Fukushima mutant snowflakes

With all this 'burning' snow mumbo jumbo, I thought I'd put up a link to an older article from '11 showing and explaining how the snow in Fuku has 'mutated'.

We report a hitherto unnoticed but highly disturbing development in the area surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. This complex has been fraught with problems as a result of the initial failure of power consequent to the magnitude 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake that struck Northern Japan on 11th March 2011. The critical plant equipment appeared to survive the earthquake without serious damage, and the safety systems performed as designed, although the magnitude of the earthquake was in excess of design parameters. However, the following tsunami engulfed the emergency power generation systems and compromised the battery backup systems. Off-site power was lost, and power to operate the pumps required to provide cooling of the reactors and the used fuel pools remained unavailable for over a week. As a result of this, small amounts of radioactive material have reportedly escaped into the environs.

Our findings relate to the formation of abnormal, ‘mutant’ ice crystals in the snow that has fallen in the Fukushima region since the earthquake. Besides hampering rescue and repair efforts, this snow potentially provides us with an early warning as to how wide-reaching the consequences of the earthquake could be.