High radioactive detections in land, sea and air are met with media derision and mass denial
News & Analysis
- Readings from multiple private and government sources over past three years indicate Fukushima radiation in the US
- YouTube Fukushima sleuths doing what government won’t trigger massive denial and mockery from LA Times, Al Jazeera America, Heal the Bay, others
- Sources for media meltdown deniers, such as oceanographer Kim Martini, demonstrate exuberant ignorance about radiation and health
- New report finds evidence of Fukushima radioactivity in Santa Cruz seawater
- Soil in California’s Humboldt County, famed for marijuana production, tests high for Fukushima radiation as well
Multiple hazardous readings of suspected Fukushima radiation have been detected in air, rain, snow, and surf in California and across the nation. The high radioactivity findings came during tests of air across America, Pacific Ocean surf south of San Francisco and Santa Cruz, rain in Death Valley and nearby Las Vegas, and in the soil of California’s marijuana-growing heartland in Humboldt County.
The radioactivity has been detected by EnviroReporter.com, its associated radiation stations, the Environmental Protection Agency’s RadNet monitoring posts, and YouTube users across the globe. Some of the hottest tests were videotaped and seen by thousands including one going viral and reaching over 770,000 YouTube viewers. The hot Humboldt dirt was discovered by an outspoken amateur Fukushima radiation sleuth.
The alarming detections show that the threat from the ongoing Fukushima Japan triple meltdowns may be arriving in force. The worst single environmental disaster in history is the most logical source for the myriad positive tests for radioactivity based on EnviroReporter.com‘s extensive investigation of the meltdowns that has resulted in over 5,436 samples and assessments across the country.
Many of those assessments have been done by Dale Ramicone who operates Radiation Station Glendale California which has a 24/7 live feed showing radiation readings along with a graph to put it in perspective.
“You know, this massive release, is so huge that it’s probably everywhere now,” Ramicone says. “I suspect that all you have to do is take samples, all up and down the coast, anywhere, and you will find contamination. It will be on the beach, in the salt spray, in the mussels and clams, the fish, everything that grows bones, shells, or exoskeletons. It may take some sensitive equipment to find it, but it’s there, I have no doubt.”
Ramicone is right. The Sea of Fuku Goo has arrived by land, sea and air just as EnviroReporter.com predicted not long after the poorly situated reactors were slammed by a 30-foot high tsunami after the Great Japan Earthquake March 11, 2011. Yet even with the destruction of much of the nuclear complex being three years ago today, the disaster has steadily worsened.
As anti-nuker Harvey Wasserman’s recent 50 Reasons to Fear the Worst from Fukushima details, events past and current illuminate the nuclear folly and foresee a grim future where Fukushima is concerned.
Indeed, nuclear reactor disasters of this sort get worse as time goes by, continually pumping poisonous radiation into the environment. No one even knows where the molten reactor cores are, located let alone what to do about them. All the while, 441 tons of highly radioactive water sluices into the Pacific every day.
News of Japan’s ongoing nuclear nightmare has become harder to come by since its lower house of Parliament passed a draconian Japanese censorship law passed in late November, 2013. Journalists who publish “inappropriately” or “wrongfully” obtained information on Fukushima face up to five years in prison. Inappropriate reporting, attempted leaks, solicitation and complicity are also illegal according to the new state secrecy act.
No need to censor most U.S. reporters to keep the lid on Fukushima. American media has reacted to these latest radiation revelations by issuing a barrage of poorly written screeds designed to discredit the people doing the actual detection work abandoned by the government in late 2011. Even once-august media outlets like the Los Angeles Times and newer media concerns like Al Jazeera America have been long on hyperbole but short on facts. This third year anniversary of the worst nuclear reactor meltdowns ever has also given us the worst ever government and media coverage of an environmental disaster.
Information obtained by EnviroReporter.com shows that the Fukushima radiation is already impacting California in ways that may crash the fishing industry, destroy coastal real estate values, poison the Golden State’s famed pot and irradiate the San Joaquin Valley breadbasket of the nation.
Does that make Fukushima the “perfect crime?”
Stephan Timmermans’s 2006 book Postmortem: how medical examiners explain suspicious deaths posits that a crime can’t be perfect if it is indeed identified as a crime. So far, Fukushima fits this description because most of the victims, human and animal alike, don’t even know what has been happening since March 11, 2011. So it’s perfect in this regard.
Amazingly, a small group of people exists who do know what’s happening and have the ability to document evidence of it and share it on a grand scale. They are armed with nuclear radiation monitors and cell phone cameras.
The challenge is daunting for these nuclear Paul Reveres who aim to warn the country of imminent disaster. The third anniversary of Fukushima reveals that the forces allayed against them are almost insurmountable.
Almost.
Flying the Fissile Skies
Recent high air, rain and snow radiation findings were detected in California, Michigan, Illinois and across nine states in a commercial jet since late last year. EnviroReporter.com has discovered that the storm that brought highly radioactive rain to Death Valley in November also slammed Las Vegas with radioactive precipitation.
Radiation readings by EnviroReporter.com revealed that flying the skies over America remains abundantly radioactive. On a December 23 flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, this reporter measured radiation at 922.1 Counts Per Minute (CPM) using an Inspector Alert. This reading was taken at the cruising altitude of 37,000 feet and was nearly 24 times the background measured in the terminal at Los Angeles International Airport.
According to documentation obtained by EnviroReporter.com, the California Highway Patrol considers any material or situation over three times background to be the triggering level for a hazardous materials incident. Of course, at high altitudes the radiation is elevated as the atmosphere thins. Nevertheless, this reporter wore a face mask to reduce radiation inhalation caused by continuously falling out and being re-suspended radiation from the triple meltdowns.
The radiation detected en route to Chicago was lower than the readings detected in late 2011 on a flight along the same flight path nine months after the meltdowns had begun. That December 23, 2011 reading at 38,000 feet registered 1,238 CPM.
Similarly, the radiation readings of southwest Michigan snow were lower this year. A December 26, 2012 kilo of snow radiated 24.1 percent above background compared to measurements of 15.3 percent and 19.6 percent above background in late December 2013 snowfalls.
Chicago snowfall measured 43.0 percent above background January 5, 2014 prior to departing back to LAX the next day before an Arctic cold front brought temperatures down to 26 degrees below zero Fahrenheit January 7.
Passing over Monument Valley at 30,000 feet, this reporter’s Inspector Alert absorbed 625 CPM, over triple what the guide says is normal. S.E. International’s basics were written prior to Fukushima nuclear fiasco.
Death Valley’s Fukushima Rains
The Inspector Alert nuclear radiation monitor used on this winter testing sojourn was donated to EnviroReporter.com by International Medcom, the Sebastopol California-based manufacturer. The company provided the instrument after seeing the shocking readings detected in Death Valley in November where rain radiation readings in the national park came in dozens of times background over several days.
Unlike the latest Michigan snow readings somewhat above background, Death Valley snow from the November 2013 storm Boreas registered at background or below. Inexplicably, the same Boreas rain lit up the Inspector Alert with a startling 26.7 times background November 22, 2013 at Badwater and 31.5 times normal at Furnace Creek, the national park’s headquarters.
These rains weren’t blazing hot because of naturally occurring radon progeny. That had been washed out long before the readings took place in the multi-day rain event. Rain tested the next day at Stovepipe Wells in the center of the park at a whopping 29.7 times background in a test performed by EnviroReporter.com entirely on camera to fully explain the testing technique and to verify the result for any skeptical viewers.
The first inkling that Fukushima radiation was raining down on Death Valley came two days before when the first Stovepipe Wells sampling came in at 7.0 times normal. During this exceptional three-day storm, nearby Las Vegas was hit with the same Boreas rain. High radiation activity during this period was evident at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency radiation station in Las Vegas.
Coast to Coast
An EnviroReporter.com analysis reveals that there have been massive beta radiation surges in cities from coast to coast since last autumn. The levels of air radiation have been many times what is considered relatively safe. Even dry regions of the country got a stiff dose not normally associated with those areas.
With no other obvious sources than the WIPP radiation leaks in southwest New Mexico, the Fukushima meltdowns again come to the fore as the prime suspect. There is no doubt that this unnatural and unexplained radiation is here and it is hot. In some cases, really hot.
EPA’s RadNet monitors have been organized for easy use by EnviroReporter.com readers because accessing EPA’s beta data can be cumbersome. The result is RadNet Air Monitoring.
@zach: Apparently you’re a student from St Michael’s Grammar School, an Australian co-educational independent day school located in St Kilda, Victoria that costs tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend. I’m afraid that while that tony education has taught you how to construct poorly-punctuated sentences, it also did not impart the critical thinking skill set that would have enabled you to see that the “perfect crime” that this article exposes had nothing to do with your prattle here. Give it another read.
A perfect crime? why would japan do this to try and harm a few americans when it killed thousands of their own, cost them hundreds of billions of dollars and even made large parts of their own country uninhabitable due to radiation?
I think you have to be pretty big headed to believe that japan decided to do that to attempt to harm a couple of americans in such a far fetched way.
Start having some sympathy for the Japanese who had their lives ripped apart by the disaster.
@All: The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works sent EnviroReporter.com the following regarding progress, or shockingly no progress, done to make more safe America’s nuclear power plants and infrastructure. Having just finished Fukushima – The Perfect Crime? will probably have our readers not very surprised at what the outstanding, yet sadly outgoing, junior Senator from California has to say:
Opening Statement of Ranking Member Barbara Boxer
EPW Hearing on “Oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”
October 7, 2015
(Remarks as prepared for delivery)
Today, the Environment and Public Works Committee is holding an oversight hearing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). I remain concerned about the slow pace at which the NRC is implementing measures intended to protect American nuclear plants in the wake of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns that occurred in Japan in March 2011.
It has been more than four years since the Fukushima disaster, and Japan continues to face challenges in its cleanup efforts.
Only one of Japan’s 43 nuclear reactors has been turned back on since the Fukushima disaster. A recent analysis by Reuters found that of the other 42 operable nuclear reactors in Japan, only seven are likely to be turned on in the next few years. Reuters also found that “nine reactors are unlikely to ever restart and that the fate of the remaining 26 looks uncertain.”
For the last four years, I have been saying that in order to earn the confidence of the public, we must learn from the Fukushima disaster and do everything we can to avoid similar disasters here in the U.S.
Following the last NRC oversight hearing in April, I met with Chairman Burns to discuss the commission’s progress on implementation of the Fukushima Near-Term Task Force recommendations. I appreciate the letter he sent me after our meeting outlining the status of the commission’s work and anticipated timelines for completing each of the recommendations.
While I recognize that progress has been made on some of the recommendations of the Post-Fukushima Task Force, I am frustrated and disappointed with the overall slow pace. Not one of the 12 task force recommendations has been fully implemented. And many of the recommendations still have no timeline for action.
I am also concerned with some of the decisions the NRC is making on whether to implement important safety enhancements.
In particular, I am troubled that the Commission overruled staff safety recommendations and voted not to move forward with multiple safety improvements. For example, by a 3 to 1 vote, the Commission decided to remove a requirement that nuclear plants have procedures in place for dealing with severe accidents, like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. These procedures ensure plans are in place when multiple failures of safety equipment occur or other unanticipated events take place.
This requirement was identified in the aftermath of Fukushima, but after years of work on this and other proposals, the Commission simply chose not to move forward. That is unacceptable.
The Commission does not appear to be doing all it can to live up to the NRC’s mission “to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while protecting people and the environment.”
We need to look no further than the two nuclear power plants in my home state. At California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, NRC has repeatedly declared the plant safe even after learning of a strong earthquake fault near the plant.
At the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Diego County, which has been closed permanently, the NRC recently issued exemptions to emergency planning requirements. The plant’s operator will no longer be required to maintain detailed plans for the evacuation, sheltering, and medical treatment of people residing in the 10-mile zone around the plant.
I am aware that the NRC is planning a rulemaking on decommissioning issues, but rubber stamping exemptions the way the Commission has is the wrong approach. I believe it is wrong to relax emergency planning requirements with thousands of tons of extremely radioactive spent fuel remaining at the site. The millions of people living in close proximity to the plant deserve better.
The NRC owes it to the citizens of California and the nation to make safety the highest priority and I urge all the Commissioners to refocus your efforts to do just that.
I look forward to discussing these issues with you today.
It should be mandatory that dispensaries test ‘medicinal’ marijuana for the presence of radiation now-along with pesticides, fungicides, etc. Wise up folks and quit smoking it.
@Eric: While it may be understandable to advocate such an extreme act, that would be terrorism which is unacceptable. Plus, there is no way to diminish the tons of goo at Fukushima by exploding the place sky high – radiation can’t be vaporized away, blown apart or scattered enough to be safe. It would make the massive mess even more unmanageable and deadly to flora and fauna on the land and in the sea.
Nuke the reactors. It would do less harm to the environment and oceans
Very good investigative factual journalism.
With regard to mainstream media’s coverage, it appears OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD is exerting it’s full force on this grave issue. For those who are not familiar, OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD was covertly implemented by the CIA soon after the agency was formed after WWII, for the purpose of infiltrating mainstream media and using it as a propaganda tool to promote their many covert agendas. Even though it was ordered by Congress to cease it during the late 1970s, it obviously was not done, and no oversight exists. Sensitive subjects which hit close to home, such as real investigations into murdered presidents, govt involvement in drug traffic, 911 and other false flag operations that factually implicate the true holders of power, will trigger the CIA’s mocking propaganda machine into high gear. And like paid stooges, the mainstream media falls in line with a synchronized goose step. And innocent victims be damned.
Anti-nuclear legend Harvey Wasserman has Michael Collins on as his guest to discuss Fukushima – The Perfect Crime? in this fast-paced show with a host who really knows his radiation. Collins describes radiation discovered along the Pacific coast in Pacifica and Santa Cruz, California, Fukushima-tainted dirt lab tested from the heart of marijuana growing country in Humboldt County, extremely radioactive rain in Death Valley, high radiation found through US EPA RadNet monitors coast to coast, meltdown deniers successfully pulling the wool over the Los Angeles Times, news aggregators and “alternative” news outlets, and the now-infamous Ventura County Reporter cover art for one of Collins’s 2012 Fukushima stories that shows how clueless the media, and Americans in general, are about the ongoing triple meltdowns that began in Fukushima Japan March 11, 2011. Not to be missed rarity.
This IS the perfect crime, because our stooge governments are allowing TEPCO to get away with it.
Specifically, I like how the Japanese Government has taken to explaining the skyrocketing thyroid cancer rates in Fukushima Prefecture — “it’s because we’re testing more thoroughly, not because there are more cancers.”
Yeah, right. If the Japanese Gov’t wasn’t lying its ass off, it would repeat the Fukushima study somewhere out of the immediate fallout zone, and then compare. Please don’t bet on that happening.
You can read some of the sordid details here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/09/fukushima-children-debate-thyroid-cancer-japan-disaster-nuclear-radiation
It’s about time for a bunch of nuke plant employees to show up and mansplain to us that “hardly any radiation was released, nukes are safe, even YOU eat bananas, and …” because we’re all just supposed to believe all the nuke industry’s bullshit.
There is an amazingly concerted effort going on to trivialize Fukushima. As recently as this week, the Japanese government was explaining away the skyrocketing childhood thyroid cancer rates in Fukushima Prefecture as “we’re doing a better job detecting, that’s all.”
“Ignore this situation at your peril.”
That’s a phrase I’ve heard far too often in my life, as to a variety of economic and public health disasters. With respect to radiation from Fukushima reaching the United States, the warning is appropriate.
In 1986, few Americans had ever heard of Ukraine, when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion and meltdown occurred. Whether out of Soviet egotism and pride, or out of fear of intense public anger and its consequences, the highest levels of the Soviet government made decisions to work in near silence (in terms of what the Soviet public knew) to attempt to staunch the continued atmospheric impacts of the explosion and meltdown. Moscow and Leningrad were far from the accident site, the bureaucrats and decision makers’ children were thought to be relatively safe, and catastrophic decisions were made. The residents of Pripyat, the town nearest the reactor, were not evacuated until 2 days after the explosion. Ukrainians living within 20 miles of the reactor were not evacuated until a month later, while Belarussians living in that 20 mile zone were not evacuated at all. The rest of the Soviet population was not aggressively educated on how best to protect themselves from becoming chronically ill from the variety of sources contaminated by the fall out from the burning reactor.
Literally hundreds of thousands of “Soviet citizens” of no consequence, Belarussians living to the north, Russians living in Bryansk Oblast of Russia to the northeast, and Ukrainians living to the east, west and south of Chernobyl were exposed first to airborne radiation from the explosion and fire, then to radiation in their drinking water drawn from the region’s surface waters, and then to radiation in the meat they ate and milk they drank because animal forage had been radioactively contaminated. Belarussians and Ukrainians were also extensively exposed from radioactive contamination of locally grown grain which went into their every day foods. The Soviet government found it inconvenient to try to prevent the public from unknowingly eating radioactively contaminated food (a situation which continues in Belarus today with particular intensity).
Over the succeeding years, the people living in those regions saw a dramatic increase in cancer and related health problems to such an extent that the people now call it “Chornobyl disease”. Birth defects substantially increased. Children died with more frequency than in other eastern European countries. Individual medical doctors in southwest Russia, Belarus and Ukraine began to undertake independent investigations of the effects of radiation on the health of the people. Those physicians wrote about their findings in medical journals published in the Russian and Ukrainian languages. In autopsies of the region’s dead children their organs were examined and Caesium-137 was found in its highest accumulation in the endocrine glands, in particular the thyroid, the adrenals and the pancreas. High levels were also found in the heart, the thymus and the spleen. The average person-on-the-street in the region now takes for granted the fact that their countrymen are still chronically sick and dying from the radiation.
The Belarussian, Ukrainian and southwest Russians have historically been chronically fatalistic, knowing that “Life stinks then you die” (a translation of a sentiment expressed in both languages.) As a consequence, the public at large in those countries knows and understands the “consequences of the Chernobyl explosion and fire” from practical experience and they soldier on.
Yet there were at least 7 non-Soviet organizations with “western” orientation which conducted public health studies in the region. All of those studies were met with criticism that Chernobyl related illnesses and deaths were under-reported or over-reported. Each study seemed directed toward a particular political goal.
In 2007 three physicians who lived in southwest Russia and Belarus put together of collection of articles on the medical effects of the Chernobyl explosion which had been written in the Russian language by practicing physicians and medical school professors. The book was simply titled “Chornobyl”.
By 2009, the New York Academy of Sciences had sponsored the publication of an English translation of that Russian language book, called “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”. The publication was little noticed until 2011, when its contents began to be discussed as a result of the Fukushima meltdowns and radioactivity releases. A shit storm about the English translation publication ensued, with some “western” scientists and statisticians vociferously attacking the report out of a belief that eastern Europeans are incapable of conducting “credible” medical and environmental research…a charge which Russian and Ukrainian scientists and physicians find incredibly insulting, given those countries universities’ reputation for producing brilliant academics. In the 2 years following the Fukushima meltdowns the English-language translation of “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment” became very difficult to obtain, in essence a suppressed or black listed document.
In contrast with Belarussians, Ukrainians and southwest Russians’ of the consequences of the catastrophe for their countries populations, Americans are completely in the dark about the consequences of Fukushima. Americans have not realized that public health consequences from the Fukushima meltdowns have already begun to occur, and as a consequence Americans are not trying to improve their chances at maintaining their pre-Fukushima life expectancy or that of their children. They are far more “in the dark” than the citizens of their historical enemy, the Soviet Union.
On all manner of issues, the Obama Administration is accused of “strictly controlling the message”. The progressive media, largely pro-Democratic Party, figuratively stick their heads in the sand on the consequences of Fukushima. No one is discussing how to better the non-interventionist outcome which was and is seen in Belarus, Ukraine and southwestern Russia.
The Republican/conservative media are supportive of economic powerhouses in the U.S., like the food and real estate industries as well as those in the medical industry who profit from widespread cancer treatment. The Republican/conservative media say nothing about the affects of the Fukushima meltdowns on people and the environment in America even when presented with the Obama Administration’s inaction and lack of candor as an opportunity for unfettered “slam journalism”.
Attacks are as-to-be-expected on journalists, scientists and citizens who try to discuss what is happening in the United States with respect to the Fukushima meltdowns. So confident of their silencing of the message, TEPCO’s American advisor Dale Klein* is now seriously talking about a program of perpetually dumping the region’s fresh water, now radioactively contaminated, into the Pacific, whether neighboring countries like it or not. The corporate, political and media elite have created an oligarchy of silence, laying down a fog of fatalism blinding the American people.
* http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/10/fukushima-operator-dump-contaminated-water-pacific
The radiation disaster in Fukushima has been and still is a cluster of lies that is allowing them to radiate the air and the Pacific Ocean and everything that lives in it and eats from it! TEPCO must be replaced with a group of international radiation and nuclear power plant experts to stop the leaking radiation from entering the Pacific Ocean and to clean up this ongoing disaster! The people at TEPCO that caused this disaster to happen by not securing the generators to higher ground after they were told to do so long before the earthquake hit and the people in the Japanese Government that allowed this to happen should be tried for crimes against humanity then put into prison! Now dozens of people are showing up with thyroid cancer and other cancers! Anyone that has been eating pacific ocean fish or sea food should think about doing a radiation detox.
Dang!
Amazingly well written. I am at a loss of words.
I read it twice and will probably read it again.
This one will be forwarded to my family and friends.
🙂 Good one, thanks.
“…more holes than a Fukushima reactor.”
– Michael Collins
Wow. Thank you for this. When I’ve mentioned, or made reference to the radiation contaminating here, people seem to ignore it or deny it. And some, appear to have the attitude of, we can’t do anything about it, so ignore it. I will be sharing this link.