I'm appalled...

Ok, sure, I'm appalled at everything- but at the moment I'm most appalled at discovering that my last post here was in December....  Gad.  Sorry about that!

I have no intention of abandoning you, or this blog.  Life, however, has been consistently more difficult than seems strictly necessary for the past months, leaving us all, thee and me, both exhausted and without cheerful conversation material.

Apparently we will have to make do, conversation-wise, with non-cheerful material for a while.  Mostly.  So, girding my loins (and I recommend you gird yours also), here is some un-cheerful material from Japan today.  Japan, keep in mind, has one of the highest standards of living on the planet, ranked #5 "Best Country" in the world by this source; and scads of money, and people with time on their hands; judging from the abundance and complexity of their festivals.  But-

Nearly 5,000 people in shelters in western Japan

"More than 10 days after the catastrophic rain that hit mainly western Japan, NHK has learned that the death toll rose to 216 people, with 15 remaining missing, as of Wednesday. NHK reporters say that 4,669 people are still taking shelter at facilities in 15 prefectures.

"The health ministry says around 55,500 households in Hiroshima, Ehime and Okayama Prefectures were still without running water. Municipality staff and Self-Defense Force personnel are delivering water to communities.

"The authorities are starting to understand the damage to agriculture and forestry. The agriculture ministry officials say the financial cost to the industries has climbed to about 500 million dollars.

"Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Wednesday that Japan has received about 220,000 dollars in donations of from China, 180,000 dollars from Taiwan and 150,000 dollars from Thailand. He added other countries, regions and organizations have also expressed sympathy and offered support."

Japan needs a few hundred thousand dollars in donations from China, Taiwan, and Thailand?  They really don't.  And 5,000 people still living in school gymnasiums 10 days later?  Hm.  Pretty lame response, truly.  Other infrastructure damage: "Rail freight services have been suspended in wide areas of western Japan ... Japan Freight Railway Company President Koichi Shingai told reporters that full recovery will take more than one month. Shingai said the disaster severely damaged rail services... the disruption has affected supplies of agricultural commodities and paper products. The freight company last week began alternative services by truck and cargo ship that cover only about 13 to 14 percent of normal rail transport volume."

This has become a pattern; these rains were global-warming spawned record-breakers; nothing like them in their 3,000 year memories.  In 2016 Japan had serious earthquakes hit in similar circumstances; and the response from the central government was again, embarrassing.  Too little; too late, and still not helping much.  The outlying areas are sort of - on their own.  Not for lack of money, or resources - but lack of will.  Sounding familiar?

Following the floods - global warming heat wave: "The Fire and Disaster Management Agency says the soaring temperatures currently hitting Japan sent 9,956 people to hospital with heat stroke in the week ending last Sunday. Of them, 12 died...  The Meteorological Agency says that scorching heat will continue across Japan until the end of July..."

And- in case you were wondering - The Ice Wall Worketh Not; as I firmly predicted here, before it was built.  Physics, you know.  The "nuclear engineers" still have no idea, 7 years later, how they are going to clean up the leaked, melted, utterly lethal nuclear fuel - nor do they even know where it is.  The communities?  Gone.

The ancient observation that "Misery loves company" is not a good guiding principle.   But ignoring and forgetting misery, I think, is worse.

Hang in there.  Keep in mind - all your ancestors - were survivors. 

:-)

What Ice Wall? Phase 2

Entire post from NHK below- with not one single mention of the ice wall.  Instead- the regulators think TEPCO really should DO something about the problem - since - they haven't.  They are doing a study, though!  Thank goodness.  Oh, and this press release points out they are still pumping water into the melted down reactors to cool them.  And the water then goes - where?  They're not sure.

"TEPCO urged to cut risk of radioactive water leak

"Japan's nuclear regulator has urged the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to reduce the risk of leaking of highly radioactive water from the facility into the sea, in case of another tsunami.

"About 60,000 tons of such water is believed to have pooled in reactor buildings at the plant. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, is injecting water into the buildings to cool melted nuclear fuel, and groundwater is flowing into their basements.

"The Nuclear Regulation Authority instructed TEPCO at a meeting on Tuesday to urgently study measures to lower the amount and radiation levels of the water.

"The authority proposed 2 measures to TEPCO. One is building more tanks to store the water, even though the plant has about one thousand tanks. The other is treating the water using a system designed to filter out radioactive material, and circulating the water in a cooling system.

"NRA member Toyoshi Fuketa said the utility cannot keep the water in the buildings forever. He said TEPCO should handle the water problem either along with that of other radioactive water or first of all.

"Following the NRA's instruction, TEPCO is to report the results of its study at a meeting next month or later."

"Oh, you mean THAT ice wall. Well..."

"Since the ice isn't stopping the water, now we're going to pump cement into the leaks."

Um.  Hey, if cement was going to work, wouldn't it have been cheaper to just pump cement in the first place?

Nope, not going to work, either.  If water flow is reduced here- the pressure, and flow rate, will go up there- making a new leak in a place where the ice was - sort of- working.

Which is why they didn't try cement in the first place.  It's a game of whack-a-mole; where the moles dig new holes as fast as you whack.  But hey- we're doing something!

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160606_28/

"TEPCO expands ice wall operations at Fukushima

"Tokyo Electric Power Company has expanded operations to create an underground ice wall at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to stop the volume of contaminated groundwater from increasing.

"TEPCO on Monday began injecting a liquid refrigerant into more pipes that make up the 1,500-meter wall surrounding 4 damaged reactor buildings. The operation now covers 95 percent of the wall.

"Groundwater flows into the buildings and becomes tainted with radioactive substances. Reducing its volume is a key to decommissioning the reactors.

"The operation started in March on the downstream side of the wall because lowering the water levels too much could cause tainted water to leak from the buildings.

"Workers began freezing the upstream side after making sure there were no leaks.

"The ice wall project still faces challenges. Ground temperatures have not fallen in some places, and groundwater levels outside the wall have not gone down.

"Also on Monday, workers began injecting cement into the ground where temperatures have not fallen."

------------------------------------------------------

Particularly fun is this bit:

"Workers began freezing the upstream side after making sure there were no leaks.

"The ice wall project still faces challenges. Ground temperatures have not fallen in some places, and groundwater levels outside the wall have not gone down."

Translation: They started freezing the other side after making sure there were no leaks.  But there are leaks - with no measurable effect on water levels anywhere.................

"Ice wall? What ice wall?"

You can learn a huge amount about how to obfuscate everything using Public Relations, just by reading, sequentially, the press releases about the Fukushima "incident".

Today, from NHK (as usual, copied in toto here)  "They believe that water is leaking from a hole near the cooling system. .. Water injected to cool the melted nuclear fuel continues to leak into the reactor building."

And there is not a peep here, in this article about water leaking, about any ice wall, intended to stop water from leaking...

What they are not explicit about is that they are still pumping water directly on to the melted reactor core; in order to keep it from reaching "prompt criticality" - as soon as it's hot enough.  That's a little mini-nuclear explosion; not a bomb, but an actual chain reaction fission event powerful enough to blow the melted core all over the prefecture (and into the ocean).

So, we don't want that, do we, so, we keep pumping water in- and it keeps disappearing somewhere (i.e. leaking out- after having been in the reactor core... and not just "into the reactor building".

Oh, and, in the following story they neatly avoid mentioning that THREE reactor cores melted down entirely- they just want to talk about #2 here.  Oh, and, it wasn't really their fault; the reactor, and all its safety devices, didn't work right.  Can't blame us for a bad machine, now really.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160605_02/

TEPCO:Cooling water leakage likely caused meltdown

"The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says a water leak in the number 2 reactor emergency cooling system may have contributed to its meltdown.

"The plant lost power following a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11th 2011.

"The emergency cooling system began operating right away, driven by steam generated in the reactors. The system's pumps were designed to inject coolant into the reactors during an emergency.

"The number 2 reactor's emergency cooling equipment lost its function on March 14th, 3 days after the disaster.

"The exact cause of the failure remains unknown more than 5 years after the accident.

"Workers tried to inject water from outside, but were unsuccessful in cooling it down. This led to the nuclear fuel meltdown and release of radioactive substances into the air that spread across the region.

"Experts at Tokyo Electric Power Company analyzed the level of contaminated water inside the number 2 reactor, as well as the amount of leaked water.

"They believe that water is leaking from a hole near the cooling system.

"The experts suspect that cooling water began leaking from the system after the pumps had operated beyond the 8 hours for which they were designed.

"They believe the water leakage was the major cause of the reactor heating up.

"Water injected to cool the melted nuclear fuel continues to leak into the reactor building. This contaminated water is hampering decommissioning work at the plant."

---------------------------------------------------------------

We can all be grateful they continue to work so diligently on the "problems".

And actually; if you read the above in one particular way, what it says is: "The meltdown caused the emergency cooling system to break down, which caused the meltdown."   Yeah, it can be read differently; but.

The experts suspect.

It's Official. The Ice Wall Isn't Working.

I'm going to just paste the entire article from NHK below, since they disappear so regularly and the links expire.

There was another TEPCO press release a week ago, which I did not repeat here; with the (approximate) headline "Ice Wall Is Proving Effective".  Actually, nothing in the article supported that headline; they were reporting that around 80% of measurements showed soil now at 0° C - ignoring all kinds of stuff like - 20% unfrozen is equal to - total failure.

"More measures needed for Fukushima ice wall

"The operator of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is considering conducting additional work to help freeze the ground around the crippled reactors.

"Tokyo Electric Power Company began freezing the soil in late March to build a 1.5-kilometer underground ice wall around the 4 reactors. The utility wants to reduce the amount of groundwater flowing into the reactor buildings, because it becomes contaminated with radioactive substances.

"TEPCO says the ground at multiple locations along the barrier has yet to reach below zero degree Celsius and one checkpoint remain at around 10 degrees.

"It says those areas contain more gravel and that the accumulated groundwater may be hampering the freezing process.

"It is studying additional measures, such as pouring chemical compounds to solidify the ground, and will discuss its ideas with Nuclear Regulation Authority.

"TEPCO had hoped to expand by this month the areas to be frozen but say it will examine the timing carefully, taking into consideration the problem facing the project."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

One specific point: "TEPCO says the ground at multiple locations along the barrier has yet to reach below zero degree Celsius and one checkpoint remain at around 10 degrees."

That would be where water is running fast through gravel, keeping the temp high- inevitable, as I predicted.  The more the water is constricted elsewhere; the faster this water will flow.  And there are multiple other factors that also still make this pointless.

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."

----------------------------------------------------

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.

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.

--------------------------------------------------------

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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

Fukushima- soon dumping in the ocean.

I haven't been posting all the stuff on Fukushima for a good while- it's mostly just too depressing, and there's nothing we can do about it in any case.

But today they're getting ready to cross a new line- and no, it's not in the news.  Unless you're a Japanese fisherman in the area.  The "government" (no longer "Tepco", since they've gotten nothing done) is asking local fishermen to agree to them - dumping radioactive groundwater, directly in the ocean.  They just can't handle the 400 tons a day, in any other way.  Here's the entire story, from NHK, Japan National TV English news feed.  Note that for PR purposes, this is a "bypass plan" - not "ocean dumping".  As always, their PR advisors are earning their keep, bigtime.


Government explains groundwater bypass plan

"The Japanese government has sought the understanding from the nation's fisheries industry to release groundwater into the sea at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

"The government presented measures under a new policy to fisheries industry representatives on Monday.

"At the Fukushima plant, groundwater flowing into reactor buildings coming into contact with water used to cool nuclear fuel continues to increase the amount of contaminated water.

"The central government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, which operates the plant want to introduce a bypass plan for the groundwater.
The measure is aimed at reducing the amount of water flowing into the reactor buildings by altering the flow of groundwater.

"The groundwater will be pumped up at the mountain side of the compound before it reaches the reactor buildings, where radioactive water has been accumulating, to reduce the amount that flows in. Then, the groundwater will be discharged into the sea. (italics mine)

"But the government and TEPCO have yet to obtain consent from local fishermen following a string of leaks into the sea of contaminated water, which has raised concerns over harmful rumors.

"Senior vice economy and industry minister Kazuyoshi Akaba met Chairman Hiroshi Kishi of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations on Monday.

"Akaba explained the measures to reduce the amount of contaminated water and new policies the government has been studying since last fall. Akaba reportedly told Kishi the radioactive levels of the water in the bypass plan will be set lower than the standard set by the state for releasing water into the sea. He also said the government will release information to the public to prevent harmful rumors.

"After the meeting, Kishi said he acknowledges the need for the bypass plan, but it can't move ahead without the understanding of local fishermen. He also said he plans to make a final decision after carefully examining how the bypass process will be monitored, and measures to prevent harmful rumors.

"Currently, 400 tons of groundwater is flowing into reactor buildings every day. The groundwater bypass plan is expected to reduce the amount by about 100 tons.
Feb. 3, 2014 - Updated 11:58 UTC"

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140203_29.html

So - they're asking the local fishermen for permission.  Not you, nor I, nor the world community- nor the Pacific Islanders...  And, what do you suppose they'll do if the local fishermen say "no"?  That's right- they'll dump it anyway.

This story avoids addressing what's in that "groundwater" - that "has been in contact" with water leaking directly from the reactor cores - but it's the bad stuff; radio-strontium and tritium along with the normal cesium stuff.  Might even be some radio-iodine, depending on how long it's been "in the ground"- that's short lived, but the reactor cores are making new, all the time.

Troll in the dungeon.  Thought you ought to know.