Last Stand at Fukushima (Hat tip to TW)

Last Stand at Fukushima

My Brother-Unit TW is doing his damnedest to inform and cajole people into awareness of the Fukushima plant's Number Four Unit and the plans to just kinda yank those spent rods out.  From what this Luddite gathers, the spent rods are sitting somewhat strangely in the water... oh, and that water?   The condition of its all important neutron absorbers is basically unknown.

So maybe this is not another in that famous series of "What, me worry?" scenarios we keep dramatizing in matters concerning our home planet and our nuclear proficiencies.

I'm as ignorant as the next fool, so TW is teaching me lots, and yes, scaring me.  What's a brother for?

No, seriously.  What's a brother for?  [TW and Grader Boob:  Insert one wink, one nod, one finger aside the nose.]

So I pass on to you some of the informative links he's posted over at American Idyll, an amazing place. And as does that blogger, we at Marlinspike Hall, a nuclear free zone, serenade you with "Morning Dew," though we've sinned by replacing the Grateful Dead cover with The Jeff Beck Group (1968).

Not feeling like doing much reading? Here's the steno version, then:

Tepco continues to pour more water onto the proximate site of three melted reactor cores it must somehow keep cool.Steam plumes indicate fission may still be going on somewhere underground. But nobody knows exactly where those cores actually are.
Much of that irradiated water now sits in roughly a thousand huge but fragile tanks that have been quickly assembled and strewn around the site. Many are already leaking. All could shatter in the next earthquake, releasing thousands of tons of permanent poisons into the Pacific.
The water flowing through the site is also undermining the remnant structures at Fukushima, including the one supporting the fuel pool at Unit Four.
More than 6,000 fuel assemblies now sit in a common pool just 50 meters from Unit Four. Some contain plutonium. The pool has no containment over it. It’s vulnerable to loss of coolant, the collapse of a nearby building, another earthquake, another tsunami and more.
Overall, more than 11,000 fuel assemblies are scattered around the Fukushima site. According to long-time expert and former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal cesium on site as was released at Chernobyl. 

 --Harvey Wasserman
Global Research, 9/20/13

Fukushima Forever
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN)
A Letter to All Young Athletes Who Dream of Coming to Tokyo in 2020:  Some Facts You Should Know About Fukushima
Webcast Portal:   ‘The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident,’ held at the New York Academy of Medicine, NYC, March 11 & 12, 2013, co-sponsored by The Helen Caldicott Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
MoveOn Petition: The World Community Must Take Charge at Fukushima
Breaking Energy News

MORNING DEW

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,

Walk me out in the morning dew today.

I can't walk you out in the morning dew my honey,

I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.

I thought I heard a baby cry this morning,

I thought I heard a baby cry this today.

You didn't hear no baby cry this morning,

You didn't hear no baby cry today.

Where have all the people gone my honey,

Where have all the people gone today.

There's no need for you to be worrying about all those people,

You never see those people anyway.

I thought I heard a young man morn this morning,

I thought I heard a young man morn today.

I thought I heard a young man morn this morning,

I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,

Walk me out in the morning dew today.

Ill walk you out in the morning dew my honey,

I guess it doesnt't't really matter anyway,

I guess it doesnt't't matter anyway,

I guess it doesnt't't matter anyway,

Guess it doesnt't't matter anyway.

Songwriters: DOBSON, BONNIE/ROSE, TIM
(or whoever the hell actually wrote it....)

Let's close, my brethren, with  Laurie Anderson, with balm and condolences to her on the death of her husband, Lou Reed.

["Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature," Anderson wrote. "He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air."]

The musical association is again stolen from mi hermano...

Mi hermano y yo... somos.  















© 2013 L. Ryan