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“The Ocean is Dying”: Marine and Animal Life Die Offs, California Coast Pacific Ocean is “Turning Into a Desert”


“The Ocean is Dying”: Marine and Animal Life Die Offs, California Coast
Pacific Ocean is “Turning Into a Desert”
By Mac Slavo
Global Research, November 11, 2018
The SHTF Plan
Region: USA
Theme: Environment
(This article was first published by Global Research in May 2015)

It was the dying cry of Charlton Heston in the creepy 1973 film Soylent Green… and it could resemble our desperate near future.

The ocean is dying, by all accounts – and if so, the food supply along with it. The causes are numerous, and overlapping. And massive numbers of wild animal populations are dying as a result of it.

Natural causes in the environment are partly to blame; so too are the corporations of man; the effects of Fukushima, unleashing untold levels of radiation into the ocean and onto Pacific shores; the cumulative effect of modern chemicals and agricultural waste tainting the water and disrupting reproduction.

A startling new report says in no uncertain terms that the Pacific Ocean off the California coast is turning into a desert. Once full of life, it is now becoming barren, and marine mammals, seabirds and fish are starving as a result. According to Ocean Health:

The waters of the Pacific off the coast of California are a clear, shimmering blue today, so transparent it’s possible to see the sandy bottom below […] clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into a desert, and the chain reaction that causes that bitter clarity is perhaps most obvious on the beaches of the Golden State, where thousands of emaciated sea lion pups are stranded.

[…]

Over the last three years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has noticed a growing number of strandings on the beaches of California and up into the Pacific north-west. In 2013, 1,171 sea lions were stranded, and 2,700 have already stranded in 2015 – a sign that something is seriously wrong, as pups don’t normally wind up on their own until later in the spring and early summer.

“[An unusually large number of sea lions stranding in 2013 was a red flag] there was a food availability problem even before the ocean got warm.”Johnson: This has never happened before… It’s incredible. It’s so unusual, and there’s no really good explanation for it. There’s also a good chance that the problem will continue, said a NOAA research scientist in climatology, Nate Mantua.

Experts blame a lack of food due to unusually warm ocean waters. NOAA declared an El Nino, the weather pattern that warms the Pacific, a few weeks ago. The water is three and a half to six degrees warmer than the average, according to Mantua, because of a lack of north wind on the West Coast. Ordinarily, the north wind drives the current, creating upwelling that brings forth the nutrients that feed the sardines, anchovies and other fish that adult sea lions feed on.

Fox News added:

The warm water is likely pushing prime sea lion foods — market squid, sardines and anchovies — further north, forcing the mothers to abandon their pups for up to eight days at a time in search of sustenance.

The pups, scientists believe, are weaning themselves early out of desperation and setting out on their own despite being underweight and ill-prepared to hunt.

[…]

“These animals are coming in really desperate. They’re at the end of life. They’re in a crisis … and not all animals are going to make it,” said Keith A. Matassa, executive director at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, which is currently rehabilitating 115 sea lion pups.

The same is true of seabirds on the Washington State coast:

In the storm debris littering a Washington State shoreline, Bonnie Wood saw something grisly: the mangled bodies of dozens of scraggly young seabirds. Walking half a mile along the beach at Twin Harbors State Park on Wednesday, Wood spotted more than 130 carcasses of juvenile Cassin’s auklets—the blue-footed, palm-size victims of what is becoming one of the largest mass die-offs of seabirds ever recorded. “It was so distressing,” recalled Wood, a volunteer who patrols Pacific Northwest beaches looking for dead or stranded birds. “They were just everywhere. Every ten yards we’d find another ten bodies of these sweet little things.”

“This is just massive, massive, unprecedented,” said Julia Parrish, a University of Washington seabird ecologist who oversees the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), a program that has tracked West Coast seabird deaths for almost 20 years. “We may be talking about 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. So far.” (source)

100,000 doesn’t necessarily sound large, statistically speaking, but precedent in the history of recorded animal deaths suggests that it is, in fact massive. Even National Geographic is noting that these die off events are “unprecedented.” Warmer water is indicated for much of the starvation faced by many of the dead animals.

Last year, scientists sounded the alarm over the death of millions of star fish, blamed on warmer waters and ‘mystery virus’:


Starfish are dying by the millions up and down the West Coast, leading scientists to warn of the possibility of localized extinction of some species. As the disease spreads, researchers may be zeroing in on a link between warming waters and the rising starfish body count. (source)

[…]

The epidemic, which threatens to reshape the coastal food web and change the makeup of tide pools for years to come, appears to be driven by a previously unidentified virus, a team of more than a dozen researchers from Cornell University, UC Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and other institutions reported Monday. (source)

Changing temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, driven by the natural cycle of gyres over decades, shifts wildlife populations, decimating the populations of species throughout the food chain, proving how fragile the balance of life in the ocean really is.

Recently, the collapse of the sardine population has created a crisis for fisheries and marine wildlife alike on the West Coast:

Commercial fishing for sardines off of Canada’s West Coast is worth an estimated $32 million – but now they are suddenly gone. Back in October, fisherman reported that they came back empty-handed without a single fish after 12 hours of trolling and some $1000 spent on fuel.

Sandy Mazza, for the Daily Breeze, reported a similar phenomenon in central California: “[T]he fickle sardines have been so abundant for so many years – sometimes holding court as the most plentiful fish in coastal waters – that it was a shock when he couldn’t find one of the shiny silver-blue coastal fish all summer, even though this isn’t the first time they’ve vanished.” [emphasis added]

[…]
“Is it El Nino? Pacific Decadal Oscillation? [La] Nina? Long-term climate change? More marine mammals eating sardines? Did they all go to Mexico or farther offshore? We don’t know. We’re pretty sure the overall population has declined. We manage them pretty conservatively because we don’t want to end up with another Cannery Row so, as the population declines, we curb fishing.” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) official Kerry Griffin. (source)

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the worst events have wiped out 90% of animal populations, falling short of extinction, but creating a rupture in food chains and ecosystems.

And environmental factors are known to be a factor, with pollution from chemicals dumped by factories clearly tied to at least 20% of the mass die off events of wildlife populations that have been investigated, and many die offs implicated by a number of overlapping factors. TheDaily Mail reported:

Mass die-offs of certain animals has increased in frequency every year for seven decades, according to a new study.

Researchers found that such events, which can kill more than 90 per cent of a population, are increasing among birds, fish and marine invertebrates.

The reasons for the die-offs are diverse, with effects tied to humans such as environmental contamination accounting for about a fifth of them.

Farm runoff from Big Agra introduces high levels of fertilizers and pesticides which createoxygen-starved dead zones which fish and aquatic live is killed off. Also preset in agriculture waste are gender bending chemicals like those found in Atrazine, used in staple crop production, and antibiotics and hormones, used in livestock production, which creates hazardous runoff for fish populations:

Livestock excrete natural hormones – estrogens and testosterones – as well as synthetic ones used to bolster their growth. Depending on concentrations and fish sensitivity, these hormones and hormone mimics might impair wild fish reproduction or skew their sex ratios. (source)

Pharmaceutical contaminants are also to blame for changing the sex of fish and disrupting population numbers, while a study found that the chemicals in Prozac changed the behavior of marine life, and made shrimp many times more likely to “commit suicide” and swim towards the light where they became easy prey.

Fish farms also introduce a large volume of antibiotic and chemical pollution into oceans and waterways:

The close quarters where farmed fish are raised (combined with their unnatural diets) means disease occurs often and can spread quickly. On fish farms, which are basically “CAFOs of the sea,” antibiotics are dispersed into the water, and sometimes injected directly into the fish.

Unfortunately, farmed fish are often raised in pens in the ocean, which means not only that pathogens can spread like wildfire and contaminate any wild fish swimming past – but the antibiotics can also spread to wild fish (via aquaculture and wastewater runoff) – and that’s exactly what recent research revealed. (source)

Mass die offs of fish on the Brazilian coastline have linked to pollution from the dumping of raw sewage and garbage.

In the last few days it was reported that a massive die off of bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico was connected by researchers to BP’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Evidence was found in a third of the cases of lesions in the adrenal gland, an otherwise rare condition linked with petroleum exposure. More than a fifth of the dolphins also suffered bacterial pneumonia, causing deadly lung infection that is likewise rarely seen in dolphin populations.
How Ocean Pollution Affects Human Health
The original source of this article is The SHTF Plan
Copyright © Mac Slavo, The SHTF Plan, 2018

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Only in Japan. Fukushima has affected much more than they think!

Monkeys Trying to Have Sex With Deer Is a Thing Now, Says Study
https://www.sciencealert.com/female-japanese-macaques-having-sex-with-male-deer?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

Yep, it happened again.
SIGNE DEAN
18 DEC 2017

At the start of this year, the world was left baffled when evidence emerged of a male snow monkey unsuccessfully getting it on with a female Sika deer on Japan’s Yakushima Island.

Now another research team has recorded female monkeys humping male deer, and these romps happened in an entirely different group of animals, in another part of the country.

Snow monkeys, or Japanese macaques, are known to cohabit with Sika deer, as the latter are attracted by food scraps discarded by the monkeys on the forest floor.

Researchers have seen monkeys grooming the deer and even riding them, but this sexual stuff is something new.

The single male macaque caught in the act on Yakushima was thought to be a low-status male who couldn’t get a female mate and thus reduced his sexual frustration by taking it out on the deer – who seemed unphased by the affair.

But it’s hard to judge what might be going on between the species with just one example, so primatologists from the University of Lethbridge in Canada decided to gather more data from the groups they were observing in Minoo, central Japan.

Scientists already know that adolescent female macaques have similar urges – they routinely interact with male and female monkeys in a sexy way, soliciting them for sex and even mounting them.

Having seen adolescent monkey girls mounting male deer in the vicinity, the team decided to compare these two behaviours to see whether the interactions really were meant to be sexual.

“This is the first quantitative study of heterospecific sexual behaviour between a non-human primate and a non-primate species,” the team writes in the study.

After counting a total of 67 mounts between two female monkeys and 258 female-monkey-on-deer mounts, the researchers identified 25 “successful” interactions, defined by three or more mounts within a 10 minute period.

Twelve of these happened between monkeys, and the other thirteen were monkey-deer liaisons. The romps would take anywhere between just a few minutes to as long as two hours.

Mostly, the deer didn’t seem to care at all – they nonchalantly stood still and even kept eating, and only a few reared up to dislodge the horny monkeys from their backs.

In a video featuring sample interactions recorded during the study, the whole thing looks fairly innocent, as the monkeys grind away atop bored-looking deer (although the biting and occasional antler-pulling is a bit more disconcerting).

After analysing the behaviours, the team concluded there was no significant difference between monkey-monkey or monkey-deer interactions – so what we’re seeing is indeed macaques having sexy time with deer.

But why are they doing this? The short answer is, we still don’t really know.

The team hypothesises there could be several reasons for these unproductive affairs – adolescent females could be practising their sex moves before engaging in the real deal, or perhaps relieving sexual tension since they couldn’t get a mate of their own species.

It all could be down to surging adolescent hormones, as female monkeys get a taste for what genital stimulation feels like, and decide to partake in it with non-threatening deer, as opposed to potentially aggressive adult male monkeys.

The researchers note they may have seen a larger number of interspecies action because of their observation area – a place in the national park where staff provide food twice a day to prevent monkeys from roaming too far out into the nearby city.

But apart from the possibly increased frequency, the researchers don’t think the sexual interactions had anything to do with human influence on the environment, as the two species hang around each other in many parts of the country.

“Future observations at this site will indicate whether this group-specific sexual oddity was a short-lived fad or the beginning of a culturally maintained phenomenon,” the team writes in the study.

The research was published in Archives of Sexual Behavior.

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‘Surprisingly’ high levels of radiation now detected along Pacific coast and in groundwater


(Wearing protective clothing and masks, a husband and wife walk along the coast damaged by the 2011 tsunami, with the Fukushima plant in the background. (Photo: AP)).

Hidden Fukushima nuclear waste being released into ocean — ‘Surprisingly’ high levels of radiation now detected along Pacific coast and in groundwater far from reactors — Expert: No one expected this — “Alarming example of how radiation has spread”

http://enenews.com/hidden-fukushima-nuclear-waste-being-released-into-ocean-suprisingly-high-levels-of-radiation-now-detected-along-pacific-coast-and-in-groundwater-far-from-reactors-expert-no-one-expected-th?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29

Published: October 5th, 2017 at 3:25 pm ET
By ENENews

Newsweek, Oct 4, 2017 (emphasis added): Radiation From Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Discovered in Sand and Groundwater 60 Miles Away… the beach groundwater is even 10 times more radioactive than the ocean directly next to the Fukushima plant.

Gizmodo, Oct 4, 2017: Fukushima’s Radioactive Waste Is Leaking From an Unexpected Source — A new and unexpected source of radioactive material left over from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has been found up to 60 miles away along coastlines… The discovery shows that damaged nuclear reactors are capable of spreading radiation far from the meltdown site, and in some surprising ways.

UPI, Oct 3, 2017: Beaches found releasing radioactive cesium into ocean 60 miles from Fukushima… Scientists have discovered a surprising new source of radioactive cesium… [Researchers] found unusually high levels of radioactive cesium-137 in the groundwater beneath several beaches… “No one expected that the highest levels of cesium in ocean water today would be found not in the harbor of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, but in the groundwater many miles away below the beach sands,” WHO researcher Virginie Sanial said…

Fox News, Oct 3, 2017: Fukushima’s radioactive cesium found an unexpected hiding spot… The find wasn’t just a surprise, but significant. As the researchers write, “Aside from the aquifer beneath [the plant], the highest recorded present-day activities of [cesium-137] in the aqueous environment in Japan are associated with brackish groundwater underneath beaches.”

IFL Science, Oct 2, 2017: Scientists investigating the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan have found an unexpected source of radioactive material… [It’s] an alarming example of how radiation from the reactor has spread… “It is as if the sands acted as a ‘sponge’ that was contaminated in 2011 and is only slowly being depleted,” said study co-author Ken Buesseler…

Study – Unexpected source of Fukushima-derived radiocesium to the coastal ocean of Japan, Sep 26, 2017: [T]he highest radiocesium (137Cs) activities outside of the power plant site were observed in brackish groundwater underneath sand beaches… During our study period, we found the highest cesium-137 (137Cs) levels (up to 23,000 Bq⋅m−3) outside of the FDNPP site not in the ocean, rivers, or potable groundwater, but in groundwater beneath sand beaches over tens of kilometers away from the FDNPP. Here, we present evidence of a previously unknown, ongoing source of Fukushima-derived 137Cs to the coastal ocean… This estimated ocean 137Cs source (0.6 TBq⋅y−1) is of similar magnitude as the ongoing releases of 137Cs from the FDNPP site for 2013–2016, as well as the input of Fukushima-derived dissolved 137Cs via rivers… This unexpected and ongoing 137Cs source requires further investigation…

View the full report here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/26/1708659114.full.pdf?with-ds=yes

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Over 1 Billion pounds of nuclear waste “will be dumped into sea” WTF???

Fury at Fukushima: Over 1 Billion pounds of nuclear waste “will be dumped into sea” — Top Official: “The decision has already been made” — “The solution is to pour the radioactive liquid into the ocean” — Toxic radioactive water to cause devastation

 
Published: July 16th, 2017 at 6:15 pm ET
By

2,855 comments

(Above:  An employee walks past storage tanks for contaminated water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, in February. Tepco needs to release the water — which contains radioactive tritium that is not removable but considered not harmful in small amounts — into the Pacific Ocean, Chairman Takashi Kawamura said. | TOMOHIRO OHSUMI / POOL PHOTO / VIA AP, FILE)

Kyodo, Jul 14, 2017 (emphasis added): Fukushima’s tritiated water to be dumped into sea, Tepco chief says — Despite the objections of local fishermen, the tritium-tainted water stored at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant will be dumped into the sea, a top official at Tokyo Electric says. “The decision has already been made,” Takashi Kawamura, chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., said in a recent interview with the media… As of July 6, about 777,000 tons were stored [1.54 billion pounds]… Kawamura’s remarks are the first by the utility’s management on the sensitive matter…

(Above:  The sea wall failure was most striking at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant AFP/Getty)

The Independent, Jul 15, 2017: Radioactive waste from Fukushima power plant disaster to be dumped in sea — Water tainted with tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, is to be released into the Pacific Ocean, says the head of the company responsible for the Fukushima clean-up operation… Local residents are furious at plans to release the radioactive tritium from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant, which suffered a triple meltdown, into the sea…

(Above:  Tokyo Electro Power Co.announced plans to pour radioactive tritium into the Pacific Ocean, a move that is angering locals. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo)

UPI, Jul 14, 2017: Japan utility plans to dump radioactive Fukushima water into Pacific — The operator of Japan’s paralyzed nuclear plant in Fukushima has decided to release radioactive tritium into the Pacific Ocean… Technology has so far been unable to remove tritium from the water, and TEPCO’s solution is to pour the radioactive liquid into the ocean… TEPCO insists tritium poses few health hazards, but Japanese fishermen are outraged because of the announcement…

(Above:  A member of the media uses a Geiger counter at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan, February 23, 2017. The site includes hundreds of tanks containing about 777,000 tons of water laced with tritium that TEPCO has decided to dump into the nearby sea, despite opposition from local fishermen.)

Newsweek, Jul 14, 2017: Fukushima’s Nuclear Waste Will Be Dumped Into the Ocean, Japanese Plant Owner Says — Toxic waste produced by one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters will be dumped into the sea, according to the head of [TEPCO]… Takashi Kawamura, chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), told foreign media that nearly 777,000 tons of water tainted with tritium, a byproduct of the nuclear process that is notoriously difficult to filter out of water, will be dumped into the Pacific Ocean…

The Telegraph, Jul 14, 2017: Fishermen express fury as Fukushima plant set to release radioactive material into ocean — Local residents and environmental groups have condemned a plan to release radioactive tritium from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean… Around 770,000 tons of highly radioactive water is being stored in 580 tanks at the site. Many of the contaminants can be filtered out, but the technology does not presently exist to remove tritium from water… Fishermen who operate in waters off the plant say any release of radioactive material will devastate an industry that is still struggling to recover from the initial nuclear disaster…

(Above:  The Fukushima No. 1 plant and hundreds of tanks containing tritiated water are viewed from the air in February. | KYODO)

Kyodo, Jul 15, 2017: Tepco backpedals after disaster reconstruction chief knocks plan to dump tritiated water into sea — [Tepco] backed off its tritium-dumping decision Friday after disaster reconstruction minister Masayoshi Yoshino said it would cause problems for struggling fishermen… The remarks made Friday by the Fukushima native came shortly after the chairman of [Tepco] was quoted as saying that the decision… had “already been made.” After Tepco Chairman Takashi Kawamura’s remarks were widely reported, the utility scrambled to make a clarification the same day. According to Tepco’s clarification, Kawamura meant to say that there was “no problem” with the dumping plan, based on government guidelines and “scientific and technological standards.” The statement also said that no final decision had been made…

See also: Experts: Japan “wants to just drop tanks” of Fukushima nuclear waste into ocean — Americans worried over plumes hitting West Coast (VIDEO)

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Experts: Billions are being exposed… Reactors “will continue to pour water into Pacific for the rest of time”


TV: Scientists fear Fukushima radiation hitting US to worsen… “A lot of people are very concerned” — Experts: Billions are being exposed… Reactors “will continue to pour water into Pacific for the rest of time” (VIDEO)
By ENENews, on February 21st, 2017
http://enenews.com/tv-scientists-fear-fukushima-radiation-hitting-us-to-worsen-a-lot-of-people-are-very-concerned-experts-billions-are-being-exposed-reactors-will-continue-to-pour-water-into-pacific-for

Arnie Gundersen, former nuclear engineer (emphasis added), Feb 2, 2017: “When I went to school, the saying was ‘dilution is the solution to pollution,’ and that’s what the Japanese believe. If they dump [radioactive water from Fukushima Daiichi] on their side and it floats over to the West Coast of the U.S. — the Pacific’s a big place — it’ll dilute out. I don’t think that’s appropriate… people are going to die. Regardless of how low the radiation is, it does cause cellular damage and cancer. So if you spread it out in a big body of water, the concentration goes down, but on the other hand, you’ve got a couple billion people exposed to it because they’re on the edge of that big body of water. So the concentration is down but the population is up and you’re still going to get cancer; it’s inevitable.”
http://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education//ecoshock-interview-extreme-nuclear-dangers


Dr. Helen Caldicott, Feb 13, 2017: As the water flows beneath the damaged reactors, it immerses the three molten cores and becomes extremely radioactive as it continues its journey into the adjacent Pacific Ocean. Every day since the accident began, 300 to 400 tons of water has poured into the Pacific where numerous isotopes including cesium 137, 134, strontium 90, tritium, plutonium, americium and up to 100 more, enter the ocean and bio-concentrate by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain… tuna, salmon and other species found on the American west coast now contain some of these radioactive elements… [Fukushima Daiichi] will continue to pour water into the Pacific for the rest of time…
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/helen-caldicott-the-fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-continues-unabated,10019


Fox News, Feb 8, 2017: Adam Housley, who reported from the area in 2011 following the catastrophic triple-meltdown, said… small levels of radiation are still being detected off the coasts of California and Oregon and scientists fear it could get worse. “The worry is with 300 tons of radioactive water going into the Pacific every day, what is that doing to the Pacific Ocean?” said Housley…
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/02/08/unimaginable-levels-radiation-fukushima-pacific-ocean-leaks

Fox News video transcript excerpts, Feb 8, 2017: Nearly 300 tons of radioactive water is dumped into the Pacific Ocean each and every day… There is still radiation being detected off the west coast of California and Oregon… The worry is with 300 tons of radioactive water going in every day to the Pacific — what is that doing to the Pacific Ocean?… We really don’t know what this radioactive water is doing to the Pacific I think a lot of people are very concerned about that…. As we know that water moves toward the west coast of the US.”

Watch the FOX News broadcast here

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Dr. Caldicott: The radiation measurement is 530 sieverts, or 53,000 rems (Roentgen Equivalent for Man). The dose at which half an exposed population would die is 250 to 500 rems


HELEN CALDICOTT: The Fukushima nuclear meltdown continues unabated
https://nuclear-news.net/

Dr Helen Caldicott, explains recent robot photos taken of Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear reactors: radiation levels have not peaked, but have continued to spill toxic waste into the Pacific Ocean — but it’s only now the damage has been photographed.

RECENT reporting of a huge radiation measurement at Unit 2 in the Fukushima Daichi reactor complex does not signify that there is a peak in radiation in the reactor building.

All that it indicates is that, for the first time, the Japanese have been able to measure the intense radiation given off by the molten fuel, as each previous attempt has led to failure because the radiation is so intense the robotic parts were functionally destroyed.

The radiation measurement was 530 sieverts, or 53,000 rems (Roentgen Equivalent for Man). The dose at which half an exposed population would die is 250 to 500 rems, so this is a massive measurement. It is quite likely had the robot been able to penetrate deeper into the inner cavern containing the molten corium, the measurement would have been much greater.

These facts illustrate why it will be almost impossible to “decommission” units 1, 2 and 3 as no human could ever be exposed to such extreme radiation. This fact means that Fukushima Daichi will remain a diabolical blot upon Japan and the world for the rest of time, sitting as it does on active earthquake zones.

What the photos taken by the robot did reveal was that some of the structural supports of Unit 2 have been damaged. It is also true that all four buildings were structurally damaged by the original earthquake some five years ago and by the subsequent hydrogen explosions so, should there be an earthquake greater than seven on the Richter scale, it is very possible that one or more of these structures could collapse, leading to a massive release of radiation as the building fell on the molten core beneath. But units 1, 2 and 3 also contain cooling pools with very radioactive fuel rods — numbering 392 in Unit 1, 615 in Unit 2, and 566 in Unit 3; if an earthquake were to breach a pool, the gamma rays would be so intense that the site would have to be permanently evacuated. The fuel from Unit 4 and its cooling pool has been removed.

But there is more to fear.

The reactor complex was built adjacent to a mountain range and millions of gallons of water emanate from the mountains daily beneath the reactor complex, causing some of the earth below the reactor buildings to partially liquefy. As the water flows beneath the damaged reactors, it immerses the three molten cores and becomes extremely radioactive as it continues its journey into the adjacent Pacific Ocean.

Every day since the accident began, 300 to 400 tons of water has poured into the Pacific where numerous isotopes – including cesium 137, 134, strontium 90, tritium, plutonium, americium and up to 100 more – enter the ocean and bio-concentrate by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain — algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish then us.

Fish swim thousands of miles and tuna, salmon and other species found on the American west coast now contain some of these radioactive elements, which are tasteless, odourless and invisible. Entering the human body by ingestion they concentrate in various organs, irradiating adjacent cells for many years. The cancer cycle is initiated by a single mutation in a single regulatory gene in a single cell and the incubation time for cancer is any time from 2 to 90 years. And no cancer defines its origin.

We could be catching radioactive fish in Australia or the fish that are imported could contain radioactive isotopes, but unless they are consistently tested we will never know.

As well as the mountain water reaching the Pacific Ocean, since the accident, TEPCO has daily pumped over 300 tons of sea water into the damaged reactors to keep them cool. It becomes intensely radioactive and is pumped out again and stored in over 1,200 huge storage tanks scattered over the Daichi site. These tanks could not withstand a large earthquake and could rupture releasing their contents into the ocean.

But even if that does not happen, TEPCO is rapidly running out of storage space and is trying to convince the local fishermen that it would be okay to empty the tanks into the sea. The Bremsstrahlung radiation like x-rays given off by these tanks is quite high – measuring 10 milirems – presenting a danger to the workers. There are over 4,000 workers on site each day, many recruited by the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia) and include men who are homeless, drug addicts and those who are mentally unstable.

There’s another problem. Because the molten cores are continuously generating hydrogen, which is explosive, TEPCO has been pumping nitrogen into the reactors to dilute the hydrogen dangers.

Vast areas of Japan are now contaminated, including some areas of Tokyo, which are so radioactive that roadside soil measuring 7,000 becquerels (bc) per kilo would qualify to be buried in a radioactive waste facility in the U.S..

As previously explained, these radioactive elements concentrate in the food chain. The Fukushima Prefecture has always been a food bowl for Japan and, although much of the rice, vegetables and fruit now grown here is radioactive, there is a big push to sell this food both in the Japanese market and overseas. Taiwan has banned the sale of Japanese food, but Australia and the U.S. have not.

Prime Minister Abe recently passed a law that any reporter who told the truth about the situation could be gaoled for ten years. In addition, doctors who tell their patients their disease could be radiation related will not be paid, so there is an immense cover-up in Japan as well as the global media.

The Prefectural Oversite Committee for Fukushima Health is only looking at thyroid cancer among the population and by June 2016, 172 people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the accident have developed, or have suspected, thyroid cancer; the normal incidence in this population is 1 to 2 per million.

However, other cancers and leukemia that are caused by radiation are not being routinely documented, nor are congenital malformations, which were, and are, still rife among the exposed Chernobyl population.

Bottom line, these reactors will never be cleaned up nor decommissioned because such a task is not humanly possible. Hence, they will continue to pour water into the Pacific for the rest of time and threaten Japan and the northern hemisphere with massive releases of radiation should there be another large earthquake.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/helen-caldicott-the-fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-continues-unabated,10019

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“Why don’t we hear complaints from US?”… Officials are criminals and trying to cover it up — Public must be aware even more radiation is coming… “People need to realize impact of contamination on them”

Nuclear Expert: Largest amount of Fukushima radiation fell on US West Coast and Pacific — “Why don’t we hear complaints from US?”… Officials are criminals and trying to cover it up — Public must be aware even more radiation is coming… “People need to realize impact of contamination on them”

Published: May 16th, 2016 at 11:44 am ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-largest-amount-fukushima-radiation-fell-west-coast-public-be-aware-rdioactive-material-flowing-america-masses-people-need-realize-impact-contamination-dont-hear-complaints-calls-c

Interview with nuclear engineer Hiroaki Koide (translation by Prof. Robert Stolz, transcription by Akiko Anson), published Mar 8, 2016 (emphasis added):
http://apjjf.org//2016/06/Hirano.html

Now, strontium-90 [Sr-90] has been leaking from Fukushima into the ocean, so it will eventually reach the United States, especially the west coast. This much we are sure of… it is the masses of people who need to realize the impact of the contamination on them. In the case of the Fukushima disaster, for example, they need to be aware that some radioactive material is reaching the North American coast, and the prevailing westerly winds will carry anything released into the atmosphere to the US…

While we are not really sure [how much radioactive material has leaked from Fukushima] we do know that a portion of this material will ride the prevailing winds across the Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, closer to the ground, the winds will be east, south, and north, and therefore this other portion will fall on Japan―and we can investigate the actual levels here: how much fell on this town, on this prefecture? Adding these up, it seems to be only 2.4 PBq. Which is to say of the total fifteen PBq, 2.4, or roughly only 16%, fell on Japanese soil. If the totals are higher, still a smaller share of the total contamination will have fallen on Japan compared with the Pacific, with the largest portion falling on the west coast of the United States.

So why don’t we hear complaints from the US? Why are there no calls for compensation? Whenever someone asks me this, I simply say that there just aren’t any such complaints. Why is this so? Well the levels released by the US during the atmospheric testing were tens of times greater than Fukushima. They are the criminals, so they cannot ask for compensation from Japan. The U.S. government does not want to have to reflect on its own past, and I think they are eager to completely avoid bringing up anything like that conversation.

See also: TV: North America will not be safe from Fukushima radiation if plant keeps leaking — Animals “suddenly died” on west coast right after 2011 disaster… Whole world noticed this strange phenomenon — “Fatally high” levels of radioactive material has entered ocean… serious pollution is ongoing (VIDEO)

Posted on by nootkabear

AP: Fukushima meltdown apology: “It was a cover-up”


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-tepco-power-japan-nuclear-meltdown-apologizes-cover-up/
AP June 21, 2016, 8:28 AM
Fukushima meltdown apology: “It was a cover-up”
32 Photos
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/first-look-inside-fukushima-nuclear-plant/5/
In this June 1, 2011 file photo released by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), workers inspect equipment inside the cesium absorption tower, part of the radioactive water processing facilities at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan.
AP/TEPCO
TOKYO — The utility that ran the Fukushima nuclear plant acknowledged Tuesday its delayed disclosure of the meltdowns at three reactorswas tantamount to a cover-up and apologized for it.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Naomi Hirose’s apology followed the revelation last week that an investigation had found Hirose’s predecessor instructed officials during the 2011 disaster to avoid using the word “meltdown.”
“I would say it was a cover-up,” Hirose told a news conference. “It’s extremely regrettable.”

Japanese woman breaks silence on Fukushima-related cancer
TEPCO instead described the reactors’ condition as less serious “core damage” for two months after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, wrecked the plant, even though utility officials knew and computer simulations suggested meltdowns had occurred.
gettyimages-513176770.jpg
Yasushi Ooishi of TEPCO poses for a portrait on February 23, 2016 in Okuma, Japan. Ooishi works in the team to handle the contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclea Power Plant.
Getty
An investigative report released last Thursday by three company-appointed lawyers said TEPCO’s then-President Masataka Shimizu instructed officials not to use the specific description under alleged pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office, though the investigators found no proof of such pressure.

Play Video
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-tepco-power-japan-nuclear-meltdown-apologizes-cover-up/
Japan struggles in cleanup of Fukushima meltdown
The report said TEPCO officials, who had suggested possible meltdowns, stopped using the description after March 14, 2011, when Shimizu’s instruction was delivered to vice president at the time, Sakae Muto in a memo at a televised news conference. In a video from that day, a company official rushes over to Muto, showing the memo and telling him that the Prime Minister’s Office has banned the word.
Government officials also softened their language on the reactor conditions around the same time, the report said.
Former officials at the Prime Minister’s Office have denied the allegation. Then-top government spokesman Yukio Edano, now secretary general of the main opposition Democratic Party, criticized the report as “inadequate and unilateral,” raising suspicion over the report by the lawyers seen close to the ruling party ahead of an upcoming Upper House election.
TEPCO has been accused of a series of cover-ups in the disaster, though the report found TEPCO’s delayed meltdown acknowledgement wasn’t illegal.
Hirose said he will take a 10 percent pay cut, and another executive will take a 30 percent cut, for one month each to take responsibility.
Play Video
Fukushima: Three Years Later
The report said Shimizu’s instruction delayed full disclosure of the plant’s status to the public, even as people who lived near the plant were forced to leave their homes, some of them possibly unable to return permanently, due to the radiation leaks from the plant.
TEPCO reported to authorities three days after the tsunami that the damage, based on a computer simulation, involved 25 to 55 percent of the fuel but didn’t say it constituted a “meltdown,” even though the figures exceeded the 5 percent benchmark for one under the company manual.
TEPCO in May 2011 publicly acknowledged “meltdown” after another computer simulation showed significant meltdown in three reactors, including one with melted fuel almost entirely fallen to the bottom of the primary containment chamber.
The issue surfaced earlier this year in a separate investigation in which TEPCO reversed its earlier position that it had no internal criteria regarding a meltdown announcement, admitting the company manual was overlooked.

Posted on by nootkabear

ENENews: “gargantuanism” in Fukushima

Nuclear Expert: We’ve detected a lot of cases “gargantuanism” in Fukushima — Reporter: “Gigantic beet… it’s almost as big as the upper part of man trying to hold it” — “They’re seeing more and more of this… people are reporting more and more of these abnormalities” (PHOTOS & VIDEO)

 http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-weve-detected-lot-cases-gargantuanism-fukushima-reporter-gigantic-beet-almost-big-upper-part-man-trying-hold-theyre-people-reporting-abnormalities-photos-video
Published: April 22nd, 2016 at 10:09 am ET
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Coast to Coast AM – ‘Fukushima and Nuclear Issues’, Mar 31, 2016 (emphasis added):

At 55:00 in

At 1:14:30 in

  • Linda Moulton Howe, reporter: “Remember when [Arnie Gundersen] was referencing the gargantuanism — it appears to be increasing, as he said, in the third generation of plants. And who knows what’s going to happen in the fourth, fifth, and so forth. The trauma of seeing these gigantic… there is a photograph of this, what they call ‘gargantuan strawberry’ in Fukushima Prefecture… [There] is a gigantic beet — it is almost as big as the upper part of the man trying to hold the big beet. And then [there] is something that several people have reported in different parts of Fukushima — where trees of, in this case, it’s a photograph of [leaves] from two species of maple. And it shows a contrast from what a normal leaf should look like, to one that is, gosh, three times bigger. And they’re seeing more and more of this — people are reporting more and more of these abnormalities in the trees in the surroundings.”

Linda Howe’s website ‘Earthfiles’, Apr 1, 2016: PHOTO: Gargantuan beet in Fukushima Prefecture after March 11, 2011; PHOTO: Gargantuan strawberry in Fukushima Prefecture after March 11, 2011; PHOTO: Enlarged maple leaves from two trees of same species

See also: Fukushima Mother: It’s very weird… plants with huge, huge flowers & giant stems — I brought deformed vegetables for radiation measurement, but officials didn’t test any and yelled “Don’t you understand? We say it’s safe!” — “All the beetles were disfigured and died”

And: Radiation Biologist: Tree leaves were gigantic after Chernobyl (VIDEO)

Broadcast of Gundersen interview available here

Posted on by nootkabear

Enviroreporter.com Fukushima @ 5 Years

Gone Fishing – Fukushima at Five Years

on March 11, 2016 in Blog, Featured, Fukushima Meltdowns, Radiation Station, Top Story 7 comments
 http://www.enviroreporter.com/2016/03/gone-fishing-fukushima-at-five-years/
Gone Fishing - Fukushima at Five Years courtesy TBS JNN Ustream
Gone Fishing – Fukushima at Five Years courtesy TBS JNN Ustream

Triple meltdowns remain out of control causing up to 66,000 excess cancers say two new reports while Americans feast on fishy Pacific seafoodSnow squalls brought the temperature down to a frigid 15.8 degrees Fahrenheit on the trawler January 20. The sea pitched in a rough chop.

Cold Japanese fisherman plied the Pacific Ocean off the east coast of Japan with three klieg lights at 2:30 in the morning. They were the only vessel around.

These weren’t just any waters the men fished in the freezing winds. The water was ‘hot’ with radiation. But the fish were plentiful and if they didn’t pass rad testing, they could be sold overseas.

The vessel bobbed in the choppy waters several hundred yards away from the still stricken, still leaking, still out of control triple nuclear reactors in full meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Gone fishing in the hot zone.

“Here’s a screenshot I took on 1/20/2016 at 2:36 [Japanese Standard Time] via the TBS Webcam,” says Sierra Nevada musician Chas Haws in a Radiation Conversation comment on EnviroReporter.com not long after taking it earlier this year. “It looks like a very large fishing boat with its trolling lights on. The thought that somebody somewhere could unknowingly consume those fish is a very scary thought. So scary I can’t believe any human being in their right mind would do such a thing.”

Black Mold Forest - Mina Ramicone
Black Mold Forest – Mina Ramicone

Exactly five years after the beginning of one of the two worst nuclear disasters in history, people are doing just that, eating fish from the seas off of Fukushima. If the catch is too radioactive under loose Japanese regulations, it’s sent to seafood consumers in the United States where the allowable radiation limits in fish are even more lax.Americans have been eating meltdowns-contaminated food for half a decade, as EnviroReporter.com’s Fukushima investigation shows. Radioactive cesium (caesium) is rising in fish caught off of British Columbia, the region (including Alaska and the Pacific Northwest) that supplies America’s ravenous seafood consumption.

RELATED: FukushimART & Fukushima, 5 years on

Two new studies detail the extent of the contamination in Japan, its cancerous impact upon the population and continued Pacific contamination. Government testing has shown sea creatures high in Fukushima radionuclides caught of West Coast of the U.S. and Canada. Yet judging from the robust U.S. consumption of crashing seafood stocks in the Pacific, which have repeatedly tested positive for Fukushima radionuclides, America has ‘gone fishing’ too in the gastronomical sense.

Gone fishing. Most Americans would fit in this category when it comes to the Fukushima meltdowns and their effects. Meltdown fatigue, complicated science and an assortment of pro-nuclear naysayers comparing Fukushima’s radiation with eating bananas has understandably numbed great numbers of people to their peril.


The Long and Ionizing Road

EnviroReporter.com’s 2014 anniversary piece Fukushima – The Perfect Crime? reported that 441 tons of highly radioactive water was sluicing into the Pacific from the stricken cores every day. According to a new report by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) called 5 Years Living With Fukushima, that number is now 300 tons per day.

The reduction in toxic water released is the good news (even though more than 500,000 thousand tons of radioactive waste water has now gone into the Pacific since 2011). The bad news is up to 66,000 “excess cancers” will hit the Fukushima area because of the meltdowns, according to the report. Workers who fought to save the reactors and their comrades paid the highest price for their valor.

Red Lady - Mina Ramicone
Red Lady – Mina Ramicone

“More than 25,000 cleanup and rescue workers received the highest radiation dose and risked their health, while preventing a deterioration of the situation at the power plant site,” the report says. “If data supplied by the operator TEPCO [plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company] is to be believed, around 100 workers are expected to contract cancer due to excess radiation, and 50 percent of these will be fatal. The real dose levels, however, are most likely several times higher, as the operator has had no qualms in manipulating the data to avoid claims for damages – from hiring unregistered temporary employees to tampering with radiation dosimeters and even crude forgery.”Even five years out, no one is allowed to live within 12.5 miles of stricken reactors. The hardships experienced by the Japanese people who had to flee Fukushima is well documented in the new short film Five Years On – Voices of Fukushima. About 180,000 remain displaced.

Coinciding with the PSR/IPPNW report launch March 9, Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar specializing in nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies, Institute for Public Studies, and former senior policy advisor, US Department of Energy, issued a statement highlighting their tragedy.

“Radioactive fallout from the reactors has created de faco ‘sacrifice zones’ where human habitation will no longer be possible well into the future,” Alvarez said. “In November 2011, the Japanese Science Ministry reported that long-lived radioactive cesium had contaminated 11,580 square miles (30,000 sq km) of the land surface of Japan. Some 4,500 square miles – an area almost the size of Connecticut – was found to have radiation levels that exceeded Japan’s allowable exposure rate.”

https://player.vimeo.com/video/158130748

Five Years On – Voices of Fukushima from Peace Boat on Vimeo.

Some cries for justice are finally being heard in Japan. Three top TEPCO executives including the chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 75, and two former executive vice presidents were indicted February 29 for professional negligence resulting in injury and death. It would seem unlikely that the judgement of these men will happen very quickly since it took five years to call them to task.

Cleaning up the mess in Fukushima won’t happen very quickly either, says TEPCO. The company says it needs 50 years to contain and remediate the reactors with the missing, oozing corium. It claims to have completed 10 percent of that work.

What appears to be a Sisyphean task to restore Fukushima is confirmed in the new March 4 Greenpeace report “Radiation Reloaded: Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident 5 years later.” The comprehensive study found that “The current approach of Japanese authorities to forest decontamination is the removal of leaf litter, soil, and understory plants in 20 meter strips along the roads and around homes that are surrounded by forests. In terms of decontaminating the large areas of Fukushima this approach is futile. Over seventy percent of Fukushima prefecture is forested, which is not possible to decontaminate.”

Greenpeace found that even if there is decontamination, it may subsequently be undone. “Mountain streams and rivers transport radioactive particulates and contaminated forest litter downstream, potentially contaminating areas that did not receive fallout, recontaminating ‘decontaminated’ areas, or discharging radioactivity to estuaries and marine ecosystems,” the report said.

Radiation spreading in Fukushima Prefecture - courtesy Japanese government
Radiation spreading in Fukushima Prefecture – courtesy Japanese government

Complicating matters even more is hot mist getting into everything, literally. “Both caesium-bearing particulates as well as vaporized, water-soluble radiocaesium were released,” the report says. “Water-soluble caesium, which came down as wet deposition with precipitation and fog, is readily absorbed via bark and leaves into the internal tissues of trees. Hot particles appear to weather and leach caesium under natural conditions. In addition, radiocaesium and 90Sr can be absorbed via root systems. Once absorbed into the internal tissues of trees, 134Cs and 137Cs are translocated with nutrient flows, concentrating in rapidly growing tissues such as new foliar structures, flowers and pollen. Japanese cedar pollen in Fukushima forests appears to have high concentrations of radiocaesium.”Radioactive fog, flowers and pollen? Yes, and hot honey too if the Fukushima sweet stuff soaks up the cesium like Croatian honey did from Chernobyl fallout adding fission to the flowers. It certainly has the potential to make even cherry tree festivals dangerous in the land of the rising radiation.

Naturally, it’s the perfect place to have the 2020 summer Olympics, i.e. Tokyo’s Radiation Olympics. If the swimming events are staged in Fukushima’s rivers, caution would be well advised if Greenpeace’s report is accurate.

“According to radiocaesium discharge projections for the century between 2011 and 2111, the major rivers whose catchments are primarily in Fukushima prefecture (the Abukuma, Arakawa, Naka, Agano, and Tadami rivers) could discharge as much caesium into the Pacific Ocean as is hemorrhaging from the Fukushima Daiichi plant itself,” the report says. “The Abukuma River alone is projected to discharge 111 TBq [Terabecquerel] of 137Cs [cesium-137] and 44 TBq of 134Cs [cesium-134], even with current rates of “decontamination”, in the century after the disaster.”

That is a lot of goo. All of it is headed for the Pacific Ocean. What goes into the water in Fukushima eventually makes its way on the Kuroshio Current to North American shores.

Just Say Glow

Many of the thousands of tests EnviroReporter.com has conducted and reported on since 2011 show Fukushima contamination in fish consumed in California and across America and Canada. Those tests keep coming in and include a variety of animals that have shown signs of Fukushima-related radionuclides in them.

In the summer of 2014, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries division found Fuku rads in northern fur seals. “We detected very small amounts of Fukushima-derived radioactive material in the seal tissue,” the NOAA report says. “We didn’t find any detectable radiation in the marine debris. The two [graph] peaks … show radiation energy for two isotopes of Cesium; 134Cs and 137Cs detected in fur seal muscle.”

Cesium-134 is a Fukushima signature radioisotope because it’s half-life of 2.07 years precludes anything else from being the source like nuclear fallout from atmospheric testing decades ago. It usually is found in tandem with cesium-137 as it indeed was in the seal.

Space Earth Moon orbits - Mina Ramicone
Space Earth Moon orbits – Mina Ramicone

Both of these isotopes of cesium are extremely dangerous with the shorter the half-life, the more intense a rate of ionization. That’s what makes cesium-134 such a perilous poison. NOAA also revealed that it tested water itself positive for cesium-134. Albacore tuna from the East Pacific Ocean, a foodie favorite, came in with 9.6 times higher in cesium-134 than the fur seal reading.“Estimated U.S. per capita consumption of fish and shellfish was 14.6 pounds (edible meat) in 2014,” according to recent NOAA data. “This total was essentially unchanged from the 14.5 pounds consumed in 2013.”

The U.S. fish feast of 2014 weighed in at 4,743,025 tons. Over 72 percent of that haul came from the Pacific with most of that harvested off of Alaska. That’s where so many Fukushima-related isotopes have been measured in all manner of flora and fauna over the last five years.

RELATED: FukushimART & Fukushima, 5 years on

Foodies gone fishing from Fukushima who just have to have their seafood yet who care about radiation bioaccumulation can take heart. There are fresh water fish and seafood from the Atlantic Ocean. But eating anything out of the Pacific is lunched.

“I know humans do some pretty insanely stupid things, so I wonder,” Haws says of his Fukushima fishing screen capture. “Why else would those fish trolling lights be on… hmm? Did they unload their hefty catch at some far away port and say it came from somewhere else? It would be a crime beyond description. There are no fish police. At least not at 2:30 in the morning just east of ongoing TRIPLE MELTDOWNS.”

The image of that trawler fishing in the freezing night in the fission-rich waters off of Fukushima Dai-chi is truly disturbing. On whose plates will that catch land?

When it comes to Fukushima, and now five years of radioactive madness, most of America – and the world, seems to have simply gone fishing.