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D'coda Dcoda

Harm from Fukushima Radiation: A Matter Of Perspective [09Jul11] - 0 views

blogs.forbes.com/...iation-a-matter-of-perspective

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 26 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • A leading biophysicist has cast a critical light on the government’s reassurances that Americans were never at risk from Fukushima fallout, saying “we really don’t know for sure.”
  • When radioactive fallout from Japan’s nuclear disaster began appearing in the United States this spring, the Obama Administration’s open-data policy obligated the government to inform the public, in some detail, what was landing here.
  • Covering the story, I watched the government pursue what appeared to be two strategies to minimize public alarm:
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  • It framed the data with reassurances like this oft-repeated sentence from the EPA: “The level detected is far below a level of public health concern.” The question, of course, is whose concern.
  • The EPA seemed to be timing its data releases to avoid media coverage. It released its most alarming data set late on a Friday—data that showed radioactive fallout in the drinking water of more than a dozen U.S. cities.
  • Friday and Saturday data releases were most frequent when radiation levels were highest. And despite the ravages newspapers have suffered from internet competition, newspaper editors still have not learned to assign reporters to watch the government on weekends. As a result, bloggers broke the fallout news, while newspapers relegated themselves to local followups, most of which did little more than quote public health officials who were pursuing strategy #1.
  • For example, when radioactive cesium-137 was found in milk in Hilo, Hawaii, Lynn Nakasone, administrator of the Health Department’s Environmental Health Services Division, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser: ”There’s no question the milk is safe.”
  • Nakasone had little alternative but to say that. She wasn’t about to dump thousands of gallons of milk that represented the livelihood of local dairymen, and she wasn’t authorized to dump the milk as long as the radiation detected remained below FDA’s Derived Intervention Level, a metric I’ll discuss more below.
  • That kind of statement failed to reassure the public in part because of the issue of informed consent—Americans never consented to swallowing any radiation from Fukushima—and in part because the statement is obviously false.
  • There is a question whether the milk was safe.
  • medical experts agree that any increased exposure to radiation increases risk of cancer, and so, no increase in radiation is unquestionably safe.
  • Whether you choose to see the Fukushima fallout as safe depends on the perspective you adopt, as David J. Brenner, a professor of radiation biophysics and the director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, elucidated recently in The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists:
  • Should this worry us? We know that the extra individual cancer risks from this long-term exposure will be very small indeed. Most of us have about a 40 percent chance of getting cancer at some point in our lives, and the radiation dose from the extra radioactive cesium in the food supply will not significantly increase our individual cancer risks.
  • But there’s another way we can and should think about the risk: not from the perspective of individuals, but from the perspective of the entire population. A tiny extra risk to a few people is one thing. But here we have a potential tiny extra risk to millions or even billions of people. Think of buying a lottery ticket — just like the millions of other people who buy a ticket, your chances of winning are miniscule. Yet among these millions of lottery players, a few people will certainly win; we just can’t predict who they will be. Likewise, will there be some extra cancers among the very large numbers of people exposed to extremely small radiation risks? It’s likely, but we really don’t know for sure.
  • the EPA’s standard for radionuclides in drinking water is so much more conservative than the FDA’s standard for radionuclides in food. The two agencies anticipate different endurances of exposure—long-term in the EPA’s view, short-term in FDA’s. But faced with the commercial implications of its actions, FDA tolerates a higher level of mortality than EPA does.
  • FDA has a technical quibble with that last sentence. FDA spokesman Siobhan Delancey says: Risk coefficients (one in a million, two in ten thousand) are statistically based population estimates of risk. As such they cannot be used to predict individual risk and there is likely to be variation around those numbers. Thus we cannot say precisely that “one in a million people will die of cancer from drinking water at the EPA MCL” or that “two in ten thousand people will die of cancer from consuming food at the level of an FDA DIL.” These are estimates only and apply to populations as a whole.
  • The government, while assuring us of safety, comforts itself in the abstraction of the population-wide view, but from Dr. Brenner’s perspective, the population-wide view is a lottery and someone’s number may come up. Let that person decide whether we should be alarmed.
D'coda Dcoda

Hiroshima to Fukushima, Finishing the Job | Veterans Today [18Aug11] - 0 views

www.veteranstoday.com/...to-fukushima-finishing-the-job

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 19 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • (San Francisco) Two 10,000 lb (4,545 kg) uranium poison gas “dirty” bombs with small nuclear  dispersion devises set Japan on the road to extinction on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. A row of six modified and enlarged US Navy submarine reactors pioneered by US Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover and manufactured by the US based General Electric Corp (GE) finished the kill March 11, 2011. Thanks to the US Navy designed and GE built atomic reactors, the Japanese people are dying, the country of Japan is no more and the land is permanently uninhabitable.
  • Lethal nuclear vapors created by the destroyed Navy/GE reactors and thousands of tons of garbaged and burning old reactor cores are spreading invisible radioactive death and sickness all over the world. What’s more: the atomic reactors spilled their burning guts into the basements and there is evidence the melted reactor cores are still “reacting” 160 days out. Shutting them down is mostly just plain impossible. The burning, radioactive gates of hell are still open wide. Breathe deep everyone. Breathe your own poisoned Fuku tainted air.
  • The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) The best measure of population growth or shrinkage is a country’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR). It is, simply put, the average number of children women have in a society over their child bearing years. Two kids per woman is the “replacement value” for one woman and one male. Two kids per woman means the man and woman replace themselves and the next generation will be the same size as their preceding generation.
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  • The higher the TFR number, the more the population will grow and expand. On the other hand, a TFR number below 2 kids per woman means the population is shrinking for the next generation. Nuclear weaponeers who know about these things say it is impossible for a society to recover, or grow again, with a TFR below 1.3 kids per woman. In short, that society is doomed. Japan’s TFR plummeted to 1.2 since the detonation of the two 10,000 lb sperm and ovary destroying uranium poison gas bombs in August, 1945.
  • A few weeks after the atomic bombing, Australian journalist George Weller managed to sneak into occupied Japan and nuked Nagasaki in spite of US Army General Douglas MacArthur’s prohibition. Weller, an experienced war correspondent, was utterly stunned at the extent of the other worldly devastation and killing of the Atomic Bomb. Mr. Weller coined the term “Atomic Plague” which then swept around the world on a wave of revulsion at what the Americans had done. Diplomats and other people politically or militarily in-the-know knew the Japanese were eager to surrender and that President Truman lied in his bull shit speech about the Atomic Bomb “saving American lives” that would be forfeit if the US were to invade Japan.
  • What’s more, the dominant owners of the NYT, the Sultzberger family, like it that way. The family has had a slash and burn radiation policy ever since Hiroshima in 1945. No Lie was too Big, in fact, the Bigger and more Bizarre the better. Germany’s WWII Fuhrer Adolph Hitler may have coined the concept “The Big Lie;” but, the New York Times spun it out to a degree that would make even Hitler proud.
  • The Radiation Warfare Committee controlled Manhattan Project to build the Atomic Bomb got its name from its organizer, the Manhattan Engineering District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The Sultzbergers’ NY Times was only too eager to help the fledgling CIA and the US War Department lie about the nuke bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan that incinerated hundreds of thousands of people. Many were literally vaporized into nothingness. The Big Lie Lives On with the NY Times
  • The coming Fuku Kid Disaster and Fuku Kill Off First and foremost will be the ever nasty New York Times (NYT.) When it comes to something really, vitally important to all our futures, our families and friends, we can always count on the NYT to lie through their teeth for the nuclear industry criminals and mass murderers. That is nothing new for the Times, they always have.
  • The six devastated US Navy/GE reactors at Fukushima Daiichi finished the Kill Truman ordered 65 years, 7 months, and 6 days later on March 3, 2011. Sayonara, Japan, you are history. “Who’s Next?” Good question. There are 438 big reactors, just stationary nuclear weapons really, in the world. 104 big nuke reactors are in America and many, like the Fuku reactors,  are by the sea due to the exorbitant, one billion gallons a day water demand of the reactors. Even the inland reactors are exquisitely vulnerable to becoming another Fukushima. If any lose electricity and off site feeds, a Fuku type meltdown is guaranteed.
  • The people in the Japanese NHK TV video below live in Northern Japan. They must evacuate and many are dying. Many won’t leave, preferring Denial as the better course to reality and Evacuation. After all, you can’t see, feel, hear or taste radiation as it liquefies your insides. Any of us could be next.
  • The US Military and probably Russia’s Military, the former Soviet Union, possess weapons that can accomplish this kind of devastation. They should, at least the US has devoted billions to controlling what the DOD calls “earth processes” for 60 years. That would be your basic hurricanes, tornadoes, rain, drought, earthquakes, tsunamis, rogue waves and volcanoes. Even a medium sized tropical storm, not even big enough to be a hurricane or typhoon, contains as much energy as 10,000 Hiroshima sized Atomic Bombs. If the War Department, later renamed to the Department of Defense to confuse the do-gooders, could control the weather or “Earth Processes” they would control the world. That’s the long held dream of Psychos and control freaks everywhere.
  • D'coda Dcoda on 19 Aug 11
     
    only a partial clipping so read article for more
D'coda Dcoda

Excessive Radiation Exposure to Tokyo Population on March 15 [12Oct11] - 0 views

blog.safecast.org/...tokyo-population-on-march-15-3

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 23 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Analysis of the fallout measured during the period 11:14~12:14 in Taito-ku, Tokyo on March 15 28was calculated into a 24-hour dose. See the main table above. The total becomes 2021Bg/m3  equivalent to 210uSv/day. The analysis was presented at Koide’s university seminar class on March 18. See 28Page 13 of this PDF. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government measured I131, I132 and Cs134, Cs137 in 28Fukazawa, Setagaya-ku, which were detected every hour on March 15. Their 28total readings for I131, I132, Cs134, Cs137 was 1247.8Bq/m3 equivalent to 141.9uSv/day. Monitoring post in Setagaya, Tokyo [pdf] Koide says that Kimura’s measurement data covers the radioactive particles collected, but gaseous 28nuclides could not be measured. He thinks that the total internal and external 28radiation exposure including gaseous nuclides was about 1mSv/day on March 2815.
  • The following video streams show Koide’s testimony (in Japanese only – no subtitles) at the House of Councilors on May 23: • http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14906087 • http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14907869
D'coda Dcoda

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

enenews.com/been-irradiated-video-1hr-2min

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 31 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • 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.”
D'coda Dcoda

Bird numbers plummet around stricken Fukushima plant [03Feb12] - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...n-fukushima-plant-6348724.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 03 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers working around Japan's disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant say bird populations there have begun to dwindle, in what may be a chilling harbinger of the impact of radioactive fallout on local life. In the first major study of the impact of the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, the researchers, from Japan, the US and Denmark, said their analysis of 14 species of bird common to Fukushima and Chernobyl, the Ukrainian city which suffered a similar nuclear meltdown, showed the effect on abundance is worse in the Japanese disaster zone.
  • The study, published next week in the journal Environmental Pollution, suggests that its findings demonstrate "an immediate negative consequence of radiation for birds during the main breeding season [of] March [to] July".Two of the study's authors have spent years working in the irradiated 2,850 sq metre zone around the Chernobyl single-reactor plant, which exploded in 1986 and showered much of Europe with caesium, strontium, plutonium and other radioactive toxins. A quarter of a century later, the region is almost devoid of people.
  • Timothy Mousseau and Anders Pape Moller say their research uncovered major negative effects among the bird population, including reductions in longevity and in male fertility, and birds with smaller brains.Many species show "dramatically" elevated DNA mutation rates, developmental abnormalities and extinctions, they add, while insect life has been significantly reduced.
D'coda Dcoda

Radiation from Fukushima may lead to decreased population in Japan [11Aug11] - 0 views

www.alaskadispatch.com/...ead-decreased-population-japan

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 12 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • In the post-disaster environment, there is now another disincentive to have children: concerns about radiation. Though long-term health implications of exposure to low doses of radiation is disputed, medical officials deem infants to be more prone to the dangers than adults. “Before the disaster, I wanted to have another child, but now I don’t think I can. I used to work at the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Plant,” says Yuki Sato, referring to the facility a few miles from the stricken Daiichi facility. Ms. Sato and her 6-year-old son are now living at an evacuation center in Koriyama City on the western edge of Fukushima Prefecture. She is concerned about radiation she may have been exposed to following the accident. “I asked the medical staff at the center whether a baby would be affected,” says Sato. “They said it ‘should' be OK.' What kind of answer is that when talking about having a baby?” Although few people were working as close to the Fukushima accident as Sato, women across the northeast of Japan, and as far away as Tokyo, are concerned about having children amid ongoing fears of the effects of radiation.
D'coda Dcoda

Iran - Regime's nuclear ambitions have no place for people's problems [26Jul11] - 0 views

www.news.az/...41241

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 26 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • the nuclear program became the main subject of the first European tourney of Foreign Minister Ali Akber Salehi.
  • As part of the tourney, Salehi visited the capital of Slovenia Ljubljana and also Vienna, where he talked to his Austrian counterpart Michael Spindelegger and general director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Yukiya Amano. At the press conference in Ljubljana and Vienna, the head of the Iranian delegation made it clear that Iran is committed to the Nuclear Weapon Nonproliferation Treaty but will never yield its legal rights for implementation of the peaceful nuclear program
  • It is not a secret that most economic problems and deprivations of the population of the country are caused by sanctions against our state over the development of nuclear industry. The paradox is that we have already got used to the sanctions, which had been place against us for already 21 years.
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  • Though the nuclear program in our country started in 1967, when the United State handed the nuclear reactor of 5 MW capacity to Shah Muhammad Reza Pehlevi, in 1979, the clericals who came to power rejected to implement the program of nuclear plant construction. In the first years after war not only foreign but also a great many of specialists participating in the nuclear program left the country. In a few years, when the situation in the country slightly stabilized, the powers decided to restart implementation of the nuclear program.
  • A scientific research center with the research reactor on heavy water was created under China’s support in Isfahan, and production of uranium ore continued. All the same, the powers were negotiating the technologies of uranium enrichment and production of heavy water with the companies from Switzerland and Germany. Iranian physicists visited  the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics in Amsterdam, nuclear Petten center in Netherlands. However, in 2002 the United States included our country into the so-called evil axe and on the basis of footage from the space, they declared that religious fanatics are working secretly on creation of nuclear weapon. For many years the United States have been seeking international isolation of our country under pretense of inadmissibility of creating a nuclear bomb by this country
  • Undoubtedly, nuclear program is a two-edged sword. First, we are an independent state and no one has the right to dictate their provisions to us. The country’s powers have repeatedly stated that the nuclear program is implemented under international standards and control. Additionally, our neighbors Kuwait, Bahrain, Arab Emirates have already stated the intention to build nuclear stations and develop nuclear industry. But the world community is not concerned with it. This means that the ‘concern’ over Iranian nuclear programs is politically motivated. How long will we have to prove that we pursue only peaceful aims?
  • Our religious leader Ayatollah Hamenei said that creation of the nuclear bomb is illegal and goes contrary to Islam.
  • why do we need this nuclear program? Why do we need those high costs, if 70% of population is starving? There are no economic preconditions for development of the nuclear program. Our country has 10% of world’s proven oil reserves and is second for its natural gas resources.
  • The energy complex of the country fully meets the internal needs, for example, Iran is 20th in the world for its power generation. So why do we need the nuclear energy sector? It is much more important in the countries that have no sufficient natural energy sources. Additionally, nuclear energy remains the subject of fierce debates. Opponents and supporters of nuclear energy give different assessment to its security, reliability and economic effectiveness. The threat is connected with problems of waste utilization, car crashes that are causes of environmental disasters.
  • It seems that the maniacal wish to develop nuclear program by all means  is caused by the excessive ambitions of the regime, which decided to demonstrate its independence and determination by all means. Getting involved in the ambitions race with its main rival-United States, the Iranian authorities do not understand that the nuclear program has already turned into a speculation that is used by each of the parties for their own interests.
  • no one cares that this mad race has no place for the problems of people,  suffering from international sanctions against the country. Though, we are used to it since in 32 years the regime recalled the people only when there appeared the direct threat of overthrow.
Jan Wyllie

Cap & Share: simple is beautiful [22Jul11] - 0 views

fleeingvesuvius.org/...cap-share-simple-is-beautiful

regulation sustainability climate change

shared by Jan Wyllie on 14 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Cap: The total carbon emissions are limited (capped) in a simple, no-nonsense way Share: The huge amounts of money involved are shared equally by the population
  • The primary fossil-fuel suppliers (e.g. oil companies) are required to acquire permits in order to introduce fossil fuels into the economy (by importing them or extracting them from the ground).
  • Next, the Share. Since the fossil fuel suppliers have to buy the permits, they will pass on this cost by increasing the fuel price. This flows through the economy (like a carbon tax), making carbon-intensive goods cost more.
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  • But the trick this time is to share out the money paid by the fossil-fuel suppliers, back to the people, which compensates for the price rises.
  • These certificates are then sold to the primary fossil-fuel suppliers (through market intermediaries such as banks) and become the permits.
  • Cap & Share in a nutshell
  • To many people, however, the ‘obvious’ mechanism is not Cap & Share but either a carbon tax (discussed below) or a version of cap and trade applied ‘downstream’ where the emissions take place. Such a cap and trade system has two parts, as follows. The first applies to the fossil fuels we buy directly (petrol, gas, coal) and burn ourselves, causing emissions; these direct emissions account for half of our ‘carbon footprint’. For these direct emissions, some form of personal carbon trading is envisaged, typically based on ideas of ‘rationing’ familiar from petrol and food rationing during the Second World War. Personal Carbon Allowances (PCAs) typically involve giving an equal allowance to each adult citizen, and each purchase of petrol, oil or gas is deducted from the allowance (typically using swipe card technology). The other half of our carbon footprint consists of indirect emissions, the ‘embedded’ emissions in goods and services, which arise when companies produce these goods and services on our behalf. These indirect emissions are controlled with an Emissions Trading System (ETS) for companies
  • scientific realism will trump political realism in the end.
  • At the moment, the populations of most countries are largely in psychological denial, ‘yearning to be free’ of the knowledge, deep down, that we are collectively on the wrong road.
  • ut we will also need a dramatic change in global popular opinion — a change of world-view. Adoption of a simple, fair and realistic framework for cutting global carbon emissions — such as Cap & Share — would be inspirational, resonating with this change and with efforts to solve the other problems that face us collectively on our finite planet.
D'coda Dcoda

Another "Baseless Rumor": Cicadas in Japan This Summer Have Been Awfully Quiet [18Aug11] - 0 views

ex-skf.blogspot.com/...ss-rumor-cicadas-in-japan.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 23 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • D'coda Dcoda on 23 Aug 11
     
    Eye witness accounts with photos of deformed/dying/dead cicadas and serious decline in their populations
D'coda Dcoda

Saudi Arabia's nuclear energy ambitions [18Aug11] - 0 views

ansnuclearcafe.org/...7741

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 19 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) plans to build 16 nuclear reactors over the next 20 years spending an estimated $7 billion on each plant. The $112 billion investment, which includes capacity to become a regional exporter of electricity, will provide one-fifth of the Kingdom’s electricity for industrial and residential use and, critically, for desalinization of sea water.
  • dom’s electricity for industrial and residential use and, critically, for desalinization of sea water.
  • This past April, the Saudi government announced the development of a nuclear city to train and house the technical workforce that will be needed to achieve these ambitions. It is clear that KSA’s plans for spending its sovereign wealth fund will be mostly focused on the home front. At the same time, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States , Prince Turki al-Faisal (served 2005-2006), has warned that a regional nuclear arms race could start if Iran does not curb its nuclear efforts. He told the Wall Street Journal on July 20, “It is in our interest that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, for their doing so would compel Saudi Arabia … to pursue policies that could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences.”
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  • According to the WSJ, the Saudi government said the former ambassador does not speak for it in an official capacity. Al-Faisal, however, is widely believed to be on a short list to be the next foreign minister of KSA. How credible his claim is about the potential for a regional arms race remains to be seen. Swapping nukes for oil drums
  • The main driver for KSA’s plans to build reactors is that at the rate that it is burning its own oil, it may have substantially less to export in just a decade or so. At a minimum, it may lose the excess capacity the rest of the world relies on when there are disruptions in supplies from other countries. One scenario suggested by energy analysts that follow oil markets is that within two decades most of the KSA output would be used for domestic consumption. Total Saudi reserves are estimated at 267 billion barrels. Debates rage in the news media over so-called peak oil, but energy experts discount them as speculative at best, and fantastic or worse on the downside.
  • Current production estimates put total KSA production capacity at 12.5 million barrels a day with a maximum output of 15 million barrels a day. The Wall Street Journal reported in April 2011 that production was running at 8 million-9 million barrels a day compared to 11 million barrels a day in 2010 reported by the Energy Information Administration. The difference is the global economic downturn has reduced demand. What’s got the attention of energy planners is that domestic use in KSA could grow from 3.4 million barrels of oil a day in 2009 to 8.3 million barrels a day by 2028.
  • The official Saudi press agency said in April 2010 that it was “alarmed” by increasing oil and gas consumption for domestic use and the resulting impact on export revenues. Reduction of consumption, which pushes up use of fossil fuel to produce electricity, is not an option for both economic and political reasons. In 2011, the Saudi government has increased its subsidies of energy supplies by $100 million for domestic use, in part to dampen any possibilities of social unrest like that which toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
  • Like other Arab countries, KSA has a large population of unemployed young people who have better than average educations.  This is a volatile mix and the arch conservatives that run KSA have defused it with lavish subsidies.
  • Electricity demand is predicted to increase from 75 GWe by 2018 to more than 120 Gwe by 2030. This growth can’t be sustained by fossil fuel alone and also maintain the income stream the nation depends on from oil exports. Nuclear reactors are an obvious choice to intervene in an unsustainable growth scenario.
  • This outlook is sending the Saudi government down a path to develop nuclear energy. In April, it announced that it was setting up the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE) to pursue this objective. Saudi Arabia is building up its transmission and distribution grids to interconnect with the UAE on the east and Oman to the south.  It is developing its so-called empty quarter which Middle East experts point out isn’t as empty as it sounds.
  • The new city’s charter states that nuclear and renewable energies, especially solar, would be developed to ensure continued supplies of drinking water and electricity to its growing population and save hydrocarbon resources such as petroleum and gas for use by future generations. The objective is to make them a source of income for a much longer period.
Jan Wyllie

Fukushima Desolation Worst Since Nagasaki as Population Flees From Fallout [27Sep11] - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...asaki-as-population-flees.html

shared by Jan Wyllie on 27 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Beyond the police roadblocks that mark the no-go zone around Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, six-foot tall weeds invade rice paddies and vines gone wild strangle road signs along empty streets.
  • “Older folks want to return, but the young worry about radiation,” said Harada, whose family ran the farm for 40 years.
  • What’s emerging in Japan six months since the nuclear meltdown at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant is a radioactive zone bigger than that left by the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While nature reclaims the 20 kilometer (12 mile) no-go zone, Fukushima’s $3.2 billion-a-year farm industry is being devastated and tourists that hiked the prefecture’s mountains and surfed off its beaches have all but vanished.
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  • A government panel investigating Tokyo Electric’s finances estimated the cost of compensation to people affected by the nuclear disaster will exceed 4 trillion yen,
  • The government last week said some restrictions may be lifted in outlying areas of the evacuation zone in Fukushima, which translates from Japanese as “Lucky Isle.”
  • Tokyo Electric’s decision in the 1960s to name its atomic plant Fukushima Dai-Ichi has today associated a prefecture of about 2 million people that’s almost half the size of Belgium with radiation contamination.
  • Some land around the Fukushima reactors will lie fallow for two decades or more before radiation levels fall below Japan’s criteria for evacuation
  • Inside the evacuation areas, levels of radiation higher than the government’s criteria for evacuation have been recorded at 89 of 210 monitoring posts. At 24 of the sites, the reading was higher than the level at which the International Atomic Energy Agency says increases the risk of cancer.
  • The coastal town of Minami Soma this year canceled its annual qualifying stage for the world surfing championship, part of a waterfront that lured 84,000 beachgoers in July and August last year,
D'coda Dcoda

Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl [29Aug11][ - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...se-than-chernobyl-2345542.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 30 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • This nation has recovered from worse natural – and manmade – catastrophes. But it is the triple meltdown and its aftermath at the Fukushima nuclear power plant 40km down the coast from Soma that has elevated Japan into unknown, and unknowable, terrain. Across the northeast, millions of people are living with its consequences and searching for a consensus on a safe radiation level that does not exist. Experts give bewilderingly different assessments of its dangers.
  • Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding scale of nuclear disasters. One of the most prominent of them is Dr Helen Caldicott, an Australian physician and long time anti-nuclear activist who warns of "horrors to come" in Fukushima.
  • Chris Busby, a professor at the University of Ulster known for his alarmist views, generated controversy during a Japan visit last month when he said the disaster would result in more than 1 million deaths. "Fukushima is still boiling its radionuclides all over Japan," he said. "Chernobyl went up in one go. So Fukushima is worse."
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  • On the other side of the nuclear fence are the industry friendly scientists who insist that the crisis is under control and radiation levels are mostly safe. "I believe the government and Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco, the plant's operator] are doing their best," said Naoto Sekimura, vice-dean of the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo. Mr Sekimura initially advised residents near the plant that a radioactive disaster was "unlikely" and that they should stay "calm", an assessment he has since had to reverse.
  • Slowly, steadily, and often well behind the curve, the government has worsened its prognosis of the disaster. Last Friday, scientists affiliated with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the plant had released 15,000 terabecquerels of cancer-causing Cesium, equivalent to about 168 times the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the event that ushered in the nuclear age. (Professor Busby says the release is at least 72,000 times worse than Hiroshima).
  • Caught in a blizzard of often conflicting information, many Japanese instinctively grope for the beacons they know. Mr Ichida and his colleagues say they no longer trust the nuclear industry or the officials who assured them the Fukushima plant was safe. But they have faith in government radiation testing and believe they will soon be allowed back to sea.
  • That's a mistake, say sceptics, who note a consistent pattern of official lying, foot-dragging and concealment. Last week, officials finally admitted something long argued by its critics: that thousands of people with homes near the crippled nuclear plant may not be able to return for a generation or more. "We can't rule out the possibility that there will be some areas where it will be hard for residents to return to their homes for a long time," said Yukio Edano, the government's top government spokesman.
  • hundreds of former residents from Futaba and Okuma, the towns nearest the plant, were allowed to visit their homes – perhaps for the last time – to pick up belongings. Wearing masks and radiation suits, they drove through the 20km contaminated zone around the plant, where hundreds of animals have died and rotted in the sun, to find kitchens and living rooms partly reclaimed by nature.
  • It is the fate of people outside the evacuation zones, however, that causes the most bitter controversy. Parents in Fukushima City, 63km from the plant, have banded together to demand that the government do more to protect about 100,000 children. Schools have banned soccer and other outdoor sports. Windows are kept closed. "We've just been left to fend for ourselves," says Machiko Sato, a grandmother who lives in the city. "It makes me so angry."
  • Many parents have already sent their children to live with relatives or friends hundreds of kilometres away. Some want the government to evacuate the entire two million population of Fukushima Prefecture. "They're demanding the right to be able to evacuate," says anti-nuclear activist Aileen Mioko Smith, who works with the parents. "In other words, if they evacuate they want the government to support them."
  • Aid Fukushima: The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported bilateral aid worth $95m Chernobyl: 12 years after the disaster, the then Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, complained that his country was still waiting for international help.
  • But many experts warn that the crisis is just beginning. Professor Tim Mousseau, a biological scientist who has spent more than a decade researching the genetic impact of radiation around Chernobyl, says he worries that many people in Fukushima are "burying their heads in the sand." His Chernobyl research concluded that biodiversity and the numbers of insects and spiders had shrunk inside the irradiated zone, and the bird population showed evidence of genetic defects, including smaller brain sizes.
  • "The truth is that we don't have sufficient data to provide accurate information on the long-term impact," he says. "What we can say, though, is that there are very likely to be very significant long-term health impact from prolonged exposure."
  • Economic cost Fukushima: Japan has estimated it will cost as much as £188bn to rebuild following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. Chernobyl There are a number of estimates of the economic impact, but thetotal cost is thought to be about £144bn.
  • Safety Fukushima: workers are allowed to operate in the crippled plant up to a dose of 250mSv (millisieverts). Chernobyl: People exposed to 350mSv were relocated. In most countries the maximum annual dosage for a worker is 20mSv. The allowed dose for someone living close to a nuclear plant is 1mSv a year.
  • Death toll Fukushima: Two workers died inside the plant. Some scientists predict that one million lives will be lost to cancer. Chernobyl: It is difficult to say how many people died on the day of the disaster because of state security, but Greenpeace estimates that 200,000 have died from radiation-linked cancers in the 25 years since the accident.
  • Exclusion zone Fukushima: Tokyo initially ordered a 20km radius exclusion zone around the plant Chernobyl: The initial radius of the Chernobyl zone was set at 30km – 25 years later it is still largely in place.
  • Compensation Fukushima: Tepco's share price has collapsed since the disaster largely because of the amount it will need to pay out, about £10,000 a person Chernobyl: Not a lot. It has been reported that Armenian victims of the disaster were offered about £6 each in 1986
  • So far, at least, the authorities say that is not necessary. The official line is that the accident at the plant is winding down and radiation levels outside of the exclusion zone and designated "hot spots" are safe.
  • Japan has been slow to admit the scale of the meltdown. But now the truth is coming out. David McNeill reports from Soma City
D'coda Dcoda

Residents of Japanese town contaminated by Fukushima refuse to return [08Oct11] - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article2193802

population

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 08 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • This could have been homecoming week in this pretty seaside town. Seven months after most residents fled as explosions rocked the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the Japanese government has declared it safe to return to Hirono.But a week after the country’s Nuclear Disaster Minister lifted the government’s evacuation recommendation for Hirono and three other towns, no one has returned. The only people in Hirono are the same hard-core few who ignored the evacuation advisory all along, plus the teams of rescue workers who use the town as a base while they race to and from the battle to repair the four damaged reactors to the north.
  • For the rest of the town’s pre-disaster population of 5,500 – including the outspoken mayor – an assurance from Tokyo is nowhere near enough to persuade them to return. Most prefer to remain, for now, in cramped temporary accommodations further from Fukushima Daiichi.“I don’t plan to come back, ever,” said a middle-aged woman who briefly visited Hirono this week to retrieve belongings from the two-storey home that she and her family fled on March 12, the day after the tsunami that set in motion the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. She paused to take in her abandoned home’s view of the ocean and its now-unkempt garden. “I’ll never feel safe here. I’ll never feel secure.”
  • Hirono and the three other towns that the government is encouraging residents to return to are in a third zone, between 20 and 30 kilometres from the plant. Pregnant women and hospitalized patients were advised to evacuate the towns in mid-April, the rest of the 58,500 who live in the area were told at the same time to be ready to flee “on a moment’s notice.” All left immediately, with the exception of 300 steadfast residents, most of them elderly enough to claim they aren’t worried about the long-term effects of radiation.
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  • Hirono’s mayor, Motohoshi Yamada, is among those staying away for now. In his estimation, the order from Tokyo – announced by new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda – was made perhaps 15 months too early.
D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima desolation worst since Hiroshima, Nagasaki [07Oct11] - 0 views

search.japantimes.co.jp/...nn20111007n1.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 07 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Beyond the police roadblocks that mark the no-go zone around the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, 2-meter-tall weeds invade rice paddies and vines gone wild strangle road signs along empty streets. Takako Harada, 80, returned to an evacuated area of Iitate, a village in Fukushima Prefecture, to retrieve her car. Beside her house is an empty cattle pen, the 100 cows slaughtered on government orders after radiation from the March 11 atomic disaster saturated the area, forcing 160,000 people to move away and leaving some places uninhabitable for two decades or more. "Older folks want to return, but the young worry about radiation," said Harada, whose family ran the farm for 40 years. "I want to farm, but will we be able to sell anything?"
  • What is emerging six months since the nuclear meltdowns at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant is a radioactive zone bigger than that left by the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  • While nature reclaims the 20-km no-go zone, Fukushima's ¥240 billion a year farm industry is being devastated and tourists that hiked the prefecture's mountains and surfed off its beaches have all but vanished.
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  • A government panel investigating Tepco's finances estimated the cost of compensation to people affected by the nuclear disaster will exceed ¥4 trillion.
  • The bulk of radioactive contamination cuts a 5- to 10-km-wide swath of land running as far as 30 km northwest of the nuclear plant, surveys of radiation hot spots by the science ministry show. The government extended evacuations beyond the 20-km zone in April to cover this corridor, which includes parts of Iitate.
  • No formal evacuation zone was set up in Hiroshima after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city on Aug. 6, 1945, though as the city rebuilt relatively few people lived within 1 km of the hypocenter, according to the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum. Food shortages forced a partial evacuation of the city in summer 1946.
  • On April 26, 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl reactor hurled 180 metric tons of nuclear fuel into the atmosphere, creating the world's first exclusion zone of 30 km around a nuclear plant. A quarter of a century later, the zone is still classed as uninhabitable. About 300 residents have returned despite government restrictions.
  • Tepco's decision in the 1960s to name its atomic plant Fukushima No. 1 has today associated a prefecture of about 2 million people that's almost half the size of Belgium with radiation contamination. In contrast, Chernobyl is the name of a small town near the namesake plant in what today is Ukraine.
  • Some people believed A-bomb survivors could emit radiation and others feared radiation caused genetic mutations, said Evan Douple, associate chief of research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima. An examination of more than 77,000 first-generation children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings found no evidence of mutations, he said.
  • While radiation readings are lower in Fukushima than Hiroshima, Abel Gonzales, the vice chairman of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, said similar prejudices may emerge. "Stigma. I have the feeling that in Fukushima this will be a very big problem," Gonzales said during a symposium held in the city of Fukushima on the six-month anniversary of the disaster. Some children who fled Fukushima are finding out what Gonzales means. Fukushima schoolchildren were being bullied at their new school in Chiba Prefecture for "carrying radiation," the Sankei Shimbun reported in April, citing complaints made to education authorities. An 11-year-old Fukushima boy was hospitalized in Niigata Prefecture after being bullied at his new school, Kyodo News reported April 23.
  • Radiation risks in the 20-km zone forced the evacuation of about 8 percent, or 160,000, of some 2 million people who live in Fukushima. Almost 56,000 were sent to areas outside Fukushima, prefecture spokesman Masato Abe said. More than 8,000 left on their own accord because of radiation fears, Abe said
  • side the evacuation areas, levels of radiation higher than the government's criteria for evacuation have been recorded at 89 of 210 monitoring posts. At 24 of the sites, the reading was higher than the level at which the International Atomic Energy Agency says increases the risk of cancer. Japan Atomic Energy Institute researcher Toshimitsu Homma used science ministry data to compare the geographic scale of the contamination in Fukushima with Chernobyl.
  • He estimates the no-go zone in Fukushima will cover 132 sq. km, surrounded by a permanent monitoring area of 264 sq. km, assuming Japan follows the criteria set by the Soviet Union in 1986. The two areas combined equal about half the size of the five boroughs that comprise New York City. In the case of Chernobyl, the two zones cover a land mass 25 times greater, according to Homma's figures.
  • "Contradiction in some official statements, and the appearance of nonscientifically based 'expert' voices, confused and added stress to the local populations in each case," said Evelyn Bromet, a distinguished professor in the department of psychiatry at State University of New York, Stony Brook. "Lies got told, contradictions got told. In the end it's easier to believe nobody," Bromet said in an interview, citing mental health studies she did on people in the areas.
  • What radiation hasn't ruined, the earthquake and tsunami devastated. Fukushima Prefecture welcomed 56 million domestic and overseas visitors in 2009, equal to 44 percent of Japan's population.
  • The coastal town of Minamisoma this year canceled its annual qualifying stage for the world surfing championship, part of a waterfront that lured 84,000 beachgoers in July and August last year, said Hiroshi Tadano, head of the town's economic division. This year, nobody visited the beaches in the two months. "Most of the beaches are destroyed," Tadano said. "And of course, radiation played its part."
  • The area's biggest festival, Soma Nomaoi, a re-enactment of samurai battles, attracted 200,000 visitors last year. This year 37,000 came. Of the 300 horses typically used in the event, 100 were drowned in the tsunami and another 100 were evacuated due to radiation, Tajino said. Minamisoma resident Miyaguchi, 54, lost his home and parents in the tsunami. He quit his job at Tepco, leaving him unemployed and housed in an evacuation center
D'coda Dcoda

Permitted Un-Safe Radiation levels allowed in Food [20Sep11] - 1 views

http://foodwatch.de/foodwatch/content/e36/e68/e42217/e44994/e45033/2011-09-20pressreleasefoodwatch_IPPNW_EN_ger.pdf Diigo won't highlight on pdf's, this one is important and concerns current level...

food and drink

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