Stop the radiation!

Photos: Occupy movement around the U.S. | Seattle News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO News |

2011-10-07T23:49:00.000-04:00

Photos: Occupy movement around the U.S. | Seattle News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO News |

Chernobyl Level Radiation In Tokyo May Lead To Evacuations

2011-09-19T23:31:00.000-04:00

Fukushima Japan TOTALLY OUT of CONTROL

2011-09-06T02:17:00.000-04:00

Fukushima Japan TOTALLY OUT of CONTROL Mirrored from

ushima Japan TOTALLY OUT of CONTROL Mirrored from BUG BelieversUnderGround with thanks

Quake risk to reactors greater than thought

2011-09-06T01:22:00.000-04:00

Sep 2, 9:04 AM EDT

By DINA CAPPIELLO and JEFF DONN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The risk that an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought, 24 times as high in one case, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data. The nation's nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America's reactors may need modifications to make them safer.

The threat came into sharp focus last week, when shaking from the largest earthquake to hit Virginia in 117 years appeared to exceed what the North Anna nuclear power plant northwest of Richmond was built to sustain.

The two North Anna reactors are among 27 in the eastern and central U.S. that a preliminary Nuclear Regulatory Commission review has said may need upgrades. That's because those plants are more likely to get hit with an earthquake larger than the one their design was based on. Just how many nuclear power plants are more vulnerable won't be determined until all operators recalculate their own seismic risk based on new assessments by geologists, something the agency plans to request later this year. The NRC on Thursday issued a draft of that request for public comment.

The review, launched well before the East Coast quake and the Japan nuclear disaster in March, marks the first complete update to seismic risk in years for the nation's 104 existing reactors, despite research showing greater hazards.

The NRC and the industry say reactors are safe as they are, for now. The average risk to U.S. reactors of core damage from a quake remains low, at one accident every 500 years, according to the AP analysis of NRC data

Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/01/MNLM1KV7P8.DTL

Who Are America’s Top 10 Gas Drillers?

2011-09-02T04:34:00.001-04:00

by Nicholas Kusnetz
ProPublica, Sep. 1, 2011, 4:12 p.m.

Natural gas—often touted as an abundant, comparatively clean source of domestic energy—has come under intensifying public scrutiny in recent months, with federal regulators and reporters challenging some of the industry's rosy business projections.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is probing whether gas companies have exaggerated their reserves and haveadequately disclosed the risks to investors from drilling's potential environmental damage. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has requested similar information from several companies.

Natural gas production has grown steadily in the United States since 2006, reaching new highs this year. But who are the leaders in this burgeoning field?

More than 14,000 oil-and-gas companies, many of them small businesses, were active in the United States in 2009, according to the Energy Information Administration. But multinational giants like Exxon Mobil and BP now produce much of the nation's gas. The 10 biggest drillers account for one-third of all production, data from the Natural Gas Supply Association and the EIA show. The 40 largest producers pump more than half of all domestic natural gas.

We've compiled a list of the top 10 drillers in the country, ranked by their daily natural gas production, and pulled together some key facts about their operations. Though there are other ways to measure these companies—revenue, market capitalization, reserves—industry experts say production numbers give the best snapshot of today's landscape and also separate drillers' gas operations from oil.

The list features both "integrated" oil-and-gas giants, such as Exxon Mobil, which refines and sells gasoline around the world, and "independents," such as Chesapeake Energy, which are primarily in oil and gas exploration and production. Thoughindustry P.R. initiatives often emphasize independent mom-and-pop drillers, most of the companies on our list are Fortune 500 corporations.

Much of the growth in gas production has come from drilling into shale formations, which provided 23 percent of the nation's gas in 2010, according to the EIA. Our list shows how integrated behemoths have expanded into this area as production has become proven, sometimes by swallowing up independents that led the way. Last year, Exxon (No. 8 in 2009) bought XTO (No. 2 in 2009) to catapult to the top of the list. Also last year, Chevron (No. 9) bought Atlas Energy (No. 50 in 2009 and an early entrant into Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale).

1. Exxon Mobil

The biggest natural gas producer is also the country's biggest oil company and one of the most profitable corporations in the world. Exxon has operations in every continent but Antarctica. Its oil and gas operations range across several states, from Pennsylvania to Colorado, and it also has wells in the Gulf of Mexico and off the California coast.

With the purchase of XTO, Exxon produces nearly 50 percent more gas than its closest competitor. Earlier this year, Exxon began running ads touting natural gas as a safe, clean source of domestic energy. About two-thirds of the company's domestic reserves are now in natural gas, with the rest in oil.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 3.9 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $370 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 8.9 billion barrels of oil (2.3 billion in the U.S.), 2.1 billion barrels of bitumen (none in the U.S.), 681 million barrels of synthetic crude (none in the U.S.), 78.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (26.1 trillion in the U.S.).

Executive Compensation, 2010: Rex Tillerson, Exxon's chairman and CEO since 2006, received almost $29 million in total compensation.

2. Chesapeake Energy

Chesapeake calls itself the most active driller in the country, with operations in 15 states, from the Rockies to Texas to Pennsylvania. The company is a good example of how "independent" doesn't necessarily mean small. As of last year, the company owned an interest in 45,800 wells, of which 38,900 were primarily gas wells.

Chesapeake has built itself as a gas company, but it is increasingly looking for "liquids-rich plays," according to its annual report. Gas wells generally produce oil and other hydrocarbon liquids as well in varying amounts, depending on the geologic formation. With oil prices high and gas prices low, many companies are seeking more wells that are oil- and liquids-rich, particularly in North Dakota, southern Texas and Pennsylvania.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 2.6 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $9.4 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 14.3 trillion cubic feet of gas equivalent (10 percent of that is oil or other liquids, converted to the equivalent volume in gas).

Executive Compensation, 2010: Aubrey McClendon, the chairman and CEO, is also the company's founder. He has the unusual option of purchasing a small stake in every well the company drills. He received $21 million in total compensation.

3. Anadarko

Anadarko is one of the biggest independent oil and gas producers in the country, with exploration or production work in all major domestic drilling areas as well as in South America, Africa, Asia and New Zealand. The company was a minority owner in BP's Macondo well, which exploded last year, killing 11 people and spilling more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Worldwide, natural gas makes up just over half of Anadarko's reserves, but 87 percent of the new wells it drilled in the United States last year were gas wells. Like many other companies, Anadarko is increasingly looking for oil- and liquids-rich production this year.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 2.4 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $11 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 749 million barrels of oil and condensate (458 million in the U.S.), 320 million barrels of natural gas liquids (307 million in the U.S.), 8.1 trillion cubic feet of gas, all in the United States.

Executive Compensation, 2010: James Hackett, the chairman and CEO, received $24 million in total compensation.

4. Devon Energy

Devon is an independent driller primarily active in the United States and Canada. The company is in the process of divesting operations in Angola and Brazil, its only holdings outside of North America.

More than 90 percent of Devon's U.S. reserves are in natural gas, with most of that lying in Texas' Barnett Shale. Like its peers, however, Devon says that this year it will focus on drilling in areas rich with oil and other liquids.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 2 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $9.9 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 681 million barrels of oil (148 million in the U.S.), 479 million barrels of natural gas liquids (449 million in the U.S.), 10.3 trillion cubic feet of gas (9 trillion in the U.S.).

Executive Compensation, 2010: J. Larry Nichols, the chairman, received almost $19 million in total compensation. John Richels, president and CEO, received almost $18 million.

5. BP

Fortune lists BP as the fourth-largest corporation in the world. The company drills in 29 countries and sells its products in 70. While BP is headquartered in London, 42 percent of the company's assets are in the United States. BP reported a $3.7 billion loss last year after spending nearly $41 billion on cleaning up the Gulf oil spill and compensating those who were affected.

The company remains primarily an oil producer, with about 40 percent of its reserves in natural gas.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 1.9 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $297 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 10.7 billion barrels of oil (2.9 billion in the U.S.), 42.7 trillion cubic feet of gas (13.7 trillion in the U.S.).

Executive Compensation, 2010: Chief Executive Robert Dudley received $1.7 million in total compensation.

6. Encana

Encana is one of the largest independent gas companies in the world, with operations mostly in the western United States and Canada, where it is based. The company has focused almost exclusively on gas.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 1.8 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $8.9 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 93.3 million barrels of liquids (38.5 million in the U.S.), 13.8 trillion cubic feet of gas (7.5 trillion in the U.S.).

Executive Compensation, 2010: Randy Eresman, president and CEO, received $10 million in total compensation.

7. ConocoPhillips

ConocoPhillips is currently an integrated oil corporation, but it recently announced plans to split into two companies, one focused on refining, the other on production. The company has listed acquiring more shale reserves in North America among its top strategic goals over the past couple of years and drills in several western states, as well as in Louisiana and Arkansas. It is exploring for shale gas in Poland and has operations in six continents.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 1.6 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $198.7 billion

Reserves, 2010: 3.4 billion barrels of oil and natural gas liquids (1.9 billion in the U.S.), 1.2 billion barrels of bitumen (none in the U.S.), 21.7 trillion cubic feet of gas (10.5 trillion in the U.S.).

Executive Compensation, 2010: James Mulva, chairman and CEO, received almost $18 million in total compensation. John Carrig, who retired as president in March, received more than $14 million.

8. Southwestern Energy Co.

Southwestern is another independent driller that focuses exclusively on natural gas. The company has operations in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, with most of its production coming from the Fayetteville Shale formation underlying parts of Arkansas.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 1.3 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $2.6 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 1 million barrels of oil, 4.9 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Executive Compensation, 2010: Steven Mueller, president and CEO, received $5.7 million in total compensation.

9. Chevron

Chevron is the second-largest oil company in the country, and the third-biggest company overall in terms of revenue. It has been building its gas reserves recently, most notably with the purchase of Atlas Energy, an active shale gas driller. Still, more than 60 percent of the company's worldwide reserves are in oil.

The majority of Chevron's oil and gas production comes overseas. Domestically, Chevron operates in seven states, including Pennsylvania, Texas and California, and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 1.3 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $198.2 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 6.5 billion barrels of oil and other liquids (1.3 billion in the U.S.), 24.3 trillion cubic feet of gas (2.5 trillion in the U.S.).

Executive Compensation, 2010: John Watson, chairman and CEO, received $16 million in total compensation.

10. Williams Energy

Williams is an independent producer focused largely on natural gas. It owns 13,900 miles of pipelines, which it says deliver 12 percent of the natural gas consumed in the United States. The company recently announced plans to separate its exploration and production activities from its other operations.

Williams has holdings in many of the major shale basins across the country, from Pennsylvania to North Dakota to Texas. The company also owns interests in several international companies.

Average Daily Natural Gas Production: 1.2 billion cubic feet.

Revenue, 2010: $9.6 billion.

Reserves, 2010: 4.3 trillion cubic feet equivalent (3 percent of that is oil or other liquids, converted to the equivalent volume in gas).

Executive Compensation, 2010: Alan Armstrong, president and CEO, received $2 million in total compensation.

Sources: The production numbers are from the Natural Gas Supply Association and reflect the average for the first half of 2011. Revenue figures are from the companies' 2010 annual reports and reflect total revenue from all sources, not just gas production. Revenue may include sales and other income and may not be adjusted for taxes. Reserves numbers are from the companies' annual reports. Bitumen and synthetic crude represent oil from Canadian tar sands or other unconventional reserves. The compensation information is from Forbes and Bloomberg Business Week.

The Story So Far

The country’s push to find clean domestic energy has zeroed in on natural gas, but cases of water contamination have raised serious questions about the primary drilling method being used. Vast deposits of natural gas, large enough to supply the country for decades, have brought a drilling boom stretching across 31 states. The drilling technique being used, called hydraulic fracturing, shoots water, sand and toxic chemicals into the ground to break up rock and release the gas.

Survs Surv it Issues: Nuclear Energy & Waste: Nuclear Energy Fact Sheet

2011-09-02T04:29:00.000-04:00

Nuclear Energy Fact Sheet
by Leslie Lai & Kristen Morrison

Introduction to Nuclear Energy for Civilian Purposes

Most early atomic research focused on developing an effective weapon for use in World War II. After the war, the United States government encouraged the development of nuclear energy for peaceful civilian purposes while continuing to develop, test, and deploy new nuclear weapons.
The Experimental Breeder Reactor I at a site in Idaho generated the first electricity from nuclear energy on December 20, 1951.
16% of the world’s electricity now comes from nuclear energy, 85% of which is concentrated in industrialized countries. A total of 441 nuclear power plants were operating as of February 2003. There were also 32 nuclear reactors under construction (Nuclear Energy Institute).
In the United States alone, there are 103 nuclear power plants, which provide about 20% of the nation’s electricity.
A new nuclear power plant has not been ordered in the U.S. since 1973.
Today, President George W. Bush’s energy policies call for a $15 billion federal subsidy to build six or seven new nuclear power plants.

1. How It Works – The Scientific Process Behind Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy relies on the fact that some elements can be split (in a process called fission) and will release part of their energy as heat.

Because it fissions easily, Uranium-235 (U-235) is one of the elements most commonly used to produce nuclear energy. It is generally used in a mixture with Uranium-238, and produces Plutonium-239 (Pu-239) as waste in the process.

A nuclear power plant generates electricity like any other steam-electric power plant. Water is heated, and steam from the boiling water turns turbines and generates electricity.

The main difference in the various types of steam-electric plants is the heat source. Coal, oil, or gas is burned in other power plants to heat the water. Heat from a chain reaction of fissioning Uranium-235 boils the water in a nuclear power plant. Some have compared this process to using a canon to kill a fly.

2. How It Doesn’t Work – Risks and Dangers of Nuclear Energy

Proliferation Risks
- Plutonium is a man-made waste product of nuclear fission, which can be used either for fuel in nuclear power plants or for bombs.
- In the year 2000, an estimated 310 tons (620,000 pounds) of civilian, weapons-usable plutonium had been produced.
- Less than 8 kilograms (about 18 pounds) of plutonium is enough for one Nagasaki-type bomb. Thus, in the year 2000 alone, enough plutonium was created to make more than 34,000 nuclear weapons.
- The technology for producing nuclear energy that is shared among nations, particularly the process that turns raw uranium into lowly-enriched uranium, can also be used to produce highly-enriched, weapons-grade uranium.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is responsible for monitoring the world’s nuclear facilities and for preventing weapons proliferation, but their safeguards have serious shortcomings. Though the IAEA is promoting additional safeguards agreements to increase the effectiveness of their inspections, the agency acknowledges that, due to measurement uncertainties, it cannot detect all possible diversions of nuclear material. (Nuclear Control Institute)
Risk of Accident
- On April 26, 1986 the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl power plant (in the former U.S.S.R., present-day Ukraine) exploded, causing the worst nuclear accident ever.
  - 30 people were killed instantly, including 28 from radiation exposure, and a further 209 on site were treated for acute radiation poisoning.
  - The World Health Organization found that the fallout from the explosion was incredibly far-reaching. For a time, radiation levels in Scotland, over 1400 miles (about 2300 km) away, were 10,000 times the norm.
  - Thousands of cancer deaths were a direct result of the accident.
  - The accident cost the former Soviet Union more than three times the economical benefits accrued from the operation of every other Soviet nuclear power plant operated between 1954 and 1990.
- In March of 1979 equipment failures and human error contributed to an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the worst such accident in U.S. history. Consequences of the incident include radiation contamination of surrounding areas, increased cases of thyroid cancer, and plant mutations.
- According to the US House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations, "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences (CRAC2) for US Nuclear Power Plants” (1982, 1997), an accident at a US nuclear power plant could kill more people than were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
Environmental Degradation
- All the steps in the complex process of creating nuclear energy entail environmental hazards.
- The mining of uranium, as well as its refining and enrichment, and the production of plutonium produce radioactive isotopes that contaminate the surrounding area, including the groundwater, air, land, plants, and equipment. As a result, humans and the entire ecosystem are adversely and profoundly affected.
- Some of these radioactive isotopes are extraordinarily long-lived, remaining toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. Presently, we are only beginning to observe and experience the consequences of producing nuclear energy
Nuclear Waste
- Nuclear waste is produced in many different ways. There are wastes produced in the reactor core, wastes created as a result of radioactive contamination, and wastes produced as a byproduct of uranium mining, refining, and enrichment. The vast majority of radiation in nuclear waste is given off from spent fuel rods.
- A typical reactor will generate 20 to 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste annually. There is no known way to safely dispose of this waste, which remains dangerously radioactive until it naturally decays.
- The rate of decay of a radioactive isotope is called its half-life, the time in which half the initial amount of atoms present takes to decay. The half-life of Plutonium-239, one particularly lethal component of nuclear waste, is 24,000 years.
- The hazardous life of a radioactive element (the length of time that must elapse before the material is considered safe) is at least 10 half-lives. Therefore, Plutonium-239 will remain hazardous for at least 240,000 years.
- There is a current proposal to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
  - The plan is for Yucca Mountain to hold all of the high level nuclear waste ever produced from every nuclear power plant in the US. However, that would completely fill up the site and not account for future waste.
  - Transporting the wastes by truck and rail would be extremely dangerous.
  - For a more detailed analysis of the problems of and risks incurred by the plan, seeTop Ten Reasons to Oppose the DoE’s Yucca Mountain Plan
- Repository sites in Australia, Argentina, China, southern Africa, and Russia have also been considered.
- Though some countries reprocess nuclear waste (in essence, preparing it to send through the cycle again to create more energy), this process is banned in the U.S. due to increased proliferation risks, as the reprocessed materials can also be used for making bombs. Reprocessing is also not a solution because it just creates additional nuclear waste.
- The best action would be to cease producing nuclear energy (and waste), to leave the existing waste where it is, and to immobilize it. There are a few different methods of waste immobilization. In the vitrification process, waste is combined with glass-forming materials and melted. Once the materials solidify, the waste is trapped inside and can't easily be released.

3. Sustainable Energy Alternatives

There are many alternative energy sources that are sustainable and do not pose the accident risks inherent in nuclear energy production. These sources include:

Bioenergy: biomass, such as plant matter and animal waste, can yield power, heat, steam, and fuel.
Geothermal: renewable heat energy can be harnessed from deep within the earth.
Wind: turbines turning in the air convert kinetic energy in the wind into electricity.
Solar: the sun’s energy can be captured and used to produce heat and electricity.
Hydrogen: if produced by renewable sources, it can power fuel cells to convert chemical energy directly into electricity, with useful heat and water as the only byproducts.
Tidal: using the movement of the ocean to power turbines and generate electricity.
Many more sustainable resources could be found and current resources improved if better technology were available and if the government and utilities actively promoted their development.
Sustainable energy links:
- Renewable Energy Policy Project (a CREST site)
- Sustainable Energy Coalition
- Renewable Energy

4. Additional Internet Resources on Nuclear Energy

Nebraskans say a Canadian oil pipeline poses unacceptable risks

2011-09-02T04:26:00.000-04:00

businessweek

Part of the Keystone pipeline (solid line) is already working. Construction on Keystone XL (red dotted line) is supposed to start soon so oil can flow to the Gulf

By Bradley Olson

The 20,000 miles of pipes that carry oil and gas across Nebraska’s open prairies don’t bother Randy Thompson at all. Neither do greenhouse gas emissions or oil geopolitics.

Yet the 63-year-old, Republican-voting rancher and other Nebraska landowners have begun to kick up a lot of dust over the Keystone XL, a 1,711-mile pipeline that, if built, will cut across Nebraska’s heartland as it funnels oil from the Athabasca sands of Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries. They worry that the project, on which Calgary-based TransCanada (TRP) has staked much of its future, might damage the Sand Hills region, a huge wetland where an aquifer often runs just a few feet below the surface. The water in the Sand Hills is essential to many ranches and farms, and Thompson says the Keystone XL could do severe damage to this ecosystem. “You’re talking about potentially ruining people’s lives,” he says.

In a last stand against TransCanada, four major U.S. unions, and other states that want the $7 billion pipeline, landowners such as Thompson have teamed up with green groups and elected officials from both parties. The Obama Administration declared on Aug. 26 that the pipeline poses limited environmental risks. However, the foes in Nebraska may present the most significant threat to a project supporters say is vital to U.S. energy security. “The opposition has figured out ‘Well, if we can delay this long enough, then it’s as good as commercially killing it,’ ” says TransCanada Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling. Competing pipelines to the Gulf from Canada are in the works. If TransCanada’s plans to begin construction in January 2012 are pushed back six to nine months, its rivals may get there first.

Canada is estimated to hold 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil, and by 2020 the pipeline could help reduce U.S. imports from OPEC countries by 18 percent, according to U.S. energy data and Canadian production figures. Girling says the Keystone project will create 20,000 U.S. jobs, and he predicts the efforts to delay the pipeline won’t work. South Dakota has approved the route, and political leaders in Montana, Oklahoma, and Texas have signaled their support.

Still, the opposition in Nebraska is digging in. On Aug. 5, Thompson and 300 activists gathered around the governor’s mansion in Lincoln, pointing flashlights at it and holding up posters that said “Ask Me Where They Should Stick That Pipeline.” Many wore T-shirts bearing Thompson’s likeness, emblazoned with the words “I Stand with Randy.” The shirts have made it all the way to Washington, where hundreds have been arrested at sit-ins outside the White House.

The state’s top three elected officials—U.S. Senators Mike Johanns (R) and Ben Nelson (D) and GOP Governor Dave Heineman—publicly came out against the pipeline’s route in August. “TransCanada has no one to blame but themselves,” says Johanns. “If they would have done a study to find the worst route to run this pipeline through, they would have ended up with this route.” TransCanada says the Sand Hills route is the safest choice because it is the shortest. The U.S. State Dept., which has oversight of cross-border projects, concurs.

Foes of Keystone plan to wage judicial trench warfare. TransCanada has secured 90 percent of the easements—contracts permitting the company to run a pipeline on private land—that it needs from Nebraska landowners. To secure the last 10 percent, it may have to use the power of eminent domain, battling as many as 45 landowners in county courthouses.

David A. Domina, a Nebraska trial lawyer whose firm studied the Keystone proposal, says it is hard to imagine local judges and juries in eminent domain cases—both in initial stages and on appeal—siding with a Canadian company against their neighbors. Eventually, the judges will have to face a public vote, he says: “In a project this controversial, all it takes is one judge who says, ‘I don’t like this process,’ and then you may have to start over.”

TransCanada says it has received commitments from oil producers to ship 440,000 barrels a day of crude on the Keystone XL, or 63 percent of its 700,000-barrel-a-day capacity. The project is “not economic” at that rate, says Bradley Olsen, a pipeline industry analyst at Tudor, Pickering, Holt in Houston.

Thompson, who was offered $17,900 by TransCanada for an easement to run the pipe across about 80 of his 400 acres, says he will not settle for any price. “It’s unbelievable that a foreign corporation can force an American citizen to forfeit some of his land for their private use and gain,” says Thompson.

Nebraskans most fear a spill in the Sand Hills. A big spill might pour into the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies 78 percent of the public water supply and 83 percent of irrigation water in Nebraska. The aquifer accounts for 30 percent of the water used in the U.S. for agriculture, according to the State Dept.’s review. The groundwater lies less than 10 feet below the surface for 65 miles of the pipeline. Yet the impact of spills in an aquifer is typically limited to “several hundred feet or less” and does not pollute the entire resource, according to the State Dept.

An existing Keystone line, which was put into service in 2010, has had 16 spills in its first year that were 5 gallons or more, according to TransCanada. One at a pumping station in North Dakota released more than 16,000 gallons.

The bottom line: A $7 billion pipeline from Canada has angered Nebraska farmers and ranchers who value the state’s precious water over oil.

From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Japan Set to Declare Wide Area Uninhabitable Due to Radiation

2011-08-23T02:44:00.000-04:00

From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Japan Set to Declare Wide Area Uninhabitable Due to Radiation

Aug. 22, 2011

By Greg Mitchell

The worst nuclear disaster to strike Japan since a single bomb fell over Nagasaki in 1945 occurred in the spring of 2011 at the Fukushima nuclear power plant following the epic tsunami. On August 22, The New York Times reports (in submerged fashion, headlining Gaddafi’s imminent fall in Libya) the disturbing news that a wide area around the Fukushima plant "could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels.”

According to The Times, "The formal announcement, expected from the government in coming days, would be the first official recognition that the March accident could force the long-term depopulation of communities near the plant, an eventuality that scientists and some officials have been warning about for months." Just two weeks ago, it was reported that radiation readings at the site had reached their highest points to date.

As Winifred Bird and Elizabeth Grossman report, moreover, radiation risks have been compounded by severe chemical contamination throughout the Fukushima area and its peripheries as a result of earthquake tsunami destruction of petro-and agrochemical plants, iron foundries, steel works, automotive, electronics, plastics and pharmaceutical plants among others. Toxic Watch Network posted a map of 130 such facilities throughout the Northeast Region (http://japanfocus.org/-Winifred-Bird/3588).

Above all, the wide release of radiation, and fear of same, has forced the Japanese and others all over the world to reflect on what happened to the country in 1945, and the continuing (but usually submerged) threat of nuclear weapons and energy today.

In its main story marking the sixty-sixth anniversary of the atomic bombings, the New York Times highlighted the new activism of survivors of the bombing (the hibakusha): campaigning against nuclear power, which has provided most of their country’s energy needs. No one in the world can better relate to the fears of a wide populace terrified that they (and perhaps the unborn) may be tainted forever by exposure to radiation.

As Kodama Tatsuhiko, head of the Tokyo University Radioisotope Center has pointed out, the Japanese government has both concealed and distorted the true dimensions of radioactivity released following the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Kodama observes that, “according to what we know so far, when we compare the amount of radiation that remained after the a-bomb and that of radiation from the nuclear plant, that of the former goes down to one-thousandth after one year whereas radioactive contaminants of the latter are reduced to only one-tenth.” (http://japanfocus.org/-Kodama-Tatsuhiko/3587) Zeroing in on the critical dangers to pregnant women and infants, he shows the extremely high risk of cancer in areas of radiation concentration in the form of Iodine and Cesium isotopes. Above all, Kodama shows that, given the vagaries of wind, rain, and terrain, the danger zone is by no means limited to the proposed evacuation zone.

My colleague Robert Jay Lifton in an op-ed for the New York Times titled “From Hiroshima to Fukushima,” pointedly asked “how it is possible that Japan, after its experience with the atomic bombings, could allow itself to draw so heavily on the same nuclear technology for the manufacture of about a third of its energy.” His answer was that there was “ . . . a pattern of denial, cover-up and cozy bureaucratic collusion between industry and government, the last especially notorious in Japan but by no means limited to that country.” [Yuki Tanaka explains why, before 3.11, with very few exceptions, there was little Hibakusha resistance to nuke power.]

The Mainichi Shimbun sought out Taniguchi Sumiteru, now 82, and currently director of the Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors Council, for comment. It noted that while he normally talks quietly and haltingly, “when the conversation turns to the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant it is as if the floodgates open, and his tone suddenly turns harsh.” Taniguchi said: “Nuclear power and mankind cannot coexist. We survivors of the atomic bomb have said this all along. And yet, the use of nuclear power was camouflaged as ‘peaceful’ and continued to progress. You never know when there’s going to be a natural disaster. You can never say that there will never be a nuclear accident.”

As it happens, I have interviewed Taniguchi three times, in the United States and in Japan. He is perhaps the iconic symbol of the hibakusha today, thanks to footage of him taken after the bombing, showing him, months after the attack, still on a floor, spread-eagled, his entire back an open wound, flaming red. It was part of footage shot by a US film crew, and suppressed for decades, as I probe in my new book Atomic Cover-Up. (You can see some of the Taniguchi footage here.)

In April, 2011, five survivors’ organizations including Taniguchi’s Nagasaki group submitted a statement to the Japanese government declaring the collapse of the “safety myth” around nuclear power and demanding a change in the government’s energy policy to prevent creating any more hibakusha. And Hidankyo, the nationwide organization of hibakusha, where Taniguchi still serves on the board, “has sent a statement to the government,” Mainichi Shimbun reported, “demanding that it distribute health record booklets—similar to the ones that are distributed to atomic bomb victims and can be used as proof of radiation exposure—to nuclear power plant workers and residents living close to them, and also provide periodic health examinations to those populations.”

Taniguchi pointed out that numerous A-bomb survivors over the decades had sought help from the government after falling ill or suffering cancer and other diseases, allegedly from radiation exposure, but had been “abandoned.” The Mainichi article closed with this question: Will the people who are suffering from invisible dangers in Fukushima be subjected to the same treatment?

Of course, the Fukushima disaster forced me to relive my own experiences in visiting the atomic cities, and research into the significance of their bombing and the American “cover-up” since. I was hardly alone. Writing in a New York Times op-ed after Fukushima, Nassrine Azimi, a senior adviser at a United Nations Institute, observed: “When it comes to nuclear issues—from atomic weapons to nuclear power—no two nations could be more irredeemably intertwined. After the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, despite dissenting voices of some of its own citizens, America drew mostly wrong conclusions as it plunged into nuclear expansion.” She cited the book Lifton and I wrote several years ago, Hiroshima in America, for its painstaking account of “the relentless public relations campaign—unleashed by the Truman administration almost within hours of the Hiroshima bombing—that led to the Faustian bargain that blinded the Americans (and later the Japanese) to the insidious, long-term damage of radiation. Prominent journalists and media outlets of the time embraced, with enthusiasm, the ‘Dawn of the Atomic Age’ and America fell, in the authors’ words, into the ‘nuclear entrapment’ that is with us to this day.”

The 3.11 earthquake tsunami and nuclear meltdown have opened the way for hibakusha and the Japanese people to revisit the decision to predicate their energy future on nuclear power. While it would be premature to judge the outcome, critics of the exorbitant human, natural and financial costs of nuclear power in earthquake prone Japan, have begun to make their voices heard. Official recognition of the contamination of Fukushima will strengthen their convictions.

This is a slightly revised and expanded version of an article by Greg Mitchell at The Nation, August 22, 2011. Greg Mitchell’s new book is “Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made.” Email: epic1934@aol.com.

Authors: Greg Mitchell

Fukushima: Pacific Ocean Radiation Over 3,000 Times Normal — Doctors Refusing To Treat Radiation Poisoning

2011-08-21T17:29:00.001-04:00

Posted by Alexander Higgins - August 15, 2011 at 7:37 pm - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog

Fukushima nuclear radiation is being detected in the Pacific Ocean at levels 3,000 times normals as doctors refuse to treat people for radiation poisoning.

The Canadian reports:

Japan’s nuclear accident has caused radiation levels in the Pacfic Ocean to rise over 3,000 times normal. Say what?
Top scientists in the field of Marine Chemistry, have done the testing and research and the result is not good. Fukushima’s poison radiated water spewn into the pacific ocean will cause malformations in ocean life as well as the resulting food chain [ that's us], from platunium, I131 and ZM133 in the ocean.
It is very important that you see the ending result of this testing. You and I will be affected by the radiation as well as our farm animals, food supply and air. Yes our air.
Where do you think the condensation from the ocean goes? Remember the ol’ saying by Newton.. what goes up, must come down.
Dr. Chris Busby in the video above also indicates that doctors are refusing to treat patients for radiation sicknesses. That is apparently because these doctors are concerned that treating them would make that vulnerable to radiation sicknesses.
[...]
Source: The Canadian

Experts: Lethal Levels of “Off-Scale” Radiation At Fukushima Infer Millions Dying

Experts warn off-scale levels of radiation, which are at their highest levels since the disaster began almost 5 months ago, infers hundreds millions dying from the nuclear fallout. Deborah Dupre, Human ...

52,547 Bq/Kg Of Cesium Radiation Found In Soil Just Outside Tokyo – 135 Miles South Of Fukushima

52,547 Bq/Kg of Cesium radiation measured in soil samples collected just outside of Tokyo over 135 miles south of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. A reader from Japan has sent me ...

Hot radioactive particles in Seattle at 50 percent of levels seen in Tokyo — Latches onto lung tissue

Grave news as Japan nuclear radiation levels in Seattle hits 50% of levels detected in Tokyo Knucklz writes: See Video Here (couldn't get it to embed and it's not uploaded to Youtube.com yet) ...

Dprogam.net – Radiation News 4-24-11 – New YouTube Video Of Geiger Counter Rain Radiation

Radiation News 4-24-2011 via Dprogram.net with yet another Geiger counter reading from a citizen coming out of the rain showing high levels of Japan nuclear radiation in the rain. Via DProgram.Net Radiation ...

SOS Video Plea from the People of Japan asking for HELP as the coverup regarding Fukushima continues

As I have previously reported, Japan is slowly issuing evacuation orders on a house by house basis depending on the radiation levels detected at each home. Only if the Japan ...

Japan Weather Chief Censored Fukushima Nuclear Radiation Forecasts To “Prevent Panic in Ordinary People”

The Mainichi daily news is reporting the chief of the Meteorological Society of Japan, Hiroshi Niino aprofessor at the University of Tokyo, is drawing strong criticism from the academic community ...

Hi-Res Photos PROVE Fukushima Explosion Sent Plutonium MOX Fuel Around The World

As previously reported the EPA has been covering up the radioactive Fukushima Plutonium and strontium bombarding the US West Coast since March 18th. Lucas Whitefield Hixson provides us with ...

FDA: Eating Fish With Radiation 2400% Above Federal Limits “Poses No Health Risks”

The EPA says eating fish caught in Japan, with radiation levels 2400% above Federal limits, does not pose any health risks. First Rainwater at 18,100% above drinking water limits is ...

Government Radiation Expert Deconstructs Myth Of “Safe” Radiation Levels

Nuclear radiation expert and renowned Government radiation expert, Chris Bubsy, deconstructs the myths and propaganda of so-called "safe" levels of nuclear radiation. The Dangers of Radiation: Deconstructing Nuclear Experts What these people ...

China Finds 100,000 SQ Miles of Radiation In Pacific Ocean Up 300 Times Higher Than Normal

China says the radioactive contamination in the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear power plant is far wider than the areas released by the Japanese government. China has discovered 100,000 square ...

Major Paper : Canada Government Covered Up “Massive Amounts Of Radiation In Air”

A Major Canadian Paper Reports That The Government Covered Up Massive Amounts Of Radioactive Material From Fukushima In Canadian Air" And Are Continuing To Manipulate Radiation Monitoring Data. Alexander Higgins August 4th, ...

Japan Passes The Computer Network Monitoring Law To Cleanse The Internet Of “Bad” Fukushima News

Japan has passed a law that will enable the police and contractors to monitor internet activity without restriction to "cleanse" the Internet of any "bad" Fukushima radiation news. As I previous ...

Abornmal Spikes Reported In Southern California Radiation, Radioactivity In Los Angeles Peaches Jump 208% Above Normal

Abnormal spikes in Radiation have been detected in Southern California over the last several days, including radiation spikes in peaches from a local market jumping to levels 208% higher than ...

Japan Sets Radiation Limits For Infant Drinks And Food More Than Twice The International Limits For Nuclear Waste

Calls grow for the resignation of a Japanese official caught lying to the public about the safety of radiation limits that have been "temporarily" increased to shockingly high levels. The "temporary ...

Japan Radiation Survey Conducted In March Shows 1 In 20 Fukushima Children Will Develop Thyroid Cancer

Japan finally releases a nuclear radiation survey that reveals that 45% of Fukushima children had sustained thyroid radiation exposure by the end of March. Despite government attempts to ...

Rapid Spike In Radiation Halts Clean-Up At Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

A rapid spike in radiation levels at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has halted the clean-up process. TEPCO says if the problem is not brought under control within a week ...

Experts: Lethal Levels of “Off-Scale” Radiation At Fukushima

52,547 Bq/Kg Of Cesium Radiation Found In Soil

Hot radioactive particles in Seattle at 50 percent

Dprogam.net – Radiation News 4-24-11 – New YouTube

SOS Video Plea from the People of Japan

Japan Weather Chief Censored Fukushima Nuclear Radiation Forecasts

Hi-Res Photos PROVE Fukushima Explosion Sent Plutonium MOX

FDA: Eating Fish With Radiation 2400% Above Federal

'People Are Suffering from Radiophobia'

2011-08-21T17:27:00.000-04:00

Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe

08/19/2011 Studying the Fukushima Aftermath

'People Are Suffering from Radiophobia'

REUTERS

Japanese scientist Shunichi Yamashita is a leading expert on the effects of nuclear radiation. In a SPIEGEL interview, he discusses his work in communicating the potential dangers of exposure to residents living near the Fukushima nuclear plant. The professor says many suffer from severe radiation anxiety.

How dangerous are low doses of exposure to radioactivity to humans? This question is heatedly debated within the scientific community. But it is not an easy time to convey details of that debate to the people in Japan living near the Fukushima nuclear plant who have now been exposed to the dangers of radiation.

Radiation-protection specialist Shunichi Yamashita, 59, has made significant contributions to what is known about the effects of radioactive radiation. He has studied the survivors of the World War II atomic bombing of Nagasaki as well as the consequences of the 1986 reactor accident at Chernobyl, which he has visited nearly 100 times as part of a Japanese scientific envoy. He is currently researching the effects of the Fukushima catastrophe -- though his efforts are meeting with much resistance from local residents.

SPIEGEL interviewed Yamashita about the expected effects of exposure in Fukushima and his plans to conduct one of the largest scientific studies even undertaken in the region. As part of the study, he hopes to examine the health effects of the nuclear disaster on some 2 million people.

SPIEGEL: The government of the Fukushima prefecture has invited you to inform people in the affected region about radiation risks. Right at the beginning, you said: "The effects of radiation do not come to people who are happy and laughing, they come to people who are weak-spirited." What did you mean by that?

Yamashita: That was on March 20 during the first meeting. I was really shocked. The people were so serious, nobody laughed at all.

SPIEGEL: These people's villages and home towns are contaminated. Nobody knows about the invisible dangers. What did you expect?

Yamashita: The mood of the people was really depressed. From animal experiments with rats we clearly know that animals who are very susceptible to stress will be more affected by radiation. Stress is not good at all for people who are subjected to radiation. Besides, mental-state stress also supresses the immune system and therefore may promote some cancer and non-cancer diseases. That is why I told people that they also have to relax.
SPIEGEL: And to help people relax, you also said that doses of 100 millisievert per year would be fine? This is normally the limit for nuclear power plant workers in emergency conditions.

Yamashita: I did not say that 100 millisievert is fine and no reason to worry. I just said that below that threshold we cannot prove a higher risk for cancer. That is the evidence from research in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl.

SPIEGEL: But you didn't understand that your reassurances would make people even more angry and frightened?

Yamashita: I think it really contributed to the confusion that the Japanese government decided to set the standard for yearly maximal dose at 20 millisievert. The International Commission on Radiological Protection suggests a limit between 20 and 100 millisievert in a situation with a nuclear emergency. Which threshold you pick is a political decision. You must weigh the risks and benefits, because any evacuation will also have risks. The Japanese government chose the most careful radiological approach. That made people more confused and insecure.

SPIEGEL: Your comments have made you a controversial figure. A Japanese journalist wants to sue you. Anti-nuclear activists ..
.
Yamashita: ... they are not scientists, they are not doctors, they are not radiation specialists. They do not know the international standards, which researchers worked on very hard. It makes me sad that people believe gossip, magazines and even Twitter.

SPIEGEL: Why should the people trust experts who have been telling them for decades that nuclear power plants are 100-percent safe?

Yamashita: I was surprised when I arrived in Fukushima that nobody was prepared for such a disaster. I used to advise China and states of the former Soviet Union on radiation protection. Now we have a tremendous accident in my own country and are not prepared. People in Fukushima did not even know that there are 11 reactors in their region. The medical faculty of the University of Fukushima didn't have a single specialist in radioprotection medicine.

SPIEGEL: Would you address the people affected by the accident in a different manner today?

Yamashita: In a situation where people had no understanding of radioactivity at all, I wanted to be very clear. I have now changed my communications approach from black-and-white to gray scale.

SPIEGEL: People want clear answers. Where is it safe? And where is it not?

Yamashita: We don't have those answers. When people ask me: "Are doses below 100 millisievert 100 percent safe?" Then I have to answer as a scientist: "I don't know."

SPIEGEL: From previous studies we have learned that if 100 people are exposed to levels of 100 millisievert, statistically speaking, one person will get cancer because of the radiation. Is it possible to project the level of danger of lower doses?

Yamashita: That could be. The problem is that to estimate the risk for disease we use the so-called linear-nonthreshold dose-response model, which assumes that even a small additional radiation dose would cause a small increase in cancer incidence in an exposed population. Such an increase is theoretically measurable, but with the doses below 100 millisievert it is statistically insignificant and thus cannot be considered as an argument in support of excessive risk. Also, with a tumor we do not know what caused it. Radiation does not leave a diagnosable signature. From radiation biology we also know that smaller doses can damage human DNA. But the human body can effectively repair those injuries within a short time; this is a natural intrinsic protective mechanism. That is what I am trying to tell the people.

SPIEGEL: And what should people do with this kind of information?

Yamashita: With low radiation doses the people have to decide for themselves whether to stay or to leave. Nobody can make that decision for them. They have to weigh the risks and benefits: Moving can mean a loss of jobs and having to change schools for the children. These factors cause stress. On the other hand, this family might be able to avoid the risk of cancer, even if it is only minimal.

SPIEGEL: That families affected by the nuclear accident are being forced to make any such decision is a terrible burden.

Yamashita: Yes. Therefore Tepco and the Japanese government should support people in their decisions. They should support those who want to stay as well as those who think even more than one millisievert is too high.

SPIEGEL: What kind of health risk from the radiation will the people around the plant in Fukushima have to face?

Yamashita: I do not think there will be any direct effect of the radiation for the population. The doses are too small.

SPIEGEL: So you don't think there will be any cases of cancer or cancer deaths?

Yamashita: Based on the data, we have to assume that. Of course, the situation is different for the workers in the plant.

SPIEGEL: Now you are already talking about something you actually intend to research. You plan to monitor the health condition of the residents of Fukushima for the next 30 years.

Yamashita: In the current situation, it is very difficult for us to be accepted by the local residents. We have to make the best medical care possible for these people the first priority.

SPIEGEL: Do you think adopting a more understanding tone than you have up until now would help you to gain acceptance?

Yamashita: Because of the accident, Tepco and the Japanese government have lost the trust of the people in Fukushima completely. The people are suffering, not only because of the earthquake and the tsunami, but also from severe radiation anxiety, real radiophobia. Therefore we have to lower the anxiety (and) give them some emotional support. And, later, we can open the discussion about epidemiological studies. Without the support of the local people, we cannot do anything. In this situation it doesn't even help that I am the expert from Nagasaki and Chernobyl. This is why I moved to Fukushima.

SPIEGEL: Who do you want to examine in your study?

Yamashita: There are three groups. The workers, the children and the general population. The workers are exposed to high-dose radiation. We surely need to monitor them to follow the effects concerning cancer and other diseases. The general population would be divided into two groups: One that was exposed to relatively low radiation and one that was exposed to relatively high radiation. The Fukushima government health office is just finishing a pilot study with which they have questioned 26,000 people.

SPIEGEL: But the people don't know how much radiation they were exposed to.

Yamashita: That is what we have to find out. We ask where the people were on March 11 at what time and then we ask those questions for every day in March. We also ask what people ate the first two weeks after the accident, what material their house or apartment is built out of. We want to connect these data with information of the distribution of the radioactive cloud and calculate the dose after the fact.

SPIEGEL: How many people should participate?

Yamashita: All 2 million residents of Fukushima prefecture. It is a big task and would set a science record. The government just decided about compensation payments for people affected by the nuclear accident. Through such applications we want to try to contact also those who moved outside of Fukushima.

SPIEGEL: What about the children?

Yamashita: We want to test the thyroids of all children under 18, altogeher 360,000 children, with ultrasound. After exposure to radiation it takes about five years until thyroid cancer first develops. We know that from Chernobyl.

SPIEGEL: Are you also researching the mental effects of the disaster?

Yamashita: Of course. We know from Chernobyl that the psychological consequences are enormous. Life expectancy of the evacuees dropped from 65 to 58 years -- not because of cancer, but because of depression, alcoholism and suicide. Relocation is not easy, the stress is very big. We must not only track those problems, but also treat them. Otherwise people will feel they are just guinea pigs in our research.

Fukushima Now Radiating Everyone: ‘Unspeakable’ Reality ‘Will Impact All Of Humanity’

2011-08-21T17:08:00.000-04:00

CBS 60 Minutes – Fukushima Now Radiating Everyone: ‘Unspeakable’ Reality ‘Will Impact All Of Humanity’

Thursday, August 18, 2011 4:29

Australia’s CBS exposed the “unspeakable” realities of the Japanese catastrophe in its 60 Minutes program Sunday night during which leading nuclear scientist Dr. Michio Kaku said radiation from Fukushima will impact of all of humanity.

The Examiner
August 16, 2011

CBS exposes extreme Fukushima radiation human rights violations while U.S. media remains silent.

Australia’s CBS exposed the “unspeakable” realities of the Japanese catastrophe in its 60 Minutes program Sunday night during which leading nuclear scientist Dr. Michio Kaku said radiation from Fukushima will impact of all of humanity. The nuclear energy power industry violation of the right to health is apparent throughout the new Australian report.

“In fact the whole world will be exposed from the radiation from Fukushima,” Dr. Kaku told CBS reporter Liz Hayes.

“We are already getting radiation from Fukushima,” Dr. Kaku said.

Just as Australia’s SBS exposed in depth the reality of the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico catastrophe unlike any U.S. mainstream news station, Sunday, Australia’s CBS has now exposed in depth the Fukushima catastrophe.

Quotes From Liz Hayes 60 Minutes Blog

Liz Hayes: Fallout

Liz Hayes From CBS TV Show 60 Minutes

Chernobyl is about three-and-a-half hour’s drive from Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine, a country still carrying the scars of a human and environmental catastrophe.

In April, 1986, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded, ironically during a safety test. What followed affected the world. A massive plume of smoke and a cloud of radiated particles swept across Europe and around the globe.
[...]
Frank was our radiation expert, because after Chernobyl we travelled to Japan and the contaminated territory of Fukushima.
Japan’s nuclear disaster in Fukushima is ongoing. There is an exclusion zone and thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes.
These are not earthquake or tsunami victims. These are radiation refugees – people who miraculously survived the horrors of that dreadful natural disaster in March, only to be made homeless by the meltdown of nuclear reactors in their region.

[...]
Much of the region is rural and deceptively peaceful. A Geiger counter the only indication radiation, the invisible enemy, is present.

The human face of this dreadful situation can be seen in shelters in public buildings. It’s where you’ll find families, old and young, struggling to retrieve their lives – a near impossibility when all you have is a cardboard box to mark out your spot, your home.

I don’t know how Japan will recover, and how these refugees will survive. Like Chernobyl, Fukushima could well become a dead zone, where no one will ever be able to return.
[...]
Read The Entire Article

“The Fukushima crisis is far from over. The crippled nuclear power plant is still leaking; and, judging from Chernobyl, recovery will not be measured in years, more like centuries,” reported the Australian presenter Liz Hayes.

Best known in Australia for reporting on 60 Minutes, Hayes is also known as former co-host of Australia’s Today, a position she held by popular demand for a decade.

As Hayes traveled through now deserted areas of rubble, that were once houses, toward Fukushima, the silence was shattered by the beeping of deadly gamma radiation fallout 40 kilometers from the crippled nuclear power plant.

“Gamma radiation is a stronger form of radiation and will go through most things apart from lead,” warned Frank Jackson, refusing to to drive Hayes any further.

Hayes stated after the Fukushima assignment, ”When I realised my only safety devices on my latest assignment were a couple of Geiger counters, some pretty flimsy pieces of protective clothing and a burly bloke named Frank, I must say I feared this was one of those times when the risks didn’t add up.”

Introducing Dr. Kaku on the Fukushima 60 Minutes program, Hayes said, “If you thought nuclear power had been averted in Japan, then meet physicist Michio Kaku.”

Dr. Kaku told Hayes, “If you’ve been exposed to Cesium because you’re a nuclear power worker, even after your long dead and buried, your grave site will be radioactive.”

“Your great grand kids can come to your grave site with a Geiger counter and see that great granddaddy still has radiation at his grave site.”

Unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe: Nuclear refugees

So far, over 135,000 Japanese people have been forced to evacuate according to Hayes.
Riding toward Fukushima, through piles of rubble for stretches where homes once stood, documented in CBS program, Hayes said, ”Streets and towns and villages are deserted.”

“And locals have been told their food and water may be contaminated.”

Stopping along the way, the Geiger showed that a head of cabbage registered as much radiation as an X-ray.
“So every time you have a cabbage, you have an X-ray,” said Hayes.

Radiation refugees by the thousands, wearing masks, live in cardboard shelters, sleeping on the floors of public buildings, with few possessions and little to no privacy, as Hayes saw first-hand and was documented by CBS.

“People have gone to a lot of trouble to make cardboard box into their home.”
Many Japanese people fear their country will never fully recover.

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to take food, water and air you breathe for granted again?” Hayes asked Chia Maxamoto.

“Ah, knowingly? I don’t think so.”

Dr. Kaku asserted about the Japanese people, “These are guinea pigs, absolute human guinea pigs.”

Chernobyl plant and people still crippled and crippling Hayes of CBS went to Chernobyl to document the scene there that is still “incredibly radioactive.”
“It is a terrible reminder of the horrors those rescue workers faced of not just a fire, but an invisible enemy.”
With what she called her “trusty producer, Phil Goyen, and crew, Scott Morelli and David Ballment, in toe,” Hayes “headed into the exclusion zone of Chernobyl, the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.”
Hayes wrote about the Chernobyl dead zone, “where remnants of lives once lived can be seen everywhere. Homes and schools and playgrounds frozen in time from the day workers and their families were ordered out, never to return.
“We entered a hospital where the first fire fighters to attend the exploding nuclear plant were taken. Their uniforms are still in the basement, and still highly radioactive.”
She said that entering the radiation hospital was a moment she will never forget, furthering, “For the first time I had a sense of the fear and horror those rescue workers must have felt. A terrible death from something they couldn’t see or touch or smell, but certainly felt.”
Children born years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster still develop cancer from it, as documented by CBS when Hayes was at Kievis Radiation Hospital built specifically for Chernobyl victims, some of whom Hayes interviewed.
These children are “battling cancer and other illnesses believed to be caused by the contamination,” she said.
Children over 32 miles from Fukushima ground zero are already suffering fatigue, diarrhea, and nosebleeds, the three most common of eight radiation sickness signs, the three in the earliest stage of the disease. Five hundred Fukushima children already have radiation in their thyroids.
Explaining that 5,000 tons of Boric acid, concrete and sand were used to bury Chernobyl’s reactor, Dr. Kaku added, ”It took years to do this and created a sarcophagus.”
“We all have Chernobyl radiation in our bodies.”
With the Chernobyl power plant in the background, Hayes said there “now a mere band aid over a molten core that is still hot and some still fear is still melting.”
A new sarcophagus has to built because the original one is breaking down.
“The Chernobyl nuclear disaster is still far from over,” said Hayes, reporting that to this day, there is still a 30 kilometer exclusion zone around the nuclear energy plant.
Since 1986, over 5 million people have been affected around Chernobyl according to scientist Iryna Lubunska, interviewed by Hayes.
“One of the things I feel I should know now is where a nuclear reactor is in any country, anywhere in the world, because it might affect me even if I don’t live in that country,” said Hayes.
Today, people as far away as in England are still being affected by Chernobyl.

Fukushima radiation is now combined in the U.S. with toxic radioactive tritium leaking from three-quarters of United States nuclear power plants, radiation from fracking, and radiation from the 2010 BP Gulf oil catastrophe.

Although a tight lid on Fukushima fallout information is keeping Americans in harms way after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed a secret pact with Japan to continue importing its untested food, and government agreed to downplay the fallout lethality, the nuclear energy silent killer continues devouring its victims, now and will for generations, as CBS documented.

Source: CBS 60 Minutes – Fukushima Now Radiating Everyone: ‘Unspeakable’ Reality ‘Will Impact All Of Humanity’ ©
Copying or redistribution of this material requires that this license must remain intact with attribution to the content source.

Japan: Thyroid Radiation Exposure Found in Children Near Tepco Plant

2011-08-19T23:00:00.000-04:00

Japan: Thyroid Radiation Exposure Found in Children Near Tepco Plant

Chisaki Watanabe
Bloomberg
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:33 CDT

Medical tests on children living in three towns near the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant found 45 percent of those surveyed suffered low-level thyroid radiation exposure, Japan's government said in a statement.

While the statement didn't comment on the source of the contamination, the announcement follows reports of radioactive material found in food after radiation leaks from the meltdown of three reactors at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant.

The tests covered 1,080 children aged up to 15 in three towns, Iwaki, Kawamata and Iitate, between 38 to 47 kilometers from the reactors. The tests between March 24 and 30 showed none of the children's thyroid glands exceeded the safety threshold of 0.2 microsievert per hour set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, according to the Aug. 17 statement.

At least one child had 0.1 microsievert per hour, the highest level observed, while more than half of those exposed absorbed 0.01 microsievert per hour, the statement said. Children are susceptible to poisoning from radioactive iodine, which can accumulate in the thyroid and cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization.

On June 6, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the reactor meltdowns at the plant released about 770,000 tera becquerels of radioactive material into the air between March 11 and March 16, doubling an earlier estimate.

Chernobyl

That's about 14 percent of the radiation emitted in the Chernobyl disaster in modern-day Ukraine. About 2 million people in Ukraine are under permanent medical monitoring 25 years after the accident, according to the nation's embassy in Tokyo.

A becquerel represents one radioactive decay per second, which involves the release of atomic energy that can damage human cells and DNA, with prolonged exposure causing leukemia and other forms of cancer, according to the World Nuclear Association.

While 203 people were hospitalized and 31 died after the explosion at Chernobyl, about 400,000 children are considered to have received significant doses of radiation to their thyroid that merit monitoring, the embassy said.

Cases of thyroid cancer in Belarus, which neighbors Ukraine, increased for at least 10 years after 1986 in children younger than 14 and for almost 20 years among 20-24 year olds, according to research by Shunichi Yamashita of Nagasaki University, who was appointed as an adviser to Fukushima prefecture on radiation exposure.

Food Tests

Japan has no centralized system to check for radiation contamination of food, leaving local authorities and farmers conducting voluntary tests.

Products such as spinach, tea, milk, and fish have been found contaminated with cesium and iodine as far as 360 kilometers (224 miles) from the plant.

Adding to the concern, officials confirmed today rice from Hokota City, about 150 kilometers from Dai-Ichi, was found to contain low levels or cesium. It was the first confirmation of rice contamination since the March 11 accident.

To contact the reporters on this story: Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo at cwatanabe5@bloomberg.net;

Fukushima radiation alarms doctors

2011-08-19T22:57:00.000-04:00

Dahr Jamail
Aljazeera
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 08:38 CDT

Residents of Ohkuma-cho attend a memorial service for the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami on 24 July 2011 in Ohkuma-cho, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, 20 km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant [EPA]

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

"How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

"The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant.

There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation.

Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming.

According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs.

Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas.

Distrust of the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster is now common among people living in the effected prefectures, and people are concerned about their health.

Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming.

When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure.

10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays.

It is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv.

TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings.

The Fukushima disaster has been rated as a "level seven" on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). This level, the highest, is the same as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and is defined by the scale as: "[A] major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."

The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters are the only nuclear accidents to have been rated level seven on the scale, which is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the scale used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times more severe than the previous level.

Doctors in Japan are already treating patients suffering health effects they attribute to radiation from the ongoing nuclear disaster.

"We have begun to see increased nosebleeds, stubborn cases of diarrhoea, and flu-like symptoms in children," Dr Yuko Yanagisawa, a physician at Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, told Al Jazeera.

She attributes the symptoms to radiation exposure, and added: "We are encountering new situations we cannot explain with the body of knowledge we have relied upon up until now."

"The situation at the Daiichi Nuclear facility in Fukushima has not yet been fully stabilised, and we can't yet see an end in sight," Yanagisawa said. "Because the nuclear material has not yet been encapsulated, radiation continues to stream into the environment."

Health concerns

Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, reporting from Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, said of the recently detected high radiation readings: "It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami, but no one realised until now."

Workers at Fukushima are only allowed to be exposed to 250 mSv of ionising radiation per year.

Junichi Matsumoto, a TEPCO spokesman, said the high dose was discovered in an area that does not hamper recovery efforts at the stricken plant.

Yet radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit was detected in processed tea made in Tochigi City, about 160km from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to the Tochigi Prefectural Government, who said radioactive cesium was detected in tea processed from leaves harvested in the city in early July.

The level is more than 3 times the provisional government limit.

Yanagisawa's hospital is located approximately 200km from Fukushima, so the health problems she is seeing that she attributes to radiation exposure causes her to be concerned by what she believes to be a grossly inadequate response from the government.

From her perspective, the only thing the government has done is to, on April 25, raise the acceptable radiation exposure limit for children from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year.

"This has caused controversy, from the medical point of view," Yanagisawa told Al Jazeera. "This is certainly an issue that involves both personal internal exposures as well as low-dose exposures."

Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan Executive Director, said: "It is utterly outrageous to raise the exposure levels for children to twenty times the maximum limit for adults."

"The Japanese government cannot simply increase safety limits for the sake of political convenience or to give the impression of normality."

Authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low-dose ionizing radiation are published in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII (BEIR VII) report from the US National Academy of Sciences.

The report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence proving there is no exposure to ionizing radiation that is risk-free.

The BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of all forms of cancer 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.

Dr Helen Caldicott, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is equally concerned about the health effects from Japan's nuclear disaster.

"Radioactive elements get into the testicles and ovaries, and these cause genetic disease like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation," she told Al Jazeera. "There are 2,600 of these diseases that get into our genes and are passed from generation to generation, forever."

So far, the only cases of acute radiation exposure have involved TEPCO workers at the stricken plant. Lower doses of radiation, particularly for children, are what many in the medical community are most concerned about, according to Dr Yanagisawa.

"Humans are not yet capable of accurately measuring the low dose exposure or internal exposure," she explained, "Arguing 'it is safe because it is not yet scientifically proven [to be unsafe]' would be wrong. That fact is that we are not yet collecting enough information to prove the situations scientifically. If that is the case, we can never say it is safe just by increasing the annual 1mSv level twenty fold."

Her concern is that the new exposure standards by the Japanese government do not take into account differences between adults and children, since children's sensitivity to radiation exposure is several times higher than that of adults.

Al Jazeera contacted Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office for comment on the situation.

Speaking on behalf of the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Relations for the Prime Minister's office, Noriyuki Shikata said that the Japanese government "refers to the ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection] recommendation in 2007, which says the reference levels of radiological protection in emergency exposure situations is 20-100 mSv per year. The Government of Japan has set planned evacuation zones and specific spots recommended for evacuation where the radiation levels reach 20 mSv/year, in order to avoid excessive radiation exposure."

The prime minister's office explained that approximately 23bn yen ($300mn) is planned for decontamination efforts, and the government plans to have a decontamination policy "by around the end of August", with a secondary budget of about 97bn yen ($1.26bn) for health management and monitoring operations in the affected areas.

When questioned about the issue of "acute radiation exposure", Shikata pointed to the Japanese government having received a report from TEPCO about six of their workers having been exposed to more than 250 mSv, but did not mention any reports of civilian exposures.

Prime Minister Kan's office told Al Jazeera that, for their ongoing response to the Fukushima crisis, "the government of Japan has conducted all the possible countermeasures such as introduction of automatic dose management by ID codes for all workers and 24 hour allocation of doctors. The government of Japan will continue to tackle the issue of further improving the health management including medium and long term measures".

Shikata did not comment about Kodama's findings.

Kodama, who is also a doctor of internal medicine, has been working on decontamination of radioactive materials at radiation facilities in hospitals of the University of Tokyo for the past several decades.

"We had rain in Tokyo on March 21 and radiation increased to .2 micosieverts/hour and, since then, the level has been continuously high," said Kodama, who added that his reporting of radiation findings to the government has not been met an adequate reaction. "At that time, the chief cabinet secretary, Mr Edano, told the Japanese people that there would be no immediate harm to their health."

Kodama is an expert in internal exposure to radiation, and is concerned that the government has not implemented a strong response geared towards measuring radioactivity in food.

"Although three months have passed since the accident already, why have even such simple things have not been done yet?" he said. "I get very angry and fly into a rage."

According to Kodama, the major problem caused by internal radiation exposure is the generation of cancer cells as the radiation causes unnatural cellular mutation.

"Radiation has a high risk to embryos in pregnant women, juveniles, and highly proliferative cells of people of growing ages. Even for adults, highly proliferative cells, such as hairs, blood, and intestinal epithelium cells, are sensitive to radiation."

'Children are at greater risk'

Early on in the disaster, Dr Makoto Kondo of the department of radiology of Keio University's School of Medicine warned of "a large difference in radiation effects on adults compared to children".

Kondo explained the chances of children developing cancer from radiation exposure was many times higher than adults.

"Children's bodies are underdeveloped and easily affected by radiation, which could cause cancer or slow body development. It can also affect their brain development," he said.

Yanagisawa assumes that the Japanese government's evacuation standards, as well as their raising the permissible exposure limit to 20mSv "can cause hazards to children's health," and therefore "children are at a greater risk".

Nishio Masamichi, director of Japan's Hakkaido Cancer Centre and a radiation treatment specialist, published an article on July 27 titled: "The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation".

In the report, Masamichi said that such a dramatic increase in permitted radiation exposure was akin to "taking the lives of the people lightly". He believes that 20mSv is too high, especially for children who are far more susceptible to radiation.

"No level of radiation is acceptable, for children or anyone else," Caldicott told Al Jazeera. "Children are ten to 20 times more sensitive than adults. They must not be exposed to radiation of any level. At all."

In early July, officials with the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission announced that approximately 45 per cent of children in the Fukushima region had experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, according to a survey carried out in late March. The commission has not carried out any surveys since then.

"Now the Japanese government is underestimating the effects of low dosage and/or internal exposures and not raising the evacuation level even to the same level adopted in Chernobyl," Yanagisawa said. "People's lives are at stake, especially the lives of children, and it is obvious that the government is not placing top priority on the people's lives in their measures."

Caldicott feels the lack of a stronger response to safeguard the health of people in areas where radiation is found is "reprehensible".

"Millions of people need to be evacuated from those high radiation zones, especially the children."

Dr Yanagisawa is concerned about what she calls "late onset disorders" from radiation exposure resulting from the Fukushima disaster, as well as increasing cases of infertility and miscarriages.

"Incidence of cancer will undoubtedly increase," she said. "In the case of children, thyroid cancer and leukemia can start to appear after several years. In the case of adults, the incidence of various types of cancer will increase over the course of several decades."

Yanagisawa said it is "without doubt" that cancer rates among the Fukushima nuclear workers will increase, as will cases of lethargy, atherosclerosis, and other chronic diseases among the general population in the effected areas.

Yanagisawa believes it is time to listen to survivors of the atomic bombings. "To be exposed to radiation, to be told there is no immediate effect, and afterwards to be stricken with cancer - what it is like to suffer this way over a long period of time, only the survivors of the atomic bombings can truly understand," she told Al Jazeera.

Radioactive food and water

An August 1 press release from Japan's MHLW said no radioactive materials have been detected in the tap water of Fukushima prefecture, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters.

The government defines no detection as "no results exceeding the 'Index values for infants (radioactive iodine)'," and says "in case the level of radioactive iodine in tap water exceeds 100 Bq/kg, to refrain from giving infants formula milk dissolved by tap water, having them intake tap water ... "

Yet, on June 27, results were published from a study that found 15 residents of Fukushima prefecture had tested positive for radiation in their urine.

Dr Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University, has been to Fukushima prefecture twice in order to take internal radiation exposure readings and facilitated the study.

"The risk of internal radiation is more dangerous than external radiation," Dr Kamada told Al Jazeera. "And internal radiation exposure does exist for Fukushima residents."

According to the MHLW, distribution of several food products in Fukushima Prefecture remain restricted. This includes raw milk, vegetables including spinach, kakina, and all other leafy vegetables, including cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and beef.

The distribution of tealeaves remains restricted in several prefectures, including all of Ibaraki, and parts of Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba, Kanagawa Prefectures.

Iwate prefecture suspended all beef exports because of caesium contamination on August 1, making it the fourth prefecture to do so.

Due to caesium contaminated straw, beef exports have been banned in four Japanese prefectures [EPA]

Jyunichi Tokuyama, an expert with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, told Al Jazeera he did not know how to deal with the crisis. He was surprised because he did not expect radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, 300km from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

"The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive," Tokuyama told Al Jazeera.

Kamada feels the Japanese government is acting too slowly in response to the Fukushima disaster, and that the government needs to check radiation exposure levels "in each town and village" in Fukushima prefecture.

"They have to make a general map of radiation doses," he said. "Then they have to be concerned about human health levels, and radiation exposures to humans. They have to make the exposure dose map of Fukushima prefecture. Fukushima is not enough. Probably there are hot spots outside of Fukushima. So they also need to check ground exposure levels."

Caldicott said people around the world should be concerned about the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Radiation that continues to be released has global consequences.

More than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water has been released into the ocean from the stricken plant.

Scientists warn that tuna caught off the Pacific coastal prefecture in northern Japan are now at risk of being radioactive [EPA]

"Those radioactive elements bio-concentrate in the algae, then the crustaceans eat that, which are eaten by small then big fish," Caldicott said. "That's why big fish have high concentrations of radioactivity and humans are at the top of the food chain, so we get the most radiation, ultimately."

On August 6, the 66th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said: "Regarding nuclear energy, we will deeply reflect over the myth that nuclear energy is safe. We will thoroughly look into the cause of the [Fukushima] accident, and to secure safety, we'll implement fundamental measures while also decreasing the degree of dependence on nuclear power generation, to aim for a society that does not rely on nuclear power."

But doctors, scientists, agricultural experts, and much of the general public in Japan feel that a much more aggressive response to the nuclear disaster is needed.

Kodama believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas. He cited Japan's itai itai disease, when cadmium poisoning from mining resulted in the government eventually having to spend 800 billion yen to decontaminate an area of 1,500 hectares.

"How much cost will be needed if the area is 1,000 times larger?"

Xcel slapped over faulty equipment at Prairie Island

2011-08-18T15:55:00.000-04:00

Xcel slapped over faulty equipment at Prairie Island

Article by: DAVID SHAFFER , Star Tribune
Updated: August 17, 2011 - 9:06 PM

Regulators said a bad battery charger had a "low to moderate" impact on safety at the plant.

hide

Xcel Energy found in 1996 that a battery charger at the Prairie Island nuclear plant in Red Wing was faulty but didn’t replace it until this year.

Photo: Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune

Federal regulators said Wednesday that Xcel Energy Inc. violated safety regulations for years by keeping a faulty charger for backup batteries at the Prairie Island nuclear power plant.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed its June preliminary finding that the issue had "low to moderate safety significance," which triggers enhanced inspections at the plant. Xcel had argued the so-called "white" finding was excessive.
The NRC rates safety issues with a color-coded system that classifies findings as green, white, yellow or red, in increasing order of significance. Green is "very low" safety significance; yellow is substantial.
It is the fifth time the plant in Red Wing, Minn., has been issued such a "white" finding. It has not had more severe violations.
Xcel conceded that the problem, first identified in 1996 during a simulation test, was not dealt with properly. The faulty charger on Unit 1 was replaced in May, after Xcel self-reported the issue and NRC inspectors took a closer look. Another charger on Unit 2 will be replaced at the next refueling, Xcel said.
"We are committed to operating our nuclear plants safely, and we take this matter very seriously," Mark Schimmel, Prairie Island site vice president, said in a statement. "These findings and the process that led to them highlight the stringent regulatory oversight of the nuclear industry in the United States."
The charger would lock up and stop recharging one of four battery packs when the plant's outside power source was cut off and the plant switched to diesel generators. Instead of fixing or replacing the charger, the utility for years turned off the charger during simulation tests. If the charger tripped off when needed, Xcel workers were to manually reset it.
"Even though this issue did not have an impact on routine plant operation or members of the public, the NRC requires safety-related equipment to be operable in accordance with the conditions of the plant's operating license," NRC regional administrator Mark Satorius said in a statement. "Contrary to these requirements, battery chargers at Prairie Island Unit 1 were susceptible to failure under certain conditions."
Xcel said it is reviewing the NRC's action and has until Sept. 16 to decide whether to contest the white finding.
David Shaffer • 612-673-7090

66 Years Ago: When Truman Opened the Nuclear Era With a Hiroshima Lie

2011-08-06T14:59:00.000-04:00

Lively discussion on the comments, too - so have a read. THANK YOU GREG MITCHELL

Greg Mitchell

In a piece earlier this week I mentioned the decades-long U.S. "coverup" of facts and options related to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 66 years ago today, including the Truman White House censoring the first Hollywood movie about The Bomb. But that shaping of the full impact, and ramifications, of the new weapons -- which would continue for years -- began within hours of the first use.

On Aug. 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman faced the task of telling the press, and the world, that America's crusade against fascism had culminated in exploding a revolutionary new weapon of extraordinary destructive power over a Japanese city.

It was vital that this event be understood as a reflection of dominant military power and at the same time consistent with American decency and concern for human life. Everyone involved in preparing the presidential statement sensed that the stakes were high, for this marked the unveiling of both the atomic bomb and the official narrative of Hiroshima.

When the astonishing news emerged that morning, exactly 66 years ago, it took the form of a routine press release, a little more than a thousand words long. President Truman was at sea a thousand miles away, returning from the Potsdam conference. Shortly before eleven o'clock, an information officer from the War Department arrived at the White House bearing bundles of press releases. A few minutes later, assistant press secretary Eben Ayers began reading the president's announcement to about a dozen members of the Washington press corps.

The atmosphere was so casual, and the statement so momentous, that the reporters had difficulty grasping it. "The thing didn't penetrate with most of them," Ayers later remarked. Finally, they rushed to call their editors, and at least one reporter found a disbeliever at the other end of the line. The first few sentences of the statement set the tone:

"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. ...The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. ...It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe."

Although details were modified at the last moment, Truman's four-page statement had been crafted with considerable care over many months. If use of the atomic bomb was inherent in its invention, an announcement of this sort was inevitable. Only the timing was in doubt.
would be suppressed by the U.S. for decades.
From its very first words, however, the official narrative was built on a lie. Hiroshima was not an "army base" but a city of 350,000. It did contain one important military base, but the bomb had been aimed at the very center of a city (and far from its industrial area). This was a continuation of the American policy of bombing civilian populations in Japan to undermine the morale of the enemy. It was also to take advantage of what those who picked the target called the special "focusing effect" provided by the hills which surrounded the city on three sides. This would allow the blast to bounce back on the city, destroying more of it, and its citizens.

The vast majority of the dead in Hiroshima would not be military personnel and defense workers but women and children. Also: at least a dozen American POWs. When Nagasaki was A-bombed three days later it was officially described as a "naval base." Film footage shot by the Japanese and later the Americans showing the full extent of the human damage would be suppressed by the U.S. for decades.

There was something else missing in Truman's announcement: Because the president in his statement failed to mention radiation effects, which officials knew were horrendous, the imagery of just a bigger bomb would prevail in the press. Truman described the new weapon as "revolutionary" but only in regard to the destruction it could cause, failing to mention its most lethal new feature: radiation.

Many Americans first heard the news from the radio, which broadcast the text of Truman's statement shortly after its release. The afternoon papers quickly arrived with banner headlines: "Atom Bomb, World's Greatest, Hits Japs!" and "Japan City Blasted by Atomic Bomb." The Pentagon had released no pictures, so most of the newspapers relied on maps of Japan with Hiroshima circled.

By that evening, radio commentators were weighing in with observations that often transcended Truman's announcement, suggesting that the public imagination was outrunning the official story. Contrasting emotions of gratification and anxiety had already emerged. H.V. Kaltenhorn warned, "We must assume that with the passage of only a little time, an improved form of the new weapon we use today can be turned against us."

It wasn't until the following morning, Aug. 7, that the government's press offensive appeared, with the first detailed account of the making of the atomic bomb, and the Hiroshima mission. Nearly every U.S. newspaper carried all or parts of 14 separate press releases distributed by the Pentagon several hours after the president's announcement.

Many of them written by one man: W.L. Laurence, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, "embedded" with the atomic project. General Leslie Groves, military director of the Manhattan Project, would later reflect, with satisfaction, that "most newspapers published our releases in their entirety. This is one of the few times since government releases have become so common that this has been done."

The Truman announcement of the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, and the flood of material from the War Department, firmly established the nuclear narrative (see much more on this in my new book, Atomic Cover-up and e-book).

One of the few early stories that did not come directly from the military was a wire service report filed by a journalist traveling with the president on the Atlantic, returning from Europe. Approved by military censors, it went beyond, but not far beyond, the measured tone of the president's official statement. It depicted Truman, his voice "tense with excitement," personally informing his shipmates about the atomic attack. "The experiment," he announced, "has been an overwhelming success."

The sailors were said to be "uproarious" over the news. "I guess I'll get home sooner now," was a typical response. Nowhere in the story, however, was there a strong sense of Truman's reaction. Missing from this account was his exultant remark when the news of the bombing first reached the ship: "This is the greatest thing in history!"

Greg Mitchell's new book is "Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made." Also in e-book editions. His email is epic1934@aol.com.

Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe brings big radiation spikes to B.C.

2011-08-05T04:48:00.000-04:00

Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, says that while radiation coming from Fukushima will lead to higher cancer rates among Canadians, the risk posed to individuals is very small.

By Alex Roslin, August 4, 2011

Nuclear impact

Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe brings big radiation spikes to B.C.

Monitoring stations catch a fraction of Fukushima fallout

After Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe, Canadian government officials reassured jittery Canadians that the radioactive plume billowing from the destroyed nuclear reactors posed zero health risks in this country.

In fact, there was reason to worry. Health Canada detected massive amounts of radioactive material from Fukushima in Canadian air in March and April at monitoring stations across the country.

The level of radioactive iodine spiked above the federal maximum allowed limit in the air at four of the five sites where Health Canada monitors levels of specific radioisotopes.

On March 18, seven days after an earthquake and tsunami triggered eventual nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, the first radioactive material wafted over the Victoria suburb of Sidney on Vancouver Island.

For 22 days, a Health Canada monitoring station in Sidney detected iodine-131 levels in the air that were 61 percent above the government’s allowable limit. In Resolute Bay, Nunavut, the levels were 3.5 times the limit.

Meanwhile, government officials claimed there was nothing to worry about. “The quantities of radioactive materials reaching Canada as a result of the Japanese nuclear incident are very small and do not pose any health risk to Canadians,” Health Canada says on its website. “The very slight increases in radiation across the country have been smaller than the normal day-to-day fluctuations from background radiation.”

In fact, Health Canada’s own data shows this isn’t true. The iodine-131 level in the air in Sidney peaked at 3.6 millibecquerels per cubic metre on March 20. That’s more than 300 times higher than the background level, which is 0.01 or fewer millibecquerels per cubic metre.

“There have been massive radiation spikes in Canada because of Fukushima,” said Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

“The authorities don’t want people to have an understanding of this. The government of Canada tends to pooh-pooh the dangers of nuclear power because it is a promoter of nuclear energy and uranium sales.”

Edwards has advised the federal auditor-general’s office and the Ontario government on nuclear-power issues and is a math professor at Montreal’s Vanier College.

In a phone interview from his Montreal home, he said radiation from Fukushima will lead to higher rates of cancer and other diseases among Canadians. But don’t panic. Edwards cautioned that the risk is very small for any particular individual.

“It’s not the risk to an individual that’s the problem but how much society is at risk. When you are exposing millions of people to an insult, even if the average dose is quite small, we are going to see fatal health effects,” he said.

Some impacts may have already occurred in North America. Infant mortality in eight cities in the U.S. Northwest jumped 35 percent after Fukushima, according to an article by internist and toxicologist Janette Sherman and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano on the Counterpunch website in June. The number of infant deaths rose from 9.25 per week in the four weeks prior to March 19 to 12.5 per week in the following 10 weeks, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control data.

“There has been a dismissiveness about the long-term hazards of nuclear power,” said Dr. Curren Warf, adolescent-medicine division head at B.C. Children’s Hospital.

Warf was on the board of the Nobel Peace Prize–winning U.S. antinuclear group Physicians for Social Responsibility before he moved to B.C. in 2009.

“These were some of the most advanced nuclear power plants in the world. But a natural earthquake and tsunami rendered their safety measures completely meaningless,” he said in a phone interview while on vacation in Tofino on Vancouver Island.

It’s not clear what health impacts British Columbians will face from the fallout from Fukushima, Warf said. But he added, “It should be a warning to Canada, the U.S., and the rest of the world about the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to natural catastrophes. These things have typically been dismissed in much of the planning.”

Dr. Erica Frank agrees. “The main concern I’ve had is we are not paying attention to Fukushima as a warning sign. Given the catastrophic long-term issues and what to do about nuclear waste, I had hoped it would be more of a wake-up [call] than it was,” said Frank, a professor of population and public health in UBC’s faculty of medicine and a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

She called on Canada to follow Germany’s lead, which, in response to Fukushima, decided in May to phase out all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. “If Germany can do it, we can too,” she said in a phone interview from her Vancouver home.

With 450,000 people homeless, fallout across much of Japan, and a damages bill estimated at $300 billion, Fukushima is the “biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind”, said U.S. nuclear-industry whistle blower Arnold Gundersen in a June 10 Al Jazeera story.

Even the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the Fukushima plant, has acknowledged that the disaster may surpass the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. “The radiation leak has not stopped completely, and our concern is that the amount of leakage could eventually reach that of Chernobyl or exceed it,” a TEPCO official said in an April media release.

In the case of Chernobyl, radiation caused 985,000 deaths worldwide—including almost 170,000 in North America—between 1986 and 2004, according to a Russian study published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Fallout contaminated about 100,000 square kilometres of land. And 25 years later, five to seven percent of government spending in Ukraine is still devoted to dealing with the disaster’s health, environmental, and other after-effects.

The impacts of Fukushima are still in the earliest stages of being determined, especially since the nuclear plant is still spewing huge amounts of radiation. On Monday, TEPCO reported detecting record-high radiation levels at the plant—double the previous record set in early June. The new level—at least 10 sieverts (10,000 millisieverts) per hour—could cause death or incapacitation within a few seconds’ exposure.

Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, said in July that decommissioning the plant would take “several decades”.

Fallout has contaminated food and water across Japan. In July, officials reported that Japanese consumers had eaten meat contaminated with radioactive material. Cattle feed at one farm had levels of radioactive cesium 57 times higher than the government ceiling.

Japanese investigators later determined that almost 3,000 cattle had eaten radioactive feed before being shipped to market. Prices of Japanese beef collapsed after 23 out of 274 beef samples exceeded government radiation limits.

In Tokyo, radioactive iodine in tap water reached double the government ceiling in March. Meanwhile, TEPCO reported in April that a seawater sample near the Fukushima plant contained 7.5 million times what was described as the legal amount of iodine-131.

TEPCO released 11,500 tons of radioactive water from its storage tanks into the Pacific Ocean on April 4.

One aspect of the fallout and seawater contamination that remains unclear is how it might affect fish stocks, especially migratory species like salmon that could pass through poisoned areas of the ocean, eat irradiated prey, or have radioactive water dumped in their home ranges by Pacific currents.

Of the five species of Pacific salmon that are native to western North America, the sockeye is the most commercially prized. It also has the most wide-ranging migration route through the North Pacific, swimming for two to three years—as far as just northeast of the top of Japan—before coming back to its natal streams in Alaska, B.C., and the U.S. Northwest.

This year’s returning sockeye are just starting to be caught off Vancouver Island’s west coast. So far, there is no word as to whether or not these fish will be tested. According to an April 17 story in the Anchorage Daily News, U.S. federal officials have already stated that there is no need to even test Alaskan salmon.

Across the Pacific Ocean, it took only a few days after the disaster for radioactive fallout to start showing up in drinking water and milk across North America. Governments in both Canada and the U.S. monitored the radioactivity, but their data is reported in such a confusing and irregular way that it’s extremely difficult to determine if maximum contamination levels have been exceeded and how public health is being impacted.

“It’s very, very difficult to interpret radiation levels detected from Fukushima and translate them into standards. It’s a nightmare,” said Arjun Makhijani, an electrical and nuclear engineer and president of the Takoma Park, Maryland–based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, in a phone interview.

And that’s not a coincidence, said Vanier College’s Gordon Edwards. “To me, it’s a way of obscuring the impacts. It’s a smoke screen.”

Dale Dewar agrees. “The government always downgrades the results. They want to soft-pedal the extent of the accident because it will threaten our own nuclear industry,” said Dewar, a family physician and the executive director of Canadian antinuclear group Physicians for Global Survival, in a phone interview from her home near Wynyard, Saskatchewan.

One of the highest post-Fukushima radiation readings in North America came on March 27 in rainwater in Boise, Idaho. It contained 14.4 becquerels of iodine-131 per litre—130 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum contamination level of 0.11 millibecquerels per litre.

EPA officials said in media reports that the high levels didn’t pose a health threat. For the agency to sound an alarm, it says, a person would have to exceed its maximum level for an entire year, drinking two litres of the contaminated water each day.

But nobody seemed to investigate how long the rainwater in Boise remained radioactive. Inexplicably, the EPA stopped monitoring Boise’s rainwater after the extremely high reading on March 27. The agency’s only other reading for the city was on March 22.

That day, the iodine-131 level hit nine becquerels per litre.

In fact, if the two readings are averaged out and stayed just as elevated over the entire six-day period from March 22 to 27, a person drinking the Boise rainwater during this time would have exceeded the EPA’s annual ceiling by 75 percent.

In B.C.’s Lower Mainland, iodine-131 in the rainwater hit almost the same level as in Boise. It also seems to have exceeded the EPA’s ceiling.

On March 19, the iodine-131 level in rainwater in Burnaby suddenly spiked from zero to nine becquerels per litre. The next day, it rose even further, to 13, according to data collected and released by Krzysztof Starosta, an associate professor of chemistry at SFU, and others.

The iodine-131 levels remained well above the background level (which is close to zero) for 12 days.

The average level of radioactive iodine was seven becquerels per litre over the 12 days. That means a person drinking two litres of the rainwater per day would have consumed 166 becquerels of iodine-131 during that period.

That’s more than double the maximum amount that the EPA says a person can drink in an entire year, which is 81 becquerels.

Starosta did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.

Starosta issued a statement on March 28 saying the levels were safe because they were lower than levels detected after the Chernobyl disaster.

“As of now, the levels we’re seeing are not harmful to humans. We’re basing this on Japanese studies following the Chernobyl incident in 1986 where levels of iodine-131 were four times higher than what we’ve detected in our rainwater so far,” the statement said.

The contaminated rainwater also didn’t spark concern from Canadian public-health officials. That’s in large part because Canadian standards are far more lenient on radioactive contamination than those of the EPA.

Canada allows six becquerels per litre of iodine-131 in drinking water—or 54 times more than the EPA. By the much higher Canadian ceiling, the rainwater in Burnaby was fine to drink.

At the B.C. Ministry of Health Services, spokeswoman Laura Neufeld referred questions about radiation monitoring to Health Canada. A Health Canada spokesperson, Stéphane Shank, didn’t return the Straight’s call. (Shank is the same Health Canada employee who did not return calls regarding a recent Straight story on nanoparticles.)

“It shows you these standards are not scientifically based,” Edwards said. “They’re arbitrary and really based on political considerations. We have a government strongly committed to the export of uranium and promotion of nuclear energy.”

And even if the radiation level in Burnaby didn’t hit the far higher Canadian ceiling, Edwards said, any amount of radiation can cause cancer and other illness. “To suggest that a certain level of radiation exposure is safe is untrue. It verges on misrepresentation. There is no evidence that there is any safe level of radiation exposure. It means you should operate as far below that level as you can,” he said.

Either way, without adequate monitoring, we may never know the impacts on Canadians.

From comments:

Ionizing radiation can break molecules, at a cellular level, causing unpredictable chemical reactions.

Think of vibrations breaking glass, that is what happens at a cellular level, in your body, from ionizing radiation.

Ionizing radiation is insidious, these large subatomic particles travel until they are stopped.

Your skin can easily stop them.

Once they are ingested, inhaled, or enter your body through a cut, their grotesque potent force cuts through your body like knife through butter, into the cells, blood or other organs, impacting other organs and leaving behind hideous, shocking damage.

A single alpha particle from Plutonium, Uranium, Americium or Radon can deliver a huge blast of radiation inside your body. This radiation energy can destroy your genetic material at a cellular level.

Once radionuclides are released into the environment they circulate and are carried with the winds until they become part of the soil and food chain. They land in our drinking water, are on the pastures that our livestock graze on, are on our vegetables and in our fruit trees.

This is particularly dangerous for humans because we are at the top of the food chain, where the higher concentrations of radionuclides are.

Most Common Diseases From Ionizing Radiation:

* leukemia
* lymphoma
* solid tumors or any organ
* bone & blood disorders
* lung cancer
* breast cancer
* endocrine disruption
* reproductive abnormalities
* accelerated aging process
* birth defects
* congenital malformations
* kidney, liver damage

These diseases and mutations don't stop with us. If ionizing radiation enters our genes, not only does it cause irreversible damage to this generation, but to future generations, as evidenced by children being born years after Chernobyl.

In Washington state, we've been detoxing and taking other precautions for ourselves, our animals and our soils since March 14.

Because of the 31 radioactive elements spewing for almost 5 months, these precautions will continue for the rest of our lives.

Are you waiting for government permission to protect yourself?

Another comment:

a few things to note.
1/ To Douglas Gray, the Hanford I know about is in south central Washington State and is the site of a huge nuclear waste and processing facility. It presents a danger to everyone in the area including southern BC. EPA radiation monitoring after Fukishima began at Richland Wa. next to Hanford on March 3 and ended March 31 after the levels went from 81 CPM(counts-per-minute) on the 30th to 277 CPM on the 31st.
2/ Health Canada operates(ed?) The Canadian Radiological Monitoring Network (CRMN) managed by the Radiation Surveillance and Health Assessment Division, Radiation Protection Bureau (RPB). Their online Monitoring Data stopped being posted for the only mainland BC station (Vancouver) three years ago or more.
3/ There is no safe level of radiation exposure. If the normal background is increased by 20% that will likely cause 20% more radiation induced cancers in the population exposed. The idea of safe limits comes from the kind of thinking that brought us pesticide regulation. Pesticides are tested for toxicity on a given animal and the mortality is expressed as an LD50 number. This disregards the long term effects, mutagenic and more subtle nervous system damage. So with radiation dose they look at deaths from radiation poisoning: an extreme effect caused by massive exposure. Ionizing radiation can cause cell damage at any level, it just becomes more likely the higher the exposure.
I have been monitoring background radiation in the BC interior since Fukishima (with a couple of breaks) and you can see my data at http://lumbywatch.ca

Fukushima Illustrates Need for Nuclear Policy

2011-08-05T04:30:00.000-04:00

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Tamar Cerafici of the Cerafici Law Firm says that the nuclear crisis in Japan highlights the need for an international response with clear, measured leadership from the United States. That leadership is hollow unless the United States adopts a coherent energy policy paying more than a begrudging acceptance of nuclear power....

The last four weeks' events at the Fuskushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant have distilled into two streams of necessary information: the first, technological and engineering response, are not reviewed in this note. Commentary and news feeds have addressed the issues admirably. The second, international legal and policy response, became important with French President Sarkozy's visit to Japan just over a week ago.

President Sarkozy, currently the Group of 20 (G20) chairman, called for "international safety norms," and requested a meeting in May to fix new norms in the wake of the crisis. Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan agreed. Their comments illustrate a sort of disconnect in the way nuclear safety is managed globally. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) makes safety recommendations and manages international nuclear diplomacy, but it has no enforcement power. Each country has sovereign regulations, and separate enforcement powers. In Japan, Sarkozy asserted that such parochialism cannot support the continued global need for nuclear energy. In calling for an international review of the causes, response, and long term effects of the Fukushima crisis, Sarkozy is acknowledging that nuclear energy policy has global reach.

In contrast, Gregory B. Jaczko, Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) and the State Department, did no favors to anyone during the first week of the crisis when they overreacted anddeclared a 50-mile exclusion, or "no-go," zone for Americans near the Dai-ichi facility. Chairman Jaczko illustrated the parochialism inherent in global energy policy, particularly in the face of Japan's exclusion zone of 12 miles. He also told Congress that there were "serious problems" cooling the reactors and that he believed workers would be exposed to potentially lethal doses of radiation. His statements, and a good dose of hyperbole from media outlets, helped trigger a run on potassium iodine tablets on the west coast. It doesn't help for the Chairman of this nation's nuclear regulatory body to yell "fire" while the President and the Secretary of Energy are urging calm.

We have yet to see a coordinated administration reaction to the events playing out at the Fukushima plant. The United States must produce a measured, careful response to the international issues emerging from Japan's handling of the Dai-ichi accident and subsequent cleanup. Long term, this response must include a coherent national energy policy. Currently, the United States does not have one. Instead we rely on a market-based mix of fossil fuels (69%), renewable energy (11%), and nuclear energy (20%). This mix is the result of long term industrial reliance on cheap fossil fuel and the difficulty of financing nuclear plants with passive designs that can function under the same conditions that destroyed the Dai-ichi plant. However, as the energy needs of the country increase, a more consistent mix is necessary.

To highlight this critical policy need, James Conca and Judith Wright, in a report funded by the Progressive Policy Institute, suggest a starting point for this national energy plan: one-third fossil, one-third nuclear, and one-third renewable energy. Conca and Wright suggest we follow French, Japanese, and Korean models and make new and significant government and private investments in nuclear energy. The United States is already the largest global consumer of nuclear energy. With 104 operating plants, use of nuclear power produces 73 percent of non-carbon electricity in the country. Lack of resources and political will have hampered any effort to scale up the use of nuclear. Even if policy makers wanted to dedicate more resources to nuclear energy development, public misconceptions about nuclear energy and the viability of renewable energy have limited the country's move to a post-carbon economy.

The events at the Dai-ichi plant have been a public policy nightmare here because the United States lacks a consistent energy policy that includes something more than a begrudging reliance on nuclear power. This means the United States needs to overhaul a regulatory procedure that is rife with expensive uncertainties, develop a coherently communicated energy policy, and educate generations of users about the differences between nuclear bombs and nuclear energy. The administration should actively support President Sarkozy's call for an international analysis of nuclear safety protocols. The nuclear industry can also play a part by actively participating in the nuclear debate. Science doesn't always win an emotional debate, and the industry has for the most part kept its mouth shut and tried to let science evangelize for it. A coherent, open discussion of the situation at Dai-ichi and the status of nuclear plants in the United States would go a long way to limit the visceral reaction from much of the general public.

(Author's note: Readers seeking more technical information may review Murray E. Miles's excellent summary of the Fukushima accident, reported by the equally excellent Rod Adams here. It's highly readable and devoid of any pro or con rhetoric.)

Tamar Cerafici is a former affiliate professor of environmental law who currently focuses her legal practice on exploring the environmental and policy implications of developing new nuclear plants. She is the owner of The Cerafici Law Firm.

Suggested Citation: Tamar J. Cerafici, The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Illustrates the Need for an Energy Policy in the United States, JURIST - Forum, April 10, 2011, ttp://jurist.org/forum/2011/04/Fukushima-illustrates-need-for-policy.php.

April 10, 2011

Japan lawmakers approve Fukushima victim compensation plan

2011-08-05T04:27:00.000-04:00

Julia Zebley at 12:36 PM ET

[JURIST] The National Diet of Japan [official database], the nation's bicameral legislature,voted [bill materials, in Japanese] on Wednesday to compensate those adversely affected by the recent Fukushima [IAEA backgrounder] nuclear power plant meltdown. The law will create a fund that could start dispensing money to victims as early as August 10. Although the government has initially agreed to contribute two trillion yen (USD $25.9 billion), damages are expected to run much higher than that. The bill will also financially support the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) [corporate website], maker of the defective reactors, to prevent the utility from dissolving. However, TEPCO must first submit a comprehensive restructuring plan as well as a proposal for allocation of the funds to victims. There is also a bill under consideration that would obligate the government to clear radioactive debris [Japan Times report]. On Friday, the Japanese government officially shifted its energy policy [Japan Times report] away from nuclear energy.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011 is considered one of the biggest man-made environmental disasters of all time and the largest nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. Following the 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, three Fukushima reactors experienced full meltdowns, while the other three malfunctioned in various other ways. Due to the tsunami, flood waters swept in and out of the building, becoming irradiated and affecting the surrounding area. Japan has been criticized for its handling of the crisis, and international reception to nuclear energy has fallen sharply since the incident. In a Forum op-ed, Fukushima Illustrates Need for Nuclear Policy [JURIST op-ed], Tamar Cerafici of the Cerafici Law Firm discussed how the Fukushima disaster should guide US policy.

The Great Hiroshima Cover-up: How the U.S. Hid Shocking Historic Footage for Decades

2011-08-02T20:52:00.000-04:00

Greg Mitchell

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 66 years ago this week, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included vivid color footage shot by U.S. military crews and black-and-white Japanese newsreel film.

The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the shocking U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. While the suppression of nuclear truths stretched over decades, Hiroshima sank into "a hole in human history," as the writer Mary McCarthy observed. The U.S. engaged in a costly and dangerous nuclear arms race. Thousands of nuclear warheads remain in the world, often under loose control; the U.S. retains its "first-strike" nuclear policy; and much of the world is partly or largely dependent on nuclear power plants, which pose their own hazards.

Our nuclear entrapment continues to this day--you might call it "From Hiroshima to Fukushima."

The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Md., in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF.

When that footage finally emerged, I spoke with and corresponded with the man at the center of this drama: Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military film-makers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades. I also interviewed one of his key assistants, Herbert Sussan (later a pioneering TV director and producer) and some of the Japanese survivors they filmed in early 1946.

Now I've written a book and e-book about this, titled Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made. You can view some of the suppressed footage here or below.

"I always had the sense," Dan McGovern told me, "that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force -- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child....They didn't want the general public to know what their weapons had done -- at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn't want the material out because...we were sorry for our sins."

Sussan, meanwhile, struggled for years to get some of the American footage aired on national TV, taking his request as high as President Truman, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward R. Murrow, to no avail.

The Japanese Newsreel Footage
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 civilians instantly and perhaps 50,000 more in the days and months to follow. Three days later, it exploded another atomic bomb over Nagasaki, slightly off target, killing 40,000 immediately and dooming tens of thousands of others. Within days, Japan had surrendered, and the U.S. readied plans for occupying the defeated country -- and documenting the first atomic catastrophe.

But the Japanese also wanted to study it. Within days of the second atomic attack, officials at the Tokyo-based newsreel company Nippon Eigasha discussed shooting film in the two stricken cities. In early September, just after the Japanese surrender, and as the American occupation began, director Sueo Ito set off for Nagasaki. There his crew filmed the utter destruction near ground zero and scenes in hospitals of the badly burned and those suffering from the lingering effects of radiation.

On Sept. 15, another crew headed for Hiroshima. When the first rushes came back to Toyko, Akira Iwasaki, the chief producer, felt "every frame burned into my brain," he later said.

At this point, the American public knew little about conditions in the atomic cities beyond Japanese assertions that a mysterious affliction was attacking many of those who survived the initial blasts (claims that were largely taken to be propaganda). Newspaper photographs of victims were non-existent, or censored. Life magazine would later observe that for years "the world...knew only the physical facts of atomic destruction."

Tens of thousands of American GIs occupied the two cities. Because of the alleged absence of residual radiation, no one was urged to take precautions.

Then, on October 24, 1945, a Japanese cameraman in Nagasaki was ordered to stop shooting by an American military policeman. His film, and then the rest of the 26,000 feet of Nippon Eisasha footage, was confiscated by the U.S. General Headquarters (GHQ). An order soon arrived banning all further filming. It was at this point that Lt. Daniel McGovern took charge.

Shooting the U.S. Military Footage
In early September, 1945, less than a month after the two bombs fell, Lt. McGovern -- who as a member of Hollywood's famed First Motion Picture Unit shot some of the footage for William Wyler's "Memphis Belle" -- had become one of the first Americans to arrive in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was a director with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, organized by the Army the previous November to study the effects of the air campaign against Germany, and now Japan.

As he made plans to shoot the official American record, McGovern learned about the seizure of the Japanese footage. He felt it would be a waste to not take advantage of the newsreel footage, noting in a letter to his superiors that "the conditions under which it was taken will not be duplicated, until another atomic bomb is released under combat conditions." McGovern proposed hiring some of the Japanese crew to edit and "caption" the material, so it would have "scientific value." He took charge of this effort in early January 1946, even as the Japanese feared that, when they were done, they would never see even a scrap of their film again.

At the same time, McGovern was ordered by General Douglas MacArthur on January 1, 1946 to document the results of the U.S. air campaign in more than 20 Japanese cities. His crew would shoot exclusively on color film, Kodachrome and Technicolor, rarely used at the time even in Hollywood. McGovern assembled a crew of eleven, including two civilians. Third in command was a young lieutenant from New York named Herbert Sussan.

The unit left Tokyo in a specially outfitted train, and made it to Nagasaki. "Nothing and no one had prepared me for the devastation I met there," Sussan later told me. "We were the only people with adequate ability and equipment to make a record of this holocaust...I felt that if we did not capture this horror on film, no one would ever really understand the dimensions of what had happened. At that time people back home had not seen anything but black and white pictures of blasted buildings or a mushroom cloud."

Along with the rest of McGovern's crew, Sussan documented the physical effects of the bomb, including the ghostly shadows of vaporized civilians burned into walls; and, most chillingly, dozens of people in hospitals who had survived (at least momentarily) and were asked to display their burns, scars, and other lingering effects for the camera as a warning to the world. At the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima, a Japanese physician traced the hideous, bright red scars that covered several of the patients -- and then took off his white doctor's shirt and displayed his own burns and cuts.

After sticking a camera on a rail car and building their own tracks through the ruins, the Americans filmed hair-raising tracking shots that could have been lifted right from a Hollywood movie. Their chief cameramen was a Japanese man, Harry Mimura, who in 1943 had shot Sanshiro Sugata--the first feature film by a then-unknown Japanese director named Akira Kurosawa.

The Suppression Begins
While all this was going on, the Japanese newsreel team was completing its work of editing and labeling all their black and white footage into a rough cut of just under three hours. At this point, several members of Japanese team took the courageous step of ordering from the lab a duplicate of the footage they had shot before the Americans took over the project--and hiding it in a ceiling at the lab. Then they handed over their footage.

The following month, McGovern was abruptly ordered to return to the U.S. He hauled the 90,000 feet of color footage, on dozens of reels in huge footlockers, to the Pentagon and turned it over to General Orvil Anderson. Locked up and declared top secret, it did not see the light of day for more than 30 years.

McGovern would be charged with watching over it. Sussan would become obsessed with finding it and getting it aired.

Fearful that his film might get "buried," McGovern stayed on at the Pentagon as an aide to Gen. Anderson, who was fascinated by the footage and had no qualms about showing it to the American people. "He was that kind of man, he didn't give a damn what people thought," McGovern told me. "He just wanted the story told."

In an article in his hometown Buffalo Evening News, McGovern said that he hoped that "this epic will be made available to the American public." He planned to call the edited movie Japan in Defeat.

Once they eyeballed the footage, however, most of the top brass didn't want it widely shown and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was also opposed, according to McGovern. It nixed a Warner Brothers feature film project based on the footage that Anderson had negotiated, while paying another studio about $80,000 to help make four training films.

In a March 3, 1947 memo, Francis E. Rundell, a major in the Air Corps, explained that the film would be classified "secret." This was determined "after study of subject material, especially concerning footage taken at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is believed that the information contained in the films should be safeguarded until cleared by the Atomic Energy Commission." After the training films were completed, the status would be raised to "Top Secret" pending final classification by the AEC.

The color footage was shipped to the Wright-Patterson base in Ohio. McGovern went along after being told to put an I.D. number on the film "and not let anyone touch it -- and that's the way it stayed," as he put it. After cataloging it, he placed it in a vault in the top secret area.

"Dan McGovern stayed with the film all the time," Sussan later said. "He told me they could not release the film [because] what it showed was too horrible."

Sussan wrote a letter to President Truman, suggesting that a film based on the footage "would vividly and clearly reveal the implications and effects of the weapons that confront us at this serious moment in our history." A reply from a Truman aide threw cold water on that idea, saying such a film would lack "wide public appeal." (He also censored the first Hollywood movie about the bomb, as I wrote here last week.)

McGovern, meanwhile, continued to "babysit" the film, now at Norton Air Force base in California. "It was never out of my control," he said later, but he couldn't make a film out of it any more than Sussan could (but unlike Herb, he at least knew where it was).

The Japanese Footage Emerges
At the same time, McGovern was looking after the Japanese footage. The Japanese government repeatedly asked the U.S. for the full footage of what was known in that country as "the film of illusion," to no avail.

Despite rising nuclear fears in the 1960s, before and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, few in the U.S. challenged the consensus view that dropping the bomb on two Japanese cities was necessary. The United States maintained its "first-use" nuclear policy: Under certain circumstances it would strike first with the bomb and ask questions later. In other words, there was no real taboo against using the bomb. This notion of acceptability had started with Hiroshima. A firm line against using nuclear weapons had been drawn -- in the sand. The U.S., in fact, had threatened to use nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on other occasions.

On Sept. 12, 1967, the Air Force transferred the Japanese footage to the National Archives Audio Visual Branch in Washington, with the film "not to be released without approval of DOD (Department of Defense)."

Then, one morning in the summer of 1968, Erik Barnouw, author of landmark histories of film and broadcasting, opened his mail to discover a clipping from a Tokyo newspaper sent by a friend. It indicated that the U.S. had finally shipped to Japan a copy of black and white newsreel footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese had negotiated with the State Department for its return.
From the Pentagon, Barnouw learned in 1968 that the original nitrate film had been quietly turned over to the National Archives, so he went to take a look.

Attempting to create a subtle, quiet, even poetic, black and white film, he and his associates cut it from 160 to 16 minutes, with a montage of human effects clustered near the end for impact. "Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945" proved to be a sketchy but quite moving document of the aftermath of the bombing, captured in grainy but often startling black and white images: shadows of objects or people burned into walls, ruins of schools, miles of razed landscape viewed from the roof of a building.

In the weeks ahead, however, none of the (then) three TV networks expressed interest in airing it. "Only NBC thought it might use the film," Barnouw later wrote, "if it could find a 'news hook.' We dared not speculate what kind of event this might call for." But then an article appeared in Parademagazine, and an editorial in the Boston Globe blasted the networks, saying that everyone in the country should see this film:

This at last pushed public television into the void. What was then called National Educational Television (NET) agreed to show the documentary on August 3, 1970, to coincide with the 25th anniversary of dropping the bomb.

The American Footage Comes Out
About a decade later, by pure chance, Herb Sussan would spark the emergence of the American footage, ending its decades in the dark.

In the mid-1970s, Japanese antinuclear activists, led by a Tokyo teacher named Tsutomu Iwakura, discovered that few pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombings existed in their country. Many had been seized by the U.S. military after the war, they learned, and taken out of Japan. The Japanese had as little visual exposure to the true effects of the bomb as most Americans. Activists managed to track down hundreds of pictures in archives and private collections and published them in a popular book. In 1979 they mounted an exhibit at the United Nations in New York.

There, by chance, Iwakura met Sussan, who told him about the U.S. military footage.

Iwakura made a few calls and found that the color footage, recently declassified, might be at the National Archives. A trip to Washington, D.C. verified this. He found eighty reels of film. About one-fifth of the footage covered the atomic cities. According to a shot list, reel #11010 included, for example: "School, deaf and dumb, blast effect, damaged Commercial school demolished School, engineering, demolished.School, Shirayama elementary, demolished, blast effect Tenements, demolished."

The film had been quietly declassified a few years earlier, but no one in the outside world knew it. An archivist there told me at the time, "If no one knows about the film to ask for it, it's as closed as when it was classified."

Eventually 200,000 Japanese citizens contributed half a million dollars and Iwakura was able to buy the film. He then traveled around Japan filming survivors who had posed for Sussan and McGovern in 1946. Iwakura quickly completed a documentary called Prophecy and in late spring 1982 arranged for a New York premiere.

Later a small part of the McGovern/Sussan footage turned up for the first time in an American film, one of the sensations of the New York Film Festival, called Dark Circle. It's co-director, Chris Beaver, told me, "No wonder the government didn't want us to see it. I think they didn't want Americans to see themselves in that picture. It's one thing to know about that and another thing to see it."

Despite this exposure, not a single story had yet appeared in an American newspaper about the shooting of the footage, its suppression or release. And Sussan was now ill with a form of lymphoma doctors had found in soldiers exposed to radiation in atomic tests during the 1950s -- or in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Still, the question of precisely why the footage remained secret for so long lingered. But McGovern told me, "The main reason it was classified was because of the horror, the devastation," he said. "The medical effects were pretty gory. The attitude was: do not show any medical effects. Don't make people sick."

But who was behind this? "I always had the sense," McGovern answered, "that people in the AEC were sorry they had dropped the bomb. The Air Force -- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child. But the AEC, they were the ones that stopped it from coming out. They had power of God over everybody," he declared. "If it had anything to do with nukes, they had to see it. They were the ones who destroyed a lot of film and pictures of the first U.S. nuclear tests after the war."

As Dark Circle director Chris Beaver had said, "With the government trying to sell the public on a new civil defense program and Reagan arguing that a nuclear war is survivable, this footage could be awfully bad publicity."

Today
In the summer of 1984, I made my own pilgrimage to the atomic cities, to walk in the footsteps of Dan McGovern and Herb Sussan, and meet some of the people they filmed in 1946. (The month-long grant was arranged by the current mayor of Hiroshima, Tad Akiba.) By then, the McGovern/ Sussan footage had turned up in several new documentaries. On September 2, 1985, however, Herb Sussan passed away. His final request to his children: Would they scatter his ashes at ground zero in Hiroshima?

In the mid-1990s, researching Hiroshima in America, a book I would write with Robert Jay Lifton, I discovered the deeper context for suppression of the U.S. Army film: it was part of a broad effort to suppress a wide range of material related to the atomic bombings, including photographs, newspaper reports on radiation effects, information about the decision to drop the bomb, even a Hollywood movie.

Then, in 2003, as chief adviser to a documentary film, Original Child Bomb, I urged director Carey Schonegevel to draw on the atomic footage as much as possible. Original Child Bomb went on to debut at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, win the top Silverdocs award, and debut on the Sundance cable channel. After 60 years at least a small portion of that footage reached part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful form its creators intended.

Americans who saw were finally able to fully judge for themselves what McGovern and Sussan were trying to accomplish in shooting the film, why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race -- and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today. But only small parts of the movie have been used (see the video below), only a small number of Americans have seen any of it. A major documentary on the footage, and the suppression, should still be made.

Greg Mitchell write daily for The Nation site, and more on the new book Atomic Cover-Up can be found here. His email is: gmitchell@editorandpublisher.comAuthor and Blogger for The Nation

Stop the radiation!

Photos: Occupy movement around the U.S. | Seattle News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO News |

Chernobyl Level Radiation In Tokyo May Lead To Evacuations

Fukushima Japan TOTALLY OUT of CONTROL

Fukushima Japan TOTALLY OUT of CONTROL Mirrored from

ushima Japan TOTALLY OUT of CONTROL Mirrored from BUG BelieversUnderGround with thanks

Quake risk to reactors greater than thought

Who Are America’s Top 10 Gas Drillers?

The Story So Far

Latest Stories in this Project

Survs Surv it Issues: Nuclear Energy & Waste: Nuclear Energy Fact Sheet

Nuclear Energy Fact Sheetby Leslie Lai & Kristen Morrison

Introduction to Nuclear Energy for Civilian Purposes

1. How It Works – The Scientific Process Behind Nuclear Energy

2. How It Doesn’t Work – Risks and Dangers of Nuclear Energy

3. Sustainable Energy Alternatives

4. Additional Internet Resources on Nuclear Energy

Nebraskans say a Canadian oil pipeline poses unacceptable risks

From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Japan Set to Declare Wide Area Uninhabitable Due to Radiation

Fukushima: Pacific Ocean Radiation Over 3,000 Times Normal — Doctors Refusing To Treat Radiation Poisoning

Fukushima nuclear radiation is being detected in the Pacific Ocean at levels 3,000 times normals as doctors refuse to treat people for radiation poisoning.

'People Are Suffering from Radiophobia'

Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe

08/19/2011 Studying the Fukushima Aftermath

'People Are Suffering from Radiophobia'

Fukushima Now Radiating Everyone: ‘Unspeakable’ Reality ‘Will Impact All Of Humanity’

CBS 60 Minutes – Fukushima Now Radiating Everyone: ‘Unspeakable’ Reality ‘Will Impact All Of Humanity’

Australia’s CBS exposed the “unspeakable” realities of the Japanese catastrophe in its 60 Minutes program Sunday night during which leading nuclear scientist Dr. Michio Kaku said radiation from Fukushima will impact of all of humanity.

Quotes From Liz Hayes 60 Minutes Blog

Related Posts

Japan: Thyroid Radiation Exposure Found in Children Near Tepco Plant

Japan: Thyroid Radiation Exposure Found in Children Near Tepco Plant

Fukushima radiation alarms doctors

Xcel slapped over faulty equipment at Prairie Island

Xcel slapped over faulty equipment at Prairie Island

66 Years Ago: When Truman Opened the Nuclear Era With a Hiroshima Lie

Greg Mitchell

Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe brings big radiation spikes to B.C.

Fukushima Illustrates Need for Nuclear Policy

Japan lawmakers approve Fukushima victim compensation plan

The Great Hiroshima Cover-up: How the U.S. Hid Shocking Historic Footage for Decades

Greg Mitchell

Nuclear Energy Fact Sheet
by Leslie Lai & Kristen Morrison