Prediction: The Ice Wall Won't Work.

Today several years after announcing the wonderful concept of freezing the soil around the core-breached reactors at Fukushima, "officials" announce they are going to actually start freezing soil today.  The point to which is - it turns out the natural groundwater in the area flows (underground) through serious contamination, and then both comes up into the broken cellars of the nuclear plant, and oh, incidentally, flows right out into the sea.  (They know that, but the "official" announcement that contamination has been leaking into the sea constantly is probably 2 years away.)

Here is link and text; and my detailed prediction below it:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160330_18/

"TEPCO to start freezing wall at Fukushima plant

"The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has gained approval from the regulator to start freezing soil around its reactors. Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO plans to create an ice wall that will reduce the amount of groundwater flowing into the 4 reactor buildings and thereby limit the buildup of radioactive water.

"The utility got the go-ahead on Wednesday from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, or NRA, to begin the underground freezing. It is expected to start the work as early as Thursday. The volume of contaminated water at the plant is increasing due to inflowing groundwater.

"Once the freezing process is complete, together with other measures, the daily accumulation of underground water is expected to fall from 400 tons to about 50 tons. The wall is expected to start restricting the inflow of groundwater about 45 days after the freezing starts.

"TEPCO finished building the underground freezing systems last month, after 2 years of work.

"But the regulator did not immediately give the greenlight to its freezing plans. It was concerned the wall could lower the groundwater level too much and cause radioactive water pooled in the reactor buildings to leak out.

"TEPCO submitted a revised plan to do the freezing work in stages. Under the new plan, it will first freeze soil at the downstream side of the buildings to prevent water leaking there.

"NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka said the operation will be a major challenge. He said it is important to carefully monitor the freezing process with adequate data."

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My prediction; based not on rancor or ill wishes but on Physics, Chemistry, and Hydrology: the ice wall will not work.  Will never work, can not ever be made to work, and is quite likely to cause new and possibly worse problems with contaminated water at the site.

"Why" it won't work requires long discussion, which perhaps we will do after it is announced that it isn't working; my guess will that announcement will happen within the next two months.  Hard to cover up 200 tons of new water every day.

So why did they build it, if common science says it can't work?  Several reasons, none good- A) they don't know how to do anything that might be effective, B) They have to appear to be doing something, and C) There is a huge amount of money to be made, from public funds, building something so wacky.  When it fails, they'll just wring their hands and walk away- the executives with fat bank accounts, and the public reputation of saints struggling with evil.

Recommended book: At The Mercy Of Nature

Tools are what we need, to survive what is coming.  Humans are tool users, tool makers - an aspect of our species that is largely responsible for climate change, the population explosion, and pretty much everything else we can point fingers at "that's the problem, right there!"  Our tools (I'm including things like antibiotics) gave humans the power to expand; so we did; and here we are.

My fingers are trying to trick me into writing a whole long essay on "tools"; but that will have to wait...

What tools do you, do we, need going into this unknown future?  We really don't know; that's a big part of our worries.  An ever-increasing number of charlatans are willing to sell you magic survival tools; be very wary.  

When we “don’t know” something- how do we, human tool users, tackle that? In this era, "Science" is our standard answer; wave the Magic Wand Of Science, and Answers will appear.

Not going into that right now, either.  What I have to offer you here is something unique, so far as I know- a fully competent practitioner of Science has waved his highly trained Wand - appropriately - and come up not with all the Answers; but with clear vision, the necessary precursor to finding our way.

I’m going to invoke a couple of Holy Names here: who says you should read this book, besides me?  E. O. Wilson.  Bill McKibben.  Both put their stamp of approval on the back cover, very official.

Ecologist Carl McDaniel has done something beautifully Scientific in his book At The Mercy Of Nature: Shackleton’s Survival Saga Gives Promise For Our Future.  

He set out to methodically search for the right question, then see what he could pull out of History that might refine the question further.  Many great scientists have stated some version of "First find the right question."  McDaniel's methods here are in the best scientific tradition.

"Do we have historical examples of humans in groups surviving against unknown challenges, and extreme trials?" - is my own phrasing of how this investigation was launched.  Because that is what ecologists know our species is facing - extreme conditions and unknown problems.

Ernest Shackleton's expedition's survival of Antarctic shipwreck in 1914 is an astonishing story which was copiously documented by photographs and daily journals.  The basics- their ship, a 3 masted sailing vessel with an early coal fueled engine, became locked in ice far from land, and the crew of 28 picked men found themselves trapped, their ship crushed and sunk.  In the era before radio, let alone GPS.  No one knew where they were, no rescuers would come.  Their story has been made into many books and multiple movies, and the storytellers are not done with it yet, I'm sure.  I won't be spoiling anything by telling you - all 28 men survived- and they finally managed their own rescue in 1917 - after years utterly alone in the Antarctic.

McDaniel re-tells the story as part of his analysis, it's mind-boggling.  You only have to get a few months into the events after the Endurance became caught in the ice to realize- people in this expedition should have started dying immediately.  Catastrophe after deadly catastrophe caught them- in my own reading, it's amazing any of them survived more than 6 months.  But they all survived.

Unlike the many re-tellings that are purely hero-worship (quite deserved); McDaniel asks "How?  Why"  and "What/"  and manages to pull multiple answers no one else has ever extracted from the story.  And convinces, with evidence.

You need to have the list of factors that allowed Shackleton's crew to survive - in your back pocket.  Look at it often.  Use it.  They survived, when they should not have.

Of course- you have to read the book, to get the list.  If you don't have McDaniel's accompanying commentary, the list will mean nothing to you.

Read it.  Pass it on.  It's a tool; one you'll need.

For example-

I'm going to paste in the entire text of a post on the Japanese news feed I've mentioned before.  It's a perfect example of the excellent studies they continue to publish - which will rapidly disappear.

There's a good chance this will never appear in international news sources; and I'd predict with near certainty that it will not reappear in Japanese internal news; past today.  The controllers can't pretend it never was published; but they can enforce "oh, it's trivial; drop it."

Summary; 3,400 people who survived the tsunami and nuclear meltdown - are now dead; from "prolonged upheaval."  They're just reporting the facts.  Lots of facts here; but you have to put them together yourself.  The link is likely to stop working today- but it works right now.

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3,400 survivors of 2011 disaster have since died

The Japanese government says more than 3,400 survivors of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami have subsequently died due to health problems caused by prolonged upheaval.

The Reconstruction Agency compiles data every 6 months on deaths related to the disaster and the ensuing nuclear accident in northeastern Japan.

Agency officials say that by the end of last September, 4-and-a-half years after the disaster, they had documented 3,407 deaths.

The largest number was in Fukushima Prefecture, where the damaged nuclear plant is based -- 1,979 residents, representing 58 percent of the total.

The officials say 1,876 people or 55 percent died within 3 months of the disaster.

Since March 2014, 156 people have died, most of them in Fukushima Prefecture.

The officials say that as of February 12th, as many as 174,471 people are still in temporary housing or living in relatives' homes. The figure is down 50,706 from last March.

156,234 people are living in prefabricated housing or apartments rented by central and local governments. 18,237 people live with their relatives and acquaintances, down 316 from last year.

43,139 people originally from Fukushima Prefecture are living different prefectures.

Local governments have completed only half the planned public housing for people affected by the disaster, and just 30 percent of residential developments on land lots in higher locations.

Some communities continue to suffer from declining populations.

In Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures, 12 communities have reported population declines of more than 10 percent. More than half said their numbers are down by 20 percent or greater.

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End quote.  Disasters cause long, slow declines - in civilization itself, now.  The entire story of the Fukushima disaster is incredibly complex; but included the immediate descent of sophisticated vultures anxious to steal public disaster relief funds.  And they have.

This is not fun to watch; but is incredibly educational; and could save your family's life someday.