Japan Admits Radiation at Fukushima is Deadly: 4,000 mSv Per Hour

Ten times worse than a previous report, and over 7.5 times the normal lifetime average total exposure of 483 millisieverts, and all in one hour.

The UK Daily Mail has all the details and photos, here, but most pointedly, this:

The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens. ...

Unlike the other reactors which use uranium, Reactor 3 uses a mixture of uranium and plutonium. Plutonium, best known as an ingredient in nuclear weapons, is particularly dangerous if released into the environment. In the worst case scenario, exposed fuel will melt, triggering a chemical explosion that will send radioactive dust hundreds of yards into the air. Chinook helicopters flying at less than 300 feet dropped four loads of water over the wrecked building in the hope that some water would seep into the dried-out pool and cool the fuel. However, footage suggested much of the 2,000 gallons of water missed its target. Later, six fire engines and a water cannon tried to spray the building with 9,000 gallons of water from high pressure hoses. However, radiation levels within the plant rose from 3,700 millisieverts to 4,000 millisieverts an hour immediately afterwards. People exposed to such doses will suffer radiation sickness and many will die.

We've been lied to all week while the media in America have been full of apologists for the nuclear industry, soft-peddling the seriousness of this situation.

Radiation in Perspective

Over the course of an average American life of 78 years, cumulative normal overall radiation exposure of 6.2 millisieverts annually amounts to about 484 millisieverts in a lifetime. Expressed in microsieverts, 6,200 annually amounts to 483,600 microsieverts in a lifetime.

The Wall Street Journal reports here about current radiation conditions in Fukushima City, 60 miles from the damaged reactors on the Japanese coast:

At Fukushima City, 60 miles from the plant, the recorded amount of radiation on Thursday was 20 microsieverts per hour, a level that is roughly 1,000 times higher than in Japanese cities far from the plant. Still, scientists say it isn't enough to cause long-term health effects.

Officials at Fukushima City also said that they found iodine, cesium-135 and cesium-137 in drinking water, at about one-quarter the levels that would make the water unfit to drink.

If the rate of 20 microsieverts per hour persisted indefinitely, it would take just 2.76 years for a resident of Fukushima to absorb what under normal conditions an American might expect to be exposed to in a lifetime: 483,600 microsieverts.

Expressed in millisieverts, the present rate of exposure 60 miles away is the equivalent of 175.2 millisieverts per year. Normal in America would be 6.2 millisieverts per year. So over the course of a lifetime, that's about 13,666 millisieverts for residents of Fukushima, 54 times above what is normal in America. The cumulative one time exposure limit for an emergency worker is 250 millisieverts, which is reported to be the amount radiated HOURLY above Fukushima I, reactor 3.

"Scientists say it isn't enough to cause long-term health effects" in this context is completely unbelievable.

Are they just saying this stuff to keep a lid on the anger which is threatening to boil over?

Just remember, it's all in the name of mere electricity.

Once in a Lifetime Emergency Dose of Radiation Emitted Hourly at Fukushima Reactor 3

The New York Times reports here about the high levels of radiation thrown off of reactor no. 3 at Fukushima I, the only plant reported to be using plutonium fuel:

Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said . . .

. . . that radiation of about 250 millisievert an hour had been detected 100 feet above the plant. In the United States the limit for police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers engaged in life-saving activity as a once-in-a-lifetime exposure is equal to being exposed to 250 millisieverts for a full hour. The radiation figures provided by the Japanese Self-Defense Force may provide an indication of why a helicopter turned back on Wednesday from an attempt to dump cold water on a storage pool at the plant.

Reports of much lower measurements at the gate to the whole complex may be meaningful in the context of relative measures of safety at various distances, but the reality is that these damaged reactors pose a deadly threat to human life and health. 

Joan Baez Thinks Obama's Just a Victim of His Inputs

What is he, a mere animal without a will? Pavlov's dog?

"[H]e could do extraordinary things by not falling into the trap that I think he is: of waking up in the morning and meeting with the military. So that's all he gets for input, unless we can make ourselves heard somehow."

-- Joan Baez, quoted here

Remember this from last September, the president complaining how he thought his opposition likened him to a dog?:

"And over the last two years, that's meant taking on some powerful interests -- some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time. And they're not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. (Applause.) That's not in my prepared remarks, it's just -- but it's true."

Who knew those powerful interests included Joan Baez?

Radiation Bullshit Repeated by CNBC from Thomson Reuters? Ah, No.

Updated and corrected, because yours truly mixed up millisieverts and microsieverts before he had his morning coffee and flew off the handle and accused CNBC and Thomson Reuters of being morons:

The average individual background radiation dose for Americans is 3 millisieverts/year, according to Wikipedia here. In microsieverts, that would come to 3000 in one year, the same dose a woman gets once a year from a mammogram in addition to the individual background radiation.

From all sources, the average American presently gets a dose of 6.2 mSv/year, or 6200 microsieverts in one year.

Taking a story from Thomson Reuters, CNBC this morning publishes this, entitled "Risks at Each Reactor of Japan's Stricken Plant Explained":

Radiation levels were higher than normal but not dangerous, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on Thursday.

They were measured at 338 microsieverts per hour at the west gate at 2000 GMT March 16 (5 am local time March 17). If a person stands outdoors for a year, they would be exposed to a  radiation level of 400 microsieverts, the agency said.

The wind is blowing northwest-to-southeast, towards the Pacific Ocean, Japan Meteorological Agency said.

If 6200 microsieverts per year is normal for an American, 338 microsieverts per hour does not become out of the ordinary until after 18 hours of continuous exposure. But compressing into the course of two or three days the radiation exposure one gets normally in a year is nothing to sniff at.

Standing outside for a year equals 400 microsieverts? That's about 0.4 mSv/year.

Acute radiation exposure over one day begins near 250 millisieverts, with possible symptoms including nausea and appetite loss, and damage to the bone marrow, lymph nodes and the spleen. In microsieverts, this would be 250,000 IN ONE DAY. On Tuesday there was a brief time in which radiation levels at Fukushima reached way beyond 250 millisieverts to 400 mSv/hour, or 400,000 microsieverts. Very dangerous.

So I figured it out . . . before I died!

And apologies to Reuters, which I now realize had a good post on the milli/micro ins and outs here yesterday.

The Tariff: Workhorse of the US Treasury Until 1913

James Grant reviews "Peddling Protectionism" by Douglas A. Irwin here for The Wall Street Journal and concludes that Ben Bernanke was already alive and hard at work wrecking the economy in 1914.

The money line of the book:

"The magnitude of the tariff shock in the Smoot-Hawley legislation, which increased the domestic price of imports by 5% at a time when dutiable imports were just 1.4% of GDP, was simply not large enough to trigger the kind of economic contraction experienced after 1930."

The money line of the review:

Here is a model of the economic tract. Lavishly illustrated with political cartoons, it contains but one algebraic equation, and that probably unavoidable.

The World Owes More Money to Japan Than to Any Other Country

So what happens if they cash in all their chips to pay for this mess?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard asks us to think about that, here:

We are discovering once again that [Japan] is the world's top creditor by far with nearly £2 trillion of net assets overseas. ...

HSBC said the pattern after the 1987 crash, the 1998 Asia crisis, and Lehman's collapse, was that Japanese repatriation kicked in violently with a lag of a week. The impact may be greater this time given the trauma, and power-rationing as 11 nuclear reactors are shut down.

Jeff Immelt: Obama's Crony Nuclear Capitalist

Rachel Layne for Bloomberg has a lengthy article about GE's nuclear business, which its chairman Jeff Immelt, was hoping to expand dramatically in India:

General Electric Co. (GE)’s goal of broadening its $1 billion nuclear service-and-parts business with sales of new reactors risks stalling as world leaders reconsider the future of atomic energy.

Governments from Germany, which halted 25 percent of its nuclear-generated electricity, to India, with $175 billion in planned spending by 2030, are reassessing the technology after Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled a power plant and raised the threat of a meltdown.

Immelt is the new head of Obama's team of economic advisers, on which he also sat before he replaced Paul Volcker.

He was among numerous American corporate figures who accompanied Obama on his lavish trip to India after the November elections in 2010.

Watch for GE to make a huge contribution after Obama is out of office to his presidential library.

Self-Described Slave of the NFL to Make Over $10 Million in 2011

He must be drinking the same stuff as Al Franken:

"The players are getting robbed. They are. The owners are making so much money off of us to begin with. I don't know that I want to quote myself on that.

"It's modern-day slavery, you know? People kind of laugh at that, but there are people working at regular jobs who get treated the same way, too. With all the money. ... The owners are trying to get a different percentage, and bring in more money. I understand that; these are business-minded people. Of course this is what they are going to want to do. I understand that; it's how they got to where they are now. But as players, we have to stand our ground and say, 'Hey, without us, there's no football.'"

-- Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, story here

GE Chairman Jeff Immelt Should Resign His Presidential Appointment

GE designed the Mark I containment vessel used by reactors at Fukushima One, as reported here, one of which appears to be leaking water underneath due to an explosion.

GE's current chairman, Jeff Immelt, defends the nuclear industry here, even with what is happening. He recently replaced Paul Volcker as the head of Obama's outside team of economic advisers, and is said to be close to the president.

GE's containment design has been challenged from the beginning, as reported here and here, including by three of its designers who quit rather than lend their names to it.

President Obama, who should be bothered by the appearance of impropriety but isn't, is carrying on with what are in comparison mere frivolities while our most important ally in East Asia is experiencing its worst crisis since the second world war.

Is it because he doesn't want to spoil GE's efforts to win new reactor business in India?

Jeff Immelt should resign immediately from Obama's team.

And so should Obama. He is a disgrace.

Fascist pigs.

Fukushima Reactor No. 2 Update: Did the Fire Engine Run Out of Fuel?

The UK Daily Mail has these details, reported here:

There were reports that a fire engine pumping water in to the Number Two reactor failed shortly before last night's explosion -- which would have led to an increase in temperature inside the reactor and could have caused the blast. ...

The latest explosion last night is feared to have cracked the main protective barrier around reactor number two at the plant.

The International Atomic Agency said radioactive material is leaking 'directly' into the air from the stricken plant at a rate of 400 millisieverts per hour.  Anyone exposed to over 100 millisieverts a year risks cancer.

Engineers are using sea water to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods.

That is a sign of the desperation of the situation because the corrosive salt water will put the reactors permanently out of action. It is the first time in 57 years that sea water has been used to cool a reactor.

Although the plant’s three working reactors shut down automatically when the magnitude nine earthquake struck on Friday, the cooling systems which keep the radioactive uranium and plutonium fuel rods cool have been hit by a series of failures. ...

'It is too dangerous to go outside and even if they did they would not be able to be transported to a safe place because we have no fuel for our vehicles,' [the mayor of Fukushima City] said.

Fukushima Reactor No. 2 Overheats: Water Pumps Ran Out of Fuel

Logistical difficulties supplying traditional fossil fuel in the wake of the quake and tsunami emergency may mean a third reactor at the Fukushima complex is toast.

As reported by Kyodo News, here:

Tokyo Electric Power said the water level of the No. 2 reactor had fallen as fuel for pumps used to inject seawater to the reactor to cool it down ran out. The firm had reported the loss of cooling functions as an emergency to the government.

US Domestic Oil Production Increased in 2009 and 2010

The data are clearly shown at the link here to the US Energy Information Administration website, and show that after five consecutive years of domestic production declines, 2009 production exceeded 2008 production, and 2010 production exceeded 2009 production.

This was true despite declining production from Alaska. There were remarkable back to back years of production increases both in the Gulf of Mexico and in the lower 48 states, especially in North Dakota.

Conservatives who wish to dispute this are idiots. Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt are brushing up awfully close to this.

Obama's attempt to take credit for it is completely disingenuous. He would stop the use of oil tomorrow if he could. Pure snake oil.

To Unions Wisconsin is Shaped Like a Fist, Against Democracy

So Pat McIlheran for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, here:

Unions choose war because the warlike arts - fighting, regimenting, taking - are what unions do best. Conflict dominates their talk, just like that image of Wisconsin as a fist is all over their posters. The chief strategy of unions is to heighten complaint and to monetize dissatisfaction by organizing it.

It is war because the peaceful alternative, democracy, didn't work out for the unions. They lost; taxpayers won. Don't imagine they'll leave it at that.

Obama: If Only I Were President of China

So the president has let it slip that it would be so much easier to be the president of China.

To Michael Goodwin for The New York Post, here, this is evidence of how reality keeps intruding on the president, who protests too much that he is not an ideologue:

[M]y suspicion is that it's not the problems per se that have Obama envying a lower rung on the global ladder. It's that he regards them as endless distractions that keep getting in the way of his transformative agenda.


He is a man of the faculty lounge who wants a blank slate so he can remake the nation into a more perfect place, as he sees it. ...


But damn it, the country and the world won't cooperate.


Or as Socrates put it:

He who is the real tyrant . . . is the real slave . . .. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor . . . he ...  is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles.

Is There a Nuke Plant Near You?

The Argonne National Laboratory operates this interactive map (here) of US nuclear-powered electric generation plants for the US Department of Energy at the website of the International Nuclear Safety Center.

Here is the map for Japan and here the link to the interactive map:

Liberty Shmiberty: The Thin Gruel Offered by The Tea Party

"[T]he proper solution would be to get us back to liberty."

-- Rep. Michele Bachmann, self-appointed leader of the Tea Party Republicans in the US House, in New Hampshire today, here

"Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones."

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1978, here

Wisconsin Senate Republicans Receive Death Threats

The Wisconsin State Department of Justice is trying to find out who sent the following email to Republican Senators in Wisconsin, threatening them, and their families, with death:

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we've had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it's going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn't leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so "high" on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won't tell you all of them because that's just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it's necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will "get rid of" (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it's worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

The email was published here by AM 620 WTMJ News Radio.

Commies With Bullhorns Storm Wisconsin State Capitol Building in Madison

Ann Althouse and Meade in Madison have the stories and the pictures, for example here, here and here.

Protestors, including assorted Socialist Workers Party members, got inside because someone inside opened a window in a Democrat's office.

As a public employee, Althouse stands to lose personally if Walker and the Republicans get their way, but she provides remarkably objective reporting on the threats to democracy in Wisconsin posed by the actions of Democrats.

Declaration of Independence 'Decidedly Un-Revolutionary'

John Fea seems to agree with historian David Armitage that ours was a revolution not made but prevented, and takes the view that Abraham Lincoln was a revisionist in his reading of the Declaration:

Historian David Armitage, in a fascinating book entitled The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, has argued convincingly that the Declaration of Independence was written primarily as a document asserting American political sovereignty in the hopes that the newly created United States would secure a place in the international community of nations. In fact, Armitage asserts, the Declaration was discussed abroad more than it was at home. This meant that the Declaration was "decidedly un-revolutionary. It would affirm the maxims of European statecraft, not affront them." ...

Lincoln was a revisionist. He found the Declaration useful for reasons that were not primarily intended by its writers.