(OT) No, #Fukushima I NPP Did Not Cause High Radiation Reading on California Beach, Experts and Officials Say

But yes, the beach was "contaminated" with naturally occurring thorium and radium.

From Half Moon Bay Review (1/8/2014):

Experts say beach radiation unrelated to Fukushima

...The amateur video went viral, drawing more than half a million views to date, and spurring government inspectors to conduct their own surveys.

After watching the clip, El Granada electrical engineer Steven Weiss grabbed his own radiation measurement equipment to test the radiation reports for himself.

On Monday, Weiss carried a Geiger counter in each hand for a second survey of Surfer's Beach. As he descended to the waterline, the readings on his gadgets climbed. He tested various spots: the side of the bluffs and the white sand closest to the waterline, both registering levels that were high but not suspiciously so as far as he was concerned. But when he placed the sensors down near a line of black silt along the back of the beach, the meters on both his gadgets spiked. The counters registered about 415 counts per minute. A cpm of 30 is considered the baseline for radioactivity typically found in the air.

“It's not normal. I've never seen 400 cpm when I just wave my Geiger around.” he said. “There has to be something radioactive for it to do that.”

Weiss is no amateur; for 40 years he has made a living designing Geiger counters, most recently for International Medcom Inc. After he verified the hotspot, he took a sample of the dark sediment and sent it to his company's main offices in Sebastopol for analysis.

International Medcom CEO Dan Sythe later put the dirt sample in a spectrum analyzer to view the radioactive “signature” of the particles, the photon energy associated with each isotope. What he found was different from cesium-137, the fissile material used in the Fukushima reactors. He would know – since the 2011 meltdown, Sythe has visited Japan nine times to help map the cesium fallout.

Instead he was seeing radium and thorium, naturally occurring radioactive elements.

...

Nonetheless, the presence and concentration of natural thorium and radium at Surfer’s Beach left experts puzzled. Both elements are actually common at beaches. In fact, a 2008 study by the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society found similar concentrations at Southern California beaches.

Sythe offered a couple possible explanations. A vein of thorium could be spilling out from the nearby coastal bluffs, he suggested. Alternatively, he heard mention of an old oil pipe running nearby the beach. Oil pipelines had a tendency to collect heavy radioactive minerals, he said.

Peterson thought the minerals could be just washing up with the salt water from the shores. The radioactive materials all were just past the high tide line, so it made sense that would be where the minerals would build up, he said.

“The conditions that are out on the beach could be the same conditions that have been out there for millennia,” he said.

Update: Tests by government health inspectors have found no connection between the elevated radiation levels at Coastside beaches and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, according to a statement by the California Public Health Department released late on Tuesday evening. An analysis by county and state officials found the radiation was the result of naturally occurring minerals, a conclusion similar to reports by independent experts.

(Full article at the link)

But the net media who went there to prove the source of radiation was the wrecked nuclear plant halfway across the globe is undeterred:

...Working to relieve concerns that the high radiation readings indicated fallout from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had finally reached the United States, electrical engineer Steve Weiss, a radiological expert who has worked on Geiger counters for 40 years, examined the same beach as the man in the video, and presented even worse results.

Weiss found levels well in excess of 1,400% of what acceptable amounts should be.

“It’s not normal. I’ve never seen 400 cpm when I just wave my Geiger around,” Weiss told the Review. “There has to be something radioactive for it to do that.”

After a spectrum analysis of the dirt on the cove, the paper later discovered the isotopes to be naturally occurring thorium and radium, and not cesium-137, the fissile material employed at the Fukushima reactor. This led many to scrap the notion that radiation from the damaged nuclear plant in Japan was the cause of the high readings. We, however, were not convinced, and set out on a mission to conduct radiation measurements up and down the coast.

And on they went, armed with a pocket geiger counter ("Inspector" brand, it looks).

Unless you find cesium-134 in addition to cesium-137, you can't tell whether cesium-137 is from Fukushima or from the atmospheric nuclear testing that the US has done so many times. And without analysis by a gamma-ray spectrometer to see the distinct peaks for nuclides and knowledge to read them, well...

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Post-Election: Will California Lead the Nation?

For good or bad, California has been the trend-setter of things to come for the rest of the country.

This time, post-election, California has:

Passed Proposition 30 to raise tax on California residents supposedly pay for "education":

A frend was in a gathering at a public school yesterday, where the educators and administrators and well-wishing moms and dads were gloating over the passage of Proposition 30 which will tax every California residents extra so that California schools have "enough" money to "educate" children. Knowing how these school administrators earning 6-figure salaries have squandered money that was borrowed on the back of the California taxpayers in the past, she wondered how they would justify burdening their fellow Californians for more waste. Well, the cure-all slogan is the same after all: "It's for the kids!" This particular school hopes to use the new-found money to purchase tissue paper boxes, among other things.

Prop 30 will not only raise taxes on the income of more than $250,000 (which in California is not that rich, particularly in Bay Area) for seven years, but also hike the already high sales tax by a quarter percent for four years. However, nowhere is it said that the money raised will be definitely used for schools. Minor details for these educators.

Handily defeated Proposition 37 that would have required labeling of GMO food:

Flawed as it may have been, Californians overall were easily persuaded by the coalition of big ag and food businesses in the US with a ton of money (Monsanto, whose ex-VP advises Obama on food safety, alone spent $8 million to defeat the Proposition 37) not to require GMO labeling because "it will hurt small farmers and retailers". Eat GMO and support small farmers! (Oh wait, have I heard that before somewhere else?)

Handily voted in Proposition 39 on "green initiatives" (supposedly):

The proposition was bankrolled by a hedge fund manager to the tune of 32 million dollars. Prop 39 will requires multistate businesses to pay income taxes based on percentage of their sales in California, and dedicate revenues for five years to clean/efficient energy projects. After that, the money may be used for schools. Sure.

So who is this hedge fund? Farallon Capital management LLC is based in San Francisco, catering to high net worth individuals. Mr. Thomas F. Steyer, who generously "donated" 32 million dollars to his campaign for Prop 39, is the Co-Senior Managing Member of the firm.

Let's see, which companies will be the first to simply pick up and leave California? Oil and gas companies are my guess.

And most importantly,

Handed Democratic "super majority" in the State Assembly:

What does that mean? It means the Democrats in the Assembly alone can amend the state constitution, override the governor's veto if they are so inclined, pass anything including raising taxes without Assembly vote or public vote. I'm sure it will be either "for the kids" or "for the environment" or "for stopping global warming". Or better yet, "for fiscal responsibility". The easiest target will be Proposition 13. The next easiest will be to charge sales tax on food, with a promise that low-income families will be exempt.

Overall, rent seekers' victory over the productive class that is getting smaller almost by the hour.

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Radioactive Sulphur from Fukushima I Nuke Plant Reached California

UC San Diego researchers found radioactive sulphur (sulphur-35) in the atmosphere that probably originated from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in the attempt to cool the reactors by injecting seawater. Chlorine in the seawater reacted with neutrons from the reactors to produce sulphur-35, which was then transported by a strong westerly wind to southern California, the researchers say.

Their findings were published in the electronic version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on August 16.

Here's the abstract from the PNAS (emphasis is mine, in blue):

A recent earthquake and the subsequent tsunami have extensively damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant, releasing harmful radiation into the environment. Despite the obvious implication for human health and the surrounding ecology, there are no quantitative estimates of the neutron flux leakage during the weeks following the earthquake. Here, using measurements of radioactive ³⁵S contained in sulfate aerosols and SO₂ gas at a coastal site in La Jolla, California, we show that nearly 4 × 10¹¹ neutrons per m² leaked at the Fukushima nuclear power plant before March 20, 2011. A significantly higher activity as measured on March 28 is in accord with neutrons escaping the reactor core and being absorbed by the coolant seawater ³⁵Cl to produce ³⁵S by a (n, p) reaction. Once produced, ³⁵S oxidizes to and and was then transported to Southern California due to the presence of strong prevailing westerly winds at this time. Based on a moving box model, we show that the observed activity enhancement in is compatible with long-range transport of the radiation plume from Fukushima. Our model predicts that , the concentration in the marine boundary layer at Fukushima, was approximately 2 × 10⁵ atoms per m³, which is approximately 365 times above expected natural concentrations. These measurements and model calculations imply that approximately 0.7% of the total radioactive sulfate present at the marine boundary layer at Fukushima reached Southern California as a result of the trans-Pacific transport.

The amount is so tiny there's nothing to worry about, says one of the researchers at UCSD:

"The levels we observed are in no way harmful in California," Thiemens said.

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OT: CA Senate bill mandates gay history in schools

As the world burns, with radiation, with gun-fire and missiles, with huge sovereign debt or with higher and higher inflation, the California Senate passes a legislation that would require public schools to teach history of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

Just unreal.

From AP:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people would be added to the lengthy list of social and ethnic groups that public schools must include in social studies lessons under a landmark bill passed Thursday by the California Senate.

If the bill is adopted by the state Assembly and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, California would become the first state to require the teaching of gay history.

Supporters say the move is needed to counter anti-gay stereotypes and beliefs that make children in those groups vulnerable to bullying and suicide.

Opponents counter that such instruction would further burden an already crowded curriculum and expose students to a subject that some parents find objectionable.

The legislation, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco, passed on a 23-14 party line vote. It also would add disabled people to the curriculum.

The bill gives school districts flexibility in deciding what to include in the lessons and at what grades students would receive them.

But starting in the 2013-14 school year, it would prohibit districts and the California Board of Education from using textbooks or other instructional materials that reflect adversely on gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

Appealing to colleagues for support, Leno said gay children still struggle routinely with verbal and physical abuse at school, even though society is more accepting than when he was a gay youth in the 1960s.

"We are second-class citizens and children are listening," he said. "When they see their teachers don't step up to the plate when their classmate is being harassed literally to death, they are listening and they get the message that there is something wrong with those people."

Republican Sen. Doug La Malfa of Butte opposed the bill.

"I'm deeply troubled kids would have to contemplate at a very, very early age, when many of us are teaching abstinence ... what is sexuality," he said.

California law already requires schools to cover the contributions to the state and nation of women, African Americans, Mexican Americans, entrepreneurs, Asian Americans, European Americans, American Indians and labor.

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California Housing Price Turning Up?

At least the asking prices for the houses in the 75th percentile in major California cities are turning upward.

I found this handy site called "HousingTracker.net", that tracks the existing home median asking price and inventory. In their words,

"HousingTracker does not track home sale prices but rather home asking prices for select metropolitan areas. The asking (or list) price is the price that a seller is asking for their home, not necessarily the sale price they receive for their home. HousingTracker also keeps count of the housing inventory (i.e. the number of homes for sale) for the same metro areas. "

They also keep track of the asking prices of 50th percentile (median), 75th percentile (higher end of the market), and 25th percentile (lower end).

Most metropolitan areas tracked show either flat lines or still declining lines for all three. So I checked California cities (there are 6 of them tracked at the site), and here's the result:


All six cities show the 75th percentile asking price (orange line) turning up significantly, in some cases higher than June 2006 (San Diego) or just as high (San Francisco).

Of course the trick here is "asking price", and does not mean this is the price that's sold. But at least this may show the sellers' sentiment is turning bullish, asking for much higher price for their houses.

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