I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix, 
first lines from Howl

Monday Morning EDT/
Monday Evening Japan Time
With Inspiration from the American Poet Allen Ginsberg 

"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does."

Another strong aftershock this morning briefly knocked out power to the Fukushima Daiichi plant complex. The Japanese government intends to increase the evacuation zone around the plant from 12 to 19 miles in certain areas, displacing many more thousands of people even as the government is claiming that risks from the leaking radiation were "considerably lower".

"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness."

Helen Caldicott goes off on George Monbiot ("a journalist not a scientist") and other nuclear apologists today in the Guardian.UK  and takes them to school. Her explication of the difference between external and internal radiation is enlightening on how the defenders of the industry confuse the issue. She shows that no level (even low levels) of radiation is safe. She then writes on the efforts to make Chernobyl appear less devastating than it was. 

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"Proponents of nuclear power – including George Monbiot, who has had a mysterious road-to-Damascus conversion to its supposedly benign effects – accuse me and others who call attention to the potential serious medical consequences of the accident of "cherry-picking" data and overstating the health effects of radiation from the radioactive fuel in the destroyed reactors and their cooling pools. Yet by reassuring the public that things aren't too bad, Monbiot and others at best misinform, and at worst misrepresent or distort, the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation exposure – and they play a predictable shoot-the-messenger game in the process."


A new book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Published by the New York Academy of Sciences,  by Dr. Alexey Yablokov, Dr. Vassily Nesterenko and Dr. Alexey Nesterenko estimates that Chernobyl is responsible for close to a million deaths.
Book PDF: http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf

"Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather Boa!"

China has expanded its ban on Japanese food products and has expressed concern about radioactive water discharge from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex. China has urged its neighbor on Friday to "act in accordance with relevant international laws." regarding radiation release in the ocean, something China knows is impossible for Japan to accomplish. Once the magic lamp of nuclear energy is broken, its deadly power may not be contained. China further commented in its Friday statement,"We ask Japan to provide China with timely, comprehensive and accurate information."

This is a consideration that Japan has been ignoring from the beginning. 

"Radioactive Nemesis were you there at the beginning black Dumb 
tongueless unsmelling blast of Disillusion?"

Slate Magazine's William Saletan tells us that humans are doing work that robots might do more safely at Fukushima Daiichi. This report asks the question, "How could such a robotically advanced country be so unprepared?"

Spoiler: Slate tells us that robots aren't available for this contingency because TEPCO decided they would be too expensive. Human life is cheap. TEPCO has even been using temporary workers in dangerous nuclear jobs because they have few benefits and lower pay. TEPCO's lack of preparedness for this catastrophe is instructive for us to understand the nuclear industry as a whole. Japan's nuclear industry had been held up as an example to the world prior to it being exposed by events. 

"Birdbrain runs the World!"

TEPCO announced today that the pumping of radioactive water into the sea was discontinued today. 

They are still pumping water all over the sight to cool spent fuel rods and reactor cores and, as has been repeatedly stated here, that water must go somewhere according to the laws of surface hydraulics. That water is still going to drain to the sea after making love to the radioactive materials at the ruined site. 

"Poets are damned...but see with the eyes of angels." 

Makoto Aida, Harakiri School Girls