General Electric reactors constructed in Japan and the US

Vivian Norris: Deadly Silence on Fukushima

Vivian Norris: Deadly Silence on Fukushima

I received the following email a few days ago from a Russian nuclear physicist friend who is an expert on the kinds of gases being released at Fukushima. Here is what he wrote:

About Japan: the problem is that the reactor uses "dirty" fuel. It is a combination of plutonium and uranium (MOX). I suspect that the old fuel rods have bean spread out due to the explosion and the surrounding area is contaminated with plutonium which means you can never return to this place again. It is like a new Tchernobyl. Personally, I am not surprised that the authority has not informed people about this.

I have been following the Fukushima story very closely since the earthquake and devastating tsunami. I have asked scientists I know, nuclear physicists and others about where they find real information. I have also watched as the news has virtually disappeared. There is something extremely disturbing going on, and having lived through the media blackout in France back in April and early May 1986, and speaking to doctors who are deeply concerned by the dramatic increase in cancers appearing at very young ages, it is obvious that information is being held back. We are still told not to eat mushrooms and truffles from parts of Europe, not wild boar and reindeer from Germany and Finland 25 years later.

A special thanks to people like European Representative Michele Rivasi, who has followed this issue since Chernobyl: Rivasi, a Green MEP and founder of France's Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity, told EurActiv that she was worried the tests would cover up nuclear risks and reinstate business as usual.

"It's very important to have scientists who are not already paid by the nuclear power industry," she said. "If they are the same people from Euratom and national authorities they use today, why would they say anything different to what they say all the time?"

One resource for information on Chernobyl deaths and cancers/illnesses was only just recently translated and can be found online: "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko, and Alexey Nesterenko.

Another very good report on Chernobyl is this one, which also outlines the disturbing relationship between WHO and the nuclear industry.

The best site I have found for up-to-date information by nuclear industry experts is here.

Arnie Gundersen was a high-level executive for years and analyzes the information he has been receiving in a calm and scientific way. His latest update is entitled, "Fukushima Groundwater Contamination Worst in Nuclear History." Gundersen is in touch with senior members of the Japanese nuclear establishment. What is highly disturbing is that the main reason Japan does not appear to be as bad a Chernobyl is that the wind was blowing out to sea and not for the most part towards land. But all this has done is spread the cancers out into the worldwide population as opposed to concentrating it all in Japan. It will be very difficult to tell, as it was in France, Scandinavia and other places, where the Chernobyl cloud traveled in the days following the disaster. I will summarize some of Gunderson's very disturbing and important information here:

1. There was a hydrogen explosion, and it was a detonation, not a deflagration -- in other words the fire burned up not burned down.

2. A frame-by-frame analysis shows a flame that confirms that the fuel pool is burning as a result of an explosion which started as a hydrogen explosion but that could not have lifted the fuel into the air so there must have been a violent explosion at the bottom of the fuel pool. But more data is needed.

3. Gunderson speaks about past criticalities in other nuclear reactors around the world, and I find it odd we are not hearing about these and how they can teach us about what is going on now at Fukushima.

4. Radioactive water is being pumped out and groundwater is contaminated, so there must be a leak or leaks, and this disaster is in no way contained. There will be contamination for a long time to come and this groundwater contamination is moving inland. One town is reporting radioactive sewage sludge from ground water or rainwater.

5. The Greenpeace ship Rainbow water has requested the Japanese government to test the waters near Japan, and Japan has refused this independent data request. The EPA has also shut down all inspection centers and is NOT inspecting fish. (Why the silence?)

Since Gunderson made this latest video, just a day or so ago new photo evidence seems to be showing burning and new fires taking place at Fukushima (from TBS JNN Japan):

Why is this not on the front page of every single newspaper in the world? Why are official agencies not measuring from many places around the world and reporting on what is going on in terms of contamination every single day since this disaster happened? Radioactivity has been being released now for almost two full months! Even small amounts when released continuously, and in fact especially continuous exposure to small amounts of radioactivity, can cause all kinds of increases in cancers.

One reason no one is reporting on this nor allowed to go inside the exclusion zone nor even measure the waters off of Japan is because of the following compiled by Makiko Segawa, a staff writer at the Shingetsu News Agency. She prepared this report from Fukushima and Tokyo for www.japanfocus.org:

Freelance journalists and foreign media are pursuing the facts, even going into the radiation exclusion zone. However, surprisingly, the Japan government continues to prevent freelance journalists and overseas media from gaining access to official press conferences at the prime minister's house and government.

Uesugi stated that since March 11th, the government has excluded all internet media and all foreign media from official press conferences on the "Emergency Situation." While foreign media have scrambled to gather information about the Fukushima Reactor, they have been denied access to the direct information provided by the government and one consequence of this is that "rumor-rife news has been broadcast overseas."

In fact, access has been limited in two ways. First, while Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio holds twice daily press conferences for representatives of the big Japanese media, registered representatives of freelance and internet media are limited to a single press conference per week. Second, in contrast to Japanese media who are briefed regularly by Edano and periodically by Prime Miniser Kan, foreign media are briefed exclusively by administrative staff.
Uesugi also notes that at TEPCO press conferences, which are now being held at company headquarters, foreign correspondents and Japanese freelancers regularly ask probing questions while mainstream journalists simply record and report company statements reiterating that the situation is basically under control and there is nothing to worry about. One reason for this, Uesugi suggests, is that TEPCO, a giant media sponsor, has an annual 20 billion yen advertising budget. "The media keeps defending the information from TEPCO!" "The Japanese media today is no different from the wartime propaganda media that kept repeating to the very end that 'Japan is winning the war against America,'" Uesugi exclaimed.
There is one particularly telling example of the media shielding TEPCO by suppressing information. This concerns "plutonium." According to Uesugi, after the reactor blew up on March 14, there was concern about the leakage of plutonium. However, astonishingly, until two weeks later when Uesugi asked, not a single media representative had raised the question of plutonium at TEPCO's press conferences.

On March 26, in response to Uesugi's query, TEPCO stated, "We do not measure the level of plutonium and do not even have a detector to scale it." Ironically, the next day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano announced that "plutonium was detected."

When TEPCO finally released data on radioactive plutonium on March 28, it stated that plutonium -238, -239, and -240 were found in the ground, but insisted that it posed no human risk. Since TEPCO provided no clarification of the meaning of the plutonium radiation findings, the mainstream press merely reported the presence of the radiation without assessment (link). Nippon Television on March 29 headlined its interview with Tokyo University Prof. Nakagawa Keiichi, a radiation specialist, "Plutonium from the power plant--No effect on neighbors."

On March 15, Uesugi criticized TEPCO for its closed attitude toward information on a TBS radio program. For this, he was immediately dismissed from his regular program. The scandal involving TEPCO's silencing of the media took an interesting turn two weeks later. At the time of the disaster on March 11, TEPCO Chairman Katsumata Tsunehisa was hosting dozens of mainstream media executives on a "study session" in China. When asked about this fact by freelance journalist Tanaka Ryusaku at a TEPCO press conference on March 30, Katsumata defended the practice.

"It is a fact that we traveled together to China," he said. "[TEPCO] did not pay all the expenses of the trip, but we paid more than they did. Certainly they are executives of the mass media, but they are all members of the study session."

When Tanaka requested the names of the media executives hosted by TEPCO in China, Katsumata retorted, "I cannot reveal their names since this is private information." But it is precisely such collusive relations between mainstream media, the government and TEPCO, that results in the censorship of information concerning nuclear problems.

Now the Japanese government has moved to crack down on independent reportage and criticism of the government's policies in the wake of the disaster by deciding what citizens may or may not talk about in public. A new project team has been created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, the National Police Agency, and METI to combat "rumors" deemed harmful to Japanese security in the wake of the Fukushima disaster."

We need to demonstrate and write to our representatives and demand that measuring be done around the world continuously. Fukushima's nuclear disaster is still going on. People need accurate information to protect themselves. Here is how after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Chernobyl doctors worked with those who had been contaminated to decontaminate them (Sources: Tatsuichiro Akizuki, M.D., Nagasaki 1945 (London: Quartet Books, 1981); Tatsuichiro Akizuki, "How We Survived Nagasaki," East West Journal, December 1980):

Macrobiotic Diet Prevents Radiation Sickness Among A-Bomb Survivors in Japan - In August, 1945, at the time of the atomic bombing of Japan, Tatsuichiro Akizuki, M.D., was director of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Francis's Hospital in Nagasaki. Most patients in the hospital, located one mile from the center of the blast, survived the initial effects of the bomb, but soon after came down with symptoms of radiation sickness from the fallout that had been released. Dr. Akizuki fed his staff and patients a strict macrobiotic diet of brown rice, miso soup, wakame and other sea vegetables, Hokkaido pumpkin, and sea salt and prohibited the consumption of sugar and sweets. As a result, he saved everyone in his hospital, while many other survivors in the city perished from radiation sickness.

I gave the cooks and staff strict orders that they should make unpolished whole-grain rice balls, adding some salt to them, prepare strong miso soup for each meal, and never use sugar. When they didn't follow my orders, I scolded them without mercy, 'Never take sugar. Sugar will destroy your blood!'...

This dietary method made it possible for me to remain alive and go on working vigorously as a doctor. The radioactivity may not have been a fatal dose, but thanks to this method, Brother Iwanaga, Reverend Noguchi, Chief Nurse Miss Murai, other staff members and in-patients, as well as myself, all kept on living on the lethal ashes of the bombed ruins. It was thanks to this food that all of us could work for people day after day, overcoming fatigue or symptoms of atomic disease and survive the disaster" free from severe symptoms of radioactivity.

People need answers, data and honest information to help them deal with what is going on. Media blackouts, propaganda and greedy self-interested industries, of any kind, who allow human beings' health to be affected, and deaths to occur, must be stopped now. That senior TEPCO man and the leading nuclear academic in Japan did not break down crying and resign their positions because all was well at Fukushima. Think about it world, and act now before it is too late.

Breast Cancer , Thyroid Cancer , Nuclear Physicist , Arnie Gunderson , Chernobyl , Fukushima , Greenpeace , Macrobiotic , Media Blackout , Michele Rivasi , Mox , Nagasaki , Nuclear , Propaganda , Radioactivity , Tepco , Uranium , Www.Fairewinds.Com , World News

Resistance from Regulators - Nuclear Stress Tests May Be Watered Down

DPA

The Marcoule nuclear power plant in Chusclan, France: The governments in London and Paris are said to be resisting moves to introduce terror and cyber attack stress tests on atomic energy sites.

In the wake of Fukushima, EU officials pledged to create stress tests for nuclear power plants that would evaluate the threat posed by natural disasters, terrorism, cyberwar and human error. Now a major German newspaper is reporting that regulators are unwilling to accept stricter scrutiny and the plans are likely to get watered down.

After Japan's nuclear disaster at Fukushima, the European Union announced with great fanfare that it would introduce stress tests for Europe's nuclear power plants to help ensure that a similar catastrophe could not happpen here. It appears, however, that the final plans will be far less ambitious than originally envisioned.

Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper is reporting that the Western European Nuclear Regulators' Association has completed its proposal for the tests. Under the final plan, however, the plants would only be required to undergo stress test inspections for dangers presented by natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis or extreme fluctuations in weather.

At the end of March, leaders of the 27 EU member states agreed at a summit that inspection measures at the 146 nuclear plants within the bloc would be stepped up to include additional accident scenarios. Additional tests would be conducted to consider electricity supplies like those that failed at Fukushima, cooling systems and additional aspects like terrorist attacks, human error or the plants' ability to function safely during unexpected emergency situations. In an interview with SPIEGEL in April, European Union Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger of Germany said: "We will also run simulations of a terrorist attack with an airplane and a cyber attack on the computer system."

'The Question Is Open'

But Western European nuclear regulators are now staunchly rejecting those calls, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in its Wednesday edition. The regulators reportedly stated in an internal paper that they would only agree to conduct stress tests involving natural disaster scenarios -- and not terrorist strikes or other manmade situations. Instead, they would agree to compose reports on potential threats that would be submitted to the European Commission in Brussels. Neither would independent nuclear experts be given access to the plants under the plan.

European energy ministers discussed the issue during an informal meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Gödöllö, Hungary. At the end of the meeting, Hungary, which currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU, issued a statement saying that the stress tests would begin in June.

In its report, the Süddeutsche Zeitung cited sources indicating that the ministers appear likely to agree to the regulators' plan, and that the nuclear plants would only be tested for possible natural disasters. Countries that want more stringent tests could do so voluntarily, the newspaper quoted a source close to Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger as saying. On Tuesday, Oettinger said publicly that "the question is open" as to whether stricter stress test measures would be included, admitting there were differences between the 27 member states.

European Commission sources told the newspaper that France and Britain have led the efforts to oppose more stringent stress tests. With France's 59 plants and Britain's 19, the two operate the largest number of nuclear power plants of any countries in Europe. Government officials in Paris and London have already stated that they plan to rely more heavily on nuclear power in the future despite the Fukushima disaster. Officials in London also stated they would not publish the results of the stress tests, which are expected to be completed by December.

The European Commission still feels that even the watered-down plan is better than the status quo. Even under the more limited plan, officials in Brussels will still get access for the first time to construction plans for plants and they would also be provided with a much better general overview of all European atomic power facilities. EU member states will also be required to disclose the conditions stipulated during the permit approval process for construction and operation. Officials described the development as "major progress." After a few more rounds of consultations, a final plan is expected to be introduced on May 12 in Brussels.

Speaking on Tuesday, International Energy Agency Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka told reporters that some older nuclear power plants in the EU may be forced to close earlier than planned as a result of the stress tests.

Efforts to water down plans for more stringent stress tests have sparked criticism in Germany. "We need to test all disaster scenarios, regardless whether they are caused by man or nature," Angelika Niebler, a German member of the European Parliament with Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union party, told the Süddeutsche. Rebecca Harms, who chairs the party group in the European Parliament for the Greens, spoke of a "dangerous lowering" of expectations in the plans. She said Energy Commissioner Oettinger had broken his pledge to make European nuclear power plants as safe as possible and to develop new, uniform standards.

Concerns about Energy Costs

At the same time, a fresh debate has broken out in Germany over higher prices for electricity in the country. After Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reversed her government's decision, taken last year, to delay the nuclear phase-out -- which was passed by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in his government with the Greens -- and extend plant lifespans. In March, Merkel shut down Germany's oldest plants and placed a three-month moratorium on the lifespan extensions.

Now German companies from energy-intensive industrial sectors have rung the alarm bell, warning that energy prices could soon skyrocket.

"We already have the highest electricity prices in Europe," Kurt Bock, who will become CEO of chemical maker BASF on Friday, told reporters this week. "Our demand is very clear: We need affordable energy prices in Germany." He also said that energy supply must be guaranteed, without any shortfalls, 24 hours a day. Bock questioned whether it would be possible to ensure supplies and meet climate protection targets for reducing CO2 emissions. "I don't see any way that we can reconcile these two points with an expedited phase-out" of nuclear power, he said.

However, the question of whether a nuclear withdrawal will automatically lead to an increase in prices is disputed. "We can phase out nuclear energy faster without having an irresponsible rise in energy prices," former United Nations environment chief Klaus Töpfer, who is heading Germany's so-called "Ethics Commission" to study the future of nuclear power, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper. He said it would also be possible to do so without putting jobs at risk.

With his statements, Töpfer distanced himself from Johannes Teyssen, who heads the major German power utility E.on. The executive, whose company operates nuclear power plants, had recently warned that Germany would only be able to phase out nuclear energy by importing atomic power and fossil fuel-generated electricity from other countries.

Töpfer said: "The fact that the head of a very large company that operate nuclear power plants is representing a position like that isn't surprising. But I don't think it is true."

dsl -- with wires

TEPCO: Seabed radiation 100-1,000 times normal level

Tokyo - Radiation readings from the Pacific seabed off Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have climbed to between 100 to 1,000 times the normal level, the plant operator said Tuesday.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said that high levels of radioactivity were detected in samples taken Friday from the seabed, in places 20-30 metres deep, Kyodo news agency reported.
The plant was damaged by a magnitude-9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami on March 11 and has been leaking radioactive material ever since.
A monitoring system at the Fukushima plant failed in the power outage that took out the plant's cooling systems after the March disaster, depriving authorities of vital information to map radiation contamination, Kyodo reported Tuesday.

The loss of the data feed from the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) probably delayed the evacuation order around the plant, about 250 kilometres north-east of Tokyo, the report said.
The government was criticized last week for not mapping the potential contamination of the area fast enough, and when it started to do so as late as April, not releasing the information to the public.
About 5,000 data sets were released Tuesday on the website of the Nuclear Safety Commission, mapping the spread of contamination at hourly intervals from early April.
The failure of the ERSS and another impact assessment system, which cost 28 billion yen (345 million dollars) to install and maintain, has raised questions about the disaster readiness of Japan's nuclear sector.
Meanwhile, shareholders of Japan's five electric power companies urged them to close their atomic power stations in the wake of the nuclear crisis.
Some 400 TEPCO shareholders submitted official documents in support of the proposal, public broadcaster NHK reported.
The report did not say whether the petitioners were among TEPCO's approximately 4,500 institutional shareholders, or its more than 596,000 private investors.
Stockholders of at least four other major utilities have made similar proposals, NHK said. The concerned investors said the risks of nuclear power generation were too big for a single company to handle. TEPCO has also been asked by its shareholders to stop investing in a fuel reprocessing plant northern Japan, Jiji Press reported.

America’s Nuclear Nightmare: Rolling Stone magazine

America’s Nuclear Nightmare

The U.S. has 31 reactors just like Japan’s — but regulators are ignoring the risks and boosting industry profits

The Davis-Besse nuclear generating station in Ohio, 

where a football-size hole overlooked by NRC 

inspectors nearly caused a catastrophe in 2002

Energy Nuclear via the NRC

By Jeff Goodell

April 27, 2011 9:00 AM ET

The meltdown in Japan couldn't have happened at a worse time for the industry. In recent years, nuclear power has been hyped as the only energy source that could replace coal quickly enough to slow the pace of global warming. Some 60 new nukes are currently in the works worldwide, prompting the industry to boast of a "nuclear renaissance." In his 2012 budget, President Obama included $54 billion in federal loan guarantees for new reactors — far more than the $18 billion available for renewable energy.

Without such taxpayer support, no new reactors would ever be built. Since the Manhattan Project was created to develop the atomic bomb back in the 1940s, the dream of a nuclear future has been fueled almost entirely by Big Government. America's current fleet of reactors exists only because Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, limiting the liability of nuclear plant operators in case of disaster. And even with taxpayers assuming most of the risk, Wall Street still won't finance nuclear reactors without direct federal assistance, in part because construction costs are so high (up to $20 billion per plant) and in part because nukes are the only energy investment that can be rendered worthless in a matter of hours. "In a free market, where real risks and costs are accounted for, nuclear power doesn't exist," says Amory Lovins, a leading energy expert at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Nuclear plants "are a creation of government policy and intervention."

They are also a creation of lobbying and campaign contributions. Over the past decade, the nuclear industry has contributed more than $4.6 million to members of Congress — and last year alone, it spent $1.7 million on federal lobbying. Given the generous flow of nuclear money, the NRC is essentially rigged to operate in the industry's favor. The agency has plenty of skilled engineers and scientists at the staff level, but the five commissioners who oversee it often have close ties to the industry they are supposed to regulate. "They are vetted by the industry," says Robert Alvarez, a former senior policy adviser at the Energy Department. "It's the typical revolving-door story — many are coming in or out of jobs with the nuclear power industry. You don't get a lot of skeptics appointed to this job."

Jeffrey Merrifield, a former NRC commissioner who left the agency in 2007, is a case in point. When Merrifield was ready to exit public service, he simply called up the CEO of Exelon, the country's largest nuclear operator, and asked him for a job recommendation. Given his friends in high places, he wound up taking a top job at the Shaw Group, a construction firm that builds nuclear reactors — and he's done his best to return the favor. During the Fukushima disaster, Merrifield appeared on Fox News, as well as in videos for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying group. In one video — titled "Former NRC Commissioner Confident That Building of New U.S. Nuclear Plants Should Continue" — Merrifield reassures viewers that the meltdown in Japan is no big deal. "We should continue to move forward with building those new plants," he says, "because it's the right thing for our nation and it's the right thing for our future."

Such cozy relationships between regulators and the industry are nothing new. The NRC and the utilities it oversees have engaged in an unholy alliance since 1974, when the agency rose from the ashes of the old Atomic Energy Commission, whose mandate was to promote nuclear power. "For political reasons, the U.S. wanted to show something good could come out of splitting the atom," says Robert Duffy, a political scientist at Colorado State University who has written widely about the history of nuclear power. "There was great pressure on the industry to get nuclear plants built quickly." With no effective oversight by the government, the industry repeatedly cut corners on the design and construction of reactors. At the Diablo Canyon plant in California, engineers actually installed vital cooling pipes backward, only to have to tear them out and reinstall them.

But even the lax oversight provided by the NRC was more than the industry could bear. In 1996, in one of the most aggressive enforcement moves in the agency's history, the NRC launched an investigation into design flaws at a host of reactors and handed out significant fines. When the industry complained to Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, a powerful nuclear ally, he confronted the head of the NRC in his office and threatened to cut its funding by a third unless the agency backed off. "So the NRC folded their tent and went away," says Lochbaum. "And they've been away pretty much ever since."

The Japanese disaster should have been a wake-up call for boosters of nuclear power. America has 31 aging reactors just like Fukushima, and it wouldn't take an earthquake or tsunami to push many of them to the brink of meltdown. A natural disaster may have triggered the crisis in Japan, but the real problem was that the plant lost power and was unable to keep its cooling systems running — a condition known as "station blackout." At U.S. reactors, power failures have been caused by culprits as mundane as squirrels playing on power lines. In the event of a blackout, operators have only a few hours to restore power before a meltdown begins. All nukes are equipped with backup diesel generators, as well as batteries. But at Fukushima, the diesel generators were swamped by floodwaters, and the batteries lasted a mere eight hours — not nearly long enough to get power restored and avert catastrophe. NRC standards do virtually nothing to prevent such a crisis here at home. Only 11 of America's nuclear reactors have batteries designed to supply power for up to eight hours, while the other 93 have batteries that last half that long.

And that's just the beginning of the danger. Aging reactors are a gold mine for the power companies that own them. Nuclear plants are expensive to build but cheap to operate, meaning the longer they run, the more profitable they become. The NRC has done its part to boost profitability by allowing companies to "uprate" old nukes — modifying them to run harder — without requiring additional safety improvements. Vermont Yankee, for example, was permitted to boost its output by 20 percent, eroding the reactor's ability to cool itself in the event of an emergency. The NRC's own advisory committee on reactor safety was vehemently opposed to allowing such modifications, but the agency ultimately allowed the industry to trade safety for profit. "The NRC put millions of Americans at elevated risk," says Lochbaum.

 FOR THE REST, Push the link.  This should have been written YEARS ago !

Nuclear energy needs handouts, can’t cut it in free market

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Russ Wellen 

 

Americans who favor it claim that nuclear energy makes us less dependent on Middle-Eastern oil with its attendant price spikes (those that aren’t a product of speculation, that is). But nuclear-energy plants don’t do much to ease the national debt. As Jeff Goodell reports in his Rolling Stone piece America’s Nuclear Nightmare (emphasis added)

Since the Manhattan Project was created to develop the atomic bomb back in the 1940s, the dream of a nuclear future has been fueled almost entirely by Big Government. America’s current fleet of reactors exists only because Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, limiting the liability of nuclear plant operators in case of disaster. And even with taxpayers assuming most of the risk, Wall Street still won’t finance nuclear reactors without direct federal assistance, in part because construction costs are so high (up to $20 billion per plant) and in part because nukes are the only energy investment that can be rendered worthless in a matter of hours. “In a free market, where real risks and costs are accounted for, nuclear power doesn’t exist,” says Amory Lovins, a leading energy expert at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Nuclear plants “are a creation of government policy and intervention.”

Goodell also points out that without such taxpayer supports as the $54 billion President Obama included in his 2012 budget “in federal loan guarantees for [them] no new reactors would ever be built.”

In other words, nuclear energy is just another industry that wouldn’t exist were it not for the kindness of the government. In fact, it’s not that different from a New Deal WPA project. Of course, once they’re up and running, writes Goodell, nuclear-power plants are “cheap to operate, meaning the longer they run, the more profitable they become.” In other words, the public helps build nuclear power plants and assumes the risk while the industry reaps the profits. Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, banks.

Related posts (automated):

1. In the end, Fukushima a gift to the nuclear energy industry?
2. NRG Energy files the first nuclear power building permit since 1978
3. The House energy bill – two steps forward, two steps backward
4. Why don’t the free marketeers of education believe in, you know, the free market?
5. Earth to Bush: “Goals aren’t enough and never will be” – An introduction to the tactics of smart energy policy

Atmospheric radiation leak underestimated

Atmospheric radiation leak underestimated

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Data released by the government indicates radioactive material was leaking into the atmosphere from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in early April in greater quantities than previously estimated.

Radioactive material was being released into the atmosphere from the plant at an estimated rate of 154 terabecquerels per day as of April 5, according to data released by the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission on Saturday.

The NSC previously estimated radiation leakage on April 5 at "less than 1 terabecquerel per hour."

Iodine-131 and cesium-137 were released into the atmosphere that day at the estimated rates of 0.69 terabecquerel per hour and 0.14 terabecquerel per hour, respectively, the NSC said.

Emissions are converted into iodine-131 equivalents for assessment on the international nuclear event scale (INES), to arrive at the total 154 terabecquerels per day, the nuclear safety watchdog said.

One terabecquerel equals 1 trillion becquerels.

On April 17, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said in its plan for stabilization of the crippled reactors it would not start to get radiation leakage under control until the plan's fourth month of implementation.

This would mean 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances would be released into the atmosphere from the plant during the coming three months, according to simple calculations based on the estimated emission rate as of April 5.

Emissions in that three-month period alone would therefore exceed the level necessary for a Level 6 severity rating on the INES, the globally accepted measure for evaluating nuclear accidents.

The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima plant has been rated a maximum Level 7 on the scale, which was established by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1992.

The total amount of radioactive material discharged from the plant from March 11 to early April was estimated between 370,000 and 630,000 terabecquerels, according to government sources.

The commission, however, said the figures were estimates only, "with a considerable margin of error." Radiation levels around the six-reactor complex have been slowly falling, it said.

(Apr. 25, 2011)

RadiationNetwork.com

Welcome to RadiationNetwork.com, home of the National Radiation Map, depicting environmental radiation levels across the USA, updated in real time every minute.  This is the first web site where the average citizen (or anyone in the world) can see what radiation levels are anywhere in the USA at any time (see Disclaimer below).

                        Nuclear Site                 Alert Level = 100 CPM
How the Map Works:
A growing number of Radiation Monitoring Stations across the country (and world), using various models of Geiger Counters, upload their Radiation Count data in real time to their computer using a Data Cable, and then over the Internet to this web site, all of this accomplished through GeigerGraph for Networks software.  This system is completely automated - there is no manual posting of data required.
How to Read the Map:
Referring to the Map Legend at the bottom left corner of the map, locate Monitoring Stations around the country that are contributing radiation data to this map as you read this, and watch the numbers on those monitoring stations update as frequently as every minute (your browser will automatically refresh).  The numbers represent radiation Counts per Minute, abbreviated CPM, and under normal conditions, quantify the level of background radiation, i.e. environmental radiation from outer space as well as from the earth's crust and air.  Depending on your location, your elevation or altitude, and your model of Geiger counter, this background radiation level might average anywhere from 5 to 60 CPM, and while background radiation levels are random, it would be unusual for those levels to exceed 100 CPM.  Thus, the "Alert Level" for the National Radiation Map is 100 CPM, so if you see any Monitoring Stations with CPM value above 100, further indicated by an Alert symbol over those stations, it probably means that some radioactive source above and beyond background radiation is responsible.
Notice the Time and Date Stamp at the bottom center of the Map.  That is Arizona Time, from where we service the Network, and your indication of how recently the Radiation Levels have been updated to the Map.
How to Participate in the Nationwide Radiation Network:
If you want to join this nationwide grass roots effort to monitor the radiation in our environment, then this is all you need (click on the Software link):

	Compatible Geiger Counter (See models below)
	GeigerGraph Software and Data Cable
	Computer with Windows Operating System
	Internet Access (Direct connection preferred)

In fact, if you become an active participant in this network (instead of just a passive viewer of this website), the GeigerGraph software that you use will incorporate the same Radiation Map as above, but your map will be fully interactive, with zoom capabilities, descriptions of Nuclear Sites and Monitoring Stations, additional Map Layers, including Counties, Airports, Roads, Railroads, Lakes and Rivers, along with the capability to download City Streets for your county.  Plus, in keeping with the elements of a true Network, the GeigerGraph software has its own Chat forum.
Compatible Geiger Counter Models:

	The Geiger
	Monitor 4 (yr 2008 redesign)
	Radalert, Radalert 50 and Radalert 100
	Digilert 50 and Digilert 100
	palmRAD
	CRM-100
	Inspector
	Inspector EXP
	Images SI models

Most of these models, as well as the GeigerGraph for Networks software, are available at GeigerCounters.com, a web site operated by Mineralab.  Click on the links in the previous sentence to go there.

Is Any Radiation "Safe"?

When the industrial application of a technology has a poisonous environmental by-product, clearly a primary requirement is to understand the consequent public health hazard. Past experience shows that, at any point in medical history, we are unlikely to know enough to assess such hazards with accuracy. But the consequences of underestimating these hazards, especially genetic hazards, can be so grave that we must be extremely conservative in assessing them.
          An error on the side of conservatism in estimating a danger can be, at worst, a delaying nuisance for the promoters of the technology. An error on the side of optimism, leading to some underestimation of the true hazard, can be extremely costly to the human species. We can always later allow more exposure to a poison, such as radioactivity, if we learn that it can be tolerated. We cannot undo genetic and chromosomal damage from overdoses of poison already consumed.
          For nuclear electricity generation, the by-product poison is radioactivity (or radiation itself). Any of the hundreds of radioactive substances produced in the course of all phases of nuclear electricity generation can be harmful to man, from uranium mining through to disposal of astronomical quantities of radioactive wastes. It doesn't matter whether the radiation is external to the body or provided by one or more radioactive compounds that have gained access to the body through air, food, or water. What counts, for any particular organ, is the total absorption of radiation energy, which is measured in rads or millirads (1000 millirads = 1 rad).
          The only possible way to set a truly safe standard -- a definite number of rads or millirads assigned to a particular tissue or organ -- would be to know beyond any reasonable doubt that within that amount no biological effect will occur. We can state unequivocally, and without fear of contradiction, that no one has ever produced evidence that any specific amount of radiation will be without harm. Indeed, quite the opposite appears to be the case.
          All the evidence, both from experimental animals and from humans, leads us to expect that even the smallest quantities of ionizing radiation produce harm, both to this generation of humans and future generations. Furthermore, it appears that progressively greater harm accrues in direct proportion to the amount of radiation received by the various body tissues and organs.
          It came as a great shock to us, in the course of our study of radiation hazards to man, that nuclear electricity generation has been developed under the false illusion that there exists some safe amount of radiation. This unsupportable concept is surely one of the gravest condemnations of nuclear electricity generation. Obviously any engineering development proceeding under an illusion of a wide margin of safety is fraught with serious danger.
          What is more, the false illusion of a safe amount of radiation has pervaded all the highest circles concerned with the development and promotion of nuclear electric power. The Congress, the nuclear manufacturing industry, and the electric utility industry have all been led to believe that some safe amount of radiation does indeed exist. They were hoping to develop this industry with exposures below this limit -- a limit we now know is anything but safe.
          Before describing the widely pervasive nature of this serious misunderstanding of the radiation hazard problem at such top levels in industry and government, it is important to establish carefully that we put the integrity, sincerity, and motives of no one into question. Undoubtedly, the scientists, the engineers, and the power executives involved, as well as the Congressmen, were simply misled in their belief that some safe amount of radiation truly exists. It was the result of some inadequate observations involving persons exposed to radium salts industrially. Numerous reputable scientists had long discounted these inadequate observations. All of the national and international standard-setting bodies had also refused to accept this inadequate evidence of a supposedly safe amount of radiation.

This just the opening to a good article from ratical.org.

It is just way too long to post in its entirety but you can access the full thing on the topic heading above.  Includes sections on:

A Multi-Billion Dollar Industry on a Dangerous Premise         
          " ... We were assigned to evaluate the hazards of atomic radiation by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1963. It was our job to assess the cost in human disease and death for all sorts of proposed and on-going nuclear energy programs, including nuclear electricity. "
         


Faith Is Not Justified           There are, in addition, further mechanisms which operated to confuse the Congress, the electric utility industry, and, eventually, the public of the United States. It is commonplace to find that people in industry, the Congress and the public-at-large, have an almost mystical faith in governmental regulatory agencies.


"No Effect Observed"          
          ..."Suppose there were 1,000 persons in an auditorium and suddenly the lights were extinguished. During the period of ensuing darkness in the auditorium, suppose a man is stabbed to death. When the lights go on again, it is perfectly appropriate (in Dr. Thompson's framework ) to state that no murder was observed ("no event observed"). Yet there is a result for certain -- in the form of a murdered man!
          What does this analogy teach us? Simply if we do not look, or if it is too dark to see, then no event can be observed -- no matter what disastrous result has occurred. We have every right to be shocked that such devious, non-reasoning pronouncements are typical of nuclear electricity promoters. "

          Such a disaster can be introduced easily and unobtrusively because of two fundamental errors in public health thinking:

1. We tend to look for "immediate" effects of poisons.
2. We forget what careful studies are required to show that 1 out of 600 die per year of a disease.

         


The Careful Studies Required to Observe Effects           We have pointed out that one person out of 600 dying annually from cancer represents a "major killer" entity -- equivalent to the entire cancer problem in the United States. Could officials miss such an effect for an environmental poison through inadequate studies? The answer is "Yes." In fact, one repeatedly encounters supposedly scientific studies that have led to erroneous results and enormous public-health blunders, simply because an inadequate number of exposed persons were studied.

          No amount of ionizing radiation is safe!

1. Quoted in "Nuclear Hazard In Santa Cruz" by Harold Gilliam, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, June 28, 1970.
2. Reference: "Radiation Exposure of Uranium Miners." Hearings of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 90th Congress 1st Session. May-August, 1967. Part 1.
3. Reference: Power Technology and The Future by Commissioner These Thompson (USAEC). Presented at "Briefing Conference for State and Local Government officials on Nuclear Development," Columbia, South Carolina, May 21, 1970.
4. Reference: Dr. Paul Tompkins, quoting directly from 1954 NCRP Statement. In "Environmental Effects of Producing Electric Power." Hearings before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy," 91st Congress, 1st Session, October-November, 1969. Part 1.

Quarter Century Retrospective On The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident By Dr. Peter Custers

Quarter Century Retrospective On The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident By Dr. Peter Custers

By Dr. Peter Custers

23 April, 2011
Countercurrents.org

The accident could have served as a wake-up call to the whole of humanity. Twenty-five years ago, on April 26th 1986, disaster struck at the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear complex, in the Ukrainian state of the former Soviet Union. The accident actually started taking shape in the preceding night, when workers undertook a turbine test that had incompletely been carried out before the nuclear plant became operational. When the test was being carried out, the automatic emergency system was shut down, undermining reactor safety. During the test also, fuel elements burst, setting off a chain of events which in no time resulted in two powerful explosions. Soon the reactor’s meltdown was a fact, and a huge radioactive cloud spread its contaminating effects over a vast area of the Soviet Union and beyond. A quarter century has lapsed since this accident occurred. Until last month ‘s accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Chernobyl was considered to be the very worst disaster ever to have occurred at a nuclear production facility since the founding of the sector during World War Two. Moreover, as recent reports confirm, even today the Chernobyl disaster is far from over (1). Hence a retrospective is surely appropriate. The more so since the Japanese authorities have meanwhile rated their Fukushima accident at the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.

First, the radioactive fall-out from the Soviet granite-moderated reactor was unprecedentedly large. Officially, the fall-out is stated to have been 50 million of curies of radioactivity. But it probably was at least several times this figure. Amongst the numerous known and unknown nuclear accidents that historically have occurred, Chernobyl is not the only one to have resulted in a dangerously large fall-out of radioactivity. When storage tanks for high- radioactive waste in 1957 exploded in a nuclear-military reprocessing factory in Cheliabinsk, in a remote corner of the Ural mountains, - tens of millions of curies of radioactivity also leaked, damaging the health of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens. Both the fall-out from Chernobyl and that from Cherniabinsk by far exceeded the radioactive fall-out from the US’s dropping of atom bombs on Japan’s cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, in 1945. Besides, since the Chernobyl complex was located close to densely populated parts of the Ukraine and Europe, the radioactive fall-out from the damaged civilian reactor was bound to be very consequential. Fifty thousand people living in Chernobyl’s immediate surroundings had to be evacuated. A vast rural region became either permanently or temporarily uninhabitable. And 15 countries of Europe saw half of their territories contaminated by the radioactive cloud. As happened in the wake of the recent Fukushima-Daiichi disaster, - public authorities every-where were forced to put restrictions on the sale and import of food, so as to reduce the risk of radiation-induced cancer deaths among their populations.

Initially, the effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe and the widespread anger it aroused put a brake on plans to expand production of nuclear energy, in particular in Europe and the US. Yet as ´Chernobyl´ started receding from public memory, proponents of nuclear energy once again went on the offensive, claiming the disaster had cost very few lives. Even a section of well known European intellectuals worried about climate change have been swayed. The renowned British thinker James Lovelock a few years back surprisingly stated that claims regarding a huge death toll from Chernobyl are ´a powerful lie´ (2). The only admission institutions representing nuclear interests, such as the IAEA, are willing to make is that the disaster caused an increase in thyroid cancers in children. This, they say, may result in just a few thousand mortalities. Not even the fact that tens of thousands of young and health men who heroically participated in clean-up activities in Chernobyl faced an early death, is admitted from this side. In a more critical report brought out in 2006, the international organization Greenpeace revealed that the figure for victims of cancer cases due to Chernobyl could top a quarter million, and that nearly a hundred thousand fatal cancers were to be deplored. Again, in an ambitious study brought out by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009, Russian scientists compared data from severely contaminated, and from less contaminated parts of the former Soviet Union. They concluded that the death toll until end 2004 may be nine to ten times Greenpeace’s amount (3). Undoubtedly, vast numbers of fatalities from the 1986 fall-out remain unrecorded or hidden. Yet Chernobyl´s tragic effects can easily be seen by those who care. In some areas of the former Soviet Union, less than 20 percent of children are healthy. Numerous babies have been born with deformities or with disturbances of their nervous systems. Genetic disorders were found in every animal species studied by the Russian scientists.

However, it would be wrong to think the after-effects of Chernobyl were limited to the direct consequences of the 1986 fall-out. Towards understanding the implications of a nuclear disaster, it is also necessary to look at the outcome of the clean-up operation undertaken subsequently by the then Soviet authorities. First, 5000 tons of materials were dropped from helicopters to re-cover the damaged reactor, at the price of the life the pilots. Then, some 6 hundred thousand workers, baptized the ´liquidators´, were recruited or forced to rapidly build a sarcophagus of concrete and metal. This operation carried out over a period of six months again was extremely hazardous, and probably resulted in the largest category of radiation-induced illnesses and deaths from the catastrophe. Besides, contrary to what one would expect or hope for - the new outer shell for Chernobyl´s melted reactor never functioned as an effective barrier to radiation leakages. It reportedly has been in danger of collapse for years! Thus, since the nineties discussions have been under way over the building of a new arch. Such an arch would have to be erected in proximity of the former reactor, and will need to be glided towards its destination via rails, in order to reduce risks for humans. Also, the existing sarcophagus and the destroyed reactor will have to be dismantled, with the aid of robots. As of 2011, a major chunk of the funds required to finance this new operation still has not been collected. Clearly, the mess from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is long-, if not ever-lasting. And although Japan´s technological capacity today obviously exceeds that of the Soviet Union 25 years back, - the clean-up work in Japan is sure to extend over very many decades to come.

What fundamental lessons can we draw from Chernobyl, - for Japan and for the world at large? The experience gathered since the melt-down 25 years back appears to validate the views nuclear critics expressed at the time. The disaster fuelled immediate and worldwide resistance - not just against expansion, but against any reliance on nuclear energy. Many hundreds of thousands of people have since participated in protests in Western Europe alone. One of the central arguments critics cite is that nuclear technology is a form of technology which is so hazardous, so destructive, that humanity would do well to renounce it entirely. Yet since the late nineties, strenuous efforts have been made by proponents of nuclear energy to stage a ´renaissance´ and resume the trend of nuclear expansion worldwide. It is very unfortunate that a section of writers and intellectuals who are vocal against climate change have sought fit to voice the same arguments being used by representatives of the nuclear lobby to defend a nuclear come-back. As a retrospective on the Chernobyl catastrophe easily brings out: one cannot trade one catastrophe against another; one can´t exchange a climate catastrophe for a nuclear catastrophe. On this anniversary we need a sacred pledge in favor of reliance on technologies that are productive, that squarely sustain all forms of life on planet earth.

Dr. Peter Custers
(author of a theoretical study on nuclear production, see Questioning Globalized Militarism (Tulika/Merlin Press, 2007)
Leiden, the Netherlands, April, 2011
www.petercusters.nl

References:

(1) For a comprehensive overview, see Dirk Bannink and Peer de Rijk, ‘Chernobyl; Chronology of a Disaster’ (Nuclear Monitor, WISE/NIRS, Amsterdam, March 11, 211, no.724)

(2) James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaya. Why the Earth is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity (Penguin Books, London, 2007), p.131);

(3) Alexey V.Yablokov, Vassily B.Nesterenko, Alexey V.Nesterenko, Chernobyl. Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Vol.1181, Blackwell Publishing, Boston, 2009).

YouTube - You won't hear this on any mainstream news!!! (Nuclear Fallout)

YouTube - You won't hear this on any mainstream news!!! (Nuclear Fallout)

Nuclear Facts A very clued in professional who will not be bought or intimidated into silence: Dr Helen Caldicott, true to style, tells it as it is. As she sees it, you wont usually hear the truth so listen up.. Nuclear fallout from Japan and Canada, You won't hear this on the news!

Investigation underway into nuclear reactor shutdown at Plant Vogtle

Investigation underway into nuclear reactor shutdown at Plant Vogtle

YouTube - Japan declares nuclear no-go zone

YouTube - Japan declares nuclear no-go zone



The Japanese government has imposed a ban on entering an exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex.

The no-go zone extends 20-kilometres around the facility, and will be enforced from midnight on Friday (1500GMT on Thursday).

Residents fled the area after an evacuation was ordered on March 12, a day after a 9.0 earthquake and 15-metre tsunami critically damaged the plant's power and cooling systems.

Several of them have since returned for short trips to retrieve their belongings.

Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett reports from Tashiwazaki, Japan. More

Fukishima - One of the Great Disasters in Modern Time: Allen L. Rowland blog

FUKUSHIMA / ONE OF THE GREATEST DISASTERS IN MODERN TIME

The silent monstrous killer of deadly radiation has been released at Fukushima and despite the denial of the Japanese government ~ its repercussions will be rapidly rising death rates. The lessons of Chernobyl 25 years ago offers Japan a deadly hint of what’s to come for clearly we are witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern times: Allen L Roland

The mainstream media has all but buried the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig disaster off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, 2010 and the subsequent 210 million gallon oil gusher while Gulf coast residents continue to say “The oil is not gone. Dead wildlife are washing up on our shores by the hundreds, Entire livelihoods are in peril” in one of the world’s greatest ecological disasters.

Now the mainstream media is attempting to bury one of the greatest disasters in modern time in Fukushima where residents will soon be crying out that ” the radiation is not gone, people are dying and our livelihoods are in peril ” but this time other voices are being heard.

One of the most reliable voices speaking out on the Fukushima nuclear disaster is Arnie Gundersen who was an engineer and senior vice president with Danbury, Connecticut-based Nuclear Energy Services. He was as insider in commercial nuclear power generation, and understands reactor operation as well as any in his field.

Last week, when the Japanese government finally announced that the disaster rating at Fukushima went from 5 to 7 ~ the worst possible nuclear accident was finally acknowledged publicly. What went unacknowledged, according to Gundersen, was that in an instant the catastrophe became 100 times worse than had been previously reported. Each increase in numeric value officially acknowledges a ten-fold increase in level of nuclear disaster. In other words, from 5 to 7 was 10 x 10: or 100 times greater.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, interviewed Michio Kaku on her show last week and asked him the very same question about the raising of the category 5 to a 7 in par with Chernobyl. Dr. Michio Kaku ,professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York and the City College of New York, confirmed that Tokyo Electric has been in denial trying to downplay the full impact of this nuclear accident ~ “However, there's a mathematical formula by which you can determine what level this accident is. This accident has already released something in the order of 50,000 trillion becquerels of radiation. You do the math. That puts it right in the middle of a level 7 nuclear accident. Still less than Chernobyl; however, radiation is continuing to leak out of the reactors. The situation is not stable at all … So, you're looking at a ticking time bomb. It appears stable but the slightest disturbance from a secondary earthquake, a pipe break, an evacuation of the crew at Fukushima can set off a full scale nuclear meltdown at three nuclear power plants far beyond what we saw at Chernobyl.”

Kaku is not a guy to be sneezed at. He's a Japanese American physicist, a best-selling author, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of New York, and the author of A Physics of the Future. This is a well-known expert in this field. He's telling the truth, and the truth is this: the Japanese government is in denial and Fukushima is a ticking time bomb.

What remains unacknowledged is that Fukushima is continuing to release terabecquerels of radioactive poison and will continue to do so for months, if not years but the public is not fully getting this message.

Gunderson's video presentation is an absolute must-watch. In the 7 and 3/4 minute video here, he exposes a great deal, including previously confidential NRC and nuclear industry inside information. It's clear, according to Gundersen, that March 21st, ten days after the earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima disaster was already rated a 7 and that the NRC, the Nuclear Industry, and TEPCO were already limiting the flow of Information and still are for that matter.

Today, we have reported evidence that the level of radioactivity in the seawater dramatically rose again. Iodine-131 spiked to 6,500 times the legal limit and levels of cesium-134 and cesium-137 rose nearly four fold.

It is here that we should address the lessons of Chernobyl ~ after 25 years, some of Chernobyl’s radioactive substances have either decayed or migrated deeper into the ground. Although levels of cesium-137 are slowly falling, concentrations of this damaging bioactive element remain high in many areas. Half of the cesium-137 deposited in 1986 will have decayed into relatively stable barium-137 by 2016 but a quarter of it will still remain in 2046 (60 years after the Chernobyl disaster)

Plants and animals continue to recycle cesium-137 through their tissue and consequently suffer from chronic radiation syndrome, increased mortality, reproductive losses and genetic defects.

The legacy of iodine-131 is although it decays relatively soon after the accident ~ enough of it inhaled or consumed in milk will cause a significant increase in thyroid cancer. A recent U.N. Report, drawing on studies by Western researchers, said 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer could be linked to Chernobyl but evidence regarding other diseases is inconclusive. Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusan researchers, however, say their studies show increased incidence of high blood pressure, stroke, vascular disease and non-malignant thyroid diseases among the after effects of Chernobyl.

I agree with Jim Kirwin who writes ~ “ Much has been made, by comparisons to Chernobyl; but that event involved just one reactor and the dimensions of its meltdown were only delayed one day before the Russian government ordered evacuations just 24 hours after the world heard about it. Japan chose the opposite course and has still not owned up to just how deadly the meltdown of their six reactors really is. The amount of radiation being released is staggering; but the massive attempt by business, by governments and by the entire nuclear industry to cover-this-up is a crime against humanity! The tonnage of the fuel rods that have melted and burned, so far, makes Chernobyl look like backyard fireworks, compared to what has already been released into the global environment which is already enough to kill the planet many times over. This is the unimaginable disaster that makes contrived-fiction look like children’s fairy-tales; because the lives of all of us depend directly on what the world does now to end this continuing nightmare.”

"Fish in nearby waters are now being measured at 4,000% above the Codex Alimentation limits for Iodine-131 and 447% of Cesium-137. Radioactive cesium has a half-life of 30 years. Radiation levels for the isotope are not considered “safe” for 10 to 20 times longer. The cesium released today will remain dangerous six centuries from now.... “Fukushima has become the dirty bomb of the Pacific"....("Radiation Spreads Worldwide", Freedom Against Censorship Thailand, Global Research, April 14, 2011)

Will Englund, Washington Post, offers on the LESSONS OF CHERNOBYL a hint of the fate that may well face Japan ~ “Near Pripyat, the abandoned and now overgrown dormitory city for Chernobyl, where moss grows on the central square and the wind thrums through the rusting Ferris wheel ~ lies a more haunting place. It was once the village of Kopachi, which happens to mean "Gravedigger" in Ukrainian. Every house there was buried in 1991 because of contamination. When Gravedigger was interred, only a nursery school was left standing, with a memorial to the Soviet soldiers and the fierce battles they fought here in World War II. "No one forgets. Nothing is forgotten," reads the plaque on the memorial. But because of Chernobyl there is now no one here to remember.” http://www.courierpress.com/news/2011/apr/10/chernobyl-may-teach-grim-lesson-to-japan/

Let us hope that the same fate will not befall Fukashima, Japan ~ which is already deserted and decaying.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-one-of-greatest-disasters-in.html

About the author: Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

How to Detoxify radiation from your body : FREE E BOOK

This one really highlights the Epsom Salt "solution", one which I can verify personally.

I spent THREE YEARS in a walker due to thyroid disease and fibromyalgia and this worked and IS working.


Please give it a read.

Treatments for Nuclear Contamination | Dr. Mark's Blog

Treatments for Nuclear Contamination | Dr. Mark's Blog
Go to the link. Cannot copy .. This is just really important information. It may save your life. I am serious.
Virginia

From the comments -


Great suggestions , also may I suggest
Reishi Mushroom, Rhodiola, Astragalus, Ginsengs
Also very important:


Melatonin, NAC, glutathione (GSH)

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2800038/?tool=pubmed

   NAC is glutathione precursor. Melatonin (and vitamin D) raises glutathione levels.

   Melatonin

   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15183467

   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20652743

2. NAC

3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12633746

   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8538205

   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9845106

   Possibly Nicotinamide (vit B3)

   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11538987

   
   
4. Iodine Treatments for Radiation Exposure | Dr. Mark's Blog says:
5. [...] to protect a person from uranium, cesium or plutonium radiation exposure so one has to turn to my full protocol and especially to eating clay and clay baths to try to remove these other particles as fast as [...]

   Quicksilver makes Clear Way cofactors. You can buy it here:
   http://products.nihadc.com/clear-way-cofactors-75-caps.html

to buy Potassium Iodide
UST BOUGHT YESTERDAY MAR. 16TH FROM http://WWW.HERBHEALERS.COM AND I BUY EVERY FEW MONTHS. THIER PRICE IS THE BEST $7.45 A BOTTLE FOR 5% LUGOL’S THIER VERY TRUSTWORTHY BUT THESE AMERICANS ARE IN EXUADOR AND IT TAKES ABOUT TWO WEEKS TO RECIEVE IT. BUT THE BEST PRICE ON THE PLANET THAT I’VE HAVE FOUND. I USE IT EVERY DAY FOR MANY REASONS ALSO TRY J CROWS.COM BUT THEIRS IS $ 25.00 FOR THE SAME SIZE BOTTLE

Strong baths with bicarbonate are needed…..2-3 lb or more of sodium bicarbonate are added to the bath.
Directions on the bicarbonate package must be followed for oral use of bicarbonate: 7 half tsp of biicarbonate mixed in a glass of water/day is the limit. For people over age 60 only 3 half tsp/day in water are recommended.

Sincerely,
Claudia French
IMVA

Diana,
Bath water should start out hot but not so hot to cause fainteness. This draws toxins to the surface of the skin and opens pores. As the water cools, to slightly below body temperature, osmotic exchange of fluids takes place and the toxins are drawn out of the body and into the tub of water.
Hopefully someone with knowledge of essential oils can answer your question on that but I don’t think it should interfere.

Sincerely,
Claudia French
IMVA

Diana,

Green Teas and Kombuchko teas are said to have good antiradiation effects.

The baking soda recommendations above are ok, but you will just have to try it and see what kind of reaction you have. And decide which is worse, a mild reaction, possibly some diarrhea or radiation poisoning. Stay hydrated!

Sincerely,
Claudia French
IMVA