The big problem I have with the nuclear crisis is that because of undeclared media blackout on Fukushima, we have a choice between the brain-dead “everything is under control” camp and the possbily worse “scare everybody into Revolution For Palestine” conspiracy theorists. Arnie Gundersen has been featured on Russia Today which has been noted for being cozy with people advocating the “truth” on 9-11. I hate it when most of the good information is still coming out of the conspiracy outlets, as long as you use your skeptic googles to filter out the obviously made up stuff to blame the New World Order. Now Al Jazeera, which is rivalling Russia Today for control of YouTube tabloid story viewers and propoganda and aims to be the TV network of regular Joe Arab or Jane Muslims everywhere is taking Arnie Gundersen’s alarming warnings practically mainstream.
This is the same fellow who caught my attention with his theory that the big unit 3 explosion was a “prompt critical”, and his cheerful videos of doom have been a big internet hit since the mainstream news has had nothing to say for weeks, and not much that the Japanese government or TEPCO seem to make much sense either. I see Russia Today and Al Jazeera as stealth weapons in a global propoganda war for people’s hearts, and the failure of the US media to either cover people like Gundersen as reliable sources, or at least the spread of their popularity as something at least as harmful as Rebecca Black’s Friday or the largely debunked notion of a nuclear bunny leaves a big vacuum for the internet blogs to play with when they use that as a jumping off point for some really made up stuff. The progressive and conspiracy blogs are plastered with Fukushima and Ft Calhoun.
Yet there aren’t any anti-nuke conservatives, or even boosters on conservative talkshows, blogs. Sites like TownHall which don’t have ANYTHING on Fukushima but lots of weiners. Seattle, home of WTO riots is about as rabidly liberal and pro-earth as a place can get if any place would start getting ugly like nuke protesters in Japan, but NOBODY is in the slightest panic up here. New Zeal, my new favorite blog just mentioned the Israel-did-it theory briefly. As you’ll see I think Glenn Beck who does an awesome job tracking down Van Jones and George Soros was a complete fail on the subject:
Glenn Beck Fail
I love Glenn Beck as much as I abhor Russia Today, but his take on Fukushima is nearly as lame as any I’ve seen from the nuclear boosters. He says ” “if everything works the way it should, this can sit there forever [pressure cooker] and burn forever and it won’t be problem … could anything else go wrong? Yeah, you bet. Remember, it cannot explode . Worst case would be if all 200,000 were still there, and there and none of the containments work”. Actually it did explode, distributing highly radioactive rubble all over the plant site and supposedly a few pieces here and there miles away. There’s all these pretty color pictures of radiation showing parts of the land that look a lot of the Chernobyl maps, except there are still people living in places that technically are more radioactive than the places that were evacuated around Chernobyl and at least the Soviets provided free buses and nice soldiers to help people pack.
Cliff Mass U Washington Weather Prof Debunks Infant Scare
(update 6/20) Seattle’s well respected meteorologist and real-math advocate Cliff Mass
responded to the 35% infant death increase claim with “Fukushima Radiation and Infant Mortality in the NW? No way”
Mass: This was all based on a report by Physician Janette Sherman, and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano that was published online by the “Progressive Radio Network” and by the web site “Counterpunch.” In this report they noted that for the 4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 there were 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week) but for the 10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 there were 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week). They note that “this amounts to an increase of 35 per cent (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3 per cent ) and is statistically significant.”
Folks, this is complete and utter nonsense and shows the downside of the web—crazy stuff gets sent around and news-hungry and sloppy media pick it up and give it credibility.
First, the whole premise is silly. That the extraordinarily small amounts of radiation reaching our shores from Fukushima are killing infants through some mysterious mechanism. But it is worst than that…just plain bad statistics!
Basically he showed that the period they chose indeed go up, but the few data points BEFORE the period went down. You can cherry-pick data to show just about anything you want, but it may not prove a thing, especially when Counterpunch is such a popular gathering spot for Conspiracy Theorists Standing Up for Palestine(tm).
Colorful Radiation Map
Michael VB on his allegedlyapparent blog did an interesting comparison of radiation patters compared to the Chernobyl maps which cover all of western europe. Turns out just about all of the colors on the Fukushima map would be just the darkest brown on the Chernobyl map, and some parts would be much higher for which they don’t have any colors, but it’s much smaller even though we know radiation has been detected all across China and Korea, it just hasn’t been put on a map yet.
This is the Fukushima map
ground radiation map
This shows how the fukushima map would look on the Chernobyl map – it would be a brown blotch. Most of the radiation has gone out to sea.
Chernobyl vs Fukushima map
No Way / Plan to Clean Up The Next Chernobyl
The nuclear industry and the world does have a problem. These plants are pretty much perfectly safe when operated properly. But when they blow up / melt down / through like this, there is no way to operate or fix them safely. Radiation that might be safe enough to walk through accumulates and concentrates in things like filters, grass, ground, water, animals, cows milk and even human breast milk. It’s been scattered to the point where people in Massachusetts and Florida can certainly detect it if not get sick from it. The planet has zero capability to process nuclear waste other than what a normally operating nuclear plant can do. That water treatment system they just hacked together might be good thinking, but it’s all improvised.
Sewer systems in Japan have no capability to dispose of sludge, you can’t throw radioactive filters in the trash, water systems have no way to treat for radioactivity, there is no way to treat contaminated ground. There isn’t a good way to dispose of 10 cows, let alone hundreds or thousands, or contaminated crops. There is no way to dig out and dispose of melted fuel, hot or cold, right now there isn’t even a way to remove the good fuel rods in pool 4 because the platform floor is trashed, let alone replaced all of the trashed cranes and hardware it would take to even open up the pressure vessels. It’s all busted (fubar was a word for that) beyond repair. Even if a lot of the worst case scenarios are exaggerated or made up, experts need that kind of imagination to make sure all the bases are covered. You can’t live by the manual which happens to state either none of this could ever happen, or it happened because of a “beyond design basis event”.
How Bad are Things Fuku-d Up?
Now things are quite bad enough without having to make up stories. It turns out Unit 1 gave out a puff of white smoke as employees clamored to get out of the reactor buildings after the lights went out. People standing next to the spent fuel pools were splashed with water. Buildings were cracking and some doors were slammed shut. A massive crane hook fell down from the ceiling mounted crane nearly killing a worker to jumped out of the way.
Contractors from Idaho and Canada also made their way out, and it took a couple of days to find a place where they could sleep with a roof overhead, and then get a plane out. People lined up at gates pointing at the tsunami they knew was coming as guards were still trying to enforce rules of scanning people and signing out.
Now I’ve seen studies showing that the BWR Mark I containment was vulnerable to the the very, very once-in-a-jillion years event of a core meltdown which could rapidly produce enough hydrogen to blow the walls of the “secondary” containment which is the roof and outer building. Other simulations showed that in the case of a blackout which disabled all powered safety pump systems, the fuel would lose cooling water in hours and completely melt down in a day, which TEPCO now confirms what everybody else’s simlulations showed, that all 3 cores eventually completely melted. It’s not just melt-down, it’s a melt-through because the hot fuel burned holes leaking molten or broken bits of uranium / plutonium fuel through the pressure cooker “pressure vessel” onto the steel containment pot which is built as thick as battleship armor. They know there are holes in the inner pressure vessel because of the amount of water that leaks out when they pump it in, though they’ve not tried to open up the big containment door and get picture of an “elephant’s foot” like they have at Chernobyl. However, they know there are cracks in that massive steel outer pot because of water leaking into trenches and the sea. About the only thing that went right was the Japanese prime minister personally showing up and telling TEPCO to !@#$% vent the reactor and inject water to keep the mess from at least completely melting through to China, er, New York from that part of the world.
So what we have is Unit 1 melted thru, blew its roof off, leaving just the steel frame, and radiation is still spiking to high levels. Unit 2 blew up in the basement, leaking radioactive water, but it is the one that still looks like it has a roof. Unit 3 looks like hell, with the skeleton of a roof collapsed, walls and massive concrete pillars blown out all around, and the northwest corner completely gone with debris spilling out like a waterfall. Everybody but TEPCO is convinced that the reason its fuel pool looks like wreckage is that a hydrogen blast must have knocked rods together to make a “prompt critical” explosion, destroying the fuel rods, and rumours are still circulating that the reactor itself blew up, though TEPCO has released enough data to pretty much disprove that theory. Still nobody has picked up on what I thought looked like split-open fuel rods in the fuel pool video, or the 3D shots which help resolve which objects are near and far. Nearly all of the video and photos are AWFUL so far, as the only hi-res shot they released was when you blew up a shot of gawking scientists. Where the heck are those hi-res photos like the ones we got of Cuba and russian bombers when you need them? Can’t they get a robot or something to poke around and figure out what in the hell happened at unit 3 and what is still up there on the top floor?
Unit 3 tour by AtomicPowerReview
Unit 4 is the “leaning reactor building of Fukushima” that blew out its walls though its reactor wasn’t even turned on. It’s fuel pool is still heating up to near boiling even after the “giraffe” pump crane fills it up with water. They just got people inside there who took pictures from inside the massive south wall gash that is beside the pool, and released a picture that looks like what US Navy veterans might recognize as what damage from a kamikaze attack looks like, which is just what the opened up sides of Unit 3 look like from the drone buzzing by. If the building falls down, and water is lost, the fuel rods could start burning in an uncontrollable fire in just an hour or so and do a re-run of Chernobyl in full scale, not just the 1/10 or 1/5 version updated estimates put the current situation.
Battle damage from kamimaze attack
Everybody is hoping that by melting into blobs, the fuel is no longer “critical” or fissioning, yet radiation is continuing to spike now and then, and nobody can explain continued production of iodine-131 which is supposed to die of in just a few days. Over a thousand workers now have been measured to have “internal radiation” exposure, and the two most exposed workers were manning the control room of 3/4 when unit 1 blew up, valiantly maintaining their stations night and day through harsh conditions in radiation suits and masks, but TEPCO was blaming the workers for being sloppy with rules.
Ft Calhoun: Fukushima on the Missouri River
Ft Calhoun Island
There’s a troublesome situation at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station on the Missouri River that should be getting on the evening news instead of somebody’s house. It’s situated on the bank of the river, and it looks like one of those farm houses in the middle of a lake sitting behind a berm and sandbags, except it’s a nuclear reactor. There’s zero coverage except the local TV news and conspiracy theory sites are ablaze with headlines of a “Level 4″ emergency. The conspiracy stories are so numerous there is an official website debunking the stories. But the reality is troubling, the plant was supposedly built to a 500 year flood when we’ve already had a couple of such floods in the midwest in the past 5 years, and their flood plan includes building up a bunch of temporary dikes with sandbags and berms. There isn’t any obvious way for workers to even drive to the site, and a fire temporarily shut down a pump to cool the fuel pool, which supposedly wasn’t a problem because they had a whopping 88 hours before it would boil, dry up, explode in flames and cover the entire midwest in clouds of uranium smoke. It’s said there’s a good 5 to 10 feet of additional margin, but the conspiracy folks may have a point that the dams upstream could suffer a catastrophic failure which could roll over the berms like the tsunami did at Fukushima. People complained that the fuel pools are up in the air at Fukushima, but these pools are BELOW the water level on the ground, which can’t be good if they get flooded.
I hate it when the only places to get good information are conspiracy sites when I surf and find Rady Ananda is reporting that the OTHER nuclear plant in Nebraska also declared an “unusual event”, and it already had a flood shutdown in 1993!
Since June 7, Cooper has been running under “Abnormal Operating Procedures” when river depth topped 38.5 feet (895 feet MSL), flooding the north access road. Sandbags and extra diesel fuel were brought in, reports WOWT. As of 1:15 pm ET on June 16, the river height of just over 40 feet near Cooper is still 5 feet below the elevation required for a plant shutdown. Near Fort Calhoun, the river is even lower as of 1:15 pm ET on June 16 (under 32 feet).
U Washington Museum Warned of 15 Meter Tsunami
The guys who did tsunami planning for the Fukushima site obviously didn’t see this website from the Burke museum that states “The water level on shore can rise many feet. In extreme cases, water level can rise to more than 15 meters (50 feet) for tsunamis of distant origin and over 30 meters (100 feet) for tsunami generated near the earthquake’s epicenter.” It’s basically impossible to make an effective seawall that high for either city or a nuclear plant, and the Fukushima reactors 1-4 were already 10 meters up the hill – another plant up the coast was just high enough to miss the waves.
Arnie’s Got Radioactive Car Air Filters??
Now I’m hearing about car air filters up here in Seattle being clogged with radioactive particles. Nothing like that on the local news here. If my air filter was radioactive, I couldn’t even throw it away except by mailing it to Hanford for disposal. There’s evidently no mention of cars in Tokyo with radioactive filters at all except for Gundersen. There’s an old story about EPA air filters which caught some of the initial radiation when the units first melted down, when they released pretty much whatever gases they had after the metal barriers broke down and the de-pressurized, but even that’s fallen below measurable levels within a few weeks. Those are not car filters. I think a lof that Arnie has to say is worth thinking about, but it seems a lot of it seems to be pulled straight out of the internet rumor mill when his own videos are the closest anybody can find to a “reliable source”.
So I appreciated when I saw this blog, which I am re-blogging with permission. This NOT EXACTLY WHAT I THINK OF UNCLE ARNIE, and frankly, he gets so personal sometimes I’ve been getting hate mail, BUT in the interest of equal time, I think the other side deserves a look since Arnie is so popular and so few people have really taken a critical look at his videos, not even the “we’re so proud of how our reactors performed” people who wrote white papers for GE. Nobody in Seattle is complaining about radioactive car air filters, and there’s no evidence anyone in Tokyo thinks it’s a problem either that I’ve been able to spot besides whoever Gunderson is talking to.
http://modernmarketingjapan.blogspot.com/2011/06/radioactive-air-filters-in-cars.html by mikeintokyorogers
Arnie Gundersen says something really stupid again. Now he claims that there is dangerous radioactive “Hot Particles” in Tokyo car air filters and that this radiation is deadly yet it cannot be detected. This is getting really ridiculous. Seriously, is this old age, dementia or Alzheimer’s with this guy?
His most recent idiocy is on Al Jazeera with an article entitled, Fukushima: It’s much worse than you think.
Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.
No. Gundersen, besides normal levels, there no “common” radiation finding in car filters in Tokyo. Fukushima is not much worse than we think. Your wild imagination and fast progressing senility is much worse than we, or even you, think.
“Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common”!? That’s just total and complete bullshit. Jeez Louise, Gundersen, the ground around us emits natural radiation! So does the sun! I’m sure that all cars emit some levels of radiation. It is a course of common sense.
Are these levels of radiation dangerous or something to be concerned about? Not according to the University of Washington. But facts haven’t stopped Gundersen yet from auditioning for the lead role in the new Chicken Little movie…
Well, I think, Arnie, you are failing miserably. If anything, the more you talk, the dumber you look.
Just to show you what a crock of sh*t this idiocy Gundersen is saying is, I just did a Japanese language Google search looking for “車のエアフィルター 放射能.” (In English this is “Automobile air filter + radiation”). There are zero results for this search excepting articles that refer to Gundersen as a source. Get that? Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Gundersen, you are caught red-handed! You are making up sh*t again.
Here’s a screen capture of all results:
Are there any readers and Gundersen fanatics who do not believe me? Here’s a shortened URL to the Google search: http://bit.ly/lUUYH0. I hope that, by now, dear reader knows how to use Google Translation.
The Al Jazeera article continues with more fluff about dangers:
According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.
“We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo,” he said. “Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters.”
The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.
“These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant,” he explained, “One cigarette doesn’t get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can’t measure them with a Geiger counter.
Wait a minute, Grandpa! You just put your foot in your mouth again… What’s this? You are quoted as saying at least three stupid things in one breath here:
In one part you say about “Hot particles” that:
“Scientists are finding these everywhere.”
Yet, you do not name these scientists. All the while you say that these “Hot Particles” are dangerous you also claim:
“…you can’t measure them (hot particles) with a Geiger counter.”
Riiiiiiight. They are radioactive and dangerous but we can’t measure them witha Geiger counter!? Earth to Gundersen! Earth to Gundersen! According to Wikipedia about “Hot Particles”, under the heading “Attributes” it clearly states:
Hot particles can be identified by a Geiger counter, or by autoradiography. Their age and origin can be determined by their isotopic signature.
In a previous article, Gundersen makes another unsubstantiated claim. It is an audio interview with him. Here’s a snippet from an interview with another fool named Chris Martenson who needs a convenient slap right up side the head too:
“Arnie Gundersen said he received 7 used auto air filters that came from Tokyo, probably from a repair shop. Five of them had no traces of radiation, but two of them were heavily irradiated. He said the fallout will be patchy…”
OK. I’m game, Arnie, old boy. Just how did you detect these Hot Particles in air filters “from Tokyo” (by the way, do you have a receipt and proof they are from Tokyo?) when you claim that the radiation, which is normally detected with a Geiger counter, is not detectable with a Geiger counter? Are you using some sort of sodium iodide crystal device or Ion chamber? Or is it just alchemy or some sort of magic potion?
If your results would stand up to scrutiny, then why don’t you make these results public (a Youtube video would be great – you seem to like being on Youtube) and also why can’t you make these claims available for confirmation by other scientists (and no, I don’t mean the “scientists” that you always refer to but never name) using the Scientific Method?
Or do we all have to go and take your word for it?… The word of a guy who makes claims about all sorts of things using “anecdotal evidence” mysterious “sources” and other claims as proof?
It gets even more silly… Gundersen goes on to compare the dangers of “Hot Particles” in car filters to to the dangers of… are you ready for it?… Cigarette smoking!!! Laughable!
“One cigarette doesn’t get you, but over time they do.”
So, what you are saying Gundersen is that, besides not being able to keep your story straight, with all the pollutants in our foods, water, industrial contaminants in the air and chemicals in our over processed foods, you think that this most recent news from your “sources” (Guffaw!) is cause enough for you to scare people and cause hysteria because the level of radiation is comparable to smoking cigarettes over a long time?
This guy looks well over 75, maybe 80. Is anyone surprised when
an over 75-year-old guy says some pretty wild stuff?
Oh please! Someone make sure Grandpa Gundersen gets his rest and makes sure he properly takes his meds everyday and on time. This guy is losing it quickly.
Grandpa, why don’t you warn people about heart disease or high blood pressure? That kills tens of thousands more times the numbers of people annually than cigarette smoking does. From the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention here’s the numbers for deaths of the leading causes of deaths (2007):
•Heart disease: 616,067
•Cancer: 562,875
•Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 135,952
•Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 127,924
•Accidents (unintentional injuries): 123,706
From the same site, in 1990, deaths attributed to smoking were, get this… 5,619! That’s the most recent information I could find. Sales of cigarettes and tobacco products keep declining every year so I imagine that they’ve found it a waste of money to keep track of this anymore.
But Gundersen wants to compare the big bad “Hot Particles” to the evils of smoking when you have over a 200,000% higher chance of dying from heart disease or cancers (food preservatives, chemicals, too much salt, and car accidents). I also showed the relative dangers of this in a previous post entitled: For Every One Death Due to Nuclear Power, 4,000 Die Due to Coal in which the title of the post speaks for itself.
Gee, Arnie, why don’t you do something more useful with your 15 minutes of fame and urge people to slow down and drive more safely? That would save a hell of a lot more lives than this nonsense you keep saying…
Oh, but then again, I forgot. You work in the nuclear industry advising people on how to decommission nuke plants and not as an adviser to automobile safety organizations. But, nah! You don’t have any conflicts of interest.
You are a REAL scientist!
Gundersen is a joke. I’ve already blasted Arnie for saying stupid stuff before. In Metallic Tastes in Mouths Prove Nuclear Disaster in Japan! Or Does it? I wrote:
Once again, Arnie Gundersen and a bunch of illogical panic stricken fools say something stupid about Fukushima and radiation.
They are now saying that there is “anecdotal evidence” of people having a metallic taste in their mouths and, from this, they draw the wild conclusion that this means there is an uncontrollable nuclear chain reaction going on at Fukushima. This nonsense has no basis in science, reality, nor does it have any evidence backing it up. It is fantasy..
..(really mean stuff about being an old geezer removed)…
Kaku’s 3 Month Wrap Up
Speaking of Michio Kaku his blog has a good 3 month wrap up that he also gave on Fox News. Kaku is probably the most recognizable Asian guy on TV besides the Mythbusters guy. He has stayed away from some of the wilder stuff Gunderson has been running with like the speculation about metallic taste from a radioactive cloud that I’ve got doubts about, air filters, and the claiming of a 35% spike in infant mortality rates across the pacific northwest that’s made the conspiracy site rounds, but also a local Seattle Q13 TV station if not CNN. He thinks the Japanese govt made a good call to flood the reactors with seawater. He said that samurai leadership would fall on their swords, but faulted TEPCO’s president for calling in sick during the crisis, and giving dose meters to kindergarteners near the plant. (He didn’t mention reports kids are told to wear long sleeve shirts and they are removing soil because it causes too much exposure) There’s also one guy who’s spewing conspiracy theories on the comments like there’s no tomorrow.
Here’s a clip of Kaku headlined by the bogus “nuclear bunny” video popularized by Russia Today posted by this MoxNews fellow who seems to be good at finding stuff about disasters and terrorism, and seems to attract bunches of comments from the “freedom for palestine”, Ron Paul and 9-11 truth crowd. Don’t watch this if you’re not paid up on your cable bills though.
I also just surfed to his prediction that there could be 3 melt downs – He didn’t know it, but Unit 1 had already melted down within the first day, it was the 13th of March, but unit 3 had exploded and melted down by the next day on the 14th, and unit 2 melted down by the 15th. Democracy Today hosted Kakku (as they had Gundersen before) on this video: Expert:
Despite Japanese Gov’t Claims of Decreasing Radiation, Fukushima a “Ticking Time Bomb” Kaku’s also been knocked by nuclear boosters as some sort of kook. I don’t trust him entirely on details of failures, for example a Chernobyl style shutting it up in a box won’t fix the problem, but I like the way he describes the problem and the frustration the Japanese people have with management and their government.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to see you again.
The situation is not stable at all. So, you’re looking at basically a I think the Japanese military is the only organization capable of At Chernobyl, there were 600,000 people mobilized, each one going in DR. MICHIO KAKU: Think of driving a car, and the car all of a sudden So what do you do? You drive the car into a river. That’s what the
we’re joined by Dr. Michio Kaku, a Japanese American physicist, a bestselling author, professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York and the City College of New York….
ticking time bomb. It appears stable, but the slightest disturbance—a
secondary earthquake, a pipe break, evacuation of the crew at
Fukushima—could set off a full-scale meltdown at three nuclear power
stations, far beyond what we saw at Chernobyl.
bringing this raging accident under control. And that’s what Gorbachev
did in 1986. He saw this flaming nuclear power station in Chernobyl.
He called out the Red Air Force. He called out helicopters, tanks,
armored personnel carriers, and buried the Chernobyl reactor in 5,000
tons of cement, sand and boric acid. That’s, of course, a last ditch
effort. But I think the Japanese military should be called out.
for just a few minutes, dumping sand, concrete, boric acid onto the
reactor site. Each one got a medal. That’s what it took to bring one
raging nuclear accident under control. And I think the utility here is
simply outclassed and overwhelmed.
lunges out of control. You hit the brakes. The brakes don’t work.
That’s because the earthquake wiped out the safety systems in the
first minute of the earthquake and tsunami. Then your radiator starts
to heat up and explodes. That’s the hydrogen gas explosion. And then,
to make it worse, the gas tank is heating up, and all of a sudden your
whole car is going to be in flames. That’s the full-scale meltdown.
utility did by putting seawater, seawater from the Pacific Ocean, in a
desperate attempt to keep water on top of the core. But then, seawater
has salt in it, and that gums up your radiator. And so, what do you
do? You call out the local firemen. And so, now you have these
Japanese samurai warriors. They know that this is potentially a
suicide mission. They’re coming in with hose water—hose water—trying
to keep water over the melted nuclear reactor cores. So that’s the
situation now.
MIT electrical engineering computer science graduate has written conservative columns on politics, race / culture, science and education since the 70s in MIT The Tech and various publications in including New Republic and National Review. 
When Gunderson says the particles can’t be detected by geiger counters he is talking about the vast amount of dispersion of the particles within a given amount of air. This means they are seen as low level or background radiation since the particle size is so small and so diffused in the atmosphere.
Automotive air filters can be used to measure how many hot particles are in an area, since the filters will trap and hold the particles over a given length of a time and if you know how many miles you’ve driven you can calculate roughly how many cubic feet of air your filter has filtered, and therefore the distribution of these hot particles.
The particles are very small and are not a problem as long as they stay outside of your body. If you inhale or swallow them, they can become part of your tissue and continue to irradiate your body from within, obviously the more particles, the more the problem. Will one kill you? Unlikely, but if you consume enough of them and add it to the rest of the toxic soup we live in, it certainly enhances your chances of getting a cancer.
The automotive air filters are a good indicator, someone should open a service and begin scanning your used filters for radioactivity so you can at least get an idea of your exposure level, since the government has halted public monitoring.
I think Gunderson does a service that the media and the government have failed to provide. Don’t kill the messenger just cause you don’t like the message.
Thank you James-
You’ve made the most reasonable sounding comments I’ve read in a long time.
Dang, Arthur!
I’m glad you didn’t slam ME like that. But you are correct and Arnie likes to be on TV.
I’m not always right and sometimes I get pasta on my face – but the Geiger-Mueller gizmoid I made DOES read hotties because (and you didn’t explain why), they emit.
Looks like I subscribed to this just in time!
I think I’m older than Arnie. Is that an automatic disqualification from ratiocination?
a hui hou
T
Arnie Gundersen for president.
ALex Jones is an intelectual light weight. He is not capable of understaning beyond a 10th grade level. Gundersen teachs at a college. If he were failing mentally, he would be pulled from the ranks.
Gundersen said that the hot particles inhaled into the lungs cannot be detected with a geiger counter because the radiation cannot pass through the body tissues to the geiger counter.
Alex, the split pea brain, leaves that out of his citation….proving he not only is incapable, but intelectually dishonest.
This is a good read, Arthur. Though comparing causes of deaths is quite dumb. The problem isn’t exactly if radiation kills (or not), as long as everybody dies in the end.
Try “エアフィルター 放射能” (without 車の), or “車 フィルター 放射能” for your search using Japanese search engines (like yahoo.co.jp or goo.ne.jp). I’ve been seeing some stories.
Believe me, I’m not a fan of scare mongers, and still I think the situation is pretty serious down here.
I hope that the fuel rods at two Nebraska plants will stay undamaged.
Regards
Hi Yoko,
I live in Japan and read Japanese. When I did the search like you suggested, I see mostly Arnie Gundersen being quoted on them. Can you please share links to articles not referring to Arnie but other sources? It will be very helpful to us.
Thanks.
Madhav “where are other sources besides gundersen”. That’s the problem. Gundersen brings up some very worrisome points that everybody should be worrying about, and people have certainly gotten worried over much sillier things such as water in plastic bottles outlawing incandescent light bults but licencing nuclear plants similar to those at Fukushima.
As far as anybody can tell, Gundersen is the ONLY person, and Al Jazeera so far is the only major media carrying his claim to have people send him radioactive car air filters, or have people in Seattle tell him they’ve seen similar things. Washington and Seattle health authorities are completely unaware or have made no comments about such reports other than going on record that there has been and is no current threat to fukushima. These reports of “hot particles”, if correct imply that there IS a present danger, as well as other reports of excess infant deaths would indicate to the contrary. Even the disposal of thousands of air filters per day in the state could be a problem, as well as sewage as I might as well bring up the question of whether there’s enough radioactivity in the rain to show up in sewage in Seattle given the amount of rain we get as I doubt we even have standards of what would constitute a problem The fact that we in Washington have a BWR5 at Hanford means authorities here as well as Oregon and Idaho need to come up with a plan NOW of what to do if it did a Fukushima on us, and who would pay for it. It is the job of state and local health authorities to be on top of such reports and do the work it takes to either verify or debunk such claims, and Gundersen should notify Seattle and Washington authorities instead of waiting for them to read about it in Asianweek.
If Gundersen is right, we should have people like him in our EPA or nuclear regulatory agency helping to manage a massive American response to the crisis instead of letting TEPCO continue to play as if they have an effective plan. If he’s wrong, he’s playing into the hands of dark forces that are behind Russia today and Al Jazeera that want to destablize the west through fear and doubt. In either case, mainstream US media and conservatives should be covering him one way or the other instead strictly being an “alternative media” circus. Problem is that everybody else is doing a crappy (that’s american for very, very bad) job of even covering or imagining possible threats or things we can do to protect ourselves, and for the most part it doesn’t hurt to speculate on the safe side and check things like air filters, or even keep windows closed (which you can’t do in seattle since most homes don’t have air conditioning) That’s another reason to get those damn reactors to stop releasing ANY radiation, for which there is ZERO plan to have anything in place before a year from now.
Hi Arthur,
Thanks for the quick reply. Arnie predicted/ analyzed about the meltdown and posted videos within a couple of weeks of the blowups at Fukushima and we didn’t entirely believe him. When Tepco confessed after 3 months, it was not a surprised to us because Arnie had done that thru some analysis (at least that’s what it seems to us laymen).
When Arnie talks about hot particles, yes, there are no similar data or analysis to show it. Even if took a bottle of air in Seatlle and lit it up with a bulb and called the dust as hot particles we would probably agree
So unless there are contradictory theories (with evidence?), assuming the worst is probably a safe thing to do especially for those with kids and just 240 kms away from Fukushima.
With Govt’s in Japan and US being run by politicians who by definition are short-term, election oriented, what can be expected of their concern for millions of citizens or neighbours? So please present any additional sources whom you think are ‘trust worthy’. We are reading everything from around the world and taking it with a ton (not just a pinch) of salt.
Dear Alex,
First of all I live in Shinagawa which is in the center of Tokyo and Have lived here 25 years. You could say I’m living this nightmare. A couple of things in your Gunderson slamfest bothered me. First of all green tea has been banned from four prefectures because of cesium particles detected tea leaves. Those prefectures are Fukushima Ibaraki Chiba and Kanagawa. If you look at a map you will see that Tokyo is in the middle of those prefectures so I don’t think these particles magically flew over or around us here in the capital. The second thing is that if you watched the weather here as closely as I do you’d see that the wind shifts almost everyday often from the east. Common sense is not always common and you seem to have none at all The radiation is here! If you want to listen to TEPCO reports go right ahead I keep them next to the toilet paper. If you want some green tea plumbs or leafy veges let me know I’ll send you some.
Steve in Tokyo
What a repulsive and dangerous article.
Thanks to Arnie Gundersen we now know the difference between “radiation”, and “contamination”.
We also now know that a good archaeological, radiological repository for the “hot particles” or “fuel fleas” as they are know in the nuclear industry are very dangerous when ingested or breathed in.
They are called “point sources” of radiation and of a completely different order to a non ‘point source’ that has spread out.
Does the author of this grotesque work of primoridial hatred work for a superior Aryan race of Climate Taxing leeches??
**Sorry i was so mad i did not complete the sentence correctly.
We also now know that a good archaeological, radiological repository for the “hot particles” or “fuel fleas” as they are know in the nuclear industry are in car engine air filters, and air conditioner air filters for instance, and are very dangerous when ingested or breathed in.
You have got to be kidding, Arthur Hu, his degrees are in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, great he can rewire and reprogram my computer.
Arthur Hu? Was that you I saw standing on a burning car in the Vancouver hockey riots beating your chest like Tarzan? Every disaster requires and egotist-in-chief. Makes me wish for an arrest warrant for the crime of intellectual dishonesty. Good bye!
Instead of bashing Arnie Gundersen why don’t you take to task the half dead US media which is not only getting the Fukushima story wrong but hardly getting the story at all. Not to mention the US government which is pumping up for nuclear tax payer subsidies in a nuclear disaster. Your bad taste diatribe just means to me that Arnie is making a real difference while making whacko conservatives wiggle. And that is always a good thing.
I love Arnie! He is one of few brave voices of reason. Did anyone here realize there is a 48% spike in infant mortality in Philadelphia and a 35% spike in the Pacific northwest due to Fukushima? Anyone keeping up daily on how many feet of flood waters are rising to bear down on Fort Calhoun or Cooper? This news needs to be up-dated daily.
“I love Glenn Beck” 1st clue
Amazingly obvious hitpiece against Gundersen.
It’s too bad you are spreading that garbage when it is so easy to go back in the scientific literature and find substantiation for what Gundersen describes.
Pretty pathetic.
-Sven
what Gunderson’s critics fail to understand is that the hot particles are impossible to measure while they are distributed in the atmosphere, as the particles are very tiny and do not give off huge amounts of radiation. Essentially like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Automotive filters, filter particles out of the atmospheric air on its way to the combustion chambers of the engine. that is what the filters do, they filter particles so they don’t get into the engine and cause severe wear or other problems, hence the name air filter. These filters will concentrate hot particles or “radioactive fleas” if they are present in the air and the vehicle is driven a sufficient number of miles within an area that contains hot particles. Once concentrated, these particles can be detected by a geiger counter and measured. The key is the filtering process concentrates the particles. This shouldn’t be that difficult to understand, we are discussing radioactive dust, it will accumulate in air filters. I don’t understand the hate and stupidity and name calling over a proven scientific principle.
I’ve got not problem with measuring air filters. Like I said, the problem COULD BE where radiation accumulates even if the level in the air isn’t enough to make you sick. That blogger is the only place I’ve seen Arnie’s claim to have actually identified such filters in Tokyo, and the only “seattle air filters” I could websearch for were the original EPA filters, though I do wonder if a commercial geiger counter could detect radiation on my air filter or bananas. My problem with gundersen is that he seems to be the ONLY source of such claims besides alarmist conspiracy websites, and the fact that his material gets spread around so many conspiracist sites. Now admittedly, even MY articles are getting thrown about such blogs based on the trackbacks I’m getting, which is why I notice, and I really don’t like a lot of the other folks that Russia Today and Al Jazeera provide outlets for.
This is crappy journalism, if you want to even call it that. As for the guy you quoted bashing Arnie and his age, well if you want to discuss age, I am guessing this person must be all of about 12 years old, or so. Try countering with facts, not 6th grade cut-downs. Wow.
Hey Alex,
I want to give you a quote. “Contamination that might be safe to walk through accumulates in filters.” This was what you stated in your article and then you slam Gunderson for stating that car FILTERS are accumulating particles?
You must know something about car filters being different from other filters. I know one difference! Filters on buildings are stationary while filters on cars move to various location with the car making it more probable that they will collect particles. Cars are also closer to the ground which is where a great deal of the contamination is, like in road dust!
One more thing. Cars travel at much higher speeds than buildings do so the intake filters pick up ally more air and probably particles too. If your waiting for anyone from TEPCO or the government to tell us about contaminated filters on cars then I suggest you hold your breat or cover your ears. It’s the bullet you don’t hear that kills you.
I don’t know what you have against Gunderson but, I do know that he was almost one hundred percent right back in mid March Just one more thing. Maybe you don’t know this but, in Japan auto repair shops are under the strict control of the JAPANESE GOVERNMENT!
Steve in Tokyo
When there is a hydrogen explosion at a nuclear facility that even Tepco says had probably melted down withing hours of the tsunami, wouldn’t there be hot particles injected into the atmosphere? Just because main stream isn’t reporting them. doesn’t mean they are not there.
Gunderson has been way ahead of the curve when it comes to the extent of damage and what has happened at Fukushima. In the near future he will probablybe proved right again about hot particles being spread across the globe.
I don’t know how anyone can call Gundersen’s information conspiracy. It has been shown the Tepco conspired to mislead the public and the press by withholding, distorting and deliberately lying about information regarding the ongoing situation at Fukushima Daicha.
If there has been a conspiracy of any sort, it has been led by Tepco and Japan’s industrial complex.
To detractors who claim they can find no information regarding radiation levels of automotive air filters on the internet, you must realize that not everything is published to the open internet. You won’t find much classified material on the internet. Does that mean there is no classified material in the world?
To think the internet is infinite and contains all the information in the world is to be a fool, the internet is only a collection of connected computers. It is not every computer in the world nor is it all the information in the world.
Just because something exists on the internet does not make it true, just because something is not on the internet does not make it false. Truth is not a condition that depends on the internet.
I still suggest an informal network of interested people should begin a system to collect and monitor their own air filters to verify and collect information regarding the spread of radioactive dust worldwide. It may need to be done locally, if filters are too radioactive they may trigger terrorist monitoring systems that have been embedded in private and postal package delivery services.This would preclude sending all filters to a central monitoring facility.
I can just see a pile of radioactive air filters showing up at faerewinds mail box now….
Well Arthur Hu, this article sure is full of fail, but the posters above have addressed the issues above pretty well, so I’ve got only one bone to pick with you: Your use of the word “conspiracy”. Obviously the mainstream media chooses to report nonsense and lies. Are they also “conspiracy” outlets? What news outlet do you go to which isn’t a “conspiracy” outlet? How do I know this website isn’t a “conspiracy” website trying to smear the name of Gundersen? Obviously the nuclear industry would have the means and the motives for such a “conspiracy”.
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http://youtu.be/7NRMTe0XCn4 I interviewed another expert Steve Wing on the health effects of radiation and he said alpha and beta particles are not detectable by many geiger counters. To fully assess the levels of internal contamination urine and stool samples would be required. The issue of dust is huge, the radiation is highest in the dirt where rain water from the radioactive rain has fallen. Thank goodness, many of the people of Japan remove their shoes before entering their homes. I’m sure it would be prudent to be cautious about your air filter replacement…Better safe than sorry i this situation.
My husband and I operate an Inspector Geigor Counter (fairly nice model ~ $700) and we are tied in to the RAD network station for coastal northern California. I was so disturbed about this air filter conversation I just went and checked mine. No increased counts per minute, or intensity of microsieverts than the air in my home or in my yard. Apparently, my air filter, which has traveled from northern Oregon to southern California since the earthquake, did not accumulate any ‘hot’ particles…certainly there wouldl’ve been a detectable difference. For perspective, our bathroom floor still is the winner (loser) for the highest radioactive intensity, in the 3-4 microsievert range/hour…who knows what’s in the tile or grout… Our average microsievert intensity is 0.10 microsieverts/hour and about 27 counts per minute. Overall, slightly higher than pre-jet stream air reaching us, but still low. Not to underscore the seriousness of this issue, it’s anxiety provoking and grave for many. I just want to add a little sample to the body of current observations.
Oops; my husband pointed out that I misplaced a decimal point, which is a BIG deal here. Our bathroom tiles are running at .35 microsieverts, not 3 to 4. And to be more clear on the other readings:
Average air readings outside: 0.125 Inside, filtered air: 0.08 Car air filters: same as outside air 0.125. No obvious difference, though we only tested for a few minutes, however, no obvious buildup of toxics that we can detect. And I realized I misspelled Geiger…
JBL, I think he made several facts known about how these people manipulate their ‘facts’. And I know a least a few 12 year olds that can see through Arnie and his pack of lies. While I believe SOME of Mr. Gunderson’s (Dr.?) conclusions. His method of ‘proving’ his statements is all out of whack.
Like his video on the nuclear explosion at Fukushima. He said hydrogen doesn’t detonate because it forms water as it combusts! Any 12 year old chemistry student knows this is bunk. He probably knows it as well, but uses it to manipulate people who don’t know much about chemistry. If you don’t believe it, make some hydrogen and oxygen and mix them in a solid container, like an old-fashioned coke bottle and cap it. (If you don’t know how to do this, I’m not going to explain).
Take the cork out and spark it. If you don’t think that’s a detonation, then you should have your hearing checked. Actually, after you do this, you will need your hearing looked at.
Look, we don’t need people like Gunderson and Busby to ‘prove’ to us that nuclear power is unsafe, there is plenty of factual information out there without making stuff up.
By the way, I am not a doctor, I have a Master’s Degree (in science!)
“All three are probably in runaway” A.G. said that at the very beginning. A very prescient prediction for a bugling old grandpa .
It then took 3 months for TEPCO to (sort of) admit it and the same 3 months for the lame stream no news media to judiciously not report it.
Guys, The Japanese government admits the melt-throughs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/08/fukushima-nuclear-plant-melt-through