Meltdown Likely Under Way At Japan Nuclear Reactor

[Central Scrutinizer]

<< According to the Salvation Army, Commissioners W. Todd Bassett and his wife Carol A. Bassett jointly received basic living allowances and grants totaling $64,210 for 2004 plus housing valued at $34,116. That is still considerably less than the salaries of some of the other top charities.

 

Marsha J. Evans, the president of the American Red Cross, was paid $651,957 in 2004. The president of the United Way is now Ralph Dickerson Jr. who's current salary is $420,000 per year, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

 

UNICEF C.E.O. and President Caryl M. Stern earned $478,645 in 2009 according to a Better Business Bureau report. The Better Business Bureau also said that Brian Gallagher, CEO of The United Way earns $1,037,410 in 2008. >>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice gigs if you can get them. Would be interesting to see how much they all give to charity maybe? :nahnah:

[Central Scrutinizer]

Nicholas Cage gets 20 million dollars per stink bomb he puts in 1000's of theaters and unknown number of homes.

 

HH

 

 

 

Never have liked many of his films really. Is he a Demoncrap? :grin:

[ThaiHome]

I think the problem is the reporters have no idea what they are talking about and rather then do the research or at least have their editors do so, they just continue to write pieces that come across as if the Japan is on the verge of becoming a nuclear wasteland, a la parts of the Ukraine.

 

Here is a typical example. These people drove around for hours with cans of gasoline in a closed car in fear of “sucking in potentially irradiated air.†So rather then try to understand what the potential harm in the radiation that had been released, the choose to breath in the fumes, which probably did far more long term harm to them then the any radiation that has been released to date.

TH

 

Covering aa Nuclear Disaster

ShareretweetEmailPrintBy HANNAH BEECH / TOKYO Hannah Beech / Tokyo – Mon Mar 21, 4:25 am ET

One by one, they cracked. One European journalist abandoned his fuel-empty rental car in Fukushima, panicking at the prospect of staying a minute longer in the capital of the prefecture where the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was leaking radiation into the air. Another swathed himself in a raincoat and duct tape before fleeing the area a few hours later. Still another just started hurtling West in a car, even as the other journalists in the vehicle pleaded for him to stop and let them off so they could continue reporting. A couple hours later, he finally halted the car; by then, they were in another prefecture. Earlier that morning, woken by a loud siren, the skittish journalist had woken up yelling "air raid, air raid," startling the other members of the media squeezed into the hotel room with him. "I thought, wait, who's attacking Japan?" recalls a colleague. "It wasn't the Americans. Was it the Chinese? I was completely confused." The noise turned out to be a passing fire truck.

 

Many of the foreign reporters covering the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami had seen plenty of death and destruction before coming to Japan. But what has so unnerved many journalists this time is an enemy that is odorless, colorless and tasteless. The sounds of mortar fire or precautions needed to avoid being kidnapped are things that some of us have been trained to understand. But radiation was an unknown threat to most of us, just as it was to many locals - even if Japan is the only country in the world that has suffered a nuclear attack. What exactly did a microsievert measure? What did a dosimeter do? How was it that we were supposed to take iodide pills but be worried about radioactive iodine? Could seaweed really counteract the effects of radiation, as one Japanese radio announcer had alleged? I had to supplement my Japanese with words that were not part of my normal vocabulary: radiation exposure, nuclear fuel rod, core cooling system. (See TIME's photos of the devastation in Japan.)

 

The rumors blew wild and unsubstantiated, especially in an area where phone and Internet services were limited by the natural disaster. A wire photographer, we heard, had been near the crippled plant area and was found with abnormal levels of radiation on his body. But was it three times or 30 times the normal amount? And what did that mean, anyway? Soon, news organizations and photo agencies began pulling their staff out of the area around Sendai, the earthquake and tsunami zone's biggest city that is around 100 km from the damaged reactor site. The evacuation of one media group catalyzed the next, emptying out hotels once so packed that journalists were sleeping in the lobby.

 

TIME's editors were very cognizant of the potential health concerns. By phone and email they reiterated that the priority was our safety, not the story. Still, the TIME team in Sendai went around and around in logical loops trying to decide out whether we should stay or go. In the end, because levels of radiation detected in the air around where we were staying weren't high, we decided to stick around for a while.

 

The winds were blowing south, which was good for those of us who were based north of the plant. When it started raining and snowing, we debated whether this was a good or a bad thing in terms of radiation exposure. (It was, we eventually agreed, a bad thing.) TIME's Tokyo reporter resorted to reading me over the phone information from the Centers for Disease Control about radiation poisoning. Basically the advice boiled down to 1) get out of the area and 2) take a long, soapy shower to get rid of surface radiation. But how to take a bath in an area where there was no running water because of the earthquake and tsunami? And the whole point as journalists was to be there. (Watch a doctor testing for radiation exposure.)

 

Add to that the constant shortage of fuel that made traveling anywhere difficult. (A fuel tuck filled with diesel gas for firetrucks was stuck in our hotel's parking lot because it, too, had run out of petrol.) We made a pact never to allow the car's gas meter to dip below half, the amount of fuel needed to make an escape to a transportation hub four hours away, in case radiation levels spiked. One day, we veered out of our way to rescue a fellow reporter stranded in a city that had become a ghost town because of radiation fears. (Comment on this story.)

 

To further protect ourselves, we traveled the decimated region with a jerry can filled with petrol squeezed in between the two front seats. The car air smelled like gas, but given that we were heading to an area not far from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, inhaling gas fumes seemed a better option than sucking in potentially irradiated air. As it turned out, when we got to one town flattened by the tsunami, a firefighter's Geiger counter showed the radiation level at 0.0. The firefighter, military and police squads were busy pulling bodies out of the tsunami wreckage. The threat of radiation was the last thing on most locals' minds. We cracked the car windows after that.

 

When I eventually arrived in Tokyo, a city usually bathed in neon, the streets were eerily dark at night. But even though some residents, both local and foreign, have begun to flee Japan's capital because of radiation worries, many seem resigned to sticking it out. Over the weekend, news that small amounts of radiation had been found in spinach, milk and tap water largely elicited shrugs. "We have to drink water to survive, and the government says it's safe, so I'll keep drinking," says Tokyo lawyer Michi Hidano. "Maybe in 30 years' time there will be an increase in certain illnesses caused by radiation. But that's something we can't worry about now." Life must go on

[ozpharlap]

"is it really that bad"

 

Dunno really, but would you want to live near the reactors now and raise your kids there, eat the foods grown near there, and drink the milk daily?

No, I would not, but I would also want my high standard of living that that energy has brought to me for the last 30 years

 

But that is my question, despite these releases and subsequent radiation, are the harmful effects that bad? We have background radiation all around us, and are the latest releases easily treatable

[ozpharlap]

Nicholas Cage gets 20 million dollars per stink bomb he puts in 1000's of theaters and unknown number of homes.

 

HH

I don't mind his films, they are simple and slightly engaging, mind you I don't mind Steven Segal, even if his acting is so wooden and predictable, like a Big Mac, you get what you buy

[bust]

Unless the IAEA are now employing journos I based my post on info stated by "qualified" personel

[ozpharlap]

Yes, you may be right, but who are the so called experts?

 

Last night on the Four Corners show (an Australian current affairs program) they had a slant (which that left wing organization is prone to do) of a horror story catastrophe, He was commentating on the meltdowns being a "dirty bomb" the so called expert has a degree in sociology.

 

The next expert was some expert from the "Friends of the Earth", no degree or accreditation given, giving highly detailed nuclear advice, sure, he may now, but probably just what he read of a corn flakes packet.

 

Then on that show a professor came on, zero training in nuclear science saying "there going to die", he is a professor in media studies. Sure, we are all going to die, the chances of the 50 involved in radio exposure at the plant, who experienced 250 millisiezuers (or something like that) increased their chance of getting cancer from 20% to 21%.

 

Here is a link to an actual nuclear scientist discussing the issues, it is in the last 1/3 of the podcast

 

Link

 

All nuclear experts that I have listen to say, as each day that goes by, it all means that it is more than likely to be better which all goes good for the peoples of Japan

[LizardKing]

Good source for info without the hyperbole: http://bravenewclimate.com and http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/default.aspx (both have good links, too)

 

And here too, but somewhat limited: http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov

[cavanami]

From U of Cal Santa Barbara. Good info, 81 min long.

 

http://www.youtube.com/tyentusa

 

Explains about the units used to measure radiation and when it gets bad.

[shygye]

... so which of those nuclear experts expressed concern about that plant BEFORE the earthquake? Which ones predicted the 3 hydrogen explosions destroying the outer containment buildings? Which ones predicted the overheating of the spent fuel rods?

 

We have now the uncontrolled release of radioactive particles from 4 nuclear reactor buildings. The farmers in that region have been put out of business, certainly for this growing season.