Sarcasm Alley

So, it's possible the unthinkable is happening in the Great Tohoku-Kanto Earthquake and Nuclear Threat - as it's currently labeled by Japanese TV. Soon, the word ‘threat’ may be changed to ‘catastrophe’. Japan's Fukushima power plant very easily could become so radioactive it would be impossible to even get near it for any possible containment or further damage control. Jesus Christ, how can this happen? What sort of anger is it that drives us to see forethought as the enemy? Who is it that believes truth is optional?

The reactor at unit 4 was shut down at the time of the earthquake last Friday, meaning that crews had transferred all of the radioactive fuel from the reactor’s core to the pool. The building housing the pool was damaged when two nearby reactor buildings exploded Saturday and Monday.

"It’s unprecedented," said David Helwig, a retired nuclear engineer who spent 40 years working on boiling water nuclear reactors of the same design as those at Fukushima Daiichi. "That’s never happened before."

Left exposed to the air, the fuel rods will start to decay and release radioactivity into the air.

Severe structural damage is the only way the fuel pool could be emptied, Helwig said. The 50-foot-deep pools have no outlets at the bottom, thus preventing them from draining in case of an accident.

From what I'm understanding, we are reaching uncharted territory in terms of a nuclear crisis. No one knows exactly what will occur if the reactors have to be abandoned and are left to turn into a huge melting mass of a radioactive tumor infecting the Japanese coastline for decades.

The U.S. official says experts believe there is a rupture in two, maybe three of the six reactors at the Fukushima power plant, but as worrisome is the fact that spent fuel rods are now exposed to the air, which means that substances like cesium, which have a long half-life, could become airborne.

"That could be deadly for decades," the official said.

There is a growing concern around the world that a nuclear catastrophic disaster is in the works.

"There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen," European Union's energy commissioner Günther Oettinger said today, according to various reports. "Practically everything is out of control. I cannot exclude the worst in the hours and days to come."

Apparently Japan can be as stupid and corrupt as the United States when it comes to dealing with corporations. It is a private utility calling the shots on the recovery operation instead of the government commandeering the situation and saying to hell with your corporate interests and ass covering - which is exactly the behavior the utility is exhibiting. Someone needs to be cracking skulls over there and I mean NOW!

The utility has a history of deception and one gets the feeling they have one leg trying to contain the reactors and one leg trying to contain culpability. Dropping water bombs from helicopters is a complete joke, even my ignorant ass knows that. We often praise blind faith as a human virtue but when it's not justified it is the most destructive of traits imaginable. Critical thinking won't kill you, folks. Only a lack of it will.

And I can see the corporate overlords here scrambling in reaction to this. But not to get their act together but rather in how to escape potential responsibility and deflect the spotlight away from their own crimes against humanity. Instead of pulling your child off the freeway you merely think up good excuses for why you left him out there for when he gets run over. The thinking is that is better than admitting a mistake in the first place and once tragedy strikes you'll be in no condition to be accused.

We could have a silver lining to this partially engineered-by-man tragedy and use it as a wake up call for nuclear plants around the world. But there's no money in the sanctity of human life.

Chinese pollution, no help from Mother Nature required

It's not God damning us, it's us damning us. Who would have pictured America as permanently economically crippled while bled to death by endless wars ten years ago? And who cannot foresee the food riots coming in the following decade as our ever shrinking pie leaves more and more to fend for themselves without recourse? Things are not going to get better without our choosing it happen despite all the wishful thinking of our daily propaganda of how wonderful we are.

Don't turn your nose up at Japanese misery you blind fools with your foot in a bear trap ready to spring. I'm not seeing anyone exempt from the madness. The idea we even have to consider a decades long nuclear nightmare blowing radioactivity over Japan and her beloved island is beyond human reason. And this happened for what? They used a poorly designed reactor and containment system to enhance corporate profits? Really?

Ask yourself this: which would you rather have: mythical profits that exist only in your mind or your actual fucking life? Because that's the choice we're facing and I'm all out of sympathy.

Which is more important? This...