‘Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind’
June 16th, 2011Via: Al Jazeera:
Scientific experts believe Japan’s nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public.
“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Japan’s 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.
Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.
“Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed,” he said, “You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.”
TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water – as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.
“The problem is how to keep it cool,” says Gundersen. “They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?”
Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.
“The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor,” Gundersen added. “TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water.”
Pentagon in Search of ‘Secret’ Farmers for Afghanistan
June 16th, 2011Via: National Journal:
The Department of Defense is looking to hire agriculture specialists to send to Afghanistan. That’s nothing especially new — Afghanistan’s economy is heavily agricultural, the health of the country’s economy is directly tied to the mission of rolling back Taliban influence, and the U.S. has been sending farming consultants there for years. But writer (and former civilian contractor in Afghanistan) Joshua Foust noticed something unusual in reading the job listing, which had been posted to recruitmilitary.com by a defense contractor. The job requires “secret” security clearance.
Airspace Over Flooded Nebraska Nuclear Power Plant Still Closed
June 16th, 2011Via: Business Insider:
A fire in Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant briefly knocked out the cooling process for spent nuclear fuel rods, ProPublica reports.
The fire occurred on June 7th, and knocked out cooling for approximately 90 minutes. After 88 hours, the cooling pool would boil dry and highly radioactive materials would be exposed.
On June 6th, the Federal Administration Aviation (FAA) issued a directive banning aircraft from entering the airspace within a two-mile radius of the plant.
“No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM,” referring to the “notice to airmen,” effective immediately.
Since last week, the plant has been under a “notification of unusual event” classification, becausing of the rising Missouri River. That is the lowest level of emergency alert.
The OPPD claims the FAA closed airspace over the plant because of the Missouri River flooding. But the FAA ban specifically lists the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant as the location for the flight ban.
The plant is adjacent to the now-flooding river, about 20 minutes outside downtown Omaha, and has been closed since April for refueling.
Why Your Money-Market Fund Could Be Hit by Greek Default
June 16th, 2011Via: CNBC:
Some of the safest, plain-vanilla investment accounts in the U.S. could be challenged if Greece defaults on its sovereign debt.
Forty-four percent of mutual fund assets in the U.S. are invested in the short-term debt of European banks, according to a report from Fitch.
A separate report from Moody’s noted that 55 percent of those holdings are in the commercial paper of French banks, such as Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole. French banks are some of biggest creditors to Greece, with over $53 billion in outstanding loans to the Greek government and private sector.
While fund managers have had plenty of warning of the potential of a default in Greece, many would likely still be caught off guard. Many fund managers assume that a bailout will prevent a default by Greece.
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers similarly caught money-market fund managers off guard, famously causing the Reserve Fund to “break the buck.”
The debt of these French banks is still very highly rated and Moody’s says the risk of default on the short-term debt is very low. But the high ratings assume that the probability of a default by Greece is very low.
Cop Who Executed Unarmed Man Released from Prison After One Year
June 16th, 2011People who protested are facing longer jail sentences.
Via: San Francisco Bay Guardian:
Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant while he was lying face down on the Fruitvale station train platform on New Year’s Day 2009, was released from a Los Angeles jail June 13 after serving a total of 365 days for his involuntary manslaughter conviction. He was sentenced to two years behind bars, but Judge Robert Perry granted him an early release due to credit for time served and good behavior.
The same date of his release, the National Lawyers Guild filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 150 protesters who were mass-arrested during the Nov. 5, 2010 demonstration in Oakland in the wake of Mehersle’s sentencing. Meanwhile, a handful of individuals who engaged in the Jan. 14, 2009 and July 8, 2010 protests launched by Grant supporters — which morphed into riots after community rallies came to an end — are still battling court cases.
Ex-Spy Alleges Bush White House Sought to Discredit Critic
June 16th, 2011Via: New York Times:
A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.
Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.
In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.
It is not clear whether the White House received any damaging material about Professor Cole or whether the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies ever provided any information or spied on him. Mr. Carle said that a memorandum written by his supervisor included derogatory details about Professor Cole, but that it may have been deleted before reaching the White House. Mr. Carle also said he did not know the origins of that information or who at the White House had requested it.
Research Credit: ottilie
Ireland: Thatched Roof Tract Homes Sit Empty
June 16th, 2011You have to see the pictures of this.
Via: Daily Mail:
As the Irish economy lies in tatters, the so-called Celtic Tiger now kept alive by an 85billion euro bailout, residents across the country have one reminder of the good old times.
Ghost estates have become a new feature of the Irish landscape – hundreds of newly built properties that lie empty after the crash.
But one is perhaps prettier than all the rest – and all the more poignant.
The St James Wood estate in the village of Stradbally consists of 15 gorgeous thatched cottages, all of them lying empty.
Perhaps the asking price of 820,000 euros (£700,000) each, when auctioneers say they are now worth just 200,000 euros (£175,000), is the reason they lie empty.
But nevertheless, what were intended as an idyllic holiday homes are now in danger of being overrun with weeds and the lawns are yellow and dead.
Allied Irish Banks Defaults
June 16th, 2011Via: BBC:
Allied Irish Banks (AIB) has been deemed to be effectively in default on its debts by the association of banks that trade in credit derivatives.
The ruling means the writers of $500m (£306m) of the insurance-like contracts will now have to make cash payouts.
On Thursday, the Irish lender stopped interest payments on some of its bonds and postponed their repayment dates.
The move is expected to cause the affected bond investors 90% losses and to save AIB a total of 2bn euros.
Operation Fast and Furious
June 16th, 2011Maybe it’s an effort to create so much chaos that people will beg for more gun control? Just a guess.
Via: Reuters:
U.S. firearms agents told lawmakers on Wednesday they were instructed to only watch as hundreds of guns were bought, illegally resold and sent to Mexico where drug-related violence has raged for years.
Agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona told the House of Representatives Oversight Committee they were told not to arrest the so-called straw buyers and instead see where the guns went.
Republicans and Democrats on the panel expressed outrage about the ATF program — “Operation Fast and Furious” — and demanded answers from the Obama administration about why arrests were secondary to tracking the firearms.
“We monitored as they purchased handguns, AK-47 variants and .50 caliber rifles, almost daily at times,” John Dodson, an ATF special agent in Phoenix, told the committee.
“Rather than conduct any enforcement actions, we took notes, we recorded observations, we tracked movements of these individuals, we wrote reports but nothing more.”
Dodson said agents were never given reasonable answers why their activities were limited.
An ATF supervisor in Phoenix, Peter Forcelli, said some tried to raise concerns with supervisors but were rebuffed.
“My concerns were dismissed,” he told the committee. “I believe that these firearms will continue to turn up at crime scenes, on both sides of the border, for years to come.”
More: “Fast and Furious” a “Catastrophic Disaster”
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June 16th, 2011I don’t know what happened over the last 24 hours or so, but it’s not Game Over for Cryptogon just yet! Thank you all very much.
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