Gee! How very different from Japan and the west coast of the US. Not to mention recent actitivy on the east coast.

Gee. How very different from Japan and the US West coast and (recently) the east coast and, earlier, Three Mile Plains. How different from decrepit plants all over the world i in nations that have signed safety treaties.

And an unnamed "whistleblower" has written a letter about it? Certainly sounds creditble to me. I mean - why would anybody in, say. Israel or the US send such a letter?

If the letter is not true, it's no different from many other situations. And, true or not, it might signal an excuse for a attack on Iran.

By the way, when were Israel's nuclear production facilities last open for UN inspection?

Actually, your attacks are completely off-base.

I have an interest in this topic (remember I majored in Math/Physics?) and have a small library of book on Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Windscale (England, graphite fire in the 1950's) and other such information.

I presented this in light of my past reading.  I was hoping for a discussion of reactor design but it is admittedly not a topic of general interest and perhaps no one else on the site is interested.

TMI was a pressurized water cooled reactor.  Chernobyl was a water-cooled graphite-moderated reactor, a dangerous designer that the West had given up years ago (Windscale was a small graphite-moderated reactor used only for the production of plutonium, not power).   It was the huge graphite fire that caused the radioactivity from Chernobyl to spread over such a large area.

Fukushima was a water-moderated boiling water reactor.   It functioned well enough until hit by a tsuanmi, which it was never engineered to withstand.

I am willing to grant that it may just be impossible to build a safe water-moderated (boiling or pressurized) reactor using uranium.   The engineering challenges are great and there are so many things that can go wrong.

But this description of Bushehr is chilling.  Not because of the design (I am sure the German engineers of 30 years ago knew what they were doing and did state of the art for the time).    But the fact that it sat unfinished for all those years is a bad sign.  Parts corrode.

The Russians wanted to start over--no doubt wise advice.  The attempt to use a 30-year old base, to change the design, and to try to fit together these disparate pieces presents an alarming picture.

The basic facts are not in question: that the German base is thirty years old and that the Russians have tried to build upon it.

It's not the facts that are at issue, it's your focus.

I think you are being a little paranoid, Witch.   I am interested in and have read a great deal about nuclear reactors, so naturally I read this article with interest.

I also followed stories about Fukushima in detail.

I would be willing to discuss other types of reactor designer if anyone is interested.

yes. and it just happens that the reactor that concerns you is in Iran.

there's a much older one in New Brunswick that has never worked properly. It's very dangerous. It's been out of us for years.  But the government plans to fix it up and put it back in service within another year or so.

Why didn't you pick that one to write about?

If nuclear reactors that withstand tsunamis and earthquakes are not possible, then we have a lot more to worry about than a reactor in Iran.

But, wow - you have  math/physics major! A major. dazzling.

I give up.  I am out of here.   

You are hardly an example of a Christian--how can you sink to such nasty talk?   When in doubt, sneer and call names.

I would expect better of a teen-ager.

I didn't call names. You have done that many times.

I confess being guilty of sneering. Can't help it when a BA with a major claims to be an authority on nuclear energy while saying (many times) that I, with a doctorate in History, don't  know what I'm talking about when I discuss history.

Be fair. Eastern Orthodox didn't say anything about being "an authority on nuclear energy." Eastern Orthodox claimed an interest in the subject based on past education. There's a difference.

EO,

Graeme and Witch are trolls. I find it just as hard to remember, because I also expect people to be reasonable. But these two simply aren't. 

Graeme

I did call you names in the past, but I swore off that.  I  was a newbie and I ended up getting banned.   I am not aware that I have called names since that time.  I apologize for that.

I tried to stick to facts since that time,

And I brought up my education not to say I knew more than you, but to explain why I was interested in the topic.

I can see you getting angry about being accused of being anti-Semitic, but getting mad and sneering at me because of this article about Bushehr, from a respectable newspaper?   I can't believe it!  I better leave before I lose my cool and say something I will regret.

EO - you have repeatedly told me I know nothing about history. You have repeatedly dismissed advice I have given you on how to read it. You have dismissed information I have given you.

But you claim insights into nuclear energy based on a BA with a major.

In any case, it is not your insights that are in question. It is your focus. The world has greater nuclear safety problems than we see in Iran. (Not the least of them being dumping nuclear and toxic waste on Afrian coasts and coastal waters.

Why the focus on Iran? Israel has 250 nuclear rockets. I haven't seen anything from you about safety concerns either in the manufacture or disposal areas. Indeed, the world is NOT allowed to inspect Israeli nuclear facilities. But I doubt very much that you would write a piece on that.

I don't mind discussion. I dislike propaganda.

So The Times of London was printing propaganda?   They are generally regarded as a respectable newspaper.

I only disagreed with you on one topic of history only (it is also partly a scientific topic at that).  Europeans in new world.   And you have to admit you are in well in the minority on that topic.   Does that make me arrogant?  We should agree to disagree on that one topic.  I am willing to leave it at that.  If I don't agree with you on everything single thing, then you write me off?

That is a shame, because you are one of the intelligent and educated people writing on this site.  On topics about I know little, like Quebec & Bill 101, I bow out, I admit I know nothing.  

Why focus on Iran?

Perhaps they make threats about "wiping Israel off the map?"   Because they are hostile and belligerent and even their neighbours can't stand their government?  Perhaps because their own population protested massively against their last rigged election until they were beaten into submission (literally  in many cases)?

Here is another reason

Latest news: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/us-accuses-iranians-of-plotting-to-...

U.S. Accuses Iranians of Plotting to Kill Saudi Envoy

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

Published: October 11, 2011

Federal authorities foiled a plot by men linked to the Iranian government to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States and to bomb a Saudi embassy, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a news conference on Tuesday.

Mr. Holder said the plot began with a meeting in Mexico in May, “the first of a series that would result in an international conspiracy by elements of the Iranian government” to pay $1.5 million to murder the ambassador on United States soil.

The Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington called the plot “a despicable violation of international norms.”

The men accused of plotting the attacks were Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri, according to court documents filed in federal court in Manhattan. The Justice Department said the men were originally from Iran. He said the men were connected to the secretive Quds Force, a division of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that has carried out operations in other countries. He said that money in support of the plot was transferred through a bank in New York, but that the men had not yet obtained explosives.

The Justice Department said in a statement that Mr. Shakuri, a member of the Quds force, remained at large. Mr. Arbabsiar, a naturalized American citizen, was arrested on Sept. 29. There is “no basis to believe that any other co-conspirators are present in the U.S.,” Mr. Holder said....

More about Iran, from "Then They Came For Me", by Maziar Bahari.

Being a political prisoner is a (sad) family tradition for this Iranian family.  His parents were Communists in the Shah's time (The Tudeh Party) and his father did several years in prison in the 1950's.  

Like many Iranians, he and his family were initially hopeful about the Ayatollah in 1979. But that did not last long.  Soon Khomeini turned on the Tudeh (breaking his word), and Mr Bahari's sister & her husband did several years in prison.

Her small toddler was brought up by his grandmother until the parents were finally released after several years.

His surviving family was behind the moderate Mousavi in the last Iranian election.   (His aged mother referrs to the current government as "garbage" whenever she mentions them).

He says,

"I believed that the reckless policies of President Ahmadinejad's government were ruining Iran.  His economic mismanagement had caused high rates of inflation and unemployment and his irresponsible rhetoric had created far too many enemies.   But even more disturbing what that by the end of his first four year term as president, and with the well-known support of Ayatollah Khamenei, to country was well on its way to becoming a dictatorship.

....

​While nobody could describe Mousavi as a Jeffersonian democract, at least he was not denying the Holocaust, insulting world leaders and threatening countries with destruction, as Ahamadinejad did on a consistent basis.  If nothing else, he would be a step in the right direction."

He too ended up in prison.  He was specifically chosen because he was an ex-patriate who worked for ​Newsweek.  (He is a Canadian citizen, but Iran does not recognize that, you cannot escape being Iranian as far as they are concerned).   It was part of their paranoid conspiracy theory that outlets like Newsweek were plotting against their govt.

The thoughts of Iranian-Canadian Zahra Kazemi (beaten to death in 2003 by Iran security) kept him in a very anxious state during his prison stay, but he stayed true to his father's words "Never name names."

They arrested huge numbers of people.  Many had no foreign connection at all.

How grateful we Canadians should be that we do not live under such a regime.

1. My disagreement with you had to do with historical method. You have never studied that. I have. You don't understand the use and limitations of sources. I do.

2. The reason Iran had a Shah (dictator) is because the US, Britain and France forced its elected government out, and forced the Shah on them. The theft and brutality of the Shah is what made Iranians turn to the ayatollah.

3. The US routinely attacks nations and kills people. The US president has declared he has the power to order assassinations or life in prison with no trial, no charge, no lawyer. That's unconstitutional. but he's done it.

It murdered 200,000 in Guatemala. It's not a secret. It was in the NY Times.

It murdered anywhere from 150,000 to one and a half million in Iraq. It lied about the reason for the attack. that's been public knowledge for quite a while.

When it arrested Noriega in Panama, it killed thousands of civilians as it blasted a path to get him.. Learn to use google.

The US killed a half million civilians in its bombing of Cambodia. It wasn't even at war with Cambodia. That was 9/11 every day for close to a year.

The US has deliberately kept Haiti in poverty for almost a century. ditto Guatemala - all to keep the people for very cheap labour.

Why do you fixate on Iran?  Did you know Iran had to supply the British navy with all its fuel (free) from 1920 to 1946 or so? Did you know that the Shah, put in place by the US, Britain and France, held power with executions and torture? that he sold oil very cheaply to them? And in return was permitted to loot his country?

Did you know that Israel has routinely threatened to bomb Iran, claiming it is developing nuclear weapons. Two problems with that. 1. there is little evidence Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. 2. Israel has 250 of them. why is Israel the only country in that region allowed to have them?

Qualified observers think there is a strong possibility that Israel will bomb Iran within the next two months, and thus plunge the US, Canada, and the whole middle east into war.

There's a reason why Iranians feel as they do. they're humans - not the cartoon caricatures you describe.

they are responsible for trying to kill the the Saudi envoy? Maybe. That's a very secret and tangled world. It could also be a setup. Anyway, it's well known by now that the US made many attempts to assassinate Castro. It cooperated with the generals in Vietnam in the assassination of the president of south Vietnam. It was almost certainly involved in the assassination of a president of Chile, and in the installation of a general as dictator. the Israel secret service murdered a Montreal weapons designer. US assassination squads operate all over the world. Is it good when Americans or Israelis do it?

Why fixate on Iran.

So you, the newb, are still trying to get people to believe that we, the folks that have been here for years, are the trolls?

How stupid do you really think the members of this forum are?

I am aware of the colonial history of Iran, but that does not give them a pass for outrageous behaviour into the indefinite future.

So Mr Bahari is a "cartoon caricature".   Like the late Zahra Kazemi, I suppose.  What constitutes a cartoon caricature?   Someone you don't agree with?

Limitations of sources: "if I don't agree with it, it is no good".  Well, you have tried to explain it better than that, but I am still left wondering why you are a distinct minority in some of the areas we have disputed.  Do the other historians not know how to use sources?

The US does not routinely assassinate people (well, it used to, but it has toned that down considerably).  Central America is acknowleged, but that was the 1970's, and has zero to do with Iran, the topic under discussion.

I don't fixate on Iran.  I noticed what I thought was a timely and relevent article in a respectable newspaper.   This discussion, had you not derailed it, could just as easily developed into one about nuclear reactors in general and if they can ever be made safe.

I am not aware of an official statement issued by the Israeli government that they are planning to bomb Iran (I could be wrong here).    Some observers think that Israel will bomb Iran, but not all.   I am hoping they don't, for one.

This cartoon caricature reference is ludicrous.  Who were the hundreds of thousands of people protesting that rigged election?   That is a lot of cartoons.

This is a new story and we cannot assess its accuracy fully at this time.

Castro, Pinochet, these are all decades and decades in the past.   You cannot continually refer to what happened 40 or 50 years ago and say that the same is true now.

No. Americans no longer have assassination squads. And the drones are used to take people on pleasure flights.

The US war in the phillipines (Operation Enduring Freedom) has been going on for decades. That makes it old news. Except it's still going on.

The deliberate impoverishment of Haiti has been going on for almost a century. So it's old news. things have changed. Tell me about it.

The US doesn't murder people any more? Guatemala was a long time ago - so it's okay? May I point out that we didn't know about Guatemala until ten years ago - and most people still don't know. So what makes you believe you know who's killing who now?

Hey, the holocaust was a long time ago. Let's forget about it.

Professional  historians quite well understand the use of sources. I never said they didn't. I said you don't. To which I can add that you won't.

And you won't ever believe anything you don't want to believe. That's a not unusual characteristic in people.

The Guardian writes today that it is most unlikely the government of Iran has anything to do with a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador. It would gain nothing by doing so - and would run terrible risks.

that takes us back to the probability that this is a set up to throw people into a panic, and justify an attack on Iran. Just like Iraq. Just like Afghanistan.

Obviously, it works on a great many people.

I have worked in the nuclear industry for 33 years. In the "free world" it is by far the safest way to produce large scale power.

The safety of Russian, North Korean, and Irani nuclear projects are a totally different kettle of fish and cannot be compared with or lumped in with nuclear safety in the rest of the world.

How about Japanese ones built by an america company?

I claim no professional expertise in the nuclear industry, but I am an interested amateur.

The graphite-moderated Chernobyl was a dangerous design--their own physicists had told them this (not too strongly, since that would not have been tolerated).   The West gave up on graphite-moderation in the 1950's (the Windscale accident in Britain in 1955 was a graphite fire also, but that was a very small reactor).

I am sure the Germans knew what they were doing when they started Bushehr, but you don't need to be a nuclear engineer to imagine what would happen after it sat there unfinished and untended for over 15 years.  And then the Iranians turned down the Russian advice to start over, leaving the Russians to try to stick something onto the old German machine.   There would be parts incompatibilites, language problems, it sounds like a nightmare.

The Fukushima reactor built by an American company was a water-moderated reactor and it ran fine for many years.  When the earthquake struck, the control rods immediately dropped into place to stop the chain reaction (with Chernobyl, they deliberating removed the control rods, then tried to jam them back in the last few seconds, but they would not go, the theory is that the cladding on the uranium rods was distorted from heat).

But stopping the chain reaction (is was also successfully stopped at Three Mile Island) does not end all your problems, you still need cooling due to the residual heat.  When the tsunami hit, all the power went out at Fukushima, the reactors were overwhelmed.   They had not been engineered to withstand a tsunami and in hindsight, they should never have been placed at sea-level.

Feel free to correct any mistakes I have made, Judd.  

It was a brand new story when I quoted it.  Looking it over, it does sound a little bizarre and I am somewhat suspicious.   That does not detract from the overall problems with the Iranian government however.   

It is probably less an American plot that some kind of government screw-up at the police level.   If I am wrong and Obama's govt plotted this they are unbelievably stupid.

This is not a minor matter. Nor is it likely a screw up at a lower level. The US has taken a unanimous stand on this. If they attack Iran in retaliation, The chances of a very big war are high, indeed. If it gets into such a war, the US does not have the conventional forces to deal with such a situation. It would have to fall back on its nuclear arsenal.

I'm not exaggerating. this is the reality that we face.

read Project for the New American Century. That is american policy. It intends to establish military dominance in the world But the window of opportunity is closing fast. It has to win soon or it's game over.

DAMAGE TO FUKUSHIMA (the collapse of the buildings was caused by the tsunami)

BUT CHINA IS GOING AHEAD WITH NUCLEAR POWER and any other type they can find.   

The Times (of London)

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/naturalresources/artic...

China’s determination to acquire more of the world’s raw materials is expected to be displayed yet again this week with confirmation of fresh talks to buy a London-listed uranium miner.

China Guangdong Nuclear Power is in fresh discussions with Kalahari Minerals about a £650 million takeover. The state-backed nuclear energy company had been prepared to pay £100 million more in March this year, until the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the subsequent disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant prompted China to suspend new nuclear projects and made uranium miners distinctly less attractive.

.....

Kalahari, whose shares trade on AIM, owns 43 per cent of Extract Resources, the Australian owner of the Husab uranium deposit in Namibia, which has the potential to become the second-biggest uranium mine in the world. Rio Tinto, the FTSE-listed miner, has a 14 per cent stake.

​

Such a takeover would be just the latest of example of China’s determination to control more of the world’s natural resources to feed its fast-growing economy. State-backed companies of the People’s Republic have splashed out billions on assets from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Canada.

Reports recently out of Japan suggests dangerous concentrations of radiation in Tokyo and other cities. My brother-in-law fled back to Canada with his Japanese wife soon after the Tsynami because she was terrified - and so were all their friends. I hear there has been no easing of the terror.

The future of nuclear power looks uncertain in Japan all right.  At the moment, I suppose there will be no alternative but for them to burn coal (I am just guessing here).   Natural gas is another possiblity, but I don't think there is much of it in Japan and it can only be imported if liquified.

There is a bizarre situation where part of Japan is on 50 Hz (same as Europe) and the other part is on 60 Hz (same as North America).  Thus electricity cannot easily be transferred between the two parts.  It has old historical roots and would be very expensive to change now.

One can hardly blame the Japanese.   But many people do not realize that there are no other reliable ways to generate large amounts of power, except for burning fossil fuels.  Windmills and solar can supply part but not all of an industrialized nation's power.  Both are unsteady (the wind dies down, the day is cloudy)...plus huge amounts of land would be required, along with long stretches of new high-power transmission lines.   That would take decades to build.

Here in BC, we are very lucky that we all on hydro-power, with enough left over to sell to the US.  The major dam is far in the north of BC, in an isolated area.  There are no damns on the Fraser River.

Here is an article from The Times (London) showing how this is rippling around the world.   A plant in the UK manufacturing fuel for Japanese reactors will be scrapped.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/utilities/article31143...

One of the British nuclear industry’s most costly white elephants is to be put down because of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, putting 800 jobs at risk.

The Mox reactor fuel plant at Sellafield is being closed after Japanese nuclear generators scrapped their contracts in the wake of the disaster in March.

As a result of the closure, Britain will be left with about 13 tonnes of Japanese plutonium for decades. The plant was supposed to convert the plutonium into Mox (mixed oxide) fuel to be shipped back to Japan, but instead it will be kept in storage in the UK.

The Sellafield Mox Plant, which began operating in 2002, has cost the taxpayer £1.3 billion to build and run. It was designed to produce 120 tonnes of the reactor fuel each year, but has been beset by technical problems and has managed only 13.8 tonnes in its lifetime.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which owns the plant, is keen for the Government to sanction the construction of a new Mox facility to make fuel for new reactors planned for Britain. Mox reactor fuel is made by mixing recycled plutonium and uranium. It is a more expensive way of making nuclear fuel, but the main advantage is that it uses up plutonium.

No technology yet exists to destroy plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons. Britain has a stockpile of about 110 tonnes of plutonium from reactors built up over the past 50 years, about a quarter of which belongs to foreign nuclear companies, including Japanese utilities that had contracted the SMP plant to turn it into Mox fuel to be returned to Japan.

However, after the meltdown at Fukushima that followed the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the future of atomic power in Japan is uncertain. Fewer than half its reactors are still operating. Japanese utilities had bankrolled a refurbishment of the Mox plant but this was put on hold after the disaster. The NDA held talks in Japan but it became clear that the utilities no longer wanted the fuel.

Tony Fountain, chief executive of the NDA, said that the Japanese would pay for the interim storage of the plutonium in Britain. He did not rule out it being converted into Mox fuel and sent back to Japan if a new plant is built.

Friends of the Earth’s Craig Bennett said: “Yet again taxpayers are footing the bill for the Alice-in-Wonderland economics of the nuclear industry. This money could have been spent developing the UK’s vast renewable energy potential, creating new green jobs and business opportunities.”

Unite called on the Government to build a Mox plant, which would cost at least £1.5 billion in its early phase.

The Government, which has been consulting the industry, is expected to make a decision in the autumn on whether to go ahead. Nuclear operators in Britain would have to be subsidised by the Government to buy fuel from the plant. Areva, of France, has submitted a proposal to build a Mox facility.

And that, I'm afraid, is only the beginning of the energy crunch.

"HOT SPOTS" in TOKYO

Like Chernobyl, the fallout from Fukushima is not in a uniform pattern.  It depends on how the wind was blowing, and especially, where is rained.   This report does not sound very good.

However, at least people can buy dosimeters.   With Chernobyl (still in Soviet times), owning a dosimeter was a crime.  (Some scientists acquired them from abroad).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/world/asia/radioactive-hot-spots-in-to...

By HIROKO TABUCHI

Published: October 14, 2011 

TOKYO — Takeo Hayashida signed on with a citizens’ group to test for radiation near his son’s baseball field in Tokyo after government officials told him they had no plans to check for fallout from the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Like Japan’s central government, local officials said there was nothing to fear in the capital, 160 miles from the disaster zone.

Then came the test result: the level of radioactive cesium in a patch of dirt just yards from where his 11-year-old son, Koshiro, played baseball was equal to those in some contaminated areas around Chernobyl.

​

The patch of ground was one of more than 20 spots in and around the nation’s capital that the citizens’ group, and the respected nuclear research center they worked with, found were contaminated with potentially harmful levels of radioactive cesium.

It has been clear since the early days of the nuclear accident, the world’s second worst after Chernobyl, that that the vagaries of wind and rain had scattered worrisome amounts of radioactive materials in unexpected patterns far outside the evacuation zone 12 miles around the stricken plant. But reports that substantial amounts of cesium had accumulated as far away as Tokyo have raised new concerns about how far the contamination had spread, possibly settling in areas where the government has not even considered looking.

.....

In the following week, however, radioactivity in the air and water dropped rapidly. Most in the city put aside their jitters, some openly scornful of those — mostly foreigners — who had fled Tokyo in the early days of the disaster.

But not everyone was convinced. Some Tokyo residents bought dosimeters. The Tokyo citizens’ group, the Radiation Defense Project, which grew out of a Facebook discussion page, decided to be more proactive. In consultation with the Yokohama-based Isotope Research Institute, members collected soil samples from near their own homes and submitted them for testing. 

​....

​Of the 132 areas tested, 22 were above 37,000 becquerels per square meter, the level at which zones were considered contaminated at Chernobyl.

....

I believe that the technology exists - and is in use - that can locate and  monitor all of the radiation hot spots in the world from satellites in orbit..

There are far fewer nuclear secrets than people think. Even Sweden - which carefully monitors radiation levels all over Europe and publishes the results could do this (and probably does).

One of my first jobs 38 years ago was building pocket Geiger Counters about the size of a cell phone today.

Thanks for the tip.

I wonder if it available to the general public?   People in Japan seem (for good reason) worried.  

In other reactor news, Armenia is still using a reactor built in the 1970's (Soviet era) for 40% of its power.  A new one is in the works, but there seem to be a lot of difficulties and phasing out the old one (Metsamor) is being delayed.  It is a pressurized water-cooled reactor (not graphite moderated like Chernobyl), but it is getting rather old.

But new ones are very expensive to build, although Russia is committed to build a new one.

http://www.rferl.org/content/russia_armenia_nuclear_power_plant_metsamor...

Fukushima clean-up problems

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577008192502423920.html?mod=djemPJ_t

Here in this city of 332,500 nearly 40 miles from the crippled reactors, local volunteers regularly hose down sidewalks where radiation readings are high, even though that could spread contamination into sewage systems. "Everybody is groping in the dark," says Hiroto Nishimaki, a 48-year-old executive of a gardening company near here....

Japan's struggle to come up with a cleanup plan has exposed a critical shortcoming: weak central decision making. Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, a lack of clear leadership on the issue, combined with bureaucratic divisions, has slowed the government's response and diluted accountability.

In the crucial early days after the tsunami knocked out power to cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. argued over who was in charge of containing the escalating disaster. Officials delayed the evacuation of residents in hot spots, despite information that radiation levels were high. They didn't distribute iodine pills to protect against thyroid cancer, despite calls from some experts to do so. They insisted that meat and vegetables produced around the nuclear facilities were safe, although they didn't adequately test for radiation.

How Japan fares in cleaning up the radioactive contamination will determine, in part, the extent of any long-term damage. The longer Japan waits to take action, the greater the chances that radioactive materials will spread through wind or rain and get into water and food supplies. Radioactive cesium, which experts say can stick around for as long as 300 years, has a tendency to bind to earth and be carried by silt in water. Earlier in October, Japan detected the highest radiation levels yet outside of Fukushima prefecture in a community 125 miles from the plant, raising new fears about the extent of contamination...

From The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/world/devastation-at-japan-site-seen-u...

For a photo, look back to Oct 13, 2011 in this thread.

November 12, 2011

Devastation at Japan Site, Seen Up Close

By MARTIN FACKLER