electric Power Company still has 125 workers that are waiting to be tested for radiation. Those workers were present when reactor buildings exploded after the 11 March 2011 disasters.
Despite the government’s complaints about TEPCo dragging its feet on testing employees, TEPCo claims they’ve tested 1,100 workers, so far. My experience in the military tells me TEPCo could have gotten that many workers tested in a day, so why has it taken them three plus months?
TEPCo is reporting that several more workers have tested positive for levels of radiation exposure above government limits. The latest worker, to test positive for contamination, was exposed to 335 millisieverts per hour of radiation.
20 June 2011, NHK reporting that Tokyo Electric Power Company is now scrambling to find out why extreme radiation levels are coming from Reactor 4 building, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant.
Reactor 4 was shut down for maintenance when the 11 March 2011 natural disasters hit. Early on most concerns were with the spent fuel pool above the reactor. TEPCo officials thought they had that under control.
Over the weekend, workers had to be moved out of Reactor 4 building due to a sudden jump in radiation levels.
TEPCo was using the fuel pool to store large contaminated objects found around the nuclear plant’s compound. After the jump in radiation emissions they discovered that water levels in the pool had dropped by 1/3. They are now injecting water, hoping that will stop the radiation emissions. Workers were in the process of strengthening the structure of Reactor 4 building.
“All indications are that the institutions of the United States of America committed financial corruption by stealing the money of the Iraqi people, which was allocated to develop Iraq, (and) that it was about $17 billion.”-Iraq letter to United Nations
Remember when the Bush Jr administration said they were taking Iraqi oil funds so they could be used to rebuild Iraq? Never happened, now Iraq wants their money.
Even U.S. investigators say the Iraqis are owed billions. Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, says the Pentagon is to blame, and calls it “…the largest theft of funds in national history.”
This comes after Kalifornia’s (sic) idiot Congressman Dana Rohrabacher demanded that Iraq pay for being invaded and occupied by the United States. The Kalifornian described the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a sign that we care about Iraqis: “We were hoping that there would be a consideration of a payback because the United States right now is in close to a very serious economic crisis and we could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs.”-Dana Rohrabacher
Unfortunately for the Iraqis, the clever Bush Jr administration got the UN Security Council to make it almost impossible for Iraq to sue the U.S. The money went to the Coalition Provisional Authority to fund reconstruction and pay Iraqi government employees. The CPA was headed by Paul Bremer. So far no one has been able to show what really happened to the Iraqi oil money.
A Turkish news source says the Turkish government has agreed to allow NATO to increase troop strength in Turkey. Turkey is a member of NATO.
Currently there are about 400 NATO personnel at the Turkish Izmir Air Station, but that could increase to the thousands as NATO personnel from Germany and Spain are moved in.
Western media is showing Turkey as helping Syrian refugees, and seemingly taking a neutral stand on events in Syria. Reports in Middle Eastern news sources say otherwise. There is growing evidence that the weapons being used by Syrian “protestors” are coming from Turkey. Several times Turkish warplanes have crossed into Syrian airspace.
NATO is reporting the build up of personnel in Turkey as part of plans to “…make NATO leaner, more flexible, and better able to deal with future challenges.”-Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General