Beltane's Faustian Bargains

Beltane Fountain. Image Source: Osgrid Gallery.

April 30 is Walpurgis Night. It is the eve of the May Day honouring of St. Walburga, a West Saxon princess by birth, and an 8th century English abbess. In the mid-700s, she traveled to Francia (to what is now Bavaria, Germany) with other English missionaries, to convert the Germans - who were still pagans at the time - to Christianity. In that work, she supported her famous uncle, St. Boniface, and her two brothers, St. Willibald and St. Winibald.  Dark Dorset describes how the celebration of Saint Walburga overlaps with the older pagan May 1 spring festival of Beltane:

[H]er feast day also coincided with a much older pagan festival of Beltane ... [which] marked the beginning of summer. The eve of Beltane 30th April - 1st May became ... known as Walpurgisnacht, perhaps originally in an attempt to Christianise the festival. Like Halloween, it was also the night in which spirits wandered and witches favoured, as it was an auspicious time for holding their midnight sabbats and for conjuring spells. The most famous of all sabbats held on Walpurgisnacht was supposed to take place on the summit of the Brocken in the Harz Mountains of Germany as mentioned in Goethe's Faust [which you can read in German and English here, and watch here].

In Europe, the night of April 30 became a spring Hallowe'en, when witches and sorcerers held fertility rites around bonfires in wild areas. In earlier times, it was the time when livestock were driven out to pasture after a long winter, and charms were uttered over the animals as they ventured out into the wilds to protect them from harm. In the New World, Walpurgis Night is associated with the dark occult, including the establishment of the Church of Satan in 1966 in San Francisco, California.

Thus, these two days, April 30 and May 1, centre on a moment of pagan-Christian ambiguity, a grey area between seasons and between evil and good, freedom and security, old and new. The sense is of turn-over, confronting the very last of winter's deaths and tests, and putting them behind to be open to spring growth. Dark Dorset summarizes these tensions:

On Walpurgisnacht it was customary for local folk to ring the bells of the church at night, cutting sprigs of blossom from the May bush (Hawthorn) and hung outside or inside the house as deterrent of witchcraft. The burning of Need-Fires and life size straw effigies of men or women which were made prior to burning and cursed with ill-health and ill-luck of the old year. Creating lots of noise by banging on drums, wood or firing of shotguns were all considered effective ways of ridding the area of witchcraft, evil spirits and dark forces. The very name St. Walburga (or Walpurgis, Waltpurde, Gauburge, Vaubourg, Falbourg, as known in other parts of Europe) and her image were also used as protective charms against witchcraft, plague, famine and storms.

In the first part of his great tragedy Faust, published in 1808, Goethe included a scene set on Walpurgis Night:

Now to the Brocken the witches ride;
The stubble is gold and the corn is green;
There is the carnival crew to be seen,
And Squire Urianus will come to preside.
So over the valleys our company floats,
With witches a-farting on stinking old goats.

Goethe's Faust explored the problems that symbolically arise around Walpurgis Night. His famous work principally concerned man's attempt to control the natural environment through scientific investigation and linear understanding, and the points at which faith and magic overtake that rational effort. Goethe's story describes Faust as a scholar, or alchemist, who makes a bargain with the devil to attain limitless knowledge. Faust's quest for infinite understanding automatically forces moral questions about how that knowledge might be exploited. Goethe insists: limitless knowledge can only be mitigated, and finally attained, by a leap of faith.

Image Source: Business Insider.

In the new Millennium, the moral dimension of limitless information, knowledge and technology is a huge problem. There are no St. Walburgas and St. Bonifaces standing now at the confluence of the environment and human knowledge of the environment. You may encounter many devils at the crossroads between environment and technology these days. For example, this week, Business Insider reported on a paper given last weekend at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting, which concluded that one third of babies in the USA are using smart phones and tablets before they can walk and talk; and toddlers under the age of one use smart devices for at least one hour per day.

Then there was a report that the radioactive forest around Chernobyl in the Ukraine was set on fire in an act of arson this week. This woodland, once called Wormwood Forest, is now famously called the 'Red Forest' because radioactivity turned the trees a red colour after the 1986 nuclear accident. It is a place of twisted genetic life and the undead, where dead trees don't decay because the insects and microbes which contribute to the life cycle are not functioning properly. As for this week's fire, a spokesperson for Greenpeace Russia remarked:

"A very large, catastrophic forest fire is taking place in a 30-km zone around the Chernobyl power plant. We estimate the real area of the fire to be 10,000 hectares; this is based on satellite images."

Why would anyone start a fire to threaten the crippled power plant (already facing troubles around construction of its new sarcophagus), let alone a fire that would carry radioactive fallout on the wind? The arson coincided with the 29th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April, which irradiated all of Europe, with debated effects.

It was in that spirit that The Smithsonian asked its American readers in March 2014, Do You Live within 50 Miles of a Nuclear Power Plant? Given the "extremely unlikely event of a meltdown," the article suggested you listen to emergency announcements from local officials. Alternatively, it hinted gently that you can just go straight to "evacuate" and listen to the announcements from further away. The Smithsonian recommended Esri's disaster response maps, including the American nuclear power plant proximity map. Canadian plants are here and UK nuclear energy sites are here. While you check the map of nuclear power plants in France, you might also want to read the series of baffling reports about unidentified remote-controlled drones spotted flying around French nuclear plants over the past year. A full list of nuclear profiles, including mining and plant construction, worldwide, is here. Germany is the only major power to face the music and seriously reconsider the dangers of nuclear energy and cut back on it, post-Fukushima, despite huge financial losses. One German blog rails against "lessons not learned" in the UK and elsewhere from the disaster in Japan. It may be costly to step back from nuclear power, but those costs are nothing compared to the cost of clean-up; TEPCO's compensation costs for the Fukushima disaster were 34 billion euros just for the year 2011.

1st time "Shape-changing" robot entering Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 PCV. Information obtained from 14 of 18 checkpoints.A big step towards decontamination of Fukushima Daiichi NPS.
Posted by Tokyo Electric Power Company, Incorporated (TEPCO) on Monday, April 13, 2015

Video Source: Facebook.

First look inside (10 April 2015), Fukushima Daiichi, Reactor #1. Video Source: Youtube.

The biggest April reports along these lines came from Fukushima Complex One, Japan, where two robots were sent into Reactor 1 at the power plant about a week apart to find out what is going on in there. Hopes were high that robots could help decontamination work. But the machines died almost immediately due to very high radiation, sending officials "back to the drawing board." The first robot died within three hours, but not before sending back creepy pictures of the plant's interior. A second robot, sent in on 15 April, also died, but transmitted photos of the floor glowing a weird green. It also photographed about 2.8 metres of water pooled at the bottom of the containment vessel. Reactor 1 is possibly the site of China Syndrome melt-throughs and melt-outs, and is so dangerous that no human can go near the area, much less enter the building.

But what happens in a China Syndrome scenario? Is it toxic seepage as the molten coriums sink into the ground and catastrophically contaminate groundwater? It could be that a strange black dirt blanketing Tokyo and environs from 2012 through 2014 was material (plutonium, uranium-236 and curium) from the missing Fukushima cores. Some 2014 studies, discussed below, identified fragments of the cores out in the Pacific.

Economic Undertow explains what a China Syndrome means (let alone, three or more), with pictures, here:

That fission products are being detected indicates the core beneath reactor 2 is in a concentrated mass. What matters is whether the cores can or will become super-critical causing an explosion. ...

Super-criticality is an issue of time: as nuclei split energetically, the tendency is for the atoms to fly away from each other. The material separates and the reactions cease. The problem emerges when there is no place for the atoms to go. Chain reactions can then propagate for generation after generation with an accompanying energy buildup until the bonds of mass and inertia represented by the ground … are overcome.

A high energy reaction of many generations would cause a substantial nuclear explosion. Critical components would be: material of sufficient mass, this material confined by incompressible material (sandy soil), weight of the core and the plug above it pressing the core against the neutron reflector. More than fifty generations of chain reactions would cause a multi-kiloton explosion beneath the reactor. ...

A powerful explosion would propagate a shock wave that would travel through the ground and compress other cores that might have burnt their way into the ground. This compression would cause even more powerful nuclear explosions. ...

The approximate largest fission nuclear test was @ 500 kilotons (Operation Ivy King, 1952). A Fukushima explosion would certainly be less powerful. The Ivy King ‘gadget’ was dangerously massive and inherently super-critical (k = 2) while the Fukushima fuel is inherently sub-critical. ...

There are over a thousand tons of nuclear material in the reactors and spent fuel pools. A multi-kiloton detonation would destroy the reactors leaving an ocean-filled crater in place of the plant. ... [N]uclear reactors along with the cores and spent fuel would become part of the fallout cloud. ... The shut-down Reactors Five and Six at the Dai-ichi complex would be destroyed, their cores would melt into the ground setting a repeat of the super-criticality process a few month’s afterward.

That assessment concludes that if a China Syndrome, or group of China Syndromes, occurred beneath Fukushima Daiichi and the cores explode, Japan will become uninhabitable. Others claim that this kind of analysis is wild and based on incorrect speculation.

"A generalized conception of what is [possibly] taking place beneath the Fukushima reactors, cores at very high temperatures burning their way into the ground." Image Source: Economic Undertow.

Chernobyl's remaining recovery officers have expressed grave concern regarding Japan's handling of Fukushima. In the 2006 documentary, The Battle of Chernobyl (which you can see here), Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of how his advisors originally told him that nuclear power was absolutely safe, so safe it would be like putting a samovar in Red Square, "like putting a tea kettle in Red Square." He later realized that his top scientists had underestimated the dangers, partly because Chernobyl's accident surpassed experience, partly because information in the USA and Russia had kept data on previous leaks secret. Once the accident occurred, Gorbachev grasped that information was not getting through the chaos, or was scattered, or not being shared. He ordered, in a fateful moment, that the KGB to go to Chernobyl, observe everything, and collect and report all information to him personally. This means that with these kinds of accidents, the scientific and engineering failure cannot be separated from its internal communications surveillance and public media problem. The 1986 May Day parade in Kiev was allowed to go ahead to avoid panic, despite the fact that the city was blanketed with deadly fallout; radioactive levels were 7,000 times higher than normal, although Pravda reported that the disaster had been dealt with. This media cover-up marked the "second phase" of the disaster, which persists even today; all footage of that May Day parade has disappeared from the Ukrainian National Archives.

As for other possibilities associated with a China Syndrome, that is, molten radioactive fuel melting through to the water table, for Gorbachev, this was absolutely unacceptable. It would have destroyed the Pripyat and Dneiper Rivers and the Black Sea (as opposed to dire pollution of these water systems, which did happen and is still the case). Gorbachev shook his head and shrugged with total resigned rejection (here): impossible. But again, it was potential supercriticality that was most frightening; this could have resulted in a second explosion which would have leveled Minsk, and rendered Europe uninhabitable. There were trains ready to completely evacuate the capitals Minsk and Kiev, as well as surrounding towns. This possible outcome of the China Syndrome was combated successfully at Chernobyl, quoted at Economic Undertow:

"We were afraid, because it could have caused another explosion. it was terrifying. Scientists came and took readings. They were very worried. They were afraid the critical temperature would be reached and it would set off a second explosion that would have been a terrible tragedy," Gen. Nikolai Antochkin USSR Air Force.

The cement slab below the reactor core is heating up and in danger of cracking. The magma is threatening to seep through. The water the firemen poured during the first hours of the disaster has pooled below the slab. If the radioactive magma makes contact with the water it could set off a second explosion even more devastating than the first.

The country’s top experts are called into action. Vassili Nesterenko was one of them, At the time, he was working on improving the Soviet Union’s intercontinental nuclear missiles.

“If the heat managed to crack the cement slab only fourteen hundred kilograms of uranium and graphite mixture would have needed to hit the water to set off a new explosion.” 

The ensuing chain-reaction would set off an explosion comparable to a gigantic atomic bomb.

“Our experts studied the possibility and concluded that the explosion would have had the force from three- to five megatons …” said Nesterenko."

Soviet physicists, engineers and workers did everything in their power to prevent this unthinkable result: "It is thanks to these men that the worst was avoided, a second explosion, ten times more powerful than Hiroshima, which would have wiped out half of Europe. This was kept secret for twenty years by the Soviets and the west alike."

A man-on-the-street analysis of China Syndrome at Fukushima mixes apocalyptic fears, ancient myths and conspiracy theories about end of the world and CERN. A Youtuber remarks: "Anyone bought tickets for the Japan Olympics !!! LOL!!! No thanks!" Someone else calls the 2020 Olympics, "The Glow Games." Video Source: Youtube.

The staff of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) admit that cleaning up the mess is "very complex." They have remarked that decommissioning the plant is beyond our current technology; the chief officer of Fukushima Daichi acknowledges that he has "no idea how it will be developed." It is expected that it will be 200 years before we create the necessary technology to clean up the mess. At present, there is no clear plan in place to stop continual pollution of Japan and the Pacific, only short-term stop-gaps.

It is hard to imagine the environmental impact, much less what will happen if there is another major earthquake. In the third week of April 2015, a mid-level Japanese earthquake saw radiation levels spike. On 24 April 2015, the South China Morning Post reported that a hotspot had been found in a children's playground in Tokyo, where radiation levels were 480 microsieverts (or 0.48 millisieverts) per hour. That is 2,000 times the normal radiation background level; you can see the basis for that calculation here. If one were to imagine a child playing there, say, one hour per day, on 200 days over a year, the child's total annual dose just from the park would be 96,000 microsieverts. 100,000 microsieverts per year is considered the lowest dose that can be correlated to increased cancer risk (the same dose experienced all at once would result in immediate death). To understand more about radiation levels, go here and here. The Tokyo park in question was built two years after the Fukushima crisis.

Economic Undertow figures that Japan's government has decided that the technological and technical challenges of Fukushima cannot be solved, so the whole matter has to be treated as a media problem: "This is typical of the ‘modern’ approach that insists that problems of physics are subject to public relations." In late 2013, a bill was proposed in Japan to prohibit discussion of the disaster by treating it as a state secret. Despite public protests by thousands of people, who feared that the secrets bill would turn journalists into terrorists, the bill was passed into law in December. The US government supported this. Meanwhile, Forbes contributed to the competing cultures of truth around the debate on nuclear power (it is pro-nuclear industry) by claiming that scaring the Japanese about Fukushima is "criminal," and a form of "terrorism."

But it is hard to label concerned consumers this way. There are efforts to keep track of the impact on food, air and water - as on this site. It is impossible to find systematic, reliable, official results. Japan has presented a protocol for testing and importation of food affected by Fukushima. Most people do not understand the official data that are reported, let alone the data that are circulated by people with Geiger counters in their kitchens. In 2011, immediately in the wake of the accident, the EU raised cesium safety levels for food. There are reports that Fukushima-prefecture-sourced food could be exported to the UK, and already has turned up in Thailand and China. Japan's neighbour, South Korea, has taken and continues to take a dim view of all this, such that Japan has asked the World Trade Organization to intervene and force South Korea to lift a ban on Japanese fish. You can see WTO statements on Fukushima here. Australia relaxed its radiation assessment protocols in the matter of importation of potentially affected food (see here, here and here).

April 2015: Millions of velella, jellyfish that live on the surface of the ocean, are washing up on the western coast of North America, from Big Sur California to Ocean Shores, Washington, USA. A citizen website tracks sightings of jellyfish beachings and mass deaths here. Images Source: Michael Watson via GrindTV.

Velella jellyfish, washed up on the beach at Ocean Shores, Washington, USA (17 April 2015). Video Source: Youtube.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency stopped testing foods for Fukushima signature fallout in 2012. Government test results for fallout in milk in British Columbia ceased in 2012. The blog, Vancouver Food Radiation Monitoring orders tests for Fukushima fallout in imported products as well as Canadian local foods. Between 2011 and 2013, activists and bloggers accused Health Canada of covering up signs of Fukushima fallout across the country. In 2012, Canadian rainwater was found to have dangerous levels of radioactive iodine:

The Green Party of Canada said despite public concern over fallout from the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Health Canada failed to report higher than normal radioactive iodine levels in rainwater. The Greens have been calling for Canada to increase transparency around possible radioactive contamination in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“We were worried that this important information would not reach the public and unfortunately, it looks as if we were right,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich Gulf Islands in a written press release.

It has now been revealed that data were not released from a Calgary Health Canada monitoring station detecting levels of radioactive iodine in rainwater well above the Canadian guideline for drinking water.

This isotope was known to be released by the nuclear accident and also showed up in tests in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Ottawa. Lower levels of contamination resulted in a don't-drink-rainwater advisory in Virginia [USA].

In 2013, The Georgia Strait tried to project future cancer cases in the USA and Canada due to contamination of fish caught off the west coast of North America. Testing in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia found hot cesium traces from Japan in spring 2014. Radioactive material has now arrived in ocean water off the Pacific coast of North America.

Godzilla vs Mothra (2011) © WoGzilla. Image Source: deviantART.

Unfortunately, the anti-global-warming lobby is pro-nuclear, because nuclear energy is seen as a green alternative to carbon, despite Fukushima. The result is a political Mothra versus Godzilla showdown between competing environmental PR ideologies. The left-wing global warming proponents and the right-wing-libertarian anti-nuke activists depart from reality together, mesmerized by the ups and downs of their conflictual narrative. Since the information out there is either unknown or unknowable, unrevealed, semi-hidden, not understood, or not available, what is happening at Fukushima becomes a crazy mythology of competing discourses.


Science Made Public: Fukushima Radiation

Caption on above source for plutonium from Fukushima cores found in ocean: "The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plants (NPPs) are known to be an unprecedented accidental source of 137Cs, 134Cs and other volatile radionuclides to the ocean. Much less is known however about the extent of input of refractory radionuclides such as plutonium to the environment. Limited available data from land soils and vegetation, suggest at least some atmospheric delivery of particulate Pu … In 2011, in surface ocean waters, we found ratios 240Pu/239Pu >0.3, which implies a component of Fukushima Pu had been delivered to the ocean." Presentation at 2014 Barcelona conference on radioecology and Fukushima's impact on the environment: K. Buesseler, E. Black, and S. Pike of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; T. Kenna of Lamont-Doherty Earth Obseratory; P. Masqué of Autonomous University of Barcelona (Sept 12, 2014)." Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

On 7-12 September 2014, an International Conference on Radioecology and Environmental Radioactivity met in Barcelona, Spain. Over 400 papers spanned radioecological studies around the world (for example, there was a paper on "Radioactivity in French bottled waters" and another, "Improving the knowledge of environment around French nuclear facilities for better dose assessment and post-accidental management"); Fukushima-related papers reveal the limits of modeling and research methodologies, the limits of our ability to understand how this accident affects the environment; but it shows what kind of serious studies are being done:

• The Work of IAEA on Assessment and Management of Radioactive Releases to the Environment
• EFFECTS OF CHRONIC EXPOSURE TO IONISING RADIATION IN THE PACIFIC OYSTER CRASSOSTREA GIGAS
• FIELD STUDIES ON LONG TERM ECOSYSTEM CONSEQUENCES OF IONISING RADIATION AND CHEMICAL POLLUTANTS (EANOR PROJECT)
• BIOMASS BURNING AND POLONIUM -210 IN THE ATMOSPHERE: A REVIEW
• A state and problem in 137Cs contamination in the marine biota along the Pacific coast of eastern Japan derived from the dynamic biological model simulation after the Fukushima accident
• Mobility of radiocaesium in boreal forest ecosystems: Influence of precipitation chemistry
• PLUTONIUM ISOTOPES IN THE OCEAN OFF JAPAN AFTER FUKUSHIMA
• PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERN ON FUKUSHIMA RADIATION RISKS IN KOREA AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES
• NEW IAEA GUIDELINES ON ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDIATION
• THE IMPACT OF LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE ON HUMANS AND ENVIRONMENT THE NEXT 100 THOUSANDS YEARS
• ACCUMULATION OF PLUTONIUM IN MAMMALIAN WILDLIFE TISSUES: COMPARISON OF RECENT DATA WITH THE ICRP DISTRIBUTION MODEL
• COMPARISON OF RAINBOW TROUT PHANTOMS FOR ESTIMATION OF WHOLE BODY AND ORGAN RADIATION DOSE RATES FROM UPTAKE OF IODINE-131 IN FRESHWATER SYSTEMS
• A mechanistic approach to link biological effects of radionuclides from molecules to populations in wildlife species
• ADVANCES IN ENVIRONMENTAL RADIATION PROTECTION: RE-THINKING ANIMAL-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION MODELLING FOR WILDLIFE DOSE ASSESSMENT
• LATE HEALTH EFFECTS OF CHRONIC RADIATION EXPOSURE OF BONE MARROW
• The Lemna minor growth inhibition test as basis to evaluate radiation or radionuclide-induced effects on freshwater plants
• INCREASED VIABILITY AND RESILIENCE OF HAEMOLYMPH CELLS IN BLUE MUSSELS FOLLOWING PRE-TREATMENT WITH ACUTE HIGH-DOSE GAMMA IRRADIATION
• Dynamic modelling of radionuclide uptake by marine biota: application to Fukushima assessment
• NEW APPROACH FOR THE MODELLING OF RADIOCESIUM IN PELAGIC FOOD CHAIN IN THE NORTHWESTERN PACIFIC AFTER THE FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT ACCIDENT
• Modelling of Radionuclides Transfer and Ambient Dose Rates in Fukushima Forest Ecosystems
• COMPARATIVE MODELING ANALYSES OF CS-137 FATE IN THE RIVERS IMPACTED BY CHERNOBYL AND FUKUSHIMA ACCIDENTS
• On the validation of an Eulerian model with the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) accident. Global and local results for Europe and Japan
• APPLICATION OF SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS ON A RADIONUCLIDES TRANSFER MODEL IN THE ENVIRONMENT DESCRIBING WEEDS CONTAMINATION IN FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, USING MORRIS METHOD AND SOBOL’ INDICES
• GENE EXPRESSION ANALYSIS IN RICE PLANTS AFTER EXTERNAL RADIATION EXPOSURE IN IITATE VILLAGE
• MONITORING AUSTRALIA’S NORTHERN COASTLINE IN ADVANCE OF SIGNS FROM FUKUSHIMA
• Vertical and horizontal distribution of radiocesium around trees in forest soil of deciduous forest, Fukushima, Japan
• DOSE RECONSTRUCTION FOR BIRDS SPECIES EXPOSED TO IONIZING RADIATIONS HIGHLIGHTS RISK FOR SPECIES REPRODUCING IN THE FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE
• Evaluation of Cost and Effectiveness of Decontamination Scenarios on External Radiation Exposure in Fukushima
• MOBILITY AND BIOAVAILABILITY OF RADIOCESIUM OF ACCIDENTAL ORIGIN: LOOKING AT FUKUSHIMA FROM CHERNOBYL PERSPECTIVE
• Continuous decline of background activity concentrations of 3H, 90Sr and 137Cs in hydrosphere
• Ecosystem monitoring on dispersion and export dynamics of 137Cs deposited on the forested area in Fukushima after the nuclear power stations accident in March 2011
• CAN INTER-CULTIVAR VARIATION IN CAESIUM AND STRONTIUM ACCUMULATION BY FORAGE GRASSES BE USED TO REDUCE CONTAMINATION OF COWS’ MILK IN RADIOLOGICALLY CONTAMINATED AREAS?
• HOW DOES THE MASS MEDIA REPORT AND INTERPRET RADIATION DATA? THE RESULTS OF MEDIA CONTENT ANALYSIS
• Semipalatinsk test site: Parameters of radionuclide transfer to livestock and poultry products under actual radioactive contamination
• 137Cs and 40K partitioning in the system soil-plant under different ecological conditions
• The Uptake and Storage of Caesium and Strontium by Spring Wheat – A Modelling Study Based on a Field Experiment
• EFFECTS IN PLANT POPULATIONS RESULTING FROM CHRONIC RADIATION EXPOSURE
• Assessment of reproductive capacity of seeds sampled from natural populations of plants from a territory contaminated with radionuclides and heavy metals
• Radio-ecological researches in the Sea of Japan and northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean after accident on the Japanese nuclear power plant "Fukushima-1": the content of plutonium isotopes and strontium-90 in sea water
• RADIOCESIUM IN ARCTIC BELUGA AND CARIBOU BEFORE AND AFTER THE FUKUSHIMA ACCIDENT OF 2011
• RADIOCESIUM DISTRIBUTION ON SEA SEDIMENT AND IN BENTHIC ORGANISMS IN THE NORTH-EAST JAPAN COAST

Warm ocean water versus Fukushima pollution: cause of sea lion deaths? Video Source: Youtube.

Video Source: Youtube.

Video Source: NBC Los Angeles.

The latest story to explain recent mass die-offs of marine animals in the Pacific (reports: here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) is a warm water blob theory due to global warming and climate change, not Fukushima radioactive waste being continually dumped into the ocean. Anti-nuke conspiracy theorists greet marine death, especially millions of sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America, and the unusual arrival of many Great White sharks off the coast of Los Angeles, with apocalyptic anxiety. This month, The New Yorker blandly dismissed these fears, while puzzling over Pacific marine animal deaths:

Every biologist I spoke with who is researching mass-mortality events said that many wildlife die-offs today really could be signals of serious problems with the ecological fundamentals of the planet. Last year, a team of scientists found that sea-star wasting disease is caused by a virus-size organism (and therefore probably a virus). Given that similar, though lesser, outbreaks have occurred in the past, the current epizootic could be perfectly natural, nothing more than a particularly dangerous strain of a virus. Yet sea stars are known to be maritime canaries-in-the-coal-mine: “They’re always the first ones to go,” Raimondi said. Radiation from Japan may have been ruled out as the epizootic’s catalyst, but a long list of other big-picture environmental stressors are under investigation for possibly having made the sea stars more susceptible to disease, among them temperature spikes (which may be related to climate change), ocean acidification, pollution, or some combination of the above or other pressures.

Similarly, sympathetic pieces on suffering Pacific fishermen play down Fukushima's effects. To dismiss the environmental impact of Fukushima is morally wrong. In order to defend a 'higher' moral imperative in the global-warming argument, some environmentalists are politically supporting the nuclear industry to combat climate change. They should rethink this dull-witted nuclear/carbon binary they have constructed. In the nuclear industry, power plants and nuclear weapons design and development go hand-in-hand, and pollution of the environment comes with the territory, as do nuclear threats in international strategic crises in relation to carbon energy industries. Nuclear accidents, because they are so dangerous and difficult for the public and experts to understand, already lend themselves to lies and myth-making. But to deny the actual dangerousness of the whole nuclear enterprise as a lie or myth? It is hard to imagine a more Faustian bargain on the eve of Beltane.

Japanese manga Attack on Titan started in 2009, before the Fukushima disaster. The story concerns deadly god-like giants who invade humans' protective walled enclaves, but it is hard not to see the cultural impact of the 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster in the official film trailer (29 April 2015). Video Source: Youtube.

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