Some days after the quake and resultant tsunami, I recall reading news articles about the Fukushima nuke plant's valves failing. The reason that it was of interest was that I worked for a couple engineering firms that provided a lot of consulting services to industrial clients. Some of my co-workers did Programmable Logic Control systems for various process equipment projects, including valves. These valves were such that they would automatically fail opened or closed (FO/FC) in the event of a power outage or similar emergency within a system. So why did these valves get hinky after the quake?

Subsequent to that, there were news articles pertaining to cyber attacks on Iran going rogue, and possibly playing a role in what transpired at Fukushima. In a fresh NYT article, the POTUS now admits to the existence of a cyber warfare targeting Iran's low-grade enrichment centrifuges for their power plant, and the 2010 *escape* of that bug to the internet, where it likely found familiar lodgings in other nuke plants, like Fukushima....


NYT Link

But the good luck did not last. In the summer of 2010, shortly after a new variant of the worm had been sent into Natanz, it became clear that the worm, which was never supposed to leave the Natanz machines, had broken free, like a zoo animal that found the keys to the cage. It fell to Mr. Panetta and two other crucial players in Olympic Games — General Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Michael J. Morell, the deputy director of the C.I.A. — to break the news to Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden.

An error in the code, they said, had led it to spread to an engineer’s computer when it was hooked up to the centrifuges. When the engineer left Natanz and connected the computer to the Internet, the American- and Israeli-made bug failed to recognize that its environment had changed. It began replicating itself all around the world. Suddenly, the code was exposed, though its intent would not be clear, at least to ordinary computer users.

“We think there was a modification done by the Israelis,” one of the briefers told the president, “and we don’t know if we were part of that activity.”

Oops!

Fukushima Valve Failures

Documents the company released on Sunday reveal that in reactor unit 1, the core had probably melted down within just 16 hours of the quake, which occurred at 2.46 pm on 11 March. Three hours later, the water level in the reactor, vital for cooling the fuel, had plummeted, and the fuel rods began to melt in the evening at 7.30 pm, with most melted by 6.50 am the following morning. Japanese government officials warned that the same thing had probably happened in reactor units 2 and 3.

Information released by TEPCO on Monday also suggests that the cooling systems for unit 1 had already failed before the tsunami struck. One possibility is that workers manually shut them down because they feared the reactor would become too cold.

As mysteries deepen about what really did happen in the early hours of the crisis, TEPCO this week drastically revised its schedule for bringing reactor units 1, 2 and 3 under full control within five to eight months. After discovering 3000 tonnes of contaminated water in the basement of reactor unit 1, the company has decided the best option is to install pumps enabling the radioactive water to be repeatedly recycled to cool the reactor, instead of cooling it with fresh water.

Things that make ya go, hmmmmm.....

Truth? Stranger than fiction. There is a real possibility that the
worm found a home in the process control arrays at Fukushima.
Before the earthquake and resultant Tsunami.
Perhaps not a singularity.

For those so inclined, here's some surprising information on Stuxnet, and a recent variant, from F-Secure--

Q: Who could have written Stuxnet?
A: Looking at the financial and R&D investment required and combining this with the fact that there's no obvious money-making mechanism within Stuxnet, that leaves only two possibilities: a terror group or a nation-state. And we don't believe any terror group would have this kind of resources.
Q: So was Stuxnet written by a government?
A: That's what it would look like, yes.
Q: How could governments get something so complex right?
A: Trick question. Nice. Next question.
Q: Was it Israel?
A: We don't know.
Q: Was it Egypt? Saudi Arabia? USA?
A: We don't know.
Q: Was the target Iran?
A: We don't know.

How does Stuxnet know it has already infected a machine?
A: It sets a Registry key with a value "19790509" as an infection marker.
Q: What's the significance of "19790509"?
A: It's a date. 9th of May, 1979.
Q: What happened on 9th of May, 1979?
A: Maybe it's the birthday of the author? Then again, on that date a Jewish-Iranian businessman called Habib Elghanian was executed in Iran. He was accused to be spying for Israel.
Q: Oh.
A: Yeah.

Q: Did Stuxnet sink Deepwater Horizon and cause the Mexican oil spill?
A: No, we do not think so. Although it does seem Deepwater Horizon indeed did have some Siemens PLC systems on it.
Q: Is it true that the US Senate held hearings on Stuxnet?
A: Yes, in November.

Full Stuxnet Q&A from F-Secure


Stuxnet could be why Germany suddenly shut down all of its nuke plants in March of last year.....

German Shut Down



As reported by F-Secure in October of last year, seems that there is a Stuxnet variant by the name of Duqu that was created by the authors of Stuxnet.

Duqu


The extrapolations of all this are rather sobering, as most industrial and municipal entities use Siemens PLC's in their respective processes....

Seems that Stuxnet was indeed detected in Japan five months before Fukushima as reported by The Daily Yomiuri--

Link

Stuxnet seems to make sense as to why the Fukushima operators were reportedly vexed in their vain attempts to regain control of the system's pumps and valves under the control of the targeted Siemens PLC's, even under battery back-up....

Given the NYT Stuxnet article cited above, and if Fukushima was the indirect result of USreal's act of cyber warfare, did the POTUS just admit to showering the northern hemisphere with the vaporized Japanese fuel rods?

The true collateral damage remains to be seen....

there is also a new virus floating around, its called Flame...

and Driftin'. you may find this article interesting as well...

part of it...

But suspicions about the U.S. government’s role in the use of cyberweapons were heightened by a report in Friday’s New York Times. Based on anonymous sources, it said President Barack Obama secretly had ordered the use of another sophisticated cyberweapon, known as Stuxnet, to attack the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities. The order was an extension of a sabotage program that the Times said began during the Bush administration.

Private security researchers long have suspected that the U.S. and Israeli governments were responsible for Stuxnet. But the newspaper’s detailed description of conversations in the Oval Office among Obama, the vice president and the CIA director about the U.S. government’s responsibility for Stuxnet is the most direct evidence of this to date. U.S. officials rarely discuss the use of cyberweapons outside of classified settings.

Stuxnet is believed to have been released as early as 2009. It was discovered in June 2010 by a Belarusian antivirus researcher analyzing a customer’s infected computer in Iran. It targeted electronic program controllers built by Siemens AG of Germany that were installed in Iran. The U.S. government also circulated warnings to American businesses about Stuxnet after it was detected.

The White House said Friday it would not discuss whether the U.S. was responsible for the Stuxnet attacks on Iran.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/w...Tx8U_story.html

So you're saying that Stuxnet caused the Earthquake. Thats kind of hard to believe

revised article from the previous one i posted, much longer...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47658329/ns/technology_and_science-security/

Don't worry Hank. We know Bush is always to blame. I learned that in the seminar titled "PBEAO". Place blame early and often.

Herr Goebbles approves that tactic.

Mebbe Stuxnet was in the act of causing the meltdown at Fukushima
and the Earthquake and Tsunami just became red herring for the
process.