Casanova

Saturday Night EDT/ Sunday Morning Japan Time
Multitudinous Disaster Update


With Some Words from The Birthday Boy, 
Giovanni Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt 

(2 April 1725 - 4 June 1798)

“I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.”

TEPCO officials announced that attempts to plug the leak of radioactive water coming directly from the core of reactor 2 had failed Saturday. Concrete washed away before it could set in an 8" hole in the leaking  maintenance pit. Authorities said they would try using a plastic polymer material Sunday to plug the leak.
They have also been spraying the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi plant with a sticky polymer to hold radioactive material in place, theoretically. There must be a prodigious amount of water flowing through there to prevent pouring enough concrete to plug an 8" leak.

On a happy note, a dog was rescued from the roof of a house floating in the ocean off Miyagi prefecture by the Japanese Coast Guard  yesterday. He was fed cookies and sausages which he wolfed down.


"When you fool a fool, you strike a blow for intelligence."


Japan is wrestling with the problem of 80 million tons of debris left by the earthquake and tsunami. Everything from hazardous waste to valuable personal possessions must be sorted out, salvaged or disposed of.  We read in this story in the Los Angeles Times that there is 500,000 tons of rotting seafood in disabled warehouse facilities. The Japanese are serious recyclers with strict rules. It will be a huge job to sort out the mess. 

"I saw that everything in the world that is famous and beautiful, if we rely on the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it up close."

Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant will be closed next week and 3.600 workers will be furloughed because of Japanese parts shortages due to the earthquake and sales slow downs resulting from  high gas prices. The plant makes F-250, F-350, trucks and Expedition and Navigator SUV's.
It's a global, global world for me and you. 

"Whether it is happy or unhappy, a man's life is the only treasure he can ever possess."

According to Reuters 11,938 are now confirmed dead and 15,478 are missing.
168,586 households in the earthquake area are still without electricity.

220,000 households are without water. 

45,761 buildings have been destroyed. 

Damages are estimated to be $190-$298 billion. This does not include losses because of suspended business and farming activity. It does not include nuclear Fukushima nuclear reactor damage or long term losses from radioactivity.
The yen has reached a record high against the dollar, which should make Japanese products cheaper on the American market. 

"Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy."

Casanova (on the left) tests a condom before enjoying the beauties of love. Illustration from
"Mémoires, écrits par lui-même"

Saturday Morning EDT/ Saturday Evening Japan Time
Life Is A Shipwreck Update


With Assistance from Proto-Existentialist
 Danish Philosoper Søren Aabye Kierkegaard 
(5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855)

“Old age realizes the dreams of youth; look at Swift: in his youth he built an asylum, in his old age he himself entered it”

A source of the highly radioactive water being discharged into the sea from the Fukushima Daiichi plant has been discovered. It is a twenty centimeter crack in some kind of a "maintenance pit". This is the (or one of, who knows?) source of high radioactivity detected in the sea  40 kilometers from the plant. There is no word on rate of flow or the details of the plan to stop it.
TEPCO does have a general plan. Two Putzmeister (I love that name) giant crane/concrete pumps are on the way from the United States. Supposedly the whole complex is to be encased in concrete. The pumps themselves will have to be scrapped as too dangerously radioactive after use. Have you seen the size of that complex? It may be a good time to buy stock in big cement companies. Whoops, somebody has already figured it out. Lafarge Cement (WAPCO) started spiking around St. Patrick's Day but has a ways to go to reach its previous high.  We observe the same pattern in Holcim Ltd. (VX). Both are profitable, unsexy companies that pay nice dividends and control a huge chunk of the cement market. This Fukushima project will generate business for decades.
Don't worry GE/Hitachi. Don't worry Westinghouse/Toshiba.  In a few years people will forget and allow themselves to be brainwashed again by your vile hired proponents of killing, dangerous, expensive, and dirty nuclear power. Be patient.


“Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.”

The Boston Globe is reporting today that reactor 1's core experienced a 70% meltdown according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Reactor 2 had a partial meltdown of 33%. Chu stated these were "more of a calculation" (translation: an educated guess) because radiation levels did not allow first hand inspection of the cores. Chu also told the Globe that the cores and spent fuel pools were covered in water and the situation was "now under control". We are all interested in what the Secretary has to say  but we have heard this same kind of reassurances several times in the past three weeks. I am a skeptic. We must remember that the Nobel Prize winning Chu is also a nuclear industry poodle. He long ago embraced the notion that the only solution to global warming is nuclear energy.

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”


The entirely appropriate debate on whether the risk of poisoning large sections of the planet for thousands of years is worth taking for the chance of decreasing the risk of climate change has now been resumed in earnest. So far, in my opinion, we are being given a fallacious false choice argument of coal versus nuclear. Both are no damn good.
The Huffington Post presents to us video of a debate between Helen Caldicott and George Monbiot.

“I think I have the courage to doubt everything; I think I have the courage to fight everything. But I do not have the courage to know anything, nor to possess, to own anything. Most people complain that the world is so prosaic, that life isn’t like a romantic novel where opportunities are always so favorable. What I complain of is that life is not like the novel where there are hard-hearted fathers, and goblins and trolls to fight with, enchanted princesses to free. What are all such enemies taken together compared to the pallid, glutinous nocturnal shapes with which I fight and to which I myself give life and being”


Here it is, April 2, over three weeks since the earthquake and tsunami and the IAEA (the UN's nuclear agency) announced today their decision to send two experts to Fukushima Daiishi.
Astounding!


“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

April 1, New Snow, Three Visitors,  My Rhododendron Buds In Their Stomachs 

Francis Picabia 22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953, Femmes Au Bull-Dog, 1940

Friday Morning EDT/Friday Evening Japan Time
Disaster Update

Picabia, self portrait

With Assistance from Francis Picabia, Artiste et Trickster Dada

"Knowledge is ancient error reflecting on its youth."
Groundwater tainted by very high levels of radioactivity has been detected below the Fukushima Daiichi complex.

Picabia, Daughter Born Without Mother, 1916-1917

"The world is divided into two categories: failures and unknowns."


Reuters reports that American workers are being recruited for fighting the disaster at the ruined and wrecked nuclear plants in Japan.
You could not pay me enough.

 Quote from the story:

"About two weeks ago we told our managers to put together a wish list of anyone interested in going to Japan," said Joe Melanson, a recruiter at specialist nuclear industry staffing firm Bartlett Nuclear in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Thursday.

I can just imagine which workers will be selected by managers for that wish list.

“But I find these women beautiful, and not having any “specialty” as a painter, nor as writer, I am not afraid to compromise myself with them vis-à-vis the élite, no more than I'm afraid to compromise myself, in other circumstances, vis-à-vis the imbeciles!”

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he wants TEPCO to remain a private company. This is after acknowledging that TEPCO will need assistance from the government (lots of money) to deal with their financial problems in the wake of their incompetence, the tsunami and the earthquake.
"TEPCO has been operating as a private company ... We would need to support them, but what I would basically like is for TEPCO to work hard as a private company."

This company should be allowed to die for their sins, as BP should be liquidated to pay for the damages they created in the Gulf of Mexico. 

“Art cannot be democratic.”


The extent of the damage at Fukushima Daiichi can be seen in a video posted at The Telegraph. 

“I always liked amusing myself seriously.”


Fukushima workers still "expect to die" according to this story by Danielle Demetriou.
Here is a quote from the mother of one of the workers.
"My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary in the long-term."

Picabia, L'Adoration du Veau, 1941-1942

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 - 1716)

Thursday Morning EDT/
Thursday Evening Japan Time
Japan Disaster Update

With an Assist From the Words of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 


"I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general."

Radioactive iodine in the sea near the Fukushima Daiichi complex has reached a new high.

Authorities insist that the danger is localized because radioactive iodine has a half life of just eight days. 

One is led to the inevitable question: "What other radioactive substances are in the water?"

There is a plan to put underwater cameras in the water near the fried reactors to determine just how bad the damage is. 

There may be a problem getting through debris to see anything.
Debris has already prevented radiation hardened robots from entering the plants reports PC World.

Many of the refugees from the radioactive areas are now bitter about the fact that TEPCO assured the residents that the plants were safe. 

It just goes to show you can't believe a corporate man in a suit. 

"It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty."

Bar owners in Fukushima are complaining about lack of business. 

People are too afraid of radiation to go out at night they believe. 

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that TEPCO's disaster plan was woefully inadequate. 

There is nothing in it to give guidance in the event of a major catastrophe. 

It addresses minor accidents only.

"The disaster plan didn't function. It didn't envision something this big." cried a former TEPCO Official quoted in the Wall Street Journal

"Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting."

Meanwhile reports continue that unsafe radiation levels are rising beyond the reactors' exclusion zone. 

Authorities have not decided to order  further evacuations despite radiation levels above accepted evacuation criteria beyond the present range. 

There is speculation that spontaneous fission reactions are still occurring at the plant complex. Last week there were reports of "neutron beams" being detected at some distance from the plants. This is considered evidence by some of uncontrolled fission or "localized criticality". Such events have killed several nuclear workers in the past.

"I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one."


A man described as a right wing activist drove a truck through the gates of the Fukushima Daini plant and into the compound after being turned away from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. His motive was unclear.
He eluded authorities for two hours.

"Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, 
and nothing happier and sweeter than truth."

It is estimated that TEPCO may be facing as much as $130 billion in claims for damages as a result of their poor preparation for nuclear disaster. That sounds low to me. And it also tells me why the government does not want to extend the exclusion area around the plant. The farther that goes, the more damages there will be.
Here in the United States we have something known as the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, a gift from Congress to the nuclear power corporations which indemnifies them from damages over $12.6 billion dollars. In other words, if something like what happened in Japan, happened in the good old USA, the taxpayers would foot most of the bill. The nuclear industry also has a slush fund to cover that first $12.6 billion. In other words, there is very little incentive for the nuclear industry to be as safe as possible because it knows it has very limited liability and no deductible!
Oh, what a feeling!
And of course, no one would dare prosecute any nuclear executives for gross reckless behavior.
Suits never go to jail.
TEPCO is expected to ask the Japanese government for "assistance" in this matter.

"...whatever renders us more capable of reflecting on more perfect objects and in a more perfect manner, also makes us naturally perfect. But the present condition of our life forces us to have a great number of confused thoughts which do not make us naturally perfect. Such is the knowledge of customs, genealogies and languages, and indeed all historical knowledge of facts both civil and natural."

Jacques Derrida, 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004, post-structuralist philosopher of deconstruction

Wednesday Evening EDT/
Thursday Morning Japan Time 
Disaster Update With an Assist from Jacques Derrida


"Il n'y a pas de hors-texte!" Context is everything!


The IAEA has announced that levels of radiaton detected 40 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi plant exceed criteria for evacuation. Japan has ordered evacuation from an area circumscribed by a 20 kilometer radius. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the government is considering extending the evacuation area. This would force 130,000 more people to leave their homes.

"We are all mediators, translators."


Reuters reports it is now feared that nuclear material in the shut down reactors could resume chain reactions and melt down under certain conditions. This is termed recriticality. "Recriticality does not mean that the reactor is going to blow up. It may be something really local. We might not even see it if it happens." said Denis Flory, a deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

"I have always had school sickness, as others have seasickness. I cried when it was time to go back to school long after I was old enough to be ashamed of such behavior.
Everything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture."


Japanese authorities are now saying that water may have to be poured onto the damaged reactors "for years" but that will, of course, intensify the problem of what to do with all the radioactive water which will result from the effort to cool down all that nuclear material.

Hiroto Sakashita, a nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics professor at Hokkaido University, says the other reactors and cooling ponds will take years to cool.
"They will just have to keep on pouring and pouring but contaminated water will keep leaking out," he told The New York Times.- ABC News Australia

"This is one of the most serious problems today, this responsibility before the current forms of the mass media and especially before their monopolization, their framing, their axiomatics."


TEPCO and the Japanese government now face the problem of dismantling and literally covering up the ruined plant with thick layers of concrete to contain radioactivity. This project could take thirty years and is estimated to cost $12 billion dollars, which I assure you is a lowball estimate. Experts are also now using the quaint and oxymoronic (unless there is an ice age) expression "immobilizing water" to describe the impossible task of keeping radioactive water at the site in place.

"To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend."


This event has thrust so-called nuclear experts into a place they never addressed in the rosy descriptions of atomic energy they gave to politicians and the public. This is a place they subconsciously knew existed but they never could imagine while planning in their corporate built ivory towers. They preferred to dwell in a prosperous happy land of perfect nuclear energy where their formulas always provided exact numbers and no one pretended to notice or wonder upon tsunamis, earthquakes, meteor strikes, the destruction of war, terrorist attacks, or human stupidity.

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, 1905-1980, existentialiste

Wednesday Morning EDT/
Wednesday Evening Japan Time
Disaster Update


Our guest philosopher today is Jean-Paul Sartre. 


"When the rich wage war it is the poor who die."

TEPCO announced the obvious today when they admitted that reactors 1-4 at Fukushima Daiichi will have to be scrapped.

It was not addressed how reactors 5 and 6 can ever be made safe places to work. 

"We apologise for causing the public anxiety, worry and trouble due to the explosions at reactor buildings and the release of radioactive materials." said TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata at a press conference today. Mr. Katsumata has taken charge of the company since CEO Masataka Shimizu's previous disappearance to an undisclosed location. Today it was announced that Shimizu was hospitalized for hypertension.
Mr. Katsumata seems to be TEPCO's go-to manager for apologies when the corporation is caught in grievous errors. He previously made a speech in 2002 announcing a new culture of safety and openness for TEPCO when it was shown that their safety procedures were inconsistent, lacking documentation, and, in fact, falsified.

"All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure."

Smoke was seen rising from the Fukushima Daini plant 1 turbine building today for a while today. It was probably nothing to worry about. TEPCO has made no announcements about this event, but it must be remembered that people have been ordered evacuated from a ten kilometer radius from this plant as well. 

TEPCO has said that all four nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daini are in cold shutdown. 

"I hate victims who respect their executioners."

Today Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said he thought all the reactors at Fukushima Daiishi should be scrapped, in contradiction to TEPCO's Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata.

Schemes are now being hatched about what to do with the copious radioactive water flowing away from activiities at the plant. It has been suggested that the water be stored on a tanker vessel anchored in the sea nearby. It has not been disclosed how water leaking out of damaged reactor buildings and spent rod cooling ponds might be successfully transported to the tanker. No one has disclosed what the disposition of any captured water might ultimately be.
There was a report that workers were using sandbags to contain the water!

"It is only in our decisions that we are important."

The authorities continue to be in a double bind at Fukushima Daiichi.
They do not want to release radioactivity.
However, they must apply huge quantities of water all over the site.
The water gets contaminated and drains away everywhere, spreading radioactivity.
But....
If they do not apply the water they increase the likelihood of a meltdown or the ignition of spent fuel rods either of which will spread higher radioactivity.
Here is a lesson about nuclear power:
Once the nuclear demon has been embraced
one is left with only bad choices for the duration of a complex and problematic relationship. 
In fact, understanding can only begin on realization that this is a relationship that cannot be ended. 


"Hell is other people."

Seawater near the plant tested at its highest level yet. 

It is now admitted that the highly toxic plutonium found in the soil outside the plant must have come from the damaged reactor. Only the high temperatures associated with at least a partial meltdown could have released the plutonium.
Plutonium has a very long half life and remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
It is especially deadly when inhaled and the tiniest quantities are fatal.
One may conjecture that if plutonium from the reactor is found in the soil outside the plant, it probably was airborne and able to be inhaled. That's just a guess.

"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance."

Soon after the nuclear crisis in Japan the nuclear industry PR machine was mostly concerned about how to put a positive spin on the problem (at first I heard the  "it could have been a lot worse" argument, which turns out to be a  counterproductive way to go) or simply insisting on its own indispensable necessity, which I call the "just because we need it" argument. The latter is a classic case of fallacy by assertion. But it can work.
Nuclear power flack Tim Probert's blog of March 18 is amusing in its approach, which bewails the situation but can provide no solution to the gigantic PR problem his industry faces, except maybe wait things out and apply money as needed. 

Here are some quotes:

Nuclear power stakeholders I spoke to immediately after the event were pretty angry that media coverage of Japan’s largest on-record earthquake initially focused on the Fukushima crisis and not the far greater death and devastation caused by the tsunami.
[Tim, we have no control over a tsunami generated by an earthquake. It is tragic and melancholy but Nature does what it does, whether we allow it or not.  We do have control over putting nuclear reactors in small countries that can be devastated by meltdowns. We do have control over correcting bad decisions made by men.]


Nuclear power remains a mystery to most people. Despite its many advantages, poor PR has always blighted the nuclear power industry. Perhaps it always will. Nevertheless, the industry has done too little to put across the meticulously high safety standards to which nuclear plants adhere and the strong record of recent years.
[Tim, I disagree, but I also acknowledge that this passage itself is PR, and bad PR at that.  PR and corporate lobbying have gotten the nuclear industry far more established than common sense, concern for safety and the environment, frugality, and good judgement ever should have allowed it to be. But, it is difficult, as the saying goes, to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.]

Too late now. Just as the talk of a global nuclear renaissance was rapidly becoming reality, the industry has taken a huge blow that could set it back by several years. There can be no worse PR for nuclear power than live television images of not one, not two, but three reactor buildings exploding and mushroom clouds of smoke billowing into a clear blue Japanese sky.
[Facts are dangerous things, Tim. Events have made your "Nuclear Renaissance" just talk. Nuclear energy is expensive and dangerous. It has needed government protection and subsidies to go as far as it has gone. No matter how you spin it, Reality is always going to provide bad PR for the industry.]

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."

The Guardian UK speculated yesterday that the nuclear material in plant 2 has melted down and fallen through the containment vessel. The story quotes Richard Lahey who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima Daiichi:
"The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell. I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards."

"Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth." 

Tuesday Evening EDT/
Wednesday Morning Japan Time
Disaster Update

"Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding." Xi Zhi 

The New York Times has an excellent piece today on the pathetic state of farmers in Fukushima prefecture who are slowly realizing that lands that their families have farmed for centuries are probably worthless. 

“We think we’ll lose 80 percent of our income,” Ryuji Togashi, who runs a Towa-area farmer’s co-op store, said last weekend. “We’ve been damaged by rumor. People think that all our vegetables are affected by radiation. We can’t even sell the products that aren’t affected.”

 The Japanese face a classic conundrum. [1590s, Oxford University slang for "pedant," also "whim," etc., later (1790) "riddle, puzzle." Also spelled quonundrum. The sort of ponderous pseudo-Latin word that was once the height of humor in learned circles.-Online Etymological Dictionary] They need to keep dousing the reactors and spent fuel pools with water to prevent disastrous meltdowns and fires; yet the water draining from these areas is seriously radioactive and cannot be collected for safe disposal if such a thing is possible.

Martin Heideggar in a Bucolic Setting

Tuesday Morning EDT/
Tuesday Evening Japan Time
Fukushima etc. Shitstorm Update


While reluctantly noting words of Nazi philosopher Martin Heideggar


“The Fuhrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply: from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility.”


Prime Minister Naoto Kan stated that Japan "would tackle the problem while in a state of maximum alert" until the disaster is brought under control.

NHK reports "No major progress is reported in the effort to drain radioactive water filling the basements of turbine buildings near 3 reactors in the damaged Fukushima nuclear facility" today.

Japanese automakers may be brought to their knees by the ramifications of the earthquake said the Japan Times. Parts intended for plants in the United States are becoming unavailable.

"Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy."

More plutonium has been found in the soil around the Fukushima Daiichi complex. Authorities are insisting the levels are not dangerous.

"Being and time determine each other reciprocally, but in such a manner that neither can the former - Being - be addressed as something temporal nor can the latter - time - be addressed as a being."

The plight of the workers at the site is shown in the following passage. 

Huddling at the plant's 'quake-resistant' tower, resting workers lie on lead matting to prevent exposure to radiation which can rise up to 10 micro-sieverts an hour in that part of the complex.
'Workers sleep in conference rooms, hallways or near bathrooms. Each person is given one blanket, everyone sleeps on the floor in rows,' said Kazuma Yokota, a nuclear safety agency inspector stationed at the plant. 'We want to avoid staying too long as much as we can, because we are exposed to radiation every day. I've been exposed to 883 micro-sieverts in the past five days,' the exhausted-looking 39-year-old confided to broadcaster NHK. The Singapore Straits Times

This must be a error or misinformation. That 883 micro-sieverts seems exceedingly low considering the levels of radiation admitted at the plant by officials, as high as 1000 millisieverts an hour. I suspect that is intended to be read as  883 millisieverts. But the picture Mr. Yokota describes of his environment is instructive.

"Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man."

The highly radioactive water at plant 2 is still rising, now into more tunnels and basement rooms Tuesday evening.
The problem of the capture and safe disposal of the water being used to cool the various reactor cores and spent rod cooling ponds as well as the extremely radioactive water collecting in and around plant 2 seems to be a question without an answer at this juncture. Most of it just seems to be draining into the sea.

"Only a god can save us."

This and That, Including 
Monday Evening EDT/ 
Tuesday Morning Japan Time
Disaster Update

With an assist this evening from the words of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872).


"Man is what he eats."


Food tainted by radiation will affect the Japanese people for a long time to come reports the Toronto Globe and Mail.

“Repeated consumption of certain products is going to intensify risks, as opposed to radiation in the air that happens once,” says Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the World Health Organization.
Shoppers in Asia are avoiding Japanese food reports Bloomerg.

“The present age ... prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence ... for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.”

Power rationing due to the earthquake and the nuclear crisis is affecting Japanese industry. The Business Times is projecting the possibility of zero growth in Japan this year.

The three most damaged reactors are still without power to the controls and pumping systems.
Highly radioactive water seeping from reactor 2 at Fukushima Daiichi has been found in a trench outside the building. The water is emitting radioactivity at a rate of 1 sievert an hour. Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano urged evacuees from the area  to stop returning  to their homes to retrieve possessions citing the extreme danger.

"Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity."


Masataka Shimizu, President of TEPCO, has not been seen in public, nor has he attended crisis management meetings with public officials since March 13. The company has explained  this by saying he is suffering from exhaustion due to overwork. In another, more honorable age, Mr. Shimizu would have performed a seppuku by now. 

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."

Looks Like Mickey Mutant Mouse, Doesn't It?Radiation levels reach new highs as conditions worsen for workers - The Washington Post

TEPCO apologized today for announcing that radiation in water puddles at damaged plant 2 at Fukushima Daiishi was ten million times above safe levels. The actual figure, we are all relieved to hear, was only 100,000 times too high. Our confidence in TEPCO's scientific and calculating abilities is restored.

Anti Nuke Rally in Tokyo Today

Sunday Morning EDT/ Sunday Evening Japan Time
Fukushima Daiishi Nuclear Complex
Japan Disaster Update


Knowledge Is Power
"I wish him nothing but pain in his silly travels especially if they wind up in my octagon. Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words -- imagine what I would have done with my fire breathing fists."


There continues to be a lack of official information about the status of the Fukushima Nuclear Plants. But some incriminating unofficial information is seeping out  like the radioactive water that is flowing  into the  Pacific Ocean.

Coverups? 
“Look what I’m dealing with, man, I’m dealing with fools and trolls.”


A former Hitachi employee has come forward and admitted he took part in a coverup to conceal the use of flawed steel in the container vessel of reactor 4. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that former Hitachi engineer Mitsohiko Tanaka called the situation a "time bomb" that he helped conceal in 1974.  That reactor was offline at the time of the earthquake.
“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running? I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.” He asked.

Hitachi said they met with Tanaka in 1988 to discuss the situation and concluded there was no problem. (In fact I have it on good authority that a Hitachi executive told Tanaka at the time, "We have a problem? Bullshit! I cured it with my brain.")

"Bring me Dr. Clown shoes."

The workers who walked in radioactive water last week are said not to be seriously injured. 

Reactor 1
“I am battle-tested bayonets, bro.”

Fresh water being injected into the core. Salt from seawater had been building up and corroding the system.

Cooling system is broke dick. 

Radioactive water being pumped out of the building. The building is very damaged. 

Reactor 2
"There’s a new sheriff in town. And he has an army of assassins.”

Water in the building is 10,000,000 times the safe level for radioactive iodine-134. No workers are in the building. Equipment, controls and pumps are damaged and inoperable. Water is being pumped into the building to keep things cool and avoid meltdown. The containment vessel and core of the reactor is suspected to be damaged allowing the leakage of the water.
Authorities grudgingly admit there is "a strong possibility" there is damage to the reactor core.
"Duh."
The building is slightly damaged. 

Reactor 3
"If you’re a part of my family, I will love you violently."

More radioactive water and no workers are in the building. 

Core damage to this reactor is "presumed". This is the plutonium MOX fueled reactor which is the most dangerous. Officially damage to the reactor is "unknown". 

Fresh water is now being pumped in to keep the reactor cool and flush out corrosive salt. 

Authorities now rate the pressure in the containment vessel as "stable". The building is severely damaged.

Reactor 4 
"The only thing I’m addicted to right now is winning.”

Seawater continues to be pumped into the spent fuel cooling pool. Water runs out of this pool as fast as it is pumped in, it seems. The building is relatively undamaged. This plant was in shutdown at the time of the earthquake. 

Reactors 5 and 6
"Winning."

Were in cold shutdown and are relatively undamaged according to authorities.

Poison in the Air and in the Water

"I am on a drug, it's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body."

Radiation is near lethal levels throughout the complex. Tests for plutonium have been called for. No readings of  levels of plutonium have been released to the public. 

It is admitted that radiation in building 2 is 1000 millisieverts an hour, which is four time the increased allowance per year for nuclear workers at the plant. 

Japanese officials now admit operations at the plant will take months. One wonders if they have enough workers who will expose themselves to this high risk. It is obvious that all of them must have exceeded the increased 250 millisieverts per year limit. Has the limit now been waived?
Here's a quote from the Washington Post indicating the level of worker safety being practiced at Fukushima Daiichi.
"One subcontracted worker who laid cables for new electrical lines on March 19 described chaotic conditions and lax supervision that made him nervous. Masataka Hishida said neither he nor the workers around him were given a dosimeter. He was surprised that workers were not given special shoes; rather, they were told to put plastic bags over their street shoots. When he was trying on the gas mask for the first time, he said the supervisor told him and other subcontractors, “Listen carefully, I’m only going to say this one time” while explaining how to use it."
Seawater in the area is measuring 1000 1800 times normal radiation.

Nuclear reactors have been designed as  very complicated systems in the attempt to make them safe systems. Ironically, the more complicated they are made, the more things there are that  can go wrong and lead to danger. The New York Times explains in this story, "U.S. Experts Blame Fukushima 1 Explosions and Radiation on Failed Venting System" how the hydrogen explosions occurred.

Are The People Noticing?
"I'm bi-winning."


Prime Minister Kan's government approval is all the way up to 28.3% in the latest polls. That's an 8.4% improvement since February!  Surprisingly, only 58% disapprove of the government's handling of the nuclear crisis. I wonder if many of those left homeless by the earthquake and tsunami were included in the polling?
It looks like the earthquake has actually somewhat increased the sparse confidence held by the people for the Japanese government. There are some who automatically rally around the authorities when crisis rears up.

It is possible that the "fall out" from the nuclear disasters in Japan will turn out the Christian Democrats from power in the German state of  Baden-Wuerttemberg for the first time since 1953. Polling shows a coalition of the Greens and the Social Democrats in the lead heading into today's election. The Christian Democrats' easy relationships with big corporations and the nuclear industry have gotten them in trouble with the voters.
[Later in the day, it is here noted that the Christian Democrats were indeed turned out of power in the prosperous German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.]

My thanks to Mr. Charlie Sheen for help writing this today.