By Harvey Wasserman: 1400 Hiroshimas still swing in the Fukushima air:

Japan's pro-nuclear Prime Minister has finally asked for global help at Fukushima. It probably hasn't hurt that more than 1,000,000 people have signed petitions calling for a global takeover; more than 8,000 have viewed a new YouTube on it. Massive quantities of heavily contaminated water are pouring into the Pacific Ocean, dousing workers along the way. Hundreds of huge, flimsy tanks are leaking untold tons of highly radioactive fluids. At Unit #4. more than 1300 fuel rods, with more than 400 tons of extremely radioactive material, containing potential cesium fallout comparable to 14,000 Hiroshima bombs, are stranded 100 feet in the air. All this more than 30 months after the 3/11/2011 earthquake/tsunami led to three melt-downs and at least four explosions. "Our country needs your knowledge and expertise" he has said to the world community. "We are wide open to receive the most advanced knowledge from overseas to contain the problem." But is he serious? "I am aware of three US companies with state of the art technology that have been to Japan repeatedly and have been rebuffed by the Japanese government," says Arnie Gunderson, a Vermont-based nuclear engineer focused on Fukushima. "I have spoken with six Japanese medical doctors who have said that they were told not to discuss radiation induced medical issues with their patients. None will speak out to the press. "Three American University professors were afraid to sign the UN petition to Ban Ki-Moon because it would endanger their Japanese colloquies who they are doing research with." Abe, he says, to paraphrase it politely, might not be entirely forthcoming. Fukushima Daiichi is less than 200 miles from Tokyo. Prevailing winds generally blow out to sea, directly towards the United States, where Fukushima's fallout was measured less than a week after the initial disaster. But radioactive hot spots have already been found in Tokyo. A worst-case cloud would eventually make Japan an uninhabitable waste-land. What it could do to the Pacific Ocean and the rest of us downwind approaches the unthinkable. "If you calculate the amount of cesium 137 in the pool" at Unit #4, "the amount is equivalent to 14,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs," says Hiroaki Koidi, assistant professor at the earthquake/tsunami. An International Atomic Energy Agency document says they were exposed to the open air, did catch fire and did release radiation. Since none of the six GE-designed Daiichi reactors has a containment over the fuel pools, that radiation poured directly into the atmosphere. Dozens more designed like these reactors operate in the US and around the world. Then corrosive sea water was dumped into the pool. Unit #4 was damaged in the quake, and by an explosion possibly caused by hydrogen leaking in from water flowing frown from the mountains, and from attempts to cool the cores missing from Units #1, #2 and #3. Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese government may try to bring down the Unit #4 rods next month. With cranes operated by computers, that might normally take about 100 days. But this requires manual control. Tepco says they'll try to do it in a year, half their original estimate, presumably to beat the next earthquake.