Another clip from the ongoing disaster. It just keeps going like an Energizer Bunny on steroids. Hollywood and the networks cannot be missing the possibilities here. They’ll probably make a once a week drama like CSI except with radiation. They could do a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry style movie where the incompetent nuclear plant operator keeps telling the rogue, burnt out nuclear safety worker, “You can’t do that, it will cause a panic!” In ten years after the tragedy has faded in the public mind, they could do a sit-com about families uprooted living in a gymnasium without any privacy explaing in humorous ways how they never really liked the dog they left behind. It will be a kind of Threes Company – Poseidon Adventure clone.

This thing definitely has Hollywood potential, after all, Married with Children ran for thirteen years and this thing is supposed to run twenty.

James Pilant

I’m not surprised. The radiation released was too high to have been caused otherwise. I’m curious but I don’t want to find out what would happen in a full melt down. We can extrapolate from the current events that it would be a cataclysm. We didn’t miss it by much.

James Pilant

 DAVID McNEILL – “SCIENTISTS SAY the fight to bring Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant under control could take three months or more, even if not hampered by further earthquakes. The announcement comes after another day of aftershocks, including one with an epicentre about 25km from the Fukushima plant. The head of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, Takashi Sawada, said yesterday that fuel rods in reactors 1 and 3 have melted and settled at the … Read More

via MidnightWatchers Blogspot

It is increasingly clear that pet safety has to be part of any disaster planning. These pet owners thought they would only be gone for a day. But now they live in gymnasiums and schools – and they are not ever going home. They thought their pets would be alright for a day but that day has become eternity.

James Pilant

One of the realities of nuclear power. But don’t worry, soon a pundit will explain to you in a new editorial that a nuclear disaster only inflicts radiation equivalent to a few chest x-rays and we should be very comfortable with the industry.

It’s a funny thing. I don’t even like cattle. On the other hand, I never contemplated starving them to death either.

James Pilant

I originally was very cautious about Arnie Gunderson and his once every two days video posting discussing the developments at the Fukushima nuclear plants. But as time has gone by, I have been pleased with his reporting. I have seen nothing that has contradicted any factual assertions on his posts. So, I’m pleased to recommend his latest report.

James Pilant

It seems every couple of days I get to write about some new problem at the Fukushima plants. It’s like a Keystone Kops movie without the laughs. I can’t help but believe that the nuclear industry is suffering a massive public relations failure not just due to the initial disaster but more because of the constant pounding repetition of disaster after disaster, problem after problem. It is a richlydeserved pain. We were assured by the industry that these things could not happen. Those statements were lies.

It is obvious we have some outrage here. It is also obvious that is entirely merited by the utilities and government of Japan.

The author makes good points and as you are probably aware I am a great fan of outrage.

James Pilant

Evacuees demand better/more from Japanese nuclear plant operator Everyday nuclear reactors inch closer to total meltdown. Now rated as being equal to the 1986 Russian, Chernobyl reactor melt down. Rated as a 7 the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant plant reactor. Operator of the stricken facility appears to be … Read More

via Pobept’s World View

I’ve got several newscasts up on this. But this is a different take on the raised level of alert because it features some interviews with local Japanese.

James Pilant

The situation at the Fukushima plant continues to deteriorate. I do not believe that this situation is going to improve in the near future. At first, there were new catastrophes almost daily. Now, they are weekly but no less severe. Most reports of these disasters have disappeared from the newscasts. The 24 hour news cycle demands new material, fresh scandal. Kirstie Alley falls down while dancing. American Idol may have trouble with its voting system. Yet, international catastrophe and the dangers of nuclear meltdown are still important and still a matter of history. These scandals, these one day news stories, these departures from good taste and sound judgment, plague our public discourse and turn our population into thrill seeking drones. This is neither conducive to democracy or to our hopes of a developing civilization.

James Pilant

This is one of the saddest videos I have ever seen. There is film here of a community inside the mandatory evacuation zone. Probably no human beings will ever live there again.

Will any arguments of low death tolls and exposures equivalent to chest x-rays prevail against this vision of land deadly to human life.

What is the cost of thousands of square miles of land that can no longer produce – no factories, no farms, no homes, – nothing.

James Pilant

(This clip is originally from CNN)