NEW 4-Mile Long Oil Slick Near BP’s Gulf Oil Well

Washington's Blog

BP’s Macondo Well May Leak for Years

CNN reports:

An oil sheen about four miles long has appeared in the Gulf of Mexico near the site of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, a Coast Guard spokesman said Thursday.

It was not immediately clear where the oil is coming from, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ryan Tippets. [Although previous oil has been matched as a "dead ringer" to the BP well.]

Coast Guardsmen went to the location after seeing the oil on a satellite image, Tippets said. The response team collected samples and sent them to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Lab in Connecticut for testing.

***

The sheen is near the spot where, on April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded over the Macondo well, killing 11 workers and spewing oil that spread across a huge portion of the Gulf.

(And see this.)

As we’ve noted for years, BP’s Macondo oil well is still leaking … and will leak for years.

For example, we noted in March:

In June of 2010, BP officials admitted to damage beneath the seafloor under BP’s Gulf Macondo well.

Numerous scientists have speculated that the blowout and subsequent clumsy attempts by BP to plug the well could have created new seeps, and made pre-existing natural seeps bigger.

***

Washington’s Blog interviewed one of the world’s leading experts on oil leaks in 2010, Robert Bea. Dr. Bea noted that we may never be able to fully stop BP’s oil leak:

Few people in the world know more about oil drilling disasters than Dr. Robert Bea.

Bea teaches engineering at the University of California Berkeley, and has 55 years of experience in engineering and management of design, construction, maintenance, operation, and decommissioning of engineered systems including offshore platforms, pipelines and floating facilities. Bea has worked for many years in governmental and quasi-governmental roles, and has been a high-level governmental adviserconcerning disasters. He worked for 16 years as a top mechanical engineer and manager for Shell Oil, and has worked with Bechtel and the Army Corps of Engineers. One of the world’s top experts in offshore drilling problems, Bea is a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group, and has been interviewed by news media around the world concerning the BP oil disaster.

***

WB: Is it possible that this fractured, subsea salt geology will make it difficult to permanently kill the oil leak using relief wells?

Bea: Yes, it could. The Santa Barbara channel seeps are still leaking, decades after the oil well was supposedly capped. This well could keep leaking for years.

Scripps mapped out seafloor seeps in the area of the well prior to the blowout. Some of the natural seeps penetrate 10,000 to 15,000 feet beneath the seafloor. The oil will follow lines of weakness in the geology. The leak can travel several horizontal miles from the location of the leak.

[In other words, the geology beneath the seafloor is so fractured, with soft and unstable salt formations, that we may never be able to fully kill the well even with relief wells. Instead, the loss of containment of the oil reservoir caused by the drilling accident could cause oil to leak out through seeps for years to come. See this and this for further background].

***

WB: I have heard that BP is underestimating the size of the oil reservoir (and see this). Is it possible that the reservoir is bigger than BP is estimating, and so – if not completely killed – the leak could therefore go on for longer than most assume?

Bea: That’s plausible.

WB: The chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon said that the Macondo well was originally drilled in another location, but that “going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools”, and that BP abandoned that well. You’ve spoken to that technician and looked into the incident, and concluded that “they damn near blew up the rig.” [See this and this].

Do you know where that abandoned well location is, and do you know if that well is still leaking?

Bea: The abandoned well is very close to the current well location. BP had to file reports showing the location of the abandoned well and the new well [with the Minerals Management Service], so the location of the abandoned well is known.

We don’t know if the abandoned well is leaking.

WB: Matthew Simmons talked about a second leaking well. There are rumors on the Internet that the original well is still leaking. Do you have any information that can either disprove or confirm that allegation?

Bea: There are two uncorroborated reports. One is that there is a leak 400 feet West of the present well’s surface location. There is another report that there is a leak several miles to the West.

[Bea does not know whether either report is true at this time, because BP is not sharing information with the government, let alone the public.]

Nearly 36pc of Fukushima children diagnosed with abnormal thyroid growths

The Telegraph
Julian Ryall

The Sixth Report of Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey, released in April, included examinations of 38,114 children, of whom 35.3 percent - some 13,460 children - were found to have cysts or nodules of up to 5 mm (0.197 inches) on their thyroids.

A further 0.5 percent, totalling 186 youngsters, had nodules larger than 5.1 mm (0.2 inches).

A study by the Japan Thyroid Association in 2001 found that zero percent of children in the city of Nagasaki had nodules and only 0.8 percent had cysts on their thyroids.

"Yes, 35.8 percent of children in the study have lumps or cysts, but this is not the same as cancer," said Naomi Takagi, an associate professor at Fukushima University Medical School Hospital, which administered the tests.

"We do not know that cause of this, but it is hard to believe that is due to the effects of radiation," she said. "This is an early test and we will only see the effects of radiation exposure after four or five years."

The local authority is carrying out long-term testing of children who were under the age of 18 on March 11 last year, the day on which the magnitude-9 Great East Japan struck off the coast of north-east Japan, triggering the massive tsunami that crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Thyroid examinations were first conducted in October last year and will be carried out every two years up to the age of 20 and every five years for the rest of the children's lives.

A second report has been issued by Japan's Institute of Radiological Sciences in which it found that some children living close to the plant were exposed to "lifetime" doses of radiation to their thyroid glands.

Death of the Birds and the Bees Across America

Global Research
F. William Engdahl

Birds and bees are something most of us take for granted as part of nature. The expression “teaching about the birds and the bees” to explain the process of human reproduction to young people is not an accidental expression. Bees and birds contribute to the essence of life on our planet. A study by the US Department of Agriculture estimated that “...perhaps one-third of our total diet is dependent, directly or indirectly, upon insect-pollinated plants.”1

The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is the most important pollinator of agricultural crops. Honey bees pollinate over 70 out of 100 crops that in turn provide 90% of the world's food. They pollinate most fruits and vegetables--including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots.2 But while managed honey bee populations have increased over the last 50 years, bee colony populations have decreased significantly in many European and North American nations. Simultaneously, crops that are dependent on insects for pollination have increased. The phenomenon has received the curious designation of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), implying it could be caused by any number of factors. Serious recent scientific studies however point to a major cause: use of new highly toxic systemic pesticides in agriculture since about 2004.

If governments in the EU, USA and other countries fail to impose a total ban on certain chemical insecticides, not only could bees become a thing of the past. The human species could face staggering new challenges merely to survive. The immediate threat comes from the widespread proliferation of commercial insecticides containing the highly-toxic chemical with the improbable name, neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are a group of insecticides chemically similar to nicotine. They act on the central nervous system of insects. But also on bees and  small song birds. Recent evidence suggests they could also affect human brain development in newborn.

Some five to six years back, reports began to circulate from around the world, especially out of the United States, and then increasingly from around the EU, especially in the UK, that entire bee colonies were disappearing. Since 2004 over a million beehives have died across the United States and beekeepers in 25 states report what is called Colony Collapse Disorder. In winter of 2009 an estimated one fifth of bee hives in the UK were lost, double the natural rate.3 Government authorities claimed it was a mystery.

And in the USA a fact sheet from the Environmenrtal Protection Agency (EPA) on Bayer AG’s Clothianidin, a widely used neonicotinoid, warned:

“Available data indicate that clothianidin on corn and canola should result in minimal acute toxic risk to birds. However, assessments show that exposure to treated seeds through ingestion may result in chronic toxic risk to non-endangered and endangered small birds (e.g., songbirds) and acute/chronic toxicity risk to non-endangered and endangered mammals.”4
Alarming UK results

A private UK research organization, Buglife and the Soil Association, undertook tests to try to determine cause of the bee death. They found that the decline was caused in part by a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids.5  Neonicotinoids are “systemic” chemicals that kill insects by getting into the cell of the plant. In Britain it’s widely used for crops like oilseed rape and for production of potted plants.

Fukushima Reactor 4 Release Would Doom Western USA

Technorati
Stephen Alexander

If Reactor 4 at Fukushima becomes unstable and releases 10 times the amount of Cesium-137 (CS-137) released at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, then the prevailing winds could carry it all the way to the Western USA – that means California.

On April 30, 2012, 72 NGO organizations sent a request to the United Nations and the Japanese government urging fast-action to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel. Experts in the nuclear field from both Japan and the world endorsed the letter.

The letter contained warnings that the damaged Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool contains Cesium-137. If that pool were exposed to an earthquake or other event that drained that pool, then the result could be a catastrophic radiological fire. The letter urged the United Nations to create a Nuclear Safety Summit to find a solution to the problem of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool. The proposal stated that the United Nations should create an independent assessment team on Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 and organize international assistance to stabilize the unit's spent nuclear fuel and prevent the impending catastrophe. The letters were delivered to both the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. The second letter asked that Japan officially ask for the United Nations' help.

Numbering in excess of 10,000, the spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima Daiichi plant lie in pools vulnerable to future earthquakes. The radioactivity is around 85-times more long-lived than the radioactivity released at Chernobyl.

The Cry for Help over Fukushima's Spent Fuel Pool No. 4

ENENEWS

Title: Urgent Request to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
Source: Green Action Japan
Date: May 1, 2012

To: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

An Urgent Request on UN Intervention to Stabilize the Fukushima Unit 4 Spent Nuclear Fuel

Recently, former diplomats and experts both in Japan and abroad stressed the extremely risky condition of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool and this is being widely reported by world media. Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), who is one of the best-known experts on spent nuclear fuel, stated that in Unit 4 there is spent nuclear fuel which contains Cesium-137 (Cs-137) that is equivalent to 10 times the amount that was released at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Thus, if an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain, this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.

Nearly all of the 10,893 spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima Daiichi plant sit in pools vulnerable to future earthquakes, with roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl.
Nuclear experts from the US and Japan such as Arnie Gundersen, Robert Alvarez, Hiroaki Koide, Masashi Goto, and Mitsuhei Murata, a former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland, and, Akio Matsumura, a former UN diplomat, have continually warned against the high risk of the Fukushima Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool.

US Senator Roy Wyden, after his visit to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 6 April, 2012, issued a press release on 16 April, pointing out the catastrophic risk of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4, calling for urgent US government intervention. Senator Wyden also sent a letter to Ichiro Fujisaki, Japan’s Ambassador to the United States, requesting Japan to accept international assistance to tackle the crisis.

We Japanese civil organizations express our deepest concern that our government does not inform its citizens about the extent of risk of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool. Given the fact that collapse of this pool could potentially lead to catastrophic consequences with worldwide implications, what the Japanese government should be doing as a responsible member of the international community is to avoid any further disaster by mobilizing all the wisdom and the means available in order to stabilize this spent nuclear fuel. It is clearly evident that Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool is no longer a Japanese issue but an international issue with potentially serious consequences. Therefore, it is imperative for the Japanese government and the international community to work together on this crisis before it becomes too late. We are appealing to the United Nations to help Japan and the planet in order to prevent the irreversible consequences of a catastrophe that could affect generations to come. We herewith make our urgent request to you as follows:
1. The United Nations should organize a Nuclear Security Summit to take up the crucial problem of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool.

2. The United Nations should establish an independent assessment team on Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 and coordinate international assistance in order to stabilize the unit’s spent nuclear fuel and prevent radiological consequences with potentially catastrophic consequences.

30 April 2012

Shut Tomari (Japan) [...]

Green Action (Japan) [...]

Endorsed by:

Hiroaki Koide Kyoto University Nuclear Reactor Research Institute (Japan)
Mitsuhei Murata Former ambassador to Switzerland and to Senegal
Board member, Global System and Ethics Society (Japan)
Akio Matsumura Former United Nations diplomat
Robert Alvarez Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C. (USA)
Masashi Goto Former Nuclear Plant Engineer (Japan)
Signing organizations: 72 Japanese organizations have signed this petition (as of 30 April 2012)

Read the letter here
See also:

• Ambassador Murata writes to UN Secretary General: "It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor" -- Appeals for independent assessment team
  
• New Interview: Fukushima poses lethal risk to US West Coast, says Senator -- Another bomb waiting to go off -- Extreme nuclear vulnerability, especially in Reactor No. 4

Debris Field The Size Of California From Japanese Tsunami Begins To Litter West Coast

Intel Hub



The fact that no federal agency is preparing for this huge wave of radiated garbage shows just how insane the leaders of this once great country have become.

A massive debris field the size of California that is surely fully radiated is on its way to the west coast yet the corporate controlled media(see Project Mockingbird) instead focuses on Iran and its nuclear program.

The west coast of the United States WILL be hit with at least partially radiated debris from Japan and the corporate media WILL either heavily downplay the dangers or completely ignore them all together.



Consider the fact that a recent medical journal study has shown that upwards of 14,000 people may have died WITHIN the United States due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster:

An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services.

This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.

Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986.

Initial reports stated that it would take up to a year for these partly radiated debris to hit the west coast, but as the video report above shows, debris have already begun to hit the coast.

Debris in British Columbia has caused local citizens and officials to claim that this is the largest quantity of debris they have ever seen that is actually moving much faster than expected.

We now live in a world where government and nuclear industry officials continually downplay the dangers of nuclear power while at the same time thousands are being devastated by its effects.

Architect of Reactor 3 warns of massive hydrovolcanic explosion

Fukushima Diary

Architect of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3, Uehara Haruo, the former president of Saga University had an interview on 11/17/2011.

In this interview, he admitted Tepco’s explanation does not make sense, and that the China syndrome is inevitable.

He stated that considering 8 months have passed since 311 without any improvement, it is inevitable that melted fuel went out of the container vessel and sank underground, which is called China syndrome.

He added, if fuel has reaches a underground water vein, it will cause contamination of underground water, soil contamination and sea contamination. Moreover, if the underground water vein keeps being heated for long time, a massive hydrovolcanic explosion will be caused.

He also warned radioactive debris is spreading in Pacific Ocean. Tons of the debris has reached the Marshall Islands as of 11/15/2011.
(Source)

Fukushima Radioactive Fallout Much Worse than Previously Reported

AllGov

 

The nuclear power plant in Japan crippled by a powerful earthquake and tsunami on March 11, released nearly twice as much radiation as the government claimed.

 

Researchers at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research examined dozens of radiation monitoring stations throughout Japan and across the world and concluded that the amount of the primary contaminant, cesium-137 (an isotope with a 30-year half-life), that escaped into the atmosphere was about double the quantity estimated by Japanese officials.

 

The experts also reported that, despite what the Japanese government has claimed, the spent fuel rods stored at the Fukushima Daiichi plant contributed to the radiation release and that this added trouble could have been mitigated by a faster flooding of the pool that contained the fuel rods.

 

The report blames the unnaturally low Japanese estimate on the fact that Japanese scientists only measured radiation inside Japan.  Only about 20% of the total fallout landed over Japan. Most of the rest fell over the Pacific Ocean, and some drifted all the way to North America and Europe.

 

Even though clouds of radioactive cesium-137 passed over Tokyo, the city was saved from serious contamination because the weather was dry and the clouds swept by without the cesium-137 falling on densely populated regions.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Los Alamos Land Fire on 2 sides of Lab, Chemical Area's 8 &49 Confirmed Burning

Los Alamos Fire is quickly spreading Across The Lab Property . Area's of Known Chemical Nuclear use are confirmed as Burning !

12 Things The Mainstream Media Is Being Strangely Quiet About Right Now

Pakalert Press

As the mainstream media continues to be obsessed with Anthony Weiner and his bizarre adventures on Twitter, much more serious events are happening around the world that are getting very little attention. In America today, if the mainstream media does not cover something it is almost as if it never happened. Right now, the worst nuclear disaster in human history continues to unfold in Japan , U.S. nuclear facilities are being threatened by flood waters, the U.S. military is bombing Yemen, gigantic cracks in the earth are appearing all over the globe and the largest wildfire in Arizona history is causing immense devastation. But Anthony Weiner, Bristol Palin and Miss USA are what the mainstream media want to tell us about and most Americans are buying it.

In times like these, it is more important than ever to think for ourselves.  The corporate-owned mainstream media is not interested in looking out for us.  Rather, they are going to tell us whatever fits with the agenda that their owners are pushing.

That is why more Americans than ever are turning to the alternative media.  Americans are hungry for the truth, and they know that the amount of truth that they get from the mainstream media continues to decline.

The following are 12 things that the mainstream media is being strangely quiet about right now….

#1 The crisis at the Fort Calhoun nuclear facility in Nebraska has received almost no attention in the national mainstream media.

Back on June 7th, there was a fire at Fort Calhoun.  The official story is that the fire was in an electrical switchgear room at the plant.  The facility lost power to a pump that cools the spent fuel pool for approximately 90 minutes.  According to the Omaha Public Power District, the fire was quickly extinguished and no radioactive material was released.

The following sequence of events is directly from the Omaha Public Power District website….

• There was no such imminent danger with the Fort Calhoun Station spent-fuel pool.
• Due to a fire in an electrical switchgear room at FCS on the morning of June 7, the plant temporarily lost power to a pump that cools the spent-fuel poo
• The fire-suppression system in that switchgear room operated as designed, extinguishing the fire quickly.
• FCS plant operators switched the spent-fuel pool cooling system to an installed backup pump about 90 minutes after the loss of power.
• During the interruption of cooling, temperature of the pool increased a few degrees, but the pool was never in danger of boiling.
• Due to this situation, FCS declared an Alert at about 9:40 a.m. on June 7.
• An alert is the second-least-serious of four emergency classifications established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
• At about 1:15 p.m. on June 7, FCS operators declared they had taken all appropriate measures to safely return to the previously declared Notification of Unusual Event emergency classification. (See first item above.)

But the crisis at Fort Calhoun is not over.  Right now, the nuclear facility at Fort Calhoun is essentially an island. It is surrounded by rising flood waters from the Missouri River.

Officials claim that there is no danger and that they are prepared for the river to rise another ten feet.

The Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, Nebraska is also being threatened by rising flood waters.  A “Notification of Unusual Event” was declared at Cooper Nuclear Station this morning at 4:02.  This notification was issued because the Missouri River’s water level reached 42.5 feet.

Right now the facility is operating normally and officials don’t expect a crisis.

But considering what has been going on at Fukushima, it would be nice if we could have gotten a lot more coverage of these events by the mainstream media.

#2 Most Americans are aware that the U.S. is involved in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.  However, the truth is that the U.S. military is also regularly bombing Yemen and parts of Pakistan.  If you count the countries where the U.S. has special forces and/or covert operatives on the ground, the U.S. is probably “active” in more countries in the Middle East than it is not.  Now there are even persistent rumors that U.S. ground units are being prepared to go into Libya.  Are we watching the early stages of World War 3 unfold before our eyes in slow motion?

#3 The crisis at Fukushima continues to get worse.  Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, recently made the following statement about the Fukushima disaster….

“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind”

TEPCO has finally admitted that this disaster has released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl did.  That makes Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster of all time, and it is far from over.

Massive amounts of water is being poured into the spent fuel pools in order to keep them cool.  This is creating “hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water” that has got to go somewhere.  Inevitably much of it will get into the ground and into the sea.

Arnold Gundersen says that the scope of this problem is almost unimaginable….

“TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water.”

The mainstream media is not paying as much attention to Fukushima these days, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a major league nightmare.

Elevated levels of radiation are being reported by Japanese bloggers all over eastern Japan.  There are reports of sick children all over the region.  One adviser to the government of Japan says that an area approximately 17 times the size of Manhattan is probably going to be uninhabitable.

Of course the mainstream media has been telling us all along that Fukushima is nothing to be too concerned about and that authorities in Japan have everything under control.

If the mainstream media is not going to tell us the truth, how are they going to continue to have credibility?

Fires Approach Los Alamos Lab

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant Main Building Underwater, 10 Mile Mandatory Evacuation Area

Los Alamos evacuates, lab closes as fire grows

Vivian Levy prepares to evacuate as a rapidly growing
wildfire approaches Los Alamos, N.M. The town is
also home to a nuclear lab.

San Francisco Gate
Susan Montoya Bryan

Los Alamos, N.M. --
Thousands of residents fled the town that's home to the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory as a rapidly growing wildfire approached, sending up towering plumes of smoke, raining down ash and charring the fringes of the sprawling lab.

The blaze, which began Sunday, destroyed 30 structures south of Los Alamos and forced the closure of the lab while stirring memories of a devastating fire in May 2000 that burned hundreds of homes and buildings.

"The hair on the back of your neck goes up," Los Alamos County fire chief Doug Tucker said of first seeing the fire in the Santa Fe National Forest on Sunday. "I saw that plume and I thought, 'Oh my god here we go again.' "

Tucker said the current blaze - which had grown to roughly 78 square miles by Monday - was the most active fire he had seen in his career.

Lab officials said radioactive material stored at various locations was safe from the flames.

The antinuclear watchdog group Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety said the fire appeared to be about 3 1/2 miles from a dump site where as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in fabric tents above ground. The group said the drums were awaiting transport to a low-level radiation dump site in southern New Mexico.

Lab spokesman Steve Sandoval declined to comment on that assertion but did acknowledge that there is low-level waste stored in drums on lab property.

Traffic on Trinity Drive, one of the main roads out of Los Alamos, was bumper-to-bumper Monday as residents followed orders to leave.

Sam Kendericks said he knew the blaze was going to be bad when he first saw the plume Sunday.

"I was going to the hardware store and I did a U-turn as soon as I saw the plume come over the mountain. I told my wife to start packing. We were here 10 years ago. We had 20 minutes last time. So this time we're ready," he said. "

Flames approached the southern edge of the famed lab, where scientists developed and tested the first atomic bomb during World War II. Lab and fire officials said they were confident that if the flames reached lab property, they would be able to protect its sensitive facilities.
The lab covers more than 36 square miles and includes about 2,000 buildings at nearly four dozen sites.

The blaze started on private land about 12 miles southwest of Los Alamos and quickly grew. Flames and smoke could be seen from the outskirts of Albuquerque, about 80 miles away.

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Why is there a Media Blackout on Nuclear Incident at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska?

Global Research
Patrick Henningsen

Since flooding began on June 6th, there has been a disturbingly low level of media attention given to the crisis at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Facility near Omaha, Nebraska. But evidence strongly suggests that something very serious has in fact happened there.

On June 7th, there was a fire reported at Fort Calhoun.  The official story is that the fire was in an electrical switchgear room at the plant. The apparently facility lost power to a pump that cools the spent fuel rod pool, allegedly for a duration of approximately 90 minutes.


FORT CALHOUN NUKE SITE: does it pose a public risk?

The following sequence of events is documented on the Omaha Public Power District’s own website, stating among other things, that here was no such imminent danger with the Fort Calhoun Station spent-fuel pool, and that due to a fire in an electrical switchgear room at FCS on the morning of June 7, the plant temporarily lost power to a pump that cools the spent-fuel pool.

In addition to the flooding that has occurred on the banks of the Missouri River at Fort Calhoun, the Cooper Nuclear Facility in Brownville, Nebraska may also be threatened by the rising flood waters.

As was declared at Fort Calhoun on June 7th, another  “Notification of Unusual Event” was declared at Cooper Nuclear Station on June 20th.  This notification was issued because the Missouri River’s water level reached an alarming 42.5 feet. Apparently, Cooper Station is advising that it is unable to discharge sludge into the Missouri River due to flooding, and therefore “overtopped” its sludge pond.

Not surprisingly, and completely ignored by the Mainstream Media, these two nuclear power facilities in Nebraska were designated temporary restricted NO FLY ZONES  by the FAA in early June.  The FAA restrictions were reportedly down to “hazards” and were ‘effectively immediately’, and ‘until further notice’. Yet, according to the NRC, there’s no cause for the public to panic.


FORT CALHOUN: Under water now. Is it potentially the next Fukushima?

A news report from local NBC 6 on the Ft. Calhoun Power Plant and large areas of farm land flooded by the Missouri River, interviews a local farmer worried about the levees, “We need the Corps-Army Corps of Engineers–to do more. The Corps needs to tell us what to do and where to go. This is not mother nature, this is man-made.” Nearby town Council Bluffs has already implemented its own three tier warning system should residents be prepared to leave the area quickly.

On June 6, 2011, the Federal Aviation Administration put into effect ‘temporary flying restrictions’–until further notice–over the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant in Blaine, Nebraska.

To date, no one can confirm whether or not the Ft Calhoun Nuclear incident is at a Level 4 emergency on a US regulatory scale. A Level 4 emergency would constitute an “actual or imminent substantial core damage or melting of reactor fuel with the potential for loss of containment integrity.” According to the seven-level International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, a Level 4 incident requires at least one death, which has not occurred according to available reports.


Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen explains how cooling pumps must operate continuously, even years after a plant is shut down.

According a recent report on the People’sVoice website, The Ft. Calhoun plant — which stores its fuel rods at ground level according to Tom Burnett – is now partly submerged and Missouri River levels are expected to rise further before the summer if finished, local reports in and around the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suggest that the waters are expected to rise at least 5 more feet.

EPA: Water Wells Contaminated Near Fracking Blowout Site

Environmental Working Group

Washington, D.C. – Underscoring the risks to drinking water supplies of hydraulic fracturing, three water samples collected from private wells following a blowout at a natural gas drilling site in northeast Pennsylvania have been found to be contaminated, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said today.

Officials with EPA informed residents in the area of the blowout about the test results but declined to provide any details as to what contaminants were detected.

“It's nice to see EPA actually on the ground, testing for contamination near the Chesapeake blowout,” said Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel at Environmental Working Group. “Now the agency must immediately reveal to the affected community what contaminants it found and compare them to the chemicals Chesapeake was using in its drilling operations. The people have a right to know."
For more on Environmental Working Group’s research and advocacy on the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, click here: http://www.ewg.org/gas-drilling-and-fracking

What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?

Center for Media and Democracy

While the U.S. media has been occupied with Anthony Weiner, the Republican presidential candidates and Bristol Palin's memoir, coverage of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster has practially fallen off the map. Poor mainstream media coverage of Japan's now months-long struggle to gain control over the Fukushima disaster has deprived Americans of crucial information about the risks of nuclear power following natural disasters. After a few weeks of covering the early aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami, the U.S. media moved on, leaving behind the crisis at Fukushima which continues to unfold. U.S. politicians, like Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, have made disappointing and misleading statements about the relative safety of nuclear power and have vowed to stick by our nuclear program, while other countries, like Germany and Italy, have taken serious steps to address the obvious risks of nuclear power -- risks that the Fukushima disaster made painfully evident, at least to the rest of the world.

Problems Multiply

News outlets in other countries have been paying attention to Fukushima, though, and a relative few in this country have as well. A June 16, 2011 Al Jazeera English article titled, "Fukushima: It's much worse than you think," quotes a high-level former nuclear industry executive, Arnold Gunderson, who called Fukushima nohting less than "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind." Twenty nuclear cores have been exposed at Fukushima, Gunderson points out, saying that, along with the site's many spent-fuel pools, gives Fukushima 20 times the release potential of Chernobyl.
Efforts to bring problems at Fukushima under control are not going well, either. Japanese authorities only just recently admitted that nuclear fuel in the three damaged Fukushima reactors has likely burned through the vessels holding it, a scenario called "melt-through", that is even more serious than a core meltdown. Months of spraying seawater on the plant's three melted-down fuel cores -- and the spent fuel stored on site -- to try and cool them has produced 26 million of gallons of radioactive wastewater, and no place to put it.

After a struggle, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), finally managed to put in place a system to filter radioactive particles out of the wastewater, but it broke down soon after it started operating. A filter that was supposed to last a month plugged up with radioactive material after just five hours, indicating there is more radioactive material in the water than previously believed. Meanwhile, TEPCO is running out of space to store the radioactive water, and may be forced to again dump contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. TEPCO already dumped some water into the ocean weeks ago, amid protests from fisherman, other countries and environmental organizations. And even if TEPCO does successfully filter the contaminated water and manage to bring its radioactivity down to acceptable levels, the utility will still have to deal with the pile of radioactive sludge the process will produce. The plan they've come up with to deal with the sludge is to seal it in drums and discard it into the ocean, which may cause even more problems. Greenpeace has already found levels of radiation exceeding legal limits in seaweed and shellfish samples gathered more than 12 miles away from the plant. The high levels of radiation in the samples indicate that leaks from the plant are bigger than TEPCO has revealed so far.

The cascade of other problems caused by the Fukushima disaster include the costs of relocating residents from the affected area around the plant, compensating people for the loss of their homes and belongings, and a drop-off in global sales of goods and products exported from Japan due to fear of radioactive contamination.

Domestic Nuclear Worries

For Americans who think "out of sight, out of mind" or "it can't happen here" when it comes to Fukishima and its ramifications, think again. Janette Sherman, M.D., an internal medicine specialist, and Joseph Magano, an epidemiologist with the Radiation and Public Health Project research group, noticed a 35% jump in infant mortality in eight northwestern U.S. cities located within 500 miles of the Pacific coast since the Fukushima meltdown. They wrote an essay, published by CounterPunch, suggesting there may be a link between the statistic and the Fukushima disaster. They cited similar problems with infant mortality among people who were exposed to nuclear fallout from Chernobyl. Sherman and Magano urge that steps be taken to measure the levels of radioactive isotopes in the environment of the Pacific northwest, and in the bodies of people in these areas, to determine if nuclear fallout from Fukushima could, in fact, be related to the spike in infant mortality. 

Nebraska's Cooper Nuclear plant, amid floodwaters (Photo: Journal Star) Tensions are also rising over two U.S. nuclear reactors in Nebraska located on the banks of the Missouri River, which is now at flood stage. On June 20, the Omaha, Nebraska World Herald reported that flood waters from the Missouri River came within 18 inches of forcing the Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, Nebraska, to shut down. Officials are poised to shut down the Cooper plant when river reaches a level of 902 feet above sea level. The plant is 903 feet above sea level. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant, 20 miles north of Omaha, issued a "Notification of Unusual Event" to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 6 due to local flooding. That plant is currently shut down for refueling, but will not restart because of the flooding. Compounding worries over these two plants is a shortage of sand needed to fill massive numbers of sandbags to hold off Missouri River floodwaters. One ton of sand makes just 60 sandbags, and hundreds of thousands of sandbags are needed to help save towns along the river from flooding. Sand is obtained from dredging the riverbed -- and the companies that sell sand can't dredge the river while it is flooding. These plants are already in a risky situation, and the flooding in Nebraska could easily be worsened just by a summer afternoon cloudburst.

Radioactive dust from Fukushima plant hit N. America soon after meltdown: researchers

Manaichi

A computer simulation-generated map of the diffusion of
radioactive materials leaked from the
Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant.

Radioactive materials spewed out from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant reached North America soon after the meltdown and were carried all the way to Europe, according to a simulation by university researchers.

The computer simulation by researchers at Kyushu University and the University of Tokyo, among other institutions, calculated dispersal of radioactive dust from the Fukushima plant beginning at 9 p.m. on March 14, when radiation levels around the plant spiked.

The team found that radioactive dust was likely caught by the jet stream and carried across the Pacific Ocean, its concentration dropping as it spread. According to the computer model, radioactive materials at a concentration just one-one hundred millionth of that found around the Fukushima plant hit the west coast of North America three days later, and reached the skies over much of Europe about a week later.

Health Canada Refuses to Test for Radiation

The Beacon

Farmers in Central Newfoundland who were open to having their land tested for radiation contamination, will not have this work done by government agencies and private companies in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In the June 2 edition of, The Beacon, it was discussed how the release of radiation from the Fukushima plant in Japan could potentially be poisoning Canadian soil, and possibly central Newfoundland. Evidence from various radiation monitors and news reports have shown that it has become a worldwide issue, and given that the airspace is shared, Canada and the U.S. have been directly affected as well.

Even though local farmers have not tested their soil and water, Nita Abbott of LA Farms, near Gambo, expressed an interest in having her land tested to ensure they’re selling a safe product. The newspaper contacted private testing companies, government agencies, and universities to inquire if they would consider testing local farms. All of them said they were not interested in getting involved at any level. Health Canada also reported that everything is normal.

Even though no official testing has been done in central Newfoundland, Ms. Abbott speculated, “I guess they feel they don’t have evidence  to take it further.”

Worldwide concern

Even though central Newfoundland is considered safe, reports by numerous media establishments have shown that radiation saturation has doubled recently. According to a CNN report, Arnie Gundersen, Chief Nuclear Engineer, said hot particles are showing up in North America. The radiation, he explained, emits a big cloud of gases, which can be measured with the Geiger counter. Nuclear engineers have also been finding hot particles or fuel fleas, which can cause cancer around the world. In Tokyo in April, measurements indicated that there are about 10 hot particles a day, which is a high level of concern in what a normal person would breathe. In Seattle, for instance, it went down to about five hot particles a day, which can lodge into lung tissue, the digestive tract or bone, and over time can cause cancer. As a safeguard, it has been strongly advised by Mr. Gundersen to wash all fruits and vegetables before consuming them.

“I guess they feel they don’t have evidence to take it further.” - Nita Abbott

According to the Fairewinds website, environmental scientist and engineer, Marco Kaltofen, is following where the radiation stream is travelling. His research focus is nuclear fallout and tracking over long distances, in particular Nanoscale particles, which contain highly radioactive materials immeasurable by a Geiger counter.

Mr. Kaltofen reported there is short-term radiation exposure such as x-rays, and long-term radiation exposure, where particles from a nuclear plant or cigarettes can carry a significant amount of radiation that never really goes away. He said, wherever it lands in the body, it begins to damage the tissue or kill cells.

Media reports south of the border suggest that Japan was downplaying the severity long after people were being affected. To this, Health Canada is insisting there is no cause for concern.
sstein@ganderbeacon.ca

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Fort Calhoun nuclear plant new Fukushima?

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Prestigious doctor: US nuclear 'Baby valley of death,' Millions to die

Examiner
Deborah Dupre



Sunday, the prestigious Doctor Mark Sircus released a new report concurring with a host of scientists and other doctors giving evidence that people of Japan and United States have been subjected to dangerous levels of radiation since Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns, and also subjected to a tight cover-up by authorities and media, the result of which will be millions of baby deaths and new cancer victims. Japanese and American children are already suffering with symptoms that appear to be the first signs of Radiation Sickness.

"Finally, three months later, we are getting some numbers on what the real dangers are. And finally we can begin to understand the enormous cover-up of the nuclear doom that is reaching lungs all over the west coast of America, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii and at least half of Japan!" stated Dr. Mark Sircus.

Dr. Sircus Ac., OMD, is director of International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA) http://www.imva.info/. He was trained in acupuncture and oriental medicine at Institute of Traditional Medicine in Sante Fe, N.M., and at the School of Traditional Medicine of New England in Boston. He served at the Central Public Hospital of Pochutla in Mexico, and was awarded the title of doctor of oriental medicine for his work including one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the U.S. Dr. Sircus's IMVA is dedicated to unifying various disciplines in medicine with the goal of creating a new dawn in healthcare.

"For infants, it’s a terrible valley of death we have created for them." says Dr. Sircus. "As we shall see for years, all of them have been born with already polluted bloodstreams and now, the very young ones are dying in greater numbers on the west coast of the United States since Fukushima blew up."

No way to avoid tiny hot particles

"After the first week, officials had enough information to call for evacuation of a wide area in Japan and also Hawaii, Alaska and the entire west coast of North America," said Dr. Sircus.

All of northern Japan and the U.S. west coast should have been evacuated according to Dr. Sircus, admittedly "as impossible as evacuating the entire planet or the entire northern hemisphere."

"Avoiding exposure is always the best plan but there is no way to avoid breathing in air contaminated with tiny hot particles. Inhalation issues are much more frightening than ingestion issues because you can pick and choose what you eat and drink but you can't buy bottled air."

"Nuclear Toxicity Syndrome," one of the books authored by Dr. Sircus, is about "how to survive in nuclear and chemical hell," he says. Dr. Sircus, a founding guide of Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors, deliverers of Detox Survival Kits to hundreds of Gulf Of Mexico BP oil and Corexit poisoned survivors.

Echoing the frustration of many Gulf of Mexico "barefoot doctors" and other volunteers since the BP oil catastrophe there over a year ago, Dr. Sircus states that "one cannot do what is necessary to survive hell if a person doesn’t know they are living in one." The problem is that, due to the media blackout on environmental hazards associated with non-renewable energy big business, relatively few people know the hell Gulf Coast people are enduring. Many Gulf Coast residents continue to attribute ongoing illness to a persistent "flu." Just as more people are doing today in relation to Fukushima radiation, many Gulf Coast residents remain in denial that Gulf of Mexico radiation from seeping oil and antibiotic resistant bacteria from the dispersant Corexit are lethal and government has not helped them. This is why Dr. Sircus and many health professionals contributed to the work of Mr. Jeff Rense for his book, "Coming Clean: From Denial to Detox" that he freely offers to save lives.

Despite mixed reports from officials and media about the vulnerability of United States nuclear plants threatened by flooding, Dr. Sircus highlights, "It just keeps getting worse by the day, and now we have Fort Calhoun nuclear plant outside Omaha, Nebraska on emergency alert as first fire and now flooding threatens to overwhelm yet another nuclear facility."

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