Wednesday, August 31, 2011

69 Millisieverts a Year for Some Japanese Children

Enenews has a report on two Japanese schools' level of radiation contamination after clean up.

After Cleanup* High school: 7.9 microsieverts/hour — Day care center: 7.1

365(7.9 X 24) = 69204/1000 = 69 millisieverts

Health authorities say 1 millisievert should be our level of exposure

Americans receive between 3-6 millisieverts a year and most of that is from medical imaging.

Can you imagine children receiving 69 millisieverts?

Of course, you might say, that the kids are only there 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

But keep in mind, the readings were taken AFTER cleaning.

You can bet community resources went into cleaning up those schools. People love their children everywhere.

But families are likely not going to be able to put the same level of energy or resources into cleaning their yards and homes.

Furthermore, contaminating is ongoing because of the incineration of radioactive debris.

Finally, the food supply is contaminated so the worst levels of exposure are going to be from internal emitters, inhaled or ingested radionuclides.

The Japanese government needs to stop the incineration of radioactive debris.

The Japanese government needs to evacuate all people using, at the very least, the Chernobyl exclusion zone (which wasn't big enough).

The Japanese government needs to set up and fund adequately a comprehensive food testing system, which it still doesn't have.

Fukushima is the Worst Nuclear Disaster in All of Human History

Michael Synder of the Economic Collapse Blog





read the entire article at the link above. Thank you Michael Snyder!!!!

"Privately Owned Nuclear Weapons Plant in...Kansas City?"

hat tip Naked Capitalism

[excerpted] "In a last-ditch court hearing, activists seek to block a new Honeywell project.
In Kansas City, Missouri, a local zoning fight is going nuclear, literally: A Monday-morning courtroom showdown between activists and politicians could determine whether the city becomes host to the world's first privately owned nuclear weapons plant.
The proposed plant, a 1.5 million-square-foot, $673 million behemoth, would replace an aging facility, also in KC, where 85 percent (PDF) of the components for nation's nuclear arms are produced. The new plant would be run by the same government contractor as the old one—Honeywell—and proponents say the only major change will be more jobs and city infrastructure. But there will be another big difference: The federal government will sublease the property from a private developer, who in turn will lease it from the city for 20 years…after which the developer will own it outright.
The developer that could ultimately own its very own nuclear weapons plant, Centerpoint Zimmer (CPZ), didn't even exist until the deal for the Kansas City facility.
... In what it called a "competitive bidding process," the US General Services Administration awarded CPZ a contract to build the new plant—on a soybean field that the company already owned. The Kansas City Council, enticed by direct payments and a promise of "quality jobs," approved the deal and agreed to exempt CPZ from property taxes on the plant and surrounding land for 25 years. It also agreed to $815 million in bond subsidies to build the plant and needed infrastructure....
read the entire article at the link above

"$60 Billion Misspent in Past 2 Wars"





Department of Defense Report to Congress on Contracting Fraud




WSJ: "Japan Finds Radiation Spread Over a Wide Area"

August 31, 2011 p. A11

"The survey of 2,200 locations within a 62-mile radius of the crippled plant found that those locations had cesium-137 in excess of 1.48 million becquerels per square meter, the level set by the Soviet Union for forced resettlement after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Japanese authorities said..."

"...the latest data point to the possibility that cesium could also be washing away and spreading to other areas, potentially contaminating rivers, lower-lying land and the ocean."

MAJIA HERE: I am very sorry for the Japanese people and regret the role my country played in persuading or coercing the Japanese government to implement nuclear power on an island so clearly, geologically unsafe for this type of "energy."

Tuesday, August 30, 2011


EPA Radnet

Amarillo Texas has a bump up to about 900 CPM beta

Remember that 30-60 is normal and 3X normal is a considered a health risk (180CPM Beta)

There was a peak upwards around the country over the last couple days but Amarillo is the highest reported.

Potrblog has a very good 17 minute video explaining why he believes high readings are from Fukushima, even those readings attributed to radon. I highly recommend the video.

"Nuclear plant worker dies of acute leukemia"

TEPCO claims this person did not get ill from working at the plant.

It is possible that this person volunteered to work at the plant because he already had this terrible disease.

It is also possible that he developed radiation sickness while working at the plant from exposure to one of the very high radiation sources at the plant.

Recall that areas of the plant have been found to be extraordinarily "hot," at 10 sieverts an hour.

Exposure to 10 sieverts would kill a person within days.

Relevant Links for Hot Areas at Plant

Compensation? I Hardly Think This Adequate

NHK: TEPCO announces standards for compensation


....The standards cover damage inflicted from March 11th to August 31st.





An "energy" source capable of poisoning entire communities for hundreds, if not thousands, of years is not a source of "power," but rather is a source of decay, entrophy, weakness, and death


Why Fukushima is Worse Than Chernobyl

hat tip Steveo--Thanks!

Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl

[excerpted]...Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding scale of nuclear disasters. One of the most prominent of them is Dr Helen Caldicott, an Australian physician and long time anti-nuclear activist who warns of "horrors to come" in Fukushima.

read entire article at the link above

Monday, August 29, 2011


Take a Look at These Headlines and Then Consider What the Aggression Against Libya Was Really About. Headlines are in yellow. My comments are in green.

Celebration and Uncertainty” Bloomberg Business Week August 29-September 4 2011 p. 7

 “Libya has the most oil reserves of an African nation…”

“Some Analysts Expect Fast Return to Oil Markets” WSJ August 24 2011 p. A9.

Libya’s national oil company will need to be fundamentally reformed, and until it is, Western oil majors will find it difficult to get operations up and running again”

[MAJIA HERE: In other words, Libya’s publicly owned resources need to be privatized rapidly and in such a way that western oil companies can seize control of the goods]

“Chasing Assets in the Arab Spring” WSJ August 25 2011 p. A1, A11.

In this article we find that “tens of billions of dollars” of Libyan government money was “frozen as a result of political sanctions ordered by the United Nations

And “Some $37 billion of Libyan assets are currently frozen by the U.S. The U.S. Wednesday introduced a resolution to the UN to authorize the transfer of about $1.5 billion of this money to Libya for humanitarian needs. Much of that would be administered by the rebels but some also by nongovernmental organization, a U.S. official said”

 [MAJIA HERE: And what is the US going to do with the other $35.5 billion dollars? I recommend reading Ellen Brown's essay Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?

“Oil Producers Take Steps to Return: Foreign Firms Face Uncertainty Over Libya’s Governance and Infrastructure After Months of Absence” WSJ August 23 2011, p. A10

“Houston-based Marathon Oil Corp. has had ‘preliminary discussions’ with rebels over the conditions of facilities where it has interests…”

“A BP PLC spokesman said the company was committed to returning to Libya ‘as soon as conditions allow’…”

With the largest proven oil reserves in Africa and its major role in export markets, Libya’s importance to the oil industry and its potential future production present a big lure to international oil companies…

“The pipelines and oil fields in eastern Libya belonging to the rebel controlled Arabian Gulf Co, or Agoco, have been protected by rebel troops, a spokesman said Monday. Before the war, when the company was run by Gadhafi’s government, it normally produced 425,000 barrels of oil a day”

[MAJIA HERE: So, formerly government holdings of oil have been privatized into the hands of the mysterious “rebels.”  One wonders how the rest of the Libyan population feel about that given that their relatively high standard of living was directly subsidized by Libyan oil revenues]

MAJIA HERE: So what else does Libya have that the US and other nations can pillage besides plenty of cash and oil? Fresh water of course, the 21st century’s blue gold.

Libya: Water Emerges as a Hidden Weapon

See also on Libya's water

US Tactics in Libya May Be a Model for Other Efforts. The New York Times. August 29, 2011

And the US and other pillaging nations and corporations need not worry about outrage from Libya's population over the pillaging of their national resources. The depleted uranium used in the assault against Libya will distract the Libyan people with disease and death.
That is correct, nuclear weapons in the form of depleted uranium were used in Libya and will no doubt poison the unfortunate civilian population.

The people running the world’s most powerful countries, militaries, and corporations are sociopaths
Additional resources

Japan Contamination Versus Chernobyl Contamination

Chernobyl Zoning

1,480,000 Bq/㎡～ Zone１）　Immediate Evacuation Level: forced and immediate evacuation

555,000 Bq/㎡～ Zone２）　Temporay Relocation Level: relocation is obligatory

185,000 Bq/㎡～ Zone３）　Preferred Relocation Level: citizens are given the right to relocate

37,000 Bq/㎡～ Zone４）　Radiation Protection Area: defined to prevent unnecessary contamination

Blogger Ex-SKF Reports Today on the Levels of Contamination Now Being Officially Recognized

[excerpted] "In one location, the contamination level is more than 10 times the Chernobyl level.
The confiscated/closed zone after the Chernobyl accident is set in locations whose cesium-137 level in soil exceeds 1,480,000 becquerels per square meter. The level of cesium-137 in the location in Okuma-machi is 10 times that of the Chernobyl confiscated/closed zone..."(READ ARTICLE AT LINK ABOVE)

MAJIA HERE: The thing is that Fukushima is STILL spewing radiation PLUS the Japanese are now INCINERATING radioactive debris so radiation is still being produced in large quantities. This disaster is nowhere near over.
What happens if the corium, which has apparently melted through the basement of at least some buildings, hits a large enough pocket of water to cause an explosion.
Why is TEPCO still in charge of this disaster? What the heck is going on here...?

Bobby 1 Has Updated His/Her Analysis of Post-Fukushima Deaths


Potrblog has issued a safety alert for citizens in the area of the North Anna nuclear plant.

The Machine Dialectic

The idea of the machine dialectic is this:

Humans externalize themselves in their labor. So, a person produces something and that thing then serves to affirm that human's existence. The human can look at the thing and say happily, "I did that!--I made that!"

However, human nightmares are born also with human externalizations.

The thing can act back up on the person to shape him or her in ways detrimental to life itself.

The things we produce can become systematized in ways that dictate our interpretations, decision frames, and actions.

Consider the automation of labor. For two hundred years, machines have dictated labor patterns. The steam engine, the cotton gin, the lathe machine, etc all acted back up human labor to shape its forms and rhythms.

Those who benefit from labor's automation have always pushed forward its development.

Automation may require new skill sets for those still employed, but typically means less labor is required for production.

The assembly line, that most significant of inventions, de-skilled work by breaking down the work process into simplified steps while eventually replacing workers with automation.

The automation of work enabled by machines contributed to the great depression in the 30s and now as outputs exceeded the consumptive capacities of largely impoverished populations.

In the contemporary era, much production work has been automated and the remaining productive work is shipped on massive machines (powered boats) far away to where labor is cheap.

Our machines have produced a dearth of jobs and are contributing to social instability as a consequence.

By easing our food production, our machines have enabled massive population explosions.

But all these machines have also created a system that is acting back upon their makers by slowly killing them.

The energy needed to run the machines is poisoning the earth. Carbon-based fuels produce toxic waste when extracted, refined, and consumed. Nuclear power produces toxic waste when extracted, refined, and consumed.

The latest news about Fukushima is frankly terrifying. The meltdown of that terrible machine will kill many, many of us and other life forms.

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of our machines is that we simply cannot live without them at this point in time.

An electro-magnetic pulse from the sun could potentially disrupt all of our electronics-based machines. Utter chaos would result because most of the world's populations would die within a few months without the machines that keep us fed while slowly sucking away our vitalities through their terrible effluents.

A meteor from space could have the same effect.

In the past, human reliance on machines was less extensive and so disruptions to our planet caused by objects or phenomena from space were more localized.

However, we have now extended our reliance on machines to such an extent that a major disruption to their operations would result in near complete societal disruption.

Yet these machines are not merely beneficent providers of life. These machines are poisoning our planet and us.

The dialectic of the machine has in fact materialized into a nightmare as the machines we have produced kill us slowly and could, in the event of their disruption, cause us to die rapidly.

Films such as Terminator, The Matrix, and 2001 have explored this nightmare scenario directly.

Yet, confronted with the reality of our indenture to the machines we have produced, we are utterly blind and so perhaps our destruction is guaranteed, whether it occur slowly through poisoning or rapidly through the chaos of disruption.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Oh No! Japan to Allow Burning of All Radioactive Waste

Ex-SKF is reporting the following;






I don't know how to wake people up to this ever-expanding disaster. I have tried every way I can imagine.

Fukushima is a problem too large for Japan alone to handle. Too much is at stake here. Fukushima must be contained and the incineration of radioactive debris must be halted or we will all suffer the consequences.

We are allowing a corrupt corporation and government to decide life or death for the people of Japan and perhaps the people of other nations as well, including the US and Canada (and perhaps China, Russia, and Korea as well).

Yet, no one wants to be bothered with the news and the mainstream news media and politicians are only too happy to oblige.

Fukushima Diary: Contaminated Food in Japan

This is a Japanese webpage that I have used google to translate into English. It is a great site for news from the "people," mostly in the form of twitters.

The news usually is not yet formally acknowledged.

Often times the twitters published at Fukushima Diary are later substantiated by NHK or some other mainstream Japanese source.

The most recent post concerns radioactive food contamination that is spreading throughout Japan because of lack of adequate testing and an almost wilful disregard for public health by authorities.














EPA Radiation Readings August 28

I see a  RADIATION spike echoing around the country over the last few days. Remember that “normal” is between 30 and 60 CPM beta (though many places run 0) and the EPA considers 3X “normal” a health risks.

San Bernardino County CA around 200 beta
Fort Smith AR 300 beta
Little Rock AR 200 beta
Phoenix AZ over 300 beta
Yuma AZ around 600 beta
Sacramento CA 650 beta
Des Moines IA 600 beta
Idaho Falls 200 beta
Fort Wayne IN 650 beta
Louisville KY 600 beta
Kearney NE 550 beta
Omaha not reporting recently
Carlsbad NM between 400 and 650 beta
Toledo OH 550 beta
Pierre SD 500 beta
Rapid City SD stopped reporting
Amarillo TX 700 beta
Harrisonburg VA ranging from 200 to 800 beta
Spokane WA 200 beta

Saturday, August 27, 2011

EPA Radnet Data August 27

It is getting harder and harder to find the EPA's radnet data, especially for beta. In my opinion, this is no accident. Let me explain and provide some relevant links.

Alexander Higgins has a wonderful feed where one can see on 1 page the gamma and beta levels for all reporting cities.

Unfortunately, his website is down today.

So, I had to go into the EPA's sites myself and see what I can find here

I can find gamma levels but not beta. Radnet has taken down the beta information from the pages where they post air monitoring for participating cities.

For instance, here is the link for air monitoring in Harrisonburg Virginia. The page only provides gamma levels, which are harder to decode for novices like myself

Here is the radnet link that is supposed to allow you to search for beta data for participating cities

However, the page is not allowing me to select the monitoring site.

Consequently, I am unable to pull up beta levels, which I've used for my reporting.

Another Radnet page offers links to pages where data are supposedly posted but the links don't work.



Debating Dose

In a previous post I described the ICRP model, as explained by Chris Busby. Busby stated that the model essentially extrapolated the human effects from radiation by looking at how water absorbed radiation. (see )

Now I am going to describe how Busby differentiates the recently developed European model (ECRR) on evaluating radiation risk from the ICRP model. The following is excerpted from this link

(Excerpted) Dose, dose rate and contamination
Dose, or absorbed equivalent dose is given in Sieverts. It is this quantity that is used to predict radiation risk. It is a lump of radiation that has been delivered to your body.

Although for some radionuclide internal exposures, absorbed dose is a meaningless concept, because it is an average to all tissue rather than the energy delivered to the DNA, we can use weighting factors to convert the absorbed dose into the energy delivered to the DNA.

This is what the ECRR has done. A microSievert (mSv) is one millionth of a Sievert...
The ICRP cancer risk coefficient is about 0.05 per Sievert and that of the ECRR is 0.1 per Sievert.
 MAJIA HERE: So, what the ECRR model has done is to weight the radiation dose so that it incorporates the biological impact on DNA rather than simply looking at the summative effect of the absorption of the radiation into tissues (at least, that is my understanding)

The ECRR's 2010 Recommendations can be found here

It is interesting to note that in the first link I've provided ( Busby notes that even the ECRR's model fails to adequately predict the impact of radiation on children because they are so much more biologically vulnerable than adults.

Thus, Busby writes:

"The dose coefficient is perhaps as much as 5 times greater for children. Infant leukemia increased after Chernobyl at levels where the ICRP foetal doses from Caesium-137 were about 50microSieverts and the ECRR coefficients for Cs-137 would not have predicted these increases"
Majia Here: Ok now we understand the criticism of the ICRP model and have another model for studying the health risks of radiation but even that model understates children's risks (and the younger the child the greater the risk as a general rule).