Got radiation? Well, of course, we do!
Radioactive material from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan has fallen in rain on major cities across the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency has also detected radioactive materials in milk, air and drinking water. The EPA and other government agencies continue to insist that they expected to see some level of radiation on US soil after the Daiichi disaster, and the current radiation levels are not a cause of public health concern. Truthout [see the story at the link] has identified gaps in the government's data, however, and nuclear watchdogs are concerned that public officials are not telling Americans the whole story.
And in other news, the reactors at Fukushima finally put themselves in the big leagues. Now, we have a Cernobyl-level disaster. Congratulations, Japan! We knew you could do it.
The regrading to a "major accident" with "widespread health and environmental effects" puts Fukushima on a par with the world's worst ever peacetime nuclear event 25 years ago in the then Soviet Union.
Japanese officials are quick to point out that the reactors haven’t exploded (that was just the buildings!), but that “we do have some leakage here.”
If radioactivity emitted in Japan can fall as rain in the US, think about the intensity of that rain in the Twin Cities from an accident just upwind somewhere in Minnesota.
Avidor, whose sketches of new shushi menu items are shown in this post, also sent me a link to a website of photos of the consequences of Chernobyl.
I asked for an interview with Sen. Julie Rosen so she could explain her support for the lifting of the nuclear power plant moratorium in Minnesota, but her office demurred, saying it had other fish to fry.
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