Fukushima #4 and questions about Arnie Gundersen

Further to my essay yesterday these comments from M.G. came back to me.

They reflect very well (and amplify) my own doubts about changes in Arnie Gundersen's message as well as reflect the fact that everything provides more questions than answers about Fukushima.

I am posting this especially because any requests for clarification have been met with silence.

Further reflections on Fukushima #4

via Facebook

“I too, rely on the reputation of the likes of Arnie Gundersen. He is a nuclear engineer, a whistleblower and truth teller who could never be accused of being in the pocketbook of the nuclear industry.”

Actually, that was a suggestion, i.e., that Gunderson had sold out and had been used as a shill. Initially, I thought the statement to be complete hyperbole. In the past few days, however, I've been wondering. In a link I opened yesterday, Arnie Gunderson said that Fukushima was "better than any other time in the past 2 years" - except for that nasty business sitting 100 feet up in reactor #4. I did a double take when I heard that. Today, in talking about the possibility that Tepco would deliberately release all the radioactive water into the ocean, Gunderson got strangely legalistic and academic in his reference to Greenpeace. Where, I wondered, was his passion and commitment?

I've become increasingly agnostic about Arnie Gunderson. I'm listening to Gunderson with a lot more caution and care. He hasn't yet addressed the discrepancies involving unit #4, and that too is very odd. He seems very well-meaning, of course. Avuncular, as I said elsewhere. I am simply asking myself how that translates. The last thing I want to do is sign on to a conspiracy theory about him. I just don't know, especially in light of all the silence we're getting on some events that reportedly did take place in early 2011, and their clash with the scenario depicted in the present.

I cannot see how Gunderson could missed that. That's his specialty, after all. If he clocked it, why wasn't he amongst the first to talk about it? That's the most troubling question.

As for the questions about reactor #4, I haven't a clue. I think Michael C. Ruppert's guest last night had indeed uncovered important information. That said, I am not nearly as enamored with him as his host. More to the point, I myself have far more questions about Fukushima than I have answers. I believe that anyone who claims to be certain as to events is seemingly overconfident or else whistling past a graveyard.

I am not yet convinced that the amount of radiation that would have been released from unit #4 had there been a large and sustained nuclear fire, as has been suggested, would have simply precipitated out and disappeared from view. It may indeed have been possible, but I'd need to hear that confirmed by experts like Helen Caldicott.

Right now, we know with certainty that much of what we've been told is true is a lie. The video associated with the cleanup in unit #4, as one of my Facebook friends suggested, looks like a Stanley Kubrick production. Having just said that, however, I remain wary of the conspiracy crowd, some of whom have history with Alex Jones, and who if given an inch will always take a mile. IMO, these people too are bad news.

In the end, the use of common sense is not a bad fall-back position. We know that neither Japan nor Tepco wanted outside inspectors or consultants to peer in on Fukushima. We can guess why. I don't think it was pride. I think it is much more likely that it was fear of being found out. What could be more sensitive than the fact that Tepco was dumping hundreds of gallons of high level radiative waste into the ocean every day, and has been doing so since the very beginning? What could be more sensitive than the three meltdowns, including the MOX fuel? But we already know about that. So it almost certainly had to involve unit #4.

I am guessing that Tepco's recent admissions of small nuclear fires involving unit #4 were true enough, except that they were probably not all that small, as described, and Tepco too said they occurred in 2011. I have no idea what means or what remains of that fuel. I have no idea where all that radiation went. I have no idea what Tepco's game is now. We do know what Yakuza's game is, however. That would likely be extortion. In Fukushima, perhaps, that would be the sound of one hand clapping.