Kyodo News reported on March 18, 2013 that a problem with electric power has occurred at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This caused spent fuel pool units 1, 3 and 4 to be without fresh water which is necessary for cooling. According to the Nuclear Regulation Authority the incident, so far, has not affected the ongoing water injection to No. 1 to 3 reactors which suffered core meltdowns in the early days of the March 2011 nuclear crisis. TEPCO said the nuclear fuel stored in the pools will remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water.
As reported in October 2012, ground under Fukushima Unit 4 is sinking. During an interview in late 2012, Mitsuhei Murata, the former Japanese Ambassador to both Switzerland and Senegal, explained that the ground beneath the plant’s Unit 4 is gradually sinking, and that the entire structure is very likely on the verge of complete collapse. Many scientists say if Unit 4 collapses, not only will Japan lie in ruin, but the entire world will also face serious damages, Mr. Murata said.
Though it is really unclear how the situation will develop any bad news coming from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant stirs the negative feelings to the max.
See live webcam of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant here.
What would happen in prolonged interruption of spent fuel pools cooling?
Spent fuel pools contain fuel rods that have been taken out of a reactor core. Because they are highly radioactive, they continue to generate heat and must be cooled for years.
They also contain large amounts of radioactive elements, which can be released into the atmosphere if there is a prolonged interruption of cooling and the water in the pool boils off.
The results of two studies in the August 15 issue of JAMA report on the psychological status of workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan several months after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, and the amount of internal radiation exposure among residents of a city north of the power plant that experienced a meltdown.
As reported in a Research Letter, Jun Shigemura, M.D., Ph.D., of the National Defense Medical College, Saitama, Japan, and colleagues examined the psychological status of Fukushima workers 2 to 3 months after the disaster for symptoms of general psychological distress, including posttraumatic stress response (PTSR). The study included all full-time workers from the Daiichi plant (n = 1,053; plant experienced meltdown) and Daini plant (n = 707; plant experienced damage but remained intact) in May and June 2011.
Using a self-report questionnaire, the researchers assessed sociodemographic characteristics and disaster-related experiences, including discrimination/slurs because the electric company that managed these plants was criticized for their disaster response and the workers have been targets of discrimination. Measures of general psychological distress included feeling nervous, hopeless, restless/fidgety, depressed, and worthless in the last 30 days.
Of 1,760 eligible workers, 1,495 (85 percent) participated (Daiichi: n = 885 [84 percent]; Daini: n = 610 [86 percent]). The authors found that compared with Daini workers, Daiichi workers were more often exposed to disaster-related stressors. Experiencing discrimination or slurs was not statistically significantly different between groups (14 percent vs. 11 percent). The researchers found that general psychological distress and PTSR were common in nuclear plant workers 2 to 3 months after the disaster.
“Daiichi workers had significantly higher rates of psychological distress (47 percent vs. 37 percent) and PTSR (30 percent vs. 19 percent). For both groups, discrimination or slurs were associated with high psychological distress and high PTSR. Other significant associations in both groups included tsunami evacuation and major property loss with psychological distress and pre-existing illness and major prop�erty loss with PTSR.”
Study Finds Low Levels of Radiation Exposure to Residents of City North of Meltdown In another Research Letter, Masaharu Tsubokura, M.D., of the University of Tokyo, and colleagues conducted a study to gauge the level of radiation exposure to residents of the city of Minamisoma, located 14 miles north of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. “Release of radioactive material into the air, water, and soil raised concern about internal radiation exposure and the long-term risk of cancer in nearby residents,” they write.
Many residents were evacuated after the meltdown, but by August 2011, approximately half had returned. A voluntary screening program for levels of cesium, known to be representative of total internal radiation exposure, was conducted between September 2011 and March 2012 for all residents ages 6 years or older.
Total cesium exposure was converted into committed effective dose (sievert, Sv). Common dose-limit recommendations for the public are 1 mSv or less. A total of 9,498 residents enrolled in the study, 24 percent of the registered population on August 15, 2011.
The sample consisted of 1,432 children and 8,066 adults. A total of 3,286 individuals (34.6 percent) had detectable levels of cesium, including 235 children (16.4 percent) and 3,051 adults (37.8 percent). Committed effective doses were less than 1 mSv in all but 1 resident (1.07 mSv).
“To our knowledge, this is the first report on internal exposure to cesium radiation after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant incident. In this sample, exposure levels were low in most adults and children tested and much lower than those reported in studies years after the Chernobyl incident. Even the highest levels of contamination observed are below the thresholds for the administration of Prussian blue [an antidote used in the treatment of cesium poisoning],” the authors write.
The researchers note that because this screening program started 6 months after the nuclear power plant disaster, higher exposure levels might have been detected earlier, and that it is not possible to ascertain whether the low levels of exposure were due to low ongoing exposure or decay from high exposure values.
“Because data were collected from volunteers, the results may not be representative of the entire population in contaminated areas. No case of acute health problems has been reported so far; however, assessments of the long-term effect of radiation requires ongoing monitoring of exposure and the health conditions of the affected communities.”
EMSC Hokkaido, Japan Region
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6.2-magnitude quake hits Papua New Guinea: USGS
SYDNEY: A 6.2-magnitude quake struck off Papua New Guinea early Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning was issued.
The quake hit at 02:15 am (16:15 GMT) 150 kilometres (93 miles) east of Rabaul, in Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain province and 885 kilometres northeast of the capital Port Moresby at a depth of 85 kilometres.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska – Alaska’s Cleveland volcano in the Aleutian Islands is continuing to erupt.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory said Friday that low-level eruptions continue to occur inside the volcano located on a remote, uninhabited island 940 miles southwest of Anchorage.
The volcano’s lava dome in the summit crater was destroyed during a short explosive eruption on Wednesday. The resulting ash cloud reached about 15,000 feet above sea level.
It was the third lava dome that has been destroyed by explosive events since the eruptions began in July 2011.
On the Tuesday broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” CNN meteorologist Alexandra Steele declared that tornadoes plowing through the Dallas-Fort Worth area were brought on by climate change.
Steele, formerly of The Weather Channel, also predicted that more extreme weather is on its way.
“It really is [such a strange spring],” Steele said. “That’s kind of the climate change we are seeing. You know, extremes are kind of ruling the roost and really what we are seeing, more become the norm.”
“CNN Newsroom” host Carol Costello said it made her “afraid” about what is in store for next spring.
“It might be unnaturally cold,” said Costello. Steele agreed that future weather would be less predictable.
“This global warming is really kind of a misnomer,” Steele said. “It’s global climate change. So the colds are colder and warms are warmer and severe is more severe.
At least 14 people died overnight into Thursday in Argentina following storms that saw strong winds cause damage across the capital region.
“Seven people died — six were crushed and one was electrocuted,” near Buenos Aires, local emergency coordinator Luciano Timerman told reporters.
Police also said three other people died in a neighborhood to the south of Buenos Aires when an illegally built home collapsed.
In the capital, a man died when the walls of his home collapsed, authorities also said in an initial report.
They later reported the death of another man crushed by the wall of a gas station abandoned in Florencio Varela to the south of Buenos Aires. A woman was killed after another wall fell on her.
In central-eastern Santa Fe province, a high tension cable snapped by the high winds killed a man, Timerman said.
Fukushima Daiichi Site: Cesium-137 is 85 times greater than at Chernobyl Accident
….In recent times, more information about the spent fuel situation at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site has become known. It is my understanding that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 304 assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231 irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4, which contain roughly 37 million curies (~1.4E+18 Becquerel) of long-lived radioactivity. The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.
The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters. Despite the enormous destruction cased at the Da–Ichi site, dry casks holding a smaller amount of spent fuel appear to be unscathed.
Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all, which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2 E+19 Bq) of long-lived radioactivity. About 134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).
It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet…..
“SAN ANTONIO – We’ve received a bunch of phone calls Monday about a ball of fire in the sky.
John Haley says that’s exactly what it looked like.
“It was like a fireball falling right out of the sky,” Haley told News 4 WOAI. “It was so bright! It was like a little piece of the sun falling with a big torch behind it.”
I spoke to our astronomer expert Bob Kelley with the Scobee Planetarium, and he explained that it was a phenomenon called “April Fireballs.”
Chunks of meteors enter and burn up in our atmosphere. The fireballs are brighter than a shooting star and can happen at any time of the day. For reasons astronomers don’t fully understand, they occur in early April.
San Antonians weren’t the only ones who saw the April Fireball Monday morning. Sightings were reported in New Braunfels, Kerrville, Floresville and other cities nearby.
“I can chalk that up on the old bucket list — I saw a meteorite during the day,” laughed Haley.”
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured imagery of a Red Planet dust devil on March 14, 2012. Different from a tornado, this phenomena sometimes occurs on clear days when the heated surface interacts with pockets of cool air above it.
Mexican plan for Gulf deepwater wells sparks new worries
Tim Johnson
MEXICO CITY — Two years after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, Mexico’s state oil company is about to test its hand at drilling at extraordinary depths in the Gulf of Mexico.
If all goes as planned, Petroleos de Mexico, known as Pemex, will deploy two state-of-the-art drilling platforms in May to an area just south of the maritime boundary with the United States. One rig will sink a well in 9,514 feet of water, while another will drill in 8,316 feet of water, then deeper into the substrata.
Pemex has no experience drilling at such depths. Mexico’s oil regulator is sounding alarm bells, saying the huge state oil concern is unprepared for a serious deepwater accident or spill. Critics say the company has sharply cut corners on insurance, remiss over potential sky-high liability.
Mexico’s plans come two years after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, the worst oil spill in U.S. history. On April 20, 2010, a semi-submersible rig that the British oil firm BP had contracted to drill a well known as Macondo exploded off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers and spewing 4.9 million barrels of oil in the nearly three months it took engineers to stop the spill.
BP has said the tab for the spill — including government fines, cleanup costs and compensation — could climb to $42 billion for the company and its contractors.
Pemex’s plans to sink even deeper offshore wells underscore Mexico’s pressing need to maintain sagging oil production — exports pay for one-third of government operating expenses — along with oil companies’ desire to leverage technology and drill at ever more challenging depths.
Carlos A. Morales, the chief of the Pemex exploration and production arm, which employs 50,000 people, voiced confidence that his company has to the ability to sink wells in ultra-deep water.
“Pemex is ready to undertake the challenge and to do it safely,” Morales said in an interview in his 41st-floor office at Pemex headquarters in this capital city.
“You have to bear one thing in mind,” he said. “Pemex is the biggest operator in the Gulf — including everyone — both in production and in the number of rigs we operate. We are operating more than 80 rigs offshore.”
Drug-Resistant Malaria Is Spreading, and It Could Be a Public Health Disaster
Artemisinin-resistant malaria parasites first emerged in Cambodia in 2006. Now researchers say the deadly bugs are quickly spreading.
Malaria remains one of the world’s great unnecessary killers. More than 650,000 people succumb to the disease each year — that’s more than one per minute — mostly in the poor nations of sub-Saharan Africa, but as deadly as malaria is, it doesn’t have to kill. Prevention and better treatment can stop the progression of the disease, and death tends to be a matter of extreme poverty.
Indeed, in recent years great progress has been made in controlling malaria, with deaths down 30% over the past decade. That’s thanks largely to more effective treatment regimens that make use of artemisinin, a plant-derived antimalarial drug originally developed in China. Artemisinin is the closest thing we have to a miracle drug for malaria.
That’s what makes the results of two studies out this week in the Lancet and Science so disturbing. Health officials have known for a while that some malaria parasites in the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia have begun to develop resistance to artemisinin, but they hoped the resistance wasn’t spreading. Now researchers in the region have shown that artemisinin is becoming dramatically less potent in malaria cases in western Thailand, and they know it’s due to growing drug resistance in the malaria parasites themselves. If resistance to artemisinin were to spread to sub-Saharan Africa, the result could be a “public health disaster,” in the words of lead Lancet author Standwell Nkhoma of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
GEOFON Off Coast Of Guerrero, Mexico
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Magnitude-4.9 earthquake jolts islands
No tsunami generated from Saturday morning
HONOLULU
Many people from the Big Island to Oahu felt a magnitude 4.9 earthquake Saturday morning.
The quake struck a little after 10:45 a.m., centered just west of Honomu in East Hawaii, at a depth of 27 miles.
There are no reports of major damage or injuries.
Scientists say the earthquake was too small to generate a tsunami and the weight of the Big Island settling is the likely cause.
Geologists at the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory say there have been no aftershocks so far, and there’s been no change in the ongoing eruption at Kilauea Volcano.
A magnitude 3.2 earthquake was registered in Libyan waters at 10.28am yesterday, and felt in Gozo.
According to the University of Malta Seismic Monitoring and Research Unit, its epicentre was 177km southwest of Malta. Other seismic activity was recorded in Crete, on Thursday.
The Italian website Meteoweb.eu, also reported the tremor, although the information it gave was different to that officially issued. It said the earthquake’s epicentre was in Gozo and that it had a magnitude of 2.9 on the Richter Scale.
According to the same website, the tremor was felt in Gozo. No damage was caused.
The last significant seismic activity in Malta, was recorded over the weekend of 23 and 24 April, last year.
A series of five earth tremors, with the first occurring at around midnight, were felt in various localities in Malta and people reported objects moving on the shelves.
The tremors had a magnitude of between 2.5 and 4.0.
The location of yesterday’s earthquake may be viewed on the website http://www.phys.um.edu.mt/seismic, where residents may also fill in the online questionnaire if they felt any shaking.
Tornadoes cause one death, damage in half dozen states
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Tornadoes touched down in a half-dozen states on Friday, killing one woman whose mobile home was flipped by a twister and causing damage to homes and businesses, authorities said.
The 60-year-old woman died in Jefferson County, Illinois, when a suspected tornado flipped her mobile home and blew it across a road into a farm field, said county coroner Eddie Joe Marks.
There was at least one other person injured in the county, located in the southern tip of Illinois.
“A young boy had just stepped into his home when the storm hit. He got away with minor scrapes and bruises but went to the hospital,” Marks said.
The tornadoes appeared to be smaller and touched down only briefly as compared to a deadly tornado outbreak in the region early this month, authorities said.
A few homes sustained damage from a suspected tornado in Fern Creek, Kentucky, a town southeast of Louisville, emergency management official Monica French said.
In Alabama, a suspected tornado damaged three homes and some chicken houses in the town of Troy, emergency management spokeswoman Yasamie August said.
Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri also had tornadoes touch down, with no reports of injuries.
“There have been a lot of tornado reports but they’ve all been brief touchdowns or rope-like tornadoes, not large tornadoes,” said Steve Weiss of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
Tornadoes have caused 55 U.S. deaths so far this year, most of them on February 29 and March 2 when swarms of tornadoes wreaked havoc across the Midwest and the South.
Tornadoes were blamed for 550 deaths in the United States last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the Weather Service.
The storm front bringing rain and severe weather to the nation’s midsection broke a spell of record-breaking, summer-like temperatures.
Among the southern Illinois towns in the severe weather zone that was pelted by hail on Friday was Harrisburg, where seven people were killed when a powerful tornado February 29 flattened part of the town.
(Reporting By Andrew Stern; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Greg McCune)
Moderate 5.1 earthquake rumbles along the outskirts of Santiago, Chile
by The Extinction Protocol
March 23, 2012 – CHILE – A moderate earthquake of 5.3 magnitude (5.1 USGS) on the Richter scale near Santiago on Saturday morning in the central area of the country, according to the Seismological Service of the University of Chile. The epicenter of the quake, which occurred at 4:28 am was located 43 kilometers northeast of the town of Casablanca, on the border regions of Valparaiso and Santiago, at a depth of 68.9 kilometers. It was in the capital and the fifth region where the earthquake was felt more strongly. According to reports received by the National Bureau of Emegencia (Onemi), the quake reached an intensity of V degrees on the Mercalli scale in Santiago, the Andes, Talagante, Tiltil, Valparaiso, Viña del Mar, Quintero, San Antonio, San Felipe, and German Village. V grades also recorded in Los Vilos, in the Coquimbo Region. In the Region of O’Higgins, meanwhile, the earthquake was felt with a force of IV degrees in Rancagua and III degrees on Christmas, Pichilemu, San Fernando and Santa Cruz. In the El Maule reached II degrees in Curicó and Order. It reached in the Fourth Region II degrees in La Serena. The Onemi received no reports of damage or injured as a result of the earthquake. –El Mostrador (translated)
PADUCAH, Ky. — Recent destructive storms in Kentucky may help the public be more aware of the potential threat of severe weather as spring begins.
National Weather Service meteorologist Christine Wielgos told The Paducah Sun ( http://bit.ly/FQpaa9) that bad storms make people more aware of risks posed by the weather.
She said she doesn’t believe frequent alerts about possible severe storms desensitize people.
“People are more aware of risks because of some bad storms happening here and in their backyards,” Wielgos said. “The storms’ intensity and frequency are increasing, and people know it.”
McCracken County emergency management director Paul Carter said he thought awareness of storm danger had increased in western Kentucky since a tornado hit in 2011 in nearby Joplin, Mo., and killed 160 people.
“There were lessons learned,” Carter said. “We try to stay off the sirens to avoid complacency. We want to make sure there is an acute threat before we start setting off the sirens around the county. So far, that has been very successful.”
Carter said bad weather is always a possibility – twisters were spotted last week in western McCracken County and there was widespread damage in 2007 when high winds from the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through the area.
He said when bad weather strikes, people should “use common sense. If there is a possibility of a bad storm, pay attention to all media and rely on warnings.”
Wielgos recommended that residents get weather radios and that will give them warnings for counties to the west. Storms most often move from west to east in the area, she said.
Brad Jackson, a Radio Shack manager at Kentucky Oaks Mall, says weather radios are selling better this year than they before spring last year.
“Any time there’s bad weather, weather radios become the No. 1 purchase,” Jackson said. “Maybe we’re selling more this year compared to last because last spring wasn’t as turbulent. We’re definitely selling more weather-related supplies like batteries, flashlights, car chargers for phones. People want to be safe, and after the ice storm two years ago, maybe more people are taking precautions.”
HENRYVILLE, Indiana: A string of violent storms from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes scratched away small towns and cut off rural communities as an early season tornado outbreak killed more than 30 people, and the death toll rose as daylight broke on Saturday’s search for survivors.
Massive thunderstorms, predicted by forecasters for days, threw off dozens of tornadoes, hitting the states of Kentucky and Indiana particularly hard. Twisters that crushed entire blocks of homes knocked out cellphones and landlines alike, ripped power lines from broken poles and tossed cars, school buses and tractor-trailers onto roadways made impassable by debris.
Weather that put millions of people at risk Friday killed 31, but both the scale of the devastation and the breadth of the storms made an immediate assessment of the havoc’s full extent all but impossible.
In Kentucky, the National Guard and state police headed out to search wreckage for an unknown number of missing. In Indiana, authorities searched dark county roads connecting rural communities that officials said “are completely gone.”
Susie Renner, 54, said she saw two tornadoes barreling down on the town of Henryville, Kentucky, within minutes of each other. The first was brown from being filled with debris; the second was black.
“I’m a storm chaser,” Renner said, “and I have never been this frightened before.”
Friday’s outbreak came two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South, and forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center had said the day would be one of a handful this year that warranted its highest risk level.
By 10 p.m., the weather service had issued 269 tornado warnings. Only 189 warnings were issued in all of February.
A total of 14 people were reported killed in Indiana. Tony Williams, owner of the Chelsea General Store in the town of Chelsea said a child and mother were huddled in a basement when the storm hit and sucked the 4-year-old out her hands. The mother survived, but her 70-year-old grandparents were upstairs; both died.
Two people also died further north in the town of Holton, where it appeared a tornado cut a diagonal swath down the town’s tiny main drag, demolishing a cinderblock gas station in one spot and leaving a tiny white church intact down the road. Officials also confirmed seven other deaths.
The death toll rose to at least 14 in Kentucky. In West Liberty, Stephen Burton heard the twister coming and pulled his 23-year-old daughter to safety, just before the tornado destroyed the second story of the family’s home.
“I just held onto her and I felt like I was getting sand-blasted on my back,” Burton said.
Kentucky State Police in Morehead said three people were dead in West Liberty and at least 75 were injured.
“All of the downtown area was just devastated,” he said. Samu said West Liberty’s hospital was damaged in the storm and some patients were being transferred to area hospitals.
Officials were having difficulty getting into the area to confirm the damage.
“We can’t even get into some of these counties,” said Kentucky Emergency Management spokesman Buddy Rogers. “The power is out, phones are out, roads are blocked and now it’s dark, which complicates things.”
A line of storms that moved through the Louisville area brought strong winds that caused damaged to homes and knocked out power to about 12,000 homes and businesses.
A line of storms that moved through the Louisville area brought strong winds that caused damaged to homes and knocked out power to about 12,000 homes and businesses.
The National Weather Service is investigating whether a tornado touched down Friday afternoon south of Louisville
Louisville Gas & Electric reported power out in multiple areas around Jefferson County.
Multiple television stations in Louisville showed damage to homes, including parts of roofs torn away, but officials reported no injuries.
Jefferson County Public Schools spokeswoman said students were delayed being dismissed while tornado warnings were in effect.
Oldham County elementary school students were being held at their schools.
The Shelby County schools released students 15 minutes late. The district said parents could expect students to arrive home 30 to 40 minutes late.
Solar Flares Likely Knocked Military Satellites Offline
Solar storms earlier this month may have caused military satellites to reboot
By Jason Koebler
Despite being made to withstand radiation emitted from solar flares, a storm caused by the sun earlier this month may have temporarily knocked American military satellites offline, according to General William Shelton, head of the Air Force’s Space Command.
The energy particles associated with two solar storms March 9 and 10 may have caused what are called “single event upsets” on military satellites. “The timing is such that we say this was likely due to [solar radiation],” Shelton told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast Thursday. Although it’s impossible to tell exactly what caused the events—essentially a temporary reboot of satellite instrumentation software—solar storms are known to wreak havoc on satellites.
“We’re very concerned about solar activity,” he said. Military satellites are “hardened [to withstand radiation], but maybe in some cases, not every part is as hard as we would like it to be.”
That’s because building a satellite to withstand solar storms is costly, which is why NASA says commercial satellites are often most vulnerable. Yihua Zheng, head of NASA’s Space Weather Services at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., says each satellite is built to withstand a different level of radiation, and that there’s a “cost-benefit analysis” to radiation hardening during a satellite’s development. Most mission-critical military satellites are built to sustain short bursts of solar radiation. Satellites “can reset and come back online.” But if the solar storm is lengthy, the damage could be severe enough that the satellite’s software won’t be able to reboot.
“Most of the satellites are built for this,” she says. “They should be OK.”
In recent years, the military has become more reliant on satellites operated by the Air Force’s Space Command, Shelton said. “Space capability is integral to everything [the military does],” he said, “from GPS targeting and communications to incoming missile warnings for our troops overseas.”
2MIN News Mar23: US Tremors/Serious Weather, Solar Activity
400 Chernobyls: Solar Flares, Electromagnetic Pulses and Nuclear Armageddon
By Matthew Stein, Truthout | News Analysis
There are nearly 450 nuclear reactors in the world, with hundreds more being planned or under construction. There are 104 of these reactors in the United States and 195 in Europe. Imagine what havoc it would wreak on our civilization and the planet’s ecosystems if we were to suddenly witness not just one or two nuclear meltdowns, but 400 or more! How likely is it that our world might experience an event that could ultimately cause hundreds of reactors to fail and melt down at approximately the same time? I venture to say that, unless we take significant protective measures, this apocalyptic scenario is not only possible, but probable.
Consider the ongoing problems caused by three reactor core meltdowns, explosions and breached containment vessels at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi facility and the subsequent health and environmental issues. Consider the millions of innocent victims who have already died or continue to suffer from horrific radiation-related health problems (“Chernobyl AIDS,” epidemic cancers, chronic fatigue, etcetera) resulting from the Chernobyl reactor explosions, fires and fallout. If just two serious nuclear disasters, spaced 25 years apart, could cause such horrendous environmental catastrophes, it is hard to imagine how we could ever hope to recover from hundreds of similar nuclear incidents occurring simultaneously across the planet. Since more than one-third of all Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, this is a serious issue that should be given top priority.[1]……
