Wednesday Paranoia

It happens every day at 2PM: Google alerts sends me the latest news from Fukushima. So I peer at it, ponder the improbable but apparently true fact that a disaster is unfolding before our blind eyes, and that life is obliviously going on. In the meantime, we are worried about Ebola! And here’s the latest news:

Tokyo Electric Power Company [TEPCO] says it has found high levels of radioactive cesium in groundwater in the compound. Officials at TEPCO say a recent typhoon may be the cause… TEPCO officials say water taken on Wednesday from a well had 460,000 becquerels of cesium per liter (Bq/l)… another well contained 424,000 becquerels. Officials say those levels are 800 to 900 times the previous peak.

Right—definite fodder for a blogger whittling away his Wednesday. So then I came to this:

What? Steel can be radioactive? But wait, there’s no time to worry about that because what in the world is happening to the horses in California? Why is their skin falling off?

But there’s not a moment to stress out about that, since there’s the pressing fact that ENEnews is reporting that “Radiation Levels have Surged Around Fukushima…100,000% of the Previous Record High…Officials Say They Don’t Know the Cause…Recent Typhoon May Be to Blame”

But before I concern myself about that, I really have to think about that weird cloud that appeared over the famed Venice Beach in California, and isn’t it strange that it produced thunder and lightening, since normally the ocean’s cooling effect prevents formation of lightening?

Then it was time to look in on Dr. Helen Caldicott, the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and what she is saying, which is that there’s a huge cover up in the United States, since the nuclear industry has bought Obama and Hillary as well.

Well, before I could digest all of that, there was this, from the Associated Press:

Craig Welch, July 24, 2014: Once-common marine birds disappearing from our coast [...] a significant ecological shift in our region — a major decline in once-abundant marine birds. [...] the number of everyday marine birds here has plummeted dramatically in recent decades. [...] several new studies now also link many dwindling marine bird populations to what they eat — especially herring, anchovies, sand lance [...] Some forage-fish species, such as herring, are a fraction of what they once were. [...] There’s certainly no shortage of crashes [...] “It’s one thing to have a rare species decline,” said Joe Gaydos, with the SeaDoc Society. “[...] We’re talking about big, common species, and a lot of them.” [...] it wasn’t clear whether this was a local or continental- scale problem, said Scott Wilson, a biologist with Environment Canada. It’s both: Up and down the West Coast, the winter breeding population [of Western grebes] is half what it was in 1975. [...] since 1970 [Puget Sound's biggest] herring stock has crashed, with more than 90 percent of the population all but gone. [...] some scientists believe the herring problem itself may be far worse than others acknowledge. [...] Wayne Landis, at Western Washington University [...] found that while Puget Sound herring used to live eight to 10 years, they now survive only to age 3 or 4. [...] “They don’t get. That old anymore,” he said. That could be the result of disease or toxic contamination or other changes [...] Usually after a bust, herring eventually recolonize, Landis said. The question now: Is this bust different [...] “Something’s happening on a big level,” [Gaydos] said. “But what is it?”

Indeed, what is it? Because I’m either supposed to stop eating hazelnuts—so says Dr. Caldicott, since hazelnuts come from Chernobyl-affected Turkey—or everything is just fine. That’s what the BBC says in an article titled, “Fukushima: Is Fear of Radiation the Real Killer?”

Right, but then it’s time to consider that a former mayor in the Fukushima prefecture is alleging that the kids are dying of thyroid cancer, and the government is covering it up. And it’s certainly true that TEPCO hasn’t exactly welcomed any help in solving what they themselves say could be a forty-year cleanup.

The real question is whether this is a matter for TEPCO at all: if I were living on the West Coast, seeing the marine birds die off and watching my horses lose the skins…well, I’d be howling for an international team to address the situation. But who’s working in the plant? According to The New York Times, it’s a motley group of homeless / drunk / mentally impaired guys picked up off the street and bused to the plant. Oh, and did I mention the mafia?

Any way you look at it, it’s a bizarre situation, made worse by a relative lack of openness. True, as you can see in the video below, they allowed the BBC in, but what the BBC found is even more frightening: nobody really knows what’s going on in key parts of the reactor, since nobody can get in to see. So they’re relying on an improvised boat with a camera to go about the core of the reactor, trying to figure out where the leaks are. And you can see it quite well: water is gushing into the core of the reactor.

As if that weren’t bad enough, my real worry is that North America—OK, the US and Canada—has discovered that it’s sitting on tremendous amounts of shale oil, so for the first time in decades, we’re starting to export oil. The problem? All of that oil needs to be released by fracking, at huge environmental cost, so what’s going to happen to all the alternative, clean energy sources that we should have been developing for the last fifty years? If oil drops down to 20$ a barrel, is a windmill going to look so attractive?

Well, we’ve been sharpening both sides of the sword for centuries, now: we’ve moved from sword to gun to bomb to nuclear warheads. And now, Dr. Caldicott raises the possibility that with the advent of artificial intelligence, computers could reproduce themselves and as well…

…start a nuclear war and annihilate the planet.

Why do I think they might do a better job of things?