The Great Reactor Fiasco is bringing in all the couch potatoes and Monday Morning Quarterbacks such as this dude:

U.N.’s Nuclear Chief Says Japan Is ‘Far From the End of the Accident’

The world’s chief nuclear inspector said Saturday that Japan was “still far from the end of the accident” that has stricken its Fukushima nuclear complex and continues to spew radiation into the atmosphere and the sea, and acknowledged that the authorities were still unsure about whether the nuclear cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them and end the crisis.

Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he saw a few “positive signs” with the restoration of some outside electric power to the plant. But taking care to say he was not criticizing Japan’s response under extraordinary circumstances, he said “more efforts should be done to put an end to the accident.”

Meanwhile, seawater in the immediate vicinity of the reactors becomes increasingly radioactive:

Level of iodine-131 in seawater off chart
Contamination 1,250 times above maximum limit

The level of radioactive iodine detected in seawater near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was 1,250 times above the maximum level allowable, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday, in a development that indicates contamination from the ruined reactors is spreading.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. meanwhile admitted it neglected to alert workers when it detected high radiation in a reactor building nine days ago.

The iodine-131 in the seawater was detected at 8:30 a.m. Friday, about 330 meters south of the plant’s drain outlets. Previously, the highest amount recorded was about 100 times above the permitted level.

If a person drank 500 ml of water containing the newly detected level of contamination, it would be the equivalent of 1 millisievert of radiation, or the average dosage one is exposed to annually, the NISA said.

TEPCO won’t say or cannot how much radiation was in the water the injured workers were standing in other than to say that the, “Three employees working near the No. 3 reactor Thursday stepped into water that had 10,000 times the amount of radiation typical for a nuclear plant,”

Whatever amount that is …

The two employees received radiation doses in excess of 150 millisieverts. The ‘old’ yearly total exposure before the fiasco was 100 millisieverts per year.

Tepco also revealed that it had detected a radiation reading of 200 millisieverts per hour in a pool of water in the No. 1 reactor’s turbine building on March 18, but failed to notify workers.

“If we had warned them, we may have been able to avoid having workers (at the No. 3 reactor) exposed to radiation,” a Tepco official told a separate news conference.

There is almost as much radiation on the ground in Fukushima approaches that from the Chernobyl reactor:

Radiation from Fukushima exceeds Three Mile Island

Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, crippled by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, has discharged more radiation than the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the United States, according to calculations by the central government.

It has already reached a level 6 serious accident on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).

Separately, calculations made by experts place the level of soil contamination in some locations at levels comparable to those found after the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

The ad hoc approaches to these reactors are starting to fall apart. TEPCO cannot pump water into the reactors with fire trucks and concrete pumps forever. At some point, people will have to go into the buildings, decontaminate them, handle large, bulky and highly radioactive items such as roof trusses and concrete slabs. Humans will have to retrieve the scattered spent fuel rods. Chunks of goo will have to be put into lead- lined trash cans and the entire mess shipped to a repository for radioactive waste. All of this will take armies of people working in shifts and heavy equipment.

What are these people waiting for? Someone to ring a bell?

While everyone is distracted with Libya, the ‘action’ is taking place in Syria and Jordan:

In Syria, Tension and Grief After Protests and Official Retaliation

The sun rose over a landscape of grief as mourners set out for funerals in the southern towns of Sanamayn and Dara’a; in Latakia (Syria); in the central city of Homs; and in the suburbs of Damascus. In each place, demonstrators had been killed hours earlier, shot by government forces in the most violent government oppression since 1982, when the leadership killed at least 10,000 people in Hama, a city in the north.

Exact numbers of the dead are hard to determine, as the official government news service denied the authorities’ culpability in new reports blaming criminal gangs.

“In some villages there were 10 or 15; in some villages there were around 20 or more than 20,” the religious leader said.

While in Jordan:

Jordan opposition demands PM’s ouster after unrest

AMMAN — Jordan’s Islamist opposition, leftists and trade unions on Saturday demanded the ouster of Prime Minister Maaruf Bakhit, blaming him for violence that has killed one person and injured 130.

“The Islamist movement demands the resignation, or the sacking, of the government and the formation of a national unity and reformist government that would win the people’s trust and protect their lives,” Hamzah Mansur, chief of the powerful Islamic Action Front (IAF), said.

“Any government that kills citizens loses legitimacy,” he told a news conference.

Youth movements backed the call.

“We demand the prime minister and intelligence chief (Mohammed Raqqad) quit,” Firas Mahadin of the March 24 youth group told reporters. “We have reached a point of no return.”

Radiation kills you but bullets kill you faster …

Libya: what is taking place there is all- out warfare with the West’s cynical ‘failed state’ tactic proceeding as planned:

Libyan rebels take Ajdabiya after allied airstrikes

Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi’s troops flee the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya after a series of attacks by international coalition forces. Rebel fighters entering the city celebrate amid destroyed government tanks and rocket systems.

Reporting from Ajdabiya and Tripoli, Libya— After seven days of punishing allied airstrikes, Libyan government forces fled the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya early Saturday, leaving behind a charred trail of smoking tanks and rocket systems destroyed by warplanes.

Rebel fighters in gun trucks raced into the nearly deserted city, firing their weapons into the air and clamoring over burning tanks in a daylong celebration of horn-honking and flag-waving.

The overnight airstrikes ended a 10-day siege by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, which bombarded the city of 120,000 with tank and rocket barrages. Government troops retreated south and west, exposing more armor to allied warplanes.

The so- called ‘Rebels’ captured Ajdabiya weeks ago and Qaddafi’s goons recaptured it a couple of weeks later. Back and forth, too bad NATO can’t figure out a way to bomb the Japanese reactors.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are quiescent right now but tomorrow?

While all this is taking place, the EU is falling apart:

Portugal ‘headed towards a default’

European Union leaders meeting in Brussels have warned that Portugal still needs to make big cuts in spending and reduce its debts. Earlier this week, the Portuguese government collapsed, increasing fears that the country will follow Greece and Ireland in seeking a multi-billion euro bailout.

Wolfgang Munchau, correspondent at the Financial Times, believes that serious political opposition to bailouts is growing in creditor countries like Germany, France, Finland and the Netherlands.

“The the minute a country pays for another country there will be so much hostility in the creditor country that the politics of this will become impossible…

“This leads me to believe that we are headed towards a default.”

Add to this stew the funding straitjackets that the PIIGS find themselves in:

Spain Takes Turn in Debt Spotlight
Portugal’s admission that it will probably need a financial bailout raises a question that will shape the outcome of the euro zone’s debt crisis: Is Spain next?

The cost of saving Spain, a €1.1 trillion ($1.56 trillion) economy, would dwarf previous bailouts and could test the financial strength of Europe as a whole.

But if Spain can continue to repair investors’ trust, as in recent weeks, then Europe stands a chance of containing the debt crisis to three countries, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, whose combined economies are half the size of Spain’s.

Debt? What debt? Greece @ 10%: (Bloomberg)

Ireland @ 10%

Portugal @ 10%:

OUCH! There is no way these countries are going to escape debt- deflation as they cannot earn enough to service the debts they carry now along with the additional ‘bailout’ debts.

Here is Fuckyoushima in reflection: the same lies, the same false promises, the same half- assed approaches that include bailing out the bosses while the same pressure builds up to massive explosions. The little dudes and dudettes get to clean up the mess … if they can.

It’s all of a piece: everyone who can has been living beyond their means, to grab while the grabbing was good. You note I said ‘was’. This is the time when accounts start to settle. What cannot be sustained will not be. What cannot be paid won’t.

Right now it’s becoming clear the energy deficit in Japan is too large to service with some fire trucks and lies about radiation just like the euro deficit in Spain cannot be serviced with the same firetrucks and lies. Something has to give and it is …