Tag Archives: Fukushima radiation

Economic Stress Indicators

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20 Early Warning Signs That We Are Approaching A Global Economic Meltdown

Michael Snyder
Activist Post

Have you been paying attention to what has been happening in Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Ukraine, Turkey and China?  If you are like most Americans, you have not been.  Most Americans don’t seem to really care too much about what is happening in the rest of the world, but they should.

In major cities all over the globe right now, there is looting, violence, shortages of basic supplies, and runs on the banks. We are not at a “global crisis” stage yet, but things are getting worse with each passing day. For a while, I have felt that 2014 would turn out to be a major “turning point” for the global economy, and so far that is exactly what it is turning out to be.  The following are 20 early warning signs that we are rapidly approaching a global economic meltdown…

1 The looting, violence and economic chaos that is happening in Argentina right now is a perfect example of what can happen when you print too much money…

For Dominga Kanaza, it wasn’t just the soaring inflation or the weeklong blackouts or even the looting that frayed her nerves.

It was all of them combined.

At one point last month, the 37-year-old shop owner refused to open the metal shutters protecting her corner grocery in downtown Buenos Aires more than a few inches — just enough to sell soda to passersby on a sweltering summer day.

#2 The value of the Argentine Peso is absolutely collapsing.

#3 Widespread shortages, looting and accelerating inflation are also causing huge problems in Venezuela…

Economic mismanagement in Venezuela has reached such a level that it risks inciting a violent popular reaction. Venezuela is experiencing declining export revenues, accelerating inflation and widespread shortages of basic consumer goods. At the same time, the Maduro administration has foreclosed peaceful options for Venezuelans to bring about a change in its current policies.

President Maduro, who came to power in a highly-contested election last April, has reacted to the economic crisis with interventionist and increasingly authoritarian measures. His recent orders to slash prices of goods sold in private businesses resulted in episodes of looting, which suggests a latent potential for violence. He has put the armed forces on the street to enforce his economic decrees, exposing them to popular discontent.

#4 In a stunning decision, the Venezuelan government has just announced that it has devalued the Bolivar by more than 40 percent.

#5 Brazilian stocks declined sharply on Thursday. There is a tremendous amount of concern that the economic meltdown that is happening in Argentina is going to spill over into Brazil.

#6 Ukraine is rapidly coming apart at the seams…

A tense ceasefire was announced in Kiev on the fifth day of violence, with radical protesters and riot police holding their position. Opposition leaders are negotiating with the government, but doubts remain that they will be able to stop the rioters.

#7 It appears that a bank run has begun in China…

As China’s CNR reports, depositors in some of Yancheng City’s largest farmers’ co-operative mutual fund societies (“banks”) have been unable to withdraw “hundreds of millions” in deposits in the last few weeks. “Everyone wants to borrow and no one wants to save,” warned one ‘salesperson’, “and loan repayments are difficult to recover.” There is “no money” and the doors are locked.

#8 Art Cashin of UBS is warning that credit markets in China “may be broken“.  For much more on this, please see my recent article entitled “The $23 Trillion Credit Bubble In China Is Starting To Collapse – Global Financial Crisis Next?”

#9 News that China’s manufacturing sector is contracting shook up financial markets on Thursday…

Wall Street was rattled by a key reading on China’s manufacturing which dropped below the key 50 level in January, according to HSBC. A reading below 50 on the HSBC flash manufacturing PMI suggests economic contraction.

#10 Japanese stocks experienced their biggest drop in 7 months on Thursday.

#11 The value of the Turkish Lira is absolutely collapsing.

#12 The unemployment rate in France has risen for 9 quarters in a row and recently soared to a new 16-year high.

#13 In Italy, the unemployment rate has soared to a brand new all-time record high of 12.7 percent.

#14 The unemployment rate in Spain is sitting at an all-time record high of 26.7 percent.

#15 This year, the Baltic Dry Index experienced the largest two-week, post-holiday decline that we have ever seen.

#16 Chipmaker Intel recently announced that it plans to eliminate 5,000 jobs over the coming year.

#17 CNBC is reporting that U.S. retailers just experienced “since 2008″>the worst holiday season since 2008”.

#18 A recent CNBC article stated that U.S. consumers should expect a “tsunami” of store closings in the retail industry…

Get ready for the next era in retail—one that will be characterized by far fewer shops and smaller stores.

On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It’s the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy’s.

Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700 empty positions.

#19 The U.S. Congress is facing another deadline to raise the debt ceiling in February.

#20 The Dow fell by more than 170 points on Thursday.  It is becoming increasingly likely that “the peak of the market” is now in the rear view mirror.

And I have not even mentioned the extreme drought that has caused the U.S. cattle herd to drop to a 61-year low or the nuclear radiation from Fukushima that is washing up on the west coast.

In light of everything above, is there anyone out there that still wants to claim that “everything is going to be okay” for the global economy?

Sadly, most Americans are not even aware of most of these things.

All over the country today, the number one news headline is about Justin Bieber.  The mainstream media is absolutely obsessed with celebrity scandals, and so is a very large percentage of the U.S. population.

A great economic storm is rapidly approaching, and most people don’t even seem to notice the storm clouds that are gathering on the horizon.

In the end, perhaps we will get what we deserve as a nation.

This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog.  Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog.

from:    http://www.activistpost.com/2014/01/20-early-warning-signs-that-we-are.html

More: Fukushima Leak

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Fukushima Radiation Leak: 5 Things You Should Know

By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer   |   August 21, 2013
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
 The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.
Credit: TEpc

Japan’s nuclear regulator has raised the threat level of a radioactive leak at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant from 1 to 3 on a 7-point scale.

Officials said Tuesday that a storage tank has leaked 300 tons of radioactive water into the ground. The rating upgrade, which has to be confirmed by the United Nations’ nuclear agency, would be the first since the March 2011 quake-induced reactor meltdown.

Here are five things to know about the leak and related radiation:

1. What does the nuclear warning level mean?

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) is a rating system for describing the severity of nuclear accidents. It was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which reports to the U.N.

The 7-point scale ranges from 1 (“Anomaly”) to 7 (“Major Accident”). Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority classified the Fukushima disaster as a level-7 event in 2011.

The new leak is the first to be given an INES rating since the original disaster. Initially classified as a level one (“Incident”), it has been upgraded to level three (“Serious Incident”), pending confirmation by the UN nuclear agency. A The upgrade to level 3 (“Serious Incident”) means the event involves the release of “a few thousand terabecquerels of activity into an area not expected by design which requires corrective action,” or one resulting in radiation rates of “greater than one sievert per hour in an operating area,” according to the INES user’s manual. A terabecquerel is 1 trillion becquerels, defined as the radioactive decay of one nucleus per second; a sievert is a unit of biological radiation dose equivalent to about 50,000 front view chest X-rays.

2. How much radioactive material leaked into the ocean?

Immediately after the June 2011 meltdown, scientists measured that 5,000 to 15,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material was reaching the ocean. The biggest threat at that time was from the radionuclide cesium. But for leaks that enter the ground, the radionuclides strontium and tritium pose more of a threat, because cesium is absorbed by the soil while the other two are not.

The Tokyo Electric Power Plant (TEPCO) estimated that since the March 2011 disaster, between 20 trillion and 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium have leaked into the ocean, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported.

The damaged plant is still leaking about 300 tons of water containing these radionuclides into the ocean every day, Japanese government officials say. An additional 300 tons have leaked into the ground from the latest storage tank leak.

3. How will the radioactive material affect sea life?

Ever since the 2011 disaster, scientists have been measuring levels of radioactivity in fish and other sea life. Several species of fish caught off the coast of Fukushima in 2011 and 2012 had cesium levels that exceeded Japan’s regulatory limit for seafood, but the overall cesium levels of ocean life have dropped since the fall of 2011, U.S. and Japanese scientists both reported.

U.S. scientists say the groundwater leaks could become worse, but warn against drawing conclusions about the impacts on sea life before peer-reviewed studies are completed. “For fish that are harvested 100 miles [160 kilometers] out to sea, I doubt it’d be a problem,” Nicholas Fisher, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y., told LiveScience for a previous article. “But in the region, yes, it’s possible there could be sufficient contamination of local seafood, so it’d be unwise to eat that seafood,” Fisher said

4. What is being done to contain the leak?

Plant operators have started to remove the contaminated soil around the leaking tank, and are expected to remove any water remaining inside by the end of today (Aug. 21), NBC News reported.

But operators are concerned that other tanks may fail too. About a third of the tanks, including the one that just leaked, have rubber seams that TEPCO says were only meant to last about five years, The New York Times reported. A TEPCO spokesperson said the company plans to build additional watertight tanks with welded seams, but will still have to use the ones with rubber seams.

Cleaning up the radioactive water will take decades. Officials are considering several possible methods for preventing contaminated groundwater from reaching the ocean, including freezing the ground around the plant or injecting the surrounding sediment with a gel-like material that hardens like concrete. Ultimately, an integrated systematic water treatment plan is needed, Dale Klein, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission told LiveScience for a previous article.

5. How does Fukushima compare with the Chernobyl meltdown?

The Fukushima plant’s meltdown in 2011 is considered the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine in 1986. Although both were given an INES rating of 7, far more radiation was released at Chernobyl — about 10 times as much as at Fukushima, NPR reported. And the health consequences a Fukushima to date have been much less severe.

The Chernobyl meltdown involved the explosion of an entire reactor that sent out a plume of radiation over a wide area. Many people nearby drank contaminated milk and later developed thyroid cancer.

By contrast, Fukushima’s radioactive cores remained mostly protected, and much of the radioactive material has been carried out to sea, far from human populations. People in risky areas were evacuated, and contaminated food was kept out of stores. While the long-term health risks are unknown, the World Health Organization said there is very little public health risk outside of the 18-mile evacuation zone.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/39067-fukushima-radiation-5-things-to-know.html