The Messenger of Water

Another video update posted by Arnie Gunderson today. This one is a real bummer, I'm afraid. The radioactive contamination is worse than Chernobyl in some places around the Fukushima reactors. Worse. And it's in the ocean, too.

I have been so sad for the ocean; now I am simply humbled. There is a guy from Japan who has done research about how water reacts when confronted with various emotions from people. Seriously. This guy, Dr. Masaru Emoto, seems radically bent on convincing us that our feelings (affect) matter. The short summary is that water reacts negatively when we express mean or angry feelings, and it chills out when we are happy or thankful. He suggests that there is indeed connection between living beings (us) and our environment. And then he has the nerve to suggest we should apologize to the water around Fukushima nuclear reactors for causing it to suffer, because this kind of thing has power when enough people do it. Can you believe the conviction of some people?

I do. Even if you think he is a complete nut, and all the people praying to the waters of Japan for forgiveness for causing such suffering to the water, and that measuring water's reaction to emotional changes is not the same as showing causation when changes happen, I challenge you to deny that we are mostly water. Are we not living beings of ocean and salt? In admitting connection, can we not heal, as well? Besides, if you don't believe in god, and you don't believe in or pray to spirits or other deities, it is still important to allow and support the living connections between ourselves and everything around us. This connection underscores real efforts to keep our bodies, and the bodies of all living things around us, resilient in the face of contamination and pollution. It may also help prevent further contamination by our  reckless industrialization and encourage connections in other ways.

Despite the superficial kookiness of this idea, I find it a better challenge to believe he is on to something important. Because if thoughts and feelings affect water, how different are the effects of actual pollution? I encourage you to look up some of his work and share your comments here.

Updates on Fukushima, March 29

It appears that nuclear disaster is not really very popular reading. For years it has been the awful fear lurking, a tiny despair fit only to bring out occasionally in full regalia and splendor. Most people I know hate that there are nuclear power reactors, that officials in positions of power deny their risk and harm, and that there is very little we can do on a national scale to shut them down. And even when they are shut down, we have all that radioactive waste that nobody wants stored in their backyard. But not many people want to dwell on the negative over which we have little control. Who can blame us? It's the invisible thing that poisons us, our food, our water, our air.

The recent disaster in Fukushima power plant has sharpened my interest in radioactivity and health, and I have been following the events closely. Today's news confirms what I (and others) have suspected: a meltdown is indeed possible and the results would be disaster for the people of Japan and the life in the ocean(s). The effects will be global.

Radioactive particles are amazingly sinister; there is no safe dose. There is no way to put it otherwise: every dose has consequences in the body - it is cumulative. It is especially damaging in children and pregnant women. This includes ultra low doses from x-rays and electronics. Even tiny amounts from the Japan fallout that fall in the rain that waters the produce grown in California and Mexico are not safe, despite what the US's claims of allowable limits might be. Radioactive iodine has a half-life of 8 days; that means that in 8 days it is reduced by half; in another 8 days it is reduced to a quarter; in another 8 days it is reduced to an eighth, and in another 8 days it is zero. 40 days from initial exposure, never mind spikes of radioactive steam blowing over the Pacific or over Tokyo in fits and spurts over two weeks. The dangers of radioactivity can NOT be overstated.

Today's news from Japan is sobering. Again, Arnie Gunderson speaks about what is happening now (video is approximately 7 minutes, look for the March 29th update). And the Guardian UK reports that there is a fuel melt in the core that has breached the containment vessel. Molten fuel is oozing or flowing slowly into the drywell, which is currently filled with seawater. The seawater might prevent a total meltdown into the ground (and ocean), by cooling the fuel, but it may not. I am so sad for the residents of Japan and the fish in the ocean.

This near-total disaster has only the goodwill of strangers going for it - the relief efforts and money flowing into Japan from the rest of Japan the world. The rest of it is enough to make all of us wonder what the hell we were thinking to allow a toxin that lasts thousands of years to heat our homes and power our industrial civilization. At least, that's what I'm thinking.

Soul Power

This great article by former nuclear engineer and anti-nuclear essayist Keith Harmon Snow is very long, and full of reliable information, analysis and conjecture. Not a happy piece, but not worth missing, either.

"Good" news, or positive news, is soul-filling and gives us strength to pursue purpose. Information about catastrophe sharpens the edge on our actions and shows us how to connect the dots, how we are connected to the earth, our land bases, and the suffering of others. Both are critical to our humanity, and can open our hearts. I feel an essay coming on. Keep watching.

The Footbath Squad

I am deeply moved by the compassionate action of a Japanese group of young people calling themselves the Footbath Squad. Inspired by the actions of another group of people providing comfort to survivors of a previous disaster, this group goes to the emergency shelter of earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster refugees and gives them 15 minutes of massage and footbaths - acts made to comfort people who have lost all security. Young people comforting the old, children, the bereaved, the suffering, the bored, the displaced. A volunteer says, "We want to share their pain."

This story has completely made my day; this story is the answer to my daughter's question, "Mom, why are you crying?". I am reminded of our ability to act like humans in the midst of so many other people's inhuman acts and oppressive decisions. Somehow their actions have comforted me, too, thousands of miles away.

Just fission

Hey kids, I've wondered why it's so hard to find good updates on Fukushima reactor meltdown, and it appears that it's because there is actually fission occurring. You know, like in a meltdown.

Neutron beam detected
Disaster impact level raised from 5 to 6 - This is a very informative article, with the title "Radiation from Fukushima exceeds Three Mile Island"

Just because it's not in the news, doesn't mean it isn't happening.

More updates can be found in the comments of this article from Green Mountain Daily.

Here is a great primer/summary of the forms of radiation and measurement by Arnie Gunderson. (Video runs 8:26)

Another update from Environment News Service

Into the ocean

Arnie Gunderson, of Fairewinds Associates - a really good place for analysis of the nuclear disaster in Japan if you want facts and reliable, non-inflammatory conjecture - has posted a recent analysis of the elevated radiation readings around the Fukushima plant. In this 7 minute video, he points out that the surface contamination recently measured in the ocean 30 - 40 km from the power plant is higher than the beta radiation level which defined a "hot spot" after the Chernobyl disaster.

And on the Green Action Japan web site, a member tweeted last night that TEPCO found trace amounts of neutron radiation  at the border of the nuclear power plant. Neutron - you know, the kind of radiation that makes other particles radioactive when it comes in contact with those particles. I'm looking for verification of this, and will post it if I find it.

The radiation from the buildings is sinking, not going into the atmosphere. Bad bad bad for people and non-human animals in Japan. But also, the ocean. The ocean! Plankton, fish, mammals that eat the radioactive fish.... What will become of the Pacific at the end of all this? Did we really have to be smacked over the head so violently by our own damned toxins (gulf oil spills, radioactive contamination, tsunamis destroying fishing villages) to get the hint that people overfish, overuse, and overstress the oceans? I guess so. Will we stop? Probably not until the oceans are near death.

Unless we can, like the earthquake, tear things apart with the force of our grief.

Got something to say?

I've been tweaking the settings, so if you're trying to post a comment it should work now. Please email me if you can't comment.

Ah, the joys of a new blog.

What is your "it"?

It appears to me that this is the perfect time to really amplify everyone's strategies for real social change - you know, the things we think are the right actions to make this earth a better, more sustainable place for living things and our descendants. And I'm not just talking protests, Honey. I'm talking everything: the whole ugly package of loving action, however you define it. I'm talking massive or tiny nonviolent protests; national and international boycotts and embargoes; disruptions of all kinds; passionate writing and speaking truth to power; unpopular opinions; nurturing each other; working with your neighbors to grow food for your communities; producing as much as we can by ourselves and/or cooperatively; consensus decision-making; driving less, biking more; loving the earth, body of our mother; sharing your rapture and the ecstasies of joy; music, poetry, manifestos; radical actions; secret radical actions; things I don't want to know about but that are necessary anyway. Really.

Now is the time people. We need to do it, whatever your "it" is.

The pressure of movement is upon us. In the destruction, who are we to argue?

No news...

I am cautiously hopeful that no news (of a multiple-reactor complete meltdown) is good news. No new fires, no new explosions, no full-out meltdowns. I continue to hope that the people in Japan can get the food, shelter, and health care they need. And maybe, down the road, some compensation from the electric company that wouldn't heed warnings over the years that these reactors would NEVER be safe. At least, that was the warning given from people who wouldn't make any money off the plants.

I also thought I'd share some of the sites I'm checking for updates. Feel free to add yours as a comment.

Fairewinds Associates, Arnie Gunderson's page
Beyond Nuclear
Green Mountain Daily
The Guardian
Japan Industrial Atomic Forum (industry page)

More links, as of 3/22/11:
Green Action Japan's Fukushima Update
Union of Concerned Scientists blog, "All Things Nuclear," about the disaster (Very good for the geeky technical lovers among us.)

Spring

The first day of Spring, up here: thunderstorms, the threat of low-level radiation, snow on the ground, and song birds. It feels like a Big Spring; the kind that grabs you and sits you down on the snow-covered moss, shakes you up a bit and then jumps inside you, filling your body with love 'til you burst at the seams. A big love. A bad love. A love edged with death and sorrow, floods and moon. A kind of wary ecstasy, naked and frostbitten, blatant, what it is without apology.

I think I'm going to like this one.

A corporate tragedy

Our corporate-sponsored president is nowhere to be seen in the fight against toxic nuclear power. Even as other nations are taking a short break from promoting and approving new plants, our lovely corporate nation continues its path of destruction through nuclear power. President Obama never looked very good to me, and I've yet to read anything that changes my mind about this issue. I have come to believe that no matter which president would be elected, the nuclear approval process and loan deals to companies to build new reactors would have just gone on and on.

And if the kind of tragedy that is happening right now in Japan can possibly happen anywhere there are plants (and it could - flooding, massive earthquakes near population centers, catastrophic power outages, etc.), every single person and official who signed the OK, approved the loan, built the plants, covered up leaks and violations of operational safety, and made a profit off of them is personally responsible. Every. Single. One. A bureaucracy is only as strong as its participants.

Because this tragedy is corporate, not natural. People decided to ignore safety warnings and approve the plants in Japan. The cost is homicide - of all the inhabitants and pets around the plant who will die and suffer from cancers, their children, the ocean life contaminated with radiation, and all the workers. The depth of my grief is vast; I have cried almost every day as the true damage continues to grow and be exposed. But while we mourn we must also nurture our righteous anger for those who continue to bargain their profits against the sacred. This anger is what will move us toward each other, which will ultimately be the only real weapon we have against the overwhelming power of american nuclear advocates. Until that time I will continue share my outrage, insights and information as I can. Because people, I am hella pissed.

They Know Radiation

Finally, Japan has people going into the area where the reactors are melting down to determine which isotopes are being released, and the levels at which people are exposed: The Peace Culture Foundation, which manages the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan. Fortunately, this group is also supplying housing and relief supplies to the victims of this corporate tragedy. Somehow I trust this group more than any word from any government body. Like the interviewee says, they know radiation.

Interview on Democracy Now.

Things to Read, Things to Eat

It appears that the nuclear dream has become a raging catastrophe. On this link, on the Green Mountain Daily page, now a couple days old, you'll find dire warnings. In the comments, though, you'll find a brilliantly angry commenter advocating putting out the reactor fires with the bodies of all the officials and scientists who have advocated so hard for nuclear power and who also have relentlessly belittled the information from anti-nuclear activists. You really should take a minute and read it. I laughed hard enough to make me feel better for a little while.


And after you're done there, you should probably check out this NYT web page with a simple, level-of-radiation-free projection of the air currents and radioactive plume that could be coming out of Japan right now. The plume could hit produce-growing areas of California tomorrow afternoon, if accurate. But don't worry. Trustworthy Officials say we're in no danger. I sure am comforted, aren't you? Mr. NRC Director's words: “I don’t want to speculate on various scenarios,” he replied. “But based on the design and the distances involved, it is very unlikely that there would be any harmful impacts.” 


Another article mentioned Cesium 137 as the most pressing danger from the meltdown of Number 4. A 30-year half-life.


I'm pretty sure the web of lies is huge from both Japan and the US. I trust no one in any position of power with this important information. I highly recommend following this story on the Green Mountain Daily web site, and the Beyond Nuclear web site. 


Things we are doing to minimize our concern for our family's health and food safety in the light of this exponentially horrifying tragedy in Japan:
1. Weeping occasionally
2. Making sure we have potassium iodide on hand
3. Eating more fermented soy: miso, tempeh, tamari
4. Increasing our Omega fatty acid and green tea consumption
5. Not buying fresh produce or food from California or Washington for a long time; especially no dairy products.
6. Sharing important links with everyone we know
7. Thanking every god that we live far inland
8. Hoping for the best while continuing to make sure our nutritional needs are met and exceeded. Not always easy to do with little money, but we're trying.
9. Drinking only very good unpasteurized alcohol. Homemade when possible. This is better for the soul.
10. Limiting refined sugar.


I've about had it with this nuclear thing. I've never understood how ANYone can support it, given that in nature there are no situations you can fully control and predict. Maybe now the billions of people around the globe will agree with me.

Selective Uptake

The nuclear power plants in Japan have started to vaporize plutonium and uranium (via the MOX fuel. Go ahead, look it up). Folks, I think we've gone way past "dubious" and headlong into "holy shit!" for nuclear power. Will the corporate-controlled U.S. government feel our pain?

And what person can even condone a power source that, given uncontrollable natural disasters, could completely fail and then produce toxins that float through the air across the globe, poisoning children in multiple countries for years to come, killing or poisoning residents near the disaster, and then using public monies to fund the relief efforts? If that is you, I hope you fucking get it now.

There is, and never has been, a safe dose of radiation. It seems stupid to promote a power source that can produce toxins, carried on the wind around the world when we could instead harness the wind without polluting our children's bodies. Ever.

And now I go back to http://www.beyondnuclear.org/ to see if there's a complete meltdown in Japan yet. If I were you, I'd start researching nutritional supplements that support our body's efforts to prevent radiation poisoning.

Tough Love

I am officially re-entering the blog world with Critical Love, an excuse to write critically about anything I damn well please. Lately it's politics and nuclear madness; it may also include B movies and music. You just never know.

Stay tuned.

To view my old blog, Mama's Big Ol' Blog, go here: http://mamablueblog.blogspot.com/
This will not be updated, as I'm giving up that zine.

New post coming soon.