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Speculation circulates privately, but one sees little about Fukushima in the English-language media here. There was a lot of coverage immediately after 3/11, but silence then, a relative siloence that strongly indicates something is too sensitive to report. In any event, Koreans are suspicious, though I've met no one with plans to flee the country. Also, if the dispersal maps that I've seen online are any indication, North America seems to be getting more radioactivity than Korea is.

Interesting assessment on Reuters: Japan's post-tsunami revival plan reaches tipping point www.reuters.com
I suppose forty years of nuclear reactor cleanup work will bring jobs to Fukushima. But will the workers want to live there?

Here's where the Unit-3 video closes in on a couple silver tubes : www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgjHMUVOEY#t=3m45s

Lol, and again: www.youtube.com

If the plant premises are dusted in snow during the winter, we shall see where the cold shutdown is not so cold, ;)

@lillymunster It will be decided within a couple of weeks. I don't think they will decide for a full Court Martial due to the huge media coverage and public support. The most likely outcomes are public court or a internal inquiry which would dismiss the possibility of a major penalty. He might get away with a security clearance revoke and a compulsory suspension of his military status without any jail term. Or he could have to spend some years behind a desk performing no clearance administrative work. Lets wait and see.

@lillymunster, Arnie held a zirconium tube and it was black.

www.theodoregray.com Zirconium fuel tubes. Source: www.theodoregray.com

@lillymunster , that depends on how long they were stored. They are highly radioactive in any case.

Meant: "neutron sources"

I have been searching, with no luck, for information presented in the videos presented after the 'S.O.S. Fukushima' which I posted last night. Specifically: the NHK report on 'Russian Bombers circle Japan' and 'U.S. Prepared to Bomb Fukushima-Updated July12.2011' in the Economic Newspaper article. Looks like all has been removed on the internet, so this is still preserved on this link. salem-news.com

Shikata ga nai, everybody

It's in the air. And water.

SHIKATA GA NAI, EVERYBODY

By David Ritchie

A Japanese expression keeps running through my mind these days: shikata ga nai.

It means “Nothing can be done” or “It can’t be helped.”

It also helps explain why the Japanese public seems so resigned toward the worst meltdown ever, at Fukushima.

Under shikata ga nai, Japanese in adversity do nothing to fight their situation. They just accept it and endure it as best they can.

Time and again in Japan’s history, one sees shikata ga nai in action – or inaction, if you prefer.

After the great Kanto earthquake that destroyed much of Tokyo in 1923, the common response was shikata ga nai. It can’t be helped. You can’t fight an earthquake.

Same for the atomic bombings in 1945. Shikata ga nai again. It can’t be helped. This is war.

Now, once again, as symptoms of irradiation appear, shikata ga nai.

Metallic taste in your mouth, symptomatic of radiation exposure? Shikata ga nai.

Persistent sore throat? Fatigue? Any other symptoms consistent with fallout all around? Shikata ga nai.

It’s a passive attitude. A fatalistic attitude, too.

But is it necessarily the wrong attitude?

You see, I’ve had a metallic taste in my mouth for months since Fukushima. Persistent sore throat and fatigue, too.

Meanwhile, a dialogue goes on within me. One half of me tells the other, “You’re getting irradiated. Aren’t you going to do something?”

The second half replies, “What to do? Shikata ga nai, you know.”

Then the first half of me, the do-something side, is silent … because the shikata ga nai side is right.

I’m helpless. So are you.

We can’t put ruined reactors back together. We can’t recover tons of radioactive water from the sea, or sweep countless hot particles from the air, or pluck strontium out of our bones. This suddenly more radioactive world is here to stay.

Sorry, but those are realities. We have to live with them. Many of us, most likely, will die of them.

Unfair? Not really.

You see, we tend to die by what we live for. We lived for cheap, plentiful electric power. Through nuclear reactors, we got it.

Now a lot of us going to die from it … through reactors that failed.

Get used to it. At least, that’s the advice I give myself. Shikata ga nai.

You may ask, “Aren’t you doing anything?!”

Yes. I’m focusing less on this life and more on preparations for the next. But this isn’t the place for that discussion.

Meanwhile, as the hot stuff spreads, think about shikata ga nai.

There’s not much else we can do, is there?

©David Ritchie 2011

(David Ritchie lives and works in Seoul, Korea.Contact: kwriter [at] asia.com.)

NUCLEAR CRISIS--9 MONTHS ON / Focus on radiation screenings ended up claiming patients' lives
Dec 17, 2011 N-plant procedure ignored? / Workers 'didn't check' reactor pressure day before explosion A government panel has found that workers at the No. 3 reactor of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant stopped operation of a high-pressure core cooling system without checking if a substitute pumping system would work on March 13, one day before a hydrogen explosion occurred there, sources said. www.yomiuri.co.jp @All For your (in)digestion...

Mag: Curium and plutonium outside Fukushima plant sign of nuclear explosion at Reactor No. 3 — “Broken spent nuclear fuel rods may have been scattered around”
enenews.com