Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Army Stockpiles Anti-Radiation Pills To Protect Against Fukushima Fallout
The Troop Support branch of the Defense Logistics Agency has decided to replenish its stockpiles of anti-radiation pills, citing the ongoing crisis at Fukushima and the potential for nuclear fallout as a primary reason behind the bulk purchase.
According to a solicitation on the FedBizOpps.gov website, the DLA is looking to finalize the purchase of almost $400,000 dollars worth of potassium iodide pills, which work by helping the the body’s thyroid gland block cancer-causing radioiodines.
The posting states that the DLA requires 75,000 blister packs of pills, each of which contain 14 potassium iodide tablets, enough to last 2 weeks for one adult. The solicitation specifies the need to “ensure that critical operational forces are protected in the event of nuclear fallout,” as the reason behind the purchase, adding that, “The recent earthquake in Japan in March of 2011 and the resultant nuclear crisis has renewed interest in this item.”
Despite the mainstream media’s disinterest in the ongoing Fukushima crisis, now into its 14th month, experts have warned that the situation at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is at its most critical phase.
As we reported last week, according to insiders the Japanese government has drawn up contingency plans for the potential evacuation of Greater Tokyo’s 39 million residents due to the threat posed by the potential meltdown of Fukushima’s reactor number 4, which holds 75% as much nuclear fuel as the entire Chernobyl complex did prior to its meltdown.
“The worse-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. If this were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate,” according to a Mainichi Daily News editorial by senior writer Takao Yamada which cited defense insiders.
Diplomat Akio Matsumura went further, warning that the collapse of reactor number 4 would “certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced,” adding that the 11,138 spent fuel assemblies stored at the Fukushima plant contain “134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident.”
Matsumura chillingly cautioned that should the worst case scenario unfold, the resulting radioactive fallout “would destroy the world environment and our civilization.”
Radiation from the Fukushima plant was recently detected on the west coast of the United States by marine biologists who found giant kelp collected along the coast from Laguna Beach to as far north as Santa Cruz to be contaminated with radiation as high as samples found in British Columbia, Canada, and northern Washington State in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Full article: http://www.prisonpla … kushima-fallout.html
