Showing posts with label meltdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meltdown. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Is The Government Stockpiling Iodine In Preparation for Fukushima Meltdown?

Government purchase of 14 million iodine doses points to silent Fukushima meltdown preparation.
Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
January 1, 2014
UPDATE: Plumes of mysterious steam rise from crippled nuclear reactor at Fukushima
Following the revelation that The Department of Health and Human Services has ordered 14 million doses of potassium iodide to be available by no later than the first of February, it is easy to see that the same federal government responsible for silently raising the allowable limits of radiation in the food supply and turning off key radiation counters positioned in the west coast may now silently be preparing for a future Fukushima meltdown.



The same type of Fukushima plant meltdown that has been predicted by leading scientists, such as those who spoke out against Fukushima’s dangers while attending the scientific symposium at the University of Alberta just a few months ago. Scientists like David Suzuki went on record in stating that Fukushima is just an earthquake away from devastating Japan and swallowing other nations with its radioactive fallout.
During the conference, Suzuki said:
“I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes under in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it’s bye bye Japan and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate.”
And Suzuki is not the only one with major concerns. In fact, Suzuki is perhaps one of the very few who actually received media attention due to his celebrity status as a recipient of 16 significant academic awards and host of the popular CBC Television program entitled ‘The Nature of Things’. Yale University professor Charles Perrow has voiced similar concerns in a telling piece entitled ‘Fukushima Forever’, which highlights the very serious threat of nuclear meltdown as a result of human error when it comes to removing the plant’s spent fuel rods.
A danger that the United States government certainly recognizes as legitimate based on the analysis of top experts, and undoubtedly is silently preparing for behind the scenes.
Perrow writes:
Much more serious is the danger that the spent fuel rod pool at the top of the nuclear plant number four will collapse in a storm or an earthquake, or in a failed attempt to carefully remove each of the 1,535 rods and safely transport them to the common storage pool 50 meters away. Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.
And silently stockpiling iodine is certainly the way that The Department of Health and Human Services would prepare for such an event. As of this morning, a government source has told me that this purchase is indeed bizarre given the quantity and delivery time frame (requiring a whopping 14 million doses by February 1st), and it goes alongside preparations we have seen in the past where the official response will likely play off the mega purchase as a ‘routine bulk acquisition with no real urgency or threat’.
The reality is that even getting a hold of low quality potassium iodide, which I would not ever personally take over a higher quality form of pure iodine, is becoming difficult as the population becomes aware of Fukushima’s expansive dangers. Many manufacturers are now stockpiling raw iodine and holding on to the element as a form of investment with the knowledge that Fukushima may very well meltdown in the coming months. For this reason, we have had a very hard time securing our nascent iodine formula that many in the field of preparedness have been stockpiling for quite some time.
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Anthony Gucciardi is the acting Editor and Founder of alternative news website Storyleak.com, as well as the Founder of the third largest natural health website in the world, NaturalSociety.com. He is also a news media personality and analyst who has been featured on top news, radio, and television organizations including Drudge Report, Michael Savage’s Savage Nation, Coast to Coast AM, and RT.
This article was posted: Wednesday, January 1, 2014 at 12:41 pm

Plumes of Mysterious Steam Rise from Crippled Nuclear Reactor at Fukushima

RT
January 1, 2014
AFP Photo / TEPCO
AFP Photo / TEPCO
Fresh plumes of most probably radioactive steam have been detected rising from the reactor 3 building at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, said the facility’s operator company.
The steam has been detected by surveillance cameras and appeared to be coming from the fifth floor of the mostly-destroyed building housing crippled reactor 3, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant’s operator.
The steam was first spotted on December 19 for a short period of time, then again on December 24, 25, 27, according to a report TEPCO published on its website.
The company, responsible for the cleanup of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, has not explained the source of the steam or the reason it is rising from the reactor building. High levels of radiation have complicated entry into the building and further inspection of the situation.
Three of the plant’s reactors suffered a nuclear meltdown in March 2011 after the Great East Japan Earthquake and resulting tsunami hit the region. The plant is comprised of six separate water boiling reactors. At the time of the earthquake, reactor number 4 had been de-fueled and reactors 5 and 6 were in cold shutdown for planned maintenance, thereby managing to avoid meltdowns.
Unlike the other five reactors, reactor 3 ran on mixed core containing both uranium fuel and mixed uranium and plutonium oxide, or MOX nuclear fuel. The Reactor 3 fuel storage pond still houses an estimated 89 tons of the plutonium-based MOX nuclear fuel composed of 514 fuel rods.
In a similar incident, small amounts of steam escaped from the reactor 3 building in July 2013, Asahi Shimbun reported. However it was unclear where the steam came from. TEPCO said that radiation levels did not change, adding that the steam could have been caused by rain that found its way to the primary containment of the reactor, and because this vessel was still hot, the water evaporated. On 23 July the steam was seen again coming out of the fifth floor just above the reactor containment, the Japanese newspaper reported.
In November, TEPCO, responsible for the decommissioning of the plant, began the highly risky removal of over 1,500 potentially damaged nuclear fuel rods from reactor 4. The reactor is the most unstable part of the plant as it was offline at the time of the 2011 catastrophe and its core didn’t go into meltdown. Instead, hydrogen explosions blew the roof off the building and severely damaged the structure.One of the most dangerous operations attempted in nuclear history was a success as a total of 22 assemblies containing 50 to 70 fuel rods have been transported to a new storage pool. While the extraction of the fuel rods is a significant challenge for TEPCO, a more complex task of removing the cores of the stricken reactors is yet to come.
This article was posted: Wednesday, January 1, 2014 at 2:59 pm