samedi 2 avril 2011
Analysis Of New Photos Of Fukushima Reactors
More Hi-res photos here
Submitted by Chris Martenson
Zero Hedge
April 2, 2011
Exclusive: new photos of Fukushima reactors
Noting that the press has largely turned its resources off of the Fukushima complex, and needing up-to-date information on the status of the damage control efforts there, we secured the most up-to-date satellite photo from DigitalGlobe (dated March 31st), which we analyze below. This is the first photo of the damaged reactor site at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility made available to the public in over a week. That means you, our readers, are the first public eyes anywhere to see this photo.
Drawing upon the expertise of our resident nuclear engineer and Ann Stringer, imaging expert, we conclude that the situation at Fukushima is not stabilized: things are not yet at a place of steady progress in the containment and clean-up efforts. It’s still a dance, forwards and backwards, with the workers making gains here and there and the situation forcing them to react defensively.
In this report, we will tell you what we know for sure, what we are nearly certain of, and what we remain forced to speculate about.
Here is a portion of a much larger image (covering 25 square kilometers in total) showing the reactor complex as of March 31, at roughly mid-day:
Photo Credit, 2011, DigitalGlobe
What We Can See
Here’s what we can directly observe in the larger satellite image:
- Steam is still rising from reactors #2, #3 (circled in green) and #4.
- Of the four reactor buildings, three are nearly or totally destroyed, while the outside (at least) of the fourth is in relatively better shape.
- We can count 7 fire trucks ‘on site’ with another 7 just to the north, all with water lines strung out across the ground.
- There is only one ship/vessel to be seen, located inside of the breakwater and nearly as far to the north as it can go inside that boundary.
- A significant number of the vehicles that can be seen at the core of the site have not moved since the first released photos on March 12.
- There is a parking lot slightly to the north and west with approximately 250 passenger vehicles in it and a side lot with 30 large green tanks neatly arranged in rows.
- The rest of the area is one, two, and four lane roads (no traffic at all), worked farmland, residential and commercial areas, mostly empty parking lots, and two baseball diamonds.
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Here’s what we don’t see
- Nowhere in the 25 km area in the main photo can we find anything that looks like a staging area with a large collection of assets such as tanker trucks, pumpers, cement trucks, piles of pre-staged materials, ambulances, and fire trucks.
- The cement pumper truck seen a week ago has been apparently replaced by the boom at reactor #4.
- There’s no obvious barge delivering fresh water for the rector cooling efforts as recently reported (it may have come and gone?).
- Any obvious changes to the roofs of any of the reactors.
- Any people outside the plants working.
Things we can logically conclude
The steam that is venting is a mixed blessing. It implies that cooling water is getting to some hot material, which is a good thing, but it also means that something is hot enough to vaporize water and the continued release of radioactivity into the surrounding environment.
This means that the lack of steam coming from reactor #1 is either a very good sign, or a very bad sign. Good because it could mean that the containment vessels are intact and cooling water is circulating. Bad because it could imply that no water is getting to it and it is a very hot mass right now. According to TEPCO, reactor #1 has had seawater, and now freshwater, circulating through the reactor vessel – and since both containment vessels are intact, we’ll conclude the lack of steam is a good sign.
The situation at Fukushima is going to drag on for years. First there’s the matter of stabilizing the situation which has not yet been fully achieved. Recent surprises in terms of the amounts and locations of radioactivity are one sign that the situation is not fully stabilized. Still, nothing has blown up in quite a while, the steam venting appears consistent, and the major surprises seem to be over for now. While the TEPCO workers are still reacting to things as they arise, these are smaller things than last week, which is another hopeful sign.
The detected presence of neutron beams, I-134, and radioactive chlorine are all strongly supportive of the idea that criticality has resumed. Our best guess is that these are localized pockets, probably of short duration, and do not involve the entire core mass of any particular reactor conflagrating in some gigantic, greenish blob of uncontrolled fission. The geometries of the fuel in relation to neutron moderators requires precise conditions to support sustained fission and so it is rather unlikely to be occurring in anything other than localized pockets. If the entire reactor in its fully operational state was capable of supporting what we might scale to 100% fission, the amount of fission happening after a partial (or complete) meltdown will be a far lesser percentage. Still, any amount of fission is unwelcome at this point because it is adding to the heat and radiation removal difficulties.
The constantly rising levels of radioactivity found in the seawater are a further unwelcome development, but without a proper isotope analysis we cannot conclude anything about the potential resumption of fission from their gross amounts alone. It’s always possible that the leftover fission products are now being washed in larger amounts into the sea for some reason.
Additional Drone Photos
These are the most detailed photos yet to emerge into the public space (released yesterday, March 31, as far as I know), and they are purported to come from a drone flyover on March 20 and 24th. They are really quite good, and worth viewing in their entirety here.
Beginning with reactor 3, one thing we can say is, this thing is a right proper mess:
(Source for all that follow)
There’s a significant hole to the left of center that goes deep into the sub-structure (with a strange greenish cast that we’ve not been able to resolve after much conjecture) and it’s clear that this building alone will take a long time to resolve.
Interestingly, we get our clearest image yet of the hole in turbine building #3 that was created by something ejected into the air during the reactor #3 explosion.
Looking like one of those cartoon cutouts that happens when the coyote hits the ground, we get the impression that whatever it was happened to be quite heavy and possibly shaped like an Apollo capsule. It has been my suspicion, which contradicts the official story, that the concrete containment vessel was what actually blew up in reactor #3 and I have been looking for evidence of in the form of large, heavy chunks of concrete (especially the refueling plug) lying about. I don’t know what made this hole in the roof of the turbine building, but it was heavy.
Reactor #4 provides us with proof that serious damage can result from the effects of an overheated spent fuel storage pool:
Here the watering boom can be clearly seen. A camera was recently attached to the boom and it took some interior shots which were suggestive of the idea that the spent fuel pool is damaged and largely drained of water. Spraying water into this pool, then, is probably a balancing act with the desire to spray enough water on the rods to keep them cool being offset by the risk of having radioactive water drain away for parts unknown.
Almost certainly this same balancing act defines the efforts for reactors #2 and #3 as well.
Conclusions
The efforts at Fukushima are probably weeks away from even basic stabilization and we are years away from any sort of a final resolution. This crisis is going to be with all of us for a very long time. Radiation will continue to escape from the complex into the environment for weeks at best, months or years at worst.
The chief concern here is that things might still take a turn for the worse whereby radiation spikes to levels that prevent humans from getting close enough to perform meaningful operations and work on the site. If the radiation spikes high enough it will force an evacuation from the vicinity complicating every part of what has to happen next from monitoring to remediation.
The general lack of staged materials anywhere in the vicinity indicates that authorities have not yet decided on a plan of action, feeding our assessment that they are still in ‘react mode’ and that we are weeks away from nominal stabilization.
On Thursday we learned from the Wall Street Journal that TEPCO only had one stretcher, a satellite phone, 50 protective suits, and only enough dosimeters to give a single one to each worker group. Given this woeful level of preparation it is not surprising to see that regular fire trucks, cement trucks, and a lack of staged materials comprise much of the current damage control mix.
We don’t yet know enough to conclude how much fission has spontaneously re-occurred, but we have strong suspicions that the number is higher than zero. Here we make our call for the release of more complete and timely radiation readouts and sampling results by TEPCO and Japan so that we can assess what the true risks are. The situation remains fluid and quite a lot depends now on chance and which way the wind blows.
And as I detailed in the Alert report I issued soonafter the tragic events of the Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 10th, the impact of Japan’s tribulations on the global economy will be large and vast. World markets are simply unpreapared for the third-largest economy to suddenly and violently downshift. The persisting crisis at Fukushima simply worsens the picture.
As always, we’ll continue montioring developments closely and reporting our findings and conclusions on this site.
best,
Chris
vendredi 1 avril 2011
Chinese HAARP Identified
A mega-project of science research on space weather monitoring, namely the Meridian Space Weather Monitoring Project (Meridian Project for short), proposed by several research institutes and universities in China has been approved recently by the Chinese government. With the objectives of investigating the space weather cause-consequence chain in the solar-terrestrial space, understanding the processes of the catastrophic space weather events, and the regional characteristics of the environment above China's territory so as to help ensuring the safety of space activities such as satellite operation etc., the project will set up a large-scale ground-based monitoring system composed of 15 stations along the longitude of 120°E and the latitude of 30°N, says Prof. WANG Chi, vice commander-general and chief engineer of the project.The initiative of the Meridian Project is to conduct a comprehensive multi-layered and inter-disciplinary survey and exploration of space environment by advanced ground based techniques. With a variety of equipment, such as magnetometers, ionosondes and digisondes Incoherent Scattering Radar, HF back-scattering radar, LIDARs, Fabry-Perotinter ferometer, IPS, and sounding rockets, in a bid to probe space environment in geo-space with an altitude higher than20-30km up to the interplanetary space.As the first step for its enforcement, Prof. Wang says, by using the 14 multi-and special-purpose observational satiations located in, such as, Mohe, the northernmost county in China, Beijing, Wuhan, Hainan Island, Shanghai and Lhasa , the project will carryout a continuous monitoring operation for obtaining relevant space environment parameters on the geomagnetic field, electrical field, wind field, air density, temperature and its composition in the middle and high layers of the atmosphere, ionosphere, magnetosphere and interplanetary space. Meanwhile, the Zhongshan Station in the Antarctica will beset up to make a comprehensive study of the polar region by scanning the vicinity centered at the south end of the longitude which passes through the Station. The Meridian project will be completed within three years.In addition, the International Space Weather Meridian Circle Program is proposed to connect 120°E and 60°W. meridian chains of ground based monitors, which will greatly enhance the ability of monitoring space environment worldwide. Chinese scientists have started discussing this proposal with the scientists from Russia and Australia and other countries or regions running through the East Longitude 120°E as well as in related countries whose territories are traversed by the West Longitude60°W, and got very positive feedback.The 200-million-yuan($25 million) project will be coordinated by the Center for Space Science and Applied Research, Chinese Academy of sciences, with participation of several other institutes and universities from CAS, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Information Industry, China Earthquake Administration, the State Oceanic Administration, and China Meteorological Administration.
jeudi 31 mars 2011
Eco Fascist Schellnhuber Says World Needs to Be Managed by Elite Authoritarians
Revolutionary Politics.com
March 31, 2011
The English edition of Der Spiegel has a recent interview with Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. In this interview Schellnhuber announced that he would unveil his “Master Plan” for transforming society – one no doubt that suits his world view. In Schellhuber’s view, human society needs to be scaled back and managed by an elite group of “wise men” who know what is best for the rest.
Schellnhuber’s contempt for today’s organisation of western soctety is illustrated by his statements. For example Der Spiegel stumps Schellnhuber with a simple question: “Why is it that your messages haven’t been all that well received until now?” Schellnhuber responds:
I’m neither a psychologist nor a sociologist. But my life experiences have shown that the love of convenience and ignorance are man’s biggest character flaws. It’s a potentially deadly mixture.”
Oh the contempt. So we are all too comfortable and ignorant. It’s time for “wiser men” to think for the rest of us. Your message, Mr Schellnhuber, has not been well received because it is anti-democratic and authoritarian. Your kind of thinking is a threat to the principles of Germany’s Constitution and so belongs under government observation.
Read the More: http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/29/another-german-will-soon-unveil-a-master-plan-for-a-transformation-of-society/
Springs man's claim to have Obama records starts buzz
A Colorado Springs “birther,” retired Air Force Col. Gregory Hollister, has Internet blogs abuzz with what may be an illegal foray into an online Social Security data base and how he obtained a copy of President Barack Obama’s draft registration from 1980.
“Col. Greg Hollister, USAF (Ret.) contacted the Selective Service, falsely impersonated President Obama, improperly registered his own address as President Obama’s address, and by this false impersonation and identity theft he managed to obtain a duplicate registration acknowledgement card with President Obama’s Selective Service information on it,” a blogger posted on gratewire.com last week. “This may violate several federal criminal statutes, and apparently caused the federal record of President Obama’s address with the Selective Service to be altered to show that he lives in Colorado Springs, CO.”
Hollister said Tuesday a private investigator, Susan Daniels of Ohio, gave him what is purported to be the president’s Social Security number. He then accessed the Social Security Number Verification Service to find out to whom it was issued and to access Selective Service documents.
The site allows registered users to verify names and Social Security numbers for employment purposes and warns that using it under false pretenses is a violation of federal law.
“According to the Social Security Administration, that number was never issued,” said Hollister, who challenged whether the president is an American citizen in a lawsuit the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Jan. 18 without requiring a response from the White House.
However, that’s the Social Security number that appears on the Selective Service documents Hollister obtained.
Hollister and others in the birther movement claim Obama was born in either Kenya or Indonesia and that his birth certificate showing he was born in Honolulu in 1961 is a forgery.
Being born outside the U.S. makes him ineligible to be president, they claim, because the Constitution requires the president to be a natural born citizen.
Hollister said the Social Security number on what he says is Obama’s draft registration begins with the numbers 042, which would be issued to someone born in Connecticut, not Hawaii.
Last week, California attorney Orly Taitz, who has led the legal challenges to Obama’s citizenship, filed an amended complaint in her latest lawsuit demanding Obama’s Social Security records, attaching as an exhibit the draft registration mailed to an address in Colorado Springs, according to the Reality Check Radio Blog.
It is unknown if the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver is investigating Hollister’s use of the data bases and obtaining Obama’s draft records.
Hollister denied breaking any laws.
“I was very meticulous and made sure everything I did was compliant with the law,” Hollister said, noting that he sent Obama an 1099 tax form.
A 1099 is an IRS income reporting form for independent contractors and free-lancers. Hollister did not explain how sending that to Obama complies with federal laws on the use of Social Security data.
Daniels said her doubts about Obama’s citizenship have only been reinforced by what Hollister found out.
Hollister said he started questioning Obama’s citizenship because as a retired Air Force officer he is subject to recall to active duty until he dies and he needs to be sure that Obama has the authority to give those orders.