Reactor 2 Suppression Pool Abnormalities Blamed For Bulk of Radiation Release

Over a two day period beginning the morning of March 15.

This according to the Nuclear Safety Commission in Japan, as reported here.

The leak is ongoing, "rising" in fact, even though volume is down, according to the story.

Radiation in Namie Town at 34 Millisieverts in Just 25 Days

From March 11 to April 5.

As reported here:

34 millisieverts of radiation had accumulated over that period at one location in Namie Town, about 24 kilometers northwest of the plant. This equates to about 314 millisieverts per year, more than 3 times the permissible level of 100 millisieverts.

The figure of 314 must factor in some estimate of radiation degradation over a year. 34 millisieverts in 25 days is a rate of 1.36 mSv/day, or 496 in a year, not 314. 

The 100 mSv level may be permissible under extreme circumstances, perhaps, but the evacuation standard being used is 20 millisieverts or higher.

Normal average radiation exposure from all sources in the US is 6.2 millisieverts annually. A person living to age 78 would get almost 484 millisieverts in an entire lifetime at that rate. In Namie Town one could conceivably get that same whole lifetime's exposure in a single year.

Nuclear power is safe . . . until it isn't. And then it's unsafe it a big, dirty, relentless and inuring kind of way.

Another Voice for a Sensible Idea: Tax-Free Retirement Withdrawals for Real Estate

The only thing preventing many mortgages from being paid off free and clear for many people is the tax hit and withdrawal penalty they'd take to withdraw the funds from their retirement savings.

John Crudele for The New York Post looks at those funds and sees a kind of housing bailout in the waiting, where consumers might even actually use the dough to buy new or existing homes. Call it a housing stimulus spending bill:


Well, maybe it's time to listen to John (that would be me). Change the rules on retirement plans so the American people can rescue the ailing real estate industry, which, by the way, will take a decade to fix if left on its own.

Let people withdraw a relatively small percentage of the $15 trillion in retirement funds to purchase real estate. Give them a tax break -- maybe even a big one.


More at the link.

Namie, Japan, Expected to Radiate 300 Millisieverts Within Next Year

According to Kyodo News, here:

For a part of the town of Namie, the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has estimated that the dose for one year since the quake would exceed 300 millisieverts.

6 millisieverts per year is average in America from all sources.

The story details the announcement of the evacuation of Namie and other similar hot spots beyond the original 20km evacuation ring.

Japan Expands Evacuation Zone Due To Expected Annual Radiation of 20 Millisieverts

A month after the accident at Fukushima, the future is clear: there will be radiation problems 20 to 30 km around the nuclear plant for the foreseeable future.

So NHK World, here:

[A]nnual exposure in the zone is expected to be above 20 millisieverts. The worldwide average exposure from the natural environment is 2.4 millisieverts.

The expanded zone includes Katsurao Village, Namie Town, Iitate Village and some parts of Kawamata Town and Minami Soma City.

Was it worth it, Tokyo?

Namie, Japan, Radiation 14 Millisieverts in 17 Days, In Iitate 8 Millisieverts

The source is believed to be cesium, with a very long half-life (a generation) compared to radioactive iodine (a week).

An American gets on average 6.2 millisieverts in a year from all sources. Japanese set the threshold for natural sources at 1 millisievert.

NHK World has the story here:

Since March 23rd, the ministry has been measuring radiation levels in 15 locations more than 20 kilometers away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

At one location, in Namie Town about 30 kilometers northwest of the plant, 14,480 microsieverts of radiation had accumulated over the 17-day period to Sunday.

8,440 microsieverts of radiation were observed in Iitate Village.

In another location in Namie, the amount reached 6,430 microsieverts.

People would be exposed to this accumulated amount of radiation if they had stayed outdoors throughout the entire period.

Obama Says Mum Didn't Have Documents To Prove His Dad Was Barack Sr.

From Barack Obama's DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, page 345:

We Miss You Being Anonymous, Too

"I miss being anonymous."

The Date Your Home Became Just Another Commodity: August 5, 1997

When you could begin to sell every two years and avoid the capital gain.

The chart here shows the first stirrings late in the year of what was to become the housing bubble.

August 5, 1997 marked the date when the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 was signed into law by President Clinton.

"When the bill passed in the summer of 1997, it stipulated that married couples would pay no taxes on the first $500,000 in profits from the sale of a house. At the time, this wasn’t seen as an incentive for people to start trading up or flipping houses—although, according to the National Association of Realtors, single-family-home sales jumped 13 percent the year after it passed, and some economists have said it instantly added value to homes, and fueled their rise in prices. But if you drove over that bridge, into the 21st century, and combined this windfall with record-low interest rates and lower down-payment mortgage requirements, the synergy changed the way people bought homes: Instead of looking at how much house they could afford, people started looking at how much mortgage they could carry. (In other words, you could roll the profits into a pricier house, put less down, and still wind up with a lower monthly mortgage payment.) Taken by itself, the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 didn’t cause the economic meltdown. But it was one more piece of kindling on the cord that would eventually become the bonfire of all our vanities."

-- Bruce Feirstein, here

The mortgages behind those houses had started to become mere commodities, too, at about the same time:

Securitization accelerated in the mid-1990s. The total amount of mortgage-backed securities issued almost tripled between 1996 and 2007, to $7.3 trillion.


Hurting us where we live.

Boston Globe Slams Obama's Nuke Waste Irresponsibility

For supporting more nuclear power, which means more unsecured waste, and closing a never-opened $10 billion Yucca Mountain depository at the same time:

The administration’s decision to cancel the depository was a profile in craven political calculation: candidate Obama promised to cancel Yucca Mountain to curry favor in the 2008 Nevada caucuses, and he followed through on the urging of a key political ally, Democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.

Read the whole opinion here.

The New Green Energy!

Spray paint the coal green!

h/t ICM

New Video: Fukushima Daiichi Swamped by 15m Tsunami, Designed for 5.7m

Story and video here:

[T]he tsunami reached up to 15 meters on the ocean side of the reactor and turbine buildings. The figure is far beyond the company's originally estimated height of 5.7 meters.

TEPCO confirmed that the 6 reactors at Fukushima Daiichi power plant had been under as much as 5 meters of water.

Coal Was King Recourse In Last Decade, Followed by Oil and Gas

"Almost half of the increase in primary energy use in the past decade has come from coal. Almost all the rest has come from oil and gas."

-- Peter Foster, here

Pay For Your Own Goddamn Abortion

“What we can’t be doing is using last year’s budget process to have arguments about abortion . . .."

-- President Obama, quoted here, who used the Obamacare process under budget reconciliation to slaughter the Hyde Amendment prohibiting federal funding of abortion.

BankRobberiesRUs

From Jeff Randall for The UK Telegraph:

When asked by a judge why he persisted in robbing banks, the serial offender replied: “Because that’s where the money is.”

For us taxpayers, this observation is now doubly true. The banks have captured our money twice over: as cash in their vaults and investments in their shares. ... We rescued them – and in so doing became their prisoners. ...

The global economy cannot function without big banks, they say: gigantism provides synergies, efficiencies and benefits of scale. What a hoot. Tell that to the shareholders of Citigroup, a banking behemoth, which all but disappeared up its own balance sheet in 2008, having had a wild (losing) punt on sub-prime mortgages. ...

There is a general perception that we don’t want banks to fail, not even bad ones. This is a mistake. We should be perfectly happy to see poorly run businesses disappear.

Read the rest here.

5 Radiation Monitoring Posts 20-30 Km From Fukushima Daiichi Over 10 MicroSv/Hr

One radiation post, #83 near the 20 km ring northwest of the reactors, continues to register the highest reading of all the monitoring posts: 58.5 microsieverts/hour.

A little farther out, four others, #s 33, 32, 31 and 79 near the 30 km ring, register 19.5, 27.8, 11.4 and 14.8 microsieverts per hour respectively.

The main gate to the reactor complex is about 108 microsieverts per hour, while Iitate is just over 6 microsieverts per hour.

These values would all need to come down to 0.11425 microsievert per hour just to mirror normal, natural conditions under which a person gets 1.0 millisievert per year. Just a handful of locations even come close.

For the following map and values, go here:

Federal Reserve Discount Window Aided Many Banks Which Failed Anyway

So says another in a long line of incriminating stories in The New York Times, highlighting the pervasive involvement of the US government in bailing out failing institutions and implicating it in the spread of moral hazard to the highest levels of American banking:

More than one thousand banks have taken advantage [of the discount window during the financial crisis]. A review of federal data, including records the Fed released last week [by court order], shows that at least 111 of those banks subsequently failed. Eight owed the Fed money on the day they failed, including Washington Mutual, the largest failed bank in American history.

Here's the graphic from the article showcasing some of the worst offenders:

"You Might Want To Think About A Trade-In"

Trade-in value of this clunker = zero

The Tyrant is the Flatterer of the Vilest of Mankind

In "Obama's Close Friend Arrested In Prostitution Sting," here, we learn that Bobby Titcomb is a former classmate who holidays, golfs and picnics with the president, and has hosted him at his home in Hawaii for a barbecue.

Birds of a feather, perhaps?

How To Plan

                                        Think ahea

d.