[Don't Panic]

Ok. Here's and advertisement for another media website.
Alternatively, a piece of investigative journalism related to this forums topic that hardly anyone will read and that focuses on the cause more than the effect.
http://www.theatlant...ukushima/39541/

Quote

"It’s been one of the mysteries of Japan’s ongoing nuclear disaster: How much of the damage did the March 11 earthquake inflict on Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors in the 40 minutes before the devastating tsunami arrived? The stakes are high: If the quake alone structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every other similar reactor in Japan is at risk."

Quote

“What really happened at the Fukushima Daiicihi Nuclear Power Plant to cause a meltdown? TEPCO and the government of Japan have provided many explanations. They don’t make sense. The one thing they haven’t provided is the truth. It’s time that they did.”

Ever heard of a Cornish salami Tsunami. Well there was a 1m one last week accompanied by hair-raising static and formally attributed to an underwater landslide
http://www.telegraph...f-Cornwall.html
http://www.dailymail...o=feeds-newsxml

Quote

Just what was happening is something of a mystery. A persistent conspiracy theory doing the rounds on the internet links recent big earthquakes and secret radio experiments allegedly being carried out by the Pentagon.


Far more likely, however, is a little-understood phenomenon called the ‘Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling mechanism’.

[savagegoose]

there was a doco on abc news 24 sat night about the tsunami, for life of me cant find it on iview. but was interesting. especially the parts with people saying oh we had tsunai warnings before dont need to flee,.
and " ohh they said floods by 3pm its 330 now and no floods lets all go home.
good luck finding it

[Don't Panic]

Lets see if any of the Australian press bothers to pick up and report the below. Maybe the story is considered insignificant.
http://www.arirang.c...=Ne8&category=1

Quote

Radioactive Beef Distributed Nationwide in JapanVarious Japanese media outlets reported Tuesday that beef containing radioactive cesium was found to have been distributed nationwide, including major cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.
Media reports say that some 190 kilograms of meat has already been distributed and a good amount has gone into the hands of Japanese consumers, leaving them, as well as the government, in shock.

[Interview : Hosokawa Ritsuo, Japanese health minister] "I think it is inevitable that we divide the areas up and inspect the meat distributed."

This latest revelation comes after meat containing radioactive material up to six times the safe limit was found last week in 11 cows that were shipped out from a farm in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, about 30 kilometers north of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Later on, local officials said cattle feed used at that farm was saturated with 75-thousand becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, which is about 56 times over the legal limit.
Authorities the said the farm went against the government's instruction not to give livestock feed that had been stored outdoors.
And the officials add that at this point, it is impossible to trace back on who bought the contaminated meat and it seems like the government won't be able to avoid the strong criticism by its own people.
Laah Hyun-kyung, Arirang News.

[tor]

Don, on 13 July 2011 - 10:50 AM, said:

Lets see if any of the Australian press bothers to pick up and report the below. Maybe the story is considered insignificant.
http://www.arirang.c...=Ne8&category=1

So you are trusting media reports but not trusting the media?

Media reports that bat child exists, I have the newspaper. Any journalist saying "other media reports" and not linking to it is pretty weird.

You believing it is hilarious though. Please continue searching for more and more bizarre forms of "actual truth".

I think it is a public service you are providing, sort of like street theatre. It gives parents something to point out to their children and say "please don't be like that".

[Don't Panic]

You are absolutely right in that the story could be completely false.

It may be one of those many false or partly false stories deliberately planted in the media to be easily refuted. The real ones tend to get pulled, wherease the false ones tend to remain to serve their disinfo purpose. Surely you know that. you are not that naive are you Tor boy (cos I am most likely older than you in both years and worldly experience matee.)

I never claimed that I believed the story to be true.
I have not yet had time to do any research to attempt to cross verify the story.

Surely any false story like that in the media would be news itself and authorities would be going out of their way to both refute it, remove it from the internet and bring severe consequences on the whoever created it. Maybe they are in the process of doing this.

I picked out this story purely because you had just reported that you had cooked your Japanese friends dinner in Japan and was wondering whether you cooked them a nice aussie steak by any chance.

As you said yourself. I am a troll. It's just a bit of fun between you and me.

The art of disinfo in the media is definitely something that my kids will be well educated on.

tor, on 13 July 2011 - 04:27 PM, said:

So you are trusting media reports but not trusting the media?

Media reports that bat child exists, I have the newspaper. Any journalist saying "other media reports" and not linking to it is pretty weird.

You believing it is hilarious though. Please continue searching for more and more bizarre forms of "actual truth".

I think it is a public service you are providing, sort of like street theatre. It gives parents something to point out to their children and say "please don't be like that".

[tor]

Don, on 13 July 2011 - 10:15 PM, said:

...cos I am most likely older than you in both years and worldly experience matee...

..The art of disinfo in the media is definitely something that my kids will be well educated on...

These two statements are unlikely to both be true.

This is good because, whether the article is correct or not, you have displayed a lack of critical thinking and failure to utilise logic in scaring yourself. Wishing that upon children would be mean.

[Don't Panic]

Hey Tor. Born in 1964. How about you? Not that it really matters.

Quick results to cross verify the radiated beef story as not being a total fabrication Lots more if you really want
http://www.bloomberg...s-in-japan.html
http://www.voanews.c...-125478143.html
http://articles.lati...safety-20110712
http://www.vancouver...eef-found-japan

tor, on 13 July 2011 - 10:58 PM, said:

These two statements are unlikely to both be true.

This is good because, whether the article is correct or not, you have displayed a lack of critical thinking and failure to utilise logic in scaring yourself. Wishing that upon children would be mean.

[Don't Panic]

Just in case your twisted denial and logic extends to considering calling me a child abuser, I don't think my children will need to know about the existence of the art of disinfo (from a viewpoint of those who are its innocent targets) until they reach the age of about 18, at which time they will still be my children.

I am not in the last bit scared of a few kg of insignificantly radioactive piece of meet in another country. I just pulled out that article from another website as your current report on your explotis to Japan provided me with a great Segway to Troll you with yet again. Yet again you fell for it with another pathetic response. Touche. Maybe one day we can meet up in Sydney and have a beer and a good laugh over all this.

tor, on 13 July 2011 - 10:58 PM, said:

These two statements are unlikely to both be true.

This is good because, whether the article is correct or not, you have displayed a lack of critical thinking and failure to utilise logic in scaring yourself. Wishing that upon children would be mean.

[Don't Panic]

http://www.smh.com.a...0709-1h81m.html
http://www.radioaust...796.htm?desktop
http://www.foodmag.c...adioactive-beef
http://www.mla.com.a...pan-beef-market
http://au.news.yahoo...dioactive-beef/

And this from http://www.dailytele...i-1226095506836
That'll help defuse any accusations from the Greens that News Ltd does not give the Greens a fair go.
Possibly a consequence of media shenanigans on the other side of the world and attempting to implement key sections of the reinforced Code of Conduct.

Don, on 13 July 2011 - 10:50 AM, said:

Lets see if any of the Australian press bothers to pick up and report the below. Maybe the story is considered insignificant.
http://www.arirang.c...=Ne8&category=1

[tor]

Don, on 14 July 2011 - 07:21 AM, said:

Just in case your twisted denial and logic extends to considering calling me a child abuser, I don't think my children will need to know about the existence of the art of disinfo (from a viewpoint of those who are its innocent targets) until they reach the age of about 18, at which time they will still be my children.

Don't see a logical path to the chil;d abuser idea so you can safely forget that one. I would think that children need training in media awareness way before 18 (in fact I wouldn't call 18 yr olds children) hence my thought that the two statements were unlikely to both be true.

Don, on 14 July 2011 - 07:21 AM, said:

I am not in the last bit scared of a few kg of insignificantly radioactive piece of meet in another country.

I wasn't scared either but I didn't buy beef from that prefecture. I went for a different prefecture, partly because my hosts said it was better and partly because my hosts were of a similar opinion to me; buying meat from there was probably an increased risk which had no real reward factor.

[Mr Medved]

Record-high radiation detected at Fukushima
http://www.abc.net.a...a-plant/2821276

The company that owns Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant says it has detected record-high radiation on site.

Almost five months after Japan's government announced a nuclear emergency, the company which owns the Fukushima nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), says radiation levels have reached at least 10 sieverts per hour near Fukushima's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors.

The radiation levels are more than double the previous record high that was reached in early June.

One nuclear expert predicts the clean-up from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami will be even more difficult, but there is speculation that the reading could be an aberration.

Peter Burns, former chief executive officer of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, says given the scale of the Fukushima emergency, the high reading is to be expected.

"The levels reported of 10 sieverts per hour are very high levels and it's going to be very difficult to manage workers going into those areas and doing operations," he said.

"To put the 10 sieverts into context, that 10 sieverts is actually a lethal dose of radiation. So you can't afford to be exposed for more than a few minutes at those levels.

"It means you're directly exposed to fuel rods in the reactors or the spent fuel ponds very closely and while it's possible to get to those levels it means there is very little shielding going on there."

In the week after the quake and tsunami, which triggered an explosion at the facility and a nuclear meltdown, military helicopters water bombed the power plant to try stop fuel rods and containment pools being exposed to the air.

Mr Burns says in addition to the damage, those working on the reactor now also have to contend with contaminated waste generated by the clean-up operation.

"There have been reports it's a huge problem of a huge inventory of contaminated materials - water and other materials that are going to have to be managed over the next years," he said.

"Obviously these have to be contained by some mechanism and then removed to various storage sites so that they can be properly managed over what will be decades.

"The ways of doing it are reasonably well known, what you have to do, but it's just managing it on the scale that they're going to have to manage it on would be unique in the world."

Tony Irwin, a former reactor manager now with the Australian National University, says TEPCO has now set up a water treatment plant.

"To pump this contaminated water through this treatment plant, you remove the radioactive materials and this is the water that is now re-circulating back to cool the reactor," he said.

"So all this water is now being contained and treated."


Abnormality
Mr Irwin says thanks to the new water treatment plant, much of the contaminated water is being contained on site and this month's recent high readings could be an abnormality.

"I think it's an isolated ... probably some sort of debris from the hydrogen explosions. They've found small isolated high-radiation debris around the site and this I think [it] looks to be another one of those," he said.

"So it's probably only a very small area where there is this 10 sieverts an hour. They've found other rubble that's one sievert an hour as well."

The record-high reading comes as the Japan government suspends all beef cattle shipments from Iwate prefecture, north of the Fukushima reactor site.

It is the third prefecture to be slapped with a ban due to contamination fears.

Jyunichi Tokuyama from Iwate Prefecture's agricultural department says he was stunned to learn that the contamination was found that far north.

"Iwate Prefecture is 200 to 300 kilometres from the nuclear plant, which has caused the beef to be contaminated. We didn't even consider that the explosion would have affected us being so far away. I'm very surprised," he said.

The Japanese government says radiated rice straw was fed to the cattle and it is also considering suspending cattle shipments in a fourth prefecture.

[Solomon]

Quote

One nuclear expert predicts the clean-up from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami will be even more difficult, but there is speculation that the reading could be an aberration.

Yeh. Yeh. Yeah!
An aberration???
The whole communication of the disaster has been an aberration.
Its likely we will never know the truth of the extent of the damage at Fukishima.

[sydney3000]

Solomon, on 02 August 2011 - 02:02 PM, said:

Its likely we will never know the truth of the extent of the damage at Fukishima.

The truth is already known. It is an uncontained nuclear fallout zone with all its associated costs and benefits.

This post has been edited by sydney3000: 02 August 2011 - 03:41 PM

[Don't Panic]

The below article might stir things up a bit.
The headline could be described as misleading if one was to base it on immediate deaths after the initial incident.
Very brave Ben. Credit to Crikey for being prepared to take the risk of running the story.
http://www.crikey.co...a-nuclear-bomb/

Quote

Wednesday, 3 August 2011 /
Fukushima disaster: worse than Hiroshima
by Ben SandilandsMore gravely serious truths about the severity of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster following the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 have emerged.

Two things are now clear and they justify the following charges: the nuclear experts that the Australian media relied upon should never be trusted again; and social media real-time raw and unfiltered audio and video reports are providing a more truthful and relevant coverage of the aftermath of the continuing nuclear crisis than the selective and filtered copy being carried by print and wire agencies.

While the Bloomberg news report overnight of two extremely high radiation readings being recorded at the Fukushima complex of nuclear plants on August 1 and August 2 are alarming, other significant disclosures are also made in this story.

• The reading of 10 sieverts of radiation per hour outside the damaged reactor buildings was the highest level the equipment used could have detected, meaning the lethality of the contamination was off the scale; and
• For the first time a tenured nuclear expert Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University concedes that the melted cores of one or more reactors may have melted through the supposedly failure proof containment vessel floor, sinking deeper into the subsoil and given the nature of the radioactive material concerned, into a position where it can spread a very long distance directly through the subsoil water table.

It took TEPCO and nuclear apologists until last month to even concede that “partial meltdowns” had occurred in up to three of the reactors, even though the only plausible explanation for the caesium contamination detected outside the reactors within 48 hours was the rupturing of the caesium sheaths surrounding the uranium rods upon their exposure to air following the draining of coolant fluid, setting up the requirements for a melt down to occur.

In what would be consistent with a deliberate policy of gradually revealing the truth some months after the event, the Japanese nuclear authorities and government are also now routinely referring to the fact that contamination levels outside the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi complex include hot spots that are as highly affected as they were around the Chernobyl reactor that exploded in the former Soviet Union 25 years ago.

Which is where social media in Japan is making itself felt.

In a series of widely viewed and replicated YouTube videos a Japan nuclear expert, Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama, has told Japan’s lower house Diet that the nation has failed miserably to make a timely evacuation of the at risk population worst affected by Fukushima radioactive fallout compared to the massive relocation that occurred in the Ukraine in the two weeks after the Chernobyl disaster.




In the English language transcripts of these videos, notably on thePenn-Olsen Asia tech blog, Kodama says he is shaking with anger at the incompetence and dishonesty of the government and nuclear authorities and the TEPCO power company in the aftermath of the accident. He attacks the use of simplistic readings that ignore for example the accumulation of deadly isotopes at the foot of slippery slides in children’s playgrounds in favour of readings at the top from which rain has washed away the contamination.

The readings, like the children, are being cooked, either by ignorance or intent.

Kodama says the uranium equivalent of the contamination released by the three affected reactor cores and four cooling ponds at Fukushima was that of 20 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs:

“What is more frightening is that whereas the radiation from a nuclear bomb will decrease to one-thousandth in one year, the radiation from a nuclear power plant will only decrease to one-tenth.

“In other words, we should recognise from the start that just like Chernobyl, Fukushima I Nuclear Plant has released radioactive materials equivalent in the amount to tens of nuclear bombs, and the resulting contamination is far worse than the contamination by a nuclear bomb.”

Kodama’s testimony, poorly reported in the established Japan media, is circulating in social media in tandem with raw videos of government officials telling a meeting of Fukushima residents demanding urgent help in evacuating to other parts of the country that they should stay put and trust them to reduce radiation. The meeting becomes increasingly angry after one official tells the residents they could evacuate at “their own risk”, while they shout at them for telling them to stay put and die.

The bigger context to these reports from Japan is that the guidance given by nuclear scientists and apologists alike to the media in Australia was disgracefully inaccurate and patronising. The reality of the caesium contamination was ignored, and the quoting of initial radiation readings in the wrong metric was ignored (and later found to be fictitious as well as mischievous, when TEPCO confirmed that it didn’t actually have any capability of measuring contamination within key parts of the complex).

The constant refrain that Fukushima would never be a level-seven disaster such as Chernobyl contained longer in the Australian media than anywhere else, even after the nuclear authorities in France and US broke with the usual protocol of not commenting on other national agencies, and said that it could reach level six or level seven and expressed a lack of confidence in their Japan counterparts.

One thing that is becoming apparent after this disaster is that the truth, like the fallout, is going to force itself on the authorities no matter how much the business, political and scientific establishments try to play it down.

This post has been edited by Don't Panic: 03 August 2011 - 05:02 AM

[AndersB]

Last month while I was sitting in an airport lounge in Manila waiting for a Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo, the TV news started reporting on the Fukushima disaster.

Although the lounge was full of people that looked Japanese, nobody watched the news report. I found that indifference a bit surprising!

[tor]

Don, on 03 August 2011 - 05:02 AM, said:

The below article might stir things up a bit.
The headline could be described as misleading if one was to base it on immediate deaths after the initial incident.
Very brave Ben. Credit to Crikey for being prepared to take the risk of running the story.

Yep stupid headline which doesn't help things at all. A few things in the article are a bit annoying to me.

Social Media has done an awesome job. Nope, _SOME_ social media did an awesome job. Most of it was even worse than the nonsense in most of the news.

Australian Media has sucked arse. Nope, ABC News24 had a bunch of reasonable speaking people saying "We are getting garbage data out of the Japanese Government and so can't draw any conclusions except by educated guesswork" on within days of it occurring. I freely admit I turned off the commercial channels as soon as they started talking about it as their coverage was just painful. (Crikey using that headline are actually being one of the stupid media IMO).

AndersB, on 03 August 2011 - 05:14 AM, said:

Although the lounge was full of people that looked Japanese, nobody watched the news report. I found that indifference a bit surprising!

As far as I could tell they seem pretty indifferent to many things that I would consider important (their economy for example). Maybe they are used to their government lying their arses off and just gave up listening.

[Mr Medved]

http://www.abc.net.a...e-tokyo/2830410

Japan is considering the possibility of creating a back-up capital city in case a major natural disaster, like the March 11 earthquake, strikes Tokyo.

A new panel from Japan's Ministry of Land and Infrastructure will consider the possibility of moving some of Tokyo's capital functions to another big city, like Osaka.

Japan is located on the junction of four tectonic plates and experiences one-fifth of the world's strongest earthquakes and geologists have warned Tokyo is particularly vulnerable to powerful earthquakes.

It is feared if a massive earthquake like the March magnitude 9.0 quake struck Tokyo, it could destroy the country's political and economic base.

[cobran20]

Mr Medved, on 08 August 2011 - 11:49 PM, said:

http://www.abc.net.a...e-tokyo/2830410

Japan is considering the possibility of creating a back-up capital city in case a major natural disaster, like the March 11 earthquake, strikes Tokyo.

A new panel from Japan's Ministry of Land and Infrastructure will consider the possibility of moving some of Tokyo's capital functions to another big city, like Osaka.

Japan is located on the junction of four tectonic plates and experiences one-fifth of the world's strongest earthquakes and geologists have warned Tokyo is particularly vulnerable to powerful earthquakes.

It is feared if a massive earthquake like the March magnitude 9.0 quake struck Tokyo, it could destroy the country's political and economic base.

Perhaps we can lease them some land in Central Australia at inflated prices - very stable there!

[Don't Panic]

For balance, I suggest one reads the full 4 page article in todays NYTimes I have selectively quoted from below.

Was the WHO's about face on suddenly linking mobile phones & electromagnetic fields to brain cancer in June 2011, possibly being a result of pressure from organisation's that influence the WHO, so as to assist explain away or muddy the waters legally regarding potential future increases in cancer rates that may in be due to nuclear radiation from Fukushima or other current or future nuclear incidents. One hopes not.

http://www.smh.com.a...0601-1ff87.html
http://www.nytimes.c...an.html?_r=1

Quote

In interviews and public statements, some current and former government officials have admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster — in order, some of them said, to limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry. As the nuclear plant continues to release radiation, some of which has slipped into the nation’s food supply, public anger is growing at what many here see as an official campaign to play down the scope of the accident and the potential health risks.

Quote

Meltdowns at three of Fukushima Daiichi’s six reactors went officially unacknowledged for months. In one of the most damning admissions, nuclear regulators said in early June that inspectors had found tellurium 132, which experts call telltale evidence of reactor meltdowns, a day after the tsunami — but did not tell the public for nearly three months.

Quote

Government officials insist that they did not knowingly imperil the public.

“As a principle, the government has never acted in such a way as to sacrifice the public’s health or safety,” said Mr. Hosono, the nuclear disaster minister.

Quote

A wider evacuation zone would have meant uprooting hundreds of thousands of people and finding places for them to live in an already crowded country. Particularly in the early days after the earthquake, roads were blocked and trains were not running. These considerations made the government desperate to limit evacuations beyond the 80,000 people already moved from areas around the plant, as well as to avoid compensation payments to still more evacuees, according to current and former officials interviewed.

Mr. Kosako said the top advisers to the prime minister repeatedly ignored his frantic requests to make the Speedi maps public, and he resigned in April over fears that children were being exposed to dangerous radiation levels.

Quote

He said the Speedi readings were so complex, and some of the predictions of the spread of radiation contamination so alarming, that three separate government agencies — the Education Ministry and the two nuclear regulators, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and Nuclear Safety Commission — passed the data to one another like a hot potato, with none of them wanting to accept responsibility for its results.

In interviews, officials at the ministry and the agency each pointed fingers, saying that the other agency was responsible for Speedi. The head of the commission declined to be interviewed.

Quote

The effects might emerge only years from now,” he said of the exposure to radiation. “I’m worried about my kids.”

Quote

In an interview, Mr. Hosono — who now holds nearly daily news conferences with Tepco officials and nuclear regulators — said that the government had “changed its thinking” and was trying to release information as fast as possible. Critics, as well as the increasingly skeptical public, seem unconvinced. They compare the response to the Minamata case in the 1950s, a national scandal in which bureaucrats and industry officials colluded to protect economic growth by hiding the fact that a chemical factory was releasing mercury into Minamata Bay in western Japan. The mercury led to neurological illnesses in thousands of people living in the region and was captured in wrenching photographs of stricken victims.

Quote

After the nuclear disaster, the government raised the legal exposure limit to radiation from one to 20 millisieverts a year for people, including children — effectively allowing them to continue living in communities from which they would have been barred under the old standard. The limit was later scaled back to one millisievert per year, but applied only to children while they were inside school buildings.

Quote

The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Toshio Yanagihara, said the authorities were withholding information to deflect attention from the nuclear accident’s health consequences, which will become clear only years later.

“Because the effects don’t emerge immediately, they can claim later on that cigarettes or coffee caused the cancer,” he said.

[sydney3000]

http://www.testoster...nese-humor.html