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Study: Childhood cancer not linked to reactors [13Jul11] - 0 views

  • A nationwide study involving more than 1.3 million children in Switzerland has concluded that there is no evidence of an increased risk of cancer for children born near nuclear power plants.    The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) and the Swiss Cancer League requested that the Institute of Social and Preventative Medicine (ISPM) at the University of Bern perform a study of the relationship between childhood cancer and nuclear power plants in Switzerland. ISPM then teamed with the Swiss Childhood Cancer Registry and the Swiss Paediatric Oncology Group to conduct the Childhood Cancer and Nuclear Power Plants in Switzerland (CANUPIS) study between September 2008 and December 2010. The results have now been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
  • The researchers computed person-years at risk for over 1.3 million children aged 0-15 years born in Switzerland between 1985 and 2009, based on the Swiss censuses 1990 and 2000. They also identified cancer cases in those children from the Swiss Childhood Cancer Registry. The ISPM then compared the rate of leukaemias and cancers in children born less than five kilometres, 5-10 km, and 10-15 km from the nearest nuclear power plants with the risk in children born further away.
  • Researchers concluded that the risk in the zone within 5 km of a nuclear power plant was "similar" to the risk in the control group areas over 15 km away, with 8 cases compared to 6.8 expected cases. In the 5-10 km zone there were 12 cases compared to 20.3 expected cases. And in the 10-15 km zone there were 31 cases compared to 28.3 expected cases. "A statistically significant increase or reduction in the risk of childhood cancer was not observed in any of the analyses," said the ISPM.
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  • The study concluded, "This nationwide cohort study, adjusting for confounders and using exact distances from residence at birth and diagnosis to the nearest nuclear power plants, found little evidence for an association between the risk of leukaemia or any childhood cancer and living near nuclear power plants."   There are five nuclear power plants in Switzerland (Beznau I and II, Mühleberg, Gösgen and Leibstadt). About 1% of the population lives within 5 km of a plant and 10% live within 15 km.
  • The radioactive emissions in the vicinity of Swiss nuclear power plants are regularly monitored and the data are published by the Division for Radiation Protection of the FOPH. "The exposure due to emissions from nuclear power plants in the vicinity of these plants is below 0.01 millisieverts per year," the University of Bern said. "This corresponds to less than 1/500 of the average total radiation residents in Switzerland are exposed to, mainly from radon gas, cosmic and terrestrial radiation and medical investigations and therapies."
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50 of 87 Green turtle's eggs were deformed [06Dec11] - 0 views

  • Mr.Mizobuchi Yukio ,the chairman of sea turtle association of Japan,found out 50 of 87 green turtle’s eggs were deformed. Normal eggs are 4 cm diameter ,but deformed ones are 6 cm diameter and various width. The smallest egg was only 1.5 cm diameter. They were deposited early in the morning of 6/5/2011,in Hirano surf beach ,Shimanto shi Kochi.On 6/4 ,the turtle came to a different beach called Futami kaigan,where it was born.However,it went back to the sea without leaving eggs and deposited eggs in Hirano surf beach ,where it wasn’t born. This is unusual case for sea turtles. Last year,sea turtles deposited eggs from 5/17~8/4 in Hirano surf beach. It was 5/22~8/4 in Futami kaigan. However,this year ,they deposited eggs on 6/5 for the first time in Hirano surf beach. In Futami kaigan ,they deposited eggs in 5/12 but didn’t come back until 6/3.
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Safecast: Global sensor network collects and shares radiation data via CC0 - Creative C... - 0 views

  • One week after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Diachi plant in March, the Safecast project was born to respond to the information needs of Japanese citizens regarding radiation levels in their environment. Safecast, then known as RDTN.org, started a campaign on Kickstarter “to provide an aggregate feed of nuclear radiation data from governmental, non-governmental and citizen-scientist sources.” All radiation data collected via the project would be dedicated to the public domain using CC0, “available to everyone, including scientists and nuclear experts who can provide context for lay people.” Since then, more than 1.25 million data points have been collected and shared; Safecast has been featured on PBS Newshour; and the project aims to expand its scope to mapping the rest of the world.
  • “Safecast supports the idea that more data – freely available data – is better. Our goal is not to single out any individual source of data as untrustworthy, but rather to contribute to the existing measurement data and make it more robust. Multiple sources of data are always better and more accurate when aggregated. While Japan and radiation is the primary focus of the moment, this work has made us aware of a need for more environmental data on a global level and the longterm work that Safecast engages in will address these needs. Safecast is based in the US but is currently focused on outreach efforts in Japan. Our team includes contributors from around the world.”
  • To learn more, visit http://safecast.org.
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New Reactor in Tennessee: Safety Concerns Cloud US Nuclear Renaissance [22Jul11] - 0 views

  • Watts Bar 2, the US's newest nuclear power plant, is being built in Tennessee and is expected to go online next year. It has a history of safety concerns that goes back decades. Nevertheless, many local people support nuclear power and are welcoming the reactor with open arms.
  • Mansour Guity was the chief witness against the American nuclear industry. He crippled entire power plants almost single-handedly. But now the 30-year war he has been waging is coming to an end. They are now putting the finishing touches on the second reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station in the Tennessee River valley, less than 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Guity's house. After construction was stopped more than two decades ago and resumed in 2007, the reactor is now expected to go online next year. Mansour Guity isn't doing too well at the moment.
  • In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, he gradually discovered that so many shortcuts were taken, and some of the work was so shoddy, during the construction of the nuclear plants along the Tennessee River that it made a mockery of any notion of nuclear safety. Guity was a nuclear engineer at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a large, long-established government-owned company that operates the Browns Ferry, Sequoyah, Bellefonte and Watts Bar nuclear power plants. When the plants were built, there was talk of thousands of clear violations of plans and building regulations, with the most serious infractions occurring at Watts Bar.
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  • A nuclear engineer who was born in Iran in 1942, Guity is a disappointed American today. "Time bombs," he says, sounding very bitter. "We are sitting on a bunch of ticking time bombs."
  • Not Up to Standard
  • The plant's two units were built at the same time in the 1970s and 80s. Only Unit 1 was placed into operation, after a dramatic delay, while Unit 2 remained unfinished until construction was resumed a few years ago. If Guity had his way, the entire plant, including both units and everything else associated with it, would disappear from the map as soon as possible.
  • The reason Guity still has trouble sleeping at night is his belief that all of these old mistakes and violations can never be completely corrected.
  • One of the reasons Guity is so upset is that there is no public debate in the United States over Watts Bar, or nuclear energy in general. It is a non-issue throughout the country, even though, according to Guity, there are plenty of reasons that it should be discussed. The United States has 104 nuclear reactors in operation, more than any other country in the world. Many plants are alarmingly dated -- some are 40 years old or even older. Some 65,000 tons of nuclear waste have accumulated over the decades. As unbelievable as it sounds, the country doesn't even have a long-term plan for the storage and disposal of the nuclear waste being generated every day.
  • If the second unit at Watts Bar, America's last reactor still under construction, really does go online next year, almost 40 years after building work began, parts of the unit will still date from the time when so many criteria were being violated. In fact, no one, not even the TVA, knows exactly the nature and scope of these violations.
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Three Plutonium Brothers of Japan: "They Are So Safe You Can Drink It" (Updated with Tr... - 0 views

  • The original Japanese video was compiled by "sievert311":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppon_vEJLCQ&feature=channel_video_title "sievert311" also has a Dr. Shunichi "100 millisievert is safe" Yamashita's video in three languages (English, Spanish, French). Check it out.
  • Tokyo Brown Tabby's latest captioning is over the collection of video clips of three Japanese nuclear researchers, claiming safety for plutonium on the national TV. The first two appeared on TV after the March 11 accident to assure the public that there was nothing to worry about on plutonium, because it was so safe.
  • Three Plutonium Brothers are: (1)Tadashi Narabayashi Professor in Engineering at Hokkaido University (in TV Asahi "Sunday Scramble" on Apr. 3, 2011)
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  • Transcript of the video.
  • (3)Hirotada Ohashi Professor in System Innovation University of Tokyo (at a panel discussion in Saga Pref. on Dec. 25, 2005, regarding using MOX fuel at Genkai Nuke Plant)
  • (2)Keiichi Nakagawa Associate Professor in Radiology The University of Tokyo Hospital (in Nippon TV "news every" on Mar. 29, 2011)
  • For example, plutonium will not be absorbed from the skin. Sometimes you ingest it through food, but in that case, most of it will go out in urine or stools. The problem occurs when you inhale it. Inhaling plutonium is said to increase the risk of lung cancer. MC: "How will that affect our daily lives?" Nothing. MC: "Nothing?"
  • Besides, plutonium can be stopped by a single sheet of paper. Plutonium is made into nuclear fuels in facilities with good protective measures, so you don't need to worry.
  • Well, half of adult males will die if they ingest 200 grams of salt. With only 200 gram. However, oral lethal dose of plutonium-239 is 32g. So, if you compare the toxicity, plutonium, when ingested, is not very different from salt. If you inhale it into your lungs, the lethal dose will be about 10 milligram. This is about the same as potassium cyanide. That sounds scary but the point is plutonium is no different from potassium cyanide. Some toxins like botulism bacillus that causes food poisoning is much more dangerous. Dioxin is even more dangerous. So, unless you turn plutonium into powder and swallow it into your lungs.... MC: "No one would do that."
  • Nothing. To begin with, this material is very heavy. So, unlike iodine, it won't disperse in the air. Workers at the plant MAY be affected. So, I'd caution them to be careful. But I don't think the public should worry. For example, 50 years ago when I was born, the amount of plutonium was 1000 times higher than now. MC: "Oh, why?" Because of nuclear testing. So, even if the amount has now increased somewhat, in fact it's still much less than before. However, if it is released into the ocean through exhaust water, that's a problem. Once outside, plutonium hardly decreases.
  • MC: "It takes 24,000 years before it dicreases to half, doen't it?" That's right. So, in that sense, plutonium is problematic. But then again, there will be no effect on the public. I think you can rest easy. MC: "Let me summarize. Plutonium won't be absorbed from the skin. If it's ingested through food, it will go out of the body in urine. If it's inhaled, it may increase the risk of lung cancer. But since it's very heavy, we don't need to worry."
  • I'd like to point out two things. What happens in a [nuclear] accident depends entirely on your assumptions. If you assume everything would break and all the materials inside the reactor would be completely released into the environment, then we would get all kinds of result. But it's like discussing "what if a giant meteorite hit?" You are talking about the probability of an unlikely event. You may think it's a big problem if an accident occurs at the reactor, but the nuclear experts do not think Containment Vessels will break. But the anti-nuclear people will say, "How do you know that?" Hydrogen explosions will not occur and I agree, but their argument is "how do you know that?"
  • So, right now in the safety review, we're assuming every technically possible situation. For example, such and such parts would break, plutonium would be released like this, then it would be stopped here...something like that. We set the hurdle high and still assume even the higher-level radiation would be released and make calculations. This may be very difficult for you to understand this process, but we do. To figure out how far contamination might spread, we analyze based on our assumption of what could occur. However, the public interpret it as something that will occur. Or the anti-nuclear people take it in a wrong way and think we make such an assumption because it will happen. We can't have an argument with such people.
  • Another thing is the toxicity of plutonium. The toxicity of plutonium is very much exaggerated. Experts dealing with health damage by plutonium call this situation "social toxicity." In reality, there's nothing frightening about plutonium. If, in an extreme case, terrorists may take plutonium and throw it into a reservoir, which supplies the tap water. Then, will tens of thousands of people die? No, they won't. Not a single one will likely die. Plutonium is insoluble in water and will be expelled quickly from the body even if it's ingested with water.
  • So, what Dr. Koide is saying is if we take plutonium particles one by one, cut open your lungs and bury the plutonium particles deep in the lungs, then that many people will die. A pure fantasy that would never happen. He's basically saying we can't drive a car, we can't ride a train, because we don't know what will happen. MC: "Thank you very much."
  • See, we've been duped. Plutonium is not dangerous! We'd better ask these three to drink it up to prove it's not dangerous. Then we will feel safe, won't we? Please doctors, would you do it for us?
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Kenzaburo Oe: Resignation to and responsibility for Fukushima disaster [19Sep11] - 0 views

  • Resignation to and responsibility for Fukushima disaster
  • In an interview in the September issue of the magazine Sekai, Hida says: “If you have already been exposed, you must be prepared. Resign yourself. Tell yourself that you might be unlucky and see horrendous effects several decades down the line. Then, try to build up your immune system as much as you can to fight the hazards of radiation. “But will making the effort to avoid buying vegetables that may be tainted be sufficient in protecting you? It’s better to take precautions than to not take them. But radioactive materials continue to leak from Fukushima, even now. Tainted food has infiltrated the market, so unfortunately, there’s no guaranteed method of protecting yourself from internal exposure. Abolishing nuclear power and cutting off radioactivity at its source is a much faster way of dealing with it.”
  • After March 11, I stayed up until late every night watching television (a newly formed habit following the disaster). There was a television reporter who went to check in on a house with the lights on in an area that was otherwise dark due to evacuation orders. As it turned out, a horse was in labor and the owner was unable to leave its side. Several days later, the reporter visited the farm once again, and saw the mare and its foal indoors in the dark. Their owner’s expression was gloomy. The foal had not been allowed outside to run around freely because radioactive material-contaminated rain had fallen on the grass. The crisis has taken away lives that many people are still trying to get back. What messages can we deliver to those people and how? I need to hear those words, too, and the person I have turned to for guidance is the physician Shuntaro Hida, who has been speaking about the dangers of internal exposure to radiation since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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  • It hasn’t been long since I read a science fiction piece in which humankind decides to bury massive amounts of radioactive waste deep underground. They are stumped by how they should warn the people of the future who will be left to deal with the waste, and by who should sign the warning. Unfortunately, the situation is no longer a matter of fiction. We are one-sidedly unloading our burdens onto future generations. When did humankind abandon the morals that would stop us from doing such a thing? Have we passed a fundamental turning point in history?
  • I do not want to deliver these words to the men — the politicians, the bureaucrats, the businessmen — who intend to thrust the difficult task of dealing with radioactive waste, which was generated and continues to be generated by an electric power policy that puts production power and economic strength before everything else, upon future generations. Rather, I want to deliver these words to the women — the young mothers — who have been quick to catch on to the dangers being posed to their children, and are trying to deal with the problem head on. After Italian voters rejected the resumption of operations at their nuclear power plants, a senior official in Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) attributed the referendum result to “mass hysteria,” suggesting that the power of women was behind the results. An Italian woman in the film industry responded to the insult, saying: “Japanese men are likely moved to action by a ‘mass hysteria’ that puts productivity and economic power before all else. I’m only talking about men here, because no matter where you are, women never put anything before life. If Japan were to not only lose its status as an economic superpower but fall into long-term poverty, we all know from Japanese films that women will overcome such hardships!”
  • The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan’s World War II defeat, and the subsequent occupation of Japan by the Allied Forces took place during my childhood. We were all poor. But when the new Constitution was unveiled, I was struck by the repetition of the word “determination” in its preamble. It filled me with pride to know that the grown-ups were so resolute. Today, through the eyes of an old man, I see Fukushima and the difficult circumstances that this country faces. And still I have hope in a new resolve of the Japanese people. (By Kenzaburo Oe, author)
  • Kenzaburo Oe, born 1935, was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. After the crisis started at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, musicians and writers, including Oe, released a statement calling for the abolishment of nuclear power. An antinuclear rally will be held in Tokyo’s Meiji Park on Sept. 19.
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    Speech given in the largest antinuclear rally held in Tokyo, September 19th, 2011 by Kenzaburo Oe, Japanese Nobel Laureate .
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Secret US-Israeli Nuke Weapons Transfers Led To Fukushima Blasts [03Oct11] - 0 views

  • Sixteen tons and what you get is a nuclear catastrophe. The explosions that rocked the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant were more powerful than the combustion of hydrogen gas, as claimed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. The actual cause of the blasts, according to intelligence sources in Washington, was nuclear fission of. warhead cores illegally taken from America's sole nuclear-weapons assembly facility. Evaporation in the cooling pools used for spent fuel rods led to the detonation of stored weapons-grade plutonium and uranium.   The facts about clandestine American and Israeli support for Japan's nuclear armament are being suppressed in the biggest official cover-up in recent history. The timeline of events indicates the theft from America's strategic arsenal was authorized at the highest level under a three-way deal between the Bush-Cheney team, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Elhud Olmert's government in Tel Aviv.
  • Tokyo's Strangelove   In early 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney flew to Tokyo with his closest aides. Newspaper editorials noted the secrecy surrounding his visit - no press conferences, no handshakes with ordinary folks and, as diplomatic cables suggest, no briefing for U.S. Embassy staffers in Tokyo.   Cheney snubbed Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, who was shut out of confidential talks. The pretext was his criticism of President George Bush for claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The more immediate concern was that the defense minister might disclose bilateral secrets to the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were sure to oppose White House approval of Japan's nuclear program.
  • Abe has wide knowledge of esoteric technologies. His first job in the early 1980s was as a manager at Kobe Steel. One of the researchers there was astrophysicist Hideo Murai, who adapted Soviet electromagnetic technology to "cold mold" steel. Murai later became chief scientist for the Aum Shinrikyo sect, which recruited Soviet weapons technicians under the program initiated by Abe's father. After entering government service, Abe was posted to the U.S. branch of JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization). Its New York offices hosted computers used to crack databases at the Pentagon and major defense contractors to pilfer advanced technology. The hacker team was led by Tokyo University's top gamer, who had been recruited into Aum.   After the Tokyo subway gassing in 1995, Abe distanced himself from his father's Frankenstein cult with a publics-relations campaign. Fast forward a dozen years and Abe is at Camp David. After the successful talks with Bush, Abe flew to India to sell Cheney's quadrilateral pact to a Delhi skeptical about a new Cold War. Presumably, Cheney fulfilled his end of the deal. Soon thereafter Hurricane Katrina struck, wiping away the Abe visit from the public memory.
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  • Since the Liberal Democratic Party selected him as prime minister in September 2006, the hawkish Abe repeatedly called for Japan to move beyond the postwar formula of a strictly defensive posture and non-nuclear principles. Advocacy of a nuclear-armed Japan arose from his family tradition. His grandfather Nobusuke Kishi nurtured the wartime atomic bomb project and, as postwar prime minister, enacted the civilian nuclear program. His father Shintaro Abe, a former foreign minister, had played the Russian card in the 1980s, sponsoring the Russo-Japan College, run by the Aum Shinrikyo sect (a front for foreign intelligence), to recruit weapons scientists from a collapsing Soviet Union.   The chief obstacle to American acceptance of a nuclear-armed Japan was the Pentagon, where Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima remain as iconic symbols justifying American military supremacy.The only feasible channel for bilateral transfers then was through the civilian-run Department of Energy (DoE), which supervises the production of nuclear weapons.
  • Camp David Go-Ahead   The deal was sealed on Abe's subsequent visit to Washington. Wary of the eavesdropping that led to Richard Nixon's fall from grace, Bush preferred the privacy afforded at Camp David. There, in a rustic lodge on April 27, Bush and Abe huddled for 45 minutes. What transpired has never been revealed, not even in vague outline.   As his Russian card suggested, Abe was shopping for enriched uranium. At 99.9 percent purity, American-made uranium and plutonium is the world's finest nuclear material. The lack of mineral contaminants means that it cannot be traced back to its origin. In contrast, material from Chinese and Russian labs can be identified by impurities introduced during the enrichment process.
  • The flow of coolant water into the storage pools ceased, quickening evaporation. Fission of the overheated cores led to blasts and mushroom-clouds. Residents in mountaintop Iitate village overlooking the seaside plant saw plumes of smoke and could "taste the metal" in their throats.   Guilty as Charged   The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were powerful enough to damage Fukushima No.1. The natural disaster, however, was vastly amplified by two external factors: release of the Stuxnet virus, which shut down control systems in the critical 20 minutes prior to the tsunami; and presence of weapons-grade nuclear materials that devastated the nuclear facility and contaminated the entire region.   Of the three parties involved, which bears the greatest guilt? All three are guilty of mass murder, injury and destruction of property on a regional scale, and as such are liable for criminal prosecution and damages under international law and in each respective jurisdiction.
  • An unannounced reason for Cheney's visit was to promote a quadrilateral alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. The four cornerstones - the US, Japan, Australia and India - were being called on to contain and confront China and its allies North Korea and Russia.. From a Japanese perspective, this grand alliance was flawed by asymmetry: The three adversaries were nuclear powers, while the U.S. was the only one in the Quad group.   To further his own nuclear ambitions, Abe was playing the Russian card. As mentioned in a U.S. Embassy cable (dated 9/22), the Yomiuri Shimbun gave top play to this challenge to the White House : "It was learned yesterday that the government and domestic utility companies have entered final talks with Russia in order to relegate uranium enrichment for use at nuclear power facilities to Atomprom, the state-owned nuclear monopoly." If Washington refused to accept a nuclear-armed Japan, Tokyo would turn to Moscow.
  • Throughout the Pantex caper, from the data theft to smuggling operation, Bush and Cheney's point man for nuclear issues was DoE Deputy Director Clay Sell, a lawyer born in Amarillo and former aide to Panhandle district Congressman Mac Thornberry. Sell served on the Bush-Cheney transition team and became the top adviser to the President on nuclear issues. At DoE, Sell was directly in charge of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, which includes 17 national laboratories and the Pantex plant. (Another alarm bell: Sell was also staff director for the Senate Energy subcommittee under the late Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who died in a 2010 plane crash.)   An Israeli Double-Cross   The nuclear shipments to Japan required a third-party cutout for plausible deniability by the White House. Israel acted less like an agent and more like a broker in demanding additional payment from Tokyo, according to intelligence sources. Adding injury to insult, the Israelis skimmed off the newer warhead cores for their own arsenal and delivered older ones. Since deteriorated cores require enrichment, the Japanese were furious and demanded a refund, which the Israelis refused. Tokyo had no recourse since by late 2008 principals Abe had resigned the previous autumn and Bush was a lame duck.
  • The Japanese nuclear developers, under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, had no choice but to enrich the uranium cores at Fukushima No.1, a location remote enough to evade detection by nonproliferation inspectors. Hitachi and GE had developed a laser extraction process for plutonium, which requires vast amounts of electrical power. This meant one reactor had to make unscheduled runs, as was the case when the March earthquake struck.   Tokyo dealt a slap on the wrist to Tel Aviv by backing Palestinian rights at the UN. Not to be bullied, the Israeli secret service launched the Stuxnet virus against Japan's nuclear facilities.   Firewalls kept Stuxnet at bay until the Tohoku earthquake. The seismic activity felled an electricity tower behind Reactor 6. The power cut disrupted the control system, momentarily taking down the firewall. As the computer came online again, Stuxnet infiltrated to shut down the back-up generators. During the 20-minute interval between quake and tsunami, the pumps and valves at Fukushima No.1 were immobilized, exposing the turbine rooms to flood damage.
  • The Texas Job   BWXT Pantex, America's nuclear warhead facility, sprawls over 16,000 acres of the Texas Panhandle outside Amarillo. Run by the DoE and Babcock & Wilson, the site also serves as a storage facility for warheads past their expiration date. The 1989 shutdown of Rocky Flats, under community pressure in Colorado, forced the removal of those nuclear stockpiles to Pantex. Security clearances are required to enter since it is an obvious target for would-be nuclear thieves.   In June 2004, a server at the Albuquerque office of the National Nuclear Security System was hacked. Personal information and security-clearance data for 11 federal employees and 177 contractors at Pantex were lifted. NNSA did not inform Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman or his deputy Clay Sell until three months after the security breach, indicating investigators suspected an inside job.
  • The White House, specifically Bush, Cheney and their co-conspirators in the DoE, hold responsibility for ordering the illegal removal and shipment of warheads without safeguards.   The state of Israel is implicated in theft from U.S. strategic stockpiles, fraud and extortion against the Japanese government, and a computer attack against critical infrastructure with deadly consequences, tantamount to an act of war.   Prime Minister Abe and his Economy Ministry sourced weapons-grade nuclear material in violation of constitutional law and in reckless disregard of the risks of unregulated storage, enrichment and extraction. Had Abe not requested enriched uranium and plutonium in the first place, the other parties would not now be implicated. Japan, thus, bears the onus of the crime.
  • The International Criminal Court has sufficient grounds for taking up a case that involves the health of millions of people in Japan, Canada, the United States, Russia, the Koreas, Mongolia, China and possibly the entire Northern Hemisphere. The Fukushima disaster is more than an human-rights charge against a petty dictator, it is a crime against humanity on par with the indictments at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. Failure to prosecute is complicity.   If there is a silver lining to every dark cloud, it's that the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami saved the world from even greater folly by halting the drive to World War III.
  •  
    A very important report from ex-Japanese Times reporter, Yoichi Shimatsu
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Animals suffer the effects of Fukushima nuclear devastation [07Jul11] - 0 views

  • The Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan has taken a massive toll on animals. The fate of wildlife is largely unknown, but domestic pets and livestock continue to suffer.   Livestock were forcibly abandoned and left behind to starve. Cows contaminated with cesium five times the permissible level have been slaughtered. Buried in the ground, their radioactive carcasses will continue to contaminate the land for decades if Chernobyl is any indication.   Family pets were left behind, tied, abandoned in homes, or left to roam the streets in search of food. Their owners were forbidden to return or were allowed to make brief visits to feed them, often too late. A rabbit born without ears is stoking fears of birth defects and genetic damage among humans while whales have been caught that are found to be contaminated with radioactive cesium. In the event of US reactor accidents, citizens are encouraged to evacuate with their pets. However, evacuation shelters and most hotels do not allow animals. Livestock, of course, cannot be evacuated.
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Earless baby bunny near Fukushima Daiichi stokes fears of radiogenic mutation... - 0 views

  • A baby bunny apparently born without ears (photo at left) in the town of Namie, near the massively leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has raised concerns about mutagenic effects caused by radioactivity in the environment. Naysayers abound, despite evidence of genetic mutations in animals (such as a two headed calf) and plants (including deformed flowers) in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island meltdown collected and documented by Mary Osborn; numerous scientific studies showing adverse impacts on wildlife populations in Chernobyl contaminated regions, such as on birds by Dr. Tim Mousseau of the University of South Carolina; and, further back in time, an epidemic of ewe deaths in southwest Utah immediately downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site. An excellent book by John G. Fuller, "The Day We Bombed Utah," published in 1984, recounts how Mormon sheep farmers experienced unprecedented sheep and ewe deaths in the early 1950s, shortly after nuclear weapons blasts upwind in Nevada. The farmers sued the Atomic Energy Commission for damages. AEC research scientists swore, under oath, that they had no evidence that radioactivity could cause such a die off in sheep and ewes. However, over a quarter century later, it was shown by the sheep farmers and their attorney that the AEC had lied -- they had conducted experiments on sheep at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State: they observed die offs very similar to what occurred in Utah. The same judge who had presided over the original trial heard the new evidence as well, and ruled that the AEC had perpetrated a fraud upon the court. Fuller also wrote "We Almost Lost Detroit," published in 1975, about the 1966 partial meltdown at the Fermi 1 experimental plutonium breeder reactor in Monroe, Michigan.
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Japan mayor wants reactor near Tokyo decommissioned [12Oct11] - 0 views

  • A Japanese mayor has called on the government to decommission the nuclear reactor in his village, 110 km northeast of Tokyo, the first local leader to urge scrapping a reactor as Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda tries to rehabilitate the tarnished nuclear sector to help meet the nation's power needs. The reactor at Tokaimura, where Japan's commercial nuclear power industry was born in the late 1950s, has been shut since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan on March 11. It entered routine maintenance in May and is not due to restart until August 2012.
  • Only 10 of Japan's 54 commercial reactors remain operating seven months after the March disaster triggered a crisis at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, as safety fears have left local authorities wary of restarting reactors once they go offline for routine maintenance.But Tokaimura Mayor Tatsuya Murakami was the first local official to call for scrapping a reactor altogether, warning that, if the wave that struck his village on March 11 had been slightly higher, the Tokai Daini reactor could have posed far graver danger than the Fukushima plant, as 1 million people live within a 30-km radius and it is much closer to Tokyo.
  • A Tokaimura official said Wednesday that Murakami made his plea at a meeting the day before with nuclear disaster minister Goshi Hosono."Shouldn't the plant be decommissioned?" he was quoted as telling the meeting.The 33-year old reactor still has seven years before its operating license expires and Tokyo Electric Power Co had been counting on the 1,100-megawatt facility to help it make up for the 4,700 megawatts of lost power from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.
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We may be too late to evacuate [15Oct11] - 0 views

  • In Chernobyl, 0.09 uSv/h → Children started having symptoms. (near radiation level as westen Tokyo) 0.16 uSv/h → Adults got leukemia within 5 years. (near radiation level as Adachiku) 0.232 uSv/h → Mandatory evacuation area in Cheronobyl. (near radiation level as Asakusa or Tokyo Disneyland) I received a lot of queries. I would like to add some more explanation to this. This is a lecture of Ms. Noro Mika, who runs the NPO “Bridge to Chernobyl”
  • She has been visiting Chernobyl for 25 years and help children to accept in Hokkaido for one month etc.. Currently, the radiation levels in some parts of Kanto area are 3 mSv/year. Annotator’s comment: According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the numerical values announced by the local government prove only the emission of gamma rays. The iodine and the cesium decay while emitting beta rays. If we have to deal strictly with gamma rays emissions, the degree of contamination can be understood, but we can’t measure the level of individual external exposure. Besides, the numerical values detected at the monitoring posts are measured at 10m above the ground level or even more.
  • In Chernobyl, an area 30 km from the nuclear plant, where the radiation level was 0.232 μSv/hour, was declared “no-entry zone”. In Chernobyl, in area where radiation levels were daily even 0.16 μSv/hour have been admitted as being dangerous, and in fact, adults got leukemia and died. Annotator: In case, in Kamakura, were I live, the level is 0.16 μSv/hour. Concerning the gamma dose rate in a certain spots one meter above the ground level, the radiation levels declared officially for Kamakura city are generally between 0.11〜0.14 μSv/hour. Radioactivity, in case of of iron, concrete, etc causes the oxidation and corrosion, but in humans accelerates the aging process and cause them sickness.
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  • And the effects start appearing in 2~3 years. We didn’t understand from the beginning where the hot spots were. But after checking later the areas where a lot of children got sick, in Belarus probably the radioactive substances were easily carried by the wind because the flat level ground, but it became clear that in areas 20~30 km from the plant there were places contaminated about just as much as Chernobyl. Kamakura is about 300 kilos away from Fukushima in a straight line. Based on the results of the investigations made after the nuclear accident in Chernobyl, in Europe the fact of assuming that 800km from the nuclear plant might be contaminated has been made taken into consideration as a basic rule for safety.
  • In Chernobyl, because contaminated farm products were made served in school lunches, about 70% of the children suffered from various kinds of health damages. Those (health problems) were not limited to their generation, and when those children became parents their problems passed to their children too. Because radioactive substances have similarities with nutrients like calcium, the mammals will feed a lot of them to their babies. Radioactive substances get easily out of their bodies by milk – hence, there were many cases when after giving birth to their first baby, a large quantity of radioactive substances were passed to the (first born) child and the mother’s health improved, but those children had serious congenital disorders (became people with serious disabilities).
  • Annotator’s comment: Because I believe that breast-feeding has a tremendous influence not only on nutrition, but also on the mental aspect; that’s why I hope that the mothers who are breast-feeding their children pay strict attention also to the their level of internal exposure and evacuate as soon as possible. Because the danger of the radioactive substances is known well enough, the world is watching the way Japan is dealing with the situation. A country which abandons its children and doesn’t value their lives is not a country worthy of trust.
  • Besides, there is no country who would buy things from a country that loosens it’s standards. The gov and Tepco spread misinformation (misinform the population). They should think about requesting the farmers give up growing farming products which are contaminated, give them compensation, and provide them new and safe farmlands.
  • n case of Chernobyl, party members, doctors and a nurses, teachers could afford to evacuate, because they could keep sustaining themselves even if they moved, but the poor people could not afford to evacuate. The symptoms which appeared at children who remained were the following: Headache nosebleed diarrhea thyroid problems not growing taller hard to recover after catching a cold swelling of the lymphatic glands, easily get sick with pneumonia kidney pain renal cancer
  • [that I have a] (because while radioactivity leaves the body, the urinary tract is affected) pain in the back side of the knee arthralgia wounds that take a long time to cure asthma hair loss problems with their hair growing alteration in visual acuity poor appetite poor concentration fatigability/easily getting tired cardiac pain (cardialgia) low resistance to diseases. The school lessons were shortened to 25 minutes, and because their kidneys became week, there are primary school children who wet their beds.
  • Even after becoming adults, the following cases were recorded: increase of myocardial infarcts an increase in the nr of sudden deaths death of young people in their 30th Accumulation of cesium in heart – even if eliminate from their bodies it (cesium) enters the body again after eating being exempted from the military service for having small holes in their hearts Regarding their children, the following medical cases were recorded - Brain damage, proved by the fact that they were slow in eating their meals.
  • Mothers of many children who were different from the other normal children give them to adoption, even if they didn’t have renal surgery or health problems, or a handicap. This kind of things are happening. (Source) German Translation
Dan R.D.

The Japanese Government's Appalling Earthquake, Nuclear Response (1) - The Daily Beast ... - 0 views

  • Residents in the radiation danger zone, instructed to stay inside their homes, are venturing out in search of food and fuel. A Japanese businessman in the country's northeast tells Joan Juliet Buck how government incompetence is killing people who escaped the earthquake.
  • Writer, cultural critic, and actor Joan Juliet Buck wrote to a foreign-born Japanese friend in the food business to ask him how we in America could help Japan. Below is his answer. Tellingly, he does not want to be identified
  • “As you are a journalist,” he wrote back, “first I would like to explain how the Japanese government and bureaucrats are incompetent against the crisis.”
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  • In the email he sent me, he combined local press reports with his own observations. The Japanese Red Cross can’t accept the food he is trying to donate for the refugees because there is no gasoline to get it into the stricken areas. Vehicles cannot get through to the affected areas, and Japan’s military, called the Self Defense Force, was forced to travel to the Tohoku region, in the country’s northeast, in a civilian ferry. People ordered to stay in their homes to shelter from radioactive emissions have neither food nor heat and venture out on foot into maximum danger to look for food.
  • Here’s a personal look at the situation in Japan today.“This is all the information we’re getting from the Japanese press: I’m giving it to you in bullet points.
  • 1. There is no fuel for heating.
  • No FuelBecause the government did not ease the regulation on the stocks of fossil fuels, there is a severe lack of fuel in all of Tokyo and the Tohoku area.
  • 2. Food and medicine are not arriving at the refugee centers.
  • 5. Due to the lack of fuel, elderly people are dying of cold, stress, malnutrition, and lack of medicine. Twenty-four of them have died so far.
  • 7. Medical doctors cannot go into the region because there is nowhere to get gasoline.
  • Slow Decision MakingThe U.S. government immediately sent an aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, after the earthquake. It arrived in the Tohoku area on March 13 at 4 a.m. Japanese time. Last night, on March 16, I learned that the Japanese Self Defense Force from Hokkaido had just left for the Tohoku area. The force was traveling to Tohoku on a civilian ferry and had planned to arrive today, March 17.Just today the government decided to send fuel to the region in need.
  • People Around the Nuclear FacilitiesWithin a 30-kilometer radius around the plants, the government has instructed the refugees to stay sealed indoors. However, the government is not sending in food and fuel to these households and these refugee centers. As food and/or fuel run out, the refugees are walking away from their houses and being exposed to radiation.
  • Public Sentiment Is Inhibiting PressureCurrently no press is in the mood to criticize the government. The general public believes that criticism should come later. The opposition parties are also quiet. There is no pressure on the bureaucrats and government to improve the situation.
D'coda Dcoda

Soviet Radiation Doctor: We were wrong - A huge new group has appeared… The c... - 0 views

  • Title: True Stories: After The Apocalypse (Nuclear Testing Effects) Uploader: AfterApocalypseMovie Upload Date: April 27, 2011 Description: During the Soviet era, the people of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan were used as human guinea pigs in the testing of nuclear weapons. Today they live with the consequences. Whilst sheep graze in radioactive bomb craters, many in the population believe that the testing is the reason why one in twenty children are born with birth defects. [...] Transcript Excerpts (Emphasis Added)
  • At 20:35 -- 21:00 in Dr. Boris Gusev, Semipalatinsk Institute of Radiation Medicine: “We knew precisely where the radiation was.” “We knew precisely how much of the different types of radiation that people were being exposed to.” “What dose the population was receiving.” “We knew everything.” At 46:30 -- 47:10 in Dr. Boris Gusev, Semipalatinsk Institute of Radiation Medicine:
  • “Over the last 15 years we have thoroughly analyzed all the material in these archives.” “We have made our conclusions and published our research, and at the same time we have continued our planned research of the population.” “Now a huge new group has appeared of 250,000-270,000 people.” “These are the children of parents who have been irradiated.” “We thought that everything would go smoothly, that chromosonal damage and genetic effects would be confined to the generation of people who were irradiated and they could not be inherited by future generations.” “But it turned out that this was wrong.”
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