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Joel Salatin: How to Prepare for A Future Increasingly Defined By Localized Food & Energy
by Chris MartensonJoel Salatin, proprietor of Polyface Farms and highly-visible champion of sustainable farming, thinks modern humans have become so far removed from a natural connection to the food they eat that we no longer have a true understanding of what "normal" food is.
The rise of Big Ag and factory farming over the past century has conditioned us to treat food mechanically (as something to be recoded and retooled) vs. biologically. And we don't realize that for all our industrialization and optimization, we're actually getting less yield and less nutrition than natural-based processes can offer.
Whether we like it or not, the arrival of Peak Oil is going to force us to realize that our heavily-energy intensive practices can't continue at their current scale. And with world population still increasing exponentially, we'll need to find other, more sustainable ways of growing our food.
Exclusive Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-Lived Than We Think
by Chris Martenson"I have said it's worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind blowing in-land. It could very well have brought the nation of Japan to its knees. I mean, there is so much contamination that luckily wound up in the Pacific Ocean as compared to across the nation of Japan – it could have cut Japan in half. But now the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends that if there is a severe aftershock and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed."
So cautions Arnie Gundersen, widely-regarded to be the best nuclear analyst covering Japan's Fukushima disaster. The situation on the ground at the crippled reactors remains precarious and at a minimum it will be years before it can be hoped to be truly contained. In the near term, the reactors remain particularly vulnerable to sizable aftershocks, which still have decent probability of occuring. On top of this is a growing threat of 'hot particle' contamination risk to more populated areas as weather patterns shift with the typhoon season and groundwater seepage.
In Part 1 of this interview, Chris and Arnie recap the damage wrought to Fukushima's reactors by the tsunami, the steps TEPCO is taking to address it, and the biggest operational risks that remain at this time. In Part 2, they dive into the health risks still posed by the situation there and what individuals should do (including those on the US west coast) if it worsens.
Click the play button below to listen to Part 1 of Chris' interview with Arnie Gundersen (runtime 36m:31s):
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Or start reading the transcript below:
Well, it now turns out that many of my worst fears about Fukushima have been confirmed with the news that TEPCO has finally admitted that Reactor #1 has experienced a meltdown event that may have breached the primary containment vessel. Further, truly alarming levels of radiation are now being reported in and around Tokyo.
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Latest Satellite Imagery From Fukushima Tells Sobering Tale
by Chris MartensonNoting that the press has largely turned its resources off of the Fukushima complex, and needing up-to-date information on the status of the damage control efforts there, we secured the most up-to-date satellite photo from DigitalGlobe (dated March 31st), which we analyze below. This is the first photo of the damaged reactor site at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility made available to the public in over a week. That means you, our readers, are the first public eyes anywhere to see this photo.
Drawing upon the expertise of our resident nuclear engineer and Ann Stringer, imaging expert, we conclude that the situation at Fukushima is not stabilized: Things are not yet at a place of steady progress in the containment and clean-up efforts. It’s still a dance, forwards and backwards, with the workers making gains here and there but the situation forcing them to react defensively all too often.
In this report, we will tell you what we know for sure, what we are nearly certain of, and what we remain forced to speculate about.
Here is a portion of a much larger image (covering 25 square kilometers in total) showing the reactor complex as of March 31, at roughly mid-day:
Nuclear Expert’s Step-By-Step Assessment of the Fukushima Disaster & What You Need to Know
by Chris Martenson
In this detailed interview, Chris talks with longtime PeakProsperity.com member Dogs_In_A_Pile, an expert on nuclear energy who has been posting frequent updates to this site covering the developments at the Fukushima reactor in Japan as they have unfolded.
Based on his decades of experience, Dogs provides a detailed overview of how nuclear reactors work and then speculates as best he can (as the world is still dealing with imperfect information on the situation) how the technical situation at Fukushima likely degraded since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit on March 11.
This is an excellent discussion that addresses in depth many of the questions asked on this site over the past week: How does nuclear energy work? What caused the explosion of several of Fukushima's reactors? What is 'decay heat' and why is it so important here? What's the likelihood the situation will be brought under control soon? What dangers should – and shouldn't – we worry about?
Many thanks to Dogs for bringing a knowledgeable and rational voice that helps demystify the haze of incomplete (and often erroneous) information that has been circulating in the media around this tragedy.
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