Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
I was wandering around Shibuya the other night and ran across a construction divider plastered with stickers of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. The stickers gradually sprung up shortly after the 1 year anniversary of the 3.11 nuclear disaster. These and many others are the work of a designer/underground artist cryptically named “281 AntiNuke” targeting Tepco Photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert documented some of 281′s handy work throughout the city along with a photograph of what appears to be 281 himself standing beside one of his stickers. I can’t find any other information on this artistic crusader otherwise. So far, I haven’t seen these two photos uploaded online. One is a an Obama Hope poster parody with the President’s visage replaced by a collage of nuclear trefoils. The other is another of Noda as a ventriloquist dummy with the tagline “Follow the Follower.”
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[Click to enlarge] SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. ~ This week there’s been talk of restarting the Edison International-operated nuclear reactors at San Onofre. Located between Los Angeles and San Diego, the two operational pressurized water reactors there ~ units #2 and #3 ~ have been shut down since January 2012, when an inspection found that new pipes that carry steam to and from the reactor’s generators showed unexpected corrosion less than two years ago after they were retrofitted. Any other time in the atomic age, the public might have just shrugged and accepted all the assurances of the giant utility. “Not to worry, folks.” But it’s only been 15 months since the triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, and three of the Japanese reactors there are still leaking radioactive becquerels and bucky balls of toxic isotopes and a tsunami-shattered fourth reactor building houses some 1,500 spent fuel rods that some say could create another nuclear disaster that will dwarf the one that the beleaguered Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government will be battling for the unforeseen future. The movement against the restarting of San Onofre #2 and #3 is growing. Warnings by the Southern California power companies that the absence of cheap and clean nuclear energy might cause rolling blackouts and limited time for junior on the Xbox don’t seem to carry the same fuzzy feelings as they did BF ~ Before Fukushima. One month after Japan’s triple 3-11 disasters, our friends over at Gizmodo published a timely story entitled “How a Fukushima-Level Disaster Would Affect You in New York, L.A. or Chicago.” The story featured some maps that were chilling then and that are even more compelling today factoring in what we didn’t know about the on-going nuclear mishaps in Japan. Gizmodo notes that while Japan opted for a 30-kilometer or 18.6-mile radius long-term evacuation zone, U.S. scientists tipped their hand last March when they advised any American citizen inside an 80-kilometer ( 49.7 mile) radius of Fukushima Daiichi to leave. If that same policy were applied in the case of meltdowns at reactors near the three top urban populations centers of the U.S. ~ New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, this would be the scenario, according to Gizmodo: ♣In the worst case of an meltdown at Indian Point Nuclear Station in Buchanan, NY, more than 20 million people in the metro area would have to be evacuated, leaving the city deserted, from Long Island to the Bronx. ♣If a Fukushima-like accident were to hit San Onofre, Southern California, although the city of Los Angeles itself would fall outside the evacuation zone, some 15 million souls would be told to evacuate from most of Orange Counnty, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes to the north; greater San Diego to the south; Fontana, Whittier and Pomona to the east; and Catalina Island and Pacific Ocean to the west. ♣A disaster at either Dresden Nuclear Power Station in Dresden, IL or Braidwood NPP, Braidwood, IL outside Chicago...
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Amazing in a way. Japan is now nearly nuclear power free. This doesn’t mean some will start up again, but for the moment there is only 1 nuclear powered reactor. It’ll be an amazing feat for a country like Japan to function without nuclear power which will then force them to go fossil or an alternative source. It’s a chance for something great to happen. (Reuters – Tepco)
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This is new and is a haunting film that’s leading up to 3.11, one year later. Watch Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
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Imagine 30 million people needing to evacuate Tokyo at once. This new report explains that the government weren’t ready. Of course it was kept secret. People who now? Much of the public is already having a hard time to believing the government. TEPCO (the owners of the plant) officials were ordered to stay and work on the reactor rather than abandon it which possibly saved Tokyo. (PRI – Fukushima)
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