Zombie Apocalypse Now!
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The White House in November 2015 recognized these problems, and took the first baby steps of dealing with the emp threat, by undertaking to prepare a space weather action plan, with emergency management, education and improved prediction technologies.253
On March 26, 2019 President Trump issued “Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulses” to assess the risks of such an attack to critical US infrastructure, beginning the cycle over again.254 This is all a good start that should have been undertaken at least a decade ago. My bet is that a geomagnetic apocalypse does not occur in the next few years, and that humanity, because of sloth, will continue to fail to implement safeguards with the needed urgency, lulled into complacency and moving at a snail’s pace – then, sometime in the near future, our phenomenal and undeserved luck runs out, and it’s lights out, forever.255
It is also worth noting, relevant to our zombie theme, that there is considerable evidence of the negative effects of geomagnetic storms on human health, affecting sleep, depression levels, mood and thus indirectly, aggression. However, the threat from nuclear disasters remains the gravest health risk.
In May 2012, there was considerable concern about the threat to the world posed by Fukushima reactor No. 4, which could have released 85 times the cesium-137 spewed forth at Chernobyl.
Mitshuhei Murata, former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland said: 252 J. Kappenman, Geomagnetic Storms and Their Impacts on the US Power Grid, (Metatech Corporation, Meta-R-319, January, 2010), at, http://web.ornl.gov/sci/ees/etsd/pes/pubs/
ferc_Meta-R-319.pdf.
253 Hannah Parry, “White House is Preparing for Catastrophic Solar Flares which Could Wipe Out Power Around the World for Months – Bringing an End to Modern Civilization as We Know It,” November 4, 2015, at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3302185/
White-House-preparing-catastrophic-solar-flares-wipe-power-world-months-bringing-end-modern-civilization-know-it.html.
254 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-coordinating-national-resilience-electromagnetic-pulses/.
255 https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/NIAC%20Catastrophic%20
Power%20Outage%20Study_508%20FINAL.pdf.
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“It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor.”256 There are 10,893 spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima Daiichi plant lying in pools that are vulnerable to destruction from future earthquakes. US Senator Ray Wyden (Democrats, Oregon) visited the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on April 6, 2012 and issued a press release on April 16, expressing alarm at the catastrophic risk the plant posed to humanity and he urged immediate US government intervention.257 He also sent a letter to Japan’s Ambassador to the United States, requesting Japan to accept international assistance to address the crisis. Senator Wyden said that the problem was “worse than reported” with “spent fuel rods currently being stored in unsound structures immediately adjacent to the ocean” and the area was highly susceptible to earthquakes with only a small makeshift seawall of bags of rocks offering protection from a future tsunami. This problem, over six years later, still exists, with radiation at “unimaginable levels.”258 It is worth reviewing the Fukushima disaster as it reveals important lessons about human error, carelessness and corruption.
The worst-case scenario involving a fire at unit 4, igniting the irradiated fuel, could release what some regard as a doomsday dose of radiation that could destroy human civilization, although there is, as we will see, room for the irradiated to debate this issue.
At Chernobyl, after its nuclear disaster, the birds and animals—
deer, wild boar, moose, lynx and wolves—have returned, all radioactive. There is controversy about the radiation effects on humans from the Chernobyl disaster. Thus, the report by the UN
256 “An Urgent Request on UN Intervention to Stabilize the Fukushima Unit 4 Spend Nuclear Fuel,” May 1 2012, at http://greenaction-japan.org/en/2012/05/press-release-coalition-sends-urgent-request-for-un-intervention-to-stabilize-the-fukushima-unit-4-spent-nuclear-fuel/.
257 B. Jacobson, “The Worst is Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time Bomb,” May 5 2012, at http://carolynbaker.net/2012/05/05/the-worst-is-yet-to-come-.
258 “New Evidence of Nuclear Fuel Releases Found at Fukushima,” February 18, 2018, at https://phys.org/news/2018-02-evidence-nuclear-fuel-fukushima.html; https://www.
scientificamerican.com/article/crippled-fukushima-reactors-are-still-a-danger-5-years-after-the-accident1/; https://video.foxnews.com/v/5315777703001/#sp=show-clips.
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Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (2000),259
found that 134 plant staff and emergency workers suffered acute radiation syndrome. The prevalence of birth defects and leukaemia was allegedly no higher than experienced before the accident with the exception of thyroid cancer in local children, the large cases due to authorities allowing contaminated milk to be used. By the year 2005, there were 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer in children, but thyroid cancer is treatable. Allegedly, only 15 children died by 2005.260
Other sources see the Chernobyl disaster as having much greater effects, with loses of hundreds of thousands of lives and ill-health effects for generations.261
How much radiation was, and may still be released from the Fukushima site is unknown as plant workers were told to lie about radiation readings, being given lead boxes used as shields to block radiation and make readings appear lower than they were in reality. Radiation levels at Reactor 1 in the base water reached levels of 10,300 millisieverts per hour “the equivalent of receiving the maximum annual dose of radiation in just 20 seconds, or enough to become gravely ill in just a few minutes.” Whatever the true Fukushima radiation levels, according to scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (noaa) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, computer models simulating ocean currents in the Pacific, indicate that radioactive ocean water will be breaking on the beaches of the US West Coast within five years – but evidence presented at the October 2013, North Pacific Marine Science Organization (pices) annual meeting indicated that a radioactive plume was detected reaching the shores of Canada and the US by July 2013 both in ocean surface waters and the atmosphere. It took until 259 UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, “The Chernobyl Accident,” at http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html.
260 Yuri M Shcherbak, “Ten Years of the Chernobyl Era,” Scientific American, April, 1996, pp. 44-49.
261 John Vidal, “Nuclear’s Green Cheerleaders Forgot Chernobyl at Our Peril,” April 2, 2011, at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/01/fukushima-chernobyl-risks-radiation. Alexey Yablokov (et al.), Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New York, 2009), volume 1181.
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April 2016 for the Japanese to attempt to build a wall of ice around the reactors, in an attempt to contain the massive outpouring of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, using underground pipes to freeze the ground. Time will tell if this strategy actual y works.262
An article in The Australian reported that nuclear workers
“had received massive undocumented exposures to radiation” and
“the danger money supposed to flow to employees from working at Fukushima Daiichi was being creamed off by unscrupulous companies.”263 The Australian quoted a nuclear engineer at the plant who said: “What remained intact after the disaster is completely fragile and when the next one comes it’s going to col apse,” meaning that the Fukushima nuclear plant is vulnerable to a new quake or tsunami. The cooling system is makeshift and the nuclear engineer believes that the next big earthquake will fracture it. He also had doubts about back-up power gear keeping the plan
t’s six reactors cool, because only temporary gear “not proper equipment” is being used.
The nuclear engineer also said that earthquake protection measures had not been made. A contractor had identified 20,000 points to be fixed for anti-seismic protection after the 2007 Niigata earthquake; none had been done due to shortages of money. Further, the engineer believes that the reactors were damaged in the 2011 earthquake.
The Australian article mentions the risk of spent fuel in a tank alongside Reactor No. 4 “which must be kept submerged at all times to avoid a catastrophic chain reaction that could render Tokyo uninhabitable.” Workers paid to deal with this fuel have had their real wages slashed to as low as 8,000 yen (about US $80) a day, when some workers earned as high as US $5,000 a day for this work in the days before the quake. It is not a proven way to maintain worker morale.
Along with this is corruption; after the disaster Japan’s mafia (Yakuza) supplied workers who owed them money to work at the plant. These workers violated workplace safety regulations, such as not wearing 262 https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/eight-years-after-fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-workers-still-facing-radiation-risk/.
263 Rich Wal ace, “Fukushima Plant ‘Set to Col apse’ from Another Quake or Tsunami,” The Weekend Australian, March 9-10, 2013, p. 12.
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dosimeters or shielding them inside clothing to minimize exposure recordings. After Yakuza workers left the plant, at least in 2013, these practices continued. The Australian article says: “One worker who was in charge of handing out dosimeters to staff in the bunker during the first few months after the disaster said many simply refused to take the devices, saying they would never be able to complete their work if their true readings were recorded.”
Tokyo Electric Power Company had initial y said that the radiation emitted by the leaking water was about 100 millisieverts an hour, but the equipment used could only record emissions at a maximum rate of up to 100 millisieverts an hour. When more sensitive equipment was used, the correct reading of 1,800 millisieverts an hour, readings 18 times higher than the previous readings, was recorded.264
Japanese informants reported that their government had experts on a speaking tour, one of whom told people that radiation wouldn’t affect happy people and people smiling. Japanese TV news said that rising radiation levels were due to Chinese atmospheric pol ution blowing to Japan!
Singapore-based news outlet AsiaOne reported in April 2013
that 120 tons of radioactive contaminated water, containing about 710 billion becquerels of radioactive materials, had leaked from an underground storage facility at the No. 1 power plant site. Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (mhlw) said in April 2013
that levels of cesium-137 (Cs-137) and cesium-134 (Cs-134), found in tangerines and rice crackers produced in the Shizuoka prefecture, about 225 miles from Fukushima, tested high for both Cs-137
and Cs-134, rice crackers = 3.7 becquerels per kilogram of Cs-137
and tangerines = 1.46 becquerels per kilogram of Cs-134 and 3.14
becquerels per kilogram of Cs-137. The average adult eating such foods at those radiation levels would exceed the safe maximum radiation level of 50 millisieverts of radiation per year in only a few weeks.
264 BBC News Asia, “Fukushima Radiation Level ‘18 Times Higher’ than Thought,”
September 1, 2013 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23918882.
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In August 2013 The Australian reported that the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority was concerned about an “emergency” at Fukushima with the release of tritium-laced groundwater into the sea besides the plant: tepco admitted that 20-40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium has leaked into the sea since the nuclear disaster.265
Another report states that 300 tonnes of radioactive water a day has entered the sea since March 2011, also admitted in August 2013 by tepco. As wel , radioactive ground-water beneath the reactors had breached an underground barrier and was rising towards the surface.
High levels of strontium 90 had been detected in the groundwater.266
The buildings of Reactors No. 1 and 4 receives 400 tonnes of groundwater each day.267
Michio Aoyama, senior researcher of the geochemical research department of the Meteorological Research Institute, found 60
billion becquerels of cesium-137 and strontium-90 discharged into the Pacific Ocean every day from a ditch at the northern end of the reactor. Unsurprisingly, there have been rising radiation levels in Japan’s seas and prefectures surrounding Fukushima. On January 10, 2014, the Japanese Fisheries Research Agency caught a fish contaminated with 12,400 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, 124 times higher than the safety standard. Fish catches around Fukushima are mostly destroyed because of dangerous radiation levels.
The Fukushima reactors have melted through the steel vessels into the ground and are continuing fission reactions. To prevent a nuclear explosion, it is necessary to cool this melted core; hence huge quantities of water must be pumped over the core, resulting in radionuclides dissolving in the water and other insoluble radioactive material such as plutonium being held in colloidal suspension. The radioactive water has not been controlled and 265 Rick Wal ace, “Tokyo to Act on Radioactive Leaks,” The Australian, August 9, 2013, p. 10.
266 M. Wil acy, “Fukushima Plant Spilling Contaminated Water into Sea ‘for Years,’” August 12, 2013, at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-12/fukushima-plant-workers-raise-safety-concerns/4879960.
267 Rick Wal ace, “Radioactive Leak at Fukushima,” The Australian, August 7, 2013, p. 10.
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pours into the Pacific Ocean. This will continue forever unless the radioactive material can be removed, but radiation levels are too high to do this. The present attempt to freeze the ground can only be a short-term solution.
David Webb, Chief Executive Officer at Origin Investments ab, is quoted at Voice of Russia.com as saying that the cooling pool of unit 4 at Fukushima is crucial as it contains 400,000 kilograms of hot plutonium: “There is a great danger of a thermo-nuclear reaction if these rods become exposed to the air and the cooling pool itself is just barely containing the temperature levels of the core as it is.
. . [O]ne microgram of plutonium could theoretical y kill a person.
There are a billion micrograms in a kilogram and there are 400,000
hot kilograms in this pool. So, if these rods combust, if the set of rods begins a thermonuclear reaction it will vaporize the water in the pool and the entire pool can become an uncontrolled nuclear reaction open to the air. These particles will be spread through the northern hemisphere. This is perhaps the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.”268 This is known as the “open-air super reactor spectacular.”
One fuel rod has the potential to kill 2.89 billion people and the number of fuel roads at Fukushima, excluding those in the pressure vessel is 11,421. Some fear a “series of cascading failures with an apocalyptic outcome.”269
The nuclear risk of Fukushima is dwarfed by the spent fuel rod problem in the United States, the largest store of radioactivity on Earth.270 The US has 65,000 tonnes of spent fuel of which 75 percent is stored in pools and there are 30 million rods in spent fuel pools.
In the pools, the cesium-137 is over 20 times more than that released 268 E. Sukhoi, “Fukushima Radioactive Leak is “the Greatest Threat Humanity Ever Faced,” – Expert,” Voice of Russia, September 2, 2013, at http://sputniknews.com/
voiceofrussia/2013_09_02/Fukushima-radioactive-leak-is-the-greatest-threat-humanity-ever-faced-expert-3792/.
269 “Fukushima Apocalypse: Years of ‘Duct Tape Fixes’ Could Result in ‘Millions of Deaths,’” August 17, 2013, at http://rt.com/news/fukushima-apocalypse-fuel-removal-598.
270 T. E. Collins and G. Hubbard, Technical Study of Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risk at Decommissioning Nuclear Powe
r Plants, (NUREG-1738, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, February 2011), pp. x and xi.
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from all previous atomic explosions and 15-30 times more than released at the Chernobyl disaster.271 All of this radioactive material is vulnerable to a 9/11 terrorist attack.272 The US has 23 reactors the same as the General Electric ones in Fukushima No.1 and also has atomic plants built on fault lines (e.g. Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant’s units 1 and 2 near Santa Barbara and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating station, outside of San Clemente, shut down in 2012, but continues in 2018 to leak radioactive material).273 A quarter of the US’s ageing reactors have leaked radioactive tritium-pol uted water.274
There have been nuclear reactor partial meltdowns (Santa Susana Field Laboratory, July 13, 1959) that contaminated surrounding areas, with radiation 300 times the acceptable levels, complete with a cover-up which could have taught the Japanese a thing or two.
The US is also vulnerable to geomagnetic disturbances such as solar flares and emp events caused by an enemy nuclear attack.
Nuclear power plants are not likely, in the US at least, to immediately go “boom,” as modern nuclear reactors are designed to shut down if safety limits are reached or exceeded, such as if the electric power shuts down. The problem is in the longer term when diesel runs out, supplying fuel to back-up generators. If the water boils off of the cooling pools and the rods catch fire, massive quantities of radiation would be released, more than in a meltdown. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said that US nuclear power plants affected by a blackout would be able to function without electricity for about eight hours and would be able to keep the reactor and 271 Robert Alvarez, Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the US: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage, (Institute for Policy Studies, Washington DC, 2011).
272 E. S. Lyman, “Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant,”
Union of Concerned Scientists, September 2004, at http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/
making-nuclear-power-safer/keeping-nuclear-plants-secure/impacts-of-a-terrorist-attack.