UK Medical Experts Say Seemingly Large Number of Thyroid Cancer in Children in Fukushima Is Likely Due to Hypersensitive Ultrasound

In other words, "screening effect," as other researchers have already concluded. (Here's a paper by German researchers, published in January 2014 in Radiation and Environmental Biophysics.)

Even some of the Japanese experts such as Dr. Masamichi Nishio who have been fanning the fear of a big increase in thyroid cancer in children after the Fukushima I NPP accident seem to be backtracking (link goes to a togetter with Dr. Nishio's comments) these days, as the third anniversary of the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan approaches.

The Guardian's article below, however, does not make it crystal clear that the thyroid screening test being done in Fukushima Prefecture since 2011 aims to test ALL children who were 18 years old and under at the time of the nuclear accident and who would have not gone to a thyroid specialist to have their thyroids checked had there been no nuclear accident.

Fukushima Prefecture's screening is finding the cases of thyroid cancer which would have gone unnoticed and undetected for years if not decades. To compare the cancer cases found in this screening with the normal cancer cases where the patient goes to the doctor and the doctor makes diagnosis doesn't make any sense, but that's what some experts in Japan and outside Japan have been doing, to the apparent frustration (for some) and anxiety (for many others) among parents in Fukushima.

So far, 269,354 children, or about 80% of all children in Fukushima who were 18 years old and younger at the time of the accident have been tested, according to the latest report (2/7/2014; in Japanese) by the Fukushima prefectural government. None of the children found with thyroid cancer had any symptoms.

From UK's The Guardian (3/9/2014; emphasis is mine):

Fukushima's children at centre of debate over rates of thyroid cancer

Three years after the worst nuclear accident in a generation, the Japanese prefecture is reporting a rise in the number of children showing cancer symptoms. But is this directly related to the disaster, or is the testing more rigorous?

by Justin McCurry in Fukushima

When doctors found several tiny nodules on his 12-year-old daughter's thyroid gland, Toshiyuki Kamei refused to let parental fear get the better of him. The symptoms are not uncommon, and the probability that they will develop into something more serious is low.

Yet Kamei can be forgiven for occasional moments of doubt: his daughter, Ayako, is one of almost 400,000 children who were living in Fukushima on 11 March 2011 – the start of the world's worst nuclear accident for a quarter of a century.

"As a parent, of course I worry, but my daughter is taking it in her stride," said Kamei, who lives in Iwaki, a city about 40km (25 miles) south of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. "She doesn't tell me if it's on her mind, and I've decided not to ask her about it."

Three years after the plant suffered a triple meltdown that released huge quantities of radiation into the atmosphere, medical authorities in Fukushima prefecture are reporting a significant rise in the number of thyroid cancer cases among local children and young adults.

The results have prompted a bitter debate about the potential effects the meltdown had on the health of hundreds of thousands of children. Either the higher-than-normal rates of thyroid cancer are connected to the nuclear accident, or they are the inevitable result of a testing regime unprecedented in size, and conducted using state-of-the-art medical equipment.

Last month, the number of confirmed and suspected cases of thyroid cancer among people aged 18 or below at the time of the accident rose to 75, compared with 59 at the end of last September. Of the current total, 33 cases have been confirmed as cancer.

...At first sight, the figures give cause for alarm. Thyroid cancer normally affects one to two people per million among 10 to 14-year-olds in Japan, a rate far lower than observed in Fukushima, although tests there apply to people aged up to 18.

But experts familiar with both disasters caution against making similarly gloomy predictions for the children of Fukushima. Dillwyn Williams, emeritus professor of pathology at Cambridge University, pointed out that a noticeable increase in thyroid cancers was not observed until three to four years after the Chernobyl accident.

"Much less radioactivity was released from Fukushima than from Chernobyl," he said. "Most of [the Fukushima radiation] was blown over the Pacific Ocean, and thyroid doses in the most-affected areas are low compared to Chernobyl.

"It is very unlikely there will be a large increase in thyroid cancer or any other health problems, apart from anxiety and psychological difficulties. That does not mean the surveillance should stop. There were surprises after Chernobyl and there may be again after Fukushima."

Williams and other experts have attributed the large number of cases to the use of hypersensitive ultrasound, which can detect the tiniest lesions, and the large number of children being tested.

...Gerry Thomas, professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College, London University, blames growing anxiety among Fukushima residents on "pseudo-scientists who can shout louder than real scientists".

"The biggest effect will be psychological – just as it was post-Chernobyl," said Thomas, who insists the rising number of cases is due to comprehensive screening, not radiation. "I still stick with what I have always said: there will not be a single death due to the radiological consequences of this accident."

(Full article at the link)

Ah. The curse of "one in million" continues, but at least the article mentions "comprehensive screening".

Professor Geraldine Thomas sounds somewhat like Mr. George Monbiot, or lot like Professor Wade Allison of Oxford University, but her comment that "pseudo-scientists" causing anxiety among Fukushima residents has a point, I believe, after reading numerous articles from the Japanese newspapers on the 3rd anniversary of the nuclear accident.

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UK Guardian: US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina in 1961

It happened on January 23, 1961, three days after the inaugural address by President John F. Kennedy. Three out of four safety controls were off.

From The Guardian (9/20/2013; emphasis is mine):

US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina – secret document

Exclusive: Journalist uses Freedom of Information Act to disclose 1961 accident in which one switch averted catastrophe

Ed Pilkington in New York

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been bad news – in spades," he wrote.

Jones dryly entitled his secret report "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb" – a quip on Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical film about nuclear holocaust, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes.

The document was uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research into his new book on the nuclear arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.

"The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy," he said. "We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here's one that very nearly did."

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Guardian Interview of Edward Snowden, NSA Whistleblower

who has now disappeared.

Now increasingly we see that it's happening domestically. To do that NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone, it ingests them by default, it collects them in its system and it filters them and analyzes them and it measures them and stores them for periods of time simply because that's the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone that they suspect at terrorism, they are collecting your communications to do so.

Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that the analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I, sitting at my desk, certainly had authorities to wire-tap anyone - from you, your accountant, to a federal judge, even to the president if I had the personal email.

... ...

I'm no different from anybody else. I don't have special skills, I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office who watches what's happening, and goes "This is something that's not our place to decide, the public needs to decide, whether these programs and policies are right or wrong." I'm willing to go on record to defend the authenticity of them, and say "I didn't change these, I didn't modify the story, this is the truth, this is what's happening, you should decide whether we need to be doing this."

And "the public"? According to Pew Research, 56% of Americans are quite happy that NSA is tracking their phone conversations. The good government is doing all they can to protect us from "terrorists"!

It is hard to believe they are the citizens of a country born of a revolution, but if I remember right, the majority of residents of the American colony were happy to remain the English subjects under King George III.

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Quiet-Spoken 29-Year-Old Former CIA Technician Is the NSA Whistleblower

(UPDATE 6/10/2013) And he disappears. I hope it is his intention to disappear, not someone having him "disappear".

==========================

"My name is Ed Snowden, I am 29 years old. I work for Booz Allen Hamilton as an infrastructure analyst for NSA in Hawaii."

Before that, he says he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Guardian has a video of the interview by Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill in Hong Kong, and part of the interview is written up as an article.

It is at Mr. Snowden's request that the paper is revealing his identity.

From The Guardian (6/9/2013; part):

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again'

Source for the Guardian's NSA files on why he carried out the biggest intelligence leak in a generation – and what comes next

Ewen MacAskill

Q: Why did you decide to become a whistleblower?

A: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."

Q: Do you think what you have done is a crime?

A: "We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me. They have narrowed the public sphere of influence."

Q: What do you think is going to happen to you?

A: "Nothing good."

Q: What do the leaked documents reveal?

A: "That the NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America. I believe that when [senator Ron] Wyden and [senator Mark] Udall asked about the scale of this, they [the NSA] said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinised most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians."

Q: Is it possible to put security in place to protect against state surveillance?

A: "You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place."

(Interview video and full article at the link)

In another article about the interview, Mr. Snowden says:

"All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.

"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.

"We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."

Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made."

He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become".

And this from Zero Hedge:

We would like to thank Snowden for putting a nail into the coffin of all those who use the term "conspiracy theorist" pejoratively. Because whatever his motives, whatever the outcome of this dramatic escalation between the people's right to know and a government intent on hijacking all civil liberties one by one, Snowden has showed that the distance from Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact is just one ethical judgment away.

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UK Guardian (Glenn Greenwald): NSA's "Boundless Informant" Tracks Global Surveillance Data, 97 Billion Pieces of Intelligence in One Month

Greenwald's scoop keeps going on and on...

From The Guardian (6/8/2013; part, emphasis is mine):

Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data

Revealed: The NSA's powerful tool for cataloguing data – including figures on US collection

Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.

The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.

The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.

The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure."

An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."

Under the heading "Sample use cases", the factsheet also states the tool shows information including: "How many records (and what type) are collected against a particular country."

A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.

(Full article at the link)

The "heat map" shows NSA's keen interest in March 2013 in Iran, Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, and India.

Also from The Guardian/Greenwald, President Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks. I wonder if Chairman Xi had read that Friday June 7, 2013 article before he met with Obama.

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UK's The Observer: "And the nuclear power station at Fukushima very nearly suffered a meltdown"

In the article that was published on March 31, 2012 not April 1 on The Guardian/The Observer, Will Hutton of Oxford University says:

It is the question – not only in Japan but, I would argue, in Britain. In Japan the devastating earthquake in Tohoku 12 months ago has made it even more acute. Three hundred and forty thousand people are still without homes. At least 19,000 died. And the nuclear power station at Fukushima very nearly suffered a meltdown

So there was no meltdown after all at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant? It came close but didn't happen?

I always thought there were three meltdowns, and three "melt-throughs" as the corium in Reactor 1, Reactor 2, and Reactor 3 are most likely to have melted through the Reactor Pressure Vessels onto the concrete floor of the Containment Vessels, and at least partially eaten into the concrete. I thought both TEPCO and the Japanese government admitted it.

We have worried for nothing for over 1 year!

Other than that, Mr. Hutton's article reads like it is from the Prime Minister's Office of Japan.

From The Guardian (3/31/2012; emphasis is mine):

What's the story of the next decade? The rebirth of Japan

The country's urge to reset its business culture is a lesson to Britain in finding the way back to prosperity

Will Hutton
The Observer, Saturday 31 March 2012

It is a small thing, but it says a lot about the country. At Tokyo's Narita airport, when you take off your shoes at the security screening check, the guard hands you a pair of leather slippers. The message is obvious: this airport cares for your wellbeing and recognises your need.

In Japan, taxi doors swing open automatically; toilet seats are electronically warmed and cleaned; and the extraordinary variety of food is presented exquisitely. There is a passion for satiating every imaginable human want and a joy in embracing the science, technology and innovation that might help deliver just that.

For 40 years, between 1950 and 1990, this passion was a key ingredient driving one of the most remarkable periods of growth in economic history. But for the past 20 years, Japan has been stricken by stagnation. In the late 1980s-90s, it suffered a financial crisis nearly as severe as our own. The economic model – the Ministry of International Trade and Industry guiding Japanese companies; the keiretsu networks of loosely conglomerated firms and associated banks; the great global brands – suffered an implosion.

Yet this remains a $5trn economy, the third largest on the planet. The Japanese themselves are desperate to recover the elixir of growth, and understand that economic conservatism – in Japan just as in Britain – leads to disappointment and heartbreak.

In 2009, the Democratic party of Japan was elected by a landslide, pledging a root and branch reform of every bureaucratic, corporatist and anti-democratic element in Japan's broken system. It also pledged to recast economic policy to serve the people. Despite some epic mistakes, notably its handling of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it still holds an opinion poll lead over its rival, the Liberal Democratic party (LDP).

However, forces within the government are very much open to pondering where it should go next. Ten days ago, I was invited by the DPJ government to go to Tokyo to contribute to this ongoing conversation.

Cabinet members wanted to discuss what a 21st-century social contract might look like, respecting both necessary labour market flexibility and security. They wanted to understand the contribution that open innovation ecosystems and an entrepreneurial state can play in driving forward innovation and investment. Above all, they asked: how could Japan reinvent its stakeholder capitalism of the second half of the 20th century so that it was more democratic? And they thought there might be something in my ideas rehearsed in the books The State We're In and Them and Us. In short, how could Japan do good capitalism?

It is the question – not only in Japan but, I would argue, in Britain. In Japan the devastating earthquake in Tohoku 12 months ago has made it even more acute. Three hundred and forty thousand people are still without homes. At least 19,000 died. And the nuclear power station at Fukushima very nearly suffered a meltdown.

At the time of the crisis, Japan hoped that, with the DPJ in power, there would be a decisive change from the way such matters had been handled in the past – obfuscation, delay, inactivity and anxiety to protect corporate interests. Yet the new government bounced off the secrecy of Tokyo Electric Power Company, the bureaucratic ministries, a muzzled media and the enveloping tentacles of the employers' organisation, the Keidanren, as if nothing had changed. Prime Minster Kan became party to delivering inadequate and late information via the impenetrable state and corporate networks; many Japanese became devotees of BBC World News as the only purveyor of truth. Kan was forced to resign last summer.

But the Japanese electorate is not ready to return to the status quo. They know they need nuclear power which just 12 months ago provided more than a third of their electricity needs; but as power stations are being closed down for safety inspections local communities are vetoing their reopening. In May, the last nuclear power station operating will also be mothballed.

The terms for their restarting are tough. Local communities, fired up by a new citizen activism, want effective oversight, transparency of information and commitments to meet international safety standards. It is Japanese good capitalism, driven by citizen demands from below.

Faced with this new phenomenon, the LDP is at a loss, while the DPJ itself seems to be re-gathering its conviction that its reform agenda is the only way forward. At an open meeting in the Japanese parliament, I was struck by the interest DPJ MPs showed in discussing innovative ways of kickstarting credit flows – as anathema to the Bank of Japan and Ministry of Finance as they are to the Bank of England and Treasury.

The Bank of Japan has just expanded a version of the Bank of England's quantitative easing programme; but abstains from the activism it used to show in the great days of Japan's growth. The conclusions are obvious. Japan's financial system is broken; an activist state has to restart bank lending by assuming some of the risk – just as it must in Britain.

If Japan could reset its macroeconomic policy, there is an enormous pool of dynamic hi-tech medium-sized firms that could immediately grow very fast. Consultant Gerhard Fasol argues that in areas like LED lighting or mobile phone payment systems, Japan is 10 years ahead of the rest of the world. The Fujitsus and Toshibas of tomorrow are in the wings. What Japan needs is for the increasingly sclerotic giants to be challenged by these many insurgents, who need new institutions to support their ambitions to go global. A new entrepreneurial, accountable state could drive a second phase of powerful Japanese growth.

These debates are foreign to our primitive business culture, which undervalues service and innovation and scarcely thinks about a more productive capitalism. There is a long list of British companies that have tried to break into Japan's market and failed. Observers say the common theme is wholesale insensitivity to the need for service and innovation, the precondition for any success in Japan.

Britain and Japan are two island economies, both mired in private debt with stricken financial systems. Although Japan has a long way to go, it is becoming obvious, confirmed by last week's British budget, which of the two countries is most likely to create the 21st-century framework for growth and prosperity. The Asian story of the next decade will be Japan's renaissance and China's relapse.

LED lighting and mobile phone payment system under an activist government. That should help end "Lost Decades".

Both the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; the word "liberal" in the party name is not what you think in the US) have been scraping the bottom when it comes to the poll numbers, though LDP still has an edge over DPJ, contrary to what Mr. Hutton says.

Jiji Tsushin shows the numbers for March 2012 as follows:

DPJ: 9.2% (February 10.1%, January 11.6%)
LDP: 11.7% (February 12.3%, January 13.3%)
Komei Party: 3.9% (February 3.4%, January 3.7%)
Japan Communist Party: 1.3% (February 1.6%, January 0.8%)
Not supporting any: 70% (February 68.2%, January 67%)

I think Mr. Hutton may want to watch the DPJ minister (Goshi Hosono) being shouted down by angry Kyoto residents who used the imperative form of speech to tell him to go back to where he came from (central government at Kasumigaseki, Tokyo). It was not "Please go back" but "Go back!"

(Or was this April 1st special after all? Or was this set up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?)

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"Never Give Up, Fukushima" Sign Right Next to 10-Plus Sieverts/Hr Location

That's the bleakest picture I've seen so far about Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

UK's Guardian has a series of photographs taken secretly by Kazuma Obara, who "became the first photojournalist to gain unauthorised access to the power plant and produced an exclusive glimpse of life inside the facility".

On the "Never Give Up, Fukushima" screen, Obara says the photo was taken before the 10-plus sieverts/hour location was found just nearby. The workers in the photo never knew about the radiation, and were never told about it even after the announcement by TEPCO, which was on August 1 evening.

For the rest of the photos and Obara's commentary, go to Guardian.

Kazuma Obara became a freelance photojournalist 3 days after the disaster. For more of his work, go to his website.

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UK's Guardian's Blooper: "38 Microsieverts" Somehow Turned Into "38 Millisieverts" for Fukushima School Yard

Let's see if (and how fast) the thought police from Japan descends on Guardian.. The Japanese government and the MSM press already dissed UK's Daily Mail as "sensational", but the paper has actually been covering the earthquake/tsunami/nuke plant accident in a very factual yet compassionate way with excellent photos.

From Guardian's article on May 2, 2011 titled "Fukushima parents dish the dirt in protest over radiation levels" by Jonathan Watts:

.......

A group claiming to represent 250 parents in Fukushima visited the upper house of parliament and presented government officials with a bag of radioactive dirt from the playground of one of the affected schools. A geiger counter clicked over it with a reading of 38 millisieverts.

That's an astonishing number, 38 millisieverts.

Except in this case it's not what the reading was. It was 38 MICROSIEVERTS. It's still awfully higher than what the national and prefectural governments have been telling the residents in Fukushima, but not to the extent of 38 MILLISIEVERTS.

For those of you who understand Japanese (including the writer at Guardian, perhaps?), here's the video of the event. About 9 minutes into the video, they put the dirt in front of the bureaucrat and put the geiger counter on it, and read off the number, "38 microsieverts":

http://youtu.be/2TS9yrUtwRQ

As of today (May 4), it is still "millisievert" at Guardian. Guardian is not alone in insisting on the story that it has published, though. As I've posted before (4/24/11 post), Japan's NHK WORLD (English) reported that "300 millisieverts per hour of radiation was detected in debris on a nearby mountainside", where in reality "From debris found on the side of the Reactor 3 building facing the mountain, 300 millisieverts/hour radiation was detected" (as in the original NHK Japanese news).

After 10 days, the radioactive debris is still "on a nearby mountainside" at NHK WORLD, and no sign of the Japanese thought police even aware of the NHK's blooper.

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GE Engineer Who Worked on #Fukushima I Nuke Plant Reactors: "Japan May Have Lost Race"

From UK's Guardian (3/29/2011, emphasis added, complete article at the link):

The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor below, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.

Richard Lahey, who has worked on the plant at Fukushima, told the Guardian officials seemed to have "lost the race" to save the reactor, but added that there was no danger of a Chernobyl-style catastrophe.

.... At Fukushima, workers have been pumping water into three reactors in a desperate bid to keep the fuel rods from melting down. But Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at the plant, said his analysis of radiation levels suggested these attempts had failed at reactor two.

He said at least part of the molten core, which includes melted fuel rods and zirconium alloy cladding, seemed to have sunk through the steel "lower head" of the pressure vessel and on to the concrete floor below.

"The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell," Lahey said. "I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards."

The major concern when molten fuel breaches a containment vessel is that it will react with the concrete floor of the drywell, releasing radioactive gases into the surrounding area. At Fukushima, the drywell has been flooded with seawater, which will cool any molten fuel that escapes from the reactor and reduce the amount of radioactive gas released.

Lahey said: "It won't come out as one big glob; it'll come out like lava, and that is good because it's easier to cool." [I hope he's right about that.]

The drywell is surrounded by a secondary steel-and-concrete structure designed to keep radioactive material from escaping into the environment. But an earlier hydrogen explosion at the reactor may have damaged this.

"The reason we are concerned is that they are detecting water outside the containment area that is highly radioactive and it can only have come from the reactor core," Lahey added. "It's not going to be anything like Chernobyl, where it went up with a big fire and steam explosion, but it's not going to be good news for the environment."

The radiation level at a pool of water in the turbine room of reactor two was measured recently at 1,000 millisieverts per hour. At that level, workers could remain in the area for just 15 minutes, under current exposure guidelines.

A less serious core meltdown happened at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. During that incident, engineers managed to cool the molten fuel before it penetrated the steel pressure vessel. The task is a race against time, because as the fuel melts it forms a blob that becomes increasingly difficult to cool.

In the light of the Fukushima crisis, Lahey said all countries with nuclear power stations should have "Swat teams" of nuclear reactor safety experts on standby to give swift advice to the authorities in times of emergency, with international groups co-ordinated by the International Atomic Energy Authority.

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