May 7th, 2012

Across the Western World the elections of this person or that person crowds the headlines, while blogs, facebook all scream about the pluses and minuses of their status, this coupled with the highest unemployment records since man jumped down from an oak bush somewhere back in antiquity, has clamped onto our attention with a iron-clad grip. All important headlines I grant, yet if youre of the mindset of some of us who dibble and dapple in numbers concerning this or that, the headlines should at least include a minor mention that sitting at 371859N 141132E just waiting for another medium to large earthquake is a situation that has the possibility of making life very miserable for the worlds 7 billion plus residents. In this, to some of us, all other news pales in comparison to loss of the little guy in France, or the debates between Presidential hopefuls in the USA whereas unless the staff of the outfit handling the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility can get their stuff together, none of the above will make a big-hill-ofbeans. Lately various news releases discuss the man-made isotope Caesium-137, which is a radioactive isotope of casesim formed as a fission product of nuclear fission. It has a half-life of approximately 30.17 years, as it decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium-137 / barium -137m whereas 95% of its nuclear decay ends up as the latter. The other 5% directly populates the ground state Ba-137 has a half-life of 153 seconds and during this short period is responsible for all of the emissions of gamma rays. Without getting into the actual numbers (burned up three slide rules running

them) it should be noted that one gram of Caesium-137 has an activity of 3.215 terabecquerel, (TBq). As for actual health-risks, Caesium-137 reacts with water producing a watersoluble compound (caesium hydroxide), which the biological behavior of caesium is similar to that of potassium and rubidium after entering your body it gets more or less distributed throughout your body, mostly concentrating in your muscles and in your bones the biological half-life of caesium is rather short at 70-days, so if you can still walk and talk at the end of 70-days your chances of surviving exposure - although with a possible limitation of your operating parts might be diminished, are pretty good - your home free. Experiments with members of our canine population showed that 3800 micrograms per 2.2 pounds of animal weight killed them in less than 3-weeks but there and again it is only your X that can be compared to a dog. If by chance you happen to ingest some Caesium-137, jump in your SUV run down to your local Prussian blue outlet and wipe out their supply, it will reduce the active life of the Caesium-137 to only 30-days. The news (what little there is, you have Google or Yahoo with specific requests) lately points to the Reactor Complex #4 at Fukushima, where the structure sufferer some major damage from an explosion during the Fukushima cascading set of events following the M-9 earthquake on March 11th, 2011. The reports on #4 cooling pool tell us that the structure is damaged, this the informed know, just as they knew that it has been reinforced with additional material to support the spent fuel cooling pond some 100 feet above the ground. Removing the spent fuel rods (1,535 of them each at over 13 feet in length or 3.82 miles of spent fuel rods) is not a simple procedure, made more complicated by the fact that the infrastructure used to accomplish the process was destroyed in the explosion in other words it is NOT possible to simply transfer the spent fuel using a crane as used in ordinary cargo, that is unless youre willing to expose some heavy duty amounts of radioactive material.

In order to prevent accidents such severe radiation exposure, fires, and/or explosions, it must be transferred at all times in heavily shielded water filled units into dry casks, as the supporting infrastructure is damaged common sense tells us that removal from the spent fuel ponds is going require an engineered process that could take a goodly sum of money towards the design and construction of a mechanism to move the 1,535 fuel assemblies. It wasnt too long ago that the Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland, Mitsuhei Murata said, It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on #4 Reactor. A statement you would have believed garnered a headline or two, zip, nada! Implied in his statement is the fact that any enormous amounts of radioactive material drifting freely about will create a storm of events that in the worst case effect the down wind and the circulating Pacific Ocean currents land on the other side of the massive ocean, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, British Columbia and the coast lines of our 49th State. Conservative estimates of lets assume the collapse or the all-fall-down spent fuel cooling pool say that the release of radiation will be 85X of that of Chernobyl a lot. Now I realize that most of us are counting on that 64.1 million square mile of salt water to suck up most of the radiation, which it will but then again the profits of doom and gloom are predicting a waste land developing in its path. Where wed see mutated crops, radioactive ground water, a huge increase in infant mortality, and a subsequent explosions in cancer and infertility remember this is a calculate estimate, in another word guess! For instance we now know that there are some 11,421 nuclear rods in various pools at the Fukushima Daiichi site, in this the announcement of 85X is based, not just the rods in #4 whereas all 11,421 of them contain 134 mil curies of caesium-137, which using simple math there is approximately 11,723 curies per rod, multiply that by 1,535 results in a little over 18 mil curies whereas the local doom and gloom splashes across the headlines there are some 37 mil curies at risk in pool #4. Now I know that they are just sucking up headlines, what is sad is that less than 15% of our citizenship have the capability or drive to do the calculation so instead of #4 releasing 85X the calculated amount of 13X or thereabouts still a lot mind you but less. Chernobyl at the end-of-the-day released some six-tons of radioactive material

contaminating a good portion of Europe with 162,160 kilos Bq/m of Caesium137. The former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the US Dept of Energy estimates only 10x times more than Chernobyl, in these ballpark estimates we see that the experts are strolling through a dim-lite corridor in that this is all uncharted territory, while the Paparazzis of the print world run about publishing information slanted towards or eminent demise 85X, 13X, 10X or even 1X is still a lot of radioactive materialmost in the form of light-mist.

All though there still is a high-level of risk tied to Fukushima Daiichi this high-level will only occur if the infrastructure surrounding #4 comes crashing down, which Im positive that the engineers involved are busting their butts in making sure it doesnt. The headline composers would have you believe that theyre sitting around sipping on saki playing a game of nuclear Tokyo Holdem.