Q4 2010 GDP Revised Up to 3.1 Percent from 2.8 Percent in Final Estimate

As reported here.

Q3 2010 GDP was 2.6 percent.

The final number for all of 2010 comes in at 2.9 percent (up), after the historic decline in 2009, when GDP was down 2.6 percent.

Pretty pathetic after all the trillions of dollars in stimulus, bailouts and lending at taxpayer expense.

Radiation in Namie, Japan, Approximately 37.88 Microsieverts Per Hour

As reported here (but you have to do the math of 10 mSv divided by 264 hours times 1000):

On Monday, the [Japanese] government announced that radiation of more than 10 millisieverts had been detected at one location in Namie Town, some 30 kilometers northwest of the plant. The figure is what a person would be exposed to if they stayed outdoors for 11 consecutive days at the location. It is 10 times higher than the 1 millisievert-per-year long-term reference level for humans as recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

The prefectural government is measuring from Tuesday more than 1,400 institutions in the prefecture outside the 20-kilometer evacuation zone.

If the recommended limit is 1 mSv per year, however, it is utterly misleading to suggest the problem in Namie is 10 times higher than it should be. It is, but only for eleven days. This is comparing 11 day apples with 365 day oranges. The problem is much worse.

The fact is, people are getting almost a millisievert per 24 hour day, 909 microsieverts to be exact, if the radiation has been properly measured. At the levels indicated, people in Namie would get 332 mSv in a year, 332 TIMES normal for a year, if normal is 1.

The reported radiation level of almost 38 microsieverts per hour, if it is accurate, is much lower than prior reports here and here, which were 161 microsieverts per hour around March 21st and 1,400 microsieverts per hour around March 27th.

Radiation at the main gate to Fukushima Daiichi, one kilometer from the reactors, at the latest reading was 121 microsieverts per hour, over three times worse than in Namie.

Radiation Next to Reactor Buildings 100 Millisieverts Per Hour, Inside Off the Scale

So reports NHK World, here:

A radiation monitor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers there are exposed to immeasurable levels of radiation.

The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant's No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. He said even levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places.

Your Kid Still Can't Read, But His Teacher Retires a Millionaire

From Scott Johnston's The Naked Dollar:

Let's get back to my millionaire claim about teachers, which on the face of it, should seem preposterous. Teachers are by far the biggest public employee category, and their contract terms are illustrative of what goes on elsewhere. In my town, a teacher retiring today gets 70%, give or take, of his or her salary for the rest of his or her life. That's about $84,000 a year (not taxed by the state, incidentally). Plus, they get health benefits for their entire family for life. That's worth another $16,000 a year, for a total of $100,000 a year. Live for 25 years and that's a total of $2.5 million. Discounted at 4%, it's $1.6 million.

To quote our president, "let's be clear": there is zero difference between this and having an IRA with a value of $1.6 million, except the rest of us didn't demand that taxpayers fund our IRAs.

But it's much worse than that.

Read the whole thing here.

Headline Unemployment Drops to 8.8 Percent

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent interactive graphic of unemployment showing every month going back to January 1948 here:

The broader measure known as U-6 is still high at 15.7 percent, and 13.5 million, dropouts not included, continue to look for work.

Employment in America hasn't been really solid since the 1960s, except for a few months in the year 2000.

Fleep.com/earthquake Has The Most Comprehensive Fukushima Accident Radiation Data

Here is a sample, graphing the differences between the histories of the radiation levels measured at the two gates to the reactor facility, compared with the main building of the complex itself, from March 24th until April 1st:

Note that the radiation in the main building is still close to a full millisievert per hour (1000 microsieverts). You would absorb there in just 6 hours what the average American absorbs in a year.

Radiation in the most sensitive areas of the reactors themselves, and the turbine buildings, has been reported as high as 1000 millisieverts per hour, even now. Expressed in full sieverts, an hour of such exposure equals 1 sievert. 8 of those will kill you very quickly.

When it comes to radiation, distance away is your friend: first the main building, then the main gate, then anyplace else, even Iitate.

Radiation Level in Iitate, Japan, Down to 6.65 Microsieverts/Hour

As of 2:00 PM, Japan time, April 3, 2011 according to the Main Disaster Office of Fukushima Prefecture (here):

The level is down from 12.1 microsieverts per hour, reported here on March 21.

Radiation Report About Iitate, Japan, Had to Be Wrong

Nothing illustrates the incredibility of some of the radiation reports about Japan in the popular press than the case of Iitate, Japan.

Today The Wall Street Journal is reporting here that the radiation level at the main gate to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant is 144 microsieverts per hour. Inside the grounds of the plant, high level readings have been reported in reactor and/or turbine buildings all the way between 200, 300, and 400 millisieverts per hour on the lower end to as much as 1000 millisieverts per hour or more at the higher end, readings worlds away from microsieverts per hour (1 millisievert per hour is the same as 1000 microsieverts per hour).

The main gate is exactly one kilometer distant from the reactors, while the west gate is just slightly farther out.

This means that despite the catastrophe unfolding at the water's edge, a kilometer away the radiation levels drop dramatically. It doesn't mean they are safe, but the decline is dramatic with distance. 

Compare that observation with the report by Kyodo News (which we detailed here) in which the spokesman for the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is quoted as saying radiation levels in Iitate, Japan, 25 to 30 miles away, were at 25 millisieverts per day, or 1.04 millisieverts per hour, if one spent a maximum of eight hours outdoors. In microsieverts per hour, that would have to be 1,040.

The following map (source) of today's conditions shows that that statement must be in error, and wildly so:

All the readings in the affected area displayed here are measured in microsieverts, and very low measurements are reported.

There is only one line of contamination running northwest of the reactors where there are reports of relatively higher readings, the highest of which is around 70 microsieverts per hour, still much lower than at the main gate to Fukushima, and nowhere even remotely in the vicinity of 1,000 microsieverts per hour.

Fukushima Daiichi Main Gate Radiation at 3:00 PM at 144 Microsieverts Per Hour

According to this cool interactive map from The Wall Street Journal here:

As of now, there's only one data point available in Fukushima Prefecture, and that's at the main gate to Ground Zero, but it's better than nothing.

At the stated level of 144 microsieverts per hour, you'd get 3.456 millisieverts camping out there for 24 hours, 6.912 millisieverts in 48 hours (just over the average American's ANNUAL exposure), and 483.6 millisieverts (the average American's exposure in a 78 year lifetime) in just 140 days (that's 20 weeks for those of you in Rio Linda). 

Sounds safe to me!

  

Fukushima Reactors 2, 3 and 5 Jolted Beyond Worst Case Projections

As reported here:

Three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced a jolt stronger than a worst case projection when hit by Japan's largest-ever earthquake March 11, provisional data by the operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. showed Friday. ...

According to the data, the lowest underground levels of the Nos. 2, 3 and 5 reactor buildings faced a seismic movement of 550, 507 and 548 gals in the east-west direction, respectively, and each figure exceeded the projected level.


The limits, according to the following data (source), were 438, 441 and 452, respectively:

This means the effect of the 9.0 quake on these reactors was 25%, 15% and 21% beyond the design parameters.

Obama, Distributor of Miseries, Must Resign

Friday-Morning, April 1, 2011

The True-born Sons of Liberty are desired to hear the public Resignation, under Oath, of Barack Hussein Obama, a Dastard, Distributor of Miseries for the United States of America.

A Resignation ?    YES.

Source

The Marks of the Slave: Ignorance and Cowardice

Source

Radiation in Iitate, Japan, at 25 Millisieverts Every 24 Hours

If that's really true, that's FOUR years' worth of normal exposure in America IN A CALENDAR DAY, AND STILL THEY WON'T EVACUATE Iitate, Japan.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, . . . said at a press conference in the afternoon [Thursday] that the agency's rough estimates have shown there is no need for people in Iitate to evacuate immediately under criteria set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan.

''The radiation dose of a person who was indoors for 16 hours and outdoors for eight hours (and continued such a lifestyle) would be about 25 millisieverts, which is about half the level which requires evacuation based on the commission's criteria,'' he said.

The commission explained that domestic criteria are based on measurements at radiation in the air, and not the soil.

The data was buried here, in a story about groundwater contamination near reactor one. The technique appears to be an old one: casually refer to the touchiest subject as an aside in a report about something entirely unrelated.

Khalif Saed: The Voice of Libyan Professional Credibility

If there's an ammunition shortage, no one has told Khalif Saed. He was firing off a large machine gun welded to the back of a pick up truck, sending the contents of the heavy belt of bullets darting through the weapon and in to an empty sky. ...

Asked why he was shooting when the revolution's military leadership has appealed for discipline and its fighters not to waste ammunition, Saed said simply: "It's my gun."

Story here.

Too Bad Obama Wasn't Fully Vetted: Appearing To Be Credible Since 1961, or Thereabouts

President Obama told CBS News in an interview aired Tuesday night that the few rebel leaders American officials have met were "fully vetted, so we have a clear sense of who they are, and so far they're saying the right things, and most of them are professionals, lawyers, doctors, people who appear to be credible."


More here.

Pesky Fuel Rod

The Europeans have banned "The Simpsons" for its insensitive nuclear humor.

I kid you not:

Broadcasters in Germany, Australia and Switzerland have decided to ban or censor episodes of The Simpsons that poke fun at nuclear disasters in light of Japan's atomic emergency.

More here.

News Story Misidentifies Reactors in New Photos

The UK Daily Mail has been providing up to the minute coverage with excellent and timely photographs, which, sad to say, seems to have failed us this day.

It's not a quibble either, because the import of the article is that Reactor 2 has melted through its vessel, in the opinion, OPINION!, of the GE head of safety research when the reactor was installed. And he's been all over the British press, not just the Daily Mail, repeating that OPINION:

Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, told the Guardian that he believed nuclear fuel had melted and burned through the reactor floor in unit number two.

But try to accurately identify that reactor in these photos:

This photo's caption appears to be correct, but Reactor 2 appears to be the most intact.

This photo's caption appears to be incorrect. These are reactors four and three, not one and two.

Latest Radiation Figures in Tokyo, Fukushima City and Iwaki City Show Broad Declines

Some meltdown, huh?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the following declining radiation measurements in Japan today:

Tokyo: 0.105 microsievert an hour. Normal is 0.035 microsievert an hour.

Fukushima City: 3.17 microsieverts an hour, compared to 5.85 microsieverts an hour a week ago and 22.90 microsieverts an hour two weeks ago.

Iwaki City: 0.81 microsieverts an hour, compared to 2.05 microsieverts an hour a week ago and 1.34 microsieverts an hour two weeks ago.

In this statement from the article, "10,000" is a typo, and should read "100,000":

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission sets the annual occupational dosage limit for workers who deal with radiation at 50,000 microsieverts and the limit for a nuclear event at 10,000 microsieverts.

It's the same sort of error, easy to make, which TEPCO made in recent days stating a radiation comparison, not the reading itself, was 10 million times higher than another reading, when they meant 100,000 times higher. And the numbskulls crucified them for it.

Zeroes get inadvertently added and subtracted all too often, it seems, in science, mathematics . . . and politics!

The good news is that the bad news is not as bad as it was.

Where Are All The Meltdown Stories Today?

Huh?

The True Meaning of 666

Don't buy stocks, unless you like overpaying, says John Bethel.

Here:

Back in January 2006, I posted about something Peter Cundill referred to over the years — “The Magic Sixes.”

As I wrote at the time:

“The Magic Sixes” are something Cundill got from a man named Norman Weinger of Oppenheimer in the 1970s. They are companies trading at less than .6 times book value (or less than 60% of book value), 6 times earnings or less, and with dividend yields of 6% or more. Cundill remembers that there were HUNDREDS of publicly traded companies in the US qualifying back in those days.

When I posted the above more than five years ago, I ran a screen on Barron’s Online and it gave three stocks meeting the test.

I just ran it again a few minutes ago and it listed one stock meeting the test. And a second that was on the bubble (and might meet it as the stock price fluctuates a bit).

The Magic Sixes isn’t meant to give specific stock tips. It’s used to gauge the broad market — and whether it’s cheap or not.

It’s clearly not here in the US.