Japan Disaster Update Monday Morning EDT/ Monday Evening Japan Time


With an Assist Today from the Words of Immanuel Kant


"By a lie, a man...annihilates his dignity as a man."


10,901 confirmed dead, over 17,000 missing


This morning it is being reported that fatal levels of radiation  are being detected outside the buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in a tunnel leading from reactor 2. These levels would kill you in two months after four hours exposure. The New York Times reported that the worker in plant 2 had a reading of 1000 millisieverts (one sievert) on his dosimeter and that 1000 millisieverts was as high as the device could read! It may be much worse.
Needless to say this situation is complicating efforts to prevent further radiation leakage at the site.
If levels are now this high outside, what are they inside the reactor buildings?
Now we are getting an idea of why Japanese authorities and TEPCO officials have not been forthcoming about radiation levels since the earthquake.
There is no doubt now that there has been at least a partial meltdown here.
The shamelessly tardy Japanese government is now strongly criticizing TEPCO for not giving enough or accurate radiation readings.

From the BBC: 
"There’s not much good news right now," said Gennady Pshakin, a former IAEA official based in Obninsk, the site of Russia’s first nuclear power plant. "There’re questions arising on how much fuel will leak out, what isotopes will be carried and how quickly they will settle. It’s becoming less predictable." 

"Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness."


A TEPCO spokesman stated that there is no evidence contaminated water has reached the sea. Yet radiation levels in the seawater near the plant have been announced at 1800 times safe. Well, maybe that radiation is just drainage from the water they have been pouring on the spent rod cooling pools. Maybe there is no "evidence" that the killing water from the leaking core of reactor 2 has reached the sea.  Cabinet Minister Edano stated that the chief priority was to prevent this water from reaching the sea.

Aftershocks continue. A tsunami warning was given and withdrawn today after a 6.5 magnitude quake off the coast near the site of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that hit over two weeks ago.

"Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and awe the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: 
the starry heavens without and the moral law within."


The number of dead and missing from the earthquake and tsunami had reached 28,550 as of 3 p.m. About 200,000 households in northeast Japan remain without power and more than 350,000 have no gas, the government said today. There are 242,882 refugees living in 2,045 shelters, the National Police Agency said. Bloomberg Business Week

"Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved."

It has been reported by Bloomberg, that the the United Nations nuclear "watchdog", the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has been parroting the Japan nuclear cheerleaders and lobbying group, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, Inc. to produce its damage assessment documents for the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Much of the information released has been shown to be inaccurate and has seemed to be inordinately optimistic.

“The IAEA’s role in dispensing advice should go beyond simply relaying information provided by the affected state,” the agency’s former top inspector, Ollie Heinonen, wrote in an analysis posted yesterday on Harvard University's website. “It is of fundamental importance that the IAEA assess such information independently, relying on other sources of information and from its own findings on the ground.”- Bloomberg link above

"Give me matter and I will construct a world out of it."


Plutonium has been found in the soil at the  Fukushima Daiichi nuclear site according to Reuters.
But not to worry!
"Plutonium found this time is at a similar level seen in soil in a regular environment and it's not at the level that's harmful to human health," TEPCO vice-president Sakae Muto told reporters at a briefing.


"Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee."