Shortsighted Grand Nuclear Ideas in the News

Nearly three years after a major earthquake, tsunami and nuclear radiation leak devastated coastal and inland areas of Japan's Fukushima prefecture, 175 miles north-east of Tokyo, Namie has become a silent town of ghosts and absent lives.

Namie's 21,000 residents remain evacuated because of continuing high radiation levels, the product of the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, six miles to the south. Homes, shops and streets are deserted except for the occasional police patrol or checkpoint.

  Guardian

Fukushima Update Website   Further Fukushima update

Almost three years after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami ravaged Japan’s east coast and set off the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, dislodged debris from the site is still washing up onto American shores. Yet while scientists have downplayed the possibility that the wreckage is contaminated with radiation, they are keeping their eyes peeled for hostile sea creatures hitching rides from across the Pacific.

  RT

Hostile, radiation-mutated monsters.

Downplaying the possibility of radiation-contaminated wreckage and turning our attention to “hostile sea creatures.” It just might work.

According to marine biologist Steve Rumrill, of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), two species discovered in the state were on the Global Invasive Species Database’s list of the world’s 100 worst invaders: Wakame, a seaweed native to Japan that began reproducing as soon as it arrived in America, and the Northern Pacific seastar, which he described as a voracious predator that could decimate local shellfish populations.

[...]

Scientists previously believed that native Japanese marine life could not survive the voyage across the Pacific Ocean, but the results have proven quite the opposite.

“We’ve been wrong on all our predictions so far,” Chapman said.

Well, that’s encouraging.

Britain’s Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site has told non-essential workers to stay home Friday due to the detection of abnormally high levels of radiation.

The radiation spike was detected by one of the monitors at the north end of the partially decommissioned site.

"Levels of radioactivity detected are above naturally occurring radiation but well below that which would call for any actions to be taken by the workforce on or off the site," Sellafield said in a statement.

  RT

Other than that they shouldn’t come to work.

UK Energy Ministry said it is in contact with Sellafield and sees no reason to believe that the incident is more serious than what the company says it is.

Because no company ever underplays its disasters.

Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said the source of the radiation could not be immediately established, but that actions were being taken in response to the incident.

Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site in Cumbria, northwest England, is currently undergoing decommission.

A Cold War legacy, Sellafield holds dozens of tons of plutonium waste from Britain’s nuclear weapons program. One of its buildings is dubbed "the most hazardous industrial building in western Europe."

Is that duct tape?

Update