MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Kristina Cooke and Tim Ahmann – “PHILADELPHIA — The U.S. Federal Reserve is actively preparing for the possibility that the United States could default as a deadline for raising the government’s US$14.3-trillion borrowing limit looms, a top Fed policymaker said on Wednesday.

Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Plosser said the Fed has for the past few months been working closely with Treasury, ironing out what to do if the world’s biggest economy runs out of cash on August 2.

‘We are in contingency planning mode,’ Plosser told Reuters in an interview at the regional central bank’s headquarters in Philadelphia. ‘We are all engaged … It’s a very active process.’

Plosser said his ‘gut feeling’ was that President Barack Obama and Congress will come to an agreement to increase the Treasury’s borrowing authority in time to avert a default on government obligations.” Read more.

Carney warns U.S. default would have ‘profound implications’ – “The governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, says a U.S. government default on its debt would have “profound implications” for financial markets and that ‘it’s our view that’s not something that should be tested.’ Carney said Wednesday the bank does not expect the U.S. will default, but that there’s no certainty about what the effects would be if it did.” Read more.

Chief Nuclear Engineer A. Gundersen: “The Japanese announced that it’s gonna be 10 years before they begin — begin — to remove those cores from the bottom of the containment.  There’s no technology right now to remove them.  Remember, they’ve melted through the nuclear reactor and they’re lying on the floor of the nuclear containment.   Now, at Three Mile Island they had melted on to the bottom of the reactor, but not through the reactor.  So this is brand new.  And, you know, it’s sort of like trying to peel an egg off the bottom of a frying pan.  If it’s cooked too long it’s a very, very complicated and difficult process and that’s what we’re facing at Fukushima in the long-term cleanup.  So in the meantime there’ll be an awful lot of liquid radioactive waste that will have to be processed for 10 or perhaps 20 years…

Some friends of mine are biologists that had worked at Chernobyl and went to Japan to do some scientific work over there.  They went anticipating things were gonna be bad.  I got a call this week from them and they said, ‘You know, things are really, really bad.’  So these are hardened scientists who are used to dealing with radiation, and they believe that conditions at Fukushima are much worse than they had thought…”

Report: Japan to name new Fukushima ‘hot spots’ – “The Japanese government will announce new “hot spots” recommended for evacuation near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant possibly “within the next couple of days,” Kyodo News reported Thursday, citing Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. Late last month, for the first time since the nuclear crisis was triggered by the March earthquake and tsunami, the government designated about 100 households in the city of Date in Fukushima Prefecture as being located in the so-called hot spots, where radiation levels are sporadically higher than other locations nearby.” Read more.

“That’s an amazing reduction from the maximum emission of 2,000 terabecquerels per hour on March 15, it is actually one-2 millionth of the maximum, says TEPCO in the Reference No. 2 of the progress report on the ‘roadmap’ to God knows where.

Is this number, 1 billion becquerels per hour emission, good? TEPCO’s Matsumoto, in the press conference on July 19, avoided the judgment, and said he didn’t know, but it was one-2 millionth of what it had been on March 15.

On closer reading of the document, though, I noticed one strange thing about this emission number. TEPCO is talking about the radiation emission measured in cesium (cesium-134 and -137), not in iodine equivalence.

To come up with the iodine-131 equivalence, you have to multiply cesium-134 by 3, and cesium-137 by 40 (according to INES handbook). TEPCO doesn’t even give the breakdown of cesium 134 and -137 in its calculation of 1 billion becquerels/hour number. Other nuclides have even higher multiplier: americium-241 is 8,000, plutonium-239 is 10,000.

If half of 1 billion becquerels is cesium-134 and the other half is cesium-137, then in iodine-131 equivalence like in the previous calculations, the emission would be:

(0.5*3)+(0.5*40)=1.5+20=21.5 billion becquerels/hour

Instead of 1 billion becquerels/hour, it would be 21.4 billion becquerels/hour in iodine equivalence, or 516 billion becquerels in one day. In less than 2 days, we would be talking about over 1 terabecquerels.” Read more.

If this high level of radiation is falling in British Columbia, imagine the accumulating effect this is having on crops, meat, milk and anything else we put into our bodies from the northwest, and all affected areas …

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Flashback: Doctor: Fukushima Fallout Will Result in Millions of Baby Deaths and New Cancer Victims, We Have Created a ‘Valley of Death’ – “… the prestigious Doctor Mark Sircus released a new report concurring with a host of scientists and other doctors giving evidence that people of Japan and United States have been subjected to dangerous levels of radiation since Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns, and also subjected to a tight cover-up by authorities and media, the result of which will be millions of baby deaths and new cancer victims. Japanese and American children are already suffering with symptoms that appear to be the first signs of Radiation Sickness.” Read more.

Flashback: US: Doctors Say 35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown May Be the Result of Fukushima Fallout – “… a physician (Janette D. Sherman, M. D.) and epidemiologist (Joseph Mangano) have penned a short but horrifying essay asking whether a spike in infant deaths in the Northwest are due to Fukushima” Read more.

By John Cassidy – “… Dalio believes that some heavily indebted countries, including the United States, will eventually opt for printing money as a way to deal with their debts, which will lead to a collapse in their currency and in their bond markets. ‘There hasn’t been a case in history where they haven’t eventually printed money and devalued their currency,’ he said. Other developed countries, particularly those tied to the euro and thus to the European Central Bank, don’t have the option of printing money and are destined to undergo ‘classic depressions,’ Dalio said. The recent deal to avoid an immediate debt default by Greece didn’t alter his pessimistic view. ‘People concentrate on the particular thing of the moment, and they forget the larger underlying forces,’ he said. ‘That’s what got us into the debt crisis. It’s just today, today.’

Dalio’s assessment sounded alarmingly plausible. But when one plays the global financial markets a thorough economic analysis is only the first stage of the game. At least as important is getting the timing right. I asked Dalio when all this would start to come together. ‘I think late 2012 or early 2013 is going to be another very difficult period,’ he said.” Read more.