Preface Nuclear Toxicity Syndrome
Dr. Sircus’ Blog | 09 June 2011
Arnie Gundersen, widely-regarded to be the best nuclear analyst covering Japan’s Fukushima disaster, indicates that the situation on the ground at the crippled reactors remains precarious and at a minimum it will be years before it can be hoped to be truly contained. “I have said it’s worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind blowing inland, it could very well have brought the nation of Japan to its knees. I mean, there is so much contamination that luckily wound up in the Pacific Ocean rather than across the nation of Japan—it could have cut Japan in half. But now the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends is, if there is a severe aftershock and the unit four building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed.”
As the crippled reactors in Japan continue to emit radiation into the environment it will appear in greater and greater concentrations in our food. Radiation has already been detected in trace amounts in milk across the U.S., and in strawberries, kale and other vegetables in California.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) sent a robot into the building of reactor one on the 3rd of June and detected up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour at the southeast corner of the building. That means staying in that area for four minutes exposes a worker to the maximum annual limit of 250 millisieverts per year.
In Europe they are feeling the fallout and it is scaring the wits out of them because after Chernobyl they learned what nuclear hardship and sickness is all about. First Germany and now the Swiss government have deciding to exit nuclear energy, each phasing out their country’s existing nuclear plants and seeking alternative energy sources to meet their energy needs, following widespread security concerns in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
The emerging reality of the ongoing nuclear reactor crisis in Fukushima, Japan—now in its third month after a devastating earthquake and tsunami caused nuclear explosions at the plant 150 miles north of Tokyo—is that it is not under control at all. Three of the six reactors are in meltdown. The crippled reactors are acting like a huge dirty bomb, emitting significant quantities of radioactive isotopes that are, in fact, contaminating our air, water, soil and food in a steady stream that will continue for a long time to come.
Arnie Gundersen says, “I am telling friends in Tokyo to keep their eyes on unit four. If there is an earthquake and unit four topples, don’t believe the authorities. You are well beyond where science has ever imagined and it is time to get on a flight and get out of there.” If unit four goes down it’s not just Tokyo; the entire northern hemisphere will be in for increasing radiation showers.
Since the accident on March 11, radioactive fallout from Fukushima has been spreading to the U.S. and across the northern hemisphere. Elevated levels of radiation caused by the meltdowns in Japan have been detected in drinking water across the United States, in rainwater, in soil, and in food grown on U.S. farms. The below video presents an early warning of what the Japanese and perhaps people all over the northern hemisphere and eventually the south will have to deal with.
Highly toxic radioactive iodine, cesium, strontium, plutonium and other toxic man-made radionuclides have leaked unabated since March 12 into the ocean and atmosphere. The radiation is contaminating large areas of Japan. Monitoring the ocean around the Fukushima plant, Greenpeace reported on May 26 that the contamination is spreading over a wide area and accumulating in sea life, rather than simply dispersing like the Japanese authorities claimed would happen.
Radiation continues to blow in a steady stream across the Pacific Ocean toward North America, following the course of the jet stream in the atmosphere and major currents in the ocean that flow from Japan to America. It took less than a month for radioactive iodine and cesium from the Fukushima nuclear accident to first show up in U.S. milk, and it continues to be detected in trace amounts in milk produced in California, one of the only states conducting any kind of testing for radiation in food.
The mainstream media is not reporting on this. Since the initial weeks of the accident, there has been a disturbing silence. Fukushima has faded from the news even though the site has not become any less dangerous. And the site is unprepared for another earthquake or tsunami, and unprepared for any typhoon activity. In the 53 years from 1951 to 2004, Japan averaged 2.6 typhoons making landfall each year. The place is a danger to us all.
West Coast Contamination
All radioactive exposures are cumulative for each human, animal and plant.
People on the west coast of the United States and Canada, Hawaii and Alaska are bearing some of the worst of the radiation and people are not taking evasive action. Gunderson said in an exclusive interview with Chris Martenson that, “I am in touch with some scientists now who have been monitoring the air on the West Coast and in Seattle for instance, in April, the average person in Seattle breathed in 10 hot particles a day. The average human being breathes about 10 meters a day of air, cubic meters of air. And the air out in the Seattle area, [they] are detecting when they pull 10 cubic meters through them, this is in April now, so we are in the end of May so it is a better situation now. That air filter will have 10 hot particles on it. And that was before the unit four issue. What I am advising is keep your windows closed. I would definitely wear some sort of a filter if I was outside.”
He is speaking about further worst-case scenarios saying, “I certainly wouldn’t run and exercise until I was sure the plume had dissipated. This isn’t now. This is, as you were saying, this is worst case. If unit four were to topple, I would close my windows, turn the air conditioner on, replace the filters frequently, damp mop, put a HEPA filter in the house and try to avoid as much of the hot particles as possible.”
Radioactivity is all over the Northern Hemisphere and each and every one is already contaminated.
The Japanese are not buying the spin about the dangers of the radiation that continue to flood Japan. A poll showed in early June that more than 80 percent of Japanese voters do not trust government information about the country’s nuclear crisis. Eighty-one percent of respondents to the survey said they did not trust government information about the crisis, Fuji TV said. Seventy-eight percent said Prime Minister Naoto Kan lacked leadership in handling the disasters.
If you feel like your life and your children’s lives are expendable then there is no need to pay attention to what is going on—no need to take evasive medical action and no reason to read my upcoming book Nuclear Toxicity Syndrome.
Fukushima Equals 3,000 Billion Lethal Doses
Dr. Michio Kaku pointed out on CNN March 18, 2011, Chernobyl involved one reactor and only 57.6 Tons of the reactor core went into the atmosphere. In dramatic contrast, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster immediately involved six reactors and IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN Agency) documented 2,800 Tons of highly radioactive old reactor cores.
Looking at the current Japanese meltdown as more than 50 Chernobyls is one way some people are beginning to estimate the disaster. Simple division tells us there are at least 48.6 Chernobyls in the burning old reactor cores pumping fiery isotopes into the Earth’s atmosphere. Some are calculating that this all adds up to three thousand billion (3,000,000,000,000) Lethal Doses of Radiation means there are 429 Lethal Doses chasing each and every one of us on the planet, to put it in a nutshell.
“Those who deny or deceptively play down the catastrophic threats to public health from all phases of the nuclear power cycle, from mining to the lack of any proven solution to permanent and safe disposal of very long-term deadly spent nuclear fuel, recklessly ignore the medical/scientific lessons we should have learned from current and previous nuclear accidents,” writes Rudi H. Nussbaum who is a Professor emeritus of Physics and Environmental Sciences at Portland State University.
French people back nuclear exodus
Press TV – June 6, 2011
Protesters in France demand the shutdown of the country’s nuclear plants (file photo)
Over three quarters of the French population support a gradual shutdown of all of France’s nuclear power plants, a recent survey has shown.
The IFOP poll of 1,005 adults commissioned by the Journal du Dimanche found that 77 percent of the French people believe the country should follow Germany and abandon nuclear energy over a 30-year period. About 25 percent of the participants believed the transition should take place sooner.
Last month, the German government announced plans to phase out all nuclear power plants in the country. On Monday, the German cabinet formally approved a bill to abolish nuclear power by 2022.
It made Germany the single largest industrialized nation to plan to give up nuclear energy altogether.
The seven oldest of Germany’s 17 reactors as well as the reactor in Kruemmel, which were taken off the grid after the nuclear disaster in Japan, were shut down immediately. … Full article
The nuclear lobby in trouble as Germany exits nuclear power
By Andrew McKillop – VHeadline – June 5, 2011
Chancellor Angela Merkel surprised many, and stunned the nuclear lobby in other countries with her May 30th announcement of a complete shut down of all Germany’s reactors by January 1st, 2022. This includes the early shutdown of 14 among Germany’s total of 17 reactors, well before that date. At present, nuclear power covers around 22 percent of German electricity consumption.
The German chancellor has, in nine months, gone from calling nuclear power plants a safe, reliable and economical “bridge” to renewable energy, with her coalition government easing regulatory constraints on extending reactor lifetimes, to pushing the biggest and fastest nuclear exit strategy in any country using nuclear power. The international nuclear lobby, already easing off in its constant PR and advertising effort because of the Fukushima disaster, has reacted in sometimes strange ways to Germany’s historic and courageous decision.
To be sure, critics of the decision can claim it is ‘only political’: Merkel has political rivals among the Social Democrats and the anti-nuclear Greens, and cynics can say her ‘atomic epiphany’ following the Fukushima disaster is simple opportunism…
French reaction to the German decision has verged on the hysterical. German-French relations were already at a low point because of Germany’s refusal to join president Sarkozy’s war initiative in Libya and German trade surpluses with France, which continue to mount. At the highest level, including spokespersons of Sarkozy’s ruling UMP political party, the German decision has been called “betrayal” of France’s claimed leading role in the fight against climate change by massive use of supposedly low-carbon, safe and economical nuclear power.
Critics are however forced to move along to technical, economic and industrial factors which, they claim, will make the Merkel plan both technically difficult and a grave economic handicap for Germany, whose export-oriented, trade surplus economic status is the envy of most other G8 countries, except Japan, envied by the USA, France, UK and Italy. Of these, three are still committed to nuclear power, but Italy has recently decided to abandon any restart or relaunch of nuclear power, and obtains zero percent of its electricity from the atom.
CABLES AND ALTERNATIVE SUPPLIES
The ‘technological challenge’ claim is that Germany must rapidly carry out expansion of Germany’s electricity-delivery network costing at least 10 billion-euro ($14.4 billion), and start work on an even more expensive Smart Grid, as well as import more nuclear electricity from France. While the first two needs are rational, and existed before any decision to exit nuclear power, the need – or even the possibility – of importing more nuclear electricity from France is in fact zero. The reason is simple: French electric power exports are steadily shrinking as France itself imports more and more power. On a year-round basis, France imports slightly more electricity from Germany, than vice versa.
In winter 2010-2011, French net imports of electricity attained 9,600 MW, the output of nearly 10 of its 58 reactors when able to fully deliver their design capacity. This itself is decreasingly possible. EDF’s attempt, in early winter 2010 to operate all 58 reactors simultaneously, under full media coverage, was a failure because several reactors were unable to reach their design capacity. With ever increasing French national power needs to meet air conditioning and cooling energy demand in summer, the country’s ability to export power will continue to decline for years ahead, making it for the least unlikely, and risky for Germany to count on French nuclear electricity to plug the gap in power supplies.
The main claim of non-German critics of the exit plan is that very heavy spending is needed on cables to connect proposed but not planned or funded, new large-scale offshore wind farms, with per-kiloWatt capital costs as high as 5,000 euro ($7,000) excluding power cables. This is of course a very high level of initial capital cost – but is also the same as French nuclear power plants, called ‘new generation’ such as the French EPR being built, very slowly and at extreme high cost, in Finland.
Germany’s large-size offshore windfarms, if they are built, would be located in the North Sea, delivering power to Germany’s ‘manufacturing belt’, located in the south. As the nuclear lobby never fails to mention, offshore windfarms are ‘leading edge technology’ and expensive, therefore making the German exit strategy uneconomic and unworkable, but offshore wind is most surely not the only non-nuclear power supply alternative available to Germany.
Others notably include natural gas-fueled power plants, typically costing less than 600 euro per kiloWatt ($850 per kW), and around $ 1,000 per kW with full carbon sequestration, able to utilise cheap shale and fracture gas and coal seam gas extracted ‘in situ’ without any coal mining operations. Gas turbine plants can also utilise pipeline gas, the costs of which will tend to fall as shale and “frac’ gas, and coalseam gas supplies rise in Europe. Interestingly, French political opposition to shale and ‘frac’ gas development in France, which has very large resources of this gas, is extreme high. The environmental case is showcased, but the rationale is also advanced that cheap gas supplies would menace the credibility and apparent low cost of French nuclear power, by providing a serious alternative.
In Germany, this alternative supply can be drawn on, if necessary by importing gas from neighboring Poland, which has prioritized the national development of shale and coalseam gas. The environmental impacts of shale gas can be compared with those of Fukushima, and presented to the general public.
SUBSIDIZED POWER
Large subsidies or power price support for German industrial users is claimed to be necessary, following the exit decision. If not, this claim goes on, Merkel’s decision to exit nuclear power will stunt growth in Europe’s largest economy, can tilt Germany into trade deficit, raise inflation and trigger a retreat into further debt that will make the euro more certain to collapse. Ironically, it is Germany’s relative economic strength due to its large trade surpluses that presently ‘defends the euro’, far more than fiscal deficit-riddled France with its aging and increasingly dangerous nuclear power plants.
Importing French nuclear power, when or if it might be available would also be expensive. French electric power prices, although well behind German prices, are officially set to rise at least 30 percent by 2014.
The reason is simple: nuclear power plant costs, especially the vast dismantling and decommissioning costs of its increasingly aged – and therefore dangerous – reactor fleet. No firm cost figures are supplied by the French government or its nuclear corporate elite on this subject, but several billion euro per reactor, and a timespan of at least 10 years per reactor, are likely. During this extended period and with no surprise, decommissioning cost will most certainly rise further – inevitably raising electricity prices and/or taxes paid by French consumers, and the price for any consumers of imported French power.
What pro-nuclear critics of Merkel’s decision call her ‘atomic epiphany’ was on one hand driven by the entirely democratic and largely spontaneous wave of opposition to nuclear power, following the Fukushima disaster. In Germany, where 250,000-person anti-nuclear demonstrations are commonplace, ignoring this would be electoral suicide, completely unlike the tepid and ambivalent reaction from France’s supine general public, subjected to constant pro-nuclear bias in all French media, especially the State-owned TV channels and radio stations.
Merkel’s exit strategy was on the other hand also driven by far less-evident and obvious factors, including the 180-degree turn on nuclear power by “Corporate Germany”, or ‘Germany AG’.
German corporate reaction was another surprise to non-German critics. Corporate response to the decision was almost euphoric. Following the Merkel announcement, Germany’s DAX stock market index showed its biggest one-day rise in weeks, May 31st. Explanations may seem complex, because as recently as Autumn 2010 German corporate chiefs were heavily insisting that nuclear reactor operating lifetime extensions must be provided more easily by Merkel’s coalition government. In particular the CEOs of the two largest nuclear power using utilities, E.On and RWE, and the Deutsche Bank president publicly threatened a probable complete halt to corporate investment in alternative energy, if Merkel did not extend nuclear plant lifetimes, and at least as important, if she continued with her government’s plan to impose special new nuclear plant operating taxes.
Merkel’s coalition government had made it clear that in return for longer operating lifetimes, nuclear plant operators would pay new taxes designed to help Germany fight its massive fiscal deficits. These taxes, or nuclear special levy, was set on a base able to reach as high as 2 billion euro per year, which would almost wipe out the overall subsidies received from government, by the nuclear sector. Other than making any increase of the reactor fleet impossible, the sector would also have to shoulder the almost open-ended, but coming costs of reactor dismantling and decommissioning.
By late 2010, the calculations and the negotiating stances of German corporate leaders had therefore changed – well before the Fukushima disaster. This, and rising German popular protests, only triggered the 180-degree changes that were coming.
In brief and like anyplace else, nuclear power is so expensive that Corporate Germany or ‘Germany AG’ seeks any way to get consumers and taxpayers to share the burden of decommissioning and dismantling the country’s aging plants. These are aging in the exact same way as those of France, USA, Japan and UK – the ‘old nuclear nations’ with nuclear plants dating back in some cases to the 1960s. Corporate Germany had already accepted that an improved power network to avoid potential blackouts was needed, especially due to Germany’s burgeoning windfarm capacity and aging power transport infrastructures. Paying for this, and for reactor decommissioning became at least as important to Corporate Germany as power price subsidies to the largest users, especially the very profitable car makers in the south, notably Daimler AG and Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) AG, and their equipment suppliers including Siemens AG (SIE) and Swiss ABB Ltd.
For Merkel, the nuclear exit strategy will be a test case on whether an export based industrialized nation can rely far more on clean energy without eroding corporate production and profit. To be sure, the exporter nation called China with the world’s biggest trade surplus, although busily building nuclear plants, presently obtains an unimpressive 2 percent of its electricity from the atom, proving that nuclear energy is in no way critical and basic to achieving the status of ‘industrial exporter country’
NUCLEAR POWER PROTECTS THE CLIMATE AND SAVES OIL
Especially in France, but not the USA where shale and “frac” gas and coalseam gas already cover about 40 percent of national gas supply, the gas-alternative to nuclear power is especially criticized. Well-known and exaggerated claims for ‘low carbon’ nuclear, versus ‘dirty gas’ are wheeled out on France’s 5 State-owned TV channels almost daily.
Compared with nuclear power which is intensely dependent on oil for mining uranium, shipping and processing uranium into fuel rods, transporting and storing nuclear wastes, building and servicing nuclear plants, and dismantling them, natural gas-fueled electricity produces about the same overall CO2 emission per unit kWh output. The data and analyses provided by defenders of “low carbon nuclear” theses carefully omit the large oil-energy subsidies, and therefore CO2 emissions produced by nuclear power when “full cycle” analysis is made. They of course never mention the open-ended costs, and enduring risks of decommissioned nuclear plants.
Critics of Germany’s exit strategy fail to mention the “cheap gas” alternative to nuclear power, except to claim it is environmentally and climatically dangerous, simply because it is the biggest and cheapest available alternative.
Defenders of nuclear power also make a point of ignoring the drastic environmental damage caused by nuclear power ‘over the horizon’, in low-income African countries, such as Niger, where France sources a large part of its uranium needs. The French semi-private nuclear corporation Areva’s uranium mines in Niger are a copybook example of destroying the environment and exploiting low-paid workers “out of sight – out of mind” in a faraway developing country, with disastrous mine worker health and safety conditions, while claiming this “protects the environment and climate”.
Critics claim Germany must build new and costly high-volume lines to France, to raise imports of nuclear-origin electricity from France’s 58 nuclear reactors. Doing this, Germany would only import unsafe, unreliable, uneconomic, inadequate and environmentally dirty nuclear power supplies from a country that is increasingly unable to satisfy its own national peak power demands, due to its over-reliance on nuclear power.
Critics of the environmental impact of fossil-based electric power (imagining of course that uranium is somehow not a fossil mineral), who loudly defend “clean” nuclear power, like James Hansen, or James ‘Gaia’ Lovelock will of course not be giving their well-paid nuclear pep talks at the edge of Fukushima’s total exclusion zone. This is now being extended due to deadly radiation extending at least 50 – 70 kilometres from the ruined power plants which will spew as much as 50 – 250 times the radiation released by the Hiroshima atom bomb of 1945, making forced evacuation needed far beyond the initially hoped-for 20 kilometres.
Already, some 90,000 to 125,000 Japanese have been forcibly evicted from their homes, farms and places of work due to “clean, cheap and safe” nuclear power. These Japanese victims of nuclear power can be asked if they think nuclear power ‘protects the environment and mitigates climate change’, in the same way as mass protestors against nuclear power in Germany. The fight against nuclear power has scored a massive victory in Germany.
Background:
German people in unprecedented rebellion against government
By Jane Burgermeister – November 8, 2010
Clinging to the Nuclear Option
A Reckless Denial of Reality
By RUDI H. NUSSBAUM | CounterPunch | May 30, 2011
The national organization Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), committed to protecting public health, demands the de-commissioning of all currently operating nuclear plants in the US and urges members of Congress to refuse to subsidize the construction of new ones with loan guarantees and liability insurance. Why? Here is the scientific/common sense justification for such an uncompromising position:
1. After the accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) plant, the official Columbia U. study found no increased health effects among the surrounding population, consistent with the officially accepted exposure levels as estimated by the TMI plant operators and applying the internationally accepted radiation risk factors, derived from the long-term follow-up of the externally exposed A-bomb survivors. Contradicting these findings, a subsequent study by Wing et al found statistically significant excess cancers. These cancers have affected the lives of real persons. Yet, Wing’s results were angrily dismissed by the radiation establishment and government health agencies because risk assessments, based on “current radiological science,” precluded that the officially accepted, very low levels of population exposures (doses) released from the TMI reactor could induce the observed excess cancers. The possibility that combining flawed dose estimates with flawed risk models could predict flawed numbers of cancers that might be off by several orders of magnitude (factors of ten), was never considered by the Columbia U. investigators.
Following a tradition illustrated nearly 400 years ago by Gallileo’s fate, accepted beliefs and supporting theoretical models, combined with vested interests, trumped observation. Questioning assumptions in adopted radiobiological models and radiation risk assessments would be equivalent to heresy.
2. All over the former Soviet Union increased incidence of cancers and a multiplicity of other serious health detriment, associated with varying levels of environmental radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster, have been documented by clinical reports and public health statistics. Until recently, the majority of those studies, however, could only be published in Russian scientific/medical journals and these were arrogantly ignored by the Western radiation health establishment. Instead, the nuclear technology promoting United Nation’s (UN) agency: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (the World Health Organization (WHO) is not permitted to conduct independent studies on radiation health) published report after report with estimated numbers of Chernobyl radiation victims that are orders of magnitude smaller than those observed and documented in the recently published compendium of the Russian data in English (Yablokov et al., Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences, 2009, usefully summarized by the German equivalent of PSR). The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) (and the WHO) had accepted IAEA assertions of very low numbers of radiation victims, purportedly based on the world’s most reliable current radiobiological and radiation risk models. Thus, mainstream radiation health scientists proclaim that the variously documented large numbers of radiation-associated health effects after the Chernobyl catastrophe in the former Soviet Union “cannot be caused” by radiation, rather they must be the result of psychosomatic traumas.
Similarly, in far away Western European countries for which UNSCEAR had estimated very low fallout doses after the Chernobyl explosion, a multitude of excess health effects have been reported in refereed medical/scientific journals, such as neo-natal mortality, Down’s syndrome or lowering of child IQ. However, mainstream radiation regulating and protection agencies, quoting the IAEA/WHO reports, deny any causal relationship between Chernobyl fallout and most of those observations. Vested political and financial interests, cherished theoretical models, mixed with intolerable arrogance, again trump reality.
3. Several years ago, the German government commissioned a team of prestigious government-employed health scientists to design a state-of-the-art study of children <5 years who lived in the proximity of any of the 16 German normally operating nuclear power reactors. Presumably, the study was meant to assuage with maximum credibility the continuing citizens’ concerns about observed childhood leukemia clusters around some of these reactors. Therefore, to my knowledge, it is the only government-sponsored radiation study ever that was designed with full input from and oversight by an independent scientific commission, including several members who had publicly supported the citizens’ concerns. Contrary to their expectations, the government scientists found irrefutable evidence that for <5 year old children there exists an association between residence within 10 km of any of these reactors and a more than doubling of risk for contracting leukemia or other cancers. This amazing finding caused quite a stir in the German media (and remains underreported and unacknowledged in the US), but it has never been credibly refuted. Some defensive (“ecologic”) studies with negative outcomes around power reactors in France and England claim to have cast doubt on the German results, but critical analysis of their data shows them to lack the necessary statistical power (i.e. sensitivity to detect an effect) to invalidate the German findings. Desperate for an “out,” the government researchers, the health agencies involved and the German government then declared these excess cases of early childhood leukemia and cancers in the proximity of nuclear plants to be “inexplicable” at this time. They claim that according to “currently accepted radiobiological models” the initiation of these excess malignancies would require levels of radioactive emissions to be three orders of magnitude larger (1,000 times) than what the reactor operators claimed to have been released. However, (1) officially accepted radiation risk factors do not take into account the extreme radio-sensitivity of the developing fetus and of very young children (R.H. Nussbaum and I. Fairlie).
Also, (2) the officially assumed levels of radioactive emissions ignored, e.g., large releases of radioactive Noble Gases (e.g. Krypton) and of Tritium (radioactive hydrogen). Both of these radioisotopes can easily enter the human body via the food chain. Equally important is the fact (3) that the traditional measure of radiation exposure, the concept of dose (absorbed energy averaged over a unit mass of exposed human tissue), which is a fundamental macroscopic concept in current radiation risk estimates, is clearly inadequate to describe a variety of known injurious microscopic cellular/molecular mechanisms that can be triggered, in particular, by internally lodged radioactivity.
Those who deny or deceptively play down the catastrophic threats to public health from all phases of the nuclear power cycle, from mining to the lack of any proven solution to permanent and safe disposal of very long-term deadly spent nuclear fuel, recklessly ignore the medical/scientific lessons we should have learned from current and previous nuclear accidents. The international radiation health science establishments, such as IAEA or ICRP, many of whose members are solidly enmeshed with nuclear arms and nuclear energy production, have for decades deliberately ignored observed detriment from radioactive emissions. Their estimates of the public health impact from environmental radioactivity are based on partially outdated and flawed theoretical models that had been developed decades ago to quantify the effects of exposures to external radiation, such as those suffered by the Japanese A-bomb survivors. In agencies that are mandated to protect public health a mindset that denies reality is intolerable.
In addition to unacceptable long lasting effects on public health, even if operating normally (see section 3), nuclear energy technology can only be financed by taxpayers worldwide because private capital considers it too risky and refuses to underwrite it. The nuclear power industry holds citizens hostage to protect its profits. The industry’s safety claims and its new marketing gimmick of modular design reactors are largely deceptive, since it has nothing to offer in terms of safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods.
It is particularly tragic that the current Japanese population is again a study cohort for the devastating effects of a very different mix of environmental radioactive contamination.
Rudi H. Nussbaum is a Professor emeritus of Physics and Environmental Sciences at Portland State University.
Is Fukushima now ten Chernobyls into the sea?
By Harvey Wasserman | May 26, 2011
New readings show levels of radioisotopes found up to 30 kilometers offshore from the on-going crisis at Fukushima are ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas during Chernobyl.
“When it comes to the oceans, says Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceonographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, “the impact of Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl.”
The news comes amidst a tsunami of devastating revelations about the Fukushima disaster and the crumbling future of atomic power, along with a critical Senate funding vote today:
Fukushima’s owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has confirmed that fuel at Unit One melted BEFORE the arrival of the March 11 tsunami.
This critical revelation confirms that the early stages of that melt-down were set in motion by the earthquake that sent tremors into Japan from a relatively far distance out to sea.
Virtually all of Japan’s 55 reactors sit on or near earthquake faults. A 2007 earthquake forced seven reactors to shut at Kashiwazaki. Japan has ordered shut at least two more at Hamaoka because of their seismic vulnerability.
Numerous reactors in the United States sit on or near major earthquake faults. Two each at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, California, are within three miles of major fault lines. So is Indian Point, less than 40 miles from Manhattan. Millions of people live within 50 miles of both San Onofre and Indian Point.
On January 31, 1986, the Perry reactor, 35 miles east of Cleveland on Lake Erie, was damaged by an earthquake rated between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter Scale—orders of magnitude weaker than the one that struck Fukushima, and that could hit the sites in California, New York and elsewhere around the globe.
TEPCO has confirmed that at least three of the Fukushima reactors—Units One, Two and Three—have suffered at least partial fuel melts. In at least one case, the fuel has melted through part of the inner containment system, with molten radioactive metal melting through to the reactor floor. A wide range of sources confirm the likelihood that fission may still be proceeding in at least one Fukushima core. The danger level is disputed. But it clearly requires still more commitment to some kind of cooling regime that will send vast quantities of water into ocean.
At least one spent fuel pool—in Unit Four—may have been entirely exposed to air and caught fire. Reactor fuel cladding is made with a zirconium alloy that ignites when uncovered, emitting very large quantities of radiation. The high level radioactive waste pool in Unit Four may no longer be burning, though it may still be general. Some Fukushima fuel pools (like many in the United States) are perched high in the air, meaning that their vulnerability remains a serious concern. But a new report by Robert Alvarez indicates the problem in the US may be more serious that generally believed.
Unit Four is tilting and may be sinking, with potentially devastating consequences. At least three explosions at the site have weakened critical structures there. Massive leakages may have softened the earth and undermined some of the buildings’ foundations. Further explosions or aftershocks—or a fresh earthquake—could bring on structural collapses with catastrophic fallout.
TEPCO has now confirmed that there are numerous holes in the containment covering Unit Two, and at least one at Unit One. The global nuclear industry has long argued that containments are virtually impenetrable. The domes at Fukushima are of very similar design and strength as many in the US.
The health impacts on workers at Fukushima are certain to be devastating.
After Chernobyl, the Soviet government sent more than 800,000 draftees through the seething wreckage. Many stayed a matter of 90 seconds or less, running in to perform a menial task and then running out as quickly as possible.
Despite their brief exposure, these “liquidators” have suffered an epidemic of health effects, with an escalating death toll. Angry and embittered, they played a significant role in bringing down the Soviet Union that doomed them.
At Fukushima, a core of several hundred workers essentially sacrificed themselves in the early stages of the disaster. They courageously entered highly contaminated areas to perform tasks that almost certainly prevented an even worse catastrophe.
David Brenner, the director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, said of the workers: “Those are pretty brave people. There are going to be some martyrs among them’.”
“I don’t know of any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war,” said University of Tokyo radiology professor Keiichi Nakaga.
Unfortunately, the toll among Fukushima’s workers is certain to escalate. As few as two in five being sent into the Fukushima complex are being monitored for radiation exposure. According the Mainichi Shimbun, just 1,400 workers at Fukushima had been given thorough checkups, with just 40 getting their results confirmed.
Even at that, Japanese officials have raised the allowable dosages for nuclear workers from 100 millisieverts to 250, five times what’s allowed for US workers, and 125 times what reactor workers typically receive in a year.
Some 88% of Japan’s reactor work force are part-timers, sparsely trained and often paid extra money to race into highly radioactive areas and then run out.
But Nobuaki Terasaka, head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, May 16 confirmed some 4,956 cases of internal exposure to radiation among workers at reactors around the country. Of those, 4,766 were originally from Fukushima and had moved to other sites, but had re-visited the prefecture after the 3/11 disaster.
Some of the stricken workers believe they were contaminated when they returned home for their families, even though they may have stayed only briefly.
Workers at Fukushima itself report spotty testing and dangerous facilities, including a leaky earthquake-resistant building where they took their breaks. “We had our meals there, so I think radioactive substances came into our bodies,” says one male worker. “We just drink beer and wash them down.”
A “dead zone” around Fukushima similar to the one surrounding Chernobyl is likely in the making. According to a report published in the Japan Times, levels of contamination in areas around Fukushima are at least comparable to some around Chernobyl.
But people outside the official evacuation zone are also vulnerable. Radiation detected in Tokyo, nearly 200 miles away, at one point prompted the Japanese government to recommend mothers not use tap water to mix formula for their infants.
Nonetheless children have been observed attending schools while bulldozers were removing the radioactive soil from their playgrounds outside. Amidst global protests, the Japanese government has weakened the limits of allowable radiation exposures to children.
In the midst of the disaster, the owners of the Indian Point reactors have announced their refusal to upgrade fire protection systems. New York Attorney-General Eric Schneiderman says more than 70% of the plant remains unprotected, which he says is a “reckless” practice. Schneiderman accuses federal regulators of being too cozy with the plant’s owners. Schneiderman and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo want the two IP reactors shut.
Over the weekend only four of Germany’s seventeen reactors were operating, but the country suffered no apparent energy shortages. Prime Minister Angela Merkel has ordered seven older reactors shut, and the rest to be closed by 2011. But six of the newer ten closed for various technical reasons.
More than 20,000 Swiss citizens rallied todemand an end to plans to build new reactors there. The Swiss government has now confirmed it will not build new reactors, another major blow to the industry, this time resulting in the cancellation of plans for at least three projects.
Japan is standing by its decision to build no more reactors, while China has put some 28 proposed projects on hold. China’s reaction to Fukushima will be crucial to the future of nuclear power, as it is by far the largest potential market for new reactors. Though prevailing winds head the other way, Fukushima is relatively close to China, and some fallout has been detected there.
The Obama Administration has still produced no comprehensive monitoring of radioactive fallout coming to the United States and has provided no guidance as to how American citizens can protect themselves, except to say not to worry. Polls now show more Americans opposing new reactors than favoring them, and grassroots opposition is fierce.
But the industry is pushing ahead with demands for $36 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors, with a preliminary vote expected soon in a House Appropriations Subcommittee. Nuclear opponents are asked to call the White House and Congress steadily through the 2012 budget process.
Also, today (May 26) may see a vote in a Senate committee on a CEDA plan that would provide still more money for new nukes. Safe energy advocates are urged to call their Senators asap.
The International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations, has announced it sees no health effects at Fukushima. The pronouncement comes as no surprise from an agency whose mandate is focused on promoting atomic energy.
The IAEA has consistently low-balled death toll estimates at Chernobyl and regularly ignores industry critics. The pronouncement comes as the agency begins a long-term study of Fukushima’s health effects. Meanwhile, a French watchdog agency has urged that 70,000 more people be evacuated from the Fukushima area. Coming from France, among the world’s pro-nuclear nations, the warning is a grim reminded of how deadly the contamination surrounding Fukushima must be.
But for all the focus on land-based contamination, the continuing flood of radioactive materials into the ocean at Fukushima could have the most problematic long-term impacts. Long-term studies of radiological impacts on the seas are few and far between. Though some heavy isotopes may drop to the sea bottom, others could travel long distances through their lengthy half-lives. Some also worry that those contaminants that do fall to the bottom could be washed back on land by future tsunamis.
Tokyo Electric has now admitted that on May 10-11, at least 250 tons of radioactive liquid leaked into the sea from a pit near the intake at Unit 3, whose fuel was spiked with plutonium. According to the Japanese government, the leak contained about 100 times the annual allowable contamination.
About 500 tons leaked from Unit 2 from April 1 to April 6. Other leaks have been steady and virtually impossible to trace. “After Chernobyl, fallout was measured,” says Buesseler, “from as far afield as the north Pacific Ocean.”
A quarter-century later the international community is still trying to install a massive, hugely expensive containment structure to suppress further radiation releases in the wake of Chernobyl’s explosion.
Such a containment would be extremely difficult to sustain at seaside Fukushima, which is still vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis. To be of any real use, all six reactors and all seven spent fuel pools would have to be covered.
But avenues to the sea would also have to be contained. Fukushima is much closer to the ocean than Chernobyl, so more intense contamination might be expected. But the high radiation levels being measured indicate Fukushima’s most important impacts may be on marine life.
The US has ceased measuring contamination in Pacific seafood. But for centuries to come, at least some radioactive materials dumped into the sea at Fukushima will find their way into the creatures of the sea and the humans that depend on them.
Can Fukushima Cause a Turko-Armenian Rapprochement?
By Serhan Ünal | International Relations | May 9, 2011
The Fukushima nuclear power plant (NPP) disaster presents a chance to reinvigorate the stalled momentum for a Turko-Armenian rapprochement. The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear melt-down which devastated Japan may have world-wide repercussions. One of these could be the creation of confidence-building measures over the similarly risky status of the only NPP in Armenia: Metsamor. Metsamor NPP was built in 1979 and was closed after a 1988 earthquake in Armenia. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and following the Azeri-Armenian War over Nagorno-Karabakh, it was re-commissioned by Yerevan in 1995 to meet increasing energy demand. Metsamor NPP uses first generation technology, and is distinguished for being “the oldest and the least secure” of the existing NPPs, according to the European Union (EU). It is located some 20 kilometres from the Turko-Armenian border and faces serious financial problems, even in re-fuelling. Under such conditions, it is difficult to convince Armenia to take the necessary security measures; there is a vital risk for the whole region, a risk to match a Chernobyl-like disaster. At this very point, this unlucky and risky situation of Metsamor provides Turks and Armenians with a timely opportunity. At present, the security of NPPs has been forced onto the world’s energy security agenda. Ankara should use this momentum smartly and take one step toward Yerevan. A deal on Metsamor’s security can enable parties to deepen the dialogue; both parties stand to gain from this cooperation.
Firstly, Turkey can help Armenia in finding loans and forming a consortium to shoulder the burden mutually, for the sake of regional security and stability. According to a prediction, a new NPP will cost approximately $5 billion. It is totally inconceivable for Armenia, which only possesses approximately $2 billion in national revenue as of 2010, to make such a large investment. Perhaps Turkey can play a primary role in forming a tripartite or quadripartite enterprise in which Armenia, Turkey, the EU and the US have shares, to make investment and generate electricity for the Armenian economy by using reliable, sustainable, cleaner and less dangerous resources. Russia can be enticed to join the new project to maintain the regional balance too. Thus, all the major actors (Washington, Brussels and Moscow) will be included in the investment with regional parties Yerevan and Ankara. The Minsk Group, which mainly consists of France, Russia and the US, can also be the institutional roof under which negotiations occur. Under the consortium (or the Minsk Group), profits can be re-invested to the region and this can develop the necessary infrastructure for re-opening the common Turko-Armenian border.
Secondly, the establishment of a consortium (or at least developing a plan for the future of Metsamor mutually) may cause much-needed political and social linkages across both countries. What is needed in Turko-Armenian relations is mutual understanding and confidence. During the negotiations, an interaction between the parties is inevitable; this will be the key for better understanding. If the parties can build confidence during the technical and economic negotiations, this may spill over into other areas from the issues being agreed on. Because the main obstacle for the Turkish government and its Armenian counterpart is public opposition to any agreement made with the opposite side, this obstacle can be eliminated through political and social rapprochement. Plus, as peculiar to Turkey, Azerbaijan’s opposition is significant; but, even Azerbaijan which has a cease-fire with Armenia, not a permanent peace, may support a solution to the risky situation of Metsamor. Within the framework of good neighbourhood and mutual understanding, parties may take one step further. This programme could proceed under the label “Atoms For Confidence”, like US president Eisenhower’s famous “Atoms For Peace” speech. There is real hope and possibility for this to succeed.
Even if the parties cannot build confidence and move discussions to other fields—like debates over the events of 1915 or the future demarcation of their common border—there will remain one, concrete achievement: the removal of a regional nuclear disaster risk. The momentum now exists. All nuclear-powered countries are debating the risks of nuclear energy, and some countries have already decided to suspend their investments. For example, Germany has just decided to speed up its abandonment of nuclear energy. Public opposition to nuclear energy could play a part in raising more awareness about the topic. This may enable the Turkish and Armenian governments to take steps towards each other much more easily, by exploiting the dangerous situation of Metsamor, without facing harsh public opposition. There is nothing to lose for either party; the chances are that they both stand to gain mutually from the deal. The international community would appreciate this positive development, too. In brief, the destructive tsunami which wreaked untold devastation upon Japan can serve as a cautionary tale for the South Caucasus, by forcing regional actors to engage in confidence-building measures and to remove the common danger of nuclear disaster.
—
Serhan Ünal is a student at the department of International Relations at Bilkent University – Ankara, Turkey.
Italy’s Great Nuclear Swindle
The Radioactive Dictatorship of Silvio Berlusconi
By MICHAEL LEONARDI – CounterPunch – May 13, 2011
Italy’s democracy is in tatters as Silvio Berlusconi and his ruling right-wing coalition work to block a citizen’s referendum that would repeal the decision of the Berlusconi government to return to nuclear energy production on the peninsula. Italy has not produced nuclear energy since 1990 and recent polls indicate that more than 75 % of Italians are opposed to nuclear energy production. The referendum in question is on the ballot for the 12th and 13th of June, although a recent call by the Berlusconi government for a one year moratorium on the relaunch of nuclear energy in Italy threatens to push the referendum off the ballot through a last minute legal ruling. The campaign to bring this referendum to a vote was spearheaded by opposition political party Italia Dei Valori (Italy of Values) which led a broad based coalition of citizen and environmental groups to gather the 500,000 signatures needed to get the referendum on the ballot.
Italy is the only G8 country that does not produce nuclear energy. It has been free of functioning nuclear power plants since 1990 but does receive around 10% of its electricity from nuclear energy generated in France and Germany. Citizens successfully passed a referendum in 1987, one year after the catastrophic Chernobyl accident, that called for the phasing out and suspension of nuclear energy production. In 1987 Italy had two operating nuclear plants and has had four operational reactors in its history. In 2007 while campaigning for his third election, Berlusconi announced his intentions to return to nuclear energy production in Italy as a strategic part of a national energy policy.
Back in 2007 Berlusconi wasn’t the only one who supported a return to nuclear energy. Important elements of the newly formed Democratic Party also voiced their support for a return to nuclear power. A wikileaks cable 07ROME2438 revealed that Pier Luigi Bersani, the current secretary of the Italian Democratic Party who in 2007 was serving as Economic Development Minister for the Romano Prodi led Center Left coalition government, opened the door for Italy’s return to atomic energy by forging the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership agreement with then US energy secretary Samuel Bodman. At that time Bersani stated that “a return to nuclear energy was not excluded by the 1987 referendum” and that it was his hope that the agreement forged between the Prodi and Bush administrations would “help lead to a change in attitude from the Italian people toward nuclear energy.” Walter Veltroni, the ex-mayor of Rome who was the newly formed Democratic Party’s first candidate for president against Berlusconi in 2008, also voiced his openness to the idea of returning to Nuclear Energy production.
Since Fukushima Bersani and his fellow Democrats have been much more subdued about their support for Nuclear Energy and they have voiced strong opposition to the current government’s plan for the construction of new reactors. The Democrats have joined the chorus of the Green Party, Italia Dei Valori and scores of citizens groups in calling Berlusconi’s attempts to block the referendum a “theft” and a “deceptive attempt to hinder the democratic process.” Fukushima has inspired renewed vigor in the antinuclear movement and worked to sway public opinion in opposition to nuclear power that had become increasingly split over the past few years.
Following Berlusconi’s election victory in 2008 and his return to power for the third time since 1994, Italy’s new minister of economic development Claudio Scajola — before being forced out of office by a corruption scandal involving bribery and fraud in 2010 — announced that the government had scheduled the start of construction for the first new Italian nuclear power plant by 2013. On February the 24th of 2009, an agreement between France and Italy was signed allowing Italy to share in France’s expertise in the area of nuclear power station design. On July 9th 2009 the Italian legislature passed an energy bill covering the establishment of a Nuclear Regulatory Agency and giving the government six months to select sites for new plants. These sites have never been finalized. On the 3rd of August 2009, Italy’s energy giant Enel and Eletricite de France established a joint venture Sviluppo Nucleare Italia Srl for studying the feasibility of building at least four reactors using a design of French reactor builder Areva — the worlds largest nuclear energy company. These energy oligarchs, with Berlusconi as their champion, are doing everything in their power to preserve their multi-billion dollar investment in a nuclear future.
To this end Berlusconi’s council of ministers announced a one year moratorium on all questions relating to the research and activation of sites for new nuclear plants in Italy on the 24rd of March 2011, less than two weeks from the earthquake in Japan and subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster. This move was immediately met with skepticism from Italy’s antinuclear movement and opposition political parties and was seen as a poorly veiled attempt to block the June referendum. On April 26th, the 25th anniversary of the catastrophic Chernobyl accident, Berlusconi held a press conference with French president Nikolay Sarkozy in Rome. At this press conference Berlusconi made his radioactive intentions clear for all. “We are absolutely convinced that nuclear energy is the future for the whole world,” he said. He went on to detail how recent polls showed that the referendum to block nuclear power for decades to come could pass at this time and that by temporarily suspending Italy’s return to nuclear program the issue would be revisited when the Italian voters had been “calmed down” and returned to the realization that Nuclear Energy was the most viable and safe way to produce electricity. He went on to explain how the “leftists and ecologists” had manipulated the emotions of the Italian voters after Chernobyl and penalized the Italian people who have to pay higher electric rates than France that operates 58 nuclear power plants. Berlusconi explained that the “situation in Japan had scared the Italian voters” and that the “inevitable return to nuclear power in Italy” would not be abandoned nor would the collaborations between Enel and Eletricite de France.
Now with Germany and Japan announcing the phasing out of their Nuclear programs and the scrapping of plans for the construction of new reactors, it would seem like political suicide to barge full steam ahead with a pro nuclear stance, but this is Italy and Berlusconi is still at the command. Berlusconi is now in control of all the major television outlets, including the state owned RAI, so getting the word out to the voters that there will be a vote on the 12th and 13th of June is proving difficult, and the heavy hand of State censorship has been wielded. At the annual May Day concert in Rome, sponsored by Italy’s two largest labor unions and televised on the state run RAI, the performing artists were required to sign a waiver agreeing not to speak about the upcoming referendums or risk a fine of over ten thousand euros. This left a bitter taste in the mouths of many of the attendees of this May Day celebration as news surfaced almost immediately that the state media outlet had censored the event.
As of now the referendum to block Nuclear Power is still on the ballot. Only a last minute ruling by the Supreme Court could remove it, and the Berlusconi government is banking on this decision as a result of their so-called nuclear moratorium. The antinuclear referendum is accompanied on the June ballot by two other referendums, one to repeal the Berlusconi government’s attempts to privatize water and the other to repeal a law called “legittimo impedimento” which was passed by the Right wing majority in order to protect Berlusconi from prosecution by giving him and members of parliament immunity from prosecution while serving in office. Each of these referendums required the gathering of half a million valid signatures and will need the high participation of 50 % plus 1 eligible voters to reach the mandated quorum in order to be considered valid. No legislative referendum has been able to reach this quorum in over a decade. Now the Berlusconi government is also trying to block the vote to keep water publicly owned. In recent legislation they created a new Water Authority in an attempt to legally block this referendum as well. While it is evident to the engaged and politically active citizenry that the Berlusconi government is pulling out all the stops to block the democratic process, the masses who get their information from Berlusconi’s private and state run television empire are being kept in the dark. No news on the referendums is reported unless it is it is very late at night or the early hours of the morning.
To publicize these referendums the citizens are taking to the streets, leafleting, using creative direct action and social networking on the internet to spread the news and get out the vote. On May 9th Greenpeace activists unfurled a large banner from Mussolini’s balcony on Palazzo Venezia in Rome. The banner includes a caricature of Berlusconi saying “Italians, I decide your future” and a call for Italians to vote on the Nuclear Referndum. Angelo Bonelli, President of the Italian Green Party, summed it up like this: “The referendums will be voted on anyway, despite the fact that the thieves of democracy have returned to action. The attempts of the government to steal the democratic rights of the Italian people to vote against nuclear energy and the privatization of water will not succeed.” On the 12th and 13th of June, the Italian people can change the course of their future by voting yes to say no to nuclear energy and the privatization of their water resources.
~
Michael Leonardi splits his time between Ohio and Italy. He can be reached at mikeleonardi@hotmail.com
TEPCO now confirms nuclear meltdown in Fukushima reactor No. 1
By Mike Adams | NaturalNews | May 12, 2011
TEPCO has now publicly admitted it wasn’t telling the truth about the severity of the damage to Fukushima reactor No. 1. We’re now being told what we’ve suspected all along — that nuclear fuel rods in that reactor are totally exposed and have suffered a nuclear meltdown, releasing vast amounts of radiation comparable to Chernobyl. As Bloomberg now reports, the water level in reactor No. 4 is one meter below the fuel assembly itself. This means, of course, that the water isn’t high enough to cover the fuel rods, which is why those fuel rods have suffered a nuclear meltdown. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…)
The Associated Press is also reporting that “other fuel has slumped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is thought to be covered in water.” This statement is astonishing all by itself because it means the fuel rods were in a total meltdown hot enough to cause their metal containment cylinders to “slump” and melt their way down to the lower levels of the coolant pools. Notably, AP carefully avoids using the term “melt” and instead says the fuel rods “slumped.” This is all part of the AP’s determined downplaying of the Fukushima catastrophe (see below).
Not surprisingly, as AP now reports, “The findings also indicate a greater-than-expected leak in that vessel.” But the laws of nuclear physics don’t care what you “expect,” you see. They don’t care about media spin or power company B.S. The laws of physics simply follow their natural course, regardless of what you hope they do.
And in the case of Fukushima, the laws of physics led directly to a core fuel meltdown that now even the mainstream media cannot deny (although they still aren’t calling it a “nuclear meltdown”). As AP reports:
Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency officials said the new data indicates that it is likely that partially melted fuel had fallen to the bottom of the pressurized vessel that holds the reactor core together and possibly leached down into the drywell soon after the March 11 quake and tsunami that struck Japan’s northeastern coast.
Undeniable meltdown
What AP is describing, of course, is a nuclear meltdown. It doesn’t get any more obvious than this: The fuel reached melting temperature and melted down. Along with this, there would have had to be a massive release of radiation into the containment vessel, which just happens to have numerous holes in it that allow highly radioactive water to leak directly into the environment. No wonder TEPCO discovered its radiation detectors had all maxed out there and become non-functional. No wonder TEPCO had to selectively stop reporting radiation releases — it was in the middle of a Chernobyl-like core fuel meltdown!
The Telegraph in the UK is refreshingly printing the truth on this story: “One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did suffer a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first time today, describing a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor’s containment vessel.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor…)
But the mainstream media in the U.S. has obviously been instructed by the White House to avoid using the term “nuclear meltdown” in describing what happened at Fukushima. There is a rather blatant downplaying of the facts going on behind the scenes at the media giants.
Some of this spin can only be called blatant lies, by the way. In the same story linked above, AP claims “Unit 4 contained no fuel rods at the time of the earthquake…”
Huh? No fuel rods in reactor No. 4? This what on Earth is this video showing? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKHW…
I love how the media admits it has been misreporting the truth of the situation all along, and then it comes up with new fairytale spin stories in practically the same sentence. They might as well just report, “There was no nuclear fuel in Fukushima at the time of the tsunami, and that’s why governments have stopped monitoring radiation levels.”
TEPCO once again meets Murphy’s Law
In any case, this sudden revelation that reactor No. 4 has already experienced a nuclear fuel meltdown is, not surprisingly, causing considerable setbacks to TEPCO’s plan to have the whole facility deactivated by Christmas. Just as NaturalNews publicly predicted, the Christmas shutdown plan was little more than a combination of fantasyland thinking and industry spin.
“What this means is this is probably going to be a much more difficult cleanup than they originally planned for,” said particle physicist Paul Padley in a Bloomberg story (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…). The government and Tepco “have consistently appeared to be underestimating the severity of the situation.”
And that’s the story of modern science: Arrogant in its confidence over the laws of nature, yet utterly dishonest in reporting the truth when its Tower of Babel crumbles to the ground. No wonder the reputation of the conventional scientific community continues to plummet as people realize just how dangerous these people really are.
Sources for this story include:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie…
Fukushima Update – May 11
Moon of Alabama
The big mess at the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues as the damaged reactors there are still releasing radioactive substances into the environment. A new leak through a cable shaft and to the cooling water intake of the no 3 reactor to the sea was found only today.
At the no 1 plant the reactor vessel continues to be fed with cooling water but can not be filled up above the level of the exposed nuclear fuel likely because of leaking pipe connections at a certain height. Now the primary containment vessel around the reactor vessel will get filled with water. This creates a “water sarcophagus” to cool the reactor vessel from the outside. So far over 9,900 tons of water have been pumped into it. Eventually water will be filled high enough to submerge the reactor vessel and thereby refill it through the leaking pipe connection.
Yesterday workers could access the inner no 1 reactor building for the very first time and they tried to install some new monitoring systems as the old ones are broken. Before the access door was opened and the workers could enter air was pushed through the building and through filters to reduce the radiation in the building. This was not very successful. Tepco had hoped to reduce radiation there to 1 millisievert per hour, but some areas inside the building that eventually need to be entered still have radiation levels between 600 and 700 millisieverts per hour, much higher than the maximum 250 millisievert lifetime(!) radiation limit that nuclear workers can be exposed to in emergency cases. Those areas will need to get shielded off before work around them can continue.
The spent fuel pool in no 1 continues to get refilled with water which then continues to evaporate through the severely damaged roof. Hydrazine was added to the water as corrosion inhibitor.
The number no 2 reactor vessel and primary containment are still leaking water into the basement of the machine hall of no 2 and 3 and from there through various ways into the environment. Work has started to pump the water out for decontamination and to block all ways from the basement into the environment. Eventually the leak in the containment vessel (likely at the damaged torus outside the primary containment which holds condensation water) will have to be repaired to allow for restoring a permanent cooling loop or to attempt to create a “water sarcophagus” around it. This will be very difficult to achieve as the water coming from the leak is radioactive.
The no 2 spent fuel pool seems for now to be fine as an improvised cooling loop has been established for it.
The no 3 reactor shows increasing reactor vessel temperature. Over the last 10 days the temperature temperature at the feedwater nozzle increased from below 100 degrees centigrade to over 221 degrees now. As the reactor vessel and primary containment is also likely damaged this also increases evaporation and releases into the environment.
The spent fuel pool in no 3 continues to get intermittently refilled with water which then continues to evaporate through the severely damaged roof. A camera view (see May 10 entry) into the water filled pool showed only tons of heavy debris from the collapsed roof.
The heavily damaged no 4 building had no active reactor at the time of the quake but a full spent fuel pool. A few days ago a camera view (see entry at May 8) into the pool showed no visible damage to the fuel elements but some rubble on top of them. Some gas bubbles were coming up from the fuel elements which points to some damaged fuel rods and continued hydrate release.
According to this Russia News report there is some speculation (starting at 3:10) that the building of reactor no 4 began to lean to one side. NISA, the Japanese regulator had ordered Tepco to check the statics of that building some weeks ago. Maybe they had good reason to do so?
In the general surrounding of the plant rubble gets removed with remote operated machines and synthetic resin gets sprayed on all surfaces to prevent radioactive dust from coming up.
Some people where allowed to visit the evacuated areas to remove items from their homes. The government seems to finally adopt the evacuated area to a real assessment of the radiation. It had at first created a 20 kilometers and then a 30 kilometer circular evacuation zone. But the days after the explosions at the plant the wind blew over land towards north-northwest before turning back to the sea and that area has of course higher radiation levels now even beyond the 30 kilometer zone than areas more near to but south of the reactors. (I remember seeing a German radiation prediction chart just a few days after the reactor explosions that showed just that. What took the Japanese government so long to come to this conclusion?) Higher levels of radiation have been found in wastewater facilities beyond the current evacuation area. This will likely be from runoff water that went into the sewage. The sludge that the wastewater facilities create is used to produce cement which will now be slightly radiated.
The prime minister of Japan has ordered another nuclear site with six reactors, Hamaoka, to shut down as it stands above a tectonic fault which is suspected to create a big quake and probably soon. This will increase the electricity deficit this summer, which will lead to blackouts and further economic damage.
Additional resources:
Update from Dr. Saji former Secretariat of Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission <— NEW!
AllThingsNuclear Union of Concerned Scientists
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Atomic power review blog
Digital Globe Sat Pictures
IAEA Newscenter
NISA Japanese Nuclear Regulator
Japan Atomic Industry Forum (regular updates)
Japanese government press releases in English
Kyodo News Agency
Asahi Shimbun leading Japanese newspaper in English
NHK World TV via Ustream
Status reports for the German Federal Government by the Gesellschaft für Reaktorsicherheit in German language
Since Fukushima the real dangers of nuclear power are now better known
By Andrew McKillop | VHeadline | May 9, 2011
In an article published August 1, 2010 I stated what is now clearer than ever, after the Fukushima disaster, and more and more threatening, after perhaps the last time the USA triumphally announces that Bin laden is dead (announcements of his death stretch back as far as December 2001).
In the August 2010 article I said:
Conventional wars, like the conventional nation states that make or “wage” war, are less and less credible due to the new nuclear threat, due to certain or assured massive or total destruction and economic damage, when or if large reactors and nuclear installations are hit.
A quick roundup of admitted and officially announced damage to the 6-reactor Fukushima site in Japan, and economic losses due to this disaster as of early May is as follows:
– At least 4 of the reactors are destroyed and unable to be repaired, and the 2 that could or might be repaired face rising Japanese public opinion in rejection of nuclear power. Radiation levels on-site remain very high, also making it difficult to envisage repair of the 2 potentially recoverable reactors. Dismantling the reactors and safe store entombment and neutralization of radiation danger at the site will cost at least US$12 billion and take several years – perhaps more than 10 years.
-Around 90,000 Japanese have been forced out of their homes, jobs and livelihoods in the 20-kilometre Total Exclusion Zone around the disaster site, that many scientists say should be extended to at least 30-kilometres. There is no known date for when these persons can or might return inside the exclusion zone, resulting in total economic loss. Some 25+ years after the Chernobyl disaster, its 7,800 square kilometre total exclusion zone remains uninhabitable.
– Economic costs and losses from the Fukushima nuclear disaster are presently estimated at a total of around US$130-175 billion, but may further increase.
– The total radiological inventory or radiation potential of each reactor at the Fukushima site is about 200 times the radiation released by the Hiroshima atom bomb, which killed about 60,000 persons by radiation (blast and fire, also killing at least as many persons, in August 1945).
-Including fuel rods in fuel pond storage, ancillary equipment, on-site nuclear wastes and nuclear materials, the total radiological inventory of the Fukushima site is probably more than 10,000 times the radiation released by the Hiroshima atom bomb.
Worldwide, there are about 440 civil reactors of similar size to the Fukushima reactors, in service at this time, as well as about 290 research, scientific and military reactors, and about 370 submarine and surface ship reactors. The radiological inventory of these mostly non-military reactors is vastly higher than the radiation release potential of all nuclear weapons held by the so-called “declared nuclear powers” (USA, Russia, China, France, UK), and the “non-declared powers” (India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea)
PLAYING WITH FIRE
Since late 2010, world media has repeatedly carried reports claiming Al Qaeda intends to become nuclear capable. One example is a February 2, 2011 article in UK Daily Telegraph headlined Wikileaks: Al Qaeda is planning a dirty bomb, and continuing: “Al-Qaeda is actively trying to secure nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build a radioactive”dirty” bomb, according to leaked diplomatic documents”.
The antiquated, technological naivety of this Wikileaks claim reminds us that Wikileaks has possibly multiple agendas and multiple masters in its so-called quest for truth. The article citing Wikileaks goes on to repeat claims of Al Qaeda being “interested” in dirty bombs, basically nuclear wastes or radioactive material packed in any kind of container and exploded, for example in a city center dustbin.
Al Qaeda operatives would however have no interest in the vast dirty bombs also known as civil nuclear reactors. They would also eschew fuel rod fabrication centers, waste reprocessing and storage centers, road, ship and train convoys transporting ultra-deadly materials, notably plutonium, the world’s uranium mines, and remaining large quantities of smaller sized nuclear ordnance, including atomic mines, torpedoes and artillery shells, leftover from the Cold War period!
Nuclear reactors are in no way designed to resist military attack – even so-called military reactors which are mostly high neutron reactors able to quickly “breed” or produce plutonium and highly enriched uranium, to make atomic weapons, are themselves rarely hard-shell protected or located underground. Most nuclear reactors have so-called containment features rarely exceeding 20 to30 centimetres of concrete and in some cases a few centimetres of mild steel protection of the reactor cores. Fuel rod dumps or cooling ponds – as shown in the case of Fukushima – are sometimes located in open air surroundings with zero protection.
The range and types of conventional military ordnance able to penetrate and destroy reactor cores, or their cooling systems, or both are very wide-ranging. They range from conventional bombs, artillery shells, mines, mortars, anti-tank and anti-building shoulder-fired missiles, to conventional short-range or long-range missiles. These missiles are owned by more than 20 nations, including Iran’s Shahab-4. Other than conventional military ordnance, unconventional and so-called terror war ordnance able to destroy any civil nuclear reactors include a large range of potential weapons. These range from kamikaze explosives like the suicide belt, to long range anti-tank missiles, improvised devices using conventional military or civil explosives, drone-launched explosive charges, and electronic and Internet based hacking attack on the control systems of nuclear plants.
Only after covering some of the more rational and likely weapons choices, do we come on to hijacked airplanes deliberately crashed on nuclear sites – whether reactor sites, reprocessing sites, fuel fabrication centres, waste storage centres, and other parts of the so-called nuclear value chain.
NO NEED FOR TERROR WAR
The Fukushima disaster has prized open previously semi-secret information on the fantastic death toll in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus from the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986. Some 60,0000 Liquidators were forced to work at the site, under panic conditions, with little or no protection and today perhaps one-third to one-half of these Liquidators are already dead. Economic loss from the Chernobyl disaster, in today’s money, was at least US$250 billion. This was not a military attack or terror attack, but a nuclear catastrophe due to human error. The Fukushima disaster was due to earthquake and tsunami, of course aggravated by the proven irresponsibility, lying and cost-cutting of the site operator, Tepco.
Nuclear power is therefore already a dagger pointed at the jugular vein of the global economy and consumer economy. Today, with what is likely the last gasp of the Al Qaeda farce, and its violence and loss of life, created by American geopolitical strategy for unknown or absurd reasons, we have a new and additional asymmetric nuclear war threat.
Western media and the Wikileaks communication side-channel provides false information on the supposed Dirty Bomb threat of Al Qaeda, but totally ignores the reality of existing and vast dirty bomb civil reactors and other nuclear infrastructures in the worldwide nuclear value chain. Since Fukushima the real dangers of nuclear power are now better known. Whatever may remain of Al Qaeda’s operatives will also know.
Andrew McKillop
xtran9@gmail.com
Senior Partner
EP Capital Pty Ltd
Mount Hawthorn
Western Australia
Australia 6016
Phone: +61 411 771 895
Nuclear plant releases unknown amount of radioactive tritium into Mississippi River
NaturalNews – May 6, 2011
Workers at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant in Port Gibson, Miss., last Thursday released a large amount of radioactive tritium directly into the Mississippi River, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and experts are currently trying to sort out the situation. An investigation is currently underway to determine why the tritium was even present in standing water found in an abandoned unit of the plant, as well as how much of this dangerous nuclear byproduct ended up getting dumped into the river. Many also want to know why workers released the toxic tritium before conducting proper tests.
The Mississippi Natchez Democrat reports that crews first discovered the radioactive water in the plant’s Unit 2 turbine building after heavy rains began hitting the area last week. Unit 2 was a partially-constructed, abandoned structure that should not have contained any radioactive materials, let alone tritium, which is commonly used to manufacture nuclear weapons and test atomic bombs (http://www.nirs.org/radiation/triti…).
According to reports, alarms began to go off as workers were releasing the radioactive storm water into the river, which engaged the stop flow on the release pump. Neither NRC nor plant officials know how much tritium was released into the river during this release.
“Although concentrations of tritium exceeded EPA drinking water limits, the release should not represent a hazard to public health because of its dilution in the river,” insisted Lara Uselding, public affairs officer at NRC Region IV, to reporters.
Such a statement, of course, is a health concern because precise levels of released tritium are unknown. Just because the radioactive substance has been diluted does not necessarily mean it is harmless, nor does it verify the substance’s source or whether or not it is still being unknowingly released. Without this crucial information, there is no telling where else tritium might be lurking around the plant and river.
A beta radioactive substance, tritium bombards cells and damages DNA when inhaled or swallowed, and can persist in the body for more than ten years upon exposure. Its perpetual effect on cells can lead to all sorts of serious diseases, including, but not limited to, gene mutations, birth defects, and cancer.
Sources for this story include:
Featured Video
10K More U.S. Troops Deploy as Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Genetic baloney in thick slices
MAYBE COULD BE INC.
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | July 8, 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- US military withdrawal from Iraq and the collapse of US-Israeli hegemonic project in West Asia
- What does Europe want – a war with Russia?
- She Followed the Actual Data on COVID Vaccines and Masks — Her Career Took a Huge Hit
- Florida AG Sues Pfizer, Bourla Over Deceptive Marketing of COVID Vaccines
- Von der Leyen gifts her spin doctor a job for life
- 10K More U.S. Troops Deploy as Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes /Suliaman Ahmed
- Iranian crew declared Dena training vessel ‘unarmed’ to US warship before deadly torpedo strike: Report
- Iran’s NPT debate moves beyond parliament
- Houthis condemn Saudi claims of attack on Medina
- Fatuous False Flags
- If Americans Knew
- Israel is squeezing the life out of Palestinians – Daily Update
- The Israeli Right Portrays Islam as Murderous. It Serves a Political Purpose
- Jordan Has Had Enough: King Abdullah’s Scathing Warning to Israel
- Israeli Colonizers (i.e. Settlers) Kill Palestinian Man Near Salfit
- New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza
- Jewish supremacy, anti-Palestinian bigotry on display in Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
