Kids in Fukushima Prefecture are becoming increasingly overweight, as they are denied daily exercise in schoolyards due to the risk posed by exposure to nuclear radiation in the area, governments’ health report reveals.
The report argues that an increasing number of kids are weighing 20 per cent more than their standard based on their height, reported Kyodo News.
The study was released by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Since June 2011 more than half the public institutions in Fukushima, which is just under 450 schools, have limited their outdoor activities during school hours. As of September 2012, 71 elementary and junior high schools still adhere to such restrictions, according to the prefectural education board.
Their main concern is fear of exposure to radiation released from the Fukushima Daiichi complex.
Earlier, alarming reports of children developing potentially cancerous abnormalities have been making news as early as July.
A report by Fukushima Medical University first published this April and updated in July revealed that 36 per cent of Fukushima children have unusually overgrown thyroid glands, and could be prone to cancer.
Of 38,000 children examined, 13,000 had cysts or nodules as large as five millimeters, the Health Management Survey stated, which made doctors around the globe rate Japan’s reaction to the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster as “ultimately medical irresponsibility.”
On top of that, fish caught off the coast of Japan following the Fukushima nuclear disaster are still contaminated, bringing speculation that leakage from the reactors has not been fully stopped. If true, it could threaten area marine life for decades to come.
The long-term consequences of the Fukushima disaster have yet to be estimated, and the possible radiation spread has been a subject of continuous dispute, with official and independent sources providing contrasting figures.
Since the day of the tragedy, Japan has seen many anti-nuclear demonstrations.
The Fukushima nuclear plant was hit in 2011 by a powerful earthquake and subsequent tsunami, the worst-ever disaster of its kind in Japan.
The disaster triggered a strong reaction in Japan itself and from May, 2011 to July, 2012 Japan managed to function without nuclear power plants, but later despite widespread protests, Ōi Nuclear Power Plant was restarted.
The disaster also had an awakening effect on several nations worldwide, with some deciding to shelve the use of nuclear energy, including European powerhouse Germany.
December 25, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Fukushima Prefecture |
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When the Fukushima-1 reactor complex in Japan went into radioactive apoplexy on March 11, 2011, the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Co. — like the Russians at Chernobyl before them — began minimizing the risks of radiation and the known and potential effects of radiological disasters.
The principle mouthpiece for this well-rehearsed minstrel show was Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano who told the world that evening, “Let me repeat that there is no radiation leak, nor will there be a leak.”(1) Edano is now the Trade and Industry Minister and oversees federal cleanup and recovery efforts.
Independent observers like Dr. Chris Busby, scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and a founder of the Low-Level Radiation Campaign in England, warned four days into the disaster: “Reassurances about radiation exposures issued by the Japanese government cannot be believed.” Likewise, physicist Nils Bøhmer, with the Oslo-based environmental foundation Bellona, insists that throughout the crisis Japan has been withholding information about radiation dangers.
Even the New York Times reported Nov. 30 on “The gap between the initial assurances given by company and government officials, and the ultimate scale of the nuclear disaster…”
Deception confirmed by UN
Now 20 months later, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health has issued a draft report charging that Japan “has adopted overly optimistic views of radiation risks and has conducted only limited health checks” among contaminated populations, the AP and CBC reported. According to Anand Grover, the UN investigator, “Japan hasn’t done enough to protect the health of residents and workers affected.”(2)
Previous investigations found that monitoring data from the federal system that tracks plumes of radiation during disasters — called “Speedi,” for System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information — was kept secret when it was needed most. News reports in August 2011 said that the system forecast that Karino Elementary School in the town of Namie would be directly in the path of the radiation plume spewing from the smashed reactors. Yet the warning never reached decision-makers and neither the school nor the town was evacuated. Instead, they became evacuation centers where families even cooked and ate meals outdoors.
Bellona reports that documents obtained by the AP and the New York Times, its own interviews with key officials, and a review of other newly released data and parliamentary transcripts show that “… Japan’s system to forecast radiation threats was working from the moment its nuclear crisis began on March 11, after an earthquake and tsunami pummeled the Fukushima” reactor site.
The UN’s Grover severely criticized the government’s commitment to health care for exposed workers and people in contaminated areas, and complained that its ongoing health checks are “too narrow in scope because they are only intended to cover Fukushima’s two million people.” Surveys of health effects should extend to “all radiation-affected zones” Grover said, a vast area including much of the north-eastern half of Honshu, Japan’s main island.
But so far, only one-fourth of Fukushima’s population has been surveyed. Grover thinks it’s unwise to check only children for thyroid damage. Indeed, Dr. Helen Caldicott told Business Insider last summer that even when lesions are found on a child’s thyroid, they aren’t being biopsied. The lesions “should all be biopsied,” Caldicott warned.
Further minimizing the actual numbers of affected persons, thousands of reactor site workers with short-term contractors “have no access to permanent health checks,” Grover said, and Fukushima residents complain that they have not been allowed access to their own health-check results.
Last March, Human Rights Watch leveled the same charge.(3) “We are really not seeing basic health services being offered in an accessible way and we are not seeing accurate, consistent, non-contradictory information being disclosed to people on a regular basis” Jane Cohen, a researcher at the New York-based rights group, told Reuters. Of the 24,228 workers who risk radiation exposure at the reactor complex, only a mere 904 are eligible for free cancer screenings being provided by the government and Tepco, the daily Asahi Shimbun reported November 22nd. The authorities have limited the scope of the $600 checkups to workers who were exposed to over 50 millisieverts between March 11 and mid-December 2011, but thousands of workers are demanding that the time limit be abolished.
Disinformation and denials confounded by science
Official lullabies, denials and attempted cover-ups are desperate shields against the enormous economic and legal liability that would follow any acknowledgment of the depth and breadth of radiation’s likely effects. Tepco said November 6th that it may need 11 trillion yen, or $137 billion, to cover its damages. Tokyo already set aside ¥9 trillion in July as part of the federal bailout and takeover of the utility. Minister Edano hinted last May that the government may cover some of the costs of decontaminating certain limited areas. Comprehensive decontamination is not even being considered because, as the science ministry reported in November 2011, radioactive fallout from the triple meltdowns was found in every one of its 57 prefectures.(4)
The journal Science reported this fall that 40% of the fish caught off the coast of NE Japan are contaminated with radioactive cesium at levels well above what the government allows.(5) Author Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution concluded that there is either a source of cesium on the seafloor, or it is still being dumped into the ocean by Tepco.
Referring to the millions of gallons of cooling water still being poured into the three destroyed reactors and their waste fuel pools, Buesseler told Radio Australia Nov. 20, “Some of that water is getting back into the ocean, either actively being pumped out after some decontamination or through leaks in the building, so [Tepco’s] not able to contain all of the water that they use to cool.”
The government and Tepco moved quickly to deny Science. The federal fisheries ministry claimed that cesium from Fukushima’s wrecked cooling systems — about 16,000-trillion becquerels, what Science called “by far the largest discharge of radioactivity into the ocean ever seen”— is “sinking into the seabed” and no longer entering the food chain. (A becquerel is one subatomic disintegration per second) Tepco representatives just said contaminated water was not leaking from any of its wreckage.
Oceanographer Kanda at Tokyo University told the journal Nature that his analysis indicates the site itself is leaking about 300 billion becquerels into the sea every month.
Notes
(1) Evan Osnos, “The Fallout: Seven months later: Japan’s nuclear predicament,” The New Yorker, Oct. 17, 2011
(2) AP, “UN says Fukushima nuclear risks underestimated in Japan,” Nov. 26, 2012
(3) Reuters, “Japan too slow in Fukushima health checks-rights group,” Mar. 6, 2012
(4) Hiroshi Ishizuka, “Cesium from Fukushima plant fell all over Japan,” Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 26, 2011
(5) “Fishing for Answers off Fukushima,” Science, Oct. 26
December 5, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Nuclear Power | Anand Grover, European Committee on Radiation Risk, Fukushima, Japan, Tepco, Tokyo Electric Power Company |
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Industry leaders will have no problem closing nuclear reactors that don’t generate expected profits. Exelon, the Chicago-based company that owns 17 of the 104 U.S. reactors, recently saw its stock price drop below $30 a share, the same level as mid-2003, and a whopping 70% below its peak of over $92 a share in mid-2008.
The standard explanation for this reversal is cost. In particular, electricity from growing natural gas and wind sources costs less to produce than that from nuclear reactors. The famous 1954 promise by Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss that the atom would create energy “too cheap to meter” has failed miserably. But while cost is the reason why utilities will be closing reactors, most reports fail to look beneath the surface and understand WHY nukes are so expensive.
The answer is that nuclear power poses great danger to safety and health. This danger means that reactors must comply with numerous safety regulations; must be built with many safety features; and must be manned by a large and highly trained work force – each a high-ticket item. In addition, the fleet of 104 U.S. reactors in operation is aging – most over 30 years old – requiring that corroding parts be replaced, pushing costs even higher.
Another element in the high cost of nukes won’t be faced until they are decommissioned (after closing). Decommissioning costs run hundreds of millions of dollars per reactor. Utilities are forced by federal law to keep a large decommissioning fund while operating reactors, to prevent them from simply closing reactors, not securing them, and sticking taxpayers with the bill.
Even with all these extensive and expensive efforts to protect the public, nukes still aren’t safe. The chance of a meltdown exists every day, from human error, natural disaster, or terrorist act. The disasters at Chernobyl in 1986 and at Fukushima last year remind us that catastrophic meltdowns that affect thousands to millions are a sobering reality. In addition to meltdowns, there is the matter of routine emissions from reactors and elevated cancer rates near reactors, demonstrated in many studies. Finally, the U. S. and other nations still have no long-term plans to store the massive amounts of hazardous nuclear waste.
Dominion Nuclear recently announced that the Kewaunee reactor in Wisconsin will permanently shut down in the spring. This action is a milestone. Not only will this be the first U.S. reactor closed since 1998, but it will likely be followed by numerous other shutdowns. An October 23 New York Times article was headlined “Reactors Face Mothballs.”
Kewaunee’s closing also represents a turning point. For over a decade, nuclear leaders steadily proclaimed an era of a revival, after years of no growth. But the word “renaissance” has vanished, and nuclear power is now in full retreat.
So which reactors will join Kewaunee and be the next to close? Nobody knows for sure, but there are a number of reactors that are faring poorly, and are candidates for shutdown:
– Crystal River (Florida), closed for over three years, needs considerable funds to replace defective parts
– San Onofre (California, two reactors), closed for nearly one year due to faulty steam generators, will require millions to repair.
– Oyster Creek (New Jersey), which must shut down by 2019, may close sooner according to Exelon executives who cite costs and market forces
– Vermont Yankee (Vermont), up for sale (and like Kewaunee with no buyers), along with stiff opposition from local citizens and elected officials
– Clinton (Illinois), another Exelon reactor, has been hit hard by cheaper alternatives
– Indian Point (New York, two reactors), faced considerable citizen and political opposition ever since a plane hijacked by terrorists on 9/11 flew directly over it on its way to the World Trade Center.
This autumn has been the worst period for U.S. nuclear reactors in a long time. Hurricane Sandy caused six reactors to close temporarily, while others were shut to change fuel, and others closed due to mechanical problems. From mid-October to late November, U.S. reactors operated at just 70-75% of capacity, down sharply from the 90% figure of the past decade.
Shrinking nuclear power is even more pronounced overseas. In Japan, nearly two years after Fukushima, only 2 of 54 reactors are operating, and the majority of Japanese are fiercely opposed to restarting any reactors. Soon after Fukushima, governments in Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland announced plans to phase out nuclear power, and Germany has already closed half a dozen reactors.
The business troubles facing reactors are nothing new – historical construction costs far exceeded original estimates, and Wall Street executives stopped lending money for new reactors in the 1970s. Fewer reactors will mean reduced threats to health but also reduced costs – proving what’s good for the environment is also good for business.
Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA, is an epidemiologist, and Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project (www.radiation.org).
Janette Sherman, MD is an internist and toxicologist. (www.janettesherman.com).
December 5, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | Exelon, Fukushima, Joseph Mangano, Lewis Strauss, Nuclear power |
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A pair of fish captured near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have shown to be carrying record levels of radiation. The pair of greenlings are contaminated with 258 times the level government deems safe for consumption.
The fish, which were captured just 12 miles from the nuclear plant, registered 25,800 becquerels of caesium per kilo, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
TEPCO says the high levels may be due to the fish feeding in radioactive hotspots. The company plans on capturing and testing more of the fish, as well as their feed, and the seabed soil to determine the exact cause of the high radiation.
The findings were surprising for officials, who had previously seen much lower levels of radiation in contaminated fish.
Fishermen been allowed to cast their reels in the nearby waters on an experimental basis since June – but only in areas more than 31 miles from the plant.
Previously, the highest recorded radiation seen in the captured wildlife was 18,700 becquerels per kilo in cherry salmons, according to the Japanese Fisheries Agency.
The radiation was caused by a meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima power plant after it was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The disaster was so intense that contaminated fish were caught all the way across the Pacific Ocean, on the California coast.
But it’s not only aquatic life that is suffering from side effects of the leaked radiation.
According to researchers, the radiation has caused mutations in some butterflies, giving them dented eyes, malformed legs and antennae, and stunted wings.
The results show the butterflies were deteriorating both physically and genetically.
But the harmful risks don’t stop with butterflies. The radioactivity which seeped into the region’s air and water has left humans facing potentially life threatening health issues.
Over a third of Fukushima children are at risk of developing cancer, according to the Sixth Report of Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey.
The report shows that nearly 36 per cent of children in the Fukushima Prefecture have abnormal thyroid growths which pose a risk of becoming cancerous.
The World Health Organization warns that young people are particularly prone to radiation poisoning in the thyroid gland. Infants are most at risk because their cells divide at a higher rate.
August 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | Fukushima, Fukushima Prefecture, Pacific Ocean, Tokyo Electric Power Company, World Health Organization |
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It’s been nearly 18 months since the disastrous nuclear meltdown at Fukushima. There have been many reports on the huge amounts of radioactivity escaping into the air and water, unusually high levels in air, water, and soil – along with atypically high levels of toxic chemicals in food – that actually “passed” government inspection and wasn’t banned like some other food.
Conspicuously absent are reports on effects of radiation exposure on the health of the Japanese people. Have any health officials publicly announced post-March 2011 numbers on fetal deaths, infant deaths, premature births, birth defects, cancer, or other health conditions? The answer so far is an emphatic “no.”
The prolonged silence doesn’t mean data doesn’t exist. Japanese health officials have been busy with their usual duties of collecting and posting statistics on the Internet for public inspection. It’s just that they aren’t calling the public’s attention to these numbers. Thus, it is the public who must find the information and figure out what it means. After locating web sites, translating from Japanese, adding data for each of 12 months, and making some calculations, mortality trends in Japan after Fukushima are emerging.
The Japanese government health ministry has posted monthly estimated deaths for the 12 months before and after Fukushima, for the entire nation of Japan. These are preliminary figures, but they have historically been very good estimates of final numbers. A further look is in order.
Total deaths increased 4.8%, compared to the normal 1.5% annual rise. Since about 1.2 million Japanese people die each year, this computes to an excess of 57,900 deaths. The rise in deaths from accidents is given as 19,200, close to estimates of those killed directly by the earthquake and tsunami. But this still leaves an excess of 38,700 Japanese deaths, with no obvious cause.
The reports provide mortality numbers for 12 common causes, making up about 80% of all deaths in Japan, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and pneumonia. Each increased in the past year, with the exception of homicide and suicide. The category “other,” which is a collection of all other causes, rose 5.9%. The sharpest increases occurred immediately after the meltdowns, in March-June 2011 (vs. the same period 2010), a finding consistent with that found in preliminary mortality in the U.S. in a December 2011 article I co-authored with Dr. Janette Sherman in the International Journal of Health Services.
Nobody should yet race to conclusions that 38,700 Japanese died from Fukushima exposure in the first year after the disaster. Several activities must occur. The final death statistics must first be posted, which will occur sometime next year. Counts of deaths and diseases among infants who are most susceptible to radiation exposure must be made public. Numbers for each area of Japan must be made public – radiation exposure from Fukushima would likely result in the highest rises in mortality in areas closest to the damaged plant. Numbers of deaths must be converted into rates, to account for any change in population.
Other potential factors accounting for increased mortality must be considered. For example, were there any fatal epidemics post-March 2011? Was access to medical services reduced in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami? Changes in morbidity and mortality rates often have more than one contributing cause.
The final element needed before conclusions are made is patience; vital statistics must continue to be tracked, and compared with radiation exposures to the Japanese people. One year after the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, which joins Fukushima as the two worst nuclear disasters in history, no examinations of deaths among nearby Soviet citizens had been done. In fact, data was suppressed, and the standard line from the Soviet government – and for years after – was that 31 emergency workers who died putting out the fire at the stricken reactor were the only casualties.
Fast forward 20-plus years, with the publication of a 2009 book by the New York Academy of Sciences. A team of Russian researchers, led by Dr. Alexey Yablokov, published results of 5,000 reports and articles on Chernobyl – many in Russian languages never before made public. Yahlokov’s team concluded that near Chernobyl, increases in diseases and deaths were observed for nearly every human organ system. They estimated that 985,000 persons died as a result of Chernobyl exposures by 2004 – and that many more were to follow.
There is no question that even if Fukushima studies proceed and are conducted in an objective manner, it will take years before the true extent of casualties are known. However, an early estimate of 38,700 additional unexplained deaths in Japan in just one year must be taken seriously, and underline the need for Fukushima health studies to be made a top priority, in Japan and in other affected nations.
Notes
Monthly mortality statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, are available at http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/new-info/jul_2012..html. Death statistics are in the July 26, 2012 publication “Monthly Vital Statistics Report (preliminary data) February 2012” and then select the same report for the prior 11 months.
Joseph J. Mangano, MPH MBA, is Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York.
August 15, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | Chernobyl, Chernobyl disaster, Fukushima, Japan, Nuclear meltdown |
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The conclusion of a report of a Japanese parliamentary panel issued last week that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster was rooted in government-industry “collusion” and thus was “man-made” is mirrored throughout the world. The “regulatory capture” cited by the panel is the pattern among nuclear agencies right up to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“The Fukushima nuclear power plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, the owner of the six Fukushima plants] and the lack of governance by said parties,” said the 641-page report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission released on July 5.
“They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly ‘man-made,’” said the report of the panel established by the National Diet or parliament of Japan.
“We believe the root causes were the organizational and regulatory system that supported faulty rationales for decisions and actions,” it went on. “Across the board, the commission found ignorance and arrogance unforgivable for anyone or any organization that deals with nuclear power.” It said nuclear regulators in Japan and Tepco “all failed to correctly develop the most basic safety requirements.”
The chairman of the 10-member panel, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a medical doctor, declared in the report’s introduction: “It was a profoundly man-made disaster—that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.”
He also placed blame on cultural traits in Japan. “What must be admitted—very painfully,” wrote Dr. Kurokawa, “is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’ Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture; our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the programme’; our groupism; and our insularity.”
In fact, the nuclear regulatory situation in Japan is the rule globally.
In the United States, for example, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, never denied a construction or operating license for a nuclear power plant anywhere, anytime. The NRC has been busy in recent times not only giving the go-ahead to new nuclear power plant construction in the U.S. but extending the operating licenses of most of the 104 existing plants from 40 to 60 years—although they were only designed to run for 40 years. That’s because radioactivity embrittles their metal components and degrades other parts after 40 years making the plants unsafe to operate. And the NRC is now considering extending their licenses for 80 years.
Moreover, the NRC’s chairman, Gregory Jaczko, recently resigned in the face of an assault on him by the nuclear industry and his four fellow NRC members led by William D. Magwood, IV. Magwood is typical of most NRC and AEC commissioners through the decades—a zealous promoter of nuclear power. He came to the NRC after running Advanced Energy Strategies through which he served as a consultant to various companies involved with nuclear power including many in Japan—among them Tepco.
Before that, Magwood served as director of nuclear energy for the U.S. Department of Energy. He “led the creation,” according to his NRC biography, of DOE programs pushing nuclear power, “Nuclear Power 2010” and “Generation IV.” Prior to that, he worked for the Edison Electric Institute and Westinghouse, a major nuclear power plant manufacturer.
Jaczko, although a supporter of nuclear power, with a Ph.D. in physics, repeatedly called for the NRC to apply “lessons learned” from the Fukushima disaster to its rules and actions—upsetting the industry and the other four NRC commissioners. As Jaczko declared in February as the other four NRC commissioners first approved the construction of new nuclear plants since Fukushima, giving the go-ahead to two plants in Georgia: “I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima had never happened.”
The NRC was set up to be an independent regulator of nuclear power to replace the AEC which was established by Congress under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. The AEC was given the dual missions of promoting and regulating nuclear power—a conflict of interest, Congress realized in 1974, so it eliminated the AEC and created the NRC as regulator and, later, the Department of Energy as promoter of nuclear power. But both the NRC and DOE have ended up pushing nuclear power with revolving doors between them and the government’s national nuclear laboratories—and the nuclear industry.
The International Atomic Energy Agency was established as an international version of the AEC by the United Nations after a speech made at it by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 in which he espoused “Atoms for Peace.” Its dual missions are serving as a monitor of nuclear technology globally while also seeking “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world.”
Its first director general was Sterling Cole who as a U.S. congressman was a big booster of nuclear power. Later came Hans Blix after he led a move in his native Sweden against an effort to close nuclear plants there. Blix was outspoken in seeking to spread nuclear power internationally calling for “resolute response by government, acting individually or together as in the [IAE] Agency.”
Blix’s long-time IAEA second-in command was Morris Rosen—formerly of the AEC and before that the nuclear division of General Electric (which manufactured the Fukushima plants)—who said after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster: “There is very little doubt that nuclear power is a rather benign industrial enterprise and we may have to expect catastrophic accidents from time to time.”
Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt followed Blix, and as he told an “International Conference on Nuclear Power for the 21st Century” organized by the IAEA in 2005: “There is clearly a sense of rising expectations for nuclear power.”
The current IAEA director general is Yukiya Amano of Japan. In Vienna at the heaquarters of the IAEA, marking the first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in March, Amano said: “Nuclear power is now safer than it was a year ago.”
Really?
Shuya Nomura, a member of the Japanese investigation commission and a professor at the Chuo Law School, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the panel’s report tried to “shed light on Japan’s wider structural problems, on the pus that pervades Japanese society.” And, noted the Times, he added, “This report contains hints on how Japanese society needs to change.”
Those “wider structural problems” are far wider than Japan—they are global. The “regulatory capture” cited in the Japanese panel’s report has occurred all over the world—with the nuclear industry and those promoting nuclear power in governments making sure that the nuclear foxes are in charge of the nuclear hen houses. The “pus that pervades Japanese society” is international. With some very important exceptions, people have not adequately taken on the nuclear authorities. And we all must. The nuclear promoters have set up a corrupt system to enable them to get their way with their deadly technology. They have lied, they have connived, they have distorted governments. The nuclear industry is thus allowed to do whatever it wants. The nuclear pushers must be firmly challenged and they and nuclear power must be stopped.
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.
July 12, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Nuclear Power, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Gregory Jaczko, International Atomic Energy Agency, NRC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission |
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Are you wondering about the disconcerting contradictions in the nuclear news in recent weeks?
Following the release of a May 2012 report, newspapers around the world posted headlines announcing that the World Health Organization concludes that Fukushima radiation emissions pose minimal health risk. Based on an assessment of reported emissions of radioiodine and cesium up through September 2011, Japan’s nuclear meltdown poses no serious cancer risk, except for localized exposures around Fukushima prefecture, which may result in increased risk of thyroid cancer.
In the same week, Japanese press reported the alarming news that TEPCO’s assessments of total radioiodine releases were some 1.6 times greater than the Japanese Government’s assessment while, on the same day, the Japanese government issued a reassuring statement that “while gross releases of iodine-131 and cesium-137 are actually far greater than originally estimated, the public can rest assured, as releases to the sea have not resulted in contamination beyond the plant’s immediate area because the mixing power of ocean currents has dispersed the substances beyond the limits of detection in seawater samples”
Meanwhile, the US press reported findings from a study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrating that by August 2011, cesium-134 and cesium-137 from Fukushima was present in the tissue of Pacific blue fin tuna, as evidenced samples taken off the coast of San Diego, in Southern California. In the media storm that followed this report, government experts with the US Food and Drug Administration proclaimed no need for public panic, as radiation levels were detectable but simply too low to be hazardous and independent scientists explained why the presence, even at small levels, was so alarming and noted the need for additional monitoring.
As has been the norm in this most recent nuclear disaster, contradictory information abounds, with alarming news countered or contradicted by reassurances that muddy the water, yet achieve the goal of containing and controlling an impotent public.
We have been here before, in a world blanketed with nuclear fallout, where massive amounts of iodine, cesium, strontium and other radioactive isotopes moved through the marine and terrestrial food chain and the human body, in well-documented ways, with degenerative and at times deadly outcomes. Yet, for many reasons, while the environmental and biomedical trajectory of such exposures are well documented, the human experience and associated public health risks are largely suppressed, classified, or simply and persistently denied.
Sometimes clarity is best achieved by stepping back, taking pause, and considering the historical antecedents and experiences that have brought us to these chaotic times. A new documentary film by Adam Horowitz offers an opportunity to do just that.
Premiering June 2, at 6:30 pm at the Lincoln Center in New York City, Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1 is a poignant, provocative, and deeply troubling look at lingering and lasting effects of nuclear disaster and the human consequences of US government efforts to define, contain, and control public awareness and concern. Nuclear Savage recounts the experiences of the Marshallese nation in the years following World War II, as they played host to the US’s Pacific Proving Grounds and served as human subjects in the classified, abusive pseudoscience that characterized the US government medical response to civilian exposures from the 1954 Bravo Test, the largest and dirtiest hydrogen bomb detonated by the United States. Detonated in the populated nation of the Marshall Islands.
Here is the story: Following World War II, the Marshall Islands became part of the Trusteeship of the Pacific, and in 1946 after the detonation of two atomic bombs in the Bikini lagoon, the United States was given the authority to administer the islands as a Strategic Trusteeship. The terms of this agreement included the US obligation to “Protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources” and “Protect the health of the inhabitants of the Trust Territory.”
Between 1946 and 1958 the United States tested 66 nuclear weapons on or near Bikini and Enewetok atolls, atomizing entire islands and, according to records declassified in 1994, blanketing the entire Marshallese nation with measurable levels of radioactive fallout from 20 of these tests. To consider the gravity of this history: the total explosive yield of nuclear militarism in the Marshall Islands was 93 times that of all US atmospheric tests in Nevada, and more than 7,000 Hiroshima bombs. Hydrogen bomb tests were especially destructive, generating intense fallout containing an array of isotopes, including radioactive iodine, which concentrates in the thyroid and can cause both cancer and other medical conditions.
All told, by US estimates, some 6.3 BILLION curies of radioactive Iodine‐131 were released to the atmosphere as a result of the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands: 42 times greater than the 150 million curies released as a result of the testing in Nevada, 150 times greater than the 40 million curies released as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. And, while comparison to the ongoing Fukushima meltdown is difficult as emissions continue, estimates to date have ranged from 2.4 to 24 million curies. Simply put, radioactive contamination in the Marshall Islands was, and is, immense.
Radioactive fallout from the 1954 Bravo Test not only blanketed a populated nation, but also severely harmed the 23 Japanese crew members of Daigo Fukuryu Maru (No. 5 Lucky Dragon) who were in Marshallese waters harvesting a school of tuna when fallout blanketed their vessel. The US provided antibiotics to treating doctors at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan. One of the crew members, Kuboyama Aikichi, died a few weeks later. In the Marshall Islands, residents of Rongelap and Rongerik Atolls who were evacuated in earlier weapons test but not informed nor moved before this largest of all detonations, experienced near fatal exposures.
News of the disastrous exposure of Japanese fishermen and Marshallese island residents fueled international outrage, prompting demands in the United Nations for a nuclear weapons test ban, a series of pacifying news releases from the US about the rapid return to health of exposed civilians.
What was not reported to an interested world public, is the news that the heavily exposed people of Rongelap, once evacuated, were immediately enrolled as human subjects in a top-secret study, Project 4.1, which documented the array of health outcomes from their acute exposures, but did not treat the pain or discomfort of radiation burns, nor utilize antibiotics to offset any potential infection.
Nor did the US make public the full array of findings from their extensive documentation of the character and extent of radioactive fallout during the 1954 and other nuclear weapons tests, which demonstrated the deposition, movement, and accumulation of radioisotopes in the marine and terrestrial environment of Rongelap and other northern atolls.
In 1957, the people of Rongelap were returned to their homelands with great fanfare, moving into newly built homes on islands still dangerously contaminated from prior nuclear weapons tests and clearly vulnerable to the fallout from the 33 bombs detonated in 1958. This repatriation of the Rongelap community was both planned and celebrated by scientists and officials at the US Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission, who saw a significant opportunity to place a human population in a controlled setting to document how radiation moves through the food chain and human body. Annually, and then as the years progressed and degenerative health symptoms increased, biannually, the US medical teams visited by ship to examine, with x-ray, photos, blood, urine and tissue samples, the relative health of the community.
It is this story of human subject experimentation with unwitting subjects that forms the core of the Nuclear Savage film, illustrating both the abusive disregard and human consequences of experiments that violate US law, the Nuremburg Code, and Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which states that “no one shall be subject without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.”
Research conducted for the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal and recently submitted to a UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights adds more detail to narrative played out in Horowitz’s Nuclear Savage film.
The long term study of the human health effects of exposure to fallout and remaining nuclear waste in the Marshallese environment extended over four decades with a total of 72 research excursions to the Marshall Islands involving Marshallese citizens from Rongelap, Utrik, Likiep, Enewetak and Majuro Atolls. Some 539 men, women, and children were subject to studies documenting and monitoring the varied late effects of radiation. In addition to the purposeful exposure of humans to the toxic and radioactive waste from nuclear weapons, some Marshallese received radioisotope injections, underwent experimental surgery, and were subject to other procedures in experiments addressing scientific questions which, at times, had little or no relevance to medical treatment needs and in some instances involved procedures that were detrimental to their health. The United States Department of Energy acknowledged in 1994 administration of Cr-51 and tritiated water, and in at least three instances, Cr-51 was injected in three young women of child-bearing age. A 2004 review of declassified research proposals, exam reports, and published articles in support of a Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal proceeding found that a broader array of radioisotopes were used — radioactive iodine, iron, zinc, carbon-14 — for a wide array of experiments including research demonstrating the linkages between radiation exposure, metabolic disorders, and the onset of type-2 diabetes.
Arguably, while these experiences were abusive, a broader public health interest was being served, as the results of such science could potentially influence government policy and actions to protect humanity from the adverse health outcomes of nuclear fallout. And indeed, significant scientific knowledge was accumulated. However, the bulk of these findings demonstrated varied degenerative health effects resulting from chronic exposure to low-level radiation in the environment, findings which threatened political (nuclear proliferation) and economic (nuclear energy) agendas. Such findings were buried in the classified files.
For example, the presence and bioaccumulation of radioiron (Fe-55) in fallout from the 1958 detonations of nuclear bombs was documented in terrestrial and marine environments, including lagoon sediments, coral reefs, and reef fish, with alarming levels in goat fish liver, but this knowledge was not shared with the larger scientific world until 1972, nor shared with Marshallese until the declassification process supporting an Advisory Commission on Human Radiation investigation forced bilateral disclosure to the Marshall Islands Government in the 1990s. The movement of cesium through the soils, and bioaccumulation in coconut crabs, trees, and fruit – primary sources of food and liquid in the Marshallese diet — was also documented, with restrictions on the consumption of coconut crab periodically issued, without explanation. The movement through the food chain, bioaccumulation, and biological behavior of radioiodine in the human body was documented, and when thyroid nodules, cancers, and disease resulted, these conditions were studied and treated through various experimental means, though the relationship between nuclear weapons testing, fallout, contamination of the environment, and human subsistence in that environment was not explained until decades had passed.
In short, a wide array of other degenerative health outcomes were documented, including changes in red blood cell production and subsequent anemia, metabolic and related disorders; immune system vulnerabilities; muscoskeletal degeneration; cataracts; cancers and leukemia; miscarriages, congenital defects, and infertility…
However, when Marshallese residents suggested to US scientists that these and other unusual health problems were linked to the environmental contamination from nuclear fallout, their concerns were repeatedly and, because of the classified nature of the science, easily dismissed then. And, because time and the US power over the radiation health effects narrative is so immense and entrenched, they continue to be dismissed now.
The experiences of the Marshallese are particularly relevant to a world still coming to terms with the ulcerating disaster that is Fukushima, a point that is not lost to the members of United Nations Human Rights Council, which has been engaged in an effort over the past number of years to explore the varied means by which humans are unable to enjoy their right to a healthy environment, including the human rights abuses associated with movement and dumping of toxic and dangerous products and wastes.
Mr. Calin Georgescu (Romania), the UN Special Rapporteur for toxics and human rights, has a mandate that includes, among other directives, a country-specific mission to investigate these concerns in the Marshall Islands, especially the human rights consequences of environmental contamination pertains from nuclear weapons testing and other US military activities. In March 2012, Mr. Georgescu visited the RMI, interviewing displaced members of the Bikini, Enewetak, and Rongelap Atolls and other Marshallese citizens whose health and other rights have been severely impacted by living in a contaminated environment.
In April he traveled to Washington DC where he interviewed US government officials, met with independent experts such as myself, and discussed his investigation with the Marshall Islands Ambassador and the RMI UN representative. The Special Rapporteur is now preparing a report that will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva during their September 2012 meeting.
Why should a world community care about Cold War nuclear militarism in the Marshall Islands and its varied ulcerating consequences, especially given the many urgent and all to current crises we now face?
The US knowingly and willfully exposed a vulnerable population to toxic radioactive waste as a means to document the movement and degenerative health outcomes of radiation as it moves through the food chain and human body. This human subject experiment extended over the decades with profound consequences for individual subjects and the Marshallese nation as a whole. The Marshallese have become a nation whose experience as nuclear nomads, medical subjects, citizen advocates and innovators is shared by many citizens, communities and indigenous peoples around the world. Their experiences, consequential damages, and their struggles to restore cultural ways of life, quality of life, inter-generational health, and long term sustainability, are especially salient to a nation and to a world concerned with the lingering, persistent, and invasive dangers of a nuclear world.
With both the US and RMI participating in the UN Special Rapporteur’s investigation, there is an obligation for both governments to receive and respond to the report recommendations in a timely fashion, and in subsequent reviews, to demonstrate truly meaningful remediation and reparation for their nuclear legacies in the Marshall Islands.
Furthermore, given the timing of the Human Rights Council review – when the US Presidential election cycle is in full swing – international scrutiny of Marshallese nuclear legacy issues may provide further fuel for the fires now raging over such questions as the effects of chronic exposure to low-level radiation, radiation monitoring, permissibility levels, who pays for the long term public health costs of nuclear energy, and the absurd notion that a tactical strategic nuclear military is a sustainable and viable option.
And, finally, given the historical role of the United Nations in designating the Marshall Islands as a strategic trust, there is a moral and legal obligation for the United Nations community to assist in the remediation, restoration and reparation due to the environment, health, and dignity of the Marshallese nation. International attention to this history and experience is long overdue, and sadly and sorely relevant to a post-Fukushima world.
BARBARA ROSE JOHNSTON is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Center for Political Ecology. She is the co-author of The Consequential Dangers of Nuclear War: the Rongelap Report. Her most recent book, Water, Cultural Diversity and Global Environmental Change: Emerging Trends, Sustainable Futures? was copublished by UNESCO/Springer in 2012. She is currently assisting the Special Rapporteur’s efforts to document the human rights consequences of nuclear militarism in the Marshall Islands, and supporting advocacy efforts to bring Marshallese citizens to Geneva so their own voices can be heard. Contact her at: bjohnston@igc.org.
- Fukushima Roulette (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- The Dangerous Myths of Fukushima (alethonews.wordpress.com)
June 3, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Chernobyl disaster, Fukushima, Fukushima Prefecture, Iodine-131, Japan, Marshall Islands, United States, World Health Organization |
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“Shut it down! Shut it down! Shut it down!” rang through the cavernous grand ballroom of the Doubletree Hotel in Tarrytown, NY, last week when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staged an Orwellian charade promoted as an “open house” held to reassure the public that the Indian Point nuclear power plant was, as the New York Post headlined the following day, “Still Safe!”
The NRC’s annual “safety assessment” of the plant, which sits on the Hudson River 30 miles north of New York City, was based on 11,000 hours of ”inspection activities.” It found that Indian Point performed “within expected regulatory bounds” and the 25 matters that do require attention but “no additional NRC oversight,” are ‘low risk’, or have “very low safety significance.”
“So,” the Post mused, “will this finally silence the ‘shut it down’ crowd? … Don’t hold your breath.”
But do keep your fingers crossed…if you’re one of the 17.5 million people living within 50 miles of the plant…
“The NRC’s annual assessment completely fails to address the public’s primary concerns about Indian Point — evacuation planning, earthquake risk and nuclear waste storage post-Fukushima,” said Phillip Musegaas, a lawyer with Riverkeeper, an environmental group based in Ossining, NY.
Those concerns were addressed in Riverkeeper’s briefing held in the rear of the ballroom prior to the NRC’s hearing that night. Some highlights:
Manna Jo Green, a member of the town council of Rosendale and Environmental Director of Clearwater, who recently toured the plant with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board: “We are calling for expansion of the evacuation plan from 10 miles to 50 miles and hardening of the fuel pools. There is no protection for those fuel pools…You couldn’t see the fuel rods in fuel pool 2 because the water was so murky… it is so densely crowded with fuel rods, you can’t even get equipment in to fully inspect it …”
Like Riverkeeper, Clearwater in Beacon, NY has filed multiple contentions with the NRC in the legal fight to deny Entergy Corporation a 20-year license extension for Indian Point. Current licenses for the two operating reactors expire in 2013 and 2015. Relicensing hearings are expected to begin in October.
John Armbruster, a seismologist with Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, cited the study, published in 2008, that revealed there was a second fault line passing near Indian Point in addition to the Ramapo fault line.
“We believe this is a significant new development in what might happen to Indian point. We have been asking since 2008 for our new results to be incorporated into the hearings for the relicensing of Indian Point – and that has been rejected as ‘outside of scope’. What was done when Indian Point was designed 40 years ago is obsolete and Fukushima tells us we have to prepare for the things that are very unlikely.”
Peter Rugh of Occupy Wall Street’s Environmental Solidarity Work Group: “The NRC has issued untold numbers of exemptions to Indian point – untold because they don’t keep track of the safety exemptions they grant to this corporation and to other nuclear operators. Entergy took in 11 billion in 2011 so they can afford to take every possible safety measure here, including shutting down…We want the workers at these plants to be retrained in the green energy sector. We must offer them better employment opportunities than being the gravediggers for New York City, for Westchester County, and for New Jersey.”
Paul Gallay, Executive Director of Riverkeeper, countered claims that shutting down Indian Point would cause an energy shortage and lead to blackouts. Results of a study commissioned by Riverkeeper and the National Resources Defense Council published earlier this year concluded otherwise.
“There’s enough surplus power in this region to turn off Indian Point tomorrow and we won’t have any kind of shortage if we don’t do another thing until 2020,” Gallay said. “In the meantime, you can build two Indian Point’s worth of replacement power. You can save 30 percent of our power needs just by energy efficiency… We do not need the power — they want to fool you into believing we do.”
During the open session, an NRC panel sat at the front of the room but no presentation was made to the public and no explanation of the safety “assessment” was given. NRC posters were on display in the hallway outside the ballroom, and Indian Point inspectors were available for questions. But not for answers.
Stepping up to the mike, Mark Jacobson, a co-founder of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC), asked, “Where is Entergy? Why isn’t Entergy in the room? We want to ask them questions.”
Getting no reply, Jacobson told the panel that he had questioned inspectors about the status of the radioactive leak under Unit 2’s transformer yard. “They said they didn’t know. It’s a leak that’s been likened to the size of the Central Park reservoir… and we can’t find out about it at this annual meeting. Who are we supposed to ask?”
Indian Point’s leaks are contaminating groundwater and the nearby Hudson River with radioactive carcinogens including strontium-90, cesium 137, and iodine 131.
The impossibility of evacuation in the event of an accident at Indian Point stirred the loudest protest of the night.
Citing the recent news report from the Associated Press that revised – and watered down – emergency planning and evacuation procedures had been adopted late last year without broad public input, Marilyn Elie, also of IPSEC, said, “Nobody has known about this and you dare, in post-Fukushima, you dare to weaken and have fewer evacuation drills.
“Region 1 could not even tell the commissioners this is not a good idea to secretly pass a new evacuation plan, to not let the stakeholders know…We need to call right now for a whole new NRC – all the commissioners need to be withdrawn – and it needs to go right down the line until it gets to Region 1.”
John Raymond is a freelance writer in New York City.
June 1, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Nuclear Power | Entergy, Fukushima, Indian Point Energy Center, NRC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission |
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A year can be a long time in politics. But for the radioactive particles released from Fukushima’s damaged nuclear reactor, a year is just a moment in their life of hundreds or thousands of years.
So, what is the radiological situation at Fukushima one year after the disaster?
Thankfully, despite more than 9,000 aftershocks since the disaster – including more than 10 rating above seven on the Richter scale – there have been no major fires or explosions since March 2011 that could cause further catastrophic releases of radioactivity.
But the extensively damaged plants are still unstable and highly radioactive. This has restricted access and clean-up efforts, which will need to go on for many decades.
Though Japanese authorities declared they’d achieved a “cold shutdown” in December, an arbitrary definition was used: coolant water temperature was less than boiling, pressure inside the reactors was not raised, and the release of radioactive materials from the first layer of containment was below a specified level. But it didn’t mean the nuclear reaction inside the reactors had been stably shut down.
Investigations
A number of investigations (some of which are still ongoing) have highlighted inadequacies in the design, prevention and response measures to deal with such a disaster. There is also a high level of dysfunction, cover-up, collusion and corruption in the nuclear industry – including its regulation and oversight.
How, for example, could sea walls designed to withstand a tsunami of only 5.5 metres be acceptable on a coast battered by a 38 metre tsunami in 1896 and a 29 metre tsunami in 1933?
How could cooling pumps, back-up generators and control systems not be required to be located on high ground?
How could spent fuel ponds, filled with vast amounts of long-lived radioactivity, safely be placed right of top of reactors? And without any special containment structures?
Independent, peer-reviewed research provides strong evidence that radioactive emissions from the Fukushima plants began after the earthquake and well before the tsunami struck. This is contrary to claims by TEPCO, the power company involved, and the Japanese government that it was the tsunami and not the earthquake that irrevocably damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant.
If leaks did begin as a result of the earthquake, as the evidence strongly indicates, this has profound implications for nuclear reactors everywhere – not only those located on coasts, within reach of tsunamis.
Poor protection
Serious gaps in measures to protect the population have also become evident.
One of the important protective health measures, which should be taken for those who have been or are likely to be exposed to significant reactor fallout, is the administration of stable iodine shortly before exposure, or within 24 hours. This blocks the uptake of radioactive iodine into the body, which causes thyroid cancer.
Yet the government admitted, in its June 2011 report to the IAEA, that because of dysfunctional decision-making, iodine was not administered to anyone in Fukushima, despite supplies reportedly being available.
Exposure to radiation
We now know the computer-based system designed to guide evacuations and sheltering (known as the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information or SPEEDI system) correctly predicted the initial path of the heaviest Fukushima fallout. The results were delivered to the government but not acted on, resulting in the people of some towns moving right into the path of the fallout.
Detailed mapping of the population’s radiation doses (from contaminants in the air, water and food) is still not publicly available. But hundreds of thousands of people still live in areas where they will receive doses higher – in some case several tens of times higher – than the world-wide recommended levels of no more than 1 milliSievert (mSv) of additional exposure per year.
The most contaminated areas were re-categorised by the Japanese government in December 2011. Residence is not precluded in areas where inhabitants would face radiation doses between 20 and 50 mSv per year.
Astonishingly, evacuation is not recommended from areas where residents are likely to be exposed to doses of up to 20 mSv per year. Even in the “bad old days” of the Soviet Union, those anticipated to receive more than 5 mSv annually after the Chernobyl disaster were resettled as a matter of priority. And those likely to receive more than 1 mSv annually had resettlement rights.
What happens next?
On January 26, 2012 the Japanese government released a roadmap of planned environmental remediation activities, to be completed over the following two years.
But the value of such measures has likely been oversold. Plans to remove the topsoil of farmland, for instance, will erode the viability of farming. And the problem of where to store, and how to isolate, vast amounts of contaminated material remains a major challenge.
One group particularly at risk of health harm is the large and growing number of workers required to help control, shut down and clean up the damaged nuclear plants.
By early December, more than 18,000 men had participated in clean-up work in Fukushima. These largely unskilled, inadequately trained, ill-equipped and poorly monitored day labourers performed the bulk of the dirty and dangerous work. Much of the contracting of these workers is dominated by criminal “yakuza” networks.
Even before the disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi complex was staffed by 1,108 regular employees and 9,195 day labourers. On average, the contracted day labourers receive two- to three-times the radiation dose of a regular worker but are not included in utility statistics. And there is no compulsory, centralised system for tracking cumulative radiation exposure or health outcomes of these workers.
Radiation levels are not always monitored. But when they are, and a labourer is known to be near the maximal permitted dose for workers, they may be sent away. The maximum dose is normally 20 mSv per year, but this was raised to 250 mSv after the Fukushima disaster. After the workers are despatched, there’s nothing stopping them from then going to work another nuclear plant.
On top of the many other health problems that the Fukushima disaster has caused, thousands of additional cancer cases will likely be diagnosed, but these will take some years to emerge.
This means, of course, that much of the radioactive fallout from Fukushima will continue to indiscriminately harm health for many generations to come.
– Tilman Ruff is an Associate Professor, Disease Prevention & Health Promotion Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health at University of Melbourne.
May 6, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Nuclear Power | Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Nuclear reactor, Tokyo Electric Power Company |
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The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and complicating nuclear crisis throw into sharp focus concerns about exposure to ionising radiation. What is it, how is it harmful, how much is too much? Inside a nuclear reactor, the radioactivity is increased about a million times as some of the uranium or plutonium is converted to a cocktail of hundreds of different radioactive elements.
There are many different pathways through which people can be exposed to radiation: inhalation of gases or particles in the air, deposits in soil or water, ingestion of food, water or dust. Some radioisotopes mimic normal chemical elements in living systems and therefore make their way up the food chain and onto our plates.
Ionising radiation
Radiation is called “ionising” when it has sufficient energy to knock the electrons off atoms to produce ions (atoms which have a net positive or negative electrical charge).
Ionising radiation damages large complex molecules either directly or by creating highly reactive chemicals inside cells.
The biological potency of ionising radiation is not related to the amount of energy it contains so much as that this energy is packaged in a form which can reach and damage complex molecules – particularly the DNA that is our genetic blueprint, that is passed on to form each new generation.
A lethal dose of radiation may contain as little energy as the heat in a cup of coffee. Our senses cannot warn us about ionising radiation – it cannot be seen or touched or felt or tasted or smelt.
Levels of exposure
Some effects of radiation only occur above certain thresholds.
In the short term, high levels of radiation exposure can cause acute radiation sickness. In the longer term there is an increased risk of cataracts, birth defects, sterility and hair loss.
High doses of radiation can kill cells – this is the reason targeted radiation is used in the treatment of some cancers.
Acute radiation exposure at doses over 100 milliSieverts (mSv), and particularly over 1000 mSv, has most impact on our rapidly dividing cells. These are the blood-forming cells of the bone marrow, lining of the gut, and ovaries and testis. The symptoms of acute radiation sickness therefore include vomiting and diarrhea, bleeding, and reduced ability to fight infection.
The major long-term effect of ionising radiation exposure is an increased risk of a wide variety of cancers. There is no “safe” level of radiation below which there is no increase in cancer risk. The earliest to appear, after around three to five years, are leukemia and thyroid cancer. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster, for instance, has resulted in an epidemic of thyroid cancer with 6,500 children affected so far.
Other cancers begin increasing after 10 years – lung, breast, colon, ovary, bladder and many others. Excess rates of cancer in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors continue to rise.
Sources of exposure
All of us are exposed to ionising radiation all the time – from the stars, from the earth and rocks, from common equipment and appliances. The global average estimated human exposure is 2.4 mSv per year.
The biggest natural source is radon gas produced from radium, part of the decay chain of uranium, which is widely distributed in the Earth’s crust. After smoking, radon is the second most important cause of lung cancer worldwide.
The bulk of ongoing exposures of human origin are from medical X-rays, and there is considerable concern about the rapidly rising medical radiation exposures, particularly from the growing number of CT scans being performed. CT scans involve radiation doses of between 3 and 11 mSv.
Exposure to ionising radiation from all sources should be kept as low as is feasible.
In Australia and most countries, it is recommended that 1 mSv per person per year be the maximum permissible exposure from non-medical sources for the general population; and 20 mSv per year the annual permissible limit for nuclear industry workers. In Japan the maximum permissible dose for the emergency nuclear workers in Fukushima has been increased to 250 mSv.
Health harms
The most authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low dose ionising radiation are contained in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII report from the US National Academy of Sciences (BEIR VII).
This report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence that there is no exposure to ionising radiation that is risk-free. The greater the exposure, the greater the risk.
BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of solid cancer (cancers other than leukemia) of about 1 in 10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1 in 100,000; and a 1 in 17,500 increased risk of cancer death.
But while radiation protection standards are typically based on adult males, it is important to note that not everyone faces the same level of risk. For infants (under 1 year of age) the radiation-related cancer risk is 3 to 4 times higher than for adults; and female infants are twice as susceptible as male infants.
Females face a lower risk of leukemia, but a 50% greater risk of developing a more common solid tumour, so their overall risk of cancer related to radiation exposure is 40% greater than for males. Fetuses in the womb are the most radiation-sensitive of all.
Over time, estimates of the health risks associated with radiation exposure have inexorably risen.
Some of these risks are probably still under-estimated, particularly the impact of internal contamination, such as from plutonium particles lodging in the lung. Internal contamination may not be picked up by external devices designed to detect gamma radiation alone, such as the hand-held radiation monitors now being widely used to screen people in Japan.
In Germany, a recent national study showed that normal operation of nuclear power plants in Germany is associated with a more than doubling of the leukemia risk for under five year olds living within 5 km of a nuclear plant, and increased risk was seen to more than 50 km away. This was much higher than expected.
The longevity of some radioactive minerals is almost incomprehensible. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,400 years. It will take almost a quarter of a million years for it to decay to less than one thousandth of the starting level. So the same particle inhaled into someone’s lung could go on to increase cancer risk for other individuals over successive generations.
Dr. Ruff is Associate Professor, Disease Prevention & Health Promotion Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne. He is IPPNW’s regional vice president for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and is Chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
May 4, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Nuclear Power | Cancer, Chernobyl disaster, Fukushima, Ionizing radiation |
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A year after the nuclear catastrophe began at the Fukushima Daiichi station in Japan, the world has a historic chance to put an end to one of the biggest frauds ever played on the global public to promote a patently unsafe, accident-prone, expensive and centralised form of energy generation based upon splitting the uranium atom to produce heat, boil water, and spin a turbine. Candidly, that’s what nuclear power generation is all about.
The lofty promise of boundless material progress and universal prosperity based on cheap, safe and abundant energy through “Atoms for Peace”, held out by US President Dwight D Eisenhower in 1953, was mired in deception and meant to temper the prevalent perception of atomic energy as a malign force following the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Eisenhower was a hawk committed to building up the US nuclear arsenal from under 1,500 to over 20,000 warheads and sought to “compensate” for this by dressing up nuclear energy as a positive force. “Atoms for Peace” camouflaged the huge US military build-up in the 1950s.
The nuclear promise was also based on untested, unrealistic assumptions about atomic electricity being safe and “too cheap even to meter”. The projection sat ill at ease with the subsidies, worth scores of billions, which nuclear received. The US navy transferred reactor designs developed for its nuclear-propelled submarines to General Electric and Westinghouse for free. The US also passed a law to limit the nuclear industry’s accident liability to a ludicrously low level.
Fifty-five years on, the world has lost over $1,000 billion in subsidies, cash losses, abandoned projects and other damage from nuclear power. Decontaminating the Fukushima site alone is estimated to cost $623 billion, not counting the medical treatment costs for the thousands of likely cancers.
All of the world’s 400-odd reactors are capable of undergoing a catastrophic accident similar to Fukushima. They will remain a liability until decommissioned (entombed in concrete) at huge public expense, which is one-third to one-half of what it cost to build them. They will also leave behind nuclear waste, which remains hazardous for thousands of years, and which science has no way of storing safely.
All this for a technology which contributes just two percent of the world’s final energy consumption! Nuclear power has turned out worse than a “Faustian bargain” – a deal with the devil. Even the conservative Economist magazine, which long backed nuclear power, calls it “the dream that failed.”
Nuclear power experienced decline on its home ground because it became too risky and “too costly to hook to a meter”. The US hasn’t ordered a single new reactor since 1973, even before the Three Mile Island meltdown (1979). Western Europe hasn’t completed a new reactor since Chernobyl (1986). As a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission put it: “The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island taught Wall Street was that a group of NRC-licensed reactor operators, as good as any others, could turn a $2 billion asset into a $1 billion cleanup job in about 90 minutes.”
Nuclear power is now on the run globally. The number of reactors operating worldwide fell from the historic peak of 444 in 2002 to 429 this past March 1. Their share in global electricity supply has shrunk from 17 to 13 percent. And it’s likely to fall further as some 180-plus 30 years-old or older reactors are retired. Just about 60 new ones are planned.
After Fukushima, nobody is going to build nuclear reactors unless they get a big subsidy or high returns guaranteed by the state – or unless they are China, India or Pakistan. China’s rulers don’t have to bother about democracy, public opinion, or safety standards.
Nor are India’s rulers moved by these considerations. They are desperate to deliver on the reactor contracts promised to the US, France and Russia for lobbying for the US-India nuclear deal in the International Atomic Energy Agency. Manmohan Singh has even stooped to maligning Indian anti-nuclear protesters as foreign-funded, as if they had no minds of their own, and as if the government’s own priority wasn’t to hitch India’s energy economy to imported reactors. Pakistan’s nuclear czars are shamefully complacent about nuclear safety.
Nuclear power is bound up with secrecy, deception and opacity, which clash with democracy. It evokes fear and loathing in many countries, and can only be promoted by force. It will increasingly pit governments against their own public, with terrible consequences for civil liberties. A recent BBC-GlobeScan poll shows that 69 percent of the people surveyed in 23 countries oppose building new reactors, including 90 percent in Germany, 84 percent in Japan, 80 percent in Russia and 83 percent in France. This proportion has sharply risen since 2005. Only 22 percent of people in the 12 countries which operate nuclear plants favour building new ones.
Nuclear reactors are intrinsically hazardous high-pressure high-temperature systems, in which a fission chain-reaction is barely checked from getting out of control. But control mechanisms can fail for many reasons, including a short circuit, faulty valve, operator error, fire, loss of auxiliary power, or an earthquake or tsunami.
No technology is 100 percent safe. High-risk technologies demand a meticulous, self-critical and highly alert safety culture which assumes that accidents will happen despite precautions. The world has witnessed five core meltdowns in 15,000 reactor-years (number of reactors multiplied by duration of operations). At this rate, we can expect one core meltdown every eight years in the world’s 400-odd reactors. This is simply unacceptable.
Yet, the nuclear industry behaves as if this couldn’t happen. … Full article
March 19, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | China, Dwight D Eisenhower, Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, India, International Atomic Energy Agency, Japan, Nuclear power |
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Last week, National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast a report on the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant meltdowns. The report whitewashed failures of the utility and government by ignoring essential facts of the disaster and its impact on health.
Sunday was the first anniversary of the March 11, 2011 disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. For months, utility and government officials held back the truth, but finally admitted that three meltdowns had occurred. Those truths—potentially poisonous to industry plans to build more nuclear plants, — may not enjoy the sunlight for long. Propagandistic op-eds and reports in U.S. news media are attempting to sweep Fukushima’s history under the rug and, sadly, NPR is one of those wielding a broom.
The following claims were presented in NPR’s March 9 report by science reporter Richard Harris.
(1) Health risks are “too small to measure”
[H]ealth effects from radiation turn out to be minor compared with the other issues the people of Fukushima prefecture now face. {snip} We all watched frightening TV images, and clouds of radioactive steam and gas did erupt from the plant. That material did sometimes move over the countryside and into populated areas, so it looked like a horrible disaster. But, in the case of radiation, the dose matters. It’s true, there is no bright line that separates a safe dose of radiation from a dangerous dose, but at some point, a dose is so small that any potential health risk is simply too small to measure.
(Richard Harris, NPR, March 9)
Harris does not identify the source of that conclusion, but it’s a long-time favorite of the industry that promoted the fantasy of “too cheap to meter.” (The bill for Fukushima is estimated at $77 billion and counting.) Listeners are kept blissfully ignorant of dissenting views, including those of the National Academies of Science. However, it’s well known that cancers due to radiation exposure may take decades to develop. Equating a low rate of illness in the first year with a negligible health risk is decidedly premature.
(2) “Quick actions” were taken by Japanese officials”
Harris quotes John Boice, “a cancer epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University,” in assessing the Japanese government’s actions to protect the public from radiation, including measures like evacuation.
One big cloud did blow inland, up toward the northwest. But most of the 170,000 residents in the area were quickly evacuated. Boice says that helped limit dangerous doses. So did other quick actions by the Japanese government.
(NPR, March 9)
A “quick” evacuation is one where authorities get the public out of the area as soon as a situation arises that might result in a radioactive release. Japanese authorities instead delayed evacuation until May 15 for residents of the area around Itate, where the cumulative radiation (the estimated first year dose) was 20 millisieverts (2000 millirem) or higher. Japanese officials also failed miserably in implementing another protection action, the distribution of potassium iodide pills.
(3) “Release of “any” food with excessive radiation was “prohibited”
They prohibited the release of any food that had had increased levels of radiation in them,” [Boice] says.
(NPR, March 9)
In fact, the Japanese government failed to keep radiation-contaminated food out of the marketplace. Bloomberg Business News reported that officials failed to ban cattle shipments from Fukushima until July 19–after some beef from the area had been shipped to shipped to supermarkets. At that time, the government reported finding beef with “as much 2,300 becquerels of cesium a kilogram,” well over the government’s limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram.
Rice contaminated with cesium also made it into the marketplace, and inspectors in Singapore detected radiation “nine times the limit in cabbages imported from Japan” (Reuters). “Spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea, milk, plums and fish have been found contaminated with cesium and iodine as far as 360 kilometers from Dai-Ichi” (Bloomberg). Those, surely, were just the tip of the iceberg because Japan had no central system for checking food for radioactive contamination. It left that task to farmers and local officials–on a voluntary basis.
(4) Smoking is “a far bigger risk to their health”
According to the NPR report, “If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for a year, you’re getting an internal radiation dose of about 30 millisieverts.
That’s more than half the dose they got through occupational exposure. But cigarette smoke is also filled with cancer-causing chemicals, so smoking is a far bigger risk to their health.”
(NPR, March 9)
A graphic in the report shows that the radiation dose from cigarettes exceeds the expected dose from some CT (computed tomography) scans. Thus, the occupational exposure at Fukushima (which likely was greater due to poor dosimetry) also exceeded the dose from CT scans. This is noteworthy because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been urging caution in ordering CT scans due to the associated cancer risk.
The effective doses from diagnostic CT procedures are typically estimated to be in the range of 1 to 10 mSv (millisieverts). This range is not much less than the lowest doses of 5 to 20 mSv received by some of the Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs. These survivors, who are estimated to have experienced doses only slightly larger than those encountered in CT, have demonstrated a small but increased radiation-related excess relative risk for cancer mortality.”
(FDA website, 11 Mar 2012)
Harris reference to cigarettes is a bit of a red herring but appears to be tied to his earlier claim that the health risk is too small to measure. That resembles a claim, popular with the nuclear industry, that FDA addressed in its discussion of CT scans.
There are some that question whether there is adequate evidence for a risk of cancer induction at low doses. However, this position has not been adopted by most authoritative bodies in the radiation protection and medical arenas.
(5) “Trauma, not radiation” is the key concern
Harris correctly acknowledges the importance of recognizing and treating stress and mental health impacts that may accompany a disaster. But, it is equally important to recognize why radiation is stress inducing.
Radiation is invisible. The average person has no means to detect it and lacks the training to understand the results. He/she must rely on a profit-minded utility and government agencies—typically captured by industry–to reveal facts that could be lethal to the corporate bottom line. As one would expect in such circumstances, deception is common.
Arguably, the most primary public health concern is not, as Harris suggests, the trauma of radiation. It is the abuse of public trust that undermines every effort to properly assess, communicate and mitigate health risks. From that point of view, NPR’s deceptive report is a public health menace as well as a disappointment to listeners seeking the “highest standards of public service in journalism.” A reminder from listeners of NPR’s mission statement is in order.
Linda Lewis is a radiological emergency planning specialist and policy analyst. B.S., Emergency Management and Administration; B.S. Geoscience.
March 14, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Government of Japan, Japan, Linda Lewis, NPR, Richard Harris |
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