Fukushima Blast Was Nuclear Explosion

British scientist Christopher Busby, a researcher on the negative health effects of ionizing radiation, told Russia Today that one of the explosions at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was a nuclear explosion, not a hydrogen explosion as widely reported in the media.



Busby said the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 was also a nuclear explosion. The Chernobyl nuclear accident dispersed large quantities of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere. Busby told RT the crisis at Fukushima is far worse than Chernobyl.

He said the explosion did not originate in the reactor core, but the tanks where spent plutonium MOX fuel rods are stored. MOX fuel contains plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. The explosion vaporized the plutonium rods and ejected a large amount of radiation into the atmosphere.

Takeshi Tokuda, a member of the Lower House of the Japanese Diet, also believes the first explosion at Fukushima was nuclear. Tokuda talked with a doctor Oikawa of the Minami Soma City General Hospital. Oikawa told the government representative that materials ejected from the plant after the explosion registered high radiation levels.

“When the hospital checked the radiation level on the people who escaped from around the nuke plant after the explosion, there were more than 10 people whose radiation level exceeded 100,000 cpm [counts per minute], beyond what could be measured by the geiger counter the hospital had,” Tokuda wrote. “100,000 cpm is the new level that the Japanese government set that requires decontamination. Before the Fukushima accident, the level was 6,000 cpm.”

The EPA has attempted to downplay the fact that plutonium is now bombarding the United States and much of the Northern Hemisphere. According to Lucas Hixton Whitefield, an EPA RADNet report shows increased levels of plutonium in the atmosphere. Whitefield found information on the plutonium in a RADnet dataset.

Sony Launching Sony S1 and S2 Android Tablets

Seems the doodle exclusive Engadget obtained a few months back panned out as Mashable got a hold of the Sony S1 and Sony S2 Android Honeycomb powered tablets, with photos, as Sony plans to announce it today! The Sony S1 is a 9.4 inch whose design creates its own slight stand. The Sony S2 is a dual screen 5.5 inch, similar to the Kyocera Echo for Sprint, which can be used separately or together; and can be folded onto each other. Of course these Sony tablets are able to download and play PlayStation games plus are Wi-Fi and 3G/4G compatible.

The tablets are to be introduced into the living as they have use infrared sensors for controlling televisions, AV devices and such; acting as a universal remote. In addition, they support DLNA technology for streaming content to other devices. Availability is fall 2011, and price is unknown thus far. What are you thoughts, would you buy one? Let us know in the comments below!

Pictures of Sony S1 and S2 Android Tablets:

This content was originally posted at AndroidTapp.com

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Goes on Sale for $399, Sells Out Immediately

What do you get when you combine a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 10.1-inch display, 16GB of storage, and a $399.99 price tag? Call that bad boy the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, which is now available for purchase via Best Buy. The Honeycomb tablet manages to grab one of the lowest price points we have seen on a device that doesn’t skimp on the hardware, and as such seems to already be backordered. The order page says units will ship in “1-2 weeks.”

This mirrors the Tranformer’s success in the UK where its first three production runs have already sold out. Either Asus didn’t anticipate high demand and lowballed their stock, or the Eee Pad Transformer is the perfect example of what can happen when you mix powerful hardware, Android Honeycomb, and the right price. Check out more discussion on the Transformer over at AndroidForums.

[via Best Buy | Thanks, Ajit!]

Fukushima and Chernobyl, similar but different

Early on, Japan’s official Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) didn’t think the damage at Fukushima was serious enough to be considered an “accident.” Ten hours after the plant was struck by an earthquake and battered by a tsunami, NISA called the situation a “serious incident,” a level 3 ranking on the IAEA scale. Even after radiation levels in the Fukushima main control room had spiked to 1,000 times normal levels, radioactive steam had been vented into the environment, and hydrogen explosions had demolished large parts of two reactor buildings, sending radioactive debris a thousand feet into the air, NISA only raised the threat assessment to level 5 — the same as the far less catastrophic accident at Three Mile Island.

Only on April 12, over a month after the crisis began, did NISA upgrade the crisis at Fukushima to level seven.

“In hindsight, their assessment of the situation was faulty,” says professor emeritus of nuclear engineering, Kenji Sumita.

The Soviet police-state clampdown on information about Chernobyl was many times worse. People surrounding the area (in what is now Ukraine) were told that a nuclear power plant had experienced only a minor accident. They weren’t told that plumes of intensely radioactive smoke were blowing across fields where dairy cows grazed. Unsuspecting resident gave their children milk with high levels of radioactive iodine, causing a spike in thyroid cancers starting ten years later.

Although thyroid cancer is treatable if caught early, and rarely results in death, the residents around Chernobyl were never told that they had been exposed to radiation and needed annual thyroid checkups. Many died needlessly.

One of the biggest differences between what happened at Chernobyl and the crisis at Fukushima is the amount of resources the two countries possess to minimize long-term effects. The Soviet Union was, we now know, facing financial collapse. Though it spent billions on Chernobyl, it simply abandoned vast amounts of contaminated land — making them into exclusions zones.

So apparently the difference is Japan isn't lying as much to the world as Russia did during Chernobyl. Of course this wonderfully in depth article doesn't even go into the differences of the nuclear explosions or meltdowns. Thanks Forbes! Oh yeah, that's right you only care about money.

Source: Forbes

The Media Corruption that Protects TEPCO

There is one particularly telling example of the media shielding TEPCO by suppressing information. This concerns “plutonium”. According to Uesugi, after the reactor blew up on March 14, there was concern about the leakage of plutonium. However, astonishingly, until two weeks later when Uesugi asked, not a single media representative had raised the question of plutonium at TEPCO's press conferences.

On March 26, in response to Uesugi’s query, TEPCO stated, “We do not measure the level of plutonium and do not even have a detector to scale it.” Ironically, the next day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano announced that “plutonium was detected”.

When TEPCO finally released data on radioactive plutonium on March 28, it stated that plutonium -238, -239, and -240 were found in the ground, but insisted that it posed no human risk. Since TEPCO provided no clarification of the meaning of the plutonium radiation findings, the mainstream press merely reported the presence of the radiation without assessment (link). Nippon Television on March 29 headlined its interview with Tokyo University Prof. Nakagawa Keiichi, a radiation specialist, “Plutonium from the power plant—No effect on neighbors.”

On March 15, Uesugi criticized TEPCO for its closed attitude toward information on a TBS radio program. For this, he was immediately dismissed from his regular program. The scandal involving TEPCO’s silencing of the media took an interesting turn two weeks later. At the time of the disaster on March 11, TEPCO Chairman Katsumata Tsunehisa was hosting dozens of mainstream media executives on a “study session” in China.When asked about this fact by freelance journalist Tanaka Ryusaku at a TEPCO press conference on March 30, Katsumata defended the practice.

“It is a fact that we traveled together to China,” he said, “[TEPCO] did not pay all the expenses of the trip, but we paid more than they did. Certainly they are executives of the mass media, but they are all members of the study session.”

When Tanaka requested the names of the media executives hosted by TEPCO in China, Katsumata retorted, “I cannot reveal their names since this is private information.” But it is precisely such collusive relations between mainstream media, the government and TEPCO, that results in the censorship of information concerning nuclear problems.

Now the Japanese government has moved to crack down on independent reportage and criticism of the government’s policies in the wake of the disaster by deciding what citizens may or may not talk about in public. A new project team has been created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, the National Police Agency, and METI to combat “rumors” deemed harmful to Japanese security in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

The government charges that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send “letters of request” to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they “take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information. ”The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality.

Makiko Segawa is a staff writer at the Shingetsu News Agency. She prepared this report from Fukushima and Tokyo. She can be reached at shingetsunewsagency@gmail.com

Source: JapanFocus.org

Nuclear apologists play shoot the messenger on radiation

Their first piece of disinformation is to confuse the effects of external and internal radiation. The former is what populations were exposed to when atomic bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Internal radiation, by contrast, emanates from radioactive elements that enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements - called internal emitters - migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer.


Source: theage.com.au

Fukushima Engineer Says He Helped Cover Up Flaw at Dai-Ichi Reactor No. 4

One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit ofHitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.

“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?” Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. “I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.”

Source: Bloomberg