Russian Nuclear Plant Fire.

Russia Nuclear Institute Fire: 'No Threat' Says Government

First Posted: 02/ 5/2012 8:47 am Updated: 02/ 5/2012 3:34 pm



MOSCOW, Feb 5 (Reuters) - A fire broke out on Sunday at a Moscow nuclear research centre that houses a non-operational 60-year-old atomic reactor, an emergency official said, and Russia's nuclear agency said there were no open flames and no threat of a radiation leak.

The environmental group Greenpeace Russia expressed serious concern about the incident.

The fire was in a basement at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics in southwestern Moscow, said Sergei Vlasov, spokesman for the Moscow branch of the Emergencies Ministry. He said no casualties were reported.

Grey smoke rose above the institute, which is encircled by a wall, and an acrid smell filled the air. Some 30 emergency vehicles, including fire trucks and ambulances, stood inside and outside the main gate, witnesses said.

Sergei Novikov, spokesman for Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom, said there were no open flames, only smoke that came from an area housing power cables and could not affect any nuclear materials at the institute.

"This case poses no threat to fissile materials," said Novikov, adding that firefighters were pumping foam into the affected area. He said the institute's heavy-water research reactor was no longer operational.

A Greenpeace Russia official said the incident was potentially very dangerous.

"This is extremely dangerous ... this should not have happened at all, but as long as it did, it shows there has been a major failure in their operations," said Ivan Blokov, campaign director at Greenpeace Russia.

"What we have here is a large amount of radioactive substance right in the centre of Moscow and even if a minor quantity leaks, it would pose a serious problem," he said.

Russian news agencies issued conflicting reports.

Interfax cited a police source as saying fire brigades were denied access to the facility for "a long time" before being allowed in.

Vlasov said he could not confirm the report, but said the fire had not been extinguished as of 2:45 p.m. (1045 GMT). State-run RIA reported earlier that that the fire had already been put out.

Safety at Russia's nuclear facilities has been a concern since the deadly 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then a Soviet republic. The Soviet authorities did not announce that disaster for two days.

A fire aboard a nuclear submarine in the north Russian port of Murmansk in December severely damaged the vessel, but authorities said radiation levels remained normal.

read more here: HuffingtonPost

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February 5, 2012

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Fire at Russian Nuclear Research Centre in Moscow

A fire broke out on Sunday at a Moscow nuclear research centre that houses a non-operational 60-year-old atomic reactor, emergency officials reported as Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom said the blaze had not been accompanied by any open flames and posed no threat of a radiation leak.

While the cause remains undetermined, Sergei Vlasov, a spokesman for the Moscow branch of the Emergency Services ministry, told Reuters that fire has begun in a basement.

Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for Rosatom, remained mum about whether any nuclear or radioactive materials remained in the six-decade old heavy water reactor, though they said the reactor is non-operational.

He said that firefighters were pumping foam into the affected area, and that the institute’s heavy-water research reactor was no longer operational, the Reuters report said.

Grey smoke was reported by witnesses to be rising above the institute, which is encircled by a wall as bitter smell filled the air, Reuters reported.  Interfax cited a police source as saying fire brigades were denied access to the facility for “a long time” before being allowed in.  Some 30 emergency vehicles, including fire trucks and ambulances, stood inside and outside the main gate of the institute, witnesses told the news agency.

Source: Enformatable.com

California Nuclear Power Plant Shuts Down With Radioactive Leaks

California nuclear plant shut down over radioactive leaks

Published: 01 February, 2012, 22:23

San Onofre nuclear plant, California

TAGS: Nuclear, Accident, USA

A leak at a Southern California nuclear facility that regularly provides power to roughly 1.4 million households has caused the plant to shut down a reactor.

Despite officials insisting that everything will be perfectly alright at the San Onofre nuclear site, this is not the first time as of late that power plants have raised serious questions about their safety in America.

A reactor at the San Onofre nuclear power station was halted Tuesday afternoon after personnel at the plant identified a leak in a steam generator tube. Gil Alexander, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, explains to Reuters that the reactor will remain offline for at least a couple of days.

"We don't expect any impact on our customers tomorrow," Alexander adds, yet notes that the reactor in question usually churns out around 1,100 megawatts of electricity to one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the country.

The shutdown is forcing officials to halt operations in Unit 3 of the plant. Unit 2 of the station was already offline at the time of the incident, of which officials say was the result of routine maintenance and upgrades.
Speaking of the alleged minuteness of the leak, Alexander tells the Los Angeles times that “it wouldn’t even qualify as the least severe” infraction under guidelines set up by the United States’ Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Regardless, the plant, located south of San Clemente, California, reported the incident to them anyway.

As it would be, the regulations in place for American facilities are actually more lax than one would expect.
"While the NRC and the nuclear industry have been reassuring Americans that there is nothing to worry about – that we can do a better job dealing with a nuclear disaster like the one that just happened in Japan – it turns out that privately NRC senior analysts are not so sure," Edwin Lyman, a Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear expert, explained to Reuters last year. Even after the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima plant in early 2011 raised questions internationally over safety regulations, the United States has done little to improve conditions since.

The reason, some say, is that the regulations in place don’t call for them. In a report conducted by the Associated Press last year, it was revealed that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has repeatedly weakened safety requirements for facilities, regularly allowing antiquated plants to continue operating by making it easier to pass tests in lieu of actually upgrading the facility. The AP found that of the 104 nuclear plants operating in America last year, 66 of them had been re-licensed for an additional 20 years of service. The vast majority of plants in the US, however, are already older than a quarter of a century.
San Onofre, located around 70 miles south of Los Angeles, is one of those.

“I think we need nuclear power, but we can’t compromise on safety. I think the vulnerability is on these older plants,” engineer Richard T. Lahey Jr., formerly with General Electric Co, told the AP last year. Although one-fifth of the nation’s power comes from nuclear plants — and much of Southern California relies on the San Onofre, loosened regulations are repeatedly putting much of America and the world at risk.

The San Onofre facility was opened in the late 1960s and has been upgraded since then, although not without incident. Engineers at the Bechtel Group Inc. of San Francisco installed a 420-ton nuclear reactor vessel at the facility in 1977, only to be publically humiliated when it was realized that the plant was constructed backwards.

Authorities at San Onofre say that the leak has yet to spread outside of the plant, but should that happen the consequences could be catastrophic. The San Onofre facility is only a stone’s throw away from the Pacific Ocean.

The AP adds in their analysis that roughly 113 alerts at the nation’s nuclear facilities since 2005 can be blamed in part on aging. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission itself reported in 2008 that 70 percent of potentially serious safety problems stem from “degraded conditions.”

Within the last year, a nuclear plant outside of Washington, DC was shut-down after concern of damage to reactors. In August 2011, officials questioned authorities at Vermont’s Yankee nuclear plant after water samples in a nearby stream tested positive for a carcinogenic chemical.
Source: Reuters

Possible leak causes San Onofre nuclear plant shutdown

By msnbc.com staff

A reactor at the San Onofre nuclear reactor in Southern California was being shut down after a possible leak was detected in one of the unit's steam generator tubes, the plant operator said Tuesday.

Southern California Edison said in a statement that "a precautionary shutdown of Unit 3" at the electricity generating plant was under way, but that there had been no release of radiation to the atmosphere and there was no danger to employees or the public.

The San Onofre plant is on the Pacific Ocean coast near San Clemente north of San Diego. It consists of two units, No. 2 and No. 3. No. 1 was shut down permanently in 1992. It is one of two nuclear plants that generate electricity in Southern California; the other is the Diablo Canyon plant in San Luis Obispo County.

Unit No. 2 at San Onofre was already offline for maintenance and refueling, but Southern California Edison said the shutdown of No. 3 would not affect the supply of electricity to customers.

In September, the failure of a major tranmission line between Arizona and California caused the Onofre reactors to go offline automatically.

Source: USNewsMSNBC

Tiny radiation amount ‘could have’ escaped from Calif. nuclear plant; officials say no danger

(Lenny Ignelzi,File/Associated Press) - FILE - In this March 1, 2010 file photo, the San Onofre nuclear power plant, seen here in north San Diego County, Calif. Operators of the nuclear power plant worked to diagnose a problem with a reactor that was shut down because of a possible leak, but officials stressed there was no imminent danger.

Source: WashingtonPost

Is There A Link Between The Illinois Nuclear Power Plant Problems & The Earthquake?

Illinois Nuclear Power Plant Shuts Down Unit After Power Loss

10:32 am

January 31, 2012

 

by Korva Coleman

Backup diesel generators are powering one of the two nuclear reactors at the Byron Station facility in northern Illinois. Unit Two came offline yesterday after it inexplicably lost power. The facility's operator, Exelon, declared the incident an "unusual event" - the lowest of four emergency status declarations set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Fire crews were called to the site, about 25 miles outside of Rockford, as smoke was seen from the top of the facility building, according to WREX-TV. But the NRC told the Chicago Tribune the smoke was from a transformer and fire crews didn't find a fire.

Exelon says workers vented steam to help the reactor cool off, which is part of their emergency response process. AP reports the steam came from plant turbines, not the reactor itself, but Exelon notes tritium was released in the steam, which is radioactive; both the NRC and Exelon say radiation levels are safe and there's no harm to the public. There's a brief Q-and-A about the steam release at the Christian Science Monitor.
Now investigators are examining whether equipment failed in the plant's electrical switchyard, triggering the shutdown, according to Exelon, which explains the switchyard transmits power both ways between the electrical grid and the nuclear plant.

Source: NPR

The cause is still under investigation for a shtudown at the Exelon Byron Nuclear Generating Station near Rockford. (Credit: CBS)

2.4 earthquake rattles northern Illinois

7:56 AM, Jan 31, 2012   |   0  comments

Credit: AP/file.

MCHENRY, Ill. (AP) - A minor earthquake that shook northern Illinois sent tremors across Chicago's northern suburbs.

Seismologists with the U.S. Geological Survey say the 2.4 magnitude quake happened just before 10 p.m. Monday and was centered just east of McHenry. There's no word of any damage or injuries.

USGS geophysicist Jessica Turner calls the earthquake "very minor." Turner says USGS received some reports of light shaking in Chicago, about 45 miles away.

Such small tremors are very common. The USGS estimates 1.3 million quakes with magnitudes between 2.0 and 2.9 occur each year.

Source: Click Here

Earthquake Details

• This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.

Magnitude	2.4
Date-Time	Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 03:54:43 UTC Monday, January 30, 2012 at 09:54:43 PM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location	42.340°N, 88.243°W
Depth	5.1 km (3.2 miles)
Region	ILLINOIS
Distances	17 km (11 miles) E of Woodstock, Illinois 33 km (20 miles) W of Waukegan, Illinois 73 km (45 miles) NW of Chicago, Illinois 305 km (190 miles) NNE of SPRINGFIELD, Illinois
Location Uncertainty	horizontal +/- 17.6 km (10.9 miles); depth +/- 3.1 km (1.9 miles)
Parameters	NST= 8, Nph= 11, Dmin=177 km, Rmss=0.45 sec, Gp= 97°, M-type="Nuttli" surface wave magnitude (mbLg), Version=8
Source	Magnitude: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D) Location: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID	usc0007u9c

Source :  USGS 

A Deadly Mix
What if a nuclear power plant accident were to be caused by an earthquake? The consequences would be truly catastrophic. First of all, the evacuation of residents would be very difficult and rescue operations would be made almost impossible because of the high level of radioactive contamination. Thus, the disaster site would have to be abandoned, and an uncountable number of people would lose their lives right after the accident, and for many years to follow.

Professor Ishibashi Katsuhiko of Kobe University has been warning of this deadly mix for the last three years. He is a renowned seismologist, who at the young age of 32 established the Great Tokai Earthquake Theory. In 1994 he wrote Daichi-doran no jidai (The Era of the Raging Earth), based on a theory that was bashed as being too extreme at the time. His theory was redeemed five month later, in the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, which left more than 6,000 dead.

Ishibashi points out that the study of earthquakes is not a fully mature science even now and we should not underestimate the possibility of disasters. But ignoring his warnings, the government insists that all Japan's nuclear power plants are safe, as they are in compliance with the earthquake resistance guideline for nuclear facilities. But for two major reasons, it is clear that the government estimate is far too optimistic. The first problem derives from defects in the guideline itself, in consideration of modern seismologic theory, and the second problem involves safety concerns over nuclear power plant construction, based on the opinion of a nuclear power plant construction supervisor with more than 20 years of experience.

Source: Stop-Hamaoka.com

Radioactive Plume From Japan's Recent Earthquake Activity.

Strong 6.8 earthquake hits Fukushima Japan, tsunami warning up

+

A strong 6.8 earthquake struck Friday at the northeastern coast of Japan near the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant which was severely damaged by the March 11 super earthquake and tsunami that caused the death of close to 20,000 people near Fukushima

A tsunami warning was issued in the Fukushima and Miyagi Perfectures but was lifted 35 minutes later.

The quake reportedly occurred at 2:36 pm (0536GMT) with its epicenter off Fukushima prefecture at a depth of 20 kilometers.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company that operates the badly-damaged Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, said there were no damages on its Onagawa Plant which has been shut since March.

However, a report say "ground under Fukushima plant is cracking and radioactive steam is coming up — Melted core may be moving out of building" enenews.com reports.

In a video interview, Dr. Robert Jacobs, Hiroshima Peace Institute: “It’s a very serious and alarming development because this started to happen specifically after two large earthquakes in the last few weeks, there was a 6.4 on the 31 of July 31 and a 6.0 on August 12″.

Meanwhile, the NY Times reports that radioactive contamination in rice, a national grain, has been found by Japanese inspectors Friday.

The discovery is likely to fan out growing fears of radioactive contamination on crops and basic agricultural produce and the general safety of Japan's food supply.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/310558#ixzz1VbPJr2fM

June 4, 2011: Volcanic Eruption, Big Brother Watching You, Fukushima, Gun Shortage, River Monsters

VOLCANIC EVENT
Information on both volcanoes :
Puyehue and Cordón Caulle are two coalesced volcanic vents that form a major mountain massif in Puyehue National Park in the Andes of Ranco Province, Chile. In volcanology this group is known as the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex (PCCVC). Four different volcanoes constitute the volcanic group or complex, the Cordillera Nevada caldera, the Pliocene Mencheca volcano, Cordón Caulle fissure vents and the Puyehue stratovolcano. As with most stratovolcanoes on the Southern Volcanic Zone of the Andes, Puyehue and Cordón Caulle are located along the intersection of a traverse fault with the larger north-south Liquiñe-Ofqui Fault. The volcanic complex has shaped the local landscape and produced a huge variety of volcanic landforms and products over the last 300,000 years. Cinder cones, lava domes, calderas and craters can be found in the area apart from the widest variety of volcanic rocks in all the Southern Volcanic Zone, for example both primitive basalts and rhyolites. Cordón Caulle is notable for having erupted following the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the largest recorded earthquake in history. (Source : wikipedia)

UPDATE 19:55 UTC : Our reader Juan Perez, has reported that the volcano went into eruption a little while ago. This news has been confirmed by Chilean Onemi.
UPDATE 19:40 UTC : SERNAGEOMIN is monitoring the volcano complex with six stations and a network camera.
Onemi, on the other hand has permanent monitoring points near the volcanic complex through VHF and HF radio system, communal, provincial and regional as well as links by satellite telephone. Onemi is the governmental emergency service.
UPDATE 19:24 UTC : Chile has approx. 2,000 volcanoes. 125 are seen as geologically active. The last 450 years, 60 volcanoes have been reported as erupted.
UPDATE 19:16 UTC :The earthquakes we have mentioned below are only the strongest ones measured today. Onemi reported at least 230 tremors an hour on Saturday. A very big number of earthquakes is mostly the sign of an immanent eruption.
UPDATE 19:12 UTC : Apart from this, the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle area is one of the main sites of exploration for geothermal power in Chile. Geothermal activity is manifested on the surface of Puyehue and Cordón Caulle as several boiling springs, solfataras and fumaroles
UPDATE 20:59 UTC : Onemi has reported that an additional 2,400 people has been asked to evacuate the volcano area. This means that the perimeter at risk has been widened.





BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU...
Who is spying on you? Do you care who knows your information? Do you care if someone uses your information for their own benefit? People are losing their identities to others. People are losing their freedoms. The public is unaware of how much of their information is being seized under the cloak of government necessity in the fight on terror and other things. What would you do if you found out that your information was being used by other people?  Does this have to do with the New World Order?  Are they planning their moves by what information they are gathering from "the people"?






FUKUSHIMA - LOW RADIATION

If you have any worries about the radiation from Japan, don't worry.  It's not likely that the radiation levels will get to what is harmful to your health.  Initially there was quite a panic, especially in the U.S., however, there is clear documentation that the Fukushima incident is not causing any excessive radiation to the citizens of the Unite States.  Please watch.




GUN CONTROL - GUN SHORTAGE

 Associated Press

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - June 4, 2011 (WPVI) -- With the U.S. at war on two fronts in the Middle East, local law enforcement agencies are feeling the squeeze when they go to order ammunition.

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A decrease in supply has led to rising costs and longer wait times for police departments whose tightening budgets already have forced them to make personnel cutbacks.

Experts tell Gannett New Jersey it has yet to become a safety issue. But rising costs and a decreased supply have put a burden on law enforcement to stockpile ammunition, and that can be a problem during lean economic times.

Some orders take a year to fill, forcing towns to make larger orders to compensate.

Mitchell C. Sklar, head of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police, told the news service that one town made a bigger order with the expectation that it would arrive over a span of 18 months. But when it arrived all at once, local officials were faced with a bill that exceeded their budget.

Police chiefs around the state spoke of rising costs and long waits to get ammunition.

"We used to spend between $12,000 to $13,000 a year but now it's around $16,000 to $18,000," Hazlet Police Chief James A. Broderick told the news service.

Some chiefs said orders take a minimum of six months to get filled, and often take up to a year.

Fairfield Police Chief Charles Voelker said departments used to be able to borrow ammunition from neighboring towns while waiting for orders to arrive, but no more.

"We are all in the same predicament and cannot afford to lend any, since there is uncertainty as to when you can repay what you borrowed," he said.

Lacey Township Police Chief William Nally recently told a budget workshop meeting that ammunition prices have doubled for his department. He told the news service that he expects prices to rise up to 35 percent for some ammunition.http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=8170865&rss=rss-wpvi-article-8170865&utm_source=errythang&utm_medium=twitter

Animal Planet's Jeremy Wade Risks Life And Limb To Capture River Monsters

First Posted: 06/ 3/11 08:25 AM ET Updated: 06/ 4/11 04:13 PM ET

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You don't have to travel all the way to Scotland's Loch Ness to search for a real monster. There may be one lurking in water much closer to home.

For those who doubt such things, just ask the folks who live near Mississippi's Chotard Lake. In February, a fisherman pulled a 327-pound, 8 1/2-foot-long prehistoric-looking alligator gar from the freshwater site.

One well-known angler, Jeremy Wade, doesn't know the meaning of the phrase "the big one that got away." As host of the hugely popular Animal Planet series, "River Monsters," the 55-year-old biologist's life is a series of detective stories as he travels the world searching for unimaginable creatures that lurk in the murky depths of inland waterways.

"It starts with a crime scene or a story, and then it's an investigation," Wade told AOL Weird News from his home in England. "Following the analogy, I will have a list of suspects and will narrow it down to the prime suspect.

"I'll then apprehend the culprit and then I'll let him go. It's all about motivation and understanding, like why did this fish grab the leg of a person who was swimming in a lake?"

More awesome pics at http://weirdnews.aol.com/2011/06/03/animal-planet-jeremy-ward-river-monsters_n_867182.html#s285370&title=River_Monsters

Japan. An Update On What Is Happening There & How It Is Effecting The United States.

Update on Japan...


1- IT COULD BE MONTHS BEFORE THE CRISIS AT THE NUCLEAR PLANTS IS UNDER CONTROL.
"TOKYO — Japanese engineers put dye into radioactive water on Monday to check if they had managed to stop a leak from one reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant but one official warned it would be months before the crisis was under control.

In the face of Japan’s biggest crisis since World War Two, one newspaper poll said that nearly two-thirds of voters want the government to form a coalition with the major opposition party and work together to recover from the massive damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Underlining the concern over the impact on the world’s third largest economy, a central bank survey showed that big manufacturers expect business conditions to worsen significantly in the next three months, though they were not quite as pessimistic as some analysts had expected."

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Japan+says+take+months+radiation+leaks/4552523/story.html#ixzz1IZtroTUT

2) USED MILKY BATHWATER DYE TO TRY TO TRACE THE PATH OF RADIOACTIVE WATER SEEPAGE.

3) PLANT OPERATORS PURPOSELY DUMPED 10,000 TONS OF HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE WATER INTO THE OCEAN.

TOKYO — Workers used a milky bathwater dye Monday as they frantically tried to trace the path of radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant.

The crack in a maintenance pit discovered over the weekend was the latest confirmation that radioactivity continues to spill into the environment. The leak is a symptom of the primary difficulty at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex: Radioactive water is pooling around the plant and preventing workers from powering up cooling systems needed to stabilize dangerously vulnerable fuel rods.

The plant operators also deliberately dumped 10,000 tons of tainted water – measuring about 500 times above the legal limit for radiactivity – into the ocean Monday to make space at a storage site for water that is even more highly radiactive.

Engineers have turned to a host of improvised and sometimes bizarre methods to tame the nuclear plant after it was crippled in Japan's magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami on March 11.

Efforts over the weekend to clog the leak with a special polymer, sawdust and even shredded newspapers failed to halt the flow at a cracked concrete maintenance pit near the shoreline. They still can't say for sure if the pit, where radioactive iodine was measured at 10,000 times the legal limit, is the source of the leak.

Suspecting they might be targeting the wrong channel to the pit, workers tried to confirm the leak's pathway by dumping several pounds (kilograms) of salts used to give bathwater a milky hue into the system, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday.

"There could be other possible passages that the water may be traveling. We must watch carefully and contain it as quickly as possible," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency.

READ MORE AT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/04/japan-nuclear-plant-radiation_n_844436.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

4)  RADIOACTIVE PARTICLES ARE LIKELY TO GET INTO THE FOOD SUPPLY.  

5) THERE IS ONLY CONJECTURE AS TO WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE SEA LIFE AFTER ALL OF THE DUMPING OF THE RADIOACTIVE WATER FROM THE PLANTS...NO ONE KNOWS HOW MUCH MORE WILL BE NECESSARY.

It's true that radioactive particles from a nuclear disaster like this do get into the food supply, but so far there's no indication that there's cause for alarm. The particles emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant bind to dust, which is how they travel through the air and eventually fall on the ground, according to CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

When cows eat contaminated grass, those particles can get into milk. Large surfaces of leafy veggies are at risk because they present a greater surface area for the particles to fall on; that's why several green vegetables can no longer be exported from certain areas near the nuclear power plant. Still, levels detected so far pose little risk, Gupta said. And so far there is no contamination of beef in Japan, the government said Friday.

Radioactive particles disperse the farther they travel, so by the time they get to the United States from Japan they are not concentrated enough to pose any health risk. The state of Washington and California have both reported low levels of radioactivity in milk; however, this milk is safe to consume, experts say.

And how about what that water might do to fish? If you're still craving sushi, it seems that, unlike after the Gulf oil disaster, there isn't as much concern about the safety of fish from Japan, Eatocracy reports. Fishing in the prefectures near to the nuclear plant - Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate - has been suspended since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which makes it less likely that tainted fish will reach the market.

READ MORE 

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/04/radiation-safety-what-you-should-know/

6) THERE IS A RUN ON INDONESIAN COCONUT HUSKS

7) ACTIVATED CHARCOAL IS BECOMING SCARCE BECAUSE OF THE AMOUNT THAT JAPAN IS USING IN ITS WATER SUPPLY.

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Efforts to protect Tokyo’s tap water from radiation leaked by a damaged nuclear-power plant have led to a run on Indonesian coconut husks.

Granulated charcoal, made of shells of coconuts and oil- palm kernels, is being used by treatment plants in Tokyo and neighboring regions to filter tap water supplies. Prices for the absorbent carbon material have risen as much as 44 percent since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that triggered the radiation threat, said Yoshio Toi, a spokesman for the municipal government in Chiba, a prefecture neighboring Tokyo.

Treatment plants are trying to remove any traces of radioactive matter, such as iodine-131, known to cause thyroid cancer, and convince customers that water supplies are safe. Some Tokyo facilities more than quadrupled the amount of activated charcoal used in filtration after a March 21 sample contained iodine-131 that exceeded the safe limit for infants.

“Tokyo is ordering more activated charcoal as we deplete our stocks,” said Gen Ozeki, a spokesman for the city’s Bureau of Waterworks. “It’s not just Tokyo doing this, others are taking extraordinary measures for their water, too, so charcoal is becoming scarce.”

READ MORE 

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-04/radiation-in-tokyo-water-spurs-run-on-coconut-shell-cleaners.html

8) RESTAURANTS AND OTHER BUSINESSES ARE STOCKPILING CHARCOAL BECAUSE OF THEIR CONCERN ABOUT THE WATER.

Radiation from Japan rained on Berkeley, California, during recent storms at levels that exceeded drinking water standards by 181 times. A rooftop water monitoring program managed by the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering detected substantial spikes in rain-borne iodine-131 during those torrential downpours. The levels exceeded federal drinking water thresholds, known as Maximum Contaminant Levels -- or MCLs -- by as much as 181 times or 18,100%. Iodine-131 is one of the most cancer-causing toxic radioactive isotopes spewed when nuclear power plants are in meltdown. It is being ingested by cows, which have begun passing it through into their milk and radioactivity has been detected. [Multiple Sources]  READ MORE http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/frameset.php?pageid=http%3A//www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/040411.php

9)  San Francisco Rainwater: Radiation 181 Times Above US Drinking Water Standard

10) THERE IS HIGHER THAN NORMAL RADIATION LEVELS BEING FOUND IN PRECIPITATION ALL ACROSS THE UNITED STATES BUT IT IS NOT BEING REPORTED IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA.