Date: 27 June 2012, 11:53 AEST
In its report, TEPCO denies ever hiding information, blames the government for confusion and delays, and rejects suggestions it ever downplayed the seriousness of the meltdowns. (Credit: Reuters) |
...
Read the rest here
In its report, TEPCO denies ever hiding information, blames the government for confusion and delays, and rejects suggestions it ever downplayed the seriousness of the meltdowns. (Credit: Reuters) |
Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s (Tepco) Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma Town, Fukushima Prefecture (AFP Photo / Tomohiro Ohsumi) |
As far as what’s been going on in Michigan this past week, here is what I can prove so far.The only item I would take issue with is 4. as we do have conflicting information from Radiation Network. As per Tim Flanegan who runs Radiation Network, the experienced operator whose station reported the 7K CPM (counts per minute) Geiger counter reading is positive his computer software and not the Geiger counter itself was responsible for misreporting the high 7K CPM reading. Also the same Geiger counter is confirmed to have fed in to both Radiation Network and Black Cat Systems, which would give the false impression that two different stations in the same area corroborated elevated radiation. See 6/15/2012 Radiation Network Alerts Show They are POSITIVE South Bend, IN was a FALSE Detection for details.
1. There was a huge explosion that rocked hundreds of square miles of North East Michigan last Wednesday. Not only have scores of people posted about their experience on Facebook, but Terry Kins, the Undersheriff of Alpena County, gave me his own account face to face.
2. The Undersheriff said local law enforcement is at a loss to explain the origin of the explosion. Deputies were dispatched to investigate, but no source was ever found. I’ve spoken to every state and federal government agency that might have the slightest oversight of this issue, from N.O.A.A. and the US Geological Survey, to the State Police; but they have all told me that they have no idea what could have caused the blast.
3. The local news media has not said a single word about this explosion. One would think that an unexplained blast that rocked hundreds of square miles might be a subject of interest for reporters in a town where the biggest events to happen all year are the Brown Trout and Potato Festivals; but there has not been a peep from any of them.
4. Roughly an hour and 45 minutes after the explosion here in Alpena, a radiation spike was recorded at three separate facilities simultaneously along the Michigan and Indiana border. Normal background radiation at those stations is 5 to 6 Counts Per Minute, but these brief spikes peaked at over 7 THOUSAND Counts Per Minute; and then the instruments fell silent.
5. The EPA quickly took down the reading, but a quick thinking internet user was able to grab a screenshot first. The EPA blamed a “glitch” in the instruments, but I find it difficult to believe that instrument packs from three different networks – two privately owned and one government-run - failed simultaneously with the same glitch. In addition, a police officer from Chicago also reported a radiation spike on the instruments at the police lab there. So that is FOUR reputable sources that recorded a radiation spike last Wednesday.
6. There have been insane amounts of military activity in Michigan over the past week. According to one witness I spoke with at the Alpena County Courthouse last Wednesday, a flight of Apache gunships came in off of Lake Huron heading west at the time of the blast we heard here in Northeast Michigan. Down below near the Indiana border, Apache gunships, Black Hawks, Chinooks, A-10 Thunderbolts, and AC-130 Spectre Gunships have been photographed in the skies.
7. While not proof of anything sinister in itself, it is interesting to note that Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota is currently running a “Nuclear Containment Drill,” and a fleet of Department of Homeland Security Nuclear Emergency Response HazMat trucks has been reported to have left its normal campus where the vehicles have been parked, immobile, for years.
8. The military doesn’t seem to care about the concerns of the residents in Michigan. A message was left on my cell phone by the Alpena CRTC’s executive assistant denying any knowledge of the source of the blast. These people are supposed to be in charge of our national security, and the best answer they can come up with is “It wasn’t us?”
9. When I tried to get that statement on video, I was arrested the second I stepped on to the base. If I was just some nosy busybody, I could understand that; but I have credentials going back almost a quarter of a century. I’ve interviewed Congressmen, Senators, Governors, Presidential candidates. During Desert Storm, I was responsible for reporting from Peterson Air Force Base, the US Space Command, the 4th ID out of Ft. Carson, and NORAD for KVOR and the CBS Radio Network.
If I can interview spokesmen at those bases during a time of war the question has to be asked: Why the stonewalling now, in peacetime, at this tiny little base tucked away in the back woods of Northern Michigan?
1st report - http://youtu.be/TJO3zdXXhTY
Update - http://youtu.be/_VvFFXBmtgo
BP
[...]For the older reports of the South Bend, Indiana reading see:
Postscript: 6/16/12, 10:50 A.M: - Radiation Alert from Indiana
You may notice that the South Bend, Indiana station that triggered the high Alert on June 6th is back online. He plans to operate his station only while he is there to attend it, and has taken interim steps to improve the integrity of his system until he can build a dedicated setup just for the purpose of this radiation monitoring. A few new facts:
I myself have limited knowledge in electronics, but this station operator is very experienced, and putting all of the above facts together, along with the makeup of his system, which involved a series of UPS backups in combination with GFCI outlet and serial connections, his best judgment is that a ground loop had developed and triggered the high radiation levels showing on the softwares that fed the radiation networks - a fluke in his particular hardware combination.
There was no lightning storm at his location that evening. Confirmed that his monitoring station was feeding both the RadiationNetwork and the Black Cat Systems network simultaneously, using Virtual Serial Port Emulation software, which means there was no corroborating reading at the identical location from a different system, because the Black Cat reading was from the same Geiger counter. As stated before, the Black Cat system uses a different unit of radiation measurement, and there is also a lag time built into their reporting. Even though the RadiationNetwork had disabled his connection, the operator's station continued to run locally, and he found after awakening that the Geiger counter itself was showing normal readings as indicated by the occasional frequency of its blinking red light! It was the computer and software only that were registering high radiation levels. The Geiger counter was being supplied by A/C, not battery power, and it is the station operator's strong opinion that had the counter been running on a battery during the time of the incident, the alert would never have occurred.
In conclusion, the station operator has worked diligently in troubleshooting the problem, and has taken interim and permanent steps to build strong integrity into his monitoring system. He has been fully cooperative and responsive since the alert, and he has my full support. He wishes to reiterate his deep apology for the concern his false alert caused.
For our part, we at the Radiation Network need a faster reacting system to end false alerts sooner, but only after we have reasonably determined that the alert is in fact false. The genuine alerts stay - in keeping with our function as an early warning system.
One final note: Some media reports of this incident seemingly confused these two:
Big difference in many ways. You might review my assessment of "Radiation Monitoring by Government vs. Private Citizen", the 3/29/11 Update from the Archive2 page linked above.
Radiation Network - that's us, a privately owned and operated, citizen-based monitoring system, versus... RadNet, a Federal Government radiation monitoring system operated by the EPA.
[...]
Source code was shared between the teams making the malware attacks, researchers said |
Iran's 'Younus' (Photo: Reuters) |
Iran's Russian-built Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Photo By Majid Asgaripour/AFP/Mehr News/File 8 hrs ago |
Rep. Buck McKeon |
Dees Illustration |
Also note from the highlight above that some of the Geiger counters in radiationnetwork.com also feed in to blackcatsystems.com.
Update: 6/7/12, 7:45 A.M: - False Alert: The alert level reading last evening appears to be a false alert from an equipment malfunction. Here is the station's report:
"out of control readings on the GeigerGraph screen from about 11:30pm local time that occurred while sleeping. My apologies to all. I have no idea what caused this. Shut down GeigerGraph and restarted. Readings from the Geiger were in the normal range (the Geiger operates on A/C). All cable connections are tight and not loose. Am speculating between the GFI and USB Adapter and some sort of voltage spikes. The uninterruptable power supply UPS had lost power and had died - a tripped GFI. I am not going to leave the system running while not at home until I can determine and fix the problem."
By the way, a handful of stations on the Radiation Network feed simultaneously to the Black Cat Systems network, which explains why a high reading was showing on their network at the same time. But Black Cat works in uR/hr instead of CPM, so their radiation level was lower because of the conversion factor between units of measurement.
Update: 6/6/12, 11:55 P.M. - Very high reading in South Bend, IN station this evening. Reason unknown. Station unresponsive to contact at this late hour. Since this same station has triggered the Alert system before, which Alerts may have been false, and because his current readings do not appear to be corroborated by nearby stations, we have disabled his station for the time being. Will report back when we know more.
Here is the video from ichicax4 with screen grabs of radiationnetwork.com and a record of her call to the NRC. This took place at approximately 1AM per the video and readings as high as 7000CPM were observed from South Bend, Indiana monitoring station:
Update: 6/6/12, 11:55 P.M. - Very high reading in South Bend, IN station this evening. Reason unknown. Station unresponsive to contact at this late hour. Since this same station has triggered the Alert system before, which Alerts may have been false, and because his current readings do not appear to be corroborated by nearby stations, we have disabled his station for the time being. Will report back when we know more.
Bloomberg News |
When fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster began appearing last Spring in U.S. air, rainwater, drinking water, and milk, many U.S. media outlets ignored the story.
It was a difficult story to cover. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency was releasing raw data erratically, sometimes late on Friday
afternoons, and reporters either had to possess radiation expertise or
take a crash course in picocuries, millisieverts, MCLs and DILs.
... Read the rest here |