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A mathematical model constructed by researchers at Imperial College London predicts the risk of cardiovascular disease (heart attacks, stroke) associated with low background levels of radiation. The model shows that the risk would vary almost in proportion with dose.

Results, published October 23 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, are consistent with risk levels reported in previous studies involving nuclear workers.

For some time, scientists have understood how high-dose radiotherapy (RT) causes inflammation in the heart and large arteries and how this results in the increased levels of cardiovascular disease observed in many groups of patients who receive RT. However, in the last few years, studies have shown that there may also be cardiovascular risks associated with the much lower fractionated doses of radiation received by groups such as nuclear workers, but it is not clear what biological mechanisms are responsible.

While the 2011 earthquake and worries surrounding Fukushima have brought the threat of radioactivity back into the public consciousness, many people still don't realize that radioactive contamination is a worldwide danger. Radionuclides are in the top six toxic threats as listed in the 2010 report by The Blacksmith Institute, an NGO dedicated to tackling pollution. You might be surprised by the locations of some of the world’s most radioactive places — and thus the number of people living in fear of the effects radiation could have on them and their children.

10. Hanford, USA

The Hanford Site, in Washington, was an integral part of the US atomic bomb project, manufacturing plutonium for the first nuclear bomb and "Fat Man," used at Nagasaki. As the Cold War waged on, it ramped up production, supplying plutonium for most of America's 60,000 nuclear weapons. Although decommissioned, it still holds two thirds of the volume of the country’s high-level radioactive waste — about 53 million gallons of liquid waste, 25 million cubic feet of solid waste and 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater underneath the area, making it the most contaminated site in the US. The environmental devastation of this area makes it clear that the threat of radioactivity is not simply something that will arrive in a missile attack, but could be lurking in the heart of your own country.

Scottish & Southern Energy (LON:SSE) has taken its ball and glove and marched off the field leaving an alliance, called NuGen, with GDF Suez and Iberdrola to build new nuclear reactors in the U.K. The other two investors bought out Scottish & Southern's shares, worth 25% of the project, for an undisclosed price increasing their respective stakes to 50% each. SSE said would now focus on renewable energy projects and with natural gas plants fueled by North Sea fields to keep the transmission lines humming when the wind doesn't blow. This may be the utility's real comfort zone and some question whether it ever really had its heart in the effort to invest in the nuclear field.

According to a Bloomberg wire service report for Sept 22, Investec analyst Angelos Anastasiou said, "Renewables are their favored area and where they see themselves in the forefront. The nuclear side was always half-hearted." Cheers from the post-industrial greens

Meanwhile, in Scotland, post-industrial visionary green groups cheered SSE's decision. In widely reported rhetoric, Dan Barlow, a key figure at Scotland's World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said his organization welcomed SSE's abandonment of the nuclear project. And he went further calling on the remaining investors to give up their nuclear plans as well. The government in Scotland, like Germany, has a delusional vision that it can provide up to 80% of its electricity needs with offshore wind power. Scotland's energy minister Fergus Ewing echoed the statements of the WWF signaling perhaps a closer than expected relationship between green groups and the government. It raises the question of whether SSE made its decision to pull out based solely on financial risk or whether it was pushed into a retreat. Ewing claims that the decision by SSE to pull out of a consortium to build a nuclear reactors is a "vindication" of one of the Scottish Government's policies to promote renewable energy.

In KING 5 TV's report Tuesday on high levels of radiation detected in Northwest rainwater, the United States government is accused of continuing to fail to tell the public about Fukushima dangerous radiation blanketing parts of the United States, a coverup that led grassroots projects and independent reporters to gather and present data for public well-being. University of California Nuclear Engineering Department Forum began asking on Tuesday for people in the Los Angles area to come forward with any dangerous radiation readings that may have been detected after local peaches were highly radioactive

UPDATE: July 13, 2011, 11:11pm: The peaches reported on July 12 were bought at "a local market," not Santa Monica Market, according to Environews on Wednesday. An investigation about the source of the peaches is underway.   Right to health denied when United States government hides high levels of Fukushima radiation  In KING 5 TV's report Tuesday on high levels of radiation detected in Northwest rainwater , the United States   government is accused of continuing to fail to tell the public about Fukushima dangerous radiation blanketing parts of the United States , a coverup that led grassroots projects and independent reporters to gather and present data for public well-being. University of California Nuclear Engineering Department Forum   began asking on Tuesday for people in the Los Angles area   to come forward with any dangerous radiation readings that may have been detected after local peaches were highly radioactive . "Our government said no health levels, no health levels were exceeded, when in fact, the rain water in the Northwest is reaching levels 130 times the drinking water standards," said Gerry Pollet from a non-government organization watchdog, Heart of America Northwest.

UPDATE: July 13, 2011, 11:11pm: The peaches reported on July 12 were bought at "a local market," not Santa Monica Market, according to Environews on Wednesday. An investigation about the source of the peaches is underway.   Right to health denied when United States government hides high levels of Fukushima radiation   In KING 5 TV's report Tuesday on high levels of radiation detected in Northwest rainwater , the United States   government is accused of continuing to fail to tell the public about Fukushima dangerous radiation blanketing parts of the United States , a coverup that led grassroots projects and independent reporters to gather and present data for public well-being. University of California Nuclear Engineering Department Forum   began asking on Tuesday for people in the Los Angles area   to come forward with any dangerous radiation readings that may have been detected after local peaches were highly radioactive . "Our government said no health levels, no health levels were exceeded, when in fact, the rain water in the Northwest is reaching levels 130 times the drinking water standards," said Gerry Pollet from a non-government organization watchdog, Heart of America Northwest. A call from the University of California Nuclear Engineering Department Forum for public radiation readings in Los Angeles came after a finding on Friday, July 8th, 2011 was reported that two peaches from the popular Santa Monica local market were confirmed to have sustained radiation levels of 81 CPMs, or greater

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”

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.

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.

: Dr. Helen Caldicott

All areas of Japan should be tested to assess how radioactive the soil and water are because the winds can blow the radioactive pollution hundreds of miles from the point source at Fukushima. Under no circumstances should radioactive rubbish and debris be incinerated as this simply spreads the isotopes far and wide to re-concentrate in food and fish. All batches of food must be adequately tested for specific radioactive elements using spectrometers. No radioactive food must be sold or consumed, nor must radioactive food be diluted for sale with non-radioactive food as radioactive elements re-concentrate in various bodily organs. All water used for human consumption should be tested weekly. All fish caught off the east coast must be tested for years to come. All people, particularly children, pregnant women and women of childbearing age still living in high radiation zones should be immediately evacuated to non-radioactive areas of Japan. All people who have been exposed to radiation from Fukushima – particularly babies, children, immunosuppressed, old people and others — must be medically thoroughly and routinely examined for malignancy, bone marrow suppression, diabetes, thyroid abnormalities, heart disease, premature aging, and cataracts for the rest of their lives and appropriate treatment instituted. Leukemia will start to manifest within the next couple of years, peak at five years and solid cancers will start appearing 10 to 15 years post-accident and will continue to increase in frequency in this generation over the next 70 to 90 years. All physicians and medical care providers in Japan must read and examine Chernobyl–Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment by the New York Academy of Sciences to understand the true medical gravity of the situation they face. I also suggest with humility that doctors in particular but also politicians and the general public refer to my web page, nuclearfreeplanet.org for more information, that they listen to the interviews related to Fukushima and Chernobyl on my radio program at ifyoulovethisplanet.org and they read my book NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER. The international medical community and in particular the WHO must be mobilized immediately to assist the Japanese medical profession and politicians to implement this massive task outlined above. The Japanese government must be willing to accept international advice and help. As a matter of extreme urgency Japan must request and receive international advice and help from the IAEA and the NRC in the U.S., and nuclear specialists from Canada, Europe, etc., to prevent the collapse of Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit 4 and the spent fuel pool if there was an earthquake greater than 7 on the Richter scale.As the fuel pool crashed to earth it would heat and burn causing a massive radioactive release 10 times larger than the release from Chernobyl. There is no time to spare and at the moment the world community sits passively by waiting for catastrophe to happen. The international and Japanese media must immediately start reporting the facts from Japan as outlined above. Not to do so is courting global disaster.

Organizers of the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World [in Yokohama] claimed 6,000 participants from some 30 countries [...] The conference shows all the signs of turning into a coherent, focused movement. [...] The conference’s call for “full transparency, accountability and responsibility by the Japanese Government and Tokyo Electric Power Company” is just as important. Without complete disclosure, progress toward grasping the causes of the problem and finding solutions cannot gain traction. The conference’s calls for ongoing data collection about the safety of food and materials will also be close to the hearts of all consumers. Already, consumers have been demanding basic information about foodstuffs and potentially contaminated materials. Last week’s discovery that radioactive gravel in concrete used to build a new condominium in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, is one more reminder that problems will continue for a very long time. Nuclear issues have come to home to roost. [...] it is clear that a practical consensus towards a different energy future is well underway. Now that is a weekend well spent!

Tokyo Shinbun is a regional newspaper covering Kanto region of Japan. It has been reporting on the Fukushima accident and resultant radiation contamination in a more honest and comprehensive manner than any national newspaper. (Their only shortcoming is that their links don't seem to last for more than a week.)Their best coverage on the subject, though, is not available digitally but only in the printed version of the newspaper. But no worry, as there is always someone who transcribes the article and post it on the net for anyone to see.

In the 2nd half of the January 27 article, Tokyo Shinbun details what kind of workers are currently working at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant: migrant workers young (in their 20's) and not so young (in their 60's), untrained, $100 a day. Some of them cannot even read and write.

Right now, 70% of workers at the plant are migrant contract workers from all over Japan. Most of them have never worked at nuke plants before. The pay is 8000 yen to 13,000 yen [US$104 to $170] per day. Most of them are either in their 20s who are finding it difficult to land on any job, or in their 60s who have "graduated" from the previous jobs."

Breaking news: two years after the Climategate, a further batch of emails has been leaked onto the internet by a person – or persons – unknown. And as before, they show the "scientists" at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light. Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa – all your favourite Climategate characters are here, once again caught red-handed in a series of emails exaggerating the extent of Anthropogenic Global Warming, while privately admitting to one another that the evidence is nowhere near as a strong as they'd like it to be. In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. This, it seems, is what motivated the whistleblower 'FOIA 2011' (or "thief", as the usual suspects at RealClimate will no doubt prefer to tar him or her) to go public.

As FOIA 2011 puts it when introducing the selected highlights, culled from a file of 220,000 emails: “Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.” “Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.” “One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true. “Poverty is a death sentence.” “Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.” Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline. FOIA 2011 is right, of course. If you're going to bomb the global economy back to the dark ages with environmental tax and regulation, if you're going to favour costly, landscape-blighting, inefficient renewables over real, abundant, relatively cheap energy that works like shale gas and oil, if you're going to cause food riots and starvation in the developing world by giving over farmland (and rainforests) to biofuel production, then at the very least you it owe to the world to base your policies on sound, transparent, evidence-based science rather than on the politicised, disingenuous junk churned out by the charlatans at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). You'll find the full taster menu of delights here at Tall Bloke's website. Shrub Niggurath is on the case too. As is the Air Vent.

At least two dozen countries around the globe get energy from nuclear power, yet not one has been able to pull off a permanent disposal site. Finding communities willing to live with such dangerous stuff has been a big sticking point. But in Sweden, two communities have stepped up, and are willing to take the country's waste. Like many countries, Sweden has had its share of political meltdowns over nuclear power. Protests stirred an uproar in the early 1980s when the Swedish nuclear industry simply decided where to begin testing for a possible geologic disposal site.

But today, instead of deflecting protesters, the nuclear industry shuttles visitors by the busloads for guided tours of facilities. More than 1,100 feet below the surface, exotic machinery and copper tubes wide enough to fit two men fill an underground cavern carved from crystalline bedrock. In this working lab in eastern Sweden, a private nuclear waste company tests methods for permanently storing used fuel. It plans to encase the fuel rods in copper capsules, then bury them 1,500 feet down in bedrock where it is supposed to sit for the next 100,000 years.

how did nuclear waste in Sweden go from a toxic topic to a field trip? People in the area said the industry needed to start over with things like public participation, a transparent, predictable process and trust. The industry took these lessons to heart. "We know that we have to meet people and communicate what we want to do, why we want to do it and how we will find a place for it," says Inger Nordholm, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, or SKB.

Of 10 nuclear power plant workers who have developed cancer and received workers' compensation in the past, nine had been exposed to less than 100 millisieverts of radiation, it has been learned.

The revelation comes amid reports that a number of workers battling the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant were found to have been exposed to more than the emergency limit of 250 millisieverts, which was raised from the previous limit of 100 millisieverts in March.

According to Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry statistics, of the 10 nuclear power plant workers, six had leukemia, two multiple myeloma and another two lymphatic malignancy. Only one had been exposed to 129.8 millisieverts but the remaining nine were less than 100 millisieverts, including one who had been exposed to about 5 millisieverts.

The private notes of the head of a U.S. cultural center in Hiroshima revealed that Washington targeted the city's residents with pro-nuclear propaganda in the mid-1950s after deciding a swing in their opinions was vital to promoting the use of civil nuclear power in Japan and across the world. The organizers of a U.S.-backed exhibition that toured 11 major Japanese cities from November 1955 to September 1957 initially considered opening the first exhibition in Hiroshima.

According to the private papers of Abol Fazl Fotouhi, former president of the American Cultural Center in Hiroshima, the idea of choosing the city was proposed at a meeting of officials of the U.S. Information Service in December 1954.

The proposal was dropped because officials were worried that it would link nuclear energy too closely with nuclear bombs. Tokyo was chosen to open the tour and three other cities were visited before the exhibition opened at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which commemorates the 1945 bombing, on May 27, 1956.

Milepost 231 now marks the end of the road. Barricades prevent traffic from proceeding farther north on Highway 6, a four-lane road that leads to the ruin of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Men in uniform are waving stop signs. In the evening twilight, a red illuminated sign flashes the following message: "No access… disaster law." Two policemen armed with red glow sticks vigorously turn away every lost driver. Three of their colleagues are blocking the exit to the right. They yell at anyone approaching on foot.

A total of 20 officers guard this intersection, day and night. To the right of the road block, the highway leads to J-Village, a former training center for the Japanese national soccer team. Since March 11, Japan's largest soccer complex has been transformed into the base camp for Japan's peculiar heroes -- the workers who are trying to regain control of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. More than 1,000 of these workers prepare themselves for their shifts here, day after day. The TEPCO power company, which is the operator of the stricken nuclear power plant, sponsored construction of the sports facility years ago. Since it has become the hub for the nuclear cleanup workers, though, the company has sealed off the area to the media and the general public.

Temporary Workers Doing the Dirty Work One of the workers feels that the public has a right to know what is happening in J-Village. He has decided to speak with SPIEGEL, although he would prefer not to give his name. He will be referred to as Sakuro Akimoto here. On busy days, he says, more than 3,000 workers pass through the radiation detection station.

Although the "Atoms for Peace" campaign was formally launched in 1957, corporate America began to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy as early as the first few months after Hiroshima. A Is For Atom, an artifact of this effort, takes this highly loaded and threatening issue straight to the public in an attempt to "humanize" the figure of the atom.A Is For Atom speaks of five atomic "giants" which "man has released from within the atom's heart": the warrior and destroyer, the farmer, the healer, the engineer and the research worker. Each is pictured as a majestic, shimmering outline figure towering over the earth. "But all are within man's power Ñ subject to his command," says the narrator reassuringly, and our future depends "on man's wisdom, on his firmness in the use of that power."General Electric, a long-time manufacturer of electric appliances, power generation plants, and nuclear weapon components, is staking a claim here, asserting their interest in managing and exploiting this new and bewildering technology. Its pitch: this is powerful, frightening, near-apocalyptic technology, but managed with firmness, it can be profitable and promising. This "Trust us with the control of technology, and we'll give you progress without end" pitch resembles what we've seen in films like General Motors' To New Horizons (on the Ephemeral Films disc). But the automobile, of course, wasn't a weapon of mass destruction.

In its first two years of release, A Is For Atom was seen by over seven million people in this version and a shortened ten-minute theatrical cut. In 1953 it won first prizes in both the Columbus (Ohio) and Turin (Italy) Film Festivals, the Freedoms Foundation Award, an "oscar" from the Cleveland Film Festival, and a Merit Award from Scholastic Teacher. In 1954 it won first prize in the Stamford Film Festival, a Golden Reel Award from the American Film Assembly, and a second Grand Award from the Venice Film Festival. The film was remade in the mid-sixties and is still available for rental.Like other John Sutherland films, A Is For Atom presents a portentious message in a visually delightful and often self-deprecating manner. "Element Town" and its quirky inhabitants, including hyped-up Radium and somnolent Lead, is unforgettable, and the animated chain reaction manages to avoid any suggestion of nuclear fear.

India has improved procedures to deal with a nuclear emergency in the wake of the Fukushima crisis in Japan, the country's atomic energy watchdog said Thursday, after criticism of its preparedness."After Fukushima, we have drawn lessons on all aspects of reactor safety and one positive development is the integrated disaster management plan," the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board chairman S.S. Bajaj said.

Earlier this year, Bajaj's predecessor at the AERB, A. Gopalkrishnan, criticised India's readiness to deal with emergencies of any kind and said that plans to tackle major nuclear incidents were largely a paper exercise.Drills were infrequent "half-hearted efforts which amount more to a sham", he said after an massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Japanese Fukushima plant in March, forcing a re-think on nuclear power around the world.A survey of nearly 10,000 Indians at the time also suggested that 77 percent of people had concerns about atomic safety while 69 percent believed the authorities could not handle a nuclear disaster on the scale of that in Japan.

Bajaj told AFP on the sidelines of a nuclear energy summit in the financial hub Mumbai that India's nuclear emergency plan "was not that positive" in the past but added: "These weaknesses have been plugged."M.C. Abani, a nuclear specialist at the National Disaster Management Authority, said that six emergency exercises had been conducted at Indian nuclear power plants since March and procedures strengthened."NDMA has raised 10 battalions of National Disaster Response Force. Each battalion has 1,150 soldiers and officers. They are trained in handling nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological incidents," he said.

The threat of radioactive contamination faced particularly by children after the Mar. 11 nuclear disaster in Japan has touched the heart of the Japanese public, and become a major political and social issue. Mothers are inevitably in the forefront of citizen groups working to protect children. At a meeting this week at the Ministry of Welfare, they presented an appeal that included a demand for the world’s first radiation safety standards for minors.

During a meeting with Vice-Minister for Health and Welfare Yoko Komiyama, Emiko Ito from the Fukshima- based Kodomo Zenkoku (Children Across Japan) Net called on the government to do more to protect children. “Safety standards established in nuclear power countries are currently set for adults,” she said. “It is a given fact that children are far more vulnerable to exposure.”

Paediatrician Dr Makoto Yamada from the Network to Protect Children from Radiation told IPS: “The hard truth is that radiation levels set in countries today are continuously challenged. Against such a backdrop, it is almost impossible to set a medically accepted rate for children.” Yamada says he believes children should be protected from all levels of radiation, which is the reason he started his network. The network is comprised of doctors from across Japan who visit Fukushima voluntarily to counsel anxious parents and provide independent radiation testing.

Seiji Maehara, who lost his bid to become the party leader and the prime minister of Japan, has nonetheless landed on a very powerful party position as the chairman of the DPJ's policy bureau.He went to Fukushima, and after visiting with the evacuees from Iitate-mura, he disclosed his party's plan to use the "eco-point" system for residential housing to promote timber from the disaster-affected area.

What is the "eco-point" for houses? Well, if you build or renovate your house with energy saving features and alternative energy features (eg. solar panels) the government will give you "eco-points". Then you can use the points at participating stores and buy whatever you want to buy with the points.Maehara is saying the government may entice builders to use the lumber from the disaster-affected area with "eco-points", even if the potentially radioactive lumber has nothing to do with energy saving.

Iitate-mura's major industry is forestry. Iitate-mura's mountains and forests have been contaminated with whatever fell on them - radioactive cesium, plutonium, strontium. No one has tested them (if someone did, he's not saying anything), but the contamination should be an order of magnitude bigger than the radioactive firewood from Rikuzen Takata City in Iwate Prefecture.