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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.

Journalist Iwakami Yasumi: “No more Nuclear Power” 100 Women from Fukushima. A sit-in Action in Tokyo 100 women from Fukushima will be sitting in front of Agency of Ministry and Trade located in Tokyo, giving a peaceful appeal for three days. Another 100 from all areas in Japan will be sitting from 10/30-11/5.

Occupy Kasumigasaki” Movement Camps Continues in front of METI, PanOrient News, November 5, 2011: “Women representatives from all over Japan are camping in Kasumigaseki district in Tokyo to express their objection to the nuclear power plants in Japan in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.” “Tents belonging to various civil anti-nuclear movements are pitched on the sidewalk corner facing the building of Japanese Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry. The women’s movement started on October 30, and continues through November 5.”

“The activists held banners saying ‘We Are Anti-Nuclear,’ and ‘Don’t Restart Nuclear Plants.’” “One of the banners said “Occupy Kasumigasaki,” the district in Tokyo where government buildings are concentrated.” “The anti nuclear energy movement is gaining more support among Japanese civilian groups” [...]

On the 27th of October 2011, Fukushima women met government officials in Tokyo to demand that the government evacuate Fukushima children immediately. But, the government official only repeated the government’s policy of cleaning up the contaminated area in Fukushima. On the 27th of October 2011, hundreds of Fukushima women gathered in front of the governmental building (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) in Tokyo to protest against nuclear power plants. Among them, thirty Fukushima women met government officials. They handed a written request asking for the abolition of all nuclear power plants and the evacuation of Fukushima children, and demanded the government answer to it in writing by 11th of November.

: 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.

While people in the 20 km exclusion zone around the Fukushima disaster site have been evacuated, the residents of this densely populated city have already waited nine months for decontamination of their houses, gardens and parks without getting any official government support for relocation, not even for children and pregnant women. We spent four days in Fukushima City doing a radiation survey in the neighbourhoods of Watari and Onami. People there have been left to cope alone in a highly contaminated environment by both the local and national governments. Our radiation experts found hot spots of up to 37 microSieverts per hour in a garden only a few meters away from a house and an accumulation of radioactivity in drainage systems, puddles and ditches. Overall, the radiation levels in these neighbourhoods are so high that people receive an exposure to radiation just from external sources that is ten times the annual allowed dose. How high their internal exposure is from eating contaminated food and inhaling or ingesting radioactive particles remains unknown, since no government program is keeping track of this.

 Parks are the most contaminated areas in Fukushima City. Some are marked with signs: “Due to radioactive contamination, don’t spend more than one hour per day in this park.” Even on sunny days last week, the parks where empty

Even inside their houses, they have to worry about radiation. We measured the rooms of an elderly lady’s house who is expecting her grandchildren for Christmas. She wanted to know what the safest place was for her grandchildren to sleep.   People in Fukushima City are worried about their health, especially families with children and pregnant women. We walked around with dosimeters and radiation detection equipment and were aware of what we are exposed to and of the risk we were taking. The residents of Fukushima City had one government survey at their house last July, if any at all. Detected hotspots where left unmarked, no instructions were given on how to behave in a radioactive environment. Since then, only 35 of the thousands of houses that need to be decontaminated have been cleaned by the government.  

Following up this article about the decreasing of water level at reactor 4… The blogger woman in Minamisoma leaked information from an actual Fukushima worker. According to her post, after the earthquake of 1/1/2012, the pipe of spent fuel pool for reactor 4 was broken, the pool completely lost its water. The worker stated, Sooner or later, the truth will have to to be widely known. Believe it or not, you will only regret. Wear a mask at least. The pool was boiling without water.

This week’s guest is Wladimir Wertelecki, the founder and chairman of the Department of Medical Genetics and Birth Defects Center of the University of South Alabama, in the U.S. Prior to his training in Medical Genetics at Harvard University Medical School, Dr. Wertelecki trained in Pediatrics at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Washington University. Later, he served as Senior Surgeon, U.S. Public Health Commission Corps at the Epidemiology Branch of the National Cancer Institute [...] He has extensively studied the effects of the radiation released by the Chernobyl meltdown on public health, particularly in children [...]

Wertelecki: I did give lectures in Tokyo recently and I met people from a variety of Universities that attended these events. My sense is that the path followed in Japan closely resembles the path that evolved after Chernobyl. And there are more regrettables than nonregrettables. It seems like frankly it’s difficult to understand what’s going on and what’s not going on. From my point of view the absolute priority is women of reproductive age… No registry of pregnant women as far as I know… very little concentration on these aspects… everything is concentrated on cancer…children beyond the scope of thyroid cancer are very important…

Wertelecki: There’s a team of expert son birds and ornithology form France, very distinguished Danish ornithologist who found in Chernobyl area very, very major disturbing findings that exactly the same is happening in Fukushima. In other words these birds cannot migrate because they become exhausted… they find microcephaly just like we do, they find all kind of instability like random spotted changes to fur, which are local mutations of course on so on and so on.

Hirose Takashi: The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and the State of the Media, Asahi NewStar, March 17, 2011:

[Interviewer] Yo: Every day the local government is measuring the radioactivity.  All the television stations are saying that while radiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. They compare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan.  What is the truth of the matter? Hirose: For example, yesterday.  Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour.  With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn’t explain what this means.  All of the information media are at fault here I think.  They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space.  But that’s one millisievert per year.  A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.  Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose.  You call that safe?  And what media have reported this? 

None.  They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it.  The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping.  What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside.  These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say?  They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance.  I want to say the reverse.  Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body.  What happens?  Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.  That’s a thousand times a thousand squared.  That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.”  Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion.  Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

The accident at Fukushima in Japan in March this year seems to have had little overall impact on the UK public's confidence in nuclear power, according to a poll.The survey, carried out by Populus last month and commissioned by the British Science Association, found that 41% of respondents agreed the benefits of nuclear power outweighed the risks, up from 38% in 2010 and 32% in 2005. Those who said that the risks greatly or slightly outweighed the benefits of nuclear power in 2010 numbered 36%, and in 2011 this dropped to 28% of respondents.

"It's genuinely surprising to me that views have returned to these early 2010 levels quite so quickly and slightly more positively," said Nick Pidgeon of the University of Cardiff, who discussed the findings of the latest poll at a briefing to mark the launch of the British Science Festival, which starts in Bradford on Saturday. "There's been a lot of speculation about the impacts of Fukushima on public attitudes – this is the first fully independent study we've had in the UK."Though overall support was up, there was a striking difference between men and women, with 53% of men in favour of nuclear power but only 21% of women supportive. "If you dig into the data, you see that men in particular become much more confident about nuclear energy," said Pidgeon.Monbiot effectHe also said that blanket media coverage and commentary – something he referred to as the "George Monbiot effect" – may have had a positive effect on public attitudes because, despite the severity of the crisis, no one has so far died.

Populus interviewed 2,050 adults between 26 and 29 August and weighted its results to ensure they were representative of the British population.Overall, the support for nuclear power has been gradually increasing for about 10 years, said Pidgeon, and, in the past five years, the majority of people in Britain has come to support the renewal of the nuclear programme.Pidgeon said that polls in the direct aftermath of the Fukushima accident had showed a dip in support for nuclear in the UK and elsewhere, though confidence did not collapse. "There were still more people, even immediately afterwards, in favour of nuclear energy than against in Britain," he said.

A lot of people are not pleased with President Obama after he approved a plan for BP to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, the first of its kind since last year's Deepwater Horizon explosion. Among the upset factions is the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, Ed Markey. "Comprehensive safety legislation hasn't passed Congress, and BP hasn't paid the fines they owe for their spill, yet BP is being given back the keys to drill in the Gulf," he said. The New York Times explains the plan: It was another sign that oil exploration in the gulf is coming back to normal, although energy companies continue to complain that the permitting process for drilling new wells remains far slower than before the accident. The federal government’s approval of the BP plan to drill up to four exploratory wells nearly 200 miles from the Louisiana coast was positive news for BP, which has struggled to recover from the April 2010 accident that left 11 workers dead and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.

About those recovery efforts, a study published last week reported that seafood in the Gulf is still not safe for pregnant women and children to eat. All year, a number of environmentalists have been expressing doubts about the Gulf's still struggling ecosystem, despite BP asserting that the recovery effort was finishing up. "It's not OK down there," marine biologist Samantha Joye said in April. "There are a lot of very strange things going on – the turtles washing up on beaches, dolphins washing up on beaches, the crabs. It is just bizarre." The Times wasn't able to get BP to comment on the latest decision but pointed to a brief statement from the company that said, "We are working through the regulatory process."

Can Japan do better than Chernobyl?, Australian Broadcasting Corporation by Dr Margaret Beavis, Jan. 6, 2012:

[...] There have been many failures in the handling of this situation. But perhaps the greatest relate to the government’s duty of care to protect Japanese citizens. The government failed to act on information about radioactive plumes. In doing so it exposed many communities to harmful radiation, and many evacuated into even higher radioactive areas. In addition, the government has declared the “safe” allowable limits for radiation exposure can be changed from the internationally accepted levels of 1 mSv to 20 mSv a year. Women and children are particularly sensitive to radiation exposure. Subjecting children to 20mSv a year for five years will result in about 1 in 30 developing cancer. After Chernobyl anyone likely to be exposed to more than 5 mSv a year was evacuated, and those in areas of 1-5 mSv were offered relocation and bans were placed on eating locally produced food.

Finally, there is an ongoing culture of poor monitoring, poor information release and cover up. It continues to significantly under report radiation levels, claiming total radiation releases at approximately half the level of observed releases detected by world wide Nuclear Test Ban Treaty monitoring sites. Current radioactivity levels are measured at 1 metre off the ground, not at ground level where children play and where radioactivity levels are significantly higher. [...] From a public health perspective the Japanese government continues to fail to protect its people, particularly its children. To quote Tilman Ruff, Associate Professor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, “At this point, the single most important public health measure to minimi[s]e the health harm over the long term is much wider evacuation.” [...]

As efforts to end the nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant drag on, it is important for the central and local governments to step up their efforts to closely examine the health conditions of people concerned and to decontaminate areas contaminated by radiation.

The people who have been most affected by radiation from the Fukushima plant are workers, both from Tepco and from subcontractors, who have been trying to bring the radiation-leaking plant under control. In the nation's history, these workers rank second only to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of their exposure to radiation, therefore the possibility cannot be ruled out that they will develop cancer. Tepco and the central government must do their best to prevent workers' overexposure to radiation and take necessary measures should workers become overexposed to radiation. It is of great concern that little has been disclosed regarding the conditions of the workers at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Tepco and the central government should disseminate information on the actual working conditions of these people, even if such information seems repetitious and includes what they regard as minor incidents. People are forgetful. They need to be informed. Such information will help raise people's awareness about the issue of radiation and its impact on health.

It must not be forgotten that exposure to radiation has long-term effects on human health. In the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, the number of leukemia cases started to increase among bombing survivors two years after the bombs were dropped. In the case of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, thyroid cancer began to appear among children several years after the disaster happened. Particular attention should be paid to the health of children. In view of these facts, it is logical that the Fukushima prefectural government has developed a program to monitor the health of all residents in the prefecture, who number about 2 million, throughout their lifetime. It has also started examining the thyroids of some 360,000 children who are age 18 or younger. Detailed and long-term area-by-area studies should be carried out to record cancer incidences. In August, the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan estimated that the Fukushima accidents released a total of 570,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances, including some 11,000 terabecquerels of radioactive cesium 137.

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.

While President Obama still favors nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster, the New England state of Vermont wants to scrap it altogether. The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is slated for shutdown in March 2012.

Nestel has already been arrested 11 times in protests against the reactor. She is a member of the "Shut it down!" group, which consists of 12 women from the ages of 40 to 92. They all have the same mission: to shut down Vermont Yankee, and in doing so make Vermont a nuclear power-free state. "We have a lot to do," says Nestel. "We are always going to have protests at the reactor and we will always let ourselves be arrested. We don't leave until we're arrested. But they always drop the charges because we're so well-liked in the community."

Since the reactor, identical in construction to the one in Fukushima, went on line in 1972, it has made headlines time and again. In 2007 a cooling tower collapsed due to shabby wooden girders. When in 2010 it was discovered that radioactive tritium had seeped into the groundwater from a pipe leak, the Vermont Senate voted by a large majority to close Vermont Yankee by 2012. Differing opinions among politicians and population

Why on earth would anyone choose to work at what’s left of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station? The job description probably goes something like this: - must spend day in full body suit, gloves, thick rubber boots and full-facial mask

- must endure extremely high temperatures in aforementioned suits - must work on badly damaged site containing the remains of 4 crippled nuclear reactors

Employees are under strict instructions not to speak to journalists – and supervisors from their various employers keep an active eye on them when they return to Iwaki in the evening. We were thrown out of one hotel when we had the audacity to approach a group of men employed to clear rubble from the site. Yet there were others who wanted to talk – albeit anonymously. Their working conditions I asked? Terrible, they said: “a burning-hell”, “terrifying” and “very troubling” – phrases I recorded in my notebook. But I wasn’t getting any closer to answering my question – why work there?