Effects of Fukushima radiation on North America

RADIATION EFFECTS IN U.S. FROM JAPAN NUKE ACCIDENT

Turner Radio Network, 26 November, 2013 Radiation reaching the United States from the nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan is causing significant harm; affecting newborn Human babies in California, Pacific Ocean sea life, and even inland wild life.  Radiation is causing massive die-offs of sea life as well as mammals, birds and reptiles inland. High percentages of inland animals that are not already dead are losing their fur, bleeding from lesions all over their bodies and failing to reproduce. Radiation contamination of sea food is already confirmed and contamination of the inland food supply is now taking place as rain carries radiation from the Pacific ocean to inland farms.  U.S. Government propagandists are claiming everything is all right - but they aren't even monitoring radiation levels - while scientists outside the government are warning the worst is yet to come. Newly released government projections (contained in this article) show parts of Hawaii, Alaska and the entire west coast of North America may become uninhabitable due to radioactive Cesium-137 making its way toward us in the Pacific. HOW IT ALL BEGAN The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a nuclear energy accident at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, caused by an earthquake and, later, a tsunami (tidal wave) generated by that earthquake on 11 March 2011.  The tsunami caused equipment failures and without this equipment, coolant stopped flowing into the reactor cores allowing them to get so hot, they melted.  During the meltdowns, radioactive materials were released into the air and water beginning on March 12, 2011. Fukushima is the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the second disaster (along with Chernobyl) to measure Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The plant comprised six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric (GE) and maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). At the time of the earthquake, reactor 4 had been De-fueled and reactors 5 and 6 were in cold shutdown for planned maintenance. Immediately after the earthquake, following government regulations, the remaining reactors 1, 2 and 3 shut down automatically, inserting control rods in what is termed a "SCRAM event." Following this, emergency diesel generators came online to power electronics and coolant systems which operated right up until the tsunami. The tsunami arrived 50 minutes after the initial earthquake. The 13 meter (40 Feet) tall tsunami tidal wave overwhelmed the plant's seawall, which was only 10 meters (30 feet)  high. The tsunami water flooded rooms in which the emergency generators were housed. The flooded diesel generators failed, cutting power to the critical pumps that must continuously circulate coolant water through a reactor to keep the fuel rods from melting down. Even though the control rods had come down and the nuclear reactions had halted, the fuel rods remained red hot following the SCRAM event.  In fact, the rods remained hot enough to melt themselves down when no adequate cold sink was available Once the diesel generators failed from the tsunami flooding, secondary emergency cooling pumps kicked-in; they were run by batteries.  One day later, the batteries died for the secondary emergency pumps. The pumps stopped and the reactors began to overheat due to lack of water to cool the fuel rods. As workers struggled to supply power to the reactors coolant systems and restore power to their control rooms, the overheating reactors released hydrogen gas; an incredibly explosive gas.  A number of hydrogen-air chemical explosions occurred, the first in Unit 1, on March 12 and the last in Unit 4, on March 15. These explosions tore the reactor buildings apart, and did severe damage to whatever cooling systems remained; making them all but useless. EXPLOSIONS OBLITERATE THREE REACTORS The first explosion took place on March 12.  The remaining explosions took place by March 15.  The results are shown below: CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE EXPLAINS THE DANGER In 2012, the Congressional Research Service reported to Congress as follows: "As it approaches the west coast of North America, the North Pacific Current splits into the southward California Current and the northward Alaska Current. Although these currents have the potential for bringing radiation from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident to U.S. waters, their flow is slow ... Regardless of the slow flow, radioactive contaminants with long half-lives (e.g., cesium-137, with a half-life of about 30 years) could still pose concerns if transported over long distances by ocean currents." Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution advised that radiation levels in seafood should continue to be monitored ... there remains the potential for a corridor of highly contaminated water leading away from Japan and a very patchy distribution of contaminated fish; extensive monitoring will determine the exact dispersion of these radioactive contaminants. [...] It has been suggested that cesium-137 may move up the food chain and become concentrated in fish muscle or that radiation hot spots may occur. Another potential concern is related to accumulation of strontium-90 in fish bone [...] additional radiation from [Fukushima] might eventually also be detected in North Pacific waters under U.S. jurisdiction, even months after its release. Regardless of slow ocean transport, the long half-life of radioactive cesium isotopes means that radioactive contaminants could remain a valid concern for years. FOOD CONTAMINATION On March 30, 2011, Mr. Lake Barrett, a former official with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now an adviser to TEPCO, said "The environmental release is the growing challenge; you’re going to read more and more about it in the paper.  Wait until the first cesium-137 shows up in Alaska salmon, which is only a matter of time."  Mr. Barrett's warning was prescient. In 2012, out of twenty Pacific Tuna fish caught and tested from various points in the ocean, one hundred percent (100%) tested positive for radiation contamination! Researchers at Stanford University studied samples from 20 blue-fin tuna caught off California between May and August 2012 and said they detected radioactive cesium. They concluded the source of the contamination was the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. In British Columbia, Canada, Pacific Herring have been found to be bleeding from their eyes, mouths, fins and tails.  Independent fisheries scientist Alexandra Morton is raising concerns about a "disease" she says is spreading through Pacific herring causing fish to hemorrhage.  “I did a beach seine on Malcolm Island [near Port McNeill on northern Vancouver Island] and I got approximately 100 of these little herring and they were not only bleeding from their fins, but their bellies, their chins, their eyeballs.   “It was 100 per cent … I couldn’t find any that weren’t bleeding to some degree." Morton dragged up several hundred of the fish and found the trouble had spread – instead of their usual silver color the fish had eyes, tails, underbellies, gills and faces plastered with blood. “I have never seen fish that looked this bad,” In June, the affected fish were only found in eastern Johnstone Strait, but have since spread to Alert Bay and Sointula, she said. COVER-UP BY TEPCO OF MASSIVE AND ONGOING RADIATION LEAKING INTO PACIFIC OCEAN On July 22, 2013, more than two years after the incident, it was revealed that the plant has been leaking 300 Tons of heavily contaminated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean EVERY DAY since the accident of March 11, 2011, something long suspected by local fishermen and independent investigators. TEPCO had previously denied this was happening and the situation prompted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe to order the government to step in. It was then revealed how -- and how much -- radiation is pouring into the Pacific Ocean: On August 20, 2013 in a further incident, it was announced that an ADDITIONAL 300 metric tons of heavily contaminated water had also leaked from a storage tank at the plant and had gone into ground water and into the Pacific. What this means is that the water pouring out of that plant today is just as poisonous as the water that came out the first day this accident took place; and it has been that way for over 1,000 days -- and counting! Scientists at the University of Alaska are concerned because some radiation has arrived in northern Alaska and along its west coast. That's raised concern over contamination of fish and wildlife. More may be heading toward coastal communities like Haines and Skagway. Douglas Dasher, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says radiation levels in Alaskan waters could reach Cold War levels. "The levels they are projecting in some of the models are in the ballpark of what they saw in the North Pacific in the 1960s," he said.  Those levels occurred after the US conducted open-air blasts of nuclear weapons in the south Pacific. This contamination is taking place because the major ocean currents running east from Japan, split as they approach the North American continent; part of the current heads north toward Alaska, the other part heads south toward the U.S. west coast.  Those currents are carrying highly radioactive water from the Fukushima disaster throughout the Pacific ocean. NOVEMBER, 2013: SHARP INCREASE IN U.S. EFFECTS In November, 2013, enormous amounts of Star Fish on the sea floor off the California coast have begun dissolving into mushy piles of white goo.  During an ocean dive Thursday morning, November 7, 2013 off the coast of Santa Cruz, Pete Raimondi [UCSC ecology professor] watched two halves of a broken sea star ravaged by a “wasting syndrome” walk away from each other. Not long after, they would turn into mushy piles of goo, disintegrated by a disease that has so far perplexed scientists. It appears the syndrome is impacting as many as 10 sea star species up and down the West Coast, wiping out entire populations in certain areas.  “They can go from great -- to pieces -- in 12 hours,” said Raimondi. The Pacific Ocean is in the middle of a cooling trend, so biologists are at a loss to explain the outbreak. Others, speaking to Turner Radio Network on condition of anonymity fearing retaliation from authorities, said the cause has already been identified: radiation poisoning.  These biologists have been threatened with losing their jobs if they reveal this publicly. On November 11, 2013 FOX NEWS reported that since June, researchers have seen the disease spread from as far as British Columbia, Canada, down through California and, within the past year, from Maine through New Jersey. The scientists tracking the disease find this simultaneous bi-coastal infection especially alarming. “There is no direct route to get from Providence to Seattle,” Gary Wessel, a molecular biologist at Brown University. However, when one considers the evaporation of radiation-contaminated water from the Pacific, being carried inland by weather systems, and the jet stream then carrying those weather systems to the east coast, the explanation becomes obvious. On November 23, 2013, thousands of dead sea birds began washing up on the shores of Alaska.  Many of the carcases were broken open and bleeding. The toxic effects of radiation on sea life is getting so terrible it is actually causing sea creatures to flee the deep ocean and head toward the shores.On November 24, the New York Times reported:  It began with the anchovies, miles and miles of them ... in the waters of Monterey Bay. Then the sea lions came, by the thousands ... then pelicans ... bottlenose dolphins in groups of 100 or more have been spotted. But it was the whales that astounded even longtime residents — more than 200 humpbacks ... and, on a recent weekend, a pod of 19 rowdy Orcas ... the water in every direction roiled with mammals. For almost three months, Monterey and nearby coastal areas have played host to a mammoth convocation of sea life that scientists here say is unprecedented in their memories ... never that anyone remembers have there been this many or have they stayed so long. Last month, so many anchovies crowded into Santa Cruz harbor that the oxygen ran out, leading to a major die-off. Marine researchers PUBLICLY say they are baffled about the reason for the anchovy explosion.  PRIVATELY, they tell the Turner Radio Network the cause is Fukushima radiation but they've been told to keep quiet to avoid causing a public panic. INLAND WILDLIFE BADLY AFFECTED  According to a November report by the U.S. Geological Survey: Alopecia (loss of fur) and skin lesions were recently observed in polar bears off the northern coast of Alaska. According to the Alaska Region Marine Mammal Stranding Network since the spring of 2012, a total of 23 polar bears from Barrow, Deadhorse and Kaktovik have been identified with variable degrees of hair loss/ thinning, inflamed and crusting skin, and oral lesions. The prevalence of these symptoms appears to be in about 28% of observed animals.The concurrent presence of hair loss in seals, walrus and polar bears has suggested a possible connection between the events. Biologists in Alaska have observed a high rate of non-viable eggs in nests of greater white-fronted geese. Northern fur seals and soil samples in Alaska are also showing unusual signs.  In another study, the Alaska Science Center has documented surprisingly high mortality (20–30 percent) of adult female musk ox during mid- to late summer in northwestern Alaska. In Montana, Wyoming and inland to Minnesota, the effects of Fukushima are already being seen.  According to the Billings (Montana) Gazette, Nov. 18, 2013: Jared Jansen said, he and his father, Mike, have seen up to 100 dead deer at a time along the Musselshell River. ... die-offs have whittled the once hardy deer herds down to a handful. “I’ve only seen three does this year. . . It used to be when I was haying along the river, early in the morning, I’d see 200 to 500 head in the meadows.” The reasons attributed to these die-offs sound like something out of a science fiction thriller: epizootic hemorrhagic disease, sylvatic plague, bluetongue, brucellosis, chytrid, chronic wasting disease ... Yet the all-too-real afflictions threaten to reduce the populations of wild mammals, birds and reptiles across Montana, Wyoming and other regions. “There is a general consensus among scientists that we are seeing more disease,” said Jonathan Sleeman, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis. . . so many diseases afflicting such a wide variety of animals ... A study is being conducted in northwestern Montana to examine the possible causes."  Others within the USGS who asked to remain anonymous for fear of their jobs say that radiation is the cause, but the government won't admit it because there is nothing they can do about it. In Minnesota, the Independent Record newspaper Oct. 31, 2013 reports Moose in the northern United States are dying ... The die-off is most dire in Minnesota, where ecologists say moose could be gone within a decade. Concerns have prompted a 10-year study of moose in Montana. It’s not just in Montana, either.  An aerial survey of moose in northeastern Minnesota earlier this year showed a 52 percent drop in population, which prompted the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to completely call off the 2013 moose hunting season. In various regions of British Columbia [Canada], populations have declined from 20 to 70 percent in recent years. HUMAN BABIES IN CALIFORNIA ALREADY SHOWING SIGNS OF RADIATION EXPOSURE A new study of the effects of tiny quantities of radioactive fallout from Fukushima on the health of babies born in California shows a significant excess of hypothyroidism caused by the radioactive contamination traveling 5,000 miles across the Pacific. The article will be published next week in the peer-reviewed journal Open Journal of Pediatrics. Congenital hypothyroidism is a rare but serious condition normally affecting about one child in 2,000, and one that demands clinical intervention - the growth of children suffering from the condition is affected if they are left untreated. All babies born in California are monitored at birth for Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) levels in blood, since high levels indicate hypothyroidism. Joe Mangano and Janette Sherman of the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York, and Christopher Busby, guest researcher at Jacobs University, Bremen, examined congenital hypothyroidism (CH) rates in newborns using data obtained from the State of California over the period of the Fukushima explosions. Their results are published in their paper Changes in confirmed plus borderline cases of congenital hypothyroidism in California as a function of environmental fallout from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. The researchers compared data for babies exposed to radioactive Iodine-131 and born between March 17th and Dec 31st 2011 with unexposed babies born in 2011 before the exposures plus those born in 2012. Confirmed cases of hypothyroidism, defined as those with TSH level greater than 29 units increased by 21% in the group of babies that were exposed to excess radioactive Iodine in the womb. The same group of children had a 27% increase in 'borderline cases'. RADIATION ALERTS ISSUED FOR MULTIPLE U.S. CITIES - NO MEDIA COVERAGE The Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center (NETC) provides free radiation monitoring information to the public from about 300 private monitoring sites and many more government monitoring sites like "RADnet" from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In the past ten days, the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center (NETC) has issued radiation alerts for several major U.S. cities after background radiation levels in those cities suddenly spiked to record high levels or jumped to fifty percent higher than normal in the "Counts Per Minute" (CPM) of deadly Gamma Radiation in the 600 - 800 keV range.  Those Alerts are known as "RADCON - 5" Alerts because the radiation has climbed to the highest level on the 5 step scale.  Despite the issuance of RADCON-5 Alerts, no mass-media in ANY of those cities, bothered to report the condition.  Cities affected were / are: OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON RICHLAND, WASHINGTON RENO, NEVADA JUNEAU, ALASKA COMPARISON TO READINGS AT FUKUSHIMA Now that you've seen the numbers here in the U.S., take a look at the reading at Fukushima itself: AREAS OF THE USA, CANADA, EXPECTED TO BECOME UNINHABITABLE The graphic below, (File is 14.4 MB May Take Time to Load)  produced by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) an agency of the United States Government, shows the MONTHLY predicted spread and potency of radioactive Cesium-137 from Fukushima throughout the Pacific Ocean. The GIF runs from March, 2011 when the disaster took place, all the way through to the year 2041. Based upon these projections, northernmost Hawaii will be uninhabitable by January, 2015. The government is concealing this to protect real estate values and tourism because there's nothing the government can do to stop the radiation. By October, 2016, all of southern Alaska including the Aleutian Islands will be uninhabitable. The government is concealing this to protect the fishing industry because there's nothing the government can do to stop the radiation. By June, 2017, the entire west coast of Canada and the United States will be uninhabitable. Both the U.S. and Canadian governments are concealing this to avoid a panic, to preserve real estate values in some of the wealthiest areas of both countries, to preserve farming and fishing industries in those areas from being driven out of business when consumers shun their products due to radiation contamination and because there is nothing the governments can do to stop the radiation. (Note: The government projection below uses only 1/3rd the amount of Cesium that was actually released initially and DOES NOT take into account the 300 metric tons of contaminated water which has leaked into the Pacific Ocean EVERY DAY since the accident in March, 2011.) To simply download the file above, right-click here and select "Save Link As" EXPERTS: THE WORST IS YET TO COME Beginning on Tuesday, November 26, 2013, TEPCO is to begin attempting to remove the 1,534 used fuel rods that remain inside Reactor #4.  These rods contain pellets of nuclear materials like Uranium and Plutonium as well as other radioactive materials.  Experts say that the fuel rods may snap during the removal process because the reactor pool is physically damaged and the rods may not be able to come out perfectly straight.  In the event a rod snaps, and fuel pellets fall out from inside the rod onto the floor of the reactor pool, they could begin reacting with each other on the floor of the pool.  They would become self-sustaining mini reactors, completely uncontrollable, boiling-off the pool water, thereby allowing the remaining fuel rods to overheat and meltdown and releasing tons of radioactive gases into the atmosphere.  One byproduct of such a scenario would be large amounts of hydrogen gas.  The temporary structure built around Reactor #4 after the earthquake, would hold enough of that hydrogen gas to make the equivalent of a nuclear explosion once the gas ignites. Experts say that if such a scenario takes place as TEPCO is removing the remaining fuel rods, "it is bye-bye Japan and people on the west coast of the United States and Canada would have only DAYS to evacuate to avoid lethal doses of radiation." Strange that the mass-media inside the United States is failing to report this.  If you would like to be alerted by e-mail about future news of this type or of RADIATION ALERTS in your area, you can subscribe to our "ALERTS" e-mail service, free!  This is *NOT* a discussion list; you will *NOT* be deluged with email and your email will *NEVER* be sold or rented to anyone.  To sign-up, click HERE